The Best American Poetry

Natalie Diaz Guest Author March 24-28

photo (c) Rachel Eliza Griffiths

This week we welcome Natalie Diaz as our guest author. Natalie was born and raised in the Fort Mojave Indian Village in Needles, California, on the banks of the Colorado River. She played professional basketball in Europe and Asia before earning her MFA at Old Dominion University. She lives in Mohave Valley, Arizona, where she works with the last Elder speakers of the Mojave language to document and revitalize the Makav language at Fort Mojave. She and her Elders are building a Mojave language dictionary and encyclopedia. She is a Lannan Fellow as well as a Native Arts Council Foundation Fellow. She teaches in the Institute of American Indian Arts Low Rez MFA program.

 

Welcome, Natalie.

 

In other news . . .

Read David Lehman's Wall Street Journal review of Evelyn Barish's "The Double Life of Paul de Man."

 

-- sdh

Save the Date: April 1, 2014 7:00 PM David Lehman at Keystone College

In celebration of National Poetry Month, the Keystone College Concerts and Lectures Series will present a poetry reading by David Lehman on Tuesday, April 1 at 7 p.m. in Evans Hall, Hibbard Campus Center. The event is free and the public is invited to attend.

Founded in 1868, Keystone is a private residential college in the rural community of La Plume, Pennsylvania, roughly 150 miles west of New York City.

Lehman will read new work as well as from his recently published New and Selected Poems (Scribner, 2013).

For more information, go here.

Is the New SAT the Adolescent Equivalent of the Tax Code? [by David Lehman]

They're reforming the SATs again, which means the columnists are duking it out about the efficacy of standardized testing, the merits of the venerable scoring sytem in which 800 aces the test, and the question of whether multiple choice questions, in which you are rewarded for guessing even if you don't know for sure, are systematicaly biased against the have-nots. We asked Silys Tompkin Comberback of the Princeton Institute of Advanced Studies for his opinion, and he countered with a multiple-choice exam that would function as a rebus except that deciphering the message correctly will offer unambiguous rewards whereas surviving an IRS audit, which has been likened to going through an autopsy while still alive, assures one only of survival, a dubious merit, like being an author and getting to call your villian after the name of the single biggest asshole you know. Here, try Professor Comberback's questions for yourself and see whether you agree with the solution formed by the pattern that results:

1) "Like the crusade to make all Americans homeowners, [the idea of college for all is] now doing more harm than good." Vocational training is better than "dumbed down college." Who said it?

a) The former drug czar who foresees the divorce of private education from public subsidy
b) Jennifer Lawrence, who graduated high school two years early in Kentucky and collected an Academy Award for Best Actress
c) An old guy griping that things ain't what they used to be
d) Coleridge in Biographia Literaria as translated by a modern computer program named -- with the exuberant irreverence of Silicon Valley -- Plato
e) Mitt Romney's daughter-in-law in the new Netflix documentary

2) When Ernest Hemingway defined critics as "men who watch a battle from a high place, then come down and shoot the survivors," he was thinking of
a) Brooks Atkinson and Howard Taubman of the New York Times
b) "The whole bullshit New York tradition, from Edmund Wilson to Susan Sontag"
c) Carlos Baker of Princeton University
d) Gertrude Stein and Sherwood Anderson (see The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas )
e) Hadley Richardson, Pauline Pfeiffer, Martha Gellhorn, and Mary Welsh

3) Which of the following didn't happen in the last week of May 2012:
a) The impresarios of Indonesia canceled Lady Gaga's sold-out concert in Jakarta because her "needleslly provocative" advocacy of homosexuality makes her the "devil's messenger"
b) A Muslim woman argued in the Guardian that wearing the hijab is the ultimate feminist act
c) A New Yorker writer blogged that he was quitting Facebook because Mark Zuckerberg is a despot and you enter his pseudo-democratic realm at grave risk to your privacy
d) Levi Johnston, the father of Bristol Palin's baby, twittered his indgination to his 400,000 followers when John Edwards was acquitted
e) A poll of New Yorkers determined that 97% did not know why John Edwards was on trial but were sure that he is guilty, thus demonstrating that

1) Campaign finance reform laws are impossible to understand
2) Screwing your media adviser is one thing, impregnating her is another
3) Screwing her is one thing, doing it while your wife is camaigning for you is another
4) Screwing is one thing, but doing her while your wife is dying of cancer is another
5) Nobody gives a shit

Extra credit if you suspend your disbelief, identify the fellow in the picture and explain his dubious relevance to this post.
-- DL

The Master at Work [1965 studio session: "It was a very good year. . ."]

 

Zeugma Headline of the Day: WSJ

"Web Pioneer Keeps Faith, And Cash, In Bitcoin"

                    Page A1, WSJ March 22-23, 2014

-- sdh

If poetry is the aphodisiac of the brain, read on. . . [Sunday, March 23, 5 PM]

Jewish Poetry Now

Celebrating The Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish American Poetry

Sunday March 23 2014 5:00PM

Center for Jewish History, 15 West 16 Street, NYC

The reading will spotlight a dynamic and talented troupe of troubadors including Sharon Dolin, Edward Hirsch, Deborah Ager (coeditor of the Bloomsbury Anthology), Jacqueline Osherow, David Lehman, Victoria Redel, Amy Gottlieb, Nomi Stone, Judith Baumel, Jason Schneiderman, and Cheryl J. Fish. Moderated by Miriam R. Haier. A wine and cheese reception will follow.

Admission is FREE. Seats are comfortable. Boys and girls together, me and Mamie O'Rourke. You don't have to be Jewish to eat Levy's Jewsh Rye Bread, one of the better commercials of its time, beat out the New York Times ("if you're without it, you're not with it") in the category of subway posters. It is rumored that Shawn Green and Mike Piazza will attend the event, with the former reading the late Ralph Kiner's elegy to Hank Greenberg.

This Monday at KGB: Rachel Zucker + Yona Harvey

KGB Monday Night Poetry is pleased to present...

Rachel Zucker + Yona Harvey

Monday, March 24, 2014

Hosted by John Deming and Matthew Yeager

Series founded in 1997 by Star Black and David Lehman

Doors open at 7:00 pm

Reading starts at 7:30pm

Admission is FREE

www.KgbBar.com

85 East 4th Street * New York, NY

Rachel Zucker is the author of nine books, most recently, MOTHERs and The Pedestrians (forthcoming, April 1). Her book Museum of Accidents was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She lives in New York with her husband and their three sons. She teaches at New York University and is currently a National Endowment for the Arts fellow.

 

 

Yona Harvey is a literary artist living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She is the author of the poetry collection,Hemming the Water (Four Way Books: New York), and the recipient of an Individual Artist Grant from The Pittsburgh Foundation.   Her poems can be found in jubilat, Gulf Coast, Callaloo, West Branch, and various journals and anthologies, including A Poet’s Craft: A Comprehensive Guide to Making and Sharing Your Poetry (Ed. Annie Finch). She lives not far from where jazz pianist and composer Mary Lou Williams grew up. Williams married the spiritual to the secular in her music, and is a regular muse in Yona’s writing.  In addition to her undergraduate and graduate degrees in English from Howard University (BA) and The Ohio State University (MFA), she also earned a Master of Library and Information Science degree from The University of Pittsburgh.  She is an Assistant Professor of English at The University of Pittsburgh.

Remaining Spring 2014 Lineup:

Mar 31  Matthew Zapruder + Charlotte Boulay   

Apr 7    Nate Pritts + Jennifer H. Fortin + Adam Fell       

Apr 14  Scott Hightower + Jeffrey Harrison  

Apr 21  Brian Blanchfield + Christopher Salerno   

Apr 28  Russell Dillon + Roger Reeves  

May 5   Ariana Reines + Laura Sims  

May 12  Mark Bibbins + Lucie Brock-Broido + Season Finale Party  

It is nice to be known, to be called out specially by the uncanny. [by Jennifer Michael Hecht]

Dear Bleaders!

So a poem is in my head today, and I thought of you.

The Song of Wandering Aengus - W. B. Yeats

I went out to the hazel wood,

Because a fire was in my head,

And cut and peeled a hazel wand,

And hooked a berry to a thread;

And when white moths were on the wing,

And moth-like stars were flickering out,

I dropped the berry in a stream

And caught a little silver trout.

 

When I had laid it on the floor

I went to blow the fire a-flame,

But something rustled on the floor,

And someone called me by my name:

It had become a glimmering girl

With apple blossom in her hair

Who called me by my name and ran

And faded through the brightening air.

 

Though I am old with wandering

Through hollow lands and hilly lands,

I will find out where she has gone,

And kiss her lips and take her hands;

And walk among long dappled grass,

And pluck till time and times are done,

The silver apples of the moon,

The golden apples of the sun.

 

(1899)

 

This is what happens when you carve a hazel wand to use as a fishing rod. You catch a magic trout who turns into a glimmering girl who calls you by your name.

Not much on her beauty, my friends, but the repeated bliss of her magically knowing his name. It is nice to be known, to be called out specially by the uncanny.

And what a fantasy of certainty and conviction. Certain that he needs her, convinced he’ll find her. Then five full lines on what that pleasure will look like and how long it will last.

It’s a story about a god of Irish Mythology, Aengus, understood to be a god of love and poetic inspiration. I think Yeats made up this particular story, but his theme sure is looking for one's love and having a blissful reunion. Also, a lot of bloody kin-killing.

His story begins when the Dagda (and important father god) had an affair with Nechtan’s wife, Boann. To hide the affair, the Dagda made the sun stand still for nine months so that Aengus was conceived, gestated, and born on the same day. 

When he grew up, Aengus tricked the Dagda out of his grand home, the Brú na Boinne (famed for its passage tombs). He arrived after the Dagda had divided his land among his children. There was nothing left. So Aengus asked dad if he could live in Brú for "a day and a night", and the Dagda agreed. But Irish has no indefinite article so “a day and a night” is identical to “day and night,” so Aengus, pointing this out, took possession of the Brú permanently. Theft by grammatical interpretation!

Aengus famously killed his step-father for killing his foster-father; slew a poet for lying about his brother’s sex life; killed his foster mother for jealously turning a horse goddess into a pool of water, etc.

He fell in love with a girl he had seen in his dreams. His mother searched Ireland for her for a year, then his father the Dagma did the same. A year later the King of Munster found out where she was.

Aengus went to the lake of the Dragon's Mouth and found a hundred and fifty girls chained up in pairs, with his girl, Caer, among them. The girls were regularly turned into swans and Aengus was told he could marry Caer if he could identify her as a swan. Aengus did, then turned himself into a swan, and the two flew away, singing. Their song put all listeners asleep for three days.

Aengus had a foster son Diarmuid, who died young. Aengus took his body back to the Brú where he breathed life into it whenever he wanted to talk.

Shall we worry about shame and money, health and the health of our friends? Or shall we spend some time with Aengus, doing things he might have done? Lately I've been thinking of the sea-dark wine, and the winedark sea. The sea cold fish and the fishcold sea. It does the trick, poor Odyssus wasting all that time in clever exiles, weeping on the shore when we first meet him. Penelope weeping in their bed.

Today though, Aengus and his transformations. Well, I guess I just felt like talking. Hope you are well. Check out my new website if you want jennifermichaelhecht.com. Don't kill yourself and I shall return to encourage you again.

Love,

Jennifer

David Lehman in the "Zone," wins the Virginia Quarterly Review Emily Clark Balch Prize for Poetry

We just received word that David Lehman has won the Virginia Quarterly Review Emily Clark Balch Prize for Poetry for his translation of Apollinaire’s “Zone,” which appeared in the journal's Spring 2013 issue. This award cannot be applied for; it is a VQR staff decision regarding the best work of poetry published in its print or online pages in 2013.

The Balch Prizes were established by Emily Clark Balch, the founding editor of The Reviewer, a publication that was key to the literary awakening of the American South. When Balch died, she left the bulk of her estate to the University of Virginia, for “the encouragement and production of American Literature.” (The money was divided to endow prizes in fiction and poetry and to create a writer-in-residence position—first occupied by William Faulkner.)

Past recipients of the poetry prize include Wendell Berry, John Berryman, Hayden Carruth, James Dickey, Carolyn Forché, Albert Goldbarth, Donald Hall, Lisel Mueller, May Sarton, Charles Simic, Natasha Trethewey, and Ellen Bryant Voigt.

Read David Lehman's introduction along with his translation of his winning poem, Appollinaire's "Zone" here.

Congratulations, David! Bon travail!

-- sdh

Iron Mountain (by Mitch Sisskind)

                Man had a big house outside
                Iron Mountain, his wife hot at
                The swimming pool, laughing  
                As Nasko Hooten introduced
                Himself: 'What kind of a name
                'Is that?' But not in the slightest
                Was he pissed off. Light shone
                In her eyes, he saw the woman
                She would have been were she
                Duncan Oklahoma born and bred. 
                Man had a truck they looked at
                For a while – Nasko Hooten said,
                   ‘I’d put a winch on the front
                   ‘Of it were that truck mine.’

 

 

 

 

 

The Healing Nature of Grief Poetry (by Tammi Truax)

 (Ed note: This is the second in a series of monthly posts by the editors and contributors to The Widows' Handbook. Read the previous post here.)

     It is believed that Elizabeth Barrett Browning was mourning her brother when she wrote this Victorian era poem. Sadly, it seems that she had to justify her feelings.

Grief

            By Elizabeth Barrett Browning

I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless;
That only men incredulous of despair,
Half-taught in anguish, through the midnight air
Beat upward to God’s throne in loud access
Of shrieking and reproach. Full desertness,
In souls as countries, lieth silent-bare
Under the blanching, vertical eye-glare
Of the absolute heavens. Deep-hearted man, express
Grief for thy dead in silence like to death—
Most like a monumental statue set
In everlasting watch and moveless woe
Till itself crumble to the dust beneath.
Touch it; the marble eyelids are not wet:
If it could weep, it could arise and go.

 

(1871 engraving of EBB, artist unknown)

       There are poems, more than can ever be counted, about death and dying. That are about the act of becoming dead, an experience none of us can actually give a first-hand account of. Such poems are about something the poet has not really experienced, and so is drawn to write about it. In many ways death is the great unknown. It has often been said that Emily Dickinson was obsessed with the subject. These poems of death may or may not be comforting to a reader.

     There has evolved another body of work sometimes called bereavement poetry, from which poems to read at funerals and memorial services are often culled. These poems, then, are read and often written to bring comfort to the grieving.

     These death and bereavement verses may or may not be poems of grief which are, and should be thought of, as a completely distinct category of poetry. And a wide body of work it is. I have even found a substantial sub-category within it that are poems all about the loss of a pet. I suspect that we have been writing grief poems as long as we have been writing. Some of the great Greek lyric poet Sappho’s surviving fragments are of mourning a lost loved one (though it is unclear if her lover had died or walked away).

       Grief poems are first-hand accounts, they are always about what has been experienced by the writer. They communicate in some way the experience of loss by a poet connected, probably intimately, to a death. Often the poet is speaking directly to the deceased. They are not about understanding death necessarily, they are about bearing witness to it, and the bearing is usually visceral and intense. The poet’s intention is not to bring comfort to anyone else. Similar to the great body of poetic works on the subject of love, grief poems are often written while the poet is in an altered state of psychological being. But unlike the fleeting euphoric experience of love, the defeating experience of loss fundamentally changes us psychologically from the way we were before the experience. Profoundly and permanently. Also unlike love the experience of loss can and does trigger depression, physical illness, and even hallucinations, which are normal reactions to it.

    More than any other emotion or experience a poet may be writing about, the experience of grief is strangely acute. It is like no other. It is a physical, emotional, social, and perhaps even financial, life alteration that one has little or no control over. It is most likely perceived as pain. For some it progresses into what is called complicated grief, for some it may even develop into Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Loss of a beloved is a shocking raw wound one might equate to a disemboweling, but that medicine cannot really heal. And though there is some truth to the old dictum about time, grief obeys no temporal boundaries.

                 It is so vast, and so consuming, that it is simply human nature to want and / or need to express it from oneself. And poetry can be one of the safest and healthiest ways to do so. The therapeutic value of poetry is well-documented in medical literature though scientific study is hardly necessary. I am just one of so many thousands who can testify to it.

                   In fact, I was so assisted in my healing process by reading and writing poetry that together with a friend, poet Kyle Potvin, I founded a little non-profit foundation we call The Prickly Pear Poetry Project simply to share the profound healing power of poetry in processing the cancer experience as survivors or caregivers of those who lost their battle. We had both experienced those battles and we had found solace in poetry that quite literally helped us to endure it. We designed a writing workshop that we team-teach at oncology and community centers. We mentor participants from diverse writing backgrounds in tapping into their experiences and releasing them onto the page. We share the work of well-known poets as well as our own. We prompt participants to produce work that we often share in the group in a work shopping atmosphere that is always filled with light even as we go into the darkest places. And getting into the light is what it is all about.

                 As can be found in The Widows’ Handbook: Poetic Reflections on Grief and Survival (Kent State University Press, 2014) grief poetry is as varied as the writers themselves. Just like the experience of grief, it is all over the place. Some experts claim that the bereaved go through five stages of grief; denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Naturally all of these emotions, and many more experts probably can’t attest to, will show up in grief poetry. In the Browning poem that I opened with it is believed she was waylaid by guilt when she wrote it, another big one the experts rarely mention. Some emotions, like humor or relief, may be as hard for others to read of as the saddest admissions of suicidal ideation or roars of rage at God.

       There is I believe only one thing all grief poetry has in common; that it is not what Browning wrote of, it is not hopeless grief, and that is evidenced by its passion. That is what is behind the healing power of grief poetry. It is in that searing anguish of deepest despair when we,

            “beat upward to God’s throne in loud access

            Of shrieking and reproach”

that we find hope. That is what grief expressed is and does. It extinguishes hopeless grief. And allows us to live, which we may have previously thought impossible.

     And still, though we have come so very far since Browning’s era in allowing the demonstration of normal human emotion, we remain undeniably uncomfortable dealing with the bereaved. Here grief poetry helps both the writer who can express their deepest truth, and the reader who can process it in his or her own time and way. And thus we are all served - those of us carrying the weight now and those who care about us.

       The Widows’ Handbook is a book of hope. Please know it and share it as such, with hearts not heavy, but light, like a thing with feathers.

     And thus we get to this; one of my favorite poems, from The Book of Light, (Copper Canyon Press, 1992, page 20).

she lived

        By Lucille Clifton

after he died
what really happened is
she watched the days
bundle into thousands,
watched every act become
the history of others,
every bed more
narrow,
but even as the eyes of lovers
strained toward the milky young
she walked away
from the hole in the ground
deciding to live.       and she lived.

Tammi Truax spent twenty years working with children, specializing in literacy. Recently she was editor of a re-release of Lady Wentworth; A Poet’s Tale and published her debut novel Broken Buckets, as an eBook.  In addition to The Widows’ Handbook Tammi's work has been included in several anthologies, and can be found in journals and online. She works as a newspaper columnist and historical museum teacher. In 2013 she was a participant at AROHO’s retreat for women writers at Ghost Ranch in NM. She is writing a novel about race in colonial America. Reach her at at www.aintiawriter.blogspot.com

David Lehman in the WSJ on Evelyn Barish's "The Double Life of Paul de Man"

Deconstruction of buildings (c) Michael Jantzen

The word deconstruction has entered the lexicon. It can mean anything from dissection or exposure to the use of a wrecking ball. "Laws governing how people deconstruct their marriages differ from state to state," Time reports, as if the 50-cent word made the sentence less trite. Sportswriters admit they spend too much energy "deconstructing" Johnny Football. Susan Sontag is said to have "deconstructed cancer." David Mamet observes a man in a Japanese restaurant "deconstructing his California roll to eat it."

Other recent objects of deconstruction—I keep a file—include Sousa's marches, the tuxedo, the building at 130 Liberty Street in lower Manhattan, the causes of the Great Recession of 2008, "Romeo and Juliet," the boxer Miguel Cotto in his bout with Manny Pacquiao, oyster stuffing, joblessness, New York City's mayoral ballot, and the "whole world." In line with the thinking of actual deconstructionists, the word "deconstruction" has wandered far from its ostensible meaning: the esoteric nexus of French theories that was all the rage in American universities in the 1970s and '80s.

Language, the argument went, has a mind of its own, subverting the intentions of those who speak or write it. Between the word and its meaning falls an ever-lengthening shadow. Every text reduces itself to the same ultimate indeterminacy, and all the world can be treated as a self-referring text. Jacques Derrida, deconstruction's inventive papa, who shuttled often between Paris and the United States, propounded the concept of "différance," according to which the sense of any term is never present but is constantly deferred. "There are only, everywhere, differences and traces of differences," Derrida wrote. There is nothing to keep in check "the infinite play of signification" that marks language in action.

Deconstruction as an academic movement, first in literary criticism but later in other fields, was more than a fad. Inasmuch as it provided a rationale for the busting of canons, the debunking of authority and the rejection of the concept of meaning, deconstruction laid the groundwork for the crisis in the humanities that we face today. English majors, for instance, were once wooed by the prospect of studying life-changing books. Surging to the fore, proponents of deconstruction and related theories wanted everyone to "problematize the text." English is no longer quite so popular a course of study. 

The movement found its American champion in Paul de Man (1919-83) of the Yale University English department, at one time considered the nation’s best. De Man’s essays—austere, tightly argued and rigorously skeptical—were a rite of passage for a generation of graduate students. His students revered him. But he was, it turns out, a fraud, a small-time crook, an Ivy League con man in tweed and, before all this, a Nazi collaborationist. Evelyn Barish’s “The Double Life of Paul de Man” is the first full-length biography of its subject, although outlines of his story have been known for two decades.

The Belgian-born professor’s death in 1983 caused great mourning. Barbara Johnson, an apostle who spread the creed to Harvard, said, “In a profession full of fakeness, he was real.” Then came the discovery by a Belgian graduate student that de Man had written pro-Nazi and anti-Semitic articles for Belgium’s newspaper of record, Le Soir, during the occupation. In 1940 and ’41, de Man had written in praise of Hitlerism and opined that deportations of the Jews would entail little anguish or grief for European civilization.

De Man never talked about his days as a Nazi apologist—except to misrepresent himself, when it suited him, as a man of the left, a veteran of the Popular Front. But his critical work rests on the proposition that such rhetorical modes as confession or apology are terminally unreliable. When faculty lounges were abuzz with de Man’s doings in Brussels in World War II, such aspects of de Man’s thinking began to seem self-serving.

One article of the scores that Paul de Man wrote for the collaborationist press received the closest scrutiny when the story broke in 1988. “The Jews in Contemporary Literature,” which ran on March 4, 1941, minimized the value of “the Jews” as writers or thinkers. They “have always remained in the second rank.” They are not “among the most important figures.” The act of expelling the Jews would not have “regrettable consequences.” You would lose at most “some personalities of mediocre worth.” Critics of deconstruction cried “aha!” Fans rushed out to excuse the fallen idol.

Derrida wrote a lengthy essay using deconstructive methods in a vain effort to prove that de Man, his ally and friend, meant the opposite of what he wrote. Yet the disclosures of de Man’s wartime activities raised doubts about his views on language and literature. Those views had long been held suspect by humanists who believe that texts have meanings, albeit complicated and ambiguous ones.

De Man’s defenders thought his transgressions were limited to one flagrantly anti-Semitic piece. Not so. In “The Double Life of Paul de Man,” Ms. Barish provides details on “how far and actively Paul de Man had entered into collaboration, how creatively he sought to support Nazism.” In addition to writing for Le Soir and a similarly tainted Flemish-language journal, de Man worked for two other publishing concerns committed to Nazi propaganda, starting at a low level but rapidly reaching positions of prominence. After the war, Ms. Barish notes, “each institution was tried and found guilty of treason.”

Ms. Barish also adds to our understanding of the shady financial dealing that precipitated de Man’s escape to the United States in 1948. De Man was a bad businessman as well as a dishonest one. As the head of a publishing house that called itself Hermes—fittingly, since Hermes in Greek myth is the patron of thieves—de Man signed advances he never paid, forged receipts and, in the common parlance of the genre, cooked the books. For swindling and embezzling he was found guilty in absentia in Belgium in 1951 and was sentenced to five years that he never served.

For by then the politically and financially bankrupt young man had fled Europe and his irate creditors, and charmed his way into a temporary job at Bard College. He shipped his European wife and their sons to Argentina and started another family in upstate New York without bothering to deconstruct the first marriage. His bigamy has long been known, though Ms. Barish has uncovered other misdeeds. It was not de Man, who took the credit, but his American wife who translated “his” version of Flaubert’s “Madame Bovary.” (“Paul’s English wasn’t good enough,” she explained.) The author also adds to the record of a “lifelong series of evictions or disappearances for nonpayment of rent.”

De Man usually talked his way out of trouble—at a tribunal in Belgium in 1946 convened to mete out judgment to suspected collaborators and again nine years later at Harvard where, in Ms. Barish’s alliterative phrase, “a detailed and deeply damaging denunciation” of de Man reached the higher ups at the ultra-elite Society of Fellows. Can we trace de Man’s concept of language as slippery to the point of indeterminacy back to his own rhetorical mastery of what Ms. Barish calls “concealment and invention”? Maybe. But his skill as a liar, and command of the academic vernacular known to insiders as “Fog,” do more to convict him of bad faith than to locate a loophole in the nature of language itself.

Though “The Double Life of Paul de Man” adds much to our knowledge of this brilliant intellectual counterfeit, Evelyn Barish’s book disappointed me. At times she doesn’t seem quite attuned to the way deconstructionists use language. She explains at one point that de Man punned on the name Archie Bunker to toast Derrida, deconstruction’s ultimate guru and “archie Debunker.” What made the lead character of “All in the Family” relevant? The answer: Archie’s response to his wife, Edith, when she asks whether he likes his bowling shoes laced over or laced under: “What’s the difference?” Ms. Barish treats the anecdote as a mere “fleeting comment,” but the pun’s wit lies in its complexity. It salutes Derrida’s concept of “différance” by turning it into a rhetorical question that can’t or shouldn’t be answered.

There is also at least one place where Ms. Barish ought to have checked her facts. Early on, she brings up a much-discussed Newsweek article about de Man that made waves in February 1988. According to Ms. Barish, the scandal so rocked the academic world that “Newsweek put the story on its cover, together with a picture of a Nazi prewar march.” This is untrue. It wasn’t a cover story. I should know: I wrote it.

Finally Ms. Barish persists in regarding de Man as the hero of his life, “an iconic figure” (how I hate that adjective) of the kind that is slipping away—like ocean-liners, three-martini lunches, and “perhaps, much of our trustfulness concerning assertions of ‘greatness.’ ” The de Man affair has little to do with the “greatness” in that last phrase. This linguistically gifted con man favored the Nazis when the Nazis were winning. After they lost, he endeavored to erase his past at a time when literary gamesmanship in the form of deconstruction bedazzled the professoriate.

“America is deconstruction,” Jacques Derrida once pronounced. But largely because of the de Man affair, the movement’s prestige has gone the way of all flesh and most theory, while things it thought to displace or bury—such as the belief that language and truth-telling are not utterly incompatible—cling stubbornly to life.

Read Lehman's "Signs of the Times: Deconstruction and the Fall of Paul de Man."

The Art of George Schneeman at Poets House April 22-September 20,2014

A Painter and His Poets: The Art of George Schneeman April 22 – September 20, 2014 George Schneeman and Maureen Owen, Intelligent Creatures (2007) Opening Reception: Tuesday, April 22, 6:00-8:00pm Poetry Reading & Panel Discussion: Saturday, April 26, 3:00-6:00pm • Poetry reading with Michael Brownstein, Larry Fagin, Alice Notley, Maureen Owen, Harris Schiff, Anne Waldman, and Lewis Warsh, introduced by Bill Berkson. • Panel discussion with Bill Berkson, Larry Fagin, Alice Notley, Maureen Owen, Peter Schjeldahl, and Anne Waldman, moderated by Ron Padgett. This exhibition is the first major retrospective of George Schneeman’s collaborative works with prominent poets of the second-generation New York School, among them Ted Berrigan, Anne Waldman, Larry Fagin, Maureen Owen, and Michael Brownstein. Curated by Bill Berkson and Ron Padgett, two of Schneeman’s close friends and collaborators, the exhibition gathers life-size portraits of poets on canvas, some of them nudes; collaborations using magazine clippings, handwritten poems, and a wide range of art materials; fresco portraits of Allen Ginsberg, Waldman, John Godfrey, and others; book covers; and other treasures from the artist’s estate. This exhibition is supported by the Dedalus Foundation. All programs take place at Poets House, 10 River Terrace (at Murray St.) in Lower Manhattan. For more information, call (212) 431-7920 or visit www.poetshouse.org. Join us on Facebook and Twitter.

In case you missed AWP 2014: Fifteen Ways of Looking at a Conference (Poem by Tina Kelley)

I

I went running beforehand, just at dawn,
heard a varied thrush, down from the mountains.
And I could’ve gone home happy then.

II

I wore my most fabulous garment, a coat,
even when I was indoors. Because every writer
needs a security blanket. And every other writer
needs a companion dog. But I get that.
It is hard to be with twelve thousand people
who all want the two tablespoons of fame
available in our measly genre. Very hard.

III

I have never heard of anybody. Or met anybody. Or read anybody.
I have never done anything with trochees.
Is it too late? I write down quotes.

IV

If you’re an editor, use a green pencil.
A poet must be a good reporter, but he must be something more.
Poetry can add to the stock of available reality.
Want to write better? Be more.
If it doesn’t sound right it’s no fucking good.
Bears aren’t afraid of being asleep.
The more you try to be original, the less original you’ll be.

V

You’re welcome.
I just saved you
$230 and that’s
if you signed up before Halloween.

VI

Know how when you leave an art museum
everything looks like art, even stop signs?
Everything sounds like poetry by around 2 p.m.

VII

I hate being all fan-ny, but there is no alternative.
There is the famous poet who wrote me a blurb.
I say thank you, even though I did so at the last gathering.
And then what to say? Umm. Thanks again?

VIII

I am talking to a younger writer
and come up with a quote:
You can’t not write.
I never wanted a tattoo before this.

IX

That awkward moment at the cocktail party when
your friend introduces you to someone and says
“Hey, Ben’s a poet. Ben, this is Tina. Tina’s a poet.”
Kind introducer is pleased somehow. She forgets:
Poets have nothing to say to poets. Not always,
but mostly.

X

You are my tribe. But we do not dress the same.
I forgot to get a piercing for this. And dye my hair neon.
And wear a long gingham prairie dress. Or painted shoes.
The black coat serves me well.

XI

The things you hear.
“We are rebuilding
the emotional infrastructure
of the world.” 
Sigh.

XIII

We share ego insecurity desire for immortality rejections very long scarves
comfort that fame can come posthumously knowledge that we usually feel better
after we write a curious fascination with the truth of long lists disdain for commas

XIV

We develop prowess in submission.
We apply to a retreat,
something you do after you lose.

XV

We observe each other up and down
the convention center’s cascading escalators,
six floors of them! And smile and wonder
and star in our own author interviews
in our minds, and hope for the best.

Tina Kelley’s second collection of poetry, Precise, was published in 2013 by Word Press, which also published her first collection, The Gospel of Galore, winner of a 2003 Washington State Book Award. She co-authored Almost Home: Helping Kids Move from Homelessness to Hope, (2012) a national bestseller about homeless young people helped by Covenant House. She was a reporter at The New York Times for ten years, shared in a Pulitzer Prize for being a part of the Times’ coverage of the Sept. 11 attacks, and wrote 121 “Portraits of Grief,” short descriptions of the victims.

Tuesday, March 18, 2014 at 6:30 PM Poetry Forum: David Lehman

Laura Cronk & David Lehman. Photo (c) Star Black 

Klein Conference Room (Room A510),
Alvin Johnson/J.M. Kaplan Hall
The New School
66 West 12th Street
New York, NY  10011

David Lehman’s New and Selected Poems appeared in November 2013 from Scribner. His other books of poetry include Yeshiva Boys (2008), When a Woman Loves a Man (2005), The Evening Sun (2002), and The Daily Mirror (2000), from Scribner, Operation Memory (1990) and An Alternative to Speech (1986) from Princeton.

Lehman has edited The Oxford Book of American Poetry (Oxford University Press, 2006), Great American Prose Poems: From Poe to the Present (Scribner, 2003), among other collections. He has written six nonfiction books, including A Fine Romance: Jewish Songwriters, American Songs (2009, Nextbook / Schocken), which won the Deems Taylor Award from ASCAP (the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers). The Last Avant-Garde: The Making of the New York School of Poets (Doubleday) and Signs of the Times: Deconstruction and the Fall of Paul de Man (Simon and Schuster).

He initiated The Best American Poetry series in 1988 and continues as the acclaimed anthology’s general editor. With Star Black, Lehman originated the famed KGB Bar Monday night poetry series. He succeeded Donald Hall as general editor of the University of Michigan Press's Poets on Poetry Series and served in that capacity for twelve years. His poetry and prose have appeared in journals ranging from The New Yorker, The New York Times, Washington Post, Newsweek and the Wall Street Journal to American Heritage, The American Scholar, Harper's, The Atlantic, Smithsonian, and Art in America. He has taught in the graduate writing program of The New School since the program's inception in 1996 and has served as poetry coordinator since 2003.

Moderated by Laura Cronk, associate director, School of Writing.

"A Martyr" by Charles Baudelaire "translated" by Sandra Simonds

 

 

In the middle of a pool of falcons, I am voluptuous

         but lame. And marbles. And more

marbles on the table. I wear a rose

             dress perfumed with lament.

 

In this room, I have hurt myself so I become

          dangerous and even the mourner’s bouquet

        cannot save my wolf head.

 

I am a cadaver, but what do I do with it?

         I am dead labor, but what do I do with it?

It’s like having blood but no prey.

 

My visions are pale gold shadows

             over my eyes which make my head just ache

and ache like some sort of historic idiot.

 

When night falls, I rest on this table

         and think about the white skin of revulsion.

Oh on this bed, I am the secretary

       of abandonment. A rosary and coins

 

of gold and the leg, the damned blue leg!—

            there can be no diamond skulls

         in the world after all.

 

I am the portrait of my own provocations

         and what strange feelings of strangeness

     I have felt being here on this table.

 

Oh I am elegant! But irritated.

             And everyone should desire me.

Respond to me, Felix. Once you called me deranged

          and impure but I am the world

        and I am that strange creature

 

inside of you, this mysterious

          table and hand and the constant

     eyeball of death.

 

 

Tonight at KGB: John Yau + Lawrence Joseph

KGB Monday Night Poetry is pleased to present...

John Yau + Lawrence Joseph

Monday, March 17, 2014

Hosted by John Deming and Matthew Yeager

Series founded in 1997 by Star Black and David Lehman

Doors open at 7:00 pm

Reading starts at 7:30pm

Admission is FREE

www.KgbBar.com

85 East 4th Street * New York, NY

John Yau has published over 50 books of poetry, fiction, and art criticism.   Yau’s many collections of poetry include Corpse and Mirror(1983), selected by John Ashbery for the National Poetry Series, Edificio Sayonara (1992), Forbidden Entries (1996), Borrowed Love Poems (2002), Ing Grish (2005), Paradiso Diaspora (2006), Exhibits (2010), and Further Adventures in Monochrome (2012).  Honors and awards for his work including a New York Foundation for the Arts Ward, the Jerome Shestack Award, and the Lavan Award from the Academy of American Poets. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ingram-Merrill Foundation, and the Guggenheim Foundation, and was named a Chevalier in the Order of Arts and Letters by France. Yau has taught at many institutions, including Pratt, the Maryland Institute College of Art and School of Visual Arts, Brown University, and the University of California-Berkeley. Since 2004 he has been the Arts editor of the Brooklyn Rail. He teaches at the Mason Gross School of the Arts and Rutgers University, and lives in New York City.

 

Lawrence Joseph is the author of five books of poetry, most recently Into It and Codes, Precepts, Biases, and Taboos: Poems 1973–1993 (which includes his first three books, Shouting at No One, Curriculum Vitae, and Before Our Eyes), published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. He is also the author of two books of prose, Lawyerland, also published by FSG, and The Game Changed: Essays and Other Prose, published by the University of Michigan Press in its Poets on Poetry Series. Born in Detroit, he is a graduate of the University of Michigan, the University of Cambridge, where he received a M.A. in English Language and Literature, and the University of Michigan Law School. He is presently Tinnelly Professor of Law at St. John's University School of Law in Queens, and has also taught in the Program in Creative Writing at Princeton. Married to the painter Nancy Van Goethem, he has lived for the past thirty-three years in downtown Manhattan.   

Remaining Spring 2014 lineup:

Mar 24  Rachel Zucker + Yona Harvey

Mar 31  Matthew Zapruder + Charlotte Boulay   

Apr 7    Nate Pritts + Jennifer H. Fortin + Adam Fell       

Apr 14  Scott Hightower + Jeffrey Harrison  

Apr 21  Brian Blanchfield + Christopher Salerno   

Apr 28  Russell Dillon + Roger Reeves  

May 5   Kate Greenstreet + Laura Sims  

May 12  Mark Bibbins + Lucie Brock-Broido + Season Finale Party  

Monday Comic by Nin Andrews

(c) Nin Andrews 2014

Contemporary Canadian Poetry by Eduardo C. Corral

This week I'm featuring the work of Shane Rhodes.

From Err

IntraVenus

Lynne, we met the day Don asked to suck me off
– not my cock, he made clear, but toes, without socks
[boys in sandals got him off] – you wheel through that memory,
your legs in casts, [the virus rhyming RNA
to [reverse transcriptase] your DNA]
bones sapped [combivir, saquinavir, ritonavir] by the daily
pharmablasts to make you gag and keep the docs away.
Those were the days we worked in then:
homeless guys down on 2nd drunk on Old Stock beer by 10,
sex workers [hookers] dazed by night work
up from the streets for the free lipstick
and condoms [safes] we dispensed, high on heroin [smack],
or [as the cell becomes a sieve] coke [crack],
eyes blue with [another negative test] mascara or black
from pimp beatings in the parking lot [turns positive] out back.
Lynne, you fundraised, you spoke, you organized,
you were one of the few who could help men die
and I never once saw you, like me, teary-eyed.
Every day since then [this, the line I tend], I
see it, think it, caught [daring words to mean]
by habit [everything I’ve touched and seen]
my fingers still type its name [all caps]: “it”
that floating thing [Sex = Silence = Death] called a referent
as in The doc says I’ve got IT – voice quiver bold italics
carrying us away from the linguistic
things we never wanted meant: GRID, the gay plague,
the empty cipher AIDS, and Christian placards saying God Loves Fags
[Insert thread: deadbody: doc, i’m 21
& just found out ive got HIV – i’m done]
Dead. I write it now between the faces
of the faceless
men who came and went [Figure 1: see this micron pic
of a lymphocyte swarmed by neon pink
viral replicants, look how they shimmer and dance -- a sequin dress
of nothingness] like so many torn couplets
each with something new to mend.
Lynn, we were the same age but you got fucked
[the body with sex is blessed] and I didn’t
that’s where our stories split – fucked
by a boyfriend who didn’t know he had it,
fucked by the used needle he shot with, the pusher who pushed it,
fucked [it’s also never at rest] by the grower
who grew it, the mule who shoved it up his ass at the border
and got through it, fucked [and can churn for years] by their needles
and plastic, the politicians with their votes
and budgets, and fucked [in its own blood] by the poster saying
He [a woman carrying a boychild] Was An Innocent Victim meaning
everyone else [and tears] deserved it.
You got fucked by [the infinite] a virus [and its 33,000,000 faces]
that loves everything it erases.
Lynne, so many words [you and the drugs got better] to say it,
why [we slept together in your bed] I haven’t looked
for you since then, [no stupid rhymes] scared
of knocking you from that past [the living with the dead]
tense where [your bones began to mend]
a whole new life [no one screamed when you bled] was inserted in.

The Body
a recombinant documentary poem

so doc what do I do?
every time my fear of getting aids
is so intense
(too much soul pain)
iam a 25yr old guy
(from a very small town
and moved to the city for a better gay life)
gave fellatio to a Thai lady boy
(i had my curiosity, i aint gonna lie)
we met through web chatting
hand jobs in the cafeteria
her mouth in the theatre
(last 1 minute, ejaculation
swallowed immediately)
I believe the fear of AIDS
is remorse when sex is bad
(trans , girl that I dont like
and that is not very serious.)
I would like an advice from you
on how to manage death :
Is it acceptable to be with trans girl
that he does not like?
I kissed her sucked there nipples
Could this be late conversion?
blow jobs with lots of tongue
i purchased a lot of condom,
when you go to france
you gonna need em!!
i met with lot of girls
(thank you!!!)
this guy i shared bleached needles with
hiv+, i am worried this guy
i can't eat or drink
I realise I’m a late converter
god, i don't have much time
i need to know if you think this case?
I was at a strip club and the stripper tongued my ear --
is this HIV?
1 in 1,000? 10,000? 100,000?
listen I am totally fuc
i might actually kill myself
I have a friend, 35,
bottomed his way to the top
(los CD4 eran 620 y la CV indetectable)
b/f cheated with a trisexual
the girl he was killed herself
because her husband had aids
He said he had been being tested
butt he condom broke
lol
there might have been pre cum,
I can’t say there wasn’t pre cum
could there have been precum?
should i start talking pep?
ive always known I was positive
(it must be a rare strain)
i have no desire
for a med filled life with sides
Is my whole life pre cum?
lol
.please save me
Now i want to make sex with wife
shall i wear that latex garbage condom?
52 year old woman in menopause
she is a slut or i dunno
but god i love this girl
unusual vaginal discharge
(five years in that army)
unprotected anal
(antigenic shift and drift)
lubed with spit it hurt so bad
i had blood
and sucked his nipples
(I am pretty
sure there wa snom ilk)
I just need to know if 1.
Was the protracted bj and nipple sucking
even worth it?
would HIV survive a lollipop?
book? brother in law?
(cuz the virus is all over the place
but gets active when it gets into an orgasm)
God, I'm only fifteen and I don't want something like that!
i swallowed my own sperm
and its quite many!!
PLS help me!!!
If a guy give another guy oral
(everyone cums in his mouth)
does he can still live healthy forever
& live happily ever after with me?
i love him so much! very2 much!!!
I parked my car
shat myself
I cried
shat myself
mon chere docteur, j'ai tellement besoin
shit?
I guess I’m reching out tonight
I guess I find my strength
and meds
within
I guess i wanna know
whos neg whos poz
when every ache, every cough
is the virus taking away
whats fake
I mean, I knew it was the HIV
killing me slowly
softly
you see, i’d been neg 23 times
when he raped me
and ejaculated inside me
and youre the first person I’m shearing this with
Hello, I can’t pay for one of my meds this month
Hello, I’ve become resistant
Hello, I’m using a vibrator in the shape of a pussy
with an open sore on top of my virginia
we did it in my backside
(illegal in North Carolina)
I licked her clit vigorously
barebacked three tops
(fucked by man with Jesus tattoo pero
no hubo eyaculación interna ni sangramiento)
and wonder if that makes the odds more even?
you see, we lost our baby
and he wants to have another
(viral load over 10 million)
but I won’t make it –
so doc what do I do?

Dark Matter

it is
it’s all there is
it’s bright
it’s brilliant
it’s it
it’s expanding, bit by bit
it’s broken, as you can see, into little units
it makes it difficult to predict
it’s there one moment, you can see it, and then
it shifts
it’s here, though, hot with spirit
it’s terrifying, yet,
it generally mimics and resists
it’s this intuitive structure, though, when you read it
it’s so full of it
its gathered itself into it
its merits
its benefits
it’s soft and abundant as ocean sand, yet
it holds more appeal than its flimsy content insists
it’s the only thing you’ll need to know because of it
it’s, as you can imagine, a conduit
it’s so eager to profit, yet, to its credit,
it has left little deposits
it sits
it eats
it shits
it’s still, albeit, hit and miss
it’s on the very edge of it
its wits
it keeps it fit
it’s here, where we, as you can feel, so intimate, kissed it
its slit
its clit, yes,
its tits
it aches for it
it aches with it
its antithesis, yet,
it’s, like Plato, discomfited by it
it doesn’t know how to act when it’s like this
it’s embarrassed by its habits
its fits
it gets repetitive, though, after a while
it’s getting so big don’t be surprised you can’t finish it
it could, I admit, use some judicious edits
its derelict surfeit
its black vomit
it has, when you see it, this, sort of, limitless kitsch
it’s an, some would say, impediment, yet
it’s so much more than even I can say it is
it preens its counterfeits
it admits
it’s waited so long at the margins, silent, against it
it’s, I mean, against all of it
it admits
it’s gone too far
its killing it
it’s, as you can see, reached its limits
it can’t remember where it is, what it is
it’s had it
it means it
it quits

(Poems are excerpts from Err by Shane Rhodes, copyright © 2011 by Nightwood Editions. Used with permission from the publisher.)

From X

Using the prescriptive constraints of found poetry, all words in these poems from X are from the Government of Canada transcripts of the Post-Confederation Treaties (also called the numbered treaties, one through eleven). Conducted by the British Crown and the Government of Canada over a fifty-year period, the treaties are the legal and literary basis of one the largest systematic, colonial land appropriations in the world. Daunting of the history and future they carry and their impenetrable legal diction, these texts are the foundational logic of Canadian colonization and ongoing settler, First Nations, Inuit and Metis relations.

the place of commencement

beginning
from the mouth
our starting point
at the Blackfoot Crossing of the Bow River
at Manitoba Post
in this present year 1899
I started
this fifteenth day of September
respectively
finally
we anchored off the mouth
where the North river flows out of the main stream
where no white man would have any claims
we found the Indians
we found many
we conferred
we drifted
we had grave doubts
we were then carrying a great weight
we came to the conclusion
we treated
we had to
and we left
on the several dates mentioned therein
in the year of Our Lord one thousand eight hundred and seventy
on this day of October
commencing
to preserve her Indian subjects
to deliberate upon certain matters of interest
to Her Most Gracious Majesty
of the one part,
and the said Indians
of the other
each performed their several duties
to our great satisfaction
beginning
at a point where the “Suicide”
made and concluded
begins
WE, the undersigned
Indians of Wapiscow
Fairford
Athabasca
we and our children
we thank thee
we thank thee
we thank you (commissioners)
from our hearts
we pray
that we may be saved
from the evil
within
from Fort Garry westward
and from Her Majesty
begin again
Indians of the said
Indians of the other
we begin again
so long as the fur bearing animals remain
in the year of Our Lord
on this day of
commencing
at the place of
beginning

lakes and rivers (click on pic to enlarge)

as may have been grunted
treaty five


As aforesaid within, hereunto the hereinafter, thereupon and hereby thereof. That is to say, within the aforesaid that whatsoever thereto, that is, the whereas within, thereon. Therein, however, that whereas, hereinafter elsewhere, thereto unless therefor. That within the that that is that, what soever, forever within the hereby, that thereupon, there is is heretofore that within. Whereas, that is to say, inasmuch hereby in that, therefor hereinafter within this. Within therein that is. Within, that is, thereabout unless thereof—hereafter throughout. And, as aforesaid, any part thereof otherwise elsewhere or hereinbefore hereby—thereto, as aforesaid, hereof within whenever. Thereon thereof whatsoever wherever forever. That is to say, however, therein thereout, therefore within. Whereas thereof, hereby within. Within the aforesaid, therefor within the hereinafter.

where there is oil
Treaty Eleven


cedE
ReleASE
​​​​​​​​
surrENDer
and yieLd

fOr his majeSTy ​​​​​​​​
all THeir rights titlEs
​​​​​​​​
pRIVileges
whatsoevER
​​​​​​​​
that iS to say: an area OF apprOxImateLy three hundred AND
square mILeS seventy-twO thousand

tO have and to hoLD
foREver

aNd his majesTy
heREby agrees

and uNDERtakEs
to lay asiDe

reSErVes
onE
squaRe
mile

foR Each
faMily

Of
fiVE

(Poems are excerpts from X by Shane Rhodes, copyright © 2013 by Nightwood Editions. Used with permission from the publisher.)

Q&A

Ben Ladouceur: Do you consider poetry to be an effective medium for instigating change in the world? To what extent, if any, do you consider yourself an activist?

Shane Rhodes: A molotov cocktail, a political slogan or a legislated bill are probably better ways to instigate change in the world than a poem. In many places, poetry is part of the larger cacophonous conversation that a society has with itself about what it is doing, what it has done and where it is going. Poetry does nothing. Poetry does everything.

Does writing about important things, things that perhaps some would rather not talk about, make one an activist? That seems a low threshold. Or, in a society engineered only to work and consume, maybe such couchbound passivity is now seen as activism? I write poetry about the things that interest me – whether that be how racism and colonization function within Canada or how we approach sexuality, homosexuality and something like the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Given poetry’s lifeblood is language, it’s a useful art to understand, investigate and display how certain phenomena – like race, like sex, like historical myth making – function and exist in and through language. I don’t buy the prissy clichés of poetry being beautiful words about beautiful things. I write ugly poems about ugly things. I'm an uglivist.

Bios

Ben Ladouceur lives in Toronto. His work has been published in many Canadian magazines including The Walrus, and in the Best Canadian Poetry anthology series. He was awarded the 2013 Earle Birney Poetry Prize.

Shane Rhodes is the author of five books of poetry including his most recent X (2013) and Err, both with Nightwood Editions. Shane has won an Alberta Book Award for poetry, the P. K. Page Founder's Award for Poetry and a National Magazine Gold Award. Shane is the poetry editor for Arc, Canada’s national poetry magazine.

Much Depends on Dinner, Purim Edition: Baking Hamentaschen with Robin Neidorf

Robin Neidorf and I were classmates in graduate school and whenever I think of her or we exchange e-mails I have to remind myself that she's not still one year out of Williams College. In grad school, even though she was studying non-fiction, she would try anything!  Like the sestina she wrote a few hours after learning the form - it was hilarious, a narrative, from the point of view of an actress who didn't want to kiss her leading man. Here's what Robin has to say about her recipe for hamentaschen (sdh): 

It has been many years since I’ve had proper hamentaschen, which to me means my grandmother Lillian’s hamentaschen. This is only in part my own fault: The last time I tried to make her recipe, my aging gas oven gasped its last just as I heated it up to bake the goods. That event precipitated three months of eating sandwiches and microwave foods from a makeshift setup in the dining room and $60,000 in renovations.  Not unexpectedly (if somewhat illogically), I was a leery of trying that recipe again.

Over the next few years, I tried other recipes. I’d purchased a book of Jewish holiday crafts, stories and recipes, and naturally my daughter Talia wanted to make those recipes, rather than the one scribbled on an index card. Since part of the purpose of the book had been to engage us both with the traditions and the (now fabulous) kitchen, I could hardly say no.

But these weren’t my recipes, or my tastes. We tried the butter version – too like a shortbread. We tried the oil version – I couldn’t get the dough to stick properly. We filled with pie filling – the lazy-mom’s version… feh! We filled with chocolate chips – Talia was delighted, but the texture was all wrong. The ideal, to my mouth, was cakey rather than crispy, and filled with a savory mixture of golden raisins, prunes, apricots and… something.

Hamentaschen, for those who are not familiar with this gift to the world, are filled cookies baked for Purim, an early spring holiday celebrating Queen Esther’s courage in speaking up for her people. Bad guy Hamen (for whose triangular hat the cookies are shaped) takes the death sentence he planned to mete out to the Jews. And in commemoration of this noble victory, Jews forevermore stave off constipation with the prune-filled sweets.

There are as many versions of the cookie as there are Jewish kitchens. The matrix of options is almost mind-boggling: The cookie can be milchig (made with dairy) or parve (suitable for either meat or milk). The filling can be tangy, sweet or super-sweet. An endless array of options for tasting and testing. (As long as the oven doesn’t let you down.)

The last butter version was a disappointment. For the cookies to be shaped around the filling, the dough needs to be chilled to stiff-but-workable. I couldn’t get the ratios right, and the dough either melted in my fingers or crumbled into sweet dust.

My cousin Malcom’s wife Kara came to my rescue when I announced in a Facebook status update that only an extra stick of butter seemed to save the day. ‘They can’t be Lillian’s, then, because hers were parve and they were perfection.’

She was right. Lillian’s were perfection. Why was I looking somewhere else when I already had what I craved?

So. Grandma Lillian’s hamentaschen. Know that Grandma Lillian was a wretched cook – her baked steak was legendary for its jaw-strengthening properties. Her percolated coffee, re-perked throughout the day, could hold a teaspoon upright. Her salads featured a bright arrangement of fruit (both fresh and tinned), boiled eggs, radishes and greens of uncertain provenance. But the hamentaschen were, as Kara reminded me, perfection.

A Friday evening I prepared the dough and chilled it. On Saturday morning Kara and Malcom’s daughter Tsaudik (only a few days younger than Talia) came over to play. At  mid-day I convinced both girls (pictured above) to help me assemble, squeezing little triangles together.

The oven worked. The aroma was just as I recalled. The great-granddaughters paid little attention to the whole process, more interested in creating outfits for the cats (and trying to catch one) than creating with me. That was fine. More than fine. It was perfection.

Grandma Lillian’s Hamentaschen:
Keep in mind this makes approximately 300 cookies. I usually make half the recipe, but this is the unaltered version:

Cookie:
6 eggs (5 makes crisper)
2 cups sugar
1 1/2 cups oil, (Lillian used Wessen)
2 oranges--juice and zest
1/4 tsp salt
5 tsp baking powder
6-7 cups flour

-mix all until barely dry, (adding flour as you go)
-chill overnight to make it stiff and workable
-roll out on a floured surface, (not too thick, thin is better)
-add about 1/2 tsp filling and form into triangles.

Filling: Grind up packages of prunes, white raisins, dark raisins, apricots. Lillian added a small jar of apricot jam, juice and zest of one lemon.

Bake at 375 for 10-16 min.

Robin Neidorf lives, writes and cooks in Minneapolis. She holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from the Bennington Writing Seminars, where she wrote a memoir about her grandmother Lillian for her thesis. Current projects include essays on being a community volunteer and notes towards a book about preparing for an interfaith-friendly Bat Mitzvah.

Ed note: This post originally appeared on April 2, 2010.