The Best American Poetry

HAIKU FOR DL [by Jim Cummins]

Illness borne with grace

shames the chronic complainer.

Moon over bare trees.

Today in "The Awl": Two Cigarettes in the Dark [poem by David Lehman]

 

Two Cigarettes in the Dark
for Stacey (July 26, 2014) 

You talk I listen
Then I talk you listen
We decide that realism
Requires nudity so
We test out that theory

 

continue reading . . . 

Birthday Comic by Nin Andrews ("Happy Birthday Mr. Lehman")

This comic was inspired by Marylin Monroe's singing of Happy Birthday, Mr. President. You can watch it here:

Allen Ginsberg Talks Rolling Thunder and Dylan "Babbling Poetry" [by Alan Ziegler]

During my June 4, 1976 visit with Allen and Louis Ginsberg for The Village Voice, Allen mentioned that he had just recorded an album of his songs, and had been on tour with Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue. The ensuing conversation (with footnotes added by Allen upon reading the transcript) was not included in the Voice piece but subsequently appeared in Poets on Stage (a special issue of Some magazine, edited by Harry Greenberg, Larry Zirlin, and myself). 

AZ: Did Dylan let you do any singing on the tour?

GINSBERG: Actually he's done me a favor, he was dubious about my singing but he kept pushing me to recite poetry, till finally in Fort Collins[1] I did, and in Salt Lake.

AZ: Why did he have to talk you into it?

GINSBERG: I sort of had this fatuous[2] idea of myself as a singer, they have enough singers and musicians and rock and roll stars there. He was interested in the poetry part—I was shy about that, partly scared, I couldn't figure what you could say to 27,000 people, what could engage the minds of that many people in the hysteria of a giant rock and roll thing. One day in Fort Collins as Dylan came off in the intermission, casually over the shoulder he said, "Why don't you go out there and read a poem?" So I went out there and read a very brief poem called, "On Neal Cassidy's Ashes" because that's Denver area (half the audience did know who Cassidy was)—seven lines, one exact, clear, sharp, solid, brilliant image, in the middle of this rock and roll hysteria saying, "All ashes, all ashes again."

ON NEAL'S ASHES

            Delicate eyes that blinked blue Rockies all ash

            nipples, Ribs I touched w/my thumb are ash

            mouth my tongue touched once or twice all ash

            bony cheeks soft on my belly are cinder, ash

            earlobes & eyelids, youthful cock tip, curly pubis

            breast warmth, man palm, high school thigh,

            baseball bicep arm, asshole anneal'd to silken skin

            all ashes, all ashes again.

AZ: How did the audience react?

GINSBERG: Well, cheers. I couldn't tell whether cheers of recognition, derision, or just to have somebody talking. I wasn't announced, I just went out and bellowed words out over a microphone and when I got off Roger McGuinn shouted my name and then the band went into their thing.

AZ: I think it would be entirely appropriate to read poetry in that setting.

GINSBERG: It turned out to be—Dylan's imagination was just right, I hadn't realized. Then I read again in Salt Lake, a poem which was just right for a Mormon, mystic town:

HOLY GHOST ON THE NOD OVER THE BODY OF BLISS[3]

            Is this the God of Gods, the one I heard about

            in memorized language Universities murmur?

            Dollar bills can buy it! the great substance

            exchanges itself freely through all the world's

            poetry money, past and future gold plated currencies

            translated by the mind's Urim & Thummim into

            owl eyes identical on every one of 90 Billion Dollarbill vibrating

            to the pyramid-top in the United States of Heaven—

            Aye aye Sir Owl Oh say can you see in the dark you

            observe Minerva nerveless in Nirvana because

            Zeus rides reindeer thru Bethlehem's blue sky.

            It's Buddha sits in Mary's belly waving Kuan

            Yin's white hand at the Yang-tze that Mao sees,

            tongue of Kali licking Krishna's soft blue lips.

            Chango holds Shiva's prick, Ouroboros eats th' cobalt bomb,

            Parvati on YOD's perfumed knee cries Aum

            & Santa Barbara rejoices in the alleyways of Brindaban

            La Illah El (lill) Allah Who—Allah Akbar!

            Goliath struck down by kidneystone, Golgothas grow old,

            All these wonders are crowded in the Mind's Eye

            Superman & Batman race forward, Zarathustra on Coyote's ass,

            Lao tzu disappearing at the gate, God mocks God,

            Job sits bewildered that Ramakrishna is Satan

            and Bodhidharma forgot to bring Nothing.

But it had to be fast, sharp. And there was no announcement (before or after) who I was or anything, I just went out and knocked that language out. So the review in the paper said that a gentleman in a tuxedo got up and recited a poem in the intermission. I had gotten a five buck shantung silk tuxedo from Salt Lake Salvation Army and wore it on stage.

AZ: Did the reviewer think it was just somebody from the audience?

GINSBERG: No, they understood it was part of the show, like "an interesting part of the show was when a guy in a tuxedo came out and recited a poem."

AZ: Many years ago, Dylan read a poem to Woody Guthrie in the middle of a concert and the audience responded enthusiastically.

GINSBERG: Everybody wants to hear Dylan talk, anyway.

AZ: The spoken voice in the context of a music setting can be very startling.

GINSBERG: Well, I must say I was a little scared because I figure after all the rhythm and harmony and powerful enunciation of vowels and consonants on Dylan's part, how talked poetry could engage people's consciousness and rivet attention. At best, poetry is soft spoken actual speech like someone talking to himself very quietly, but saying things so clear that it is literally comprehensible and the sound is clear and the mind is clear. In rock and roll, the mind is not necessarily clear. So the poetry can have the clear mind talking directly, and not raising the voice. It would be interesting in the middle of Rolling Thunder to get to that. Another thing is the oratorical "Howl" or "Sunflower" like that "Holy Ghost" poem I did in Salt Lake—in an oratorical rock and rolling voice. But to do Reznikoff or Williams style work that doesn't have rhyme, (Whitman is still oratorical)—it's an open field for experiment, but Dylan seems to want experiment.

AZ: It's such a great opportunity to get the work out there.

GINSBERG: And to develop a form, maybe there is no poetic form yet developed for an audience of 27,000 people. That's a whole new physical setting: there's the form of coffee house and there's the form of the Greek amphitheatre, and there's the form appropriate to the movie theatre, and there's a form appropriate to vaudeville, a form appropriate to the YMHA hall, and a form appropriate to the university cafeteria, ballroom, auditorium, lounge or classroom, or a form appropriate to the Australian aborigine tribal community chanting led by the Songman with song sticks. So there's all different forms appropriate to different situations. Now the situation of quiet speech—quiet, sensible non-manipulative speech to planet crowds is something that hasn't been quite taken up yet. It's been taken up on the radio with fireside chats or on television to a certain extent, but the in-person just-talk to so many people and without raising the voice has not yet been experimented with.

AZ: The closest we've had to large poetry readings has been when the Russian poets come to such places as Madison Square Garden, but they raise their voices.

GINSBERG: Yes. I've worked with them and I know them and I know their style. First of all, it's only crowds of 5,000 or 10,000 or 15,000, and they are people attuned to poetry. But here, it's crowds not yet attuned to the tradition of spoken poetry in vast crowds. And it's not crowds of five or ten thousand, it's crowds of 20 and 30 or 40,000 people, a Shea Stadium or Yankee Stadium crowd potentially, Astrodome crowds, Be-In crowds—events like Woodstock might be 100,000. I've been in front of 100,000 people, but in a foreign language—in Prague, May Day '65. What I did there was chant, just reduce to pure sound, syllables of "Om" and "Ah" and that worked out. But to speak in America to large crowds is different. Dylan, I think, saw the space there before I did, and tried to encourage me to do it, which is an amazing piece of generosity on his part—intelligence—or just natural mind, Dylan has common sense—freedom—ease, ease. So, he's talking about continuing working on that.

AZ: Is he going to keep on touring?

GINSBERG: Well, we talked about it a couple of weeks ago, he said he's a gypsy and he wants to go on touring for the rest of his life, absolute wandering, and I said, "Well, I have to go home and take care of my father." He said, "Listen, when you're an old man, we'll take care of you on your death bed." He said, "We're gonna be gypsies, go around the world and tour forever, never never never never come home again." It was late at night, and we were all drinking.

AZ: Are you going to hold him to it?

GINSBERG: No, I'm sure he was just babbling poetry.

FOOTNOTES (added by Allen Ginsberg):

---

[1] Fort Collins Colo., Site of Hard Rain concert, May 23,1976.

[2] Actually I was kidding. By June 3, 1976 I had finished recording First Blues album under direction of jazz historian John Hammond Sr., with musicians I'd worked with since late 60's Blake Songs album, and the 19 yr old cherubic David Mansfield of Dylan's Rolling Thunder group

[3] Read at Salt Lake May 19,1976, Rolling Thunder Revue. This version as altered for Mormon Salt Lake Context—Urim & Thummim are Mormon revelatory gold plated artifacts.

Happy birthday, Ben Jonson, thou rare spirit and kinsman of mine [by DL]

Ben Jonson (1572-1637)

Of the canonical English poets, was there ever a finer rhymester than "rare" Ben Jonson? His poems sing; they are lyrics that require no musical accompaniment, though the impulse to set his words to music must always be great. Jonson's facility with triple rhymes is unrivaled, as in this gorgeous song from his masque Cynthia's Revels (Act I., Sc. ii.):

ECHO'S SONG

Slow, slow, fresh fount, keep time with my salt tears;
   Yet slower, yet, O faintly gentle springs:
List to the heavy part the music bears,
         "Woe weeps out her division, when she sings.
              Droop herbs and flowers;
              Fall grief in showers;
              Our beauties are not ours":
                   O, I could still,
(Like melting snow upon some craggy hill, )
               drop, drop, drop, drop,
Since nature's pride is, now, a withered daffodil.

Happy birthday to us, big Ben. -- DL

Ben Hogan Wins US Open On My Birthday in 1950 [by David Lehman]

On my birthday today in 1950, Ben Hogan won the Unted States Open in a three-way playoff. What made it almost miraculous was that Hogan had suffered multiple injuries sixteen months earlier when a Greyhound bus swerved out of its lane and hit Hogan's car head on. Hogan, attempting to shield his wife, Valerie, from the impact, went to the hospital with a broken collarbone, broken ankle, broken ribs and a double fracture of his pelvis. (Valerie escaped with minor injuries.) A blood clot in Hogan's leg required emergency measures; doctors tied off the surrounding veins to prevent the clot from reaching his heart. As a result, Hogan’s legs atrophied. Would he ever play a round of golf again? The more pressing question was whether he would ever walk again.

Yet here he was at the Merion Golf Club in Ardmore, PA, site also of the 2013 U. S. Open. Hogan defied the skeptics, playing four rounds of superb golf, walking from hole to hole unassisted. At the 72nd hole, he needed a par to tie Lloyd Mangrum and George Fazio for the lead and join the pair in a June 11th playoff. Hogan's one-iron shot to the green, one of the great moments in golfing history, occasioned Hy Peskin's photograph, above, undoubtedly the sport's most famous. A year later Hollywood turned the inspiring tale into a movie, Follow the Sun, with Glenn Ford as Hogan and Anne Baxter as Valerie. Click here or here for more on Hogan's heroics. -- DL

On Judy Garland's Birthday: How About You?

 

Music by Burton Lane, lyrics by Ralph Freed. "I love a fireside, when a storm is due / I like potato chips, moonlight, and motor trips, / How about you?  // I'm mad about good books, / can't get my fill, / And Franklin Roosevelt's looks / give me a thrill. . ."

Mark Eleveld: Chicago Tribune Printers Row Lit Fest 2015

The Chicago Tribune hosted the largest literary festival in the Midwest over the weekend. I had the pleasure of hosting the Arts and Poetry Tent. We had several readings that moved audiences. Here are some amateur photos of the event.  

Saturday morning started with Angela Jackson reading from her first book in 17 years, It Seems Like A Mighty Long Time. Soulful, intelligent, passionate, and filled with wisdom and wit, Jackson was a delight to have.

 

The mystic Paul Breslin read from his new book, Between My Eye and the Light. Spiritual and on point, Paul began his reading by talking about the madness of the world post-9/11.

 

Editor of poetry at Northwestern Press, and poet of her long-awaited first book Vessel, Parneshia Jones was cool, clever, and open. "I want to get personal, raise your hand if you remember your first kiss. Good, now raise your hand if you remember your first French kiss ..." inquired Jones of the audience. 

 

Daniel Wolff flew in from the East Coast for his book tour supporting his collection, The Names of Birds. He read every poem twice, with a small description in the interior. It was a metaphysical call and response.

 

Also dropping into the Chicago Tribune Arts and Poetry Tent from her book tour, actress and poet Amber Tamblyn . Amber read from her latest collection, Dark Sparkler and was interviewed on stage by Megan Stielstra, author of Once I Was Cool. Amber's book includes poems about child stars who died, Hollywood at large, and features art by David Lynch, Marilyn Manson, and other notables. During the interview, the actress/poet thoughtfully commented, "When people ask what I do, I tell them I get professionally rejected. I've been acting since I was 11, and I didn't take a break until I was 26. I had success, I had failure, but it is always going forward. So I tell people, they don't see all of the rejections behind it." Amber filled the poetry tent, sold out of books, and had to make a flight for a reading in Calgary.

And closing the weekend with what has become a tradition over the last three years, author of Wine for a Shotgun, Marty McConnell performed her exceptionally acute and piercing poems.  

Download 15 The World's Guide to Beginning

 

Another fine weekend of poetry at her best.  

 

 

Monday Comic by Nin Andrews

Today's comic was once again inspired by a Chapter 2011 in David Lehman's State of the Art (Pittsburgh, 2015) in which David quotes famous poets' definitions of poetry. He includes this wonderful quote from Gertrude Stein:  "Poetry is nothing but using losing refusing and pleasing and betraying and caressing nouns." NA

Dino Paul Crocetti of Steubenville, Ohio, was born today. Nel blu dipinto di blu. . .

 

Volare o o
cantare o o o o,
nel blu dipinto di blu
felice di stare lassù,
e volavo volavo
felice più in alto del sole
ed ancora più sù,
mentre il mondo
pian piano spariva laggiù,
una musica dolce suonava
soltanto per me. . .

Alicia in Wonderland: What it is like to be the only American and only woman in the contentious Oxford Professor of Poetry election [by A. E. Stallings]

Talbot Hall and gardens Lady Margaret Hall Oxford

It began as quickly and unexpectedly as falling down a rabbit hole, or passing through a mirror—an e-mail arrived, out of the blue, from one of the previous holders of the position, the critic Christopher Ricks. The subject line was “An Inquiry,” and it was characteristically brief:

“It came to me that you would be an excellent professor of poetry at Oxford. (Geoffrey Hill has not long to go.) Would this possibility interest you?”

An American poet day-dreams of course about certain prizes, recognition, or positions, however implausible, but the Oxford Professor of Poetry simply is not one of them—it seems such the exclusive purview of British and Irish men. In its 300 years, it has never gone to a woman or indeed as far as I am aware, to anyone outside of the British Isles. It had never crossed my mind.

But I said yes I’d give it a go, and we were off.

All at once, I found myself in a sort of Wonderland, and in a horse race (I would say a caucus-race, but not everyone will be able to demand prizes), as well as a literary-political game of chess. I was standing in a unique election, a mixture of that rarest of things, direct democracy, and one of the most rarefied: only Oxford graduates (and other members of Convocation) may vote. The position was established in 1708 by Henry Birkhead, who founded it on the notion that “the reading of the ancient poets gave keenness and polish to the minds of young men.” It was originally only open to clergymen from Merton.

According to The Guardian, “Soyinka’s backers have been keen to stress that they consider the post more like an honour to be bestowed than a job to be applied for.” I want to say the exact opposite—yet that’s too facile. Maybe instead the office could be described as an honor to be applied for, a job to be bestowed. For all its grandeur and prestige, the post is, in essence, the oldest and first Poet in Residence in education. Certainly I have been applying very hard since the middle of March. 

Numerous rules have been changed since the scandal-ridden election of 2009. To get on the ballot used to require only a dozen nominators with Oxford degrees; now it takes fifty. We hunted after the requisite nominators for a couple of weeks (among them Tobias Wolff, Christopher Ricks of course, Adrian McKinty, Chlo Aridjis), followed up on their filling out and mailing of the nominator form (which could not be scanned or faxed), and collated before sending them to the Election office. In an abundance of caution, we ended up with 73. 

Perhaps the most significant change to the process, however, is that in the last election on-line voting was introduced. (The use of paper ballots was costly, and one had to vote in person.) Overseas voters were a factor last time, but this time will be, I think, more so. It remains to be seen how social media and the internet will change the nature of the election. I suspect surprises lie in store.

It’s been an intense roller coaster too: reaching out to the press, reading virulent blog posts (note to self—do not read the comments), asking major academics and writers for support. But also exciting, even moving--generous endorsements from publications such as the TLS, and highly-regarded and popular critics such as Mary Beard and Amanda Foreman. You learn who your friends are (and foes) in the literary community. You might tower over the treetops, or find yourself at the bottom of a treacle well, three or four times a day. My immensely supportive husband, John Psaropoulos, who is a Greek journalist (though UK citizen) already run off his feet with the “crisis,” has had to do a lot more cooking than usual and more supervising of long division at homework time. I have been living for months on a diet of jittery adrenaline and arcane Oxford gossip.

The principal job requirement is a lecture a term, though the professor should also do something else—a reading, workshop, meeting with students.  But the qualifications (the candidate “must be of sufficient distinction to be able to fulfill the duties of the post”) and job description (“to participate in the wider intellectual life of the English faculty to encourage the production and appreciation of poetry”) are vague; the job is yours to define. Being a poet is not a requirement, and indeed some of the best professors have been critics. The current holder, Geoffrey Hill, a vigorous octogenarian, has been delivering rousing old-testament jeremiads to standing ovations. As a matter of policy, however, he does not meet with students. Seamus Heaney, who was professor when I was in residence, delivered compelling and humane talks; it turns out you could book an appointment to meet with him and discuss your poems, but either I didn’t know it at the time, or I couldn’t work up the nerve. Other professors, Robert Graves and W. H. Auden for instance, would meet students at cafes or pubs.  I would aim to be a Professor in that approachable mold. And I would hope that, as the first woman, and maybe almost as important, the first American apart from the naturalized citizen W. H. Auden (Rober Lowell lost to Edmund Blunden in 1966), I would also serve as an encouragement to others. 

Most of all I kept thinking, as I wandered through Oxford this past week (I was there to give a reading at Rhodes House), what a curious and curiouser turn of events the whole matter was.  As a young and insecure American graduate student twenty years ago, Oxford intimidated me:  I felt awkward, that I didn’t belong, I was out of my element.  Now I seemed to be collegially accepted, claimed even, staying at the Lodgings of the Principal of my old college, collaborating in the campaign with my former tutor, having a strategic coffee in the Senior Common Room in Christ Church, meeting with students at the Eagle and Child (watering hole of the Inklings—C.S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, etc.), attending a dinner at high table.  Had I made it somehow, a pale anonymous pawn, to the far end of the chessboard? 

Walking through the gorgeous gardens of Lady Margaret Hall, in their full glory at the beginning of June, by the banks of the Cherwell fringed with doilies of Queen Anne’s lace, I was ambushed by a bewildering mixture of melancholy and joy, gratitude and wonder. I would sometimes take a turn on the path and feel a stab of—not of nostalgia, since surely a place of brief sojourn in my youth could not be called home—but chronalgia, as if the soul of the young woman aspiring to be a poet, and the soul of the poet I had become, passed right through each other, coming and going.

It’s been disappointing to see that one major English newspaper in particular has made a narrative out of a two-man race—which I suppose is true in the sense that the two front-runners are men.  But it is also an exciting and historic time for women in Oxford.  The university recently appointed its first female Vice Chancellor (nothing Vice about it—this is the head of the university), in the Oxford’s eight-hundred some-odd years.  And St. Benet’s Hall, the last all-male college, just voted to admit female students for the first time.  Maybe good things come in threes.

It’s been a wild ride, full of thrills and confusion, bemusement and vexations, anxiety and hope.  But anything is possible as we run round and round towards the finish line.  With only days to go before the end of voter registration, and only three weeks until the end of the election, right now my odds at Ladbrokes are five to one.

A. E. Stallings, Athens

(ed note: Find out how to register and vote for A. E. Stallings here.)

Meet the Press: Nin Andrews in Conversation with Diane Goettel of Black Lawrence Press

 

NA: Tell me about Black Lawrence Press.  Where are you located?  Who came up with the name? What distinguishes the press from others?  How long has it been in existence?

DG: Thanks so much for giving me the opportunity to talk about Black Lawrence Press! We were founded in 2005 in upstate New York by Colleen Ryor who named the press after the Black River and the St. Lawrence River. That year we published just one book of poetry, but since then we’ve grown quite a bit—our annual lists include between fifteen and twenty new titles. The books themselves are printed in Michigan and distributed by Small Press Distribution in California. All of our editors work from home, which means that our day-to-day operations take place in the cloud and via satellite, not in a traditional office space.

NA: How many editors do you have at Black Lawrence Press?

DG: There are currently eight of us. Four are in New York State: Gina in Ithaca, Yvonne in Manhattan, and Kit and Angela are in Brooklyn. The other four are farther flung: Linwood is in Ohio, Anneli is in Boston, Daniele is in Switzerland, and I live in Hong Kong.

NA:  You run quite a few competitions, and you also have open reading periods with no reading fees.  Do most of your books come from the competitions?  

DG: When we first got started I’d say about 75% of the books came in through contests. In the early days, we just didn’t get as many manuscripts through the open reading periods—no one knew us. However, our contests were listed on various databases for writers, so we got more submissions through them. That’s changed. Now that we’re more established, we get lots of submissions through the open reading periods. This year we’ve accepted books by Reneé Ashley, Sequoia Nagamatsu, and Cynthia Manick from our open reading period. They are all new members of the BLP list.

We also have many authors who have continued to send us their work. Authors like Marcel Jolley, Daniele Pantano, Mary Biddinger, David Rigsbee, Abayomi Animashaun, TJ Beitelman and Jacob M Appel have three or more books either published or forthcoming from us. Since January we’ve accepted new titles from BLP authors Laura McCullough, Jenny Drai, and Kristy Bowen. 

NA: What distinguishes a Black Lawrence manuscript?  What makes a manuscript a contest winner? 

DG: When I stop reading a manuscript as an editor and start reading it as an admirer—that’s when I know I want to publish a book.

NA: If you had one line of advice to give to poets submitting their work to Black Lawrence Press, what would it be?

DG: Take your time—we hope to be here, reading manuscripts and publishing books for many years to come, so there’s no need to rush, no need to send your manuscript if you’re not sure it’s ready. 

NA: I just read Mary Biddinger’s wonderful new book, A Sunny Place with Adequate Water.  I was wondering if you could say a few words about the book or give us an excerpt.


DG: I’d love to share one of my favorite poems from the collection.

FORTUNES AND MISFORTUNES

Clearly I was getting nowhere.
I wanted to be the next Moll Flanders. 

I felt not of myself, as if roads
had shifted a little. But who was feeling 

me, then? Pneumonia was like an aunt
who sends you enormous shorts

with the price tag still on,
then watches you toss them into a lake. 

I hated my friends and their weddings.
The cold trickle of children

from a neighborhood school turned
into a simulated knife

fight between warring factions.
My distrust of the establishment left

me somewhat prepared.
I was evacuation-prone, redheaded

and formerly adulterous, cultivated
enough to need no costume

but holiday socks and a ghost train
like in the wedding magazines

my friends suddenly began purchasing
while I was attempting sleep

and other things while standing.
Remember when your biggest worry

was where? And now it’s how many
leaves will keep you alive.

 

NA:  I’d also love to see a short excerpt from one of your novelists or short story authors.  

DG: 


This is from Miracles and Conundrums of the Secondary Planets by Jacob M. Appel, forthcoming this summer. It is taken from the title story:

          Zigfrīds Imants Lenc did not have a name on his home planet, because names were superfluous, but in Lummings, Alabama, where he operated the Latvian restaurant opposite the abortion clinic, his regulars called him Red Ziggy. The “Red” did not refer to the young man’s politics. Customers at Café Riga found the eatery’s proprietor zealously neutral in political matters, as impervious to provocation as the mimes at the Twelve Oaks Mall. Newcomers often speculated that his colorful nickname arose from the young man’s perpetually blush-slapped cheeks: a plausible, yet inaccurate guess. Rather, Ziggy had purchased the eatery from an old-timer known as Red Wally, who’d once made headlines for refusing Rosa Parks a soft drink. Ziggy replaced his predecessor’s ham hocks and black-eyed peas with pickled mushrooms and black balzam; the food critic at the Press Sentinel plucked the “Red” off Wally and pinned it onto Zigfrīds. But the review itself had been generous. Café Riga could claim to be the only Latvian restaurant in metropolitan Birmingham—the only Latvian restaurant in the entire state, in fact—which explained Red Ziggy’s placement. If the proprietor knew little about Baltic cuisine, his clientele knew even less, so mistakes were unlikely to attract attention. This low profile suited his mission: to observe the outlying planet’s inhabitants. Unfortunately, Dr. Schnabel opened his clinic six weeks after Red Ziggy baked his first pīrāgi, drawing competing demonstrators and the national media to Lummings; four months later, Erin Gwench of Saint Agatha’s College in Creve Coeur, Rhode Island, came to torment his soul.

NA: What are some highlights of the Press?  

 DG: I’m especially proud of our newsletter Sapling, which is a curated weekly e-newsletter. Each issue profiles a contest, a small press, and a literary journal, and features an interview or article. Over the course of our first three years, some of our highlights have included interviews with the editors and publishers of Wave Books, Ugly Duckling Presse, YesYes Books, Conduit, Drunken Boat, and Coconut Books, and emerging author interviews with the likes of Leigh Stein, Shane McCrae, Danny Bland, and Monica Drake. You can find out more here.

Also, our list of anthologies is growing and I’m really pleased with the books that we’ve produced so far. I believe that Others Will Enter the Gates: Immigrant Poets on Poetry, Influences, and Writing in America, The Lineup: 20 Provocative Women Writers, and Art & Understanding: Literature from the First Twenty Years of A&U are all important books. 

NA: Is there anything else you’d like to say about the press?

DG: We recently started a consultation program which allows poets and writers to send their work to Black Lawrence Press authors for critique. It’s been a huge success so far and we’re looking forward to continuing the program into 2016.

NA: I’d love close with a poem of your choice from one of your poets.

DG: This is from Patient. by Bettina Judd, winner of the 2013 Hudson Prize.

In 2006 I Had an Ordeal with Medicine.

I must have been found guilty of something. I don’t feel
innocent here lurking with ghosts. See    it happens like
that. I start at a thought that is quite benign and end up
peccant, debased.

I had an ordeal with medicine and was found innocent
or guilty. It feels the same because I live in a haunted
house. A house can be a dynasty, a bloodline, a body.   

There was punishment.   Like the way the body is
murdered by its own weight when lynched.   Not that I
was wrong but that verdicts come in a bloodline.        

In 2006 I had an ordeal with medicine. To recover, I
learn why ghosts come to me. The research question is:
Why am I patient?

 

Diane Goettel is the Executive Editor of Black Lawrence Press. She lives in Hong Kong with her husband, Noah, and their Doberman Pinscher, Spoon.

Nin Andrews received her BA from Hamilton College and her MFA from Vermont College. The recipient of two Ohio Arts Council grants, she is the author of several books, most recently Why God Is a Woman (Boa). Others include The Book of Orgasms, Spontaneous Breasts, Why They Grow Wings, Midlife Crisis with Dick and Jane, Sleeping with Houdini, and Dear Professor, Do You Live in a Vacuum. She also edited Someone Wants to Steal My Name, a book of translations of the French poet, Henri Michaux. Her book, Southern Comfort  was published by CavanKerry Press in 2010. Follow Nin's blog here. Follow Nin on Twitter here.

My Visit with Allen Ginsberg and Louis Ginsberg [by Alan Ziegler]

   In late May, 1976, I got a call from Richard Goldstein, one of my journalism heroes and an editor at The Village Voice. (Check out his recently published gem of a memoir Another Little Piece of My Heart: My Life of Rock and Revolution in the ‘60s.) Richard told me that Allen Ginsberg’s father, Louis, was dying, and asked if I would be interested in writing a profile about their relationship. Richard assured me that Allen was enthusiastic about the prospect because it would give a boost to his father, who always wanted to be written about in The Voice.

    “Why me?” I asked, when there were so many big-time journalists who would jump at the chance. Richard—whom I had only met a couple of times—replied that they weren’t as sensitive as I was.

    I said yes, with trepidation: this was a high stakes piece (was I up to the task?), and my newspaper experience included its share of botched edits and misleading headlines. I was relieved when The Voice signed an unusual contract with Allen, ensuring that he would be able to offer notes on the piece and have veto-power over the headline.

    The beginning of the 4,500-word article filled the back page of The Voice’s July 5, 1976 issue, under the headline “Allen Ginsberg Sees His Father Through” (a banner at the bottom of the page read “David Mamet: Best New Playwright of the ‘70s”).

    Louis Ginsberg died on July 7. I received a card from Allen, letting me know that Louis had been well enough to read most of the article. Among his last words were, “I have read enough.”

    As far as I know, the piece has never been reprinted or digitized, so today (June 4, 2015), exactly 39 years after my visit with the Ginsbergs on the day after Allen’s birthday, I keyboarded the text. I made no changes (no matter how much I was cringing) other than to correct a few typos.

       Allen Ginsberg has been spending a lot of time in Paterson, New Jersey, lately. He stays in a spacious, softly-furnished three-room apartment in a modern brick building in the suburban East End of the city. The telephone—like the one in his Lower East Side apartment—needs frequent attention, wired into Allen’s network of involvements, which lately have included recording an album and touring with Dylan. But much of Allen’s attention these days goes to his 80-year-old father, Louis, who is seriously ill with a malignant tumor. At the Paterson apartment Allen shares with his second wife, Edith, Allen is mostly a son, giving care and company to his father. On June 3, he was 50.

            Louis Ginsberg has lived in New Jersey all his life, teaching English at a Paterson high school for 40 years, which overlapped with 20 years teaching nights at Rutgers. Louis Ginsberg is also a poet, but, unlike his son, he used words as flesh for skeletons of traditional meter and rhyme schemes. Although Louis is widely published, including three books and numerous anthologies, he is best known among contemporary poetry audiences for his readings with Allen over the last decade.

            A Ginsbergs reading often climbed the media scale to “event” status, a rarity on the poetry scene; perhaps only Russian poets reading at Madison Square Garden have attracted more press coverage. It was a natural and often oversimplified story: old and young, square and beat, meter and breath. Father and son. Their first reading, for the Poetry Society of America in 1966 in New York, was billed as a “battle,” and police were actually called to stand by in case the crowd got unruly.

            Allen Ginsberg now finds the police incident funny, but at the time, “I was really pissed off! Calling the police? My father and I reading, and they’re calling the police? Undignified! There was a tendency to stereotype, and to exploit the situation as conflict rather than harmony which would have been more helpful socially, and probably more aesthetically pleasing." And there was often humor in their byplay which eluded the media. "Many think we bridge a generation gap," says Louis. "We've had many wonderful times."

            Now that Louis is mostly confined to his apartment, Allen stays by his side as much as possible, and there is more harmony than ever. It would be tempting to think of their current relationship as the Son Comes to Terms With His Sick Father, but the son never strayed too far, and they are merely continuing a process that has been going on for, well, a generation. A process which accelerated when they were on the road together—"When we traveled, we also traveled inside each other," says Louis.

            They used to argue about the Vietnam War, until Louis changed his opinion around 1968. Allen had thought it was just a political disagreement until he overheard his father attacking the war to someone else, and Allen realized that their clash also had something to do with their relationship. "It was a personal ego conflict between us of who was going to be wrong and give in." This peaked in an argument during a car trip when Allen got so exasperated that he blurted out, "You fuckhead."

            Louis didn't respond verbally, but Allen remembers a quizzical fatherly look of, "you'll feel badly later that you spoke to me like that." Louis knew that "when Allen lost his temper at me he'd usually call later to apologize."

            Allen did regret his harshness, but "it sort of broke the ice in a way. It was so outrageous that it was human and funny. It was the intensity of love; I was so concerned about communication with him, that we be on the same side, that I was really like going mad and crying and yelling at him." Eventually Allen became "more gentle," giving his father "space to change."

            And now, communication-through-gentleness is the motif that decorates their relationship. Allen describes it: "As his life draws to a close, there's a possibility of total communication and poignancy of our being here this once and realizing that it's closing. It makes all the poetry of a lifetime come true, at its best. It's a good, open space, very awesome and beautiful." Both agree that they're more open with each other than ever before; their closeness was evident during the course of a day I spent with them in early June.

 ***

            Edith Ginsberg gets a chance to I go out with her friends when Allen is around, secure that her husband is being well cared for. When Louis says he is thirsty, Allen is halfway to the kitchen before Louis has told him what he wants to drink. Louis tells me that Allen is a "wonderful son, waits on me hand and foot," and they spend their time talking, about such things as "death and illness, elemental things." Allen returns to the living room with a glass of ginger ale for his father, and adds, "olden times, modern times, poems that influenced our youth."

            On the day of my visit, references from father and son came from the likes of Wordsworth and Milton, two poets who had a strong presence in Allen's childhood along with the lyric poets of Louis Untermeyer's anthologies (including Allen's father). While young Allen would be lying on the floor reading such comics as Krazy Kat and The Katzenjammer Kids, Louis would walk to and fro quoting poetry (perhaps a graduate degree could be built on the combined influence of Milton and Krazy Kat on the poetry of Allen Ginsberg).

            Louis recites, from memory, a section from "Paradise Lost" he used to read to Allen some 40 years ago:

                    Hurld headlong flaming from th' Ethereal Skie

                    With hideous ruin and combustion down. . . .

             A word is sometimes just beyond his reach, or he falters on a phrase; Allen sits on the couch, body angling toward the gold armchair which holds his father, feeding the correct words when needed, so the two of them complete the passage. Allen has done less formal teaching than his father, but both are marvelous at sharing knowledge and wisdom. When they converse together, they comfortably trade teacher and student roles.

            Some lines from Wordsworth's "Intimations of Immortality From Recollections of Early Childhood" come up:

                    And not in utter nakedness,

                    But trailing clouds of glory do we come

                    From God who is our home.

             Allen recalls that the other day Louis said this image was "correct, but not true," and Louis adds that by "correct" he means that it is a "good figure of speech, but I don't think it's true." “What of immortality?” Allen questions Louis about heaven, and Louis says it is "wishful thinking."

            "What about hell, is there a hell?" Allen playfully jabs his words with a smile. Louis doesn't believe in hell, either; he is more interested in talking about the awe and wonders of the galaxies. "Why this prodigious display of energy?" Eventually stars burn up. "You wonder what it's all for."

            "That's pretty cheerful," Allen replies, "because that leaves us completely free to do whatever we want in a closed dream system."

            Louis has been mulling all this over. He starts to build something out of the fragments of talk: "Thinking really is poetry, although we don't call it poetry," he says, establishing the teacher role.

            "Thinking is poetry?" questions Allen, the student.

            “All kinds of thoughts are mental constructs," answers Louis, referring to such concepts as heaven and hell, adding, "In poetry you have a mental construct, but you have someoriginality of language that startles you" (like ‘trailing clouds of glory’). "Every metaphor, every figure of speech is a new construct."

            "That's the first time I ever heard you say that all thoughts are poetry."

            In the dialogue that ensues, Louis makes the point that, like poets, scientists construct images which may or may not hold up as true, such as the concept of "atom," which is derived from the Greek, meaning "not cut." This concept was proved to be untrue, and a new "thought/poem" had to be created.

            Allen did not know the derivation of the word "atom" and asks Louis to repeat it. Louis continued as teacher, explaining that the nucleus is made of quarks. Like a playful student, Allen shouts with glee a duck-like, "Quark Quark! The answer is quark, quark, like Lewis Carroll."

            He soon shifts into the teacher role to explain that what Louis has been saying is similar to the Buddhist concept that all conceptions of the existence or nonexistence of God or self are equally arbitrary.

            "I would agree to that," Louis replies.

            “The decay of the body,” Allen continues, “underlines the arbitrary nature of the idea of self.”

            “I know,” Louis says softly.

            “Throughout the conversation, Louis looks at his watch every few minutes. He seems to have a purpose for it, though I know he is not expecting anyone. Each look at the watch is inconclusive, till finally, with surety, he hands it delicately to Allen, saying, "Allen, will you wind this up."

            "It's now 10 of 11, Louie, so it just stopped, your watch just stopped 10 minutes ago."

            Allen tapes many conversations with his father, including: recollections of Paul Robeson at Rutgers; conversation about his grandson (Allen's brother, Eugene, a lawyer and a poet, has four children); description by Edith of a visit to Dr. Levy; Louis reading his early poem, “The Poet Defies Death”; recollections of a recently deceased friend; conversation on Book Two of “Paradise Lost”; and Louis having a dizzy spell.

            Allen also sketches his thoughts and dreams about his father into his journal (which provides the raw material for his books. Periodically, Allen goes through the journal, picking off the “cream”). In the black-covered, lined notebook with “Record” printed on the cover, Allen entered the following on May 18, 1976, after he and his father had read Wordsworth together (“With tranquil restoration:—feelings too / of unremembered pleasure….”)

                    Wasted arms, feeble knees

                    80-years-old, hair thin & white

                    cheek bonier than I’d remembered—

                    head bowed on his neck, eyes opened

                    now and then, he listened—

                    I read my father Wordsworth’s ‘Tintern Abbey’

                    “When I was a boy we had a house

                    on Boyd Street—” —“Newark?”

                    “Yes, the house was near a big empty lot,

                    full of bushes and trees. I always wondered

                    what was behind all those green branches

                    and tall grass. When I grew up

                    I walked around the block

                    and found out what was back there—

                    it was a glue factory.”

            Allen reads the journal entry to his father, introducing it by saying, "I wrotethis down, I don't think you've seen it." He refers to it as, "my latest poem," but corrects himself by saying, "ours," before reading it.

            As Louis listens, he is in the same posture as Allen describes. He nods at the accuracy of his son's words, which capture the approach he's used for much of his poetry writing: "I will see a flash of the past; suddenly it'll swim into my ken some picture of that incident. Like starpoints, when you're far away from them you can see the pattern."

            One of Allen's dreams about his father, from an April journal entry:

            "Louis was in bed in front room of Park Avenue apartment. I was with Edith by his side. He slumped over on the bed, eyes closed. I put my palm to his forehead and held him close, hugging him. Ah a tremor in his chest near his heart, a few spasmodic movements deep inside his body. I said, ‘Ah,' clearly to him as if the vibration of my voice through my hands or into his ears might be heard far off as a sign of openness. Ah he was still alive, that his movement hadn't ceased, very subtle stirrings still, though breath seemed to have stopped. Ah. Edith sat by attentive silent."

            "Ah" is a Buddhist mantra meaning "appreciation of present, endless space."

            One of Louis's last poems says that "somewhere" there is a tree and a patch of dirt which will be made into a coffin and grave for him; but he is “patient.” "When you get older and you're seriously ill, you think of these things," he comments about the poem, which he has paraphrased from memory because his only copy was submitted for publication.

***

            ·At midday—after a morning of conversation, a nap, and lunch prepared by Allen, Louis is beginning to wear down. He is more grounded in his chair, holding tighter to thearmrests. One must speak louder and more distinctly, and I find that I too am wearing down and have trouble speaking loud enough. I am beginning to withdraw from Louis, perhaps because the seriousness of his condition—which was an abstraction when I agreed to do this article—has seeped into me and I am beginning to feel a closeness to him. But Allen breaks my slipping away by yelling “Louder!" tempering his voice with a playful laugh. It works; as I continue speaking, Louis has less trouble hearing me. I am back with him. But soon it is time for him to return to bed.

            "In the afternoon," Louis explains, "a lethargy enfolds me and I want to lie down."

            Allen wants to know. "What does it feel like, exactly?"

            “It plagues me to close my eyes and relax my body. It embezzles my will."

            "Do you have any pain?"

            "No pain, that's the fortunate part of this, to give it a light name, infection. If any questions arise, I won't be sleeping, I'll just be lying down in my study, so you can come inand if I don't know the answer, that doesn't stop me from talking."

            After Louis goes inside, I think about my momentary withdrawal a few minutes ago, and ask Allen how he and Louis related to the news of his condition. How was he told? How did he face it? Was there any panic on Allen's part?

            The only panic, according to Allen, was during the limbo before Louis was told of the doctor's diagnosis, after the family already knew. "I was in a panic that the lack of communication would grow to a point where it would be insoluble. We'd all be trapped in a series of illusions." Louis had been worried that he might have a tumor in his head because he had trouble holding it up (“It felt like my head was falling off"), so when he was eventually told that there was a malignant tumor in his spleen/liver area, he responded with relief that it wasn't as bad as he'd fantasized. In fact, he made a joke about it. Louis has been contributing puns to a local newspaper for many years, one of his most notorious being, “Is life worth living? / It depends on the liver." After he was told of the diagnosis, he said, “I never thought my pun would come back to bite me."

            Before Louis was told of his condition, Allen's "pain was in worrying about him, not realizing he could take care of himself; the pain was in projecting our own fears. This is the one time you can really totally communicate. Some of my relatives said they wouldn't want to know ifthey were going to I die. I was really shocked. When I told my father of the delay, he said, 'Ah, so you kept a secret from me.' He marveled that we were so . . . so. . . “ Allen sifts through words in his head before coming up with the right one: "foolish."

***

            The day before I visited was Allen's birthday. “It’s interesting to relate to because he's 80 and I'm 50.” He spent his birthday in the studio recording an album of his songs—“It’s great to be 50 and up there shaking my ass making rock and roll with a bunch of 19- year-old musicians."

            Allen would hope that his recent flowering in new creative areas and his relationship with his father could be a model that would partially offset what he calls "ageism” among some young people who believe that “everything is shit and people grow old and they can't do anything anymore and they lose their balls and life is just 'kicks.’ That just develops a punk attitude rather than a wise man attitude. It cuts ground from under unborn feet."

            With his father, "a very old, natural situation has developed, where we're both so soft and tender to each other.”

            Is it surprising to hear Allen Ginsberg talkso "conservatively" about family and wisdom of the old? It may be surprising, says Allen, if your information about him comes from the "CIA FBI Time magazine stereotype of dirty unwashed evil beatniks eschewing their parents."

            It is not surprising to Louis, who says, "Contrary to what people thought, that Allen was a Wild Man of Borneo, he's really compassionate."

            Although Allen never totally broke away from his family, there was a time when he was drifting. But even then, while Allen was moving quickly—living the life he and his friends made their reputations writing about—Louis set up a room for Allen in the house he and his new wife moved into. “Allen picked his own wallpaper, Oriental. . . . In the course of a life, the youngster doesn't want to be tied by strings to the family, so Allen started to wander, but he always had a place to come and get what he needed.” In one visit, Allen brought Jack Kerouac, Gregory Corso, and Peter Orlovsky and they all typed up poems for “Combustion," the first mimeographed poetry magazine. Allen typed up the first section of “Kaddish.”

            For Allen, full disclosure has been his poetic mode, and perhaps the fullest of his disclosures was “Kaddish,” his classic rhapsodic explosion of words about the insanity and death of his mother, Naomi. Louis was part of that experience and therefore part of the poem. Even though Louis has been happily remarried for 25 years, he is frozen in the minds of tens of thousands of readers as the confused, helpless husband:

                    Louis in pyjamas listening to phone, frightened—do now?—Who could know? my fault, delivering

                        her to solitude? sitting the dark room on the sofa, trembling, to figure out—

            I ask Louis how it felt to see the play version of "Kaddish” a few years ago.

            “It was a novel experience. Here I was listening to words that I spoke 40 years ago. My curiosity held my feelings of grief at bay." But this is so far away, that Louis does not want to dwell on it. "You can make mention of these things, but not too much, because that's an era that's passed."

            Now Louis sits straight in his chair and talks about the different approaches he and Allen took in dealing poetically with that time. “My first wife died: in my book there are some love poems—Allen wrote 'Kaddish,' which is more first hand. I used what you call 'aesthetic distance.' Let's say I'd go to the sanitarium where she'd be, I’d write: 'the father and two sons observed the wife sick.' Maybe I'm introverted, I don't want to wear my sorrow on my sleeve, but Allen speaks right out. I think one of Allen's strengths is that he has said what young people think but are afraid to say." But for Louis, “sometimes a side blow or a hint is better than the forthright exact sentence."

            In the case of "Kaddish," it was painful for Louis and the family to see parts of it in print, but Louis I feels its function for Allen was to “exorcise and give vent to his feelings, so sorrow was eased and there was solace." Louis seems accepting of the difference in their presentations, but what was more difficult was that Allen had been away from home a lot in the midst of the turmoil over Naomi's condition.

            "There was a time when my wife was in the sanitarium and Allen was roaming, I thought he was fleeing from sadness, running away from a tragedy."

            Allen returns to the room from a phone call in time to hear the last few words. "What was I running I away from?"

            "I said you were running away from tragedy."

            Allen looks at his father and says, "Well, I didn't get very far. Here we are." Although it was said playfully, he reconsiders, "maybe that's overdramatizing."

            They set about the process of exploring this conflict by focusing on some lines from Louis's poem, "Still Life," about the time Naomi was in the sanitarium.

                    No one is in the house but tensions swarm

                    The mother in a sanitarium broods.

                    Her sons by traveling try to chloroform

                    The loss that burrows in their solitudes

                    And dreams of how her two grieving sons will climb

                    Up marble stairways through facades of fame.

            Allen picks up on the word “facades,” perhaps avoiding the central conflict by saying, “‘Facades’ in the sense of maya, illusion, naturally because all existence is illusionary.” It is Allen the teacher talking and it sounds inappropriate. He eases into a softer tone, “I always thought you liked the fact that I was getting well-known as a poet.”

            “I felt sad that you had to run away or hide from a great sorrow.”

            “What do you mean, ‘run away’?”

            “You went here, there, you went to Colorado, to San Francisco.”

            “I didn’t think that I was hiding, I thought that was exploring, going out.”

            The circle is not completely closed. They are, however, a bit closer in touch with each other.”

            Poets do not usually achieve fame with the general public. And certainly not quickly. Allen Ginsberg got famous quickly. This was due in part to the controversy over the use of obscenities in “Howl.”

            “We didn’t like obscenity and told him not to use it,” Louis says, adding, with hindsight, “But it wouldn’t be Allen if he didn’t use it.” Louis was supportive during Allen’s legal battles over “Howl” and, “although we were somewhat bewildered by Allen’s soaring into fame, we were delighted.”

            Allen interrupts to say, “You always keep speaking of it as fame rather than beauty. I’m mad, that’s not fair.”

            Earlier that morning, I sat in Ben and Bob’s coffee shop/candy store down the block, where Louis used to spend a lot of time before his illness. Proprietor Marty Singer recalled that Louis was in “seventh heaven” and “tickled pink” about Allen’s success and the fact that he was a part of it: “The colleges want both of us,” Louis would say with a smile of both a proud father and proud poet.

            A photograph in Louis and Edith’s apartment shows the father and son giving a reading at the 92nd St. “Y,” but Allen is lying on a couch with his leg in a cast. Even though he had broken his leg, he refused to cancel the reading because he “didn’t want to disappoint my father.”

***

            There was a long time when Allen was not at ease with his father’s poetry. Louis Ginsberg is a lyric poet (“with a modern touch,” he adds) and so was the young Allen Ginsberg. “My early poetry was just like my father’s, same rhyme schemes. I had to deal with my own resentments and discriminations and rebellion against traditional forms which I grew up with.”

            His poetic journey took him away from his father’s approach, and along the road he picked up metaphysical, objectivist/imagist, surrealist, dissociative, and Buddhist influences. Then, in the late ‘60s, he had a public reunion with his father’s verse in his introductory essay “Confrontation with Louis Ginsberg’s Poetry” to Louis’s book “Morning in Spring.” Allen wrote, “I won’t quarrel with his forms anymore: By faithful love he’s made them his own.”

            Louis Ginsberg’s work is his own. In the process of doing this piece, I too had to confront a style I had set aside. Many gems shine through Louis’s poems, and it is interesting to see how he deals poetically with many of the same themes Allen explores.

            Louis is quick to point out that Allen’s latest book, “First Blues,” uses rhyme. “There was a time when Allen derided regular meter and rhyme. We had arguments. As time went on, he influenced me a little bit. I’ve written some free verse. Maybe I influenced him.” Allen notes that a major difference between his latest rhymes and his earliest is that “I’m singing.” The new poems include music, the original partner for lyric verse. Allen’s handwritten inscription on the copy of “First Blues” he gave his father reads: “Ah for Louis New Years Eve day December 31, 1975 while we’re all still alive a book of rhymed poems ending the poetry war between us….love, Allen.”

***

            Louis is lying down on the couch in his study, drifting along a fitful half-sleep. Allen shows me around the room while a few feet away his father is exhaling a steady stream of delicate sighs.

            “I see you keep your National Book Award here,” I mention, pointing to the certificate on the wall commemorating Allen’s “The Fall of America.”

            “I gave it to him, it’s his.”

            The sighs from the couch gradually change shape to form a word, which eventually reaches Allen as the sound of his name.”

            “Allen….”

            “Hmmmmmm…what?” Allen answers, hovering over his uncovered father, ready to bring him whatever it is he wants. But he doesn’t want anything, except to say, “Allen, you’re all right.”

            “Yeah, I am all right.”

            “You’re all right, Allen,” Louis repeats, looking through almost-closed eyes at his son.

            “Yeah, I’m all right. You’re all right?”

            “You’re all right, I’m all right, you’re all right,” Louis says clearly, completing the conversation.

            A few minutes later, Louis says, “Allen, I feel a draft, close the window.”

            Allen brings the cover, which he pours over Louis’s body, pausing to hold Louis’s arm for a while, fingers breathing on his father’s flesh.

***

            In the living room, while his father is napping, Allen mentions that William Carlos Williams’s widow, Flossie, just died. “I hadn’t, alas, been in touch with her for many years.”

            We talk about Charles Reznikoff, who died a few months ago. “I wonder who’s keeping Mrs. Reznikoff company,” Allen says.

            Louis returns from his nap. He wants to know if I have any more questions, and requests that he be sent copies of the article. He sits down and says:

            “I was talking before about the constellations and immensity, unfathomable of the universe—are you taking this down?—no matter how small men are, they are greater than the biggest star, because they know how small they are.

            “I wanted to complete that thought.”

Mark Eleveld: The Poetry Tent is too Small

I came up in the ‘poetry readings’ world under royalty. I was in the military for a small bit (small note about the military: When you are on, you are on, and when there is nothing, there is nothing. “Stand around and wait,” which for me meant, stand around and read. I probably read more books in the military than in graduate school) and when I came out I went to a small Midwestern, liberal arts school to work on or fly airplanes (my MOS in the military was 68 Golf). I lasted a day in an engineering class. My father worked evenings, and I drove to his business late at night and told him I couldn’t be in aviation. He smiled and gave me a hug (he was good at making big world problems seem small) and told me to take some classes that I was interested in. 

I loaded up on English courses, philosophy courses, and journalism courses. I was attracted to the work, but also to the character of these professors. Dr. Richard Prince was  (and remains) one such inspiration. If English offices were supposed to have books dripping off of the shelves, low light, uncomfortable chairs that had butt prints grown in, with a partially filled ashtray somewhere, and a small flask of something hidden not too far from the ashtray, then his office fulfilled that duty. He was smart. He was giving of his time. He was very interested in the lives of others. And when he spotted something interesting about a student, he helped develop and nurture it. Personally, he introduced me to Chicago as the hot bed of literary activity. And, he introduced me to poet Marc Kelly Smith. Marc is the poetry slam founder. He runs a weekly show (it is the longest running poetry show in Chicago, quite possibly, the country) that has the poetry slam in it. He created the poetry slam in 1988. The Green Mill Jazz Lounge is the home of the poetry slam. Marc Smith built it.

I am a behind-the-scenes guy, mostly. But I was lucky that I had this very hard discipline from the military, a very formal education from the Christian Brothers, and the juxtaposition of living, breathing poets and writers. It very much interested me to read Carl Sandberg and see Marc Smith. It interested me to read Gwendolyn Brooks and see Patricia Smith. It interested me to read Nelson Algren and see Stuart Dybek. So, as I was reading the books of unerring truth, I was meeting with Marc to work on shows, or book tours, or write articles; Marc would always ask me what I was reading and we’d sit on his couch and go back and forth about how good, or how awful it was. Marc is an artist, one of the most pure minded artists I have been around. He is a tough nut. I came up with a bunch of tough nuts. All of them filled with love, desire, passion, a Midwestern work ethic, and the ability to continually impress and screw up at the same time. All too human. (Marc was particularly brutal on the Beats. We went round and round on that … he might have won.) Among the many, many gifts that Marc has, he builds shows. And that is his lasting impact on me. How do you put a poetry reading together? Marc is royalty. He taught me.

The biggest annual literary event in Chicago is the Printers Row Bookfest. It is a small neighborhood of Chicago that sits next to the retired Dearborn Train Station. It’s cool: Blocks and blocks of books, writers, poets, chefs, enthusiasts, kids, music, beer, and sun (or rain) – Kasey’s Tavern. I first went in 1998 and saw Robert Pinsky. Robert was good. I am pretty sure he read "Jersey Rain" in Dearborn Station. The following year I saw Li Young-Lee read at Grace Place at the fest. I am pretty sure he read "The Gift". I saw Edward Hirsch in the Poetry Tent as people were piled up on the outside trying to peer in. Edward said something like, “The poetry tent is too small. The Chicago Tribune needs to make a bigger poetry tent. They thought poetry wouldn’t fill it. They were wrong,” something like that. It was fun, and lovely. He gave a great reading. I saw the slam poet Taylor Mali fill the tent and impress with his poem, "What Teachers Make". I saw Mark Doty a couple of years ago fill the tent and give as elegant a reading, while bleeding sweat, as I have ever seen. I saw Amber Tamblyn, Rachel McKibbons, and Mindy Nettifee, fill the tent and deliver ice and popsicles to the audience during the ‘coven’ reading (which later blurred into Frank Deford talking about a witch he knew in New York City).  I saw an audience member ask poet Michael Robbins why he was so, ‘melancholy’.  There was even a fun squabble last year where I was moderating a reading with Patricia Smith and Cin Salach, and Patricia took the lead from me and asked if there were any questions, to which one Joffre Stewart of ‘Howl’ fame (he is Ginsberg’s friend in Chicago burning money) stood up and started to defame some poets. Patricia looked at me and said, “Oh god, I’m sorry,” and then an older man in the crowd jumped up and started screaming at Joffre to “Shut up, shut up, shut up”.

I have been hosting the poetry tent for about seven or eight years. This means recommending poets. It means putting together different ‘show’ ideas with poets. It means reading introductions. It means asking questions. It means building an environment to have both poet, writer and audience member happy and entertained. It means getting poets water (Yes, I'm the Water Boy ... Slap Hands! Slap Hands!). It isn’t always easy. Mostly, I like reading the books before the poets come and making a comment, or asking a question about the work. Sometimes I am more critical than I should be. Other times I am more giving than I should be. If you like poetry, if you like characters, if you like a little drama and spice, and if you enjoy the varied voices, the poetry tent is for you. All of the different stories about the readings … to paraphrase Edward Hirsch, the poetry tent is too small, but it is kinda big too.  

Mark Eleveld: Nature’s first green is gold.

Robert Frost reads "Nothing Gold Can Stay"

I was in an American Studies course in high school. It was my junior year. The course was taught by Mr. and Mrs Sprague. He worked in some capacity for the Federal Government with Native Americans (we were required to visit their home for tea once a semester where he would give a tour of the Native American artifacts he had collected during his time on the reservations) and taught the history part of the course and she (this delightful sprite’ish looking, overly enthusiastic and biting strong, strong woman) taught the English portion. The class was in the bell tower section of the original high school building: Pimped out cherry wood everywhere, creaky wooden floors, built in books cases, with statues of all the great writers bopping around the room.

It was cool. The classes were double-blocked, so we would have American Literature first, and then go to U.S. History right after, and vice-versa. It was as much a ‘show’ as it was a class. The context became a medium for their message.

There were girls in class that I wanted to impress. Mrs. Sprague was big on recitation. I think she read most of The Scarlet Letter to us aloud. Not so much reading as performing. Not so much performing as inhabiting the soul of those characters. I remember her jumping about whenever she read anything to do with Pearl. She was ghostly. I enjoyed the performance, but I crashed and burned on the test. When she handed the test back, she asked if I had read the book. Aloud. She asked if I belonged in the class. Aloud. I was not impressing anyone.

I was a high school athlete, but I worked a job as well. At Hong Kong Village, my best buddy Dave and I bussed tables. Dave went into the work force at age 16 and never looked back. He graduated, but it was tough on him. I told him about the test. I told him what Mrs. Sprague had said. He was good to me, he respected that I liked books, and that I liked to read, that I wrote things at an early age. He told me they were reading The Outsiders. And, as if out of a film, he went to the coat rack (he had a biker, black leather with a hand painted cover of Metallica’s ‘Master of Puppets’ on the back of his jacket) and tossed me his classroom copy. I read it that night. I fell in love with it. I watched the film a bunch. (Val Kilmer told me he was offered a part in The Outsiders film). All of these tough kids. All of these heady, traumatic experiences. The innocence of it all. The deep well of reserve that Pony Boy maintained. He was a good kid. Even Dally was a good kid. And Johnny was Captain America in spades. More than anything, my head kept coming back to Pony reciting ‘Nothing Gold Can Stay’ by Robert Frost. If you have not read it, it’s here.  It’s short, easy, and bountiful in a beatific way. I understood the poem. I understood the poem more than the class struggle of the greasers and the socials (I know the class struggle is entwined in the fabric of the storyline, but it doesn’t push me the same way the boy’s love for each other does).

The poem suggested something that was hard for me to deal with: That because something was good, doesn’t mean it stays that way. In fact, that it is impossible to maintain the same moments further. This is the debate that Pony Boy and Johnny have. Pony suggests something similar. But Johnny, on his deathbed, offers that Frost is wrong. “Stay Gold Pony Boy,” says Johnny.  I’m more inclined to believe Frost, but props to Johnny for sentimentality. Johnny was all heart.

Later in the year, we had to memorize and recite a poem in class. When Mrs. Sprague gave us the assignment, I remember raising my hand. “Yes Mark.” “May I go first?” “It isn’t due until the end of the week Mark.’ “I know, but I’d like to go now.” “Of course.” I went to the front of the class. I gave a small introduction. I gave props to Dave for sharing the book. And I went into it. I read it well. I read it twice, actually. It was sitting there, like the text was chiseled into the cherry wood walls in the back. “Very good Mark. What does it mean,” asked Mrs. Sprague. “It means that because something is really good right now, doesn’t mean it will always be good. But I think the opposite is true then, just because you did something really poorly, doesn’t mean you won’t do something really well.” She smiled and told me I did a nice job.  I impressed some people. Good poems do the work for you. I think I got a date off of that recitation. That was good, for a while, too.                                        

Monday Comic by Nin Andrews

Today's comic was inspired by a Chapter 2011 in David Lehman's State of the Art (Pittsburgh, 2015), which opens with the question, What makes poetry great?  David then goes on to quote famous poets' definitions of great poetry.  I particularly love what Randall Jarrell said of Frost's "Directive": "The poem is hard to understand, but easy to love." I feel that way about many great poems.