The Best American Poetry

Sunday, June 29, 2014: 44th Annual Gay Pride Parade [by Stacey Harwood]

Thanks to the repair work that's ongoing here, there's a temporary platform and scaffolding outside of our windows on the second floor. I was able to climb out on Sunday to take a few photos of the 44th annual Gay Pride Parade, which marches down 5th Avenue and turns west on 8th Street. Click through the slide-show to spot the celebrity in the crowd.

A TRIBUTE TO HORACE SILVER (1928-2014) by Ira Sadoff

 A few weeks ago I was looking for something to listen to, searching out – as I often do -- a mood, a tone. I picked out Horace Silver’s Re-entry, a compilation of live dates from 1965-66. As with many of Silver’s CDs, Re-entry was pure toe-tapping fun. The joyful tunes stuck with me for days afterwards. So I felt an immediate sadness when I read about Silver’s death last week because his music -- especially “Cape Verdean Blues” -- was still very much alive in me. I’m sure the sadness was heightened by the knowledge that most of the jazz figures I grew up with and loved are gone now and I’ll never get to see them again.

            As part of the Blue Note “stable,” Horace Silver, along with artists like Art Blakey, Lee Morgan, Miles, Monk, Freddie Hubbard, and Booker Ervin, produced endless numbers of great albums during the hard-bop era of the Fifties and early Sixties. Jazz had a cultural cache then that it doesn’t have now: jazz musicians would play on TV, their images would grace the covers of TIME and NEWSWEEK. Jazz was a signifier during that time-- authentic or not -- for being cool or hip. These artists made music that was relatively accessible (funky beats and melodies galore), identifiable and yet full of playful invention: this primarily rhythmic music grew out of gospel and  R & B as well as post World-War II bop traditions and the “Blue Note Sound” was characterized by a capacity to swing and by artists who were very accomplished – a few self-taught – on their respective instruments.

Horace Silver was a special case: first of all he was an innovative composer, creating a stew of Latin and African rhythms to add to that thumpy gospel, bluesy sound. He perfected the jazz quintet (led by tenor and trumpet players), a trend that had became popular with Blakey when Silver played in his band in the early Fifties. For a decade or more Silver’s  recordings were especially well-loved: when he played at the Half-Note or the Village Gate you’d often see lines around the corner, because folks who knew his recordings wanted to see him live. A half dozen times I was among these fans, sometimes lucky enough to get in and listen.

Silver had a distinctive style, a recipe, as it were. Generally the songs began by establishing a rhythm with a strong two or three beat bass line. Then the piano might come in briefly to state the theme and the horns would join in to play the head (either in harmony or in unison), which sounded to me something like a waterfall, the notes cascading in a downward progression, or a roller coaster, down and then up. Then Silver would solo: usually a series of block chords with the left hand and while he approached melody with the right hand (mostly using one or two fingers). He played modest and relatively brief solos while letting his horn players carry the weight of improvisation. His solos’ substantial pleasures came from rhythm, the piano as a percussive instrument. Though an ingenuous composer, his own solos were rarely especially inventive, they just had a recognizable sound: a great beat and an infectious melody.

So Silver had a distinctive style, a signature sound: the pleasure of that signature was like welcoming a familiar voice, a member of the family. The danger of a style of course is calcification, resulting in a dulling of the listener’s senses. We all know poets with distinctive styles who wrote the same poems over and over again until we stopped listening: repetition made the work predictable. I wouldn’t say that he sought out commercial success (though it’s never been easy for jazz musicians to make a living so many artists of the ear hoped for a “hit” like Lee Morgan’s “Sidewinder”): time just seemed to pass him by. I associate his wonderful music with the world before the civil rights movement and Viet Nam. Before all the black rage and innovation that came from the likes of Coltrane, Eric Dolphy, Don Cherry and Ornette Coleman. Jazz became more challenging: in the shift to “free jazz” melody and rhythm no longer seemed to suffice: it reflected neither evolving musical nor minority experience. To advance the art and to reflect the artist in the world it seemed like one needed a huge capacity for improvisation and the kind of roughness, rage and darkness you might hear in the percussive piano playing of a Cecil Taylor or an Albert Ayler. He became aware of the rift: On a ’68 record cover for “Serenade to a Soul Sister,” he’s quoted as saying that he didn't believe in allowing "politics, hatred, or anger" into his music. One might suggest Silver came from a more innocent time, but the Fifties were by no means innocent. Retrospectively, the Fifties and early Sixties reflected a relatively comfortable and joyful period for jazz; it was a time when musicians digested Parker and Gillespie and extended their discoveries. Of course the British Invasion arrived then too: the Beatles and the Stones’ in many ways displaced jazz as a popular music. And now we live in an world that rarely welcomes difficulty; serious jazz artists mostly go to Europe and the Far East to play their music. But in the years before the revolutionary change, esp. in Horace Silver’s case, you could virtually dance to the music.

Re-Entry was for me probably the last really successful adventurous date of Silver’s band. Oh Silver continued to compose, occasionally often for larger bands, sometimes with strings, sometimes suites in the Ellington mode, even occasionally evoking the earlier funky style, but none of the dates that followed had for me the vitality of Silver’s wonderful decade plus of successful recordings, from 1954 to 66.

As with many live dates Re-Entry cuts stretch out and I associated the album with the kind of impulsive risk-taking that many studio recordings lack. But listening to the album again after Silver’s death, I can also hear restlessness in the horn solos: Joe Henderson’s solos  -- as they were whenever he played with Silver – were fresh and inventive, but by this time he’d also listened to and absorbed some Coltrane. Two years away from his own Black Narcissus, he was already moving on, and when Silver plays after him the music takes a turn to the conventional: his solos seem static, a little too familiar. Woody Shaw, just finding his own way, was also moving away from the hard-bop sounds of early LeeMorgan and Clifford Brown (great trumpet players who also provided a model for the second trumpet player on Re-entry,  the highly underrated Carmell Jones). The cuts on Re-entry represent for me the apex of Silver’s accomplishment: we hear developed versions of so many of his great upbeat songs (like “Song for My Father,” “Cape Verdean Blues,””Senor Blues””Sister Sadie,” “Filthy McNasty” and “The African Queen” that still give us pleasure (I only wish they’d played “Nica’s Dream,” one of my all-time favorite Silver tunes). These songs have all been covered by any numbers of musicians since that time, so Silver’s music will certainly live on. But this album also suggests the end of an era: ultimately the most imaginative solos belong to Henderson.

            Finally I’ll never forget one beautiful Silver ballad, “Peace,” though I’m thinking now of how it was heartbreakingly played by Chico Freeman. It’s a great tribute song, a wish, a longing, an acknowledgment of bereavement. It sums up for me the loss I feel in his absence. He captured a time in jazz, and it’s hard to think of anyone funkier that Horace Silver. My toes are still tapping.

Ira Sadoff is the author of seven collections of poetry, including most recently True Faith (BOA EDITIONS,2012), and Barter, and Grazing (U. of Illinois), a novel, O. Henry prize-winning short stories, and The Ira Sadoff Reader (a collection of stories, poems, and essays about contemporary poetry). This fall Sadoff's Palm Reading In Winter will be reissued as part of the Carnegie-Mellon Classics Series. He teaches at Colby College and the MFA program at Drew University. Find out more about Ira Sadoff here. 

Rudyard and Me by Peter Ferry

When we were children our mother used to put us to bed at night and entertain us on long car trips with poetry.  We loved ballads, and she knew a bunch of them by heart: The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes, Longfellow’s The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere and especially Kipling.  My very favorite poem of his was The Ballad of East and West.   And when we did the dishes after dinner, there were four positions, one for each of us:  washer, dryer, putterawayer and reader.  In this way we recited lots of poetry, read a good bit of Charles Dickens, and in the process learned to love the spoken word, the sound of literature. 

                In 1960 when I was fifteen my father’s father died, and my mother and I drove my grandfather’s old ’55 Chevy home to West Virginia from Ashville, North Carolina, on windy mountain roads.  It was an ordeal.  My mother was a tiny woman not five feet tall and never a good driver.  I kept her spirits up and her mind distracted from her fear by requesting poems, and she recited them one after another.  I don’t think we exhausted her supply even on that long drive.

                Then in college I had a freshman speech class in which our professor talked about the oral tradition of literature that was especially strong there in the Appalachian hills.  He invited us to recite any bits of poetry we might know.  Someone said a limerick, someone else some Ogden Nash doggerel,  then there was a song lyric and a verse or two of Robert Frost.  I said the opening lines of The Ballad of East and West:

                Oh East is East and West is West,

                And never the twain shall meet,

                Til earth and sky stand presently

                At God’s great judgment Seat.

               

But there is neither East nor West,

                Border nor breed nor birth

                When two strong men stand face to face

                Tho’ they come from the ends of the earth.

               

When I stopped, the professor looked at me hopefully.  “I don’t think you are finished.”

                “Well, I guess I know a little more.”  I got through the next few lines.

                “Go on,” he said.

                And I went on.  To my amazement, I knew the whole thing, all ninety-seven lines of it.  If my memory serves, I’d never seen the poem on the printed page.  I knew it only from hearing my mother recite it.

                This little story is not about my powers of memory which are quite ordinary.  It is about the powers of poetry which are not.

Poetry from Aotearoa/New Zealand 2 -- Janis Freegard's 'A Life Blighted by Pythons'

A Life Blighted by Pythons

waiting at the bus-stop
all I can think about
is how my hovercraft is full of eels

but it’s not, of course it’s not
my hovercraft is practically empty
my eels are few

in fact they’re not eels at all
but a netload of whitebait
and it isn’t even a hovercraft

I've never owned a hovercraft in my life
I wouldn’t know what to do with one
it’s not even a dinghy

it’s a reusable eco-friendly shopping bag
and they’re definitely not eels
and not even whitebait

the truth is, I've never been whitebaiting
they’re just vegetables
and I only have one thing to say:

your eels
my hovercraft
now, baby, now

        -- Janis Freegard 

Based in Wellington, New Zealand, Janis Freegard has a background in botany and the natural sciences--territories her poems are intent on celebrating, excavating, reconfiguring and subverting. 'A Life Blighted by Pythons' is from her first collection, Kingdom Animalia, published by Auckland University Press in 2011. Within the zoo-like enclosure of that book, she collects and catalogues numerous species, inspired by the Swedish naturalist and 'Father of Taxonomy', Carolus Linnaeus (1707-78), about whom Freegard writes on her blog. Like the most interesting bestiaries of past eras, her poems tell us more about the human condition than they do about the natural world of which humanity is a part.  What exactly is going on in Freegard's 'blighted life'? A Freudian psychologist would have a field day with her ensemble of snakes and hovercraft. Is the poem propelled by love or lust or neurosis? Or is it simply the product of a hyperactive imagination? For the record, there are no species of snakes living in the wild in New Zealand, although there are a great many eels. And there are no public hovercrafts; the only examples are in the service of eccentric millionaires.

"On Experimental Poets" [by Jim Cummins]

They think they're wags,
but they're really tails.

The Wags of Fear: fantasizing
they carry nitro, but it's

really 'Nite-So' ('night soil,'
a green product developed

by the Self-Importance Movement).
Scorpions--not sorcerers or

'Scorpios'--but actual scorpions.
They're all looking for a Frog

to carry them across the river.
You can find them posing

at poetry readings, whispering,
'Monsieur?  Monsieur?'

-- James Cummins

Note: See The Wages of Fear by Henri-Georges Clouzot (with Yves Montand) and the remake, Sorcerer, by William Friedkin

Peter Ferry Guest Author June 30-July 4

This week we welcome Peter Ferry as our guest author. Peter grew up in Parkersburg, West Virginia, and Chicago. He has a B.A. from Ohio University and an M.A. in English Literature from Northwestern University. He edited and wrote textbooks for Rand McNally and Company in the 1970’s and taught English at Lake Forest High School for twenty-seven years.

His first novel Travel Writing was published in English in The United States and The United Kingdom and in Portuguese in Brazil. It was recorded by Blackstone Audio, Inc. and movie rights were purchased by Castle Rock. Ferry is a frequent contributor to the travel pages of The Chicago Tribune and an occasional one to the travel blog WorldHum and Peter Greenberg’s nationally syndicated radio travel show. His short fiction has appeared many places including Fiction, StoryQuarterly, McSweeneys and The New Review of Literature.  He is currently featured in OR and The Chicago Quarterly Review.  He has been awarded an Illinois Arts Council Award for short fiction.

Ferry is married and has three children. He lives in Evanston, Illinois and Palisades Park, Michigan. You can find out more about Peter on his website here.

Welcome, Peter.

Peter Jay Shippy wins our first poetry contest (2007)

HERE'S THE CHALLENGE: 
John Lawrence Ashbery, guest editor of the inaugural volume in The Best American Poetry series in 1988, has the same middle name as an American poet of note, born in the nineteenth century, whose work appears in The Oxford Book of American Poetry. Name him and write a sonnet — rhymed or unrhymed — comparing the two poets.

Click here to read Peter Jay Shippy's winning entry selected by judge Paul Violi. -- DL 

FLASH MEMOIRS OF FOUR TEACHERS [by Alan Ziegler]

DAVID IGNATOW

On February 15, 1971, I receive a telegram—a real telegram with teletype pasted onto yellow Western Union paper—announcing my acceptance into David Ignatow’s Craft of Poetry workshop at the 92nd Street Y. This will be my first workshop. I don’t know much about Ignatow—I applied because a friend said her brother was excited to have a chance to study with him (he didn’t get in)—and I buy two of his books. As I devour Ignatow’s colloquial poems of bagels and bums, apples and America, his laments of love and life, I feel a too-good-to-be-true nervousness.

I am overmatched. Many of the others have published, and they speak a lingo  I don’t know. But I come to learn that Hitchcock selecting you for “Kayak” does not mean being cast in a suspense movie set on a tiny boat, but rather having George Hitchcock publish your poem in his literary magazine. The turning point comes when I bring a poem to workshop about a character named Harvey. After I read it, Ignatow says, “You know what William Carlos Williams would have said about that poem: ‘So you know Harvey, well then TELL me about him.’”

            Not only do I have a mentor in David Ignatow, but I have William Carlos Williams as a “grandmentor.”

David and I keep in touch, and he is generous with his feedback and support, until the magazine I co-edit rejects a story by his wife, which David hand-delivered to me and I said I liked. David sends me a postcard with the salutation “Dear Nobody.” He accuses me of promising acceptance of his wife’s story so I could get an interview with him, then betraying him. He declares that I “have no guts,” repeats that I am a Nobody, and concludes with “we will never speak again.”

            I am devastated by the vitriol yet amazed that I am Somebody enough for him to  call a Nobody.

            I remember that I have the phone number of a young writer David thought I should meet. I haven’t gotten around to following up, but I don’t know where else to turn, so I call. She sounds happy to hear from me, and I blurt out what’s happened and read her David’s postcard. She is as bewildered as I am, and says, “He always talked about you like a son.”

            Can it be this simple: I rebelled against Daddy by making Mommy mad at him?

            I write David a letter, apologizing for the misunderstanding but pointing out that I never said we would publish the story—just that I like it—and he gave me the story at the last of our interview sessions. David responds that he assured his wife of an acceptance because he thought I was in charge. He accepts my apology and closes with, “We will never speak of this.”

            I am relieved but wonder if I will ever again be embraced by David. I next see him at a literary event and shyly approach his circle. David puts his arm around me and says to the others, “Alan and I have been through some things.”

 

I am considering graduate school, and I ask David if I can audit his MFA workshop at Columbia. (Many years later I will be in the administrative position of turning down such requests out of hand.) David agrees on the condition that I not submit poems to the workshop, speak during class, or see him during office hours. For me, this couldn’t be any more ideal.

            I contentedly sit slightly away from the table, soaking up everything without concern at being judged. Not sure if David has officially received permission, I don’t tell anyone I am auditing. A few weeks into the term, David points to me and says, “Alan is an editor of a very important new magazine”—perhaps he has noticed that the other students go off to bars and cafes without inviting me. After class, I am asked along to the West End.

 

Good teaching means knowing what to say, when to say it, and how to say it. Here’s an example of good teaching. David solicits some of my poems for a section he is editing for The American Poetry Review. He sends my stuff back because “you’re moving very fast and I want to catch you at your best,” asking me to submit new material just at the deadline. How clever: I don’t feel rejected, and I start to write like a maniac. I don’t know how long I will be “moving very fast,” and I don’t want to miss a minute of it. At the deadline, I submit and he accepts.

            A couple of years later, I send David the proposed manuscript for my first full-length collection, and he replies, “I don’t think you have a complete book in this ms.” He names 21 poems that “could form the beginning of an excellent book, if you can be patient and continue to write to match these.” I am patient, and the book gets better.

            I rely on David’s opinions of my work, so it is distressing when I send him a batch of pieces and he writes back: “With the exception of two poems, none of these strike me as very good.” A few days later I receive an addendum: “I’m sorry to have written you in haste. I was tired that day and low about most things but this morning the poems struck me much more intensely.”

I get a note from David telling me he is working on a new book: “So you’ll find my head buried in the typewriter next time we meet. It’ll be like I’m wearing a typewriter for a hat.”

            I picture David writing the first sentence and grinning as the hat image comes to him, continuing to type with utter pleasure.

David gives a reading to a packed auditorium at the Guggenheim Museum. At the reception, I am too shy to wedge my way close to him. One by one, the crowd disperses, until it is just the two of us. I walk with David out into the frigid, sleeting February night and accompany him down Fifth Avenue, looking for a bus stop.

            I say, “It’s quite a compliment that so many people came out to see you in this miserable weather.”

            “Yes, I’ll have to remember that in my will.”

            We cross slushy Fifth Avenue. David lets a bus go by as we talk. “There are a lot of people who care about your work, and you,” I say, my way of telling David that I care about his work, and him. 

            “Sometimes I forget that.”

While David is living in Jamaica, Queens, I have dinner with him in a Chinese restaurant. After dinner, David shops at a grocery store and pays with a twenty-dollar bill. The clerk examines the bill closely, back and forth, and after it passes inspection he apologizes.

            “That’s all right,” David says. “It’s not my money, I just pass it along.”

 

Eventually, I become director of the undergraduate program at Columbia, where David now teaches. David calls to ask if he can reschedule a class, several weeks in advance. “Of course. You didn’t have to ask,” I say, to which David replies, “I always check with the boss.” One August, David—now in his late 70’s—calls to tell me he has Parkinson’s and will not be able to teach anymore because of the strain of the commute from East Hampton.
            “I’m sorry this happened,” I say.
            “Something had to happen.”
            “Well, how do you feel?”
            “I imagine the way Mr. Parkinson did.”

The last time I see David, he is in the hospital and he is dying. He asks me if he can teach next semester, and for a second I think he is delusional, but then he grins.

            He tells me, “I like your gray hair. It looks good on you,” and I reply that I like the beard he has growing in.
            “I’ll ask Rose,” he replies, referring to his dead wife, and once again I think he might be delusional, until I realize he is not talking about now or here.
             David asks me scratch an itch on his head, and then he falls asleep. I take out one of his books from my bag to show his nurse, to make sure she knows whom she is caring for. David wakes up and sees her holding it. “That’s my latest book.”

When I get the news that David has died, I remember when he recited one of his poems at the beginning of a session at the 92^nd Street Y, so long ago: “Ignatow is dying / and so is the sun.” We stared at him, waiting for the rest of the poem. That was it. David shrugged and said, “Hey, I got it published.”

            Since David’s death, I have kept a wary eye on the sun.

^^^

JOEL OPPENHEIMER

Joel Oppenheimer’s private workshop, in 1972, meets on the lower floor of his duplex in Westbeth, the former Bell Telephone building (on the corners of West and Bethune) converted to artists housing. At the first session, I read a poem called “Things to do Today”:

This is a report
on the shape of the commune
at the present time:
The dishes need to be washed
and the candle on the kitchen table
is almost burnt out; the laundry
that has just been washed
needs to be folded and put away;
it’s stuffy, the windows need to be
opened, and Nancy, looking sad,
needs to be talked to
before she leaves for the weekend.

            Joel responds “That’s where I live!” and I am off and running.

            At a later class, all I have is a 21-word poem. I am embarrassed by its brevity and explicitness. Hoping there won’t be time for me, I comment more than usual on my classmates’ poems. But Joel calls on me. I am always amazed at how Joel can come up with ways to discuss a poem—questions to ask, comments to make—but what can even he possibly say about this one? I read the poem and cringe.

WHEN

When was the last time
you said I love you
before I did
or touched my penis
before it was hard?

            “Alan,” he says, then repeats, “Alan.” He shakes his head and calls up the stairs to his wife: “Helen, you’ve got to hear this!” She isn’t there. Joel says he has no suggestions, the poem is perfect. “Leave me a copy to show Helen.”

            After class, Joel puts his hand on my shoulder and says, “Alan . . . that poem.”

            Could there possibly be a less erudite, more nonspecific response to a piece of writing? Could a writer dream of a better critique?

 

A year later, we meet up again at the City College graduate writing program. Joel says his goal is to separate the “tummler” (Yiddish for an entertainer who “makes a racket”) from the “poet” in me. On one of my breakthrough poems he suggests only that I add a “you” (I do) and delete a “so” (I don’t), but his comment on the bottom of the page is crucial: “Good—it works—the old problem we talked about, i think you’re getting to it more & more.” On another poem he writes: “Will this ever get written properly? i mean, it’s okay now, but you know it ain’t down yet. Have you tried this as a story?”

            He is teaching the poet along with the poem.

            In class, Joel reads us a poem a former lover has written about him, in which he is described as the ugliest man on earth. He couldn’t be more proud.

^^^

KURT VONNEGUT

I have been admitted to the City College graduate writing program as a poet, but I convince the director to let me also take Kurt Vonnegut’s fiction workshop.

            The class meets in Kurt’s midtown Manhattan townhouse. A few sessions into the term, Kurt tells us that his writing isn’t going well and he needs to take a week off. He looks pale and dispirited as he explains that he is trying to write about heaven and can’t figure out how to do it. Two weeks later, when I ask how the writing is going, he smiles, waves his thumb like a flag, and says, “A-number one.” He looks terrific. (His depiction of heaven doesn’t appear until a few years later, in the prologue to Jailbird.)
         I write a short story about rock musicians. Kurt thinks it should be a novel. “Are you going to settle for easy victories, be happy with an ‘A’ in Creative Writing?” he asks me. I would be thrilled with an “A” in Creative Writing from Kurt Vonnegut, but I say I’ll give it a go. Kurt replies that I shouldn’t agree so fast: “Telling you to write a novel is like telling you to get married.”
        Every couple of weeks we have a one-on-one meeting. Kurt usually says something before we even sit down: “You’re on to something,” and, later in the term, “You’re racking right along. It looks like a book.” The supreme compliment comes when he declares that in addition to being a poet I am “becoming a man of letters.”
After reading a new chapter, Kurt says, “These guys are trouble, get rid of them,” about two of the protagonist’s band members. I assume he is speaking to me as the author, and I am ready to expunge the characters, but he clarifies that he is talking through me to the protagonist, who should fire them in the story.
            I leave feeling great. I am creating characters.
            My momentum is strong, and Kurt invites me to meet with him after the term ends. A couple of weeks go by, and I muster the courage to call for an appointment. His wife answers and tells me, “The term is over, he’s not seeing any students.”
          Before I can plead my case, Kurt comes on an extension and says, “It’s all right.”
          At our meeting, Kurt asks, “Do you know famous rock musicians?”
         “Not famous ones.”
         “Huh?”

            Kurt explains that some kid in the Midwest will read my book and become a famous rock musician, emulating my characters because that’s all he knows about how a rock musician acts. Then kids will emulate him.
            I am not only creating characters, I am creating people.
            I ask how his book is going, and he replies, “It doesn’t much matter. It’s not going very well.” I can take this two ways:
            1) If Kurt Vonnegut has such doubts, who am I to even try to get into the game? Or, 2) The fact that I, too, have such doubts doesn’t mean I am not worthy of being in the game.
            I opt for the latter.

            At the end of the session, Kurt inscribes my copy of Breakfast of Champions: “For Alan Ziegler, who has begun a book of his own.”

 

I never finish that novel, but fifteen years later my manuscript of short stories wins a minor award, and I am happy with this collection of “small victories.” I send Kurt the manuscript, and ask for a blurb, figuring I am probably the tenth writer that week to ask him for one—all with connections less tenuous than mine—and that he has probably long ago forgotten me. I include a return postcard, asking him to check one of five boxes: “I will try to take a look at the manuscript and maybe write a blurb.” “No, but try again with the galleys.” “No.” “Yes, but be patient.” “It’s done. Here’s the blurb.”
            A week later, the postcard comes back. Kurt has checked the “be patient” box and added, “Just got back from England, so have to catch up on a lot of stuff.” But in the same batch of mail is an envelope with his blurb, which is prefaced by: “I’m honored to know you.”
            Likewise, I am most sure.

 ^^^

WILLIAM BURROUGHS

William Burroughs has just moved back to New York from London, and it is amazing to see Old Bull Lee in the flesh, much less have him as a teacher at City College in the Spring of 1974. He agrees to do an independent study with me, and he gives me permission to tape his undergraduate lectures (which he delivers from typed pages). The first time I put my tape recorder on his table, I ask him to release the pause button when he starts talking so I won’t disturb him. Bill declines, preferring that I do it: “I don’t like to fool with other people’s machines.”
           We meet at Bill’s sparsely furnished downtown loft. Usually, he wears a tie. Once, when I arrive he is sitting at a big table typing on an old Underwood; later, he has a new IBM electric. He serves me coffee and our conversations are dominated by intense caesuras.
           At our final session, I show him part of the novel-in-progress about rock musicians I worked on with Kurt Vonnegut. He quietly reads the piece while I talk with James Grauerholz about small presses. Bill pats his front shirt pocket, making contact with a pack of cigarettes, but he doesn’t take one.
            Finally, Bill says, “It’s very, very good. Polished.” He pauses, and I wait for “but.” Instead, he adds, “Do you have an agent?”
            “No,” I reply, my heart beginning to race toward the finish line of a novel with blurbs by Vonnegut and Burroughs.
            Bill starts coughing and says, “You really need codeine for a cough, but you need a prescription.” (The journalist in me recognizes the lead: “William Burroughs can’t get codeine without a prescription.”)
          “I know some rock musicians,” he says. “David Bowie.”
          “What do you think of him?” I ask, realizing that the lesson is over.
          “Cold and purposeful,” Burroughs replies. “I also know Jagger. He’s a nice guy and a smart businessman.”
         We talk about Kerouac and Neal Cassidy. Bill tells me that Naked Lunch originated as a series of letters. He signs my copy of The Wild Boys: “For Alan, from the Wild Boys.”
         As I am leaving, Bill says I should feel free to return. “I’m here in the afternoon.”

 ^^^

Earlier versions of these pieces appeared in The Writing Workshop Note Book (Soft Skull).

Cambridge, England: Dining Mecca? [by Stacey Harwood]

      Cambridge University, with its medieval passageways and glorious college gardens, has dominated this town for over 800 years. It is the university of Byron and Wordsworth, Charles Darwin and Stephen Hawking, Emma Thompson and Stephen Frye. Francis Crick and James Watson famously announced their discovery of DNA at the Eagle, an event enshrined on a plaque on the pub’s smoke blackened walls.

    David Lehman studied at Clare College in Cambridge for two years, while a Kellett Fellow from Columbia University. He was following in the footsteps of poets and scholars, including John Berryman, and his contemporaries David Shapiro and Aaron Fogel. While there he met Lawrence Joseph, a University of Michigan fellow at Magdalene (pronounced "Maudlyn") College, who became a life-long friend.

            The University has its share of food lore: Trinity College claims credit for inventing crème brûlée  (“Trinity cream”), any mention of “Clare College mush” to an “old boy” will surely elicit groans, and aside from the Queen, only the dons of St. John’s college can legally eat swan, inspiring a student to pen this bawdy limerick of renown:

There was a young man of St. John’s,
Who wanted to bugger some swans.
So he went to the porter
Who said, “Have my daughter!
The swans are reserved for the dons.”

           David credits his years as a Clare College fellowship student with motivating him to cook: the food “in hall” was inedible and the restaurant fare that an American student abroad could afford was not much better. He saw no alternative to renting a flat, buying a few kitchen basics, and preparing his own meals.

            David and I have returned to Cambridge several times over the past few years, most recently so that David could give readings at Clare. While he met with his former Dons, I sussed out the food scene, following pointers given by food-writer and restaurateur Tim Hayward, with whom we shared a leisurely morning at Fitzbillies, his tea-shop and restaurant. 

     What a difference a few decades make. Thanks to the high-speed train that departs every 30 minutes from London’s King Cross station and pulls into Cambridge in under an hour, Cambridge is both a tourist destination and a commuter town. It also has a flourishing food and dining scene, with chefs and culinary entrepreneurs as ambitious as a university mathematician vying for a Nobel. Cambridge is now home to two Michelin starred restaurants, the one-star Alimentum and the two-star Midsummer House, where an acquaintance predicted, correctly, that our meal would be “bonkers.” Though Chef Daniel Clifford flirts with molecular gastronomy, he honors his classical French training. It all comes together beautifully, as exemplified by my starter of celery and watercress bavarois with beetroot cannelloni balanced atop a scoop of horseradish ice cream.

            While Cambridge has chain-food imports, we had no trouble finding local talent. Contemporary clichés apply: market driven, nose-to-tail, locavore.  Here’s what we found:

1. Cambridge Cheese Company:

When we stepped into this welcoming shop, manager David Wilshin was unpacking bunches of fresh garlic, each head a tight fist of creamy cloves. These he would display in the window alongside stalks of white asparagus and a sign announcing the availability in bottles—finally—of the popular and bracing Pickled Pig Cider, brewed from local apples. We assembled a sampler comprising Cambridge Blue cheese, the nutty cow’s-milk Red Leicester, a wedge of the aptly named Stinking Bishop, and a Bramley apple and pork pie (made locally by an octogenarian farming couple).

Cambridge Cheese Company
4 All Saints Passage
Cambridge, Cambridgeshire CB2 3LS
+44 1223 32867

2. Cambridge Wine Merchants:

Don’t be fooled by the name. Though its wine selection is impressive enough to garner several awards, CWM has distinguished itself as a leading specialist in malt whiskey. At any given time you’ll find as many as 350 bottles on the shelves of the Kings Parade flagship store, some of which are quite rare either because the distillery no longer exists or the whiskey was in limited production. Fancy a bottle of 21 year Lagavulin? You’ll find it here for a mere 425£ (about $650.)

Cambridge Wine Merchants
2 King's Parade,
Cambridge CB2 1SJ,
+44 1223 309309

3. Cristine Patisserie:

If you blink while walking along Trumpington Street, you might miss Botolph Lane, which would be a shame because that’s where you’ll find Cristine Pattiserie, with its display case filled with Brazilian sweets such as brigadeiro, coconut beignho, and my favorite, the surprise de uva. From the outside, surprise de uva resembles a truffle, albeit a green one. Take a bite for a hit of cold grape juice from the single fruit hidden within. 

Cristine Patisserie
1B Botolph Ln,
Cambridge CB2 3RD,
+44 7763 529886

4. Fitzbillies:

 Go to this bakery-café for a famed Chelsea bun, just to find out what all the fuss is about, but return for dinner to try chef Rosie Syke’s British cooking. When Alison Wright and Tim Hayward snatched this 90-year mainstay from the insatiable jaws of the fast-food monster, they introduced innovations that include selling artisanal bread from a local baker, inviting food-truck cooks to host “first Wednesday” pop-ups, and serving imaginatively conceived weekend dinners. The menu is posted Tuesday nights on Fitzbillies’ website. Tables fill quickly yet one still has the feeling of dining in undiscovered country. On the night of our visit, we had the boldly spiced seven-hour shoulder of lamb and a rich rabbit, chicken, and St. George’s mushroom pie baked in an oblong enamel tin that would dwarf a volume of Pepys’ diary.

Fitzbillies
52A Trumpington St
Cambridge CB2 1RG,
+44 1223 352500

5. Grantchester Orchards Tea Garden:

You can travel to this historic tea garden by car but far better to walk the two miles from center Cambridge. For the full Grantchester Orchards experience, hire a punt for transport by way of the river Cam. Here is the spot that aroused longing in WWI poet Rupert Brooke—But Grantchester! Ah, Grantchester! There’s peace and holy quiet there—and continues to attract Cambridge dons and students. Large and small tables and casual deck chairs are strategically placed throughout the leafy orchard, giving visitors a certain amount of privacy while they snack on tea, scones and light meals before gliding home.

 Grantchester Orchards Tea Garden
45 - 47 Mill way,
Grantchester, Cambridge CB3 9ND
+44 1223 551125

6. Jack’s Gelato:

To find Jack, you either have to subscribe to his twitter feed (@jacks_gelato) or stumble upon him by accident while he’s dishing out inspired flavors from the back of his tricycle. Recent tweets: "Now scooping seven flavours outside the @CUBotanicGarden. I am having an earl grey gelato. With a bit of dark chocolate on the side.Happy." and “Organic 72% dark chocolate and single estate Rwandan coffee sorbet, churning as I type. #pretentious #butdelicious.”

Jack’s Gelato (facebook)
133 Sturton Street
Cambridge, England
+44 7909 224178
twitter: @jacks_gelato

7. Seasonality Cambridge:

Amanda O’Neill got her start by making bramble jelly with blackberries foraged while walking her dog. She now offers a full line of jams, preserves, and chutneys that includes Cambridge Greengage, Spiced Apricot & Cardamom Chutney, and her best selling Piccallili relish. Her latest creation is Summer Pudding conserve, inspired by the traditional English dessert of fruit and juice-soaked white bread layered in a deep bowl. Though her business has grown, Amanda works from her home kitchen, makes her own pectin, and has no plans to expand beyond Cambridge or into mail-order (though she’s happily “chuffed” when a customer wants her to ship to California). Visit her website for retail locations.

Seasonality Cambridge
+44 7950 049618

8. Steak and Honour:

Hamburgers. Why would an American bother when there’s glorious fish and chips to be had? Chinese writer Lin Yutang rhetorically asked, “What is patriotism but the love of the food one ate as a child?” If you happen to be in Cambridge and feeling homesick, find the tricked-out Steak and Honour food truck and join the queue. Owner Leo Riethoff established his bona fides at top kitchens in London and Cambridge before turning his talents to the fundamentals of a good burger: great beef ground daily, brioche bun, and a garnish of pickles, lettuce, and onions with the requisite “Heinz Tommy K” and mustard. It’s your lucky day when Steak and Honour parks beside Jack’s Gelato.

Steak and Honour
[email protected] 
+44 7729 541707
twitter: @steakandhonour

TONIGHT: 22nd Annual Poets House Showcase Opening

The 22nd Annual Poets House Showcase Opening TONIGHT Thursday June 26, 2014 10 River Terrace New York, NY 10282 • 5:30-7:00pm Opening Reception • 7:00pm Readings by Meena Alexander, Jennifer Michael Hecht, David Lehman, and Rachel Zucker Meena Alexander, Jennifer Michael Hecht, David Lehman, and Rachel Zucker The Annual Poets House Showcase has become the go-to event for poets, publishers, and literary lovers to discover what’s new in the world of poetry. This year’s exhibition, featuring almost 3,000 volumes from over 700 sources – from micro-presses to major publishing houses – opens with readings and festivities, and will be on view through August 16. The Showcase opens for viewing TONIGHT, Thursday June 26 at 5:30pm. At 7:00pm, this year’s Opening Readings will be by renowned poet and CUNY Grad professor Meena Alexander from Birthplace with Buried Stones (Triquarterly); acclaimed nonfiction author and poet Jennifer Michael Hecht, from Who Said (Copper Canyon Press); poet and long-time Best American Poetry series editor David Lehman, from his New and Selected Poems (Scribner); and poet Rachel Zucker, from The Pedestrians (Wave Books).

FLASH MEMOIRS OF LIFE ON THE TEACHING ROAD [by Alan Zeigler]

FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL

(1974)

Shortly after I start the graduate writing program at City College, someone tells me about Kenneth Koch’s book on teaching poetry writing to children and asks whether that is something I want to do. I say I’d be scared to death to get up in front of a group of children. “Children see through me, like cats; I can imagine myself teaching adults: I can fool dogs and adults.”

            A few months later, Stuart—from my poetry workshop—asks if I’d like to make $200 for four afternoon’s work. Legally? Yes, doing poetry sessions with children in a writers-in-the school program. I imagine being in front of a class of hissing cats. But I can use the $200, and if I fail I can shrug and say, “It wasn’t my idea.”

            I observe Stuart teaching—he is terrific, animated and spiritual. The kids adore him and the teachers respect him. Oh if that could be me! I ask Stuart how I can prepare, and he explains that in the writers-in-the-schools game the major league is Teachers & Writers Collaborative, they have lots of material, I should go to their office and browse.

            I picture a bustling office with writers everywhere, heads buried in their notebooks while staffers field phone calls (“Yes sir, we can have two poets and one novelist out there in an hour”) and send the writers off on their assignments. But the office turns out to be a converted classroom in an elementary school in the West Village; the director, Steve Schrader, is alone when I get there. He makes me feel welcome and puts together a stack of books and magazines published by Teachers & Writers, and won’t take any money.

            I read all the material, and soon names like Bill Zavatsky and Phillip Lopate are in my head alongside Mark Strand and Adrienne Rich. In one piece, Karen Hubert writes about first-day-of-school nervousness before starting a residency. I find this comforting as I ride the subway to the school deep in Brooklyn.

            I emulate Stuart at my first class, and the kids seem to buy it. By my last class of the day I am me: reading aloud poems I love, hearing myself say things I didn’t know I knew, and—most amazingly—enjoying private conversations with kids as they are writing. One of my feared inadequacies was that I could never do that “voice” people use with children. But the kids seem to like it just fine that I talk normal to them.

            I come home relieved, but wracked with doubts about how well I did and whether I have anything left to say. When I reappear a week later, the children applaud my entrance. I am hooked.

^

OVERTIME

(1975)

In my first full year of teaching I follow the advice of an actor friend: “Never say no to a job when you’re starting out.” Everything blooms at once. I am getting residencies from Teachers & Writers, Poets in the Schools, and Poets & Writers, while teaching as an adjunct at Bronx Community College. At each new school I have to prove myself. I have no backlog of assignments to pull out of the bag so I am constantly preparing while doing my own writing. My toughest session is on Saturday mornings at Bronx Community College, a remedial writing class that meets from 8 a.m. until noon.

            One Friday, starting my fourth and last class of the day, I open my mouth and realize I don’t have enough left in me to go through with my plan. I am incapable of jumping around the room trying to excite the poetry out of the kids. In desperation, I ask them what’s important enough for them to write about. It turns out to be my best session of the week, opening up a whole new avenue of teaching. I leave elated but still exhausted, and Saturday in the Bronx looms.

            At 7 a.m. I find myself climbing up the hill to the Bronx Community College campus. The stores are closed and the sky is grey with an early-winter bite. I feel fuzzy and can’t remember turning off the alarm. What if I am dreaming that I am on my way to school, but I am really in bed about to miss my class? If I shake myself real hard will I come awake in my bed? I make myself shudder and am still slogging up the hill, so I must operate under the assumption this is real.

            By the time class starts, I am sure I am awake, if barely. I plunge into comma splices and subject-verb agreement without using those terms. As usual, Patterson comes in 30-minutes late; Patterson is an overnight conductor on the D-train and insists on going home and changing into a suit before coming to class—he’d rather be late than unkempt. Like many of my other students, he is well past college age, taking advantage of the City University’s open admissions policy.

            During a break, I find Ignacio waiting for me in the hallway. Ignacio has three kids and a full-time job, and took remedial writing before but failed because a crisis at home forced him to miss the final classes. “Professor, I was here on time,” Ignacio says. (I have asked the students to call me Alan, but some insist on calling me professor—perhaps they have enough Alans in their lives and need a professor or two.) “Then I went to the john just to close my eyes for a few minutes, and I just woke up.”

            “OK,” I say, gesturing toward the classroom. The exhaustion hits me again. I have to go to the bathroom, but I am afraid that if I sit down, I too will fall asleep. I head back into the room.

            After class, three students wait for me in the hallway, but they are blocked by Iris, a nurse in her fifties. “Alan,” she says, “go home to your bed.”

 ^

THE RACE CARD

(1976)

 All the students at the elementary school are black. As I start a long-term residency, I worry about a racial confrontation, but after several months it still hasn’t happened. Until one afternoon, when I hear Thomas yell, “You stupid honky.” I meet his eyes, he is scowling.

 I ask Thomas to accompany me into the hall.
“Thomas, how long have we known each other?”
“About three months, I guess.”
“Did you just discover that we are different colors?”
“What are you talking about, man?"
“You just called me a honky.”

            Thomas looks at me quizzically, then replies, “I didn’t call you a honky, I called Shawn a honkey.” Shawn is lighter skinned than the rest. “I wouldn’t call you a honky.”

             “Why not?”

            Thomas seems stumped by the obviousness of my question, and finally sputters out: “Because you are one!”

 

The American Scholar's Crowd-Sourced Sonnet: Looking for Line 10!

On Tuesday, May 6, The American Scholar launched a website experiment in writing crowd-sourced poetry—in this case, a Shakespearean sonnet. David Lehman supplied the first line and picks subsequent lines from reader submissions.  If you would like to enter, you must submit your line on the American Scholar site here.

Here is the sonnet to date:

How like a prison is my cubicle,

And yet how far my mind can freely roam

From gaol to Jerusalem, Hell to home.

Freedom ends or starts with a funeral.

Say what must die inside that I may not

Cast down this die and cross the Rubicon

Thence to the true hell: the heat of Tucson

Where drug lords blaze loads of coke, meth, and pot.

Freedom starts, or ends, with a funeral,

---

Line eight was suggested by Diana (no last name given): “Where drug lords blaze loads of coke, meth, and pot.” I like the way the line rubs our nose into a harsh reality. The succession of ten monosyllables and the strong alliteration of “r” and “l” sounds in the first part of the line clinch the deal. The line sounds a conclusive note to the first eight lines of our sonnet whether we take them as one block or as two four-line stanzas.

Continue reading and enter your line here.

SHORT PROSE BITES* [by Alan Ziegler]

*bites used here as a noun

These quotes and fragments are part of a compendium-in-progress.

^

A partial glossary of nomenclature: Anecdotes, aphorisms, apothegms, Briefs, brief essays, Casos, crônicas, Definitions, Denkbilder, Espresso stories, extracts, Fables, fantasies, feuilletons, ficciones relámpagos, figures, flash fiction, fragments, Gnomes, greguerías,  Hint fiction, Ideas, idylls, instructions, Jottings, Kurzprosa, Lists, lyrical essays, Maxims, microcosmography, microcuentos, microfiction, microstories, monostichs, Nanofiction, napkin stories, notes, Ocherks, ouroboric novels, Parables, paragraphs, pensées, prosa d’arte, prose poems, Quick fiction, Reflections, Sentences, shorts, short-short stories, situations, sketches, sudden fiction, Tableaus, tales, transmutations, tropisms, twitterfiction, Utterances, Very short stories, Vignettes, Wuyun-shi, Xtremely short stories,Can someone get me an X and Y?, Zuihitsu

^

“The prose poem is a funny fish-fowl…. I rather think that the special freedom that the prose poem has, and its special charm, is its quickness. When a prose poem takes a little time to read, rather than being able to read right through, that time has got to be meaningful to the poem, such as the sense of time passing. Otherwise, again, it gets heavily with prose. Of course I am talking about my notion of the ideal prose poem, the kind of prose poem I would like to write. Anyway, at the heart of the prose poem, no matter how one does them, is IMAGINATION and INVENTION; the surprise that prose can do some of the things it is made to do, and that the mind of so spooky.”

— Russell Edson
(from a July, 1974, letter to AZ)

^

Prose poems can be quick, which is not to say rushed. A person who is rushed is often careless and forgetful of details. The race goes to the swift who stay on their feet. But if you do fall—fall gloriously.

^

An anecdote that transcends through language or narrative can become a vignette. A transcendent vignette can become a prose poem. What does it need? Mojo, that’s what.

^

“And if, as I suggest, such an arrangement of imagery requires just as much fundamental brainwork as the arrangement of an argument, it is to be expected that the reader of a prose poem should take at least as much trouble as a barrister reading an important decision on a complicated case.”

—T.S. Eliot

^

Sei Shönagon lived in Japan from 966-1017 (she would have been able to blog about the Y1K scare). Her famed Pillow Book came about because she “had a vast quantity of paper at my disposal, and I set about filling the notebooks with odd facts, stories from the past, and all sorts of other things, often including the most trivial material.” Sounds like a blog. Written in private (“I wrote these notes at home, when I had a good deal of time to myself and thought no one would notice what I was doing”), her notebooks became public and soon everyone knew what she was doing. This form came to be known as zuihitsu (discussed in Kimiko Hahn’s piece “Compass,” included in Short).

^

Native Americans kept “blogs” known as Winter Counts. Tribe historians would depict a significant event for each year on a buffalo or deer skin. The story behind each pictograph would be passed along verbally, and sometimes written down. (1887: The Winter of Night Issue. The Sioux, enraged by the government’s refusal to issue clothing until allotments of land had been accepted, threw Major Spencer, Agent, from his office. Demanding the warehouse keys from Yard Boss, Helver, the chiefs entered and issued the clothing at night.)

^

Notes and Queries—a London weekly founded in 1849 (a version is still being published)—functioned as a kind of newsgroup for “literary men, artists, antiquaries, genealogists, etc.” Their motto was provided by Dickens via Captain Cuttle: “When found, make a note of,” to which the editors appended “till then make a QUERY.” Each issue featured scores of brief notes from readers, as well as queries that might get answered in subsequent issues.

^

Perhaps the first electronic blogger was Will Rogers, who—from 1926 to 1935—submitted short newspaper pieces via telegram from wherever he happened to be: LONDON, Aug. 25.—France is very quiet. The rise in taxes was only proposed. Deer season opened in Scotland for all those who can’t hit grouse. Debts and dictators quiet today. Rogers often composed quickly and submitted his copy unedited.

A Portfolio of Shorts by Newer Writers [selected by Alan Ziegler]

Nora Brooks

SOUP OF GLASS AND CHALK-STAINED SKIES

1. Maybe you own a crockpot. Meals made in them are supposed to be nourishing. Chalky edges of plaster gape open around the hole in the wall next to ours. Crockpots are things mothers give to men newly divorced. Dad can’t feed us pizza and Campbell’s ready-to-serve with mini-sirloin patties anymore. We’ll be yanked back to Auburn, California or wherever Mom’s moving. The new boyfriend’s name is Dick.
   
   
2. Cleave 2-3 lbs. of discount beef into stew chunks. Use a good knife. Dad says his problem with cooking is he’s never had to do it before. Top ramen with lunch meat doesn’t count. My eyes are fixed on his flimsy blade severing tendon and miniature arteries, soaking the cutting board with blood like bruises blooming. There’s another hole in the hallway and one in my bedroom. I don’t understand why we have to wait until we move to patch them.
   
   
3. Quarter 4 medium potatoes and chop an onion roughly. Fish a pound of peas out of the freezer and hope they’re not frost-burnt. He slams the meat chunks into the pot with the vegetables. He sets down his sixth beer. He adds water. It’s supposed to be that easy.
   
   
4. Add seasonings to your taste. Dad has a memory of Mom’s soups, hearty and simple, with a little love nip of pepper. He tosses in a handful from a pre-ground jar like he’s sowing a field. Take it easy, I tell him. It sits for the time it takes him to go on a beer run. Miracle, it’s done. He walked to get the beer. The last thing we need in this family is a DUI, he tells us sisters, slouched over our stools at the dining bar. It’s so full of pepper that it hurts. It’s like swallowing glass. Eat it, he tells us, I don’t want people thinking I can’t take care of you.

 

Nora Brooks is a writer whose work has been published in Poets & Writers, PopMatters, Monkeybicycle, Redactions, Alimentum, and The Best American Poetry blog and is forthcoming from H.O.W. Journal. She is an MFA candidate at The New School and lives in the East Village. This piece originally appeared in Redactions. Nora can be found online at norabrooks.org.

  ^^^ 

Scott Dievendorf

GHOST PLAYER

Before I learned to play, I knew the harp was the only instrument fit for God. I had seen paintings of angels and saints strumming it atop clouds. They deigned lift a trumpet for the people of earth.

            During our first lesson my brother told me the strings were made of catgut—the internal parts of an animal we weren’t to eat.

My father carted us out during his parties and quieted his guests and told them to listen as his cherubim played. My brother sat in the chair and plucked the chords, just as he was told, and when he finished, I followed. My father always wanted his little girl to play last.

Neither of us learned it very well. Our teacher would admonish us. Remind us to practice. Tell us to pluck more gently. Keep our fingernails short.

My brother quit before I did.

The last we heard of him was a resounding note before I took my turn in front of our bay windows. All he and I had in common, really, was that neither of us understood how such a delicate sound could echo from something so vulgar as catgut. But he left before he could come to know our father.

Scott Dievendorf grew up in California and now resides in Brooklyn. He received his MFA from Columbia University. His work has appeared in Epiphany. He currently serves as fiction editor of Apogee Journal and is polishing his novel on a Charlie Chaplin impersonator.

 ^^^

Sasha Fletcher

SOME FACTS ABOUT WHALES

Whales are difficult to trust because they are large and because they will not tell you about their blowholes or ever offer you the option of subtitles for their conversations, which are often called songs. Whales can travel vast distances. Whales reproduce one at a time, and very slowly. Whales have a lot of love to give. Whales will make a house for you inside of their bellies for all of your days. They will ask that you not light a fire, as it tickles them. Tickles is a whale word for the ways in which they will kill you. My mother once told me about being swallowed by a whale but then I realized she was talking about Pinocchio, who was a puppet made out of wood. Floorboards are made out of wood. Chairs are made out of wood. The cabinets in the kitchen are made out of wood and the burners on the stove are ringed by fire. This is a sure sign whales are not around as I go to sleep. As I go to sleep I am bathed by streetlights and surrounded, on all sides, by darkness.

Sasha Fletcher is the author ofit is going to be a good year(Big Lucks Books, 2015), one novella, and several chapbooks of poetry.

^^^

 

Ring Me Up, Scotty [by Charles Coe]

I've discovered that when you can’t figure out how your fancy new Internet-based office phone works, you create more problems than you solve by jabbing buttons at random. And tempted as I might be, I suspect that striking said phone repeatedly with a three-hole punch until it’s reduced to a pile of plastic shards would do little to improve the situation.

The tech guy at my office recently carried off the analog beast I’d used without incident for fifteen years and left a sleek gunmetal gray uberphone covered with buttons sitting on my desk. I stared at it for a while, then finally said, “Let’s make sure we understand each other. All I want from you is a dial tone. Just let me dial a number, talk to somebody, hang up when I’m done, and get on with my life. Sound fair to you?” I thought it was a pretty good heart-to-heart chat. But I was doing all the talking, and probably should have recognized this as a bad omen.

With my new phone I can do a hostile takeover of Microsoft, reconfigure the orbits of communications satellites, and adjust the thermostat of every house in North America. I can do everything but make a telephone call. It has an instruction manual longer than a Stephen King novel. But a Stepen King novel's written in English; at least twice a week I have to ask the office manager to come over and help me decode the thing.

I think it’s time to reconsider proven technologies like talking drums, smoke signals, and tin cans connected by a string. I’m trying to organize a committee at my office to explore those possibilities, but so far no go.

Guess I’ve just reached an age where I can no longer pretend I’m “cutting edge” in any way. I used to dash up a set of stairs, but now I trudge resolutely, briefcase banging against my knee, staying to the right so the youngsters can vault by me two steps at a time. And I often shake my head when I see things on television that would have once had police pounding on the studio door.

But don’t take me wrong; I’m not a curmudgeon. I enjoy and appreciate the wonders of this young century. It’s just that I wish I could slow things down sometimes…just a little. I was perfectly happy with my old office phone, but someone else decided it was time for a change.

So if you’ll please excuse me, I’m going to go dig up a phone book (remember those?) and see if I can scare up a deal on some carrier pigeons.

 

Charles Coe is author of two books of poetry:  “All Sins Forgiven: Poems for my Parents” and “Picnic on the Moon,” both published by Leapfrog Press. His poetry has appeared in a number of literary reviews and anthologies, including Poesis, The Mom Egg, Solstice Literary Review, and Urban Nature. He is the winner of a fellowship in poetry from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Charles’s poems have been set by a number of composers, including Beth Denisch, Julia Carey and Robert Moran. A short film based on his poem “Fortress” is currently in production by filmmaker Roberto Mighty. Charles is co-chair of the Boston Chapter of the National Writers Union, a labor union for freelance writers. He has been selected by the Associates of the Boston Public Library as a “Boston Literary Light for 2014.”

 

Philip K. Dick [by Mitch Sisskind]

  

No telling what time it was

As he woke in darkness with

The sleeping cat’s warmth,

 A gift from God, on the back
 
Of his neck and, weeping,

He willed himself to perfect

Stillness lest the cat leave.

But wait. Here was a thought,

Here was another possibility:

He was dead and, willfulness

Be damned, could no more

Stir himself than trisect an angle!

Yes, that might be it --

And this was paradise!

Monday Comic by Nin Andrews

 

(c) Nin Andrews

The Short Prose Hall of Fame Inaugural Induction—a Fantasy* [by Alan Ziegler]

* This fictive conversation comprises factually-based dialogue I have put in the speakers’ mouths along with their actual words (sometimes lightly adapted), which are in italics.

 TIME: The never-present

SETTING: The Théâtre du Splendide Hotel. The backdrop—hand-painted by Manet—reads: “And the Splendide Hotel was built amid the tangled heap of ice floes and the polar night—Rimbaud.” The stage is bare except for five café chairs for the inductees. The audience includes members of the Short Prose Society, who represent several countries and centuries. Because it is my fantasy, I get to be the host.

 

AZ

Welcome to the Short Prose Hall of Fame’s inaugural induction, coinciding with publication of Short: An International Anthology of Five Centuries of Short-Short Stories, Prose Poems, Brief Essays, and Other Short Prose Forms. Thank you all for coming from such distances of time and space; I expect that many of you will be sitting on this stage in future ceremonies. Our first honoree’s only book, the posthumously published Gaspard de la Nuit (Gaspard of the Night), is widely considered to be the first book of prose poems, though he didn’t use the term. Louis (Aloysius) Bertrand lived most of his life in Dijon, with forays into the Paris literary scene. He attended Victor Hugo’s salon, where the great literary critic Saint-Beuve described his “shrewd and bantering expression” as he read his “little ballades in prose.”

 (Louis “Aloysius” Bertrand enters, a bit dazed by the applause.)

Edgar Allan Poe, our only non-French honoree, is a writer of tales, poems, and essays, as well as an editor. He is known as the master of the macabre and the inventor of the detective story. Of most concern here is his enormous influence as a writer of short prose.

(Edgar Allan Poe enters, not terribly surprised by the acclaim.)

And now the man who did the first important translations of Poe’s work into French, and credited Bertrand as inspiration for his Paris Spleen, the first self-identified collection of prose poems—alas, also published posthumously. He is also an art critic and essayist whose work chronicles and fosters modernism: Charles Baudelaire!

(Charles Baudelaire runs out and engulfs Bertrand and Poe in a group hug.)

Stéphane Mallarmé published prose poems and verse poems in the same book, further establishing the prose poem as a form of poetry. He has had enormous influence in spite of—and due to—his celebration of the difficult and the obscure. Even his good friend Degas fled a eulogy he was giving, exclaiming, “I do not understand. I do not understand.”

 (Mallarmé enters and addresses the audience.)

MALLARMÉ

 I become obscure, of course! if one makes a mistake and thinks one is opening a newspaper.

 (Mallarmé introduces himself to Bertrand and Poe, and enjoys a warm reunion with Baudelaire.)

 

AZ

I’m not sure if our final inductee has arrived, but let me tell you about him. His star shone bright but was self-extinguished before the age of 21 when he embarked on a new life in Africa as an itinerant entrepreneur (though reports of his involvement in the slave trade are greatly exaggerated). His two books of prose poems, A Season in Hell and The Illuminations, have been enormously influential, and his face and last name are cultural icons: Is Arthur Rimbaud here?

(After a minute of anxious waiting, Arthur Rimbaud  reluctantly saunters across the stage, looking bemused at the Splendide Hotel sign. He nods to Mallarmé (whomhe knew only in passing) and gives a respectful bow to Baudelaire, whom he never met but called “the first seer, the king of poets, a real god.” As much as Rimbaud tries to act blasé, you can tell that he is glad to be here. The inductees take their seats. I invite members of the audience to stand and speak whenever they feel so moved.)

AZ

Bertrand and Poe were born two years apart (1807, 1809), separated by an ocean and a language. But they shared a sensibility that would set in motion this anthology.

BAUDELAIRE

(addressing Bertrand)

Louis, it was while thumbing through—for the twentieth time at least—your celebrated Gaspard de la Nuit that the idea came to me to try to do something analogous. I knew it was going to be a remarkable book but was sure that it would pass unnoticed.

AZ

Paris Spleen established you as the inventor of the prose poem.

 POE

Excuse me, but I published a prose poem, Eureka, fifteen years before the first of Charles’s.

AZ

Yes, but that was a different creature, almost 40,000 words. In 1765, Jaucourt used the term poeme en prose to discuss “poetry in prose works…which might have never seen light if their authors had to subject their genius to rhyme and measure,” but he gave as an example Fénelon’s novel-length Les Aventures de Télémaque. Let’s stipulate that “prose poem” and “poetic prose” are not necessarily synonymous. But let’s also stipulate that we go with whatever the author says: John Ashbery published a book called Three Poems, the shortest of which is 37 pages, and I’m not going to tell him he can’t call them prose poems.

(addressing Bertrand)

You had a formal notion of the short prose poem, even if you didn’t call it that.

BERTRAND

I did try to create a new kind of prose; I referred to my paired paragraphs as couplets,and I left instructions for Monsieurtypesetter to cast large white spaces between these couplets as if they were stanzas in verse. I sold the book—including my illustrations— to Eugene Renduel, then I waited and waited for him to publish it. After five years I made one last plea for his good will, leaving a conciliatory sonnet by his door. Five more months went by, and I stopped living.

AZ

Two years later, your friend David d’Angers acquired the rights by returning your advance to Renduel, and the book was published.

(Hisses and boos from the audience. One figure skulks out  the rear door, while another gets handshakes from those around him.)

Poetry from Aotearoa/New Zealand 1 -- Bill Manhire's 'Hotel Emergencies'

2008 (c) Ed Swinden

Hotel Emergencies

The fire alarm sound: is given as a howling sound. Do
       not use the lifts. The optimism sound: is given as the
       sound of a man brushing his teeth. Do not go to bed.
       The respectability sound: is given as a familiar honking
       sound. Do not run, do not sing. The dearly-departed
       sound: is given as a rumble in the bones. Do not enter
       the coffin. The afterlife sound: is given as the music of
       the spheres. It will not reconstruct. The bordello sound:
       is given as a small child screaming. Do not turn on the
       light. The accident sound: is given as an ambulance
       sound. You can hear it coming closer, do not crowd the
       footpaths. The execution sound: is given as the sound of
       prayer. Oh be cautious, do not stand too near

 or you will surely hear: the machinegun sound, the weeping
      mother sound, the agony sound, the dying child sound:
      whose voice is already drowned by the approaching
      helicopter sound: which is given as the dead flower
      sound, the warlord sound, the hunting and fleeing and
      clattering sound, the amputation sound, the bloodbath
      sound, the sound of the President quietly addressing
      his dinner; now he places his knife and fork together (a
      polite and tidy sound) before addressing the nation

and making a just and necessary war sound: which is given
      as a freedom sound (do not cherish memory): which is
      given as a security sound: which is given as a prisoner
      sound: which is given again as a war sound: which is
      a torture sound and a watchtower sound and a firing
      sound: which is given as a Timor sound: which is given
      as a decapitation sound (do not think you will not gasp
      tomorrow): which is given as a Darfur sound: which is
      given as a Dachau sound: which is given as a dry river-
      bed sound, as a wind in the poplars sound: which is
      given again as an angry god sound:

which is here as a Muslim sound: which is here as a Christian
      sound: which is here as a Jewish sound: which is here as
      a merciful god sound: which is here as a praying sound;
      which is here as a kneeling sound: which is here as a
      scripture sound: which is here as a black-wing sound: as
      a dark-cloud sound: as a black-ash sound: which is given
      as a howling sound: which is given as a fire alarm sound:

which is given late at night, calling you from your bed (do
      not use the lifts): which is given as a burning sound, no,
      as a human sound, as a heartbeat sound: which is given
      as a sound beyond sound: which is given as the sound
      of many weeping: which is given as an entirely familiar
      sound, a sound like no other, up there high in the smoke
      above the stars

 
Bill Manhire

~

Bill Manhire's Selected Poems appeared earlier this year from Carcanet (UK) and from Victoria University Press (NZ), a few months earlier. Included in that collection, 'Hotel Emergencies' was written in 2004, at the height of the Iraq conflict. The poem is just as poignant ten years later. Most of the time, Bill Manhire (born 1946) is a  poet of the lilting, if often disconcerting, personal lyric. Among his influences are an unconventional upbringing in public hotels around the remote New Zealand province of Southland, his early studies of Icelandic literature, and a wide-ranging attentiveness which has brought him into fruitful collaborations with visual artists including Ralph Hotere (1931-2013) and with numerous composers--most recently, Norman Meehan (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1D9zKYfBxo). With its sense of public urgency and  its almost panicked delivery, 'Hotel Emergenices' is uncharacteristically direct in its engagement with the socio-political world, yet the form of intimate address and the graceful accumulation of details is typical of Manhire's poetry.

Introducing the Poets of New Zealand

Photograph (c) Jason O'Hara

Beginning this week, Gregory O'Brien will be curating a weekly series featuring poets of New Zealand. Poet, essayist, artist and curator Gregory O'Brien was born in Matamata, New Zealand, in 1961. His most recent collections of poetry are 'Beauties of the Octagonal Pool' (Auckland University Press 2012) and a collaboration with photographer Bruce Foster, 'Citizen of Santiago' (Trapeze 2013). He is a regular contributor to the UK journal PN Review. Carcanet (Manchester) has published two of his books, 'Days Beside Water' (1994) and 'News of the Swimmer Reaches Shore' (2007).  In 1996 he co-edited the Oxford University Press Anthology of New Zealand Poetry (in English). O'Brien is a full-time writer and artist based in Wellington. Find out more about Gregory here.

Welcome, Gregory.