The Best American Poetry

Discoveries from The Yearbook III [by M. Fitzgerald]

Those three photographs nagged at me. The single girl, Thelma. The two boys, Donald and Simeon. Those young faces. Simeon smiles, looking sideways from the camera. But Donald and Thelma look straight at the photographer with an indecipherable look in which shyness seems to predominate, even though I was tempted to see an undertone of defiance.

I was probably reading too much into it. I wondered what happened to them, where they went after graduation. I wondered whether they were the first in their families to graduate from high school. I began to romanticize them. I began to impute my father with insights, with deliberations that I would not ever be able to confirm.

There is no way to know whether the decision to put those two photographs as end stops to the list of graduating seniors was an accident, or a statement; or indeed a tribute to the two young people. I just wanted it to be so.

I could not let them go: even if the photographs were accidentally placed where they were – who knows, perhaps my father and his editorial team realized they had failed to include them in the alphabetical order after the laborious typesetting had already been done, and quickly added them --; perhaps Thelma and Simeon’s family had had to scrape together the money to pay the photographer and had only managed to do so at the last moment --; even so, I could not let them go. I wanted, now, to bring them out of the shadowy past they shared with my father.           

I looked at the fragments of scholastic biography below each of the three names in the Yearbook, at the snippet of comment inserted as it was for every graduating student and every member of the faculty:

Donald Hogan: Orchestra ’27, ’28; Freshman Cantata; Sophomore Cantata.

“A droll little man”

 

He is the one included in the alphabetical order. The descriptive caption coincides with something in the photograph that shows a clear skinned round faced boy with piercing dark eyes, who seems barely a teenager: the shirt and bunched-up tie look as though they have been put on for the photographic session. There was no information in the Yearbook about Cantata, although there were at least four school organizations dedicated to music making, from Band to the Big Twelve Soloists to the music appreciation club.

Simeon Osby: Chemistry Club ’27; Astronomy Club ’27; Ramblers ’27; Orchestra ’23, ’24, ’25.

“A true friend of the high school”

Simeon wears a dapper bow tie and is in three-quarter profile. He is long faced and handsome, looking away from the camera with a faint smile. He’d participated in a number of activities, I noticed. I noticed that he had been in High School since 1923: he had been two years slower than my father to reach graduation. I wondered what the caption meant, in what way this boy had been a ‘true friend’ of the school.

I leafed through The Capitoline pages more slowly, through all the organizations and clubs: in the 1928 Yearbook there seems to have been no Chemistry or Astronomy Club that Simeon could have remained in, and no Ramblers. What happened?

School clubs come and go with the interest or lack of interest of students and faculty, that was all. Nothing else showed me what the suggestive caption could mean.

But, after photographs of the newly formed Jazz club, after the French and the Spanish clubs, after the Paper Craft Club -- all of them filled with young Caucasian faces --, there was the Unity Girls Reserves. All African American young women: seventeen of them in a group photograph.

Not a single African American girl or boy in any of the clubs until this clustering in the one organization:

“their membership this year numbered thirty-five girls…their purpose they state as f
ollows: ‘first, to create spirit of friendliness towards everyone; second, to live up to our Christian ideals; third, to be honest in all our undertakings; fourth, to be ready for service at all times’. A Glee Club of six girls was formed and sang at the First Christian Church”.

There already were two Glee Clubs, one for boys and one for girls, why not join those clubs? Was it because these girls sang the alien Gospel music rather than Victorian hymns or Gilbert and Sullivan?

Where were the boys? Were there no African American boys other than Harold Gray, Donald Hogan and Simeon Osby? Was there not even a Unity Boys Reserves?

Seventeen girls had been photographed, of the thirty-five girls in the club.

Even if the proportion of participants to actual number of students was 50 per cent, there must have been around seventy African American girls at Springfield High.

Only one graduated in June 1928.

And there she was, fourth from the left in the bottom row: Thelma May Donnigan, the same young woman whose class photograph had been placed next to Simeon Osby’s at the end of the pages in the Yearbook dedicated to the 245 graduating seniors.

Thelma Donnigan: Unity Club President ’25, ’26; Vice-President ’26, ’27; President ’27; Big Sister ‘27

“Care is an Enemy to Life”

 

“Care is an enemy to Life”: a quote from something, or an invented phrase? I didn’t know.

But I was struck by such a profound reversal from the familiar, from the acceptable: surely “Care is a Friend to Life?”

Even when I learnt that it is in fact a familiar line from Twelfth Night, that the context in the play is comedic and facetious, I remained uncomfortable with the implications: it is a startling different line from the descriptive phrases for the two African American young men. Beyond the Shakespearean context, it seems to speak of something akin to rage. Perhaps of rage precisely.

Did Thelma ask my father, the hard working editor-in-chief, to put in that phrase rather than any other?

If the phrase was Thelma’s choice, it seemed to contradict the whole purpose of the Unity Girls Reserves, of which she had been both President and Vice-President for three years. The Reserves, shamelessly geared for the lives these young women were destined to: friendly, honest, ready for service…in other words, living up to an ideal, as maids in the more affluent Springfield households, as cleaners in law offices like my grandfather’s.

‘Care is an Enemy to Life’: it could be that Thelma did not want to be a caring maid in an affluent Springfield household. She did not want to tend to the babies, do the cooking, serve table. She did not want to care.

But perhaps it was the full editorial team who chose the phrase: the two descriptive captions for the boys seemed to point to it.

I imagined an eager group of teens sitting at large tables in a library still lined only with dark leather bound books, still poorly lit by single bulbs shaded in green tinted milk-glass, charged with coming up with 240 appropriate phrases for all the seniors, and an additional 60 or so for the faculty.

Not an easy task, but for all teenagers time is an endless expanse, and they had a lot of fun, sitting around the table on the cold evenings of the 1927-1928 winter.

Of all the quotes and phrases, why this one for this young woman?

An after-thought. After all, Thelma was the last person listed among the seniors. They had run out of apt phrases, been through all the books of quotations from the school library. Someone came up with this phrase: Toby talking to Maria in Shakespeare’s comedy, and the editorial team left the library and the big table with relief. After all, who was Thelma?

It struck me with a moment of vertigo: two hundred and forty Seniors: that number is double the number of students between the age of 11 and 18 at the English boarding school I went to in the mid-sixties. Two thousand, four hundred High School aged students in Springfield’s public High School. The whole of Sussex University where I got my degree in English in the early 70s, only had around five thousand undergraduates. Unimaginable, a High school this size.

They did not even know her. Why would they?

She was not one of the academic or the athletic elite. Though they had shared the school for three years, they moved in different circles. What was the Unity Reserves again? No reason at all for my father to have ever crossed paths with Thelma, or with Donald or Simeon.

I should probably not take it too seriously, not interpret my father’s editorial days too earnestly.

Centuries have been spent analyzing what Shakespeare meant by that phrase “Care is an enemy to life”, and surely these youngsters had studied the play, and most of them had rolled their eyes at any complicated analysis.

Although I had studied Twelfth Night in the first year at my English boarding school, as I reeled from the transition to an English educational system after elementary school years in Italy, and had re-read it in the years when I trained as a secondary school teacher a dozen years later, I had not remembered the phrase.

Once I knew where the strange six word phrase came from, I still had to note that in the section showing all the 1928 graduating seniors, ‘Care is an enemy to Life’ were the last words, and that their Shakespearean origin seemed completely irrelevant to their placement as part of a description of Thelma Donnigan.

I had to find out more about these three young people.

I noticed the names of the faculty advisors for the Unity Reserves: Mrs Taborn, Miss Davidson, Miss Burnham, and I looked back at the list of faculty in the Yearbook to see what these three teachers had taught. They were not listed and, unlike all other faculty, they were not photographed. Were they African-American too, and excluded for the color of their skin?

Discoveries from a Yearbook Part II [by M Fitzgerald]

                                    

It was a while before I returned to The Capitoline. By then, I had been on number of short forays to the Beinecke Library in New Haven where my father’s papers are archived. On the last visit, I had spent the time transcribing handwritten letters to and from my father to his father, and to his aunt Agnes, and even letters from his father to Agnes.

Some of the letters were dated from the High School years, and two of them referred directly to The Capitoline: in one, handwritten and dated Sunday December 1927 he writes to Agnes:

“…I am now ‘free’ to devote my days and nights to the pleasant labor of publishing an ambitiously planned Capitoline… By skillful manipulation of a trade rivalry we have succeeded in shaving off $200 off the printing contract, and by splitting the photography between two firms save another $200. However, in spite of these coups our innovations are going to be so expensive as to leave plenty of financial worries. I am well satisfied with the photographic arrangement in particular, and I do believe it will prove to be one of the best things we have done.”

In another undated letter, his father writes to Agnes:

“The youngster had every single line that went into this year’s Capitoline to write and then to typewrite – proof to read – the entire make up of the book to arrange and it was a huge task when school work had to be prepared…”

 

I had not realized that my father had been involved in the editing of the Yearbook, but when I picked up The Capitoline again I saw immediately the proud display on the inside cover. Now ‘The guy who’s responsible for this’ caption-quote under his name, that I had seen when I first skim through, made sense: he was the Editor-in-Chief of the 1928 Yearbook. Maybe that explained also the number of photographs.

I leafed through, looking for what else I might have missed.

I reached the last page that listed and displayed photographs of the June Seniors, and was startled by the portraits of two students on the bottom of the last page: a young African American man and an African American young woman. Simeon Osby and Thelma Donnigan.

I didn’t think the school had any African American students.

I was immediately embarrassed by the thought: it was a public school, why would it not have African American students? Why was I surprised at their presence? I went back, suddenly focused on the young faces I had barely glanced at, and saw the portrait of one more African American young man among the June Seniors, Donald Hogan.

I saw Margaret Clem, Araminta Edwards, Harold Grady, Francene Johnson and Bessie Murrel, listed in alphabetical order, among the students who had graduated in January 1928.

In 1928, among the 245 other seniors, only eight were African American. Only three graduated in June with my father.

I had not noticed them before because there were so few of them. Because I wasn’t looking for anyone except my father.

And I had only noticed Simeon and Thelma because they had been placed out of alphabetical order, at the end of the list, at the bottom of the page, as if to draw the attention of any reader of the Yearbook to them.

Why were they there, and not on the correct alphabetical page?

I remembered the words I had seen only a few weeks before, in the letter my father wrote to his aunt Agnes, the one his father had written to her: ‘I am well satisfied with the photographic arrangement in particular, and I do believe it will prove to be one of the best things we have done.’ ‘The youngster had… the entire make up of the book to arrange.’

I had assumed this remark to refer to the photographs of the campus, to the large photograph of the Principle, even to the intriguing displays inserted inside the front and back cover.

Now I found myself asking whether my father had been responsible for, and intentional about, the placing of the photographs of two of the three African American students where they were.

What did it mean that there were so few African American Seniors?

I began to consider the whole social structure of the school and of Springfield itself at this time in a way that I had not ever thought about before. I realized that my assumption – without ever having given it a second’s thought -- had been that there wouldn’t be any African-Americans in Springfield at all at that time, and I was embarrassed again.

I was now focused, drawn to this social context to my father’s life as much by the seemingly pointed placement of the two portraits and by the surge in the Black Lives Matter movement that was making news across all media platforms -- against a police violence perpetrated predominantly against African-Americans among the minorities of color -- as by embarrassment at my own misapprehensions and assumptions.

                                                ******

Some quick on-line research provided the information I did not know I wanted “…1856: Springfield establishes a public school system. Within a short time, a separate school is created for black students.”

Springfield: Abraham Lincoln’s city, where the president responsible for the abolition of slavery lived between 1844 and 1861, and from where he represented the state in Congress from 1846. While Lincoln was a congressman in this city, the first public schools, opened a mere four years before the outbreak of the Civil War, were segregated by race: I was taken aback.

But according to the same site, in 1874 a new law was enacted that forbade segregation. Perhaps that meant that the school created for black students twenty years earlier was closed down. Or perhaps it opened its doors to white students.

I wondered how many parents moved their white children from Springfield High to the school created for black children; I wondered how many black parents moved their children to Springfield High. I wondered how welcoming either school was to the other.

Anyway, what could all this possibly have to do with with my father and his life.

I tried to shrug it off; the law prohibiting segregation was put in place fifty-plus years before he walked through the doors of his high school in fall of 1925. Was it in any way necessary to fall into the rabbit hole of this kind of exploration, to research the make-up of the population of Springfield at that time, determine what other high schools there could have been more welcoming to African Americans, and what determined the presence and absence of any group?

Did I really want to get into the history of our privilege and its systemic humiliation of other groups? Things had surely changed by 1928. And there were African American students at Springfield High. There were just very few of them.

So many other things could account for the small numbers: perhaps there wasn’t a large African American population in Springfield, and the ratio of students was proportional to the numbers of each ethnicity.

There was another, opposite embarrassment to contend with: should I really have been so taken aback to see that racism and segregation were systemic in Abraham Lincoln’s own city? What did I know of the population of Springfield at that time? Less than nothing.

What did I know about the history of racism in a country I did not even grow up in? Nothing much. My sympathy for the Black Lives Matter movement was no more than the knee-jerk reaction of a bleeding heart liberal. I was proud of my liberal heart, though I have never spent more than an hour outside the classroom in the company of any African-American. But did it justify indulging my attention on such peripheral matters? I should return to the subject of my father, not get distracted by the red herring of race, I thought.

The embarrassment itself swung back: why did I consider it peripheral? Did my father live in a vacuum, that all this should be irrelevant to his upbringing, to his choices, to his decisions? Did I live in a vacuum, that the pervasive awareness of past discriminations of all kinds had not seeped through my consciousness through the years, had not affected my sense of what the engagement in the intellectual life of my time had to be? What is the periphery and what is the center of any life? Are those the words one should even be using, periphery and center?

Minor League Baseball on the 4th of July [by Greg Pattenaude]

 

Steven Wrenn on deck! photo (c) Greg Pattenaude

There is something very patriotic about seeing baseball on the 4th of July. And even if you are not a big baseball fan, a visit to minor league park is worth the trip.  I am lucky to have a team less than fifteen minutes from my home.  My wife and I have made it a point to attend the July 4 game at Joseph Bruno Stadium in Troy, NY as our celebration of independence.  For less than $11, you can sit four rows behind the on-deck circle and get to see talented ballplayers hoping to make the big leagues someday.  Will it be Daz Cameron, son of former major leaguer Mike Cameron?  How about Steven Wrenn, who's father, Steve, played minor league ball in the late 1960s?  For many of the players, fresh out of college, this league is their first professional gig; they are getting paid to play baseball.  The reality, however, is that very few will make it to the majors, let alone move up another rung in the minor league system.  In the fifteen seasons of the Tri City Valleycats, 44 players have made it to the majors, players such as Dallas Keuchel, the 2015 American League Cy Young Award winner and Ben Zobrist, who last year played for the World Champion Royals and this season is with the first place Cubs. 

I always keep score at these games, then store the program in the basement.  In a few years, I'll pull out the scorecard to see if any of the names made it.  Sadly, there are many disappointing scorecards.  The "Joe", the area nickname for the ballpark, hosted the 2008 New York Penn League All Star game, which I attended.  The only names I recognized from my scorecard that night were the d'Arneau brothers, Travis, who plays for the Mets, and Chase, who is with the Braves.    

But on this night - July 4th, 2016, none of that matters; the Valleycats are playing the State College Spikes, an affiliate of the St Louis Cardinals.  And it's a perfect night for baseball and post game fireworks.  Not too many firework venues offer a comfortable chair, hot dogs for $2.50 and a cup holder for adult libations. 

Southpaw, the Valley Cats Mascot

In tonight's game, runs were scored early, with the Spikes leading most of the night.  Of course, in a minor league park, the game serves as filler for what happens in between innings, when various promotions are rolled out on the field.  There is Southpaw, the Valleycats' mascot, racing a 10 year old boy around the bases.  Southpaw always seems to lose by a step or two.  Then there is a game of musical chairs, with an obnoxious chicken (well, someone in a chicken suit), who cheats and always wins, becoming the park villain in the process and a great reminder to go get some tenders or a "spiedie" at the concession stand.  And finally, there is the Condiment Race and poor Relish, who never wins.  Tonight, he has a healthy lead on Ketchup and Mustard when a giant ketchup bottle jumps out of the stands and tackles Relish, allowing Ketchup to win.  Relish has been America's most under-appreciated condiment for many years.  Hokey?  You bet, but it's good, clean family fun; 21st century vaudeville.  Meanwhile, back to the game, the Spikes take a two run lead to the bottom of 9th.  With two outs and a runner on for the Valleycats, Taylor Jones, a product of Gonzaga University, cracked a mighty blast to center that had the fans on their feet.  But the ball died in the night air, falling just short of a game tying home run, and the home team lost 9-7.

But that's still OK, because now we have fireworks.  Synched to a mix of pop, country and patriotic music, the 20 minute display is the perfect way to conclude our nation's 240th birthday.  Maybe for the 241th, Relish will reign.  

The condiments race

Mourners [by Alan Ziegler]

Charlotte and Anne without Emily 
Charlotte without Anne and Emily

Don without Phil

George without Gracie

Groucho, Harpo, Zeppo, and Gummo without Chico
Groucho, Zeppo, and Gummo without Chico and Harpo
Zeppo and Groucho without Chico, Harpo, and Gummo
Zeppo without Groucho, Harpo, Gummo, and Chico

Mimi and Joan without Richard
Joan without Mimi and Richard

Paul, George, and Ringo without John
Paul and Ringo without George and John

Elaine without Mike

Jerry without Anne

Dom and Joe without Vince
Dom without Joe and Vince

Harry and Jimmy without Al
Harry without Al and Jimmy

Doc without Merle

Eng without Chang

Matty without Pearl
Karen, Alan, and Philip without Matty and Pearl

Discoveries from a Yearbook [by M. Fitzgerald]

More than a year after a momentous visit to Springfield, Illinois where my father lived his childhood and high school years, Jim Huston, the city librarian with whom I had become friends, sent me a copy of The Capitoline for 1928. It’s the Yearbook for the year my father graduated High School: a thick, green bound book.

I barely glanced at the sepia colored photographs of the campus, and only briefly paused on the pages that showed photographs of faculty and the administration: who were his teachers again? On my visit, Jim and I had gone to the school, and I had seen the letter about my father, written by the poet Vachel Lindsay and addressed to one of those teachers, framed and hanging in the English classroom. But I could not remember her name, although when I reached the faculty pages in the Yearbook, the name Susan Wilcox rang a bell.

The caption under her name said that she was Head of the English Department, and the adviser for the Bulletin, and the small cameo photograph showed an elderly delicate looking woman faintly smiling, with a curly untidy hair parted in the middle, and rimless glasses. There was a quote below the information: “Those who know her, know all words are faint.” It seemed very appropriate for an English teacher. I noticed that the information on every faculty member was followed by some kind of quote.

As I skimmed through, I noticed the arrangement of photographs for the senior class: some at the top of the page, and some at the bottom of the pages. In between, the names that corresponded to the photographs were listed alphabetically, with a line or two detailing scholastic achievements, and brief quotes, just like the brief quotes for the faculty.

My father was not among the Seniors who graduated in January, and the first photograph of him I saw was on the page for the members of the Scholarship Society.

He is looking straight into the camera with a questioning expression: his ears stick out a little, his hair is parted on the left, brushed down firmly and smoothed down by brilliantine or water. He looks young. He is young: he turned seventeen in October of his Senior Year.

The Scholarship Society, “was organized with the purpose of giving recognition to those who attain a high scholastic average…with a general average of 85% for the four years of his High School course…90% for three years in at least one major subject”.

Of course, he would be one of the high achievers, I thought. There must have been perhaps two dozen more scholarship students. I did not pause to count, moved on to look through the June graduates.

There he was: a different photograph. This time in three quarter profile, looking towards the left with the same serious questioning expression.

The hair shows a small wave, and both the strong nose and the thin lips are more defined. Below the long list of academic and other school activities, the brief quote “The guy who’s responsible for this.” I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I was more eager to see any other photographs of him and leafed quickly through, pausing briefly at the pages of informal snapshots of the Seniors: two of them are of my father, one in a full suit and tie, standing outside with a book in hand, the other in the same suit, leaning against some kind of structure. ‘Fitz again’ is the caption below the photo.

 

All in all, I saw half a dozen photographs of him in my first quick skim through: as quarter back in the football team, playing doubles in tennis and making it to the second place among the big twelve school teams in his Junior year, and as one of the winners in the public speaking contest among the big twelve. A popular, successful young man.

M. J. Fitzgerald, Guest Author July 11-15

This week we welcome back M.J.Fitzgerald as our guest author.  M.J. is the author of novels, short stories and essays, and teaches in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Minnesota.

Yearbook is part of an ongoing project, Drifts of Chance, a daughter's discoveries, a book of essays about the poet Robert Fitzgerald, best known for his translations of The Odyssey, The Iliad and The Aeneid.  An earlier essay, Plots and Sisters, was posted on The Best American Poetry Blog in October 2014.

Welcome back, M.J.

-- sdh

The Man Who Helped Writers

Henry Alsberg: The Driving Force of the New Deal Federal Writers’ Project

Susan Rubenstein DeMasi

McFarland, 2016

Writing biographies is a particular challenge. There is a normal literary reflex to turn a life story into a chronological account of events instead of locating the arc of the subject’s principal accomplishments. Facts pile on facts covering up the real story underneath. Additionally, sometimes it seems that it is a biographer’s nightmare to leave out a piece of research, no matter how trivial. It is a curse of biographers to be convinced that readers must be interested in what the subject had for lunch on Thursday afternoons before napping.

Susan Rubenstein DeMasi is to be highly commended not only for navigating around these dangers but also for taking on the task of writing about a subject who is not well-known. Henry Alsberg’s spirit is surely doing hand spins, for DeMasi has rescued him from undeserved obscurity and then told his fascinating life in clear and well-written prose.

Some subjects are cursed by the settings of their lives. The world itself provided insufficient background for them to lead an interesting life. Alsberg faced no such hardship. The Great Depression, alongside the Revolution and the Civil War, is one of the principal defining eras of the American experiment.

Writers were among those who suffered economic deprivations. The Federal Writers’ Project, part of the Works Progress Administration, was one of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s programs to help the unemployed. The project hired more than 6,000 people, mostly young and from the working class. 

It was Henry Alsberg, a journalist with an eye for understanding the social forces at work in the society and a moral compass with social justice as its true north, who was appointed to direct the Project. 

Because Alsberg himself came from the political left, and many projects were deemed left-wing, it didn’t take long for the House Committee on Un-American Activities to identify the Project as a threat to the country.

Alsberg deserves the principal credit for what turned out to be a thousand publications under his tenure. Ultimately, for example, there were 2,300 accounts of what it was like to have been a slave. Alsberg labored to ensure that such a vital history was collected.

In a way, Alsberg was the man who wrote America. The American Guide Series provided histories of each of the 48 states then in America. It took 6,000 writers to produce this invaluable series, which came under attack from some individual states for their inclusion of sharecroppers and workers.

The Project and its accomplishments are important stories in American life. It is odd, therefore, that Henry Alsberg’s name is not more widely-known.

DeMasi is out to correct that. Here’s Alsberg helping Jews who survived pogroms in Eastern Europe. There he is with Emma Goldman. Turn a page in DeMasi’s impressive book, and you find Alsberg aiding political prisoners.

Alsberg led a quiet personal life. It would have been easy to miss the inner man and focus just on the more famous aspects of his external life. But DeMasi, who did a jaw-dropping amount of original research, has determined that Henry Alsberg would be saved from oblivion.

She has done her job.

Advanced Algorithms, Final Exam [by Alan Ziegler]

Create algorithms to determine the following:

1)

How many pencils, pens, and markers are stored right now in mugs and other holders?

How many are usable?

How many have been nonfunctioning for more than a year?

2)

How many people within the past hour looked for their glasses, which were nestled atop their head?

How many people looked for their glasses and swept the top of their head without finding them there?

How many found their glasses on the top of their head then looked around to see if anyone saw them?

3)

How many people within the past hour said goodbye to someone they will never see again?

How many people in the past hour passed someone on the street whom they once passed on a street in another city?

How many people were on a bus, train, or plane with someone they went to high school with, and didn’t know it?

4)

How many writers spent more than one minute trying to decide whether to use past or last before hour in the past hour?

5)

How many individual french fries were consumed in the past hour by someone other than the person who ordered them?

How many hands were slapped trying to do the above?

6)

What is the collective weight of all the dog excrement dropped on sidewalks in the past hour?

What is the collective weight of all the dog excrement transferred to trash bins in the past hour?

How many dog walkers confirmed nobody was watching before walking away from their dog’s excrement?

How many people walked away without looking around first?

7)

How many people think that Larry Keating is an underrated comic actor?

How many people have ever mentioned ZaSu Pitts in a Facebook post?

8)

How many people dreamed last night that they told their students, “The decision to place bases 90 feet apart in baseball is the most perfect decision ever made!”

How many people can answer the following question without consulting a map: “If Yankee Stadium had no fences, would a ball that lands in Montreal be fair or foul?”

9)

How many people have wondered about any of the above in the past hour?

10)

How many people have, within the past hour, wondered about all of the above?

(Moon over the Square du salamandre, Paris 20ème)

Tales the Fifties: Elegy for the Little Man [by Alan Ziegler]

    One of my second-grade classmates has the demeanor of a little man.

    In 1953 Brooklyn, boys are required to wear ties to school; most of us have one or two clip-ons, worn until they become invisible. Except for the little man—he has many ties, and they are always perfectly knotted. Each morning after he takes off his coat he pauses at the classroom mirror and adjusts his tie. “Windsor knot,” he announces to anyone who stares.

    One day, the little man and I stay after school to help the teacher rearrange the bookshelves. It is taking a long time, and I start to toss in the books. The little man says, “My father always says, ‘If you are going to do something, get it right.’” I am impressed, and we redo the shelf.

    On the first day after Christmas vacation, the teacher—younger than my mother—asks the class to gather in the story area because she has something to tell us. The little man was killed in a car accident over the vacation. She could have told the class he moved away, she says, but she thinks we should always know the truth.

    Now a grown man, I can’t remember what the little man looked like. But I can picture this vividly: It’s a December blizzard night. The little man’s family is going visiting. His father is warming up the car. “Hurry up, dear, we’re late,” his mother says gently as the little man stands, his back to me, at the mirror next to the Christmas tree, getting his Windsor knot just so.

Rachel [by Mitch Sisskind]

Mitch the sad old poet stared into the 

void. He had read in Genesis 2:18 

that "it was not good for the man to be

alone" but the man was alone. What 

then was the use of it all? 

 

 

He thought of Billie Jean King. An
accomplished woman but neither
she nor any of her ilk held the slightest
interest for Mitch. None -- and he was 

sure the feeling was mutual.

  

 

Then Rachel suddenly appeared. She
was a real shot in the arm.  

 

 

Here's a picture of a jackass with a hot young
woman. The jackass is "on cloud nine."

  

Here's a picture of Mitch and Rachel.

 

Rachel had done some drawings over the years.

 

 

Many of them were sexual in a peculiar way.



Two of Mitch's favorite exclamations were "fuckbirds"
and "fuck a duck." Rachel adapted these as a drawing
of ducks having sexual intercourse.

 

Rachel started doing drawings of Mitch with a penis 
for his nose.

 

When Mitch was watching the world cup soccer
game Rachel did a drawing that continued the 

nose/penis idea. Mitch was rooting for Paraguay 

which she misspelled in the drawing.

 

 

Rachel had a fondness for word play. In another nose/penis

drawing she referred to post-nasal dick.

​Fascinated and energized by Rachel, Mitch started
a sort of beatnik biker look. He told Rachel they
might have to live under a bridge and without batting
an eyelash she said, "Let's live under a bridge then."

 

​
Mitch showed Rachel a picture of a rabbi with a 
possum which she found very inspiring.

 

 

Possums started appearing in the drawings as a
sexual symbol. Also Jewish stuff,

   

​The possum became a regular character in drawings
whose meaning could be obscure.

 

But nothing lasts forever:
"Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream." 

 

 

Ha, ha hee, full well is me, 
For I am now at liberty.

                   -- Sir Thomas Wyatt, the elder

   

Max Ritvo's Four Reincarnations [by Alan Ziegler]

I have concluded my self-imposed hiatus from this blog, and will be posting regularly again.

But I wanted to pre-restart with a note about Max Ritvo's forthcoming book of poems, Four Reincarnations, which will be published this Fall by Milkweed. (A poem from the book recently appeared in The New Yorker). Two days after Max joined two of my classes at Columbia in January 2014, I learned that he is terminally ill with Ewing's Sarcoma, a state of being that is in the text or subtext of many of his poems. But his poems—and his life—are about so much more. Max is one of the most intellectually and artistically gifted people I have ever known (he is also a wonderful performer). Timothy Donnelly—among others—has spoken splendidly about Max's work. For now, I will appropriate Max's own words:

A CENTO FOR MAX RITVO’S FOUR REINCARNATIONS

moving, joy, moving I am given a reward
so passionately and imaginatively
though the images vary exhaustingly and troublingly

much more beautiful than either one of our voices
your brain binds around mine, a gold gauze
this is how love works

thou art me before I am myself
you have my thoughts faster than I can
even of the imagination sizzling on top of it

I will live in your small ecstatic brain
for the possession of our smallest sensations
this is purity

who brings a kind of relief
in the middle of a blizzard
no one can speak the language you will rewrite

Meet the Press: Dante Di Stefano in Conversation with Crystal Simone Smith of Backbone Press

DD: In her famous essay, “Poetry is Not a Luxury” Audre Lorde writes: “Poetry is not only dream and vision; it is the skeleton architecture of our lives. It lays the foundations for a future of change, a bridge across our fears of what has never been before.” Can you begin by talking about how the chapbooks at Backbone Press embody this kind of bridge?

CS: I love the genre of poetry because of its closeness. A poem can be a single moment or span across a 100 years. And, poems are the author’s personal experience and truth, so as Lorde states, poetry can serve as an agent of change. Choosing to focus on poets of color meant, for me, our press would be considered political. In Tara Betts' 7x7 kwansabas, she deftly writes 25 celebratory poems about historic and iconic Black Americans, resurrecting and introducing many who are lesser known to the world. The form kwansaba, created by Eugene Redmond, consist of seven words to a line, each word no more than seven letters in seven lines of poetry, no easy feat. Additionally, Dariel Saurez’s chapbook, In the Land of Tropical Martyrs, consists of free verse, personal testaments of his Cuban heritage. The narratives are about family elders and universal suffering. I would say both of these titles are necessary bridges across generational and racial lines. Backbone hopes to publish many more titles that engage these broader cultural conversations.

DD: As you’ve just noted, Backbone Press publishes poets of color, and seeks work that is “political, invocative, social, gritty, personal, and poignant.” Can you talk about this mission and how it fits in with current cultural and political events?

CS: It’s important to note when I say poets of color this includes poets of all diverse backgrounds: Asian, Latino, Native American and so on. Our niche is cultural writing, not just poetry, by African American writers. We need more venues and spaces focusing on diversity. Not to say there aren’t prominent poets of color publishing and winning poetry contests; there’s quite a few. The publishing world, however, is pretty slanted and while most people (publishers) believe in diversity, they don’t always practice it. As for the terms listed in our mission, we wanted to attract a variety of styles, not a focus necessarily on form or technique, but the different ways we can define poetry with regards to culture: social influences, connecting differences, the various diasporas. Is the author writing across cultures? Is the use of language distinct, that of a vernacular tongue? Lastly, our publications often draw parallels with current political culture. For example, Eric Tran’s chapbook, Affairs with Men in Suits shines a brilliant and essential contra-light on North Carolina’s HB2, a law passed in the state that has been described as the most anti-LGBT legislation in the country. One might infer from Tran’s title that it is simply a collection of LBGTQ poetry, but the poems themselves explore complex issues of masculinity, insecurities, and the lust and lust-shame that occurs between male lovers who are closeted as a result of their conservative viewpoints. Poets don’t plan these things, but it even includes a heedful, ingenious bathroom sex poem. Tran’s collection is one of satirical, imagined scenarios that address the hypocritical standards by which laws like HB2 emerge. I also consider Suarez’s chapbook, In the Land of Tropical Martyrs, a must-read for those considering a visit to Cuba in light of the recent lift of sanctions by the US.

DD: How did Backbone Press come into being?

CS: Many years ago, I was a graphic and web designer and those skills are invaluable in advertising and publishing. While considering my options after MFA study in 2011, which admittedly were slim, I decided not to return to graphic design as a career, but instead to use that skill set to start the press. I am the founder and managing editor, so it is essentially my endeavor. But, I’ve been lucky to have other editors and an advisory board to help steer things. I also knew early on, Backbone would be a non-profit organization. Micro-press publishing is not an industry known for its profits and I wanted the company to align with the grassroots model, not in the sense of political action, but in practicing the strategies of starting small and increasing participation through social media, word of month, and brand recognition.

DD: Your Advisory Board includes some amazing poets and scholars: Lenard D. Moore, Evie Shockley, Cathy Park Hong, and Sheila Smith McKoy. What role does the Advisory Board plays at Backbone Press?

CS: Per our non-profit status and bylaws, we meet once annually to discuss the year in review, future plans, and to pass a budget. This is typically done with members that are local to Durham, North Carolina where we are based. I also seek the council of non-local members throughout the year as needed.  Lenard D. Moore, Sheila Smith McKoy, and Evie Shockley are all members of the Carolina African American Writers Collective (CAAWC), Moore being the founder of the writer’s group, which I’m a member of as well. Cathy Park Hong is on the MFA faculty of Queens University of Charlotte, my alum. She is small in stature, but a mighty force in contemporary poetry and someone whose work and efforts I hugely admire.

DD: C.P. Mangel’s Laundry is much different stylistically and structurally than the other chapbooks you’ve published. It’s a chapbook length poem about a hate crime in prison. The poem references Boethius and the Aryan Brotherhood, quoting Walt Whitman, Amy Lowell, Gerard Manley Hopkins, The Book of Lamentations, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, Gustave Flaubert, W. Somerset Maugham, C.P. Cavafy, and others. What do you find most compelling about this chapbook?

CS: The long poem is quite difficult to pull off. The author is challenged to maintain the metaphor, repetition of sound, and direct characters, all while pushing the narrative forward with a natural ease. Mangel, in our opinion, nailed this challenge in Laundry. While there is a rich, interloping narrative that unravels, with both thrill and simplicity, the added epigraphs and quotes interspersed pause the reader, forcing h/she to digest its relevance before continuing in the poem. What compelled me the most was the stunning, in-depth glimpse into prison life and skillful control of the poem from beginning to ending.

DD: Tyree Daye’s Sea Island Blues begins with a fine poem called “When I was New.” This poem includes the following notable stanzas:

            The small cedars and pines dancing
            under street lamps celebrated
            a night without lightning.
            And I danced with nothing but gin
            in my stomach, Robert Johnson,
            in my head,
            the devil in my wallet.

            When you’re poor hell is the least
            of your worries. It’s a hard thing to kick,
            loneliness, without drugs or booze.
            The angels of sleep press your silhouette
            on the wall across the room.

            And I heard a Geechee woman sing a song
            that flew up like cardinals we were told
            to blow kisses at for good luck.
            We sat on a live oak branch
            that hung men and women
            who cried freedom in G major.

These stanzas typify Daye’s skill at creating poems where the present is a place freighted with pasts and vanishings, old grievances, loneliness, and the living legacy of systemic violence against black and brown bodies. Using these stanzas as a starting point, can you tell us how Daye’s chapbook is in dialogue with the work of Dariel Suarez, Eric Tran, and Allison Joseph?

CS: First, I should say I love that poem and I love the depth Tyree accomplishes in his poetry. He is a very young poet, an MFA student, but his soul is old and wise. I think the correlation between the writers you mention is each author’s intention to explore the human condition.  While Tran does so through human/homosexuality, the other authors are doing so through race and other means. To delve further, each manuscript examines race through the lens of place. Allison Joseph’s Trace Particles tackles America as a whole. Through pop culture parodies, we are forced to examine our part in America’s social failures. Whereas, Tyree Daye and Dariel Suarez’s poems are immersed in precise places and the reader is afforded close, vivid experiences through their witness and chronicling. Perhaps the more important commonality in these works is the sense of alienation, an often persistent presence in cultural writing. That alienation, the desire for others to understand and acknowledge it, in many ways, becomes a shared culture.

DD: How has your work as an editor and book publisher influenced your life as a writer? In what ways has your writing life, in turn, influenced your editorial and publishing work?

CS: I certainly read more poetry now as par for the course in this position. I very much try to keep the two roles of publisher and writer separate. I also volunteer in youth detention homes where I hold poetry workshops for young offenders, usually black boys. The publishing and workshops are community efforts for me. Poetry is exchange—pain on paper, or healing. It is not something the world can afford to dismiss. Being an editor has made me a more recognized writer in the industry.

DD: What is the most encouraging experience you have had as an editor?

CS: When I started Backbone I thought mostly in terms of having a space, less about the strategies it takes to maintain or grow such a space. So much of small publishing depends on support from the entire literary community and I was a barely known poet and not yet a publisher. A friend, Jonathan Farmer, recommended I use CRWROPPS to advertise and get the word out, so to speak. Not only did Allison Joseph, the owner and moderator, list our call for submissions for free, she submitted Trace Particles for consideration. I was so moved by her gesture to entrust us with her work. I felt the universe was working in my favor; that Backbone could transcend from idea to actuality.

DD: What is your personal definition of poetry?

CS: I have but one, tell the truth.

DD: Can you tell us about the Lucille Clifton Poetry Prize?

CS: The second encouraging experience I had as a young editor was the opportunity to establish The Lucille Clifton Annual Poetry Contest. Clifton’s work hugely influenced my writing life. It was the sole reason I pursued an MFA in poetry. I was planning to attend a summer writer’s conference where she was on the faculty and I wanted to come as a poet serious about the craft, even if that only meant an MFA candidate. She passed away a few months before the conference. With the cordial permissions of Sidney and Gillian Clifton the prize was launched in 2012. It is held each spring and honors Clifton’s prolific work. Sidney Clifton provided the salient words below:

“As the daughter of poet Lucille Clifton, I am thrilled to see Backbone Press honor my mother's work with the annual Lucille Clifton Poetry Prize. My mother's life and work bore testament to her courageous innate ability to distill life's most wondrous and terrible moments into words that will continue to sear and resonate. Her life, her way of seeing and walking in the world were the backbone of her work. I am her daughter. Her backbone is mine. And yours.”  

DD: On that note, it would be fitting for us to end the conversation with the words of a poet who has Lucille Clifton’s words (literally) tattooed on her arm. Tara Betts is a spiritual heir to Clifton, and a tremendous poet in her own right. Her chapbook, 7x7 Kwansabas, is, by far, my favorite in your catalog. Here is her poem, consisting of five linked kwansabas:

            The Autobiography Suite-in-Progress

                7

            You see parents where others see black
            sock and white sock. A pair mated
            to make you and the hump pushing
            you from only child to big sister,
            only girl, basket of eggs, not bearer
            of the family name, meant for skirts,
            singing to moons, putting pins in maps.

                16

            Virgin looked like a broken ring shoved
            to the back of a drawer. Avoid
            telling your mother that pyro sounds like
            kiss, pop, boom that creeps to shudder
            rush through pelvis and chest. She made
            you in such fluent heat. You learn
            this tongue leaves you, a popped kernel.

                25

            My torch of ire made itself plain.
            A man took me on and off
            like a pair of pants. I sifted
            through books, ever loyal, yet not knowing
            what would lift my head, heavy from
            stone pressed into my brain. Blues songs
            on repeat weigh down each sunrise, again.

                34

            When 6 trains smashed ease from joints
            and winter stole browns from my temples
            so they matched storms numbing my brain,
            as it grew to hate paper, ink,
            soothe itself with blood songs that whisper
            lack of vitamin B, iron, much more.
            I curl like wet hair, curved note.

                43

            I scaled the ivory tower not wifedom,
            found muscles I never thought I had.
            I am looking past three short years
            when the last two decades blinked shut,
            and brought me here. Swept away fog
            that slowed me as death turned common.
            Clear, urgent, ready to raise these fists.

Crystal Simone Smith is the author of two poetry chapbooks, Routes Home, (Finishing Line Press, 2013), Running Music, (Longleaf Press, 2014) and a forthcoming collection of haiku, Wild Flowers. Her work has appeared in Callaloo, Nimrod, Barrow Street, Frogpond, African American Review, and elsewhere. She is an alumna of the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop and the Yale Summer Writers Conference. She holds a BA in Studio Art Design from The University of North Carolina at Greensboro and an MFA in Poetry from Queens University of Charlotte and lives in Durham, NC. She teaches English Composition and Creative Writing and is the Founder and Managing Editor of Backbone Press.

Dante Di Stefano’s collection of poetry, Love is a Stone Endlessly in Flight, is forthcoming from Brighthorse Books.

 

Britain fogged in, all-nighters bring France to the brink

Hot conversations await France's hard-pressed sea, sex & sun seekers

The British EU referendum and the supposed decision of certain of France’s unions to go head-to-head with the government over a planned protest march made of Thursday 23 June 2016 a day of future determining.

Towards the evening of that stormy day, Karine and I couldn’t find any useful information on how the referendum was faring, so we decided to go first to see a hip-hop concert and then go to the Nuit debout – Up all night – protest at the Place de la République and see for ourselves what had come of the union-government confrontation, if anything.

The Nuit debout movement in Paris has been staying up all night – a combination of sit-in and continous debate/speechifying –  at République since March 31st. The movement has is origins in, especially, protests against the national emergency laws promulgated by the government following the November 2015 terror shootings by religious fanatics. It was then carried along as a general protest against the way things have got to be.

According to Politis, a political magazine, Nuit debout-ers in Ile de France are highly educated, uncertainly employed and Parisian. They are young people who reject party-political commitment and young union activists along with older, “left-leaning” persons with time on their hands. They have no political traction in the broader country. This corresponds with my personal observations.

Intellectually and politically, Nuit debout-ers can be summed up in bold sentiments, such as this one, scrawled in a place usually reserved for paid advertising on the number 3 métro:

“Either everybody gets to share in the wealth or working makes no sense”.

When Karine and I got to République – a teensy tipsy from some impromptu boozy hipping & hopping – some discussion was taking place as to how to separate the Nuit debout movement from its association with the union agenda. There were also some people telling very patient policepersons that a policeperson’s job is a shame to the people and so forth and so on.

All was pretty much tired-out talk and in this respect much like the gnashing of teeth on the other side of la Manche (formerly the "English Channel").

Since 1703, England’s had a pretty good run at world empire. Some of it has been positively brilliant. One thinks of Wilberforce or Paine. Jane Austen writ my Bible and Keats my creed, and Trollope my parliamentary handbook. I still laugh at the Flashman novels and paw around to find what’s newly-published in the iles. I envy Lucky Jim, O! How I envy him. Bravo, les anglo-saxons!

But it’s all like the earnest plea to discuss the independent future of Nuit debout  Karine and I heard – just nostalgia-based make up for the hard facts: Bzzzz! Game over!

The European Union could certainly do worse than Angela Merkel or one of those clever Danish women so in view these days. And, as far as I can see, we will do better with schrecklich-dresser Merkel than otherwise. Those ugly jackets hide real spine as well as her womanly ass. Little England will get “One Nation Tory” Teresa May – a campaign idea that seems to me just about a winner for everybody: lucky little England.  

As to France, it’s always a sad moment to see nice people full of good ideas drooping under the weight of disappointed hopes for something… something… well, for something better. It is discouraging to have pinned any hopes at all on such unreliable people as political labor unionists. But, thank you, stars, no unpleasant, possibly anti-Republican realignments have taken place in the froth of it all.

And Nuit debout (including the protests that preceded it) has real victories to its credit in the matter of public debate. First, the Nuit debout-ers see themselves as proud citizens of a Republic, not members of some identity-obsessed, complaining interest group in a corporate state. Second, they have come up with ways to conduct organized open debate in disorderly crowd situations. Third, insistent confrontation over control of symbolic public space has meant that today citizens hold the public spaces, not the police and the religious boobies.

Vacation starts today, July 1^st. France (and everybody else else in Europe too) are going away for the next few months, including the Nuit debout-ers. Everybody will be able to think things over, but you can bet the Nuit debout-ers will: the legitimation/integration of the extreme right and political realignment generally, immigration into Europe, EU leadership, economic growth (or “no growth”), wealth distribution, individual and collective (identity) rights and empowerment.

We will think these summery thoughts even if, as Karine claims, we’ve all got to adapt to living in a Scotland-like climate of raucous cloud and chilly breezes.

“Wool underpants, mon Tracy,” she adds, hopefully. “We’ve got to make wool underpants. Then we shall be rich as well as adapted. No?”

Thinking about wool underpants and the Nuit debout movement puts me in mind of the fabulous, dizzy moment of Harold Washington’s dead-of-winter 1982-3 Chicago mayoral campaign. In those days, Chicago was the last white New Deal city. Demographics and development made it an new city and, I realize now, was a pre-visualization of contemporary American politics.

President Obama was famously there at that time. But so were many others who figure or have figured in his administration, along with unsung Democratic Socialist activists (who had the wit to see that lifestyle was the coming issue), old guard Hyde Park radicals, journalists and bureaucrats. To the delighted astonishment of our ordinary black neighbors and the disdain of the political ones, I was there, too, with my pals, Jonathan and Tom, putting up posters and knocking on doors.

I think the Nuit debout-ers have been learning about politics in France in the wake of the November mass murders as I learned about politics in America at Harold Washington’s feet.

I learned that American politics are, above all, dirty, cruel and violent. Everything turns on race perception and a whiny feeling of being hard-done by (For this reason, Bernie Epton, an undistinguished but white person, originally the token candidate put up by the hopelessly coopted Republican Party, became a serious contender – Sound familiar?)  Politically-minded people care principally about power not principal and certainly not the public weal (The white-dominated City Council refused to accept the result – Sound familiar?).

In short, in Chicago, I saw that politics reflects human beings and a little bird tells me that Nuit debout-ers have seen this, too. If you want to go forward, you’d better get used to working with unpleasant facts and people. Be prepared to be swept away, as was poor Bernie Epton, by your own unsavory, unexplored, impulses.

But, finally, even if politics is the moral equivalent of bonded servitude in a tar pit, it’s both useful and beautiful. Politics is a uniquely honorable, dangerous, undertaking for decent human beings such as the Nuit debout-ers, of whom we have not heard the last.

Meanwhile, Vive la République. Vive la France. Vivement les vacances.