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Posted by The Best American Poetry on March 30, 2015 at 10:26 AM in Guest Bloggers, Nin Andrews | Permalink | Comments (3)
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Moon
Last night, when the moon
slipped into my attic-room
as an oblong of light,
I sensed she’d come to commiserate.
It was August. She travelled
with a small valise
of darkness, and the first few stars
returning to the northern sky,
and my room, it seemed,
had missed her. She pretended
an interest in the bookcase
while other objects
stirred, as in a rockpool,
with unexpected life:
strings of beads in their green bowl gleamed,
the paper-crowded desk;
the books, too, appeared inclined
to open and confess.
Being sure the moon
harboured some intention,
I waited; watched for an age
her cool glaze shift
first toward a flower sketch
pinned on the far wall
then glide to recline
along the pinewood floor
before I’d had enough. Moon,
I said, we’re both scarred now.
Are they quite beyond you,
the simple words of love? Say them.
You are not my mother;
with my mother, I waited unto death.
from The Overhaul (Minneapolis: Graywolf, 2015)
Kathleen Jamie’s The Overhaul, which won the Costa Prize for Poetry in 2012, has recently been published in the USA. These mid-life poems are deceptively simple, less ebullient than some of her earlier work – the feisty poems of The Queen of Sheba gave voice to a generation of Scottish women not prepared to be subdued; more conversational, full of questions. Thrifty with words when confronted by spendthrift nature, ‘Her poetry is to be admired as one might a winter garden for its outline, clarity and light’, wrote the Observer reviewer; ‘Reading the collection is, on one level, the equivalent of taking a Scottish walk, observing birds, deer, sheep and the sea.’
Jamie lives in Fife, and is Chair of the Creative Writing programme at the University of Stirling.Her fine essay collections, like her poetry, examine with lyrical acuity the way humans dwell in, delight in and despoil the natural world. She is rarely as self-referential as in The Overhaul. The last lines of ‘Moon’ surprise us with their buried feeling brought to light, their deeply Presbyterian tone.
Find out more about Kathleen Jamie here:
http://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poetry/poets/kathleen-jamie
and hear her reading and discussing her poems
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/poetica/2012-07-14/4066098
Friends, we need your help. We need to raise £100,000 for the building renovation which will hugely extend our reach. Your gift helps us to give: to lend books; to send books, poetry postcards and poets around Scotland; to record and send poets’ voices around the world; to bring people and poems together in care homes, schools, hospitals…
Go to www.justgiving.com/byleaveswegive or www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/about/support-our-workto donate online
Posted by Robyn Marsack on March 29, 2015 at 10:52 AM in Scotland | Permalink | Comments (0)
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A teenage gymnast was doing miraculous things in the Olympics. Her flexibility and strength were astonishing. The television commentator shrieked something like, “Oh no, she bent her knees on the stutz!” The knees had given a little, but it was amazing that they were still attached to her legs. This brings to mind what Coleridge refers to in Anima Poetae as “the head-dimming, heart-damping principle of judging a work by its defects, not its beauties.” Yes, Olympic commentators must deal with defects, and it is our obligation—when asked—to point out a writer’s botched literary stutzes, but we must never forget the beauties.
Another way to dim the head and dampen the heart of a writer is to react with a dismissive I’ve seen this kind of thing before attitude. Something old to you may have just been born in the writer; be gentle with that baby. Even more problematic is We shouldn’t be seeing this kind of thing again. A poet told me that his first submission to a workshop was greeted with, “I can’t believe that anyone still writes poetry that way.” I can’t believe that anyone would say such a thing.
Flannery O’Connor told students at Hollins College, “Every time a story of mine appears in a freshman anthology, I have a vision of it, with its little organs laid open, like a frog in a bottle.” O’Connor was referring to the tendency of literary criticism to veer more toward dissection than enjoyment, but a former classmate of hers at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Jean Wylder, was “sure she was remembering those Workshop sessions at Iowa.” No matter how supportive the workshop, there are moments when the discussion might feel like dissection, and, unlike an anthologized author, the writer is actually in the room while the examination takes place. But, the critique is not an autopsy, and should be taken in the spirit of “This is how to get that frog hopping.”
When responding to a writer in a “slump,” throwing effusive praise on work that the author knows is inferior could do more harm than good. The best way to un-dim the head and un-dampen the spirit is to accept what is before our eyes and encourage the writer to keep swinging. Willie Mays was batting .477 in the minors when he was called up to the Giants in 1951, where he started out 0 for 12. He tearfully told his manager, Leo Durocher, to bench him or send him back to the minors. Durocher told Mays he wasn’t going anywhere: “Just keep swinging, because you’re my centerfielder, even if you don’t get a hit for the rest of the season.” Mays got a lot of hits and was named rookie of the year (he is now in the Hall of Fame). He later recalled, “I think that really, really turned me around.”
When my wife was in fourth grade, she came across an oversized, illustrated edition of Bambi in the school library. The sprawling pictures of the forest—with their sweeping colors and expressive faces on the animals—enchanted her, and she excitedly cradled the book and went to the desk to check it out. Her teacher stopped her cold with, “Isn’t that a little young for you, dear?” She returned the book and didn’t tell her parents about it, embarrassed that she had selected a childish book. I can picture her expression as she tried to cover up the rebuke she felt. She got over it, and there were many more books for her, but she never quite trusted that teacher again. We must help one another tap into enchanted places, not plug them up so that nothing more can pour forth.
Criticism—no matter how sensitively stated—needs to be administered in appropriate dosages. George Balanchine, commenting on how he responds to dancers, said, “If it’s a young person I let her do it the first time. I don’t tell her everything—it’s impossible to do that. I’ll say, ‘If you do a little bit more turnout, then let’s see what will happen.’ So next time she’ll turn out a little more, and I say, ‘Now you’re looking very good, but that’s not everything. Why don’t you look straight and go this way instead of that way?’ That’s what we do.”
Being critiqued can be painful. For Ernest Hemingway, it was a pain in a specific place: He gave a draft of A Farewell to Arms to F. Scott Fitzgerald, who responded with ten pages of handwritten notes, at the bottom of which Hemingway scrawled his three-word response, “Kiss my ass,” signed “EH.” Robert Benchley was appropriately dismissive (though a bit more civil) when New Yorker editor Harold Ross wrote “Who he?” next to a mention of Andromache. Benchley wrote back, “You keep out of this.” A better role model might be Marcia Davenport, who graciously responded to Maxwell Perkins: “You make the work almost do itself. I think if I had to struggle alone I would give up.”
We have to accept that critical shrapnel might occasionally lodge in authors’ egos. But pre-publication it’s like hearing bad news from an accountant during tax preparation, as opposed to the worse hurt from an IRS auditor. Either way you pay a price, but the latter comes with penalties.
Perhaps writers should go through a workshop boot camp featuring ego-toughening exercises: Recruits take turns reading a piece out loud, interrupted every couple of lines by a chant of “Needs work! Doesn’t work! Needs work! Doesn’t work! Needs work!” Then recruits read what they consider to be the best piece they’ve ever written, and have it be met by silence, paper shuffling, furtive looks at watches, and finally one comment: “It’s easy to read. What font is that?”
A helpful critique may not be pleasurable but it doesn’t have to be unpleasant. I overheard a student after one of my classes being asked how her workshop went. She replied, “I was kicked around the room.” I was about to comfort her when she pumped her fist and added, “It was great.” If you can’t muster such enthusiasm for being kicked around the room, you might think of it this way: If you are trapped in a well and call for help, you don’t want someone to drop down a comfortable chair; you want a rope, even though the climb up won’t be fun for either of you.
Workshops offer multiple comments that often contradict one another. Think of it this way: When you entertain guests at a party, you’re nice to everyone, you listen, you ask and answer questions, and later you decide whom you might like to have lunch with and whom you might not want in your house again. Similarly, “entertain” all suggestions during the critique. Then make your choices.
Even rejected suggestions—if fully considered—can be helpful. One student pointed out that comments she declined to act on “helped me think about what the character is not as well as what she is.” There are rare cases when no substantial changes result from a critique. In the opening credits to Happy Days, Henry Winkler’s Fonzie, comb in hand, looks into the mirror then shrugs, choosing not to alter a hair on his head. But he looks.
Sometimes, no matter how much helpful criticism a piece receives, and how many drafts you put it through, it still doesn’t work. This can be part of the process toward success. The painter Camille Corot wrote in his sketchbook, “One would be wrong to get discouraged after two or three mediocre studies. It is the preparation of the good one that profits, without us noticing so, from this seemingly sterile work.”
adapted from The Writing Workshop Note Book
Posted by Alan Ziegler on March 26, 2015 at 10:30 AM in Alan Ziegler | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Over at the American Scholar, a group of committed poets have been writing a sestina, week by week, stanza by stanza. Last Tuesday, David Lehman picked a title, thus completing the poem. Here's what he writes about the title and the months-long collaboration:
The title that strikes me as the most elegant, succinct, and pertinent is “Compline,” as proposed by Paul Michelsen. Compline is the Latin name for the night prayer, the final canonical prayer in the Catholic day, following Vespers. Our sestina is a prayer of sorts; it is endowed with religion and the spirit of divine immortality leavened by the occasional jest; and if readers don’t recognize the title, all the better if they hunt it down in the dictionary or are moved to visit W. H. Auden’s vastly underrated sequence of poems “Horae Canonicae.” And if there are traces of “complete” and “complaint” in our title, so be it.
It was not an easy choice—I also liked “Her Hourglass a Prism” (Charise Hoge), “Mary, Singing” (Christine Rhein), “Uncertainty” (Patricia Smith), andLaWanda Walter’s whimsical “How to Dress for Anything.”
To all my thanks, not only for the spirited effort resulting in a truly collaborative endeavor that can, I believe, stand on its own as an anthology piece of the future, but for the contagious enjoyment of the process. I am immensely gratified, too, by the compliments in my direction. If we are a team and I am the coach, well, that metaphor goes right to my head like a perfectly chilled, light-yellow drink consisting of top-shelf bourbon, lemon juice, and honey in equal measures, shaken and served in a rocks glass.
I shall do my best to contrive another contest that will spur the team to heights. But that may take me some time. Meanwhile, I have thought of prompts for the next couple of weeks, and I hope they will prove inspiring.
Here, then, is our complete sestina, written and titled over the past two months.
-- sdh
Posted by The Best American Poetry on March 23, 2015 at 01:24 PM in Adventures of Lehman, Announcements, Collaborations, Guest Bloggers, Poems | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Song for a Swift
be owl
my oldest night
be wren
my selfish grief
be gull
my restlessness
be lark
my disbelief
be hawk
my hidden path
be dove
my weary fist
be swift
my only soul
my only soul
be swift
Printed by permission of the poet.
John Glenday collects his poems together at long intervals, so a new book – this poem is in a collection due to be published in 2015 – is a treat for his admirers, of whom there are many. His third collection, Grain, was shortlisted for the Griffin International Poetry Prize in 2010, and the judges remarked: ‘His highly crafted lyrics are like wrought iron, strong but delicate, with a care for assonance and cadence.’
Glenday lives in the Highlands, on the west shore of Loch Ness (there are city poets in Scotland! They’ll make an appearance). His poems are unhurried but have their own urgent notes, and sometimes their humorous ones; mainly, though, there is the sense that the lines have been held up to the light and tested. The ‘small ballast of the soul shifting’ is something he attends to, and that shift may be caused by the sound of wind, water or bird; by human love, or a voice issuing from who knows where.
Find out more about John Glenday here.
and hear him read and talk on the SPL podcast:
http://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/connect/podcast/john-glenday-and-kim-edgar
Friends, we need your help. We need to raise £100,000 for the building renovation which will hugely extend our reach. Your gift helps us to give: to lend books; to send books, poetry postcards and poets around Scotland; to record and send poets’ voices around the world; to bring people and poems together in care homes, schools, hospitals…
Go to www.justgiving.com/byleaveswegive or www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/about/support-our-work to donate online.
Posted by The Best American Poetry on March 23, 2015 at 09:14 AM in Guest Bloggers, Scotland | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Posted by The Best American Poetry on March 23, 2015 at 08:50 AM in Jim Cummins - Mid West Correspondent, Nin Andrews Comics | Permalink | Comments (1)
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Not to bask too much in the glow of this venue, but I have always loved these mix tapes David Lehman and Editor give us every year. I started reading as a high school student in 1992 (Charles Simic), and I've sought them out every year since (no worries, I've worked backwards too). 1994 (A.R. Ammons), 1997 (James Tate), 2001 (Robert Hass), and 2011 (Kevin Young) all floored me. Thank you, Terrance Hayes, for Major Jackson, Donald Revell, Cate Marvin, and on and on, this past year (thanks to them too, and the magazines that noticed their poems). I love these books. They put poetry in people's lives, in both populist and subversive ways, and they put the names of magazines and poets and editors in front of people's faces. They're beautifully made books, they feel good in the hand, they're artifacts, and what's more, I want to read them every year. I love it when someone makes me a mix.
So needless to say, this week has been fun for me. And it’s probably time for me to tell you, with all due respect to all the poets and editors over the years, what the BEST poem in the BEST edition of The Best American Poetry is:
“Being Pharaoh" by Beckian Fritz Goldberg, 1995 (Richard Howard)
Because it came to me when I needed it. I picked the book up in a library, flipped to this poem, and thought, well, I need this in my life.
Because it made me learn about Beckian Fritz Goldberg.
Because I feel like it's a breaking-up-with-something poem that's mostly about something else.
Because I kind of feel like the speaker is the you in "Refugee" by Tom Petty. You don't have to live like a refugee, you're just kind of choosing to; no offense.
Because of the medical words and terms and images, the oxygen mask hissing, and because the nature stuff is vague and weirdly put: the feather trees across / the river, the curious shore dog.
Because it taught me about smart line breaks: Tonight I am sick of every man / and his past. And the past is tired of his / request that it love him
Because of that personification of "the past" right there.
Because she describes the soul as gelatinous. Rather, she describes her image of the soul as a child as a glass / wing, fluted, gelatinous, detached / as my voice under water... I understand every single bit of that.
Because of the power trip of being an actual pharaoh, and the fact that no one is actually being a pharaoh. They're just trying.
Because it made me learn about Field.
Because it made me learn about Richard Howard and Richard Howard's poems! Thank you, Richard Howard. The entire 1995 edition is, as previously stated, the official best Best American Poetry. All the Beats and references to them in the poems, your acceptance of "longish" poems, the ending of Nicholas Christopher's poem ("Terminus"), your assertion that "our poetry is the myth by which we live and love and have our seeing." Thank you for Aaron Fogel's "The Printer's Error" from The Stud Duck, thank you for John Koethe and Charles H. Webb and Margaret Atwood. Thanks for it all.
Because it came to me when I needed it. Like the rest of these books. See my dog-eared pages here:
Posted by Amy Lingafelter on March 20, 2015 at 11:19 PM in Guest Bloggers | Permalink | Comments (2)
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"I wrote this book almost without knowing it . . ."
The acclaimed annual, The Best American Poetry, is the most prestigious showcase of new poetry in the United States and Canada. Each year since the series began in 1988, David Lehman has contributed a foreword, and this has evolved into a sort of state-of-the-art address that surveys new developments and explores various matters facing poets and their readers today. This book collects all twenty-nine forewords (including the two written for the retrospective “Best of the Best” volumes for the tenth and twenty-fifth anniversaries.) Beginning with a new introduction by Lehman and a foreword by poet Denise Duhamel (guest editor for The Best American Poetry 2013), the collection conveys a sense of American poetry in the making, year by year, over the course of a quarter of a century.
Read a selection here.
Order your copy here.
-- sdh
Posted by The Best American Poetry on March 20, 2015 at 07:23 PM in Adventures of Lehman, Announcements, Book Recommendations, Guest Bloggers | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Man in Santa suit kills eight
and then,
with a single efficient shot,
himself.
At a party of his in-laws
near Los Angeles
on Christmas Eve
the man in the Santa suit
drew his gun
and started shooting
as soon as they let him in
which they did because
he said he was Santa Claus
and they thought he had come
to entertain the children.
Then he sprayed
the room
with pressurized gas
and set the house on fire.
The owners of the house,
an elderly couple
retired from the
spray-painting business,
and their daughter, Sylvia,
the estranged wife
of the gunman,
were among the dead
or missing.
12 / 25-26 / 08
Posted by The Best American Poetry on March 20, 2015 at 04:54 PM in Adventures of Lehman, Poems | Permalink | Comments (0)
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What I’m about to describe is not special just because it exists. Nor is it a novel idea; teachers run programs like our Coffeehouse in schools every day. I didn’t invent it, nor am I especially good at it. I’d describe my role as less mentor, more encourager. I’m the person who supplies the hot chocolate and claps really loud. Another teacher and I run it, we inherited it from teachers of the same mindset, born from our own teachers who sensed the same thing we do: these artsy kids need some space and a venue for their artsy-ness.
Mr. C. and I run an after school Coffeehouse multiple times a year for our students in a 100 seat Little Theatre. That’s it. Students can get up and perform. Whatever. We have some rules (“No swearing” “Five minutes or two poems” “No singing along with songs playing over your headphones while the rest of us can’t hear the music” [NEW rule]). The most important rule (and one that exists in Poetry Slams and similar programs everywhere) is “No apologies.” This rule is designed to prevent shy kids or kids sharing what they’ve made for the first time from standing and stuttering apologies for their five minutes. Sharing something you’ve made is unbelievably difficult. Seriously. Sharing something you’ve made is unbelievably difficult. I salute every person who’s ever done it, especially if you’re 15 years old.
(I also salute my parents and the teachers I had who made it possible for me to do it. Who gave me some space and a venue.)
With all due respect to coaches (wonderful people who care a lot about our kids and spend a lot of time with them), when a kid physically grows big and tall or stays small, coaches have a pretty good idea there might be talent to be cultivated there. A kid talented at making art doesn’t necessarily stand out in a physical way. If artistic talent is to be cultivated and some-of-the-most-important-contributions-humans-have-to-offer-this-otherwise-busted-world, from cave paintings to Da Vinci to students reading their own poems on the stage of a Little Theatre in a high school America in 2015, is to continue to exist, who will see this talent if we don’t give burgeoning artists the space and time to show it?
So basically, Coffeehouse is the basketball practice of art.
There are many singers and musicians. They’re especially good this year. Tony played the theme song from Rocky on the ocarina. Jaidah played her own songs and “Just the Two of Us” by Bill Withers. Josh played “Bankrupt on Selling” by Modest Mouse. Mikeya sang the Sam Smith version of “How Will I Know.” A group of students sang the theme song to Pokemon. Mr. C. played death metal versions of Taylor Swift songs. We kind of hit every genre.
The poets earn my special respect. They read their poems off laptops and phones and out of old school journals. Some of them know their work by heart. Some of them read Slam-style, some of them read with their heads down and not aimed towards the microphone. Their poems can be funny and full of pain. My favorite line this year has been from Michael’s “Self Image, Fame, and Stitches” (and I’m paraphrasing here): I can’t eat, I can’t sleep, I can’t even go to Wendy’s anymore
It’s an exercise in listening, I rarely see the poems on the page. I occasionally ask for copies. I asked a former student Colin Pascoe for his work, and they’re some of my favorite poems I’ve ever read. I still have the binder he gave me, his “book,” when he graduated, in which he separated his poetic efforts into high school years. See his chapter page for Freshman year: “Hello I’m Colin and I hate everyone and I don’t title my poems because I hate them too.” His performances at Coffeehouse and at Louder Than a Bomb in Chicago in 2009 were epic.
We lose students sometimes, and we lost Colin in 2010. Colin went away to college with strict instructions from me to keep writing poems, graduate, and apply for MFA school. I feel a deep sense of loss over all the poems he never wrote. And I’m thankful he sought out a space and a venue for his artsy-ness in high school.
I’m thankful for all the kids that do.
With permission, I’m ending with a link to some current student work, Tracy’s great poem “The She System.”
She killed with it at Coffeehouse.
Posted by Amy Lingafelter on March 19, 2015 at 03:28 PM in Guest Bloggers | Permalink | Comments (0)
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1) When I am five, my mother’s dentist gives me a little vial of mercury to play with: “See, it’s metal and it’s liquid!” I love how the silvery substance slinks as I tilt the glass. “Is that safe?” my mother asks. “Of course it is,” the dentist replies. “It’s what we put in your mouth.”
2) While I'm in high school, my dentist—whose office is attached to his suburban home—is rumored to be having an affair with his hygienist. Then we hear he is getting divorced. My next bill is much higher than usual; the itemization lists, for the first time, “double” cavities.
3) A few months after college, the pain in the back of my mouth is excruciating. I don’t have a dentist or the money to pay for one. I could probably acquire both within a few days, but the pain is excruciating. I hear about a free dental clinic in the East Village. The dentist I am assigned to has hair down to his shoulders. Janis Joplin blasts in the background. “That’s gonna have to come out,” he says, “but we’re not allowed to pull teeth during the same visit that we tell you. You’ll have to come back.” “I’m sure now.” He looks in my mouth again and says, “You know, I could really get off on pulling this tooth.” He pulls, and for many years when I hear Janis sing “take another piece of my heart,” I really feel our pain.
4) Dental Pedagogy: I am in the chair with the assistant’s finger in my mouth. The dentist says, “Bite down,” and I do. Right on her finger. The dentist says to his assistant, “When I tell him to bite down, you need to take your finger out.” Three lessons here, applicable to the writing workshop:
5) More Dental Pedagogy: I used to have a dentist who made me feel guilty for being in the very condition that I was paying him to deal with. I go to a new dentist and sheepishly open my mouth. He smiles and says, “You need me!” Two lessons here for the writing workshop:
6) I see my dentist standing alone away from the crowd in the lobby of a sold-out memorial tribute to a writer who used to be his patient. “I can’t get in,” he tells me sadly, and I return a minute later with a comp ticket from my friend who is hosting the event. “What is it you do?” he asks in a tone approaching awe.
7) I am the last patient on Friday afternoon. My dentist is fine-tuning the crown before cementing. He inserts, removes, files, and reinserts several times, trying to get it just right. “How does it feel now?” he asks, and I say it still hurts. He convinces me to live with it for the weekend. “I don’t want to file too much,” he says with a patient smile. "If it still hurts next week I can file some more with it glued." In the waiting room I do an about-face and re-enter. My dentist has removed his smock and eyeglasses. He is wearing a tank T-shirt. He squints at me as I say, “I’m pretty sure it’s going to hurt!" and he blurts out, “You’re driving me crazy!"
8) I arrive ten minutes early for a 2 p.m. checkup. Several people are in the waiting room. In my discreet sweep of the room—no eye contact—I sense familiarity, which doesn’t surprise me as I have been coming here for many years. At 2 p.m., a man stands up and enters the office area without being called, followed by the others. The last woman to leave the waiting room turns to me and says, “Come on in, Mr. Ziegler,” and, as I do, I see that the man has put on a white smock and become my dentist.
9) I’ve only heard about this: Benny Hill has a bit with dentists toasting by clinking glasses, swishing, and spitting.
10) While my dentist waits for his assistant to join us for a procedure, we start exchanging reminiscences, having lived through some common times. Eventually he realizes the assistant has been in the room for several minutes. “Stories,” he explains to her with a sweet, wan smile. “Stories.”
Posted by Alan Ziegler on March 19, 2015 at 11:04 AM in Alan Ziegler, Guest Bloggers | Permalink | Comments (4)
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Specifically, this copy of this book.
I had read most of it before, in libraries and at other people’s houses. And I knew a lot about it when I got it. I was at Mercer Street Books in NYC with amazing former contributor Tanya Larkin on October 27, 2007. We both saw it at the same time, but she let me buy it. She's good to me. We talked about the poems a lot.
It’s the first US edition from 1971, and the pages are worn in the best way. You can see it’s a great artifact for someone who likes books as artifacts. I’ve always loved prices on old books, too, and thinking about the cost of milk and meat at the time. $2.95 for all the things inside this book in 1971. After I read it straight through, the $2.95 stuck out at me most for some reason.
It’s a beautiful book.
It’s really not for everybody. It’s full of death and animals and animalistic behavior and God and really specific names of body parts and modern machinery and Oedipus and "a ceremonial Japanese decapitator" and stabbing and battles and wombs. It's a lot.
It can be read in one sitting.
I see it in a lot of other places. I imagine Markus Zusak read it before he wrote his excellent The Book Thief.
I’d be interested to talk to someone who came to it blindly. I can’t describe reading it without some pretty extensive background knowledge of Hughes’ life. I think this made the book more valuable to me, but how the poems exist without the context of him, I don’t know.
I don’t know how the poems exist on their own at all, really. I know my favorites are: Crow’s First Lesson, A Grin, In Laughter, Crow Frowns, Crow Blacker Than Ever…
The agony did not diminish
Man could not be man nor God God.
The agony
Grew.
Crow
Grinned
Crying: “This is my Creation,”
Flying the black flag of himself.
That line. I want to fly the black flag of myself.
It’s not a book I want to leave the house with or return to very often. It’s kind of like the Schindler’s List of violent poetry books. That movie got to me, intensely, but it’s not something I really want to watch again to pass the time. It is not a pass-the-time book.
Examination at the Womb-Door, also a favorite. The act of owning in that poem inspires me. Death owns your still-working lungs, your utility coat of muscles, your questionable brains, but who is stronger than death? Someone about to be born. For the moment.
That might be the best picture to paint of it. It is essentially a book that describes the act of living (waking up and breathing every day) as "owning a utility coat of muscles." Thank you for letting me buy it that day, TL.
Posted by Amy Lingafelter on March 18, 2015 at 09:32 AM in Guest Bloggers | Permalink | Comments (2)
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( 1) Who is the real hero of "Citizen Kane"?
a) Barry Kane
b) Marshall Will Kane
c) Charles Foster Kane
d) Xanadu
e) Captain Queeg
Name the three other relevant movie titles implied by the choices.
2) St. Patrick's Day special: When the hero played by Victor McLaglen (left) shouts "Frankie, your mother forgives me," he is referring to
a) Frankie Machine
b) Frankie 5 Angels
c) Frankie McPhillip
d) Fred Derry
e) General Frank Savage
Name the novel on which the movie is based.
3) Which of these characters does not figure in "Les Enfants du paradis"?
a) Garance
b) Baptiste
c) Pepe Le Moko
d) Jericho
3) Frederic Lemaitre
Who directed the movie?
4) Who says it? "I'm a businessman. Blood is a big expense."
a) Moe Green
b) Khartoum
c) Johnny Fontaine
d) Solozzo
e) Barzini
Did he also say, "You don't buy me out. I buy you out."
5) Which of these personages survives the bloody finale of "The Wild Bunch"?
a) Pike Bishop
b) Deke Thornton
c) Phyllis Dietrichson
d) Robert E. Lee Prewitt
e) Joel Cairo
True or false: "Pike Bishop" was Sam Peckinpah's sneaky way of predicting the disappearance of Bishop Pike in the summer of 1969.
Posted by The Best American Poetry on March 17, 2015 at 06:16 PM in Movies, Multiple Choice | Permalink | Comments (2)
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And every day at least one school student in America asks me (or my stand-in, at all the schools lucky enough to have a librarian) for a "good" book. Most days, it’s many students asking. "Good" means something different every time. I have been asked specifically for a "calm" book, a "happy" book, a book with "a whole bunch of drama," a "love" book, that "blue" book, that "book with the guy and the girl in a circle on the cover," that "book where [insert plot detail here]," etc. I have been asked specifically for a "dirty" book. I admire that question, because while many high school students know what they want, few have the wherewithal to ask that way. I don’t love all the books I point out. They don’t love all the books I point out. When I start to rattle off books, the most popular question is, "Miss, have you read every book in this whole library?" The most popular title for random adults in many schools is "Miss" - an approach some adults hate, but I find it sweetly formal. I have not read all the books in this whole library. I can’t. Some of these books are not good. And some of them are not the right fit for me as a reader. But everyone gets to pick, and good librarians (on the public service side of things) haven’t read every book, they just know about books. There’s a difference. I know the books I love.
I say “on the public service side of things” because there are many different types of librarians. Some people who get the Masters of Library Science degree are really into organizing information in all its many formats but have no head for public service. And vice versa. I have a good head for public service and a mediocre head for organizing things. I hope the profession seems complex enough to allow for these idiosyncrasies. Libraries do have their devotees. If you're one of them, look around your library the next time you go. Notice what the librarians and library staff do. Ask them. They'll tell you. They like helping.Posted by Amy Lingafelter on March 17, 2015 at 10:42 AM in Guest Bloggers | Permalink | Comments (1)
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Religious holidays were a big deal when I was a parochial school kid in Indiana back in the early sixties. On Christmas Eve the church was packed for Midnight Mass, lit only with candles and filled with the spicy scent that trailed behind when the priest walked up the aisle swinging the incense holder. On Good Friday when we filed in for morning mass, as we did every weekday before school, all twelve Stations of the Cross—and all the other statues in church—were shrouded in spooky purple satin. (On Easter Sunday the shrouds were removed to celebrate the return of the savior.)
Yet for the first- and second-generation Irish nuns and priests who had dominion over our school (where all the students were African-American) the most important holiday by far was St. Patrick’s Day. You never saw so much green in your life. There must have been a basement room somewhere in the school building filled with nothing but St. Patrick’s Day bling. Banners, streamers, posters, shamrocks, leprechauns…and hand-made signs the students spent most of the previous week crafting during study period. I wish I had a videotape of us little black kids singing "Oh the Sound of the Kerry Dancers" and "When Irish Eyes Are Smilin."
Our keepers celebrated the birth and resurrection of the Son of God, but let’s face it; Jesus wasn’t Irish. The nuns never explained why St. Pat was such a big deal (something to do with snakes?) But then again they never explained much of anything. If you had a question about religion, you just looked up the correct answer in the catechism.
The early sixties were something of a Golden Age for the Irish in this country. After decades of prejudice and repression they’d made amazing progress weaving themselves into the fabric of American life. And there was a son of Ireland in the White House! One who’d successfully challenged immigration policies that blatantly favored northern Europeans over Irish.
And to many of these immigrants, sports were just as important as politics. The priests at St. Bridgets idolized from afar the Boston Celtics--winners of eight straight NBA titles starting in 1959. And they were out of their minds in 1966 when Notre Dame was rated number one by one sportswriters college football poll and second to Michigan State in the other. These Goliaths were meeting to settle the matter once and for all, and the Friday before the epic contest (that ended in a tie) our pastor Father Ryan made his usual Friday morning visit to the school. Here was the exchange as he stood smiling like a visiting dignitary at the front of our classroom:
Father Ryan: “Is everyone studying hard?”
Class: “Yes, Father Ryan.”
Father Ryan: “Is everyone saying their prayers at night?”
Class: “Yes, Father Ryan.”
Father Ryan: “Good. Well, say an extra prayer tonight. Notre Dame plays Michigan State tomorrow for the National Championship...”
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 was selected by the Associates of the Boston Public Library as a “Boston Literary Light for 2014.” His novella, "Spin Cycles," was published in November, 2014 by Gemma Media.
Posted by Charles Coe on March 17, 2015 at 10:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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KGB Monday Night Poetry is pleased to present...
Ada Limon & Jason Schneiderman
Monday, March 16, 2015
Hosted by John Deming and Matthew Yeager
Series founded in 1997 by David Lehman and Star Black
Doors open at 7:00 pm
Reading starts at 7:30pm
Admission is FREE
85 East 4th Street * New York, NY
Ada Limon is the author of Lucky Wreck (2006), This Big Fake World (2006), and Sharks in the Rivers (2010). She earned an MFA from New York University, and is the recipient of fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts and the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center. Her work has appeared in numerous publications including The New Yorker, The Harvard Review, Pleiades, and Barrow Street. Limón splits her time between Kentucky, California, and New York.
Jason Schneiderman is the author of Sublimation Point, winner of the Richard Snyder Prize from Ashland Poetry Press, and Striking Surface, A Stahlecker Selection from Four Way Books. His poetry and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, includingAmerican Poetry Review, The Best American Poetry, Poetry London, Grand Street, The Penguin Book of the Sonnet, Story Quarterly, and Tin House. Jason has received fellowships from Yaddo, The Fine Arts Work Center, and The Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. He was the recipient of the Emily Dickinson Award from the Poetry Society of America in 2004, and a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Award in 2011. He is Poetry Editor of the Bellevue Literary Review, and Associate Editor at Painted Bride Quarterly. Jason Schneiderman is an Assistant Professor at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, part of the City University of New York.
Upcoming Spring 2015:
Posted by jdeming on March 16, 2015 at 01:12 PM in KGB Reading Series | Permalink | Comments (0)
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This week we welcome Amy Lingafelter as our guest author. Amy's short collection Return of the Fist came out in the Lost Horse Press Series New Poets / Short Books edited by Marvin Bell in 2009. Her poems have appeared in Verse, The Iowa Review, Black Warrior Review, Quarterly West, and Crab Orchard Review. She is a school librarian in the Chicago area.
Welcome, Amy.
-- sdh
Posted by The Best American Poetry on March 16, 2015 at 10:42 AM in Announcements | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Posted by Amy Lingafelter on March 16, 2015 at 09:10 AM in Guest Bloggers | Permalink | Comments (2)
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Posted by The Best American Poetry on March 16, 2015 at 08:09 AM in Guest Bloggers, Nin Andrews Comics | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Radio
I left it
on when I
left the house
for the pleasure
of coming back
ten hours later
to the greatness
of Teddy Wilson
"After You've Gone"
on the piano
in the corner
of the bedroom
as I enter
in the dark
from New and Selected Poems by David Lehman