The Best American Poetry

Where My Dreaming and My Loving Live: Poetry & the Body: Pat Mora

The Waiting, acrylic on canvas, by Julia Khoroshikh

Metamórfosis

by Pat Mora

                     Pearls here
                         Pearls there
                        Pearls behind us
                        —George Sarandáris

             I

Topless
she rules
her turquoise sea,
this child,
kicks her commands.

Arms outflung,
she orchestrates
waves, enters
her Aegean kingdom,
plants her small
feet triumphantly
on obedient sand,
scolds a swell
that lifts her
with its clear power.

The sea bows,
retreats.
Vasílissa
tis thálassas
smiles
regal approval
at the light
rippling her long mysterious hair.

            II

Laughing, full nude
     fengári tosses
an eager string
of fish to cheer
     the night-brooding sea.

Like fireflies they dart
     and glint in the sea’s dark,
whispering folds.
     The fish leap
to ride the waves
     of its silver sorrow
like stars scurrying
     to our fabled shores.

Might I step softly
     on the jasmine shimmer
of their fins
     from island to island
on this fragrant bridge of light?

            III

We are all beautiful
     in water. Girls
         lift their mothers
             laughing in their arms.
Grandmothers, heavy in sand,
     float in this
          caressing sea,
              point their toes, dancers again,
their arms, graceful, as silvery-
      green olive trees,
           their legs, lovely in play,
                in ripples of light.

In 2018, The University of Arizona Press will publish Pat Mora's seventh adult poetry collection, Encantado: Desert Monologues; and Lee and Low Books, her children’s poetry collection, Bookjoy, Wordjoy. Her other adult collections include Adobe Odes; Aunt Carmen's Book of Practical Saints;  Communion; Borders; Chants, and Agua Santa: Holy Water, where "Metamórfosis" was first published.  Among her awards are Honorary Doctorates from North Carolina State University and SUNY Buffalo, a Life-time Achievement Award from the Texas Institute of Letters, a Virginia Hamilton Literary Award, an Honorary Membership in the American Library Association, a Life-time Membership in USBBY, a Civitella Ranieri Fellowship to write in Umbria, Italy, and a Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Texas at El Paso. She was a recipient and judge of a Poetry Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and a recipient and advisor of the Kellogg National Leadership Fellowships. Born in El Paso to a loving, bilingual family, Pat lives in Santa Fe. She is always working on new books.

"Where My Dreaming and My Loving Live: Poetry & the Body" is the second annual offering of the Poetry Coalition -- more than twenty organizations nationwide dedicated to working together to promote the value poets bring to our culture and communities, as well as the important contributions poetry makes in the lives of people of all ages and backgrounds. A founder member of the Coalition, Letras Latinas at Notre Dame's Institute's for Latino Studies has partnered with the Best American Poetry blog to present 10 poems by women in March that engage with this year's theme, which borrows a line from U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith's "Flores Woman." The poems in this project were curated by Emma Trelles.

Notes on the Final Four (Part Two) [by Dean Smith]

Part 2: Touch

I’m still replaying Grayson Allen’s last second shot against Kansas that would have sent Duke to the Final Four. Last Sunday's game resembled a heavyweight boxing match from start to finish and Allen’s shot teased its way off the front rim to the backboard and around the rim again before harmlessly bouncing out. Off-balance in desperation when he shot the ball, I wondered whether it left his fingertips with enough softness towards the rim. Shooters trade in dodgy concepts such as “streaks” and “touch”—illusory notions used to define their ability to consistently put the ball in the basket by coaches and commentators. In this case, Allen's reputation as a "dirty" player may have worked against him in the celestial realm of the basketball gods. Karma does find its way to the hardwood. 

Kansas won in overtime 85-81 and it was one of the most thrilling games of the last five years. The shooting guards put on a display for both teams—and Kansas hit their three-point shots during the extra time.

Villanova faces Kansas in a clash of the titans tonight. These teams explode from one end of the court to the other. Their “bigs” can shoot three-pointers and everyone fills the lane on the break. Villanova won it all two years ago and they are seasoned. Kansas is also a veteran club but may lack the discipline of the Wildcats. It will also be a battle of interesting names. Villanova has Donte DiVincenzo and Kansas LaGerald Vick and Sviatoslav Mykhailiuk (last name pronounded MAH-KYE-LUKE) Either of these teams can win it all.

Michigan will prevail against upstart Loyola. The Ramblers will battle valiantly and have already achieved the unthinkable. Led by senior guard Muhammad-Ali Abdur-Rahkman, Michigan has a date with destiny and they could pull it off. This team is the antithesis of the Fab Five team from the 1990s and reflects the blue-collar character of its coach. John Beilein’s Michigan Wolverines will be in the NCAA Championship with a tall order on its hands in defeating either Villanova or Kansas. I’ll be pulling for Michigan because my dad coached John Beilein at Wheeling College in the early seventies.

“John was a student of the game,” my dad said, “and a pretty good player. He runs a clean program.”

My father possesses an astute basketball mind and is the best pure shooter I’ve ever seen. His shot lifted from his fingertips with a tightly wound backspin and rose perfectly in a medium arc toward the basket splashing through the center of the net almost every time effortlessly. He didn’t shoot the traditional jump shot but a hybrid version that incorporated elements of a set shot with a quick release and only the slightest elevation from the balls of his feet. He idolized Bob Cousy. My first memories are of him playing in pick-up games and coaching at the collegiate level as an assistant for the University of Baltimore. At the end of practice, he’d pick up a ball, twirl it on his index finger and then carefully edge it over the rim into the basket still spinning. 

That’s when I wanted to become a basketball player.

My Irish father, James “Snuffy” Smith knew what he was doing when he suggested that I be named Dean Smith—a compromise designed to placate his Italian father-in-law. Dino Bartoli wanted the first-born grandson to be named after him.  In September of 1963 neither family was ready for a “Dino Smith.” 

It strikes me now that this name choice foreshadowed my father’s desire to become a basketball coach five years later. He had already encountered Dean Smith numerous times within the sports pages of the Baltimore Sun and the News American whenever Maryland played the team from Chapel Hill, NC. The Tar Heel coach was about to begin his third season. 

My father had been the best regional salesman Esso ever had but it was killing him on the inside. He’d won regional sales prizes like a bolt-action deer rifle and he was a natural at sales but basketball was his passion. He’d played point guard for the legendary coach Ed Hargaden at Loyola High School in the early sixties and then the University of Baltimore. 

My parents divorced in 1970.        

When I was eight, my dad left Baltimore to coach at Wheeling College and pursue his dream. I didn’t see him very much but I practiced basketball all the time, hoping to impress him when he’d return. Basketball healed the pain and so did poetry.

I wrote the poem “Head Fake” about the days without him:

…the fundamentals of separation

became the head fake

the spin-move, the jab stab

aggressive, tenacious

when I found the range

to play for him…

I saw my father at Wes Unseld's basketball camp in the summers. Wes played for the Baltimore Bullets. At six-feet seven, Wes played an aggressive but small center position. And yet he defended the seven-footer Kareem Abdul-Jabaar with the greatest hook shot in the history of the game better than anyone. Wes confessed his secret to us campers that he stepped on Kareem's feet. Wes could barely dunk the ball but he could grab a rebound off the backboard, turn in mid air and heave an outlet pass over his head the length of the court to hit the opposite backboard. Just before lights out, he'd stop by to tuck me in at camp.

Dad returned to Baltimore in 1976 to coach the Johns Hopkins Blue Jays. For the first time, my brother and I traveled with the team on bus trips, ate box lunches, sat on the bench and alerted my dad and head coach Gary Rupert when there were seven minutes left on the half-time clock. They made it into the Division III NCAA tournament that year.

In 1979, my stepfather was transferred to Chicago for a better job and I left my dad and relatives back in Baltimore. Back then, it took a village to raise two boys and my mom and stepfather made a good team as did my dad and his wife. All four of my parents brought strength and sacrifice to us on a daily basis.  

Snuffy went on to coach with J.D. Barnett and Tubby Smith at Virginia Commonwealth University. Those teams made it into the NCAA tournament. The game was beginning to change and my father opted for a more stable career in business. Also, my brother and I were headed to college. He’s still in touch with John Beilein and Tubby Smith.

The last four teams standing are rostered with players who have stayed in school and not the “one-and-done” types who opt for the big money of the NBA after one season—often never realizing their potential.

Dad and I will be watching on Monday night and speaking at half time. My lifelong basketball journey has involved seeking out and getting to know my father.  Selected for publication in the inaugural issue of Open City by editor and basketball junkie Thomas Beller, "Head Fake" ends with the following lines:

Basketball is love

It takes a soft touch

from long range

and lots of practice.

Happy 30th Birthday Best American Poetry!

On Tuesday, April 3, 2018, at 7 PM, Poet's House will host an all-star cast to honor the thirtieth anniversary of the birth of The Best American Poetry annual anthology. 

Featuring former guest editors:  

Mark Doty, ed. BAP 2012
Terrance Hayes, ed. BAP 2014
Edward Hirsch, ed. BAP 2016
Natasha Trethewey, ed. BAP 2017  

David Lehman, series editor, will moderate.

DATE AND TIME:  April 3, 2018 - 7:00PM

Poets House
10 River Terrace, New York, NY 10282
Elizabeth Kray Hall

ADMISSION:  $10, $7 for students and seniors, free to Poets House members 

 

 

 

On Kenneth Koch [by David Shapiro]

What’s Happening

(“Write 19 lines under that heading and I’ll post it” – DL to DS)

1. Mostly decathected as they say in analysis: forget forget!
2.  I pause don’t dance don’t leap. "I rarely dance."
3.  I don't own the four volumes of Herzen just a sliced bio like his bio.
4. "Bankers are roaring like beasts on the floor of the Bourse"
5. What's better? Alain Delon and Monica Vitti loiter at stock exchange.
6. Someone dies, a minute of silence grows, then the beasts roar back.
7. I love stringing beads in a bead store in New Orleans. Beads in trees.
8. I wanted a random necklace to give to a random friend.
9. I was attacked for randomness. It was indeed too expected.
10. The critic's glasses are flying, and also a Mondrian flower torn apart.
11. "I am afraid of nothing. I have BEEN to Mexico."
12. Spinoza the lovable philosopher fried spiders and watched: what?
13. Don't overcome obstacles, find easiness. KK's motto from VL
14. What's happening? What am I thinking? "Do you actually think?"
15. Ron Padgett: you don't actually think I will read all this, do you?
16. Don't ever use the past tense in discussing physical beauty.
17. My friend said he was sinking into the white spaces between letters.
18. Whitman said "Leave the best unsaid----------------------------------
19. How do you end a poem? With the proper sense of endlessness.

in memory of KK

-- David Shapiro [March 31, 2009]

"Notes on the Final Four" [by Dean Smith]

Part 1: The Cavalier Curse

The first week of the NCAA basketball tournament is my favorite time of the year. I’ve always been addicted to the possibility of a Cinderella story and this year I found myself in a precarious position. I’d just watched the University of Virginia win the ACC tournament in Brooklyn and enjoy what was arguably the best regular season in the school’s history along with a number one ranking for the home stretch of the season.

I’d managed to resist the temptation of wishing for a Final Four appearance or even a championship for my alma mater for the entire season. As a Virginia fan, I knew better. My team’s modus operandi involved squeezing the life out of the opposition with a boa constrictor-like defense and a methodical offense predicated on screens and passing to drain the shot clock. Michigan, Kansas, and Villanova all had talented teams that could adjust their tempo--accelerating or de-accelerating--to match their opponent's style. We only had one gear and in a tournament that could be a liability. Those teams emerged as the first three of my Final Four teams. I then violated all of my rules of bracket selection and went with my heart--penciling Virginia into the championship position of my office pool. I even went as far as to wear a Virginia sweatshirt to work. I'm now convinced these behaviors helped disturb the universe. 

On Tuesday of that week, I learned the Cavaliers would be without DeAndre Hunter, a redshirt freshman who had become an “X” factor for the team. Amidst a collection of players who fit Coach Tony Bennet’s system of defense and ball control, Hunter took games over with his athleticism. He single-handedly silenced 27,000 Syracuse fans in early February with a 15-point outburst that defined the margin of victory.

When I received the news of Hunter’s broken hand, I immediately thought of the Cavalier Curse. I served as an usher during seven-foot four center Ralph Sampson’s illustrious tenure at UVA and remembered in 1984 when guard Othell Wilson injured his foot, dashing all hope of a national championship that year. My namesake, Dean Smith tortured the Cavaliers as well back then--shortening games with his four corners offense. When I attended UVA, Coach Holland's dog shared my name. (How I was named and my basketball lineage will be the subject of another basketball post). I've learned to cultivate as much irony as possible in life. 

Back to the curse. In 1990, the Virginia football team incurred a costly personnel infraction with their number one ranking on the line against Georgia Tech and had a touchdown nullified for too many men on the field.  The touchdown would have allowed them to win by four points instead of losing by three. Also, one of their top receivers had fallen down a stairwell in a construction site the night before to end his career.

There had already been enough mishaps over the years. Surely, this year was going to be different.

Top seed Virginia faced the 16^thseed UMBC in the first round. I cringed. The games makers were definitely messing with my mind.

Unlike most of the nation, I knew the University of Maryland Baltimore County Retrievers basketball program well. I’d been a ball boy along with my brother for its early basketball teams and had spent several hundred hours in its gym. My father Snuffy Smith was an assistant coach for the UMBC Retrievers in the late 1970s. He recruited scrappy local players that would earn the school their first ever appearance in an NCAA tournament. Dad coached under Billy Jones—the first African American player to start in the ACC for Maryland. 

Division II basketball in Baltimore during those days was blood sport and neighborhood bragging rights were often at stake. The Baltimore area produced tremendous basketball talent and the rivalries and personalities were every bit as interesting as Lefty Driesell’s Terrapin squad in College Park. Marvin “The Human Eraser” Webster dominated for Morgan State, Brian “Gumby” Matthews played like NBA star Bobby Dandridge for Towson State and Ronald Smith roamed the middle for the University of Baltimore and often arrived at the gym in a long mink coat. Riding the team bus and sitting at the end of the bench, my brother and I were mesmerized by these characters. 

This year’s UMBC team was coached by Ryan Odom, son of Dave Odom who coached at Virginia during my undergraduate days in Charlottesville. Leading Wake Forest to seven straight NCAA appearances, Dave was a cerebral tactician who undoubtedly had shared thoughts with his son about how to dismantle the top seed and number one ranked team in the tournament. Ryan's pedigree was enough to cause alarm. 

Tied 21-21 at the half, UMBC spread the floor in the second and quickly established a 12-point lead. Unheralded point guard K.J. Maura penetrated the Virginia defense and dished to his teammates Joe Sherburne and Jarius Lyles. They hit their shots--each one stabbing the bull and dulling its senses. Panic set in on the Virginia sideline. For the first time in the history of the tournament, a number one seed lost to a sixteenth. Virginia had finished the season 31-2--but records meant nothing. Everybody in the big dance starts 0-0. 

Writing in the Southern Reviewin 1991, John T. Irwin described a Cavalier as someone “equally adept at penning a witty sonnet or making a dashing cavalry charge.”  Unfortunately, Virginia struggled with finding any kind of form let alone a sonnet against the Retrievers. They missed shots, defensive assignments, and failed to mount any kind of cavalry charge. UMBC obliterated Bennet’s impenetrable “pack-line” defensive fortress. The Retrievers trounced the Cavaliers by twenty points in the most embarrassing loss in tournament history.

"You guys and dad were on the ground floor of the program," my stepmother texted me. 

It was bittersweet. 

So much for the utility of being a soldier and a poet—only the University of Virginia could play its best season ever and suffer one of the worst losses in any sport. It may have been Thomas Jefferson who started the curse with this quote:

Games played with the ball and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind.

The Loyola Ramblers now fill the hole in my bracket. I did get my Cinderella story after all. To add even more irony, I played basketball for the Loyola Ramblers in high school outside Chicago. 

 

 

 

Erin & Linda Reagan Update(s): Will Erin Date Again? [by Walter Carey]

Editor's note: Walter Carey writes: "David Huntley, my source for this story, is the pseudonym of an executive at CBS who asked that he or she not be named.  -- WC." See our earlier dispatch of October 13, 2017. 

Erin Reagan Boyle has stayed out of the limelight during the controversy surrounding Linda Reagan's departure from the show. Brigid Moynihan, who remains the most beautiful brunette on television, has unwittingly created a dilemma for her producers. Should they match her up with an eligible male? Should she be dating? Is the possibility of her reconciling with Boyle realistic?

The problem: as long as she remains single, Erin is an exemplary role model for single mothers and professional women. To add romance to er life would be to risk this identification. On the other hand, the female demographic has expressed itself on a tw-to-one basis favoring a dating relationship, even if it does not have a happy outcome.

The wild card is Erin's daughter, now a Columbia junior, "As long as Nicky Reagan remains an undergraduate, our hands are tied," shrugged Shumacher. The irony is not lost on the actress who plays Nicky. Should she hook up with a guy while her mother remains celibate? There is a possibility that the cardinal and the police commissioner will discuss the hypothesis the next time they play chess. Nicky does not smoke pot even though the other girls in the dormitory do but the temptation to sin is great. She is now twenty-two years old and one of the best college debaters in the nation. Erin is proud of her and their exemplary relationship so unique in the annals of mother-daughter relationships.

For our Israeli readers, consider this insight into Erin Reagan's mind:
משנת 2010 מככבת בסדרת הטלוויזיה "שוטרים בדם" המשודרת ברשת CBS. בסדרה היא מגלמת את דמותה של התובעת ארין, בת למשפחת שוטרים אירית-אמריקאית.

It has now been nearly a year since Linda Reagan''s demise on Blue Bloods, and the question that has haunted fans of the show" refuses to die. Did she jump or was she pushed? 

This remains topic number one on the set.

Those who believe Linda jumped are in the minority. "It is not in her character," said Maria Baez, Danny's partner. Maria is not related to the folksinger Joan Baez but she respects her work. Jamie Reagan shrugged and deflected questions about whether he would accept a promotion that would take him off the beat. Erin Reagan Boyle, true to her Libra nature, was non-committal but glad the conversation did not turn to her love life. Frank Reagan, wearing his signature Brooks Brothers red, white, and blue rep tie, sighed.

"The contracts of contract players are up for review each season, and that's the simple fact," Max Shumacher said. When asked point-blank if the decision to eliminate Linda Reagan from the plot was the consequence of a salary dispute with Amy Carlson, the actress who portrayed Danny Reagan's wife in the hit TV series, he would neither deny nor confirm the allegation. In October, Carlson broke her public silence to say that she didn't think her departure from the show was handled well but that it had been "an honor to be part of a superb ensemble cast" and that Danny has been very sweet about it. "He really has a gentle side, which he tries to keep under wraps," she said.

What most concerns Linda and her fans is the way the plot accommodated her sudden elimination from it and the Sunday night family dinners for which the show is famous. "It was like an execution," Felicity Unger said. Ms. Unger, vice president of the Television Psychology Association, said she spoke for other psychologists who felt that fans of the Friday night procedural need "a way to grieve, to move through it."

Linda Reagan's demise occurs off-screen, between seasons of the long-running program. It is a particularly brutal death -- she dies in a helicopter crash. "She was doing her job," the police psychologist counsels Danny, who refuses to be consoled. "She died the way she would have wanted to die -- in the line of duty, same as you." But the unsettling feeling persists that a helicopter crash represented a certain producer's hostility to Linda and the long-repressed wish to "off the bitch." -- W. C.

Those who believe Linda jumped are in the minority. "It is not in her character," said Maria Baez, Danny's partner. Maria is not related to the folksinger Joan Baez but she respects her work. Jamie Reagan shrugged and deflected questions about whether he would accept a promotion that would take him off the beat. Erin Reagan Boyle, true to her Libra nature, was non-committal but glad the conversation did not turn to her love life. Frank Reagan, wearing his signature Brooks Brothers red, white, and blue rep tie, sighed.

"The contracts of contract players are up for review each season, and that's the simple fact," Max Shumacher said. When asked point-blank if the decision to eliminate Linda Reagan from the plot was the consequence of a salary dispute with Amy Carlson, the actress who portrayed Danny Reagan's wife in the hit TV series, he would neither deny nor confirm the allegation. In October, Carlson broke her public silence to say that she didn't think her departure from the show was handled well but that it had been "an honor to be part of a superb ensemble cast" and that Danny has been very sweet about it. "He really has a gentle side, which he tries to keep under wraps," she said.

What most concerns Linda and her fans is the way the plot accommodated her sudden elimination from it and the Sunday night family dinners for which the show is famous. "It was like an execution," Felicity Unger said. Ms. Unger, vice president of the Television Psychology Association, said she spoke for other psychologists who felt that fans of the Friday night procedural need "a way to grieve, to move through it."

Linda Reagan's demise occurs off-screen, between seasons of the long-running program. It is a particularly brutal death -- she dies in a helicopter crash. "She was doing her job," the police psychologist counsels Danny, who refuses to be consoled. "She died the way she would have wanted to die -- in the line of duty, same as you." But the unsettling feeling persists that a helicopter crash represented a certain producer's hostility to Linda and the long-repressed wish to "off the bitch." -- W. C.

Farewell Le Grande Orange [by Greg Pattenaude]

Today's opening day of the 2018 baseball season, usually a day of eternal optimism, had a shadow of melancholy with the passing of the great Rusty Staub.  Rusty is the only player to have achieved 500 hits with four different teams - Houston, Montreal, Detroit and the Mets.  I'll talk about his time with my team and my favorite memories.  He played for the Mets from 1972 through 1975, when he wore number four, and 1981 through 1985, when he wore number ten. 

 I attended my first Opening Day in 1974.  My friend had secured front row tickets along the right field line on the field level at Shea Stadium. I was bundled in a parka, gloves and a knit hat that day. The game time temperature was thirty-seven degrees. It was the day the Mets raised their pennant for winning the 1973 National League championship series.  Rusty was playing right field, and we hollered at him most of the game as he trotted in and out between innings.  He never acknowledged us; ballplayers usually don't.  But it was nice to be that close to him as he traversed the field.  I have a blurry black and white photo of number 4 passing by.

I'll jump ahead to his final year, 1985.  When the Mets reacquired Rusty, he was older, somewhat heavier, and mostly used for pinch hitting.  He was really good at it.  In 1983, he set a season record for runs batted in as a pinch hitter.  On this night in 1985, the Mets were trailing in the bottom of the 9th inning. Rusty was sent up to pinch hit.  The crowd buzzed with excitement as Rusty connected with a pitch and the ball was heading for the stands in right field, where we were sitting.  At the last second, the ball curved foul, just to our left and the crowd let out a collective groan.  However, on the very next pitch, the ball didn't hook foul, landing in the Mets bullpen.  Tie game!  Shea erupted in jubilation as Rusty rounded the bases.  The Mets would go on to lose that game in extra innings, but that moment - Rusty's moment - is one of my favorite memories at Shea.  I often thought that if I ever met Rusty, I would share that memory.  There are other memories. I remember when they acquired him in April 1972 for four minor league players, his World Series heroics in 1973 while playing in the frigid October New York City night air in short sleeves and a bum shoulder, the absurdity of trading him to Detroit for Mickey Lolich after the 1975 season, and his return in 1981, immortalized in one line of the song Talkin' Baseball by Terry Cashman.

After baseball, Rusty had restaurants - two in Manhattan at one time, and his BBQ ribs were excellent.  And he spent a few years in the Mets' broadcast booth calling games. His charitable work for the families of fallen police and firefighters was exemplary.

So we sadly bid farewell to Le Grande Orange. May Rusty rest in peace.

-- Greg Pattenaude

Where My Dreaming and My Loving Live: Poetry & the Body: Lory Bedikian

Sestina, as my mother cooks

by Lory Bedikian


I tell her it’s a problem of the nerve.
She doesn’t look up, but eases a scar
on each small olive, making room
for the marinade to soak in. Not one eye
blinks as she does this. Like before, I’m pretty
sure that this is my cue to leave.

But I think back, when she had to leave
Aleppo with my father, each good-bye plucking a nerve,
hitting notes against her chest—quite pretty
for a plainly dressed Protestant. Like a scar
they mark the bible with this date. One eye
on the future, they fly and find a one-room

apartment in New York. Now, my mother acts as if this room
holds only her. She mumbles there’s nothing wrong, just leave
the past alone and you’ll be fine. I lunge my twitching eye
toward her. But she doesn’t have the nerve
to look. I wonder how she handles the brush of scar
below her abdomen, where I entered the world, pretty

different than most. She asks me to put on something pretty
for once. The L.A. noon heat rises. I pace the room
thinking of how to tell this woman of the scar
tissue the doctor found; how I tried to leave
the office smiling, grateful it wasn’t worse, just a nerve
disorder, its radar placed in the sphere of an eye.

After so many years, she still gives me the eye
over. What I say next is anything but pretty:
Has she ever thought each cell, each nerve
of my body is conspiring in rebellion to the room
we’ve always held between us? She says she must leave
for work, she’s late. My fingers shake. I say another scar

will form from this—like each scar
you brought across the Atlantic. I feel as small as the eye
of a needle. A cutting board, an empty sink is what we leave
behind us. She walks ahead, down the hall. I stop. Pretty
soon she’ll reappear. In this house I have no room
left, so I grab my keys, knowing it’s enough that I’ve struck this nerve.

This is how she survives, making sure to leave the house looking pretty.
Not one scar visible to the eye. She doesn’t question this world, how it has
the nerve to move us from room to room, so far from where we started.

 

Lory Bedikian’s The Book of Lamenting was awarded the 2010 Philip Levine Prize for Poetry. She earned her MFA in Poetry from the University of Oregon, where she was awarded the Dan Kimble First Year Teaching Award for Poetry. Her work has been selected several times as a finalist in the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Open Competition and in the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award Competition and has received grants from the Money for Women/Barbara Deming Memorial fund and AFFMA. Poets & Writers chose her work as a finalist for the 2010 California Writers Exchange Award. Her work was included in the anthology Wide Awake: Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond (Beyond Baroque Books, 2015) and chosen as a finalist in the 2015 AROHO Orlando Competition. Her newer work has been published in Miramar and she has poems forthcoming in Tin House.

"Where My Dreaming and My Loving Live: Poetry & the Body" is the second annual offering of the Poetry Coalition -- more than twenty organizations nationwide dedicated to working together to promote the value poets bring to our culture and communities, as well as the important contributions poetry makes in the lives of people of all ages and backgrounds. A founder member of the Coalition, Letras Latinas at Notre Dame's Institute's for Latino Studies has partnered with the Best American Poetry blog to present 10 poems by women in March that engage with this year's theme, which borrows a line from U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith's "Flores Woman." The poems in this project were curated by Emma Trelles.

Jon Peede, Chair-elect of the NEH, with Good News

Jon Peede, who is chair-elect of the National Endowment for the Humanities, after having served as senior deputy chairman, shares the excellent news:  <<< Congress Increases Budget for N.E.H. and N.E.A. Despite Trump’s Agenda

Congress has rejected Donald Trump’s priorities towards cutting arts funding, increasing the budget for this year by about $3 million for both the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. ... >>> Way to go, Jon.

 

Next Line, Please: The Hedgehogs and the Foxes [by Virginia Valenzuela]

Last week, the illustrious leader of the poetry free-for-all tasked the writers of Next Line, Please with a prompt inspired by the challenging game of chess. He proposed that they write poems inspired by the name of a chess opening, such as “Sicilian Defense,” “Queen’s Gambit Declined,” “Hedgehog System,” “Grand Prix Attack,” “Napoleon Opening,” “Vienna Game,” or something of the like. The entries seemed to separate into two categories: the hedgehogs and the foxes.

Among the hedgehogs is Mack Eulet’s “J’Adoube” which means means “I adjust,” with a specific chess application: it is what is said by a player who wants to adjust the placing of a chessman without making a move with it.

Here in the hedgehog system, it’s midnight
now in every time zone. Our strategy:
more us, less space—a convex, touchy-feely
aggression like the big bang. Alternating

currents with no switch, the board’s white-black
voltage zaps our zugzwang with rigor mortis.
Once a pawn a time—it never matters.
The queen seems free until a hand swoops to pluck her.

Among the foxes is Don Baumgart's “Fegatello” which takes its title from the name of a chess defense also known as “the fried-liver attack,” a subset of the “two knights’ defense.” 

All the priceless moments: talking fianchetto,
zugzwang, speculating rules of senet
even pleased to chat about parcheesi
and all our greatest aspirations;

All our treasured things:
Queen Cleo’s dried-berry necklace, all this drink,
these inimitable livers, Dido’s trusty dildo,
the GPS that helped you find the clit;

And then it was time to eat your last meal:
Fried liver, asparagus, raspberry tea;

But you never made the final swing
Your c.o.d.: Asphyxiation
caused by venom
from the bite you gave yourself.

Visit the American Scholar's page to read the full post, with many more excellent poems and crafty chess moves! And please raise a glass on Saturday, March 31st, at midnight any time zone.

Catullus # 25 translated by Molly Arden

Thallus, you letch: softer than rabbit fur, goose down, ear flap
is your phallus and sack of nuts
that dangle from your old man crotch,  festooned
with cobwebs, and still you’re as greedy as a gonif
[line missing here]
give back the things you stole from me --
my cape, handkerchief from Spain,
etchings from Carthage, bracelet of Salome --
things you claim you inherited from your folks.
Spare my your obnoxious jokes.
Get your sticky hands off my stuff,
and send them to me, or I swear I’ll kick your ass
and make you twist like a toy battleship
in the bathtub when a hurricane hits the sea.

-- translated by Molly Arden (2009)

Pictured above are Molly Arden and friend Charlotte Goren in 2009.

Why would the English love to live in ancient Greece? [by Virginia Woolf]

<<<

It is the climate [in England] that is impossible. If we try to think of Sophocles here, we must annihilate the smoke and the damp and the thick wet mists. We must sharpen the lines of the hills. We must imagine a beauty of stone and earth rather than of woods and greenery. With warmth and sunshine and months of brilliant, fine weather, life of course is instantly changed; it is transacted out of doors, with the result, known to all who visit Italy, that small incidents are debated in the street, not in the sitting-room, and become dramatic; make people voluble; inspire in them that sneering, laughing, nimbleness of wit and tongue peculiar to the Southern races, which has nothing in common with the slow reserve, the low half-tones, the brooding introspective melancholy of people accustomed to live more than half the year indoors.

>>>

​from "On Not Knowing Greek" in The Common Reader by Virginia Woolf​

The photograph accompanying this piece is not of Virginia Woolf but of Elizabeth Taylor in the movie Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Labyrinth for Solo Piano [by Lera Auerbach]

 

 

 

 

 

 

Labyrinth for Solo Piano
Inspired by The Book of Imaginary Beings
and other writings by J. L. Borges

Tomorrow evening, March 27, 2018, I will premiere Labyrinth, a large work for solo piano commissioned by San Francisco Performances.

I have been fascinated with labyrinths - real or imaginary - all my life. So, it is not surprising that J.L. Borges has been one of my favorite writers for a very long time.

Labyrinth is an exploration of Time and its different prisms, mirrors, faces, games. The passages of the labyrinth are the passages of Time. Or, perhaps, Time itself takes the form of a labyrinth in which the inner and outer sides are the same, infinitely expanding and infinitely contracting.

Inspired by the hidden set of variations in Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition (the series of Promenades portraying a man walking through the gallery) in Labyrinth appeared the "Traumwanderer" (Dream wanderer). I do not know where the Traumwanderer came from. I asked him, but his answers are cryptic. Perhaps, the Traumwanderer is my double. More likely, he is a shape-shifter and becomes the double of each listener who comes to a concert hall and unexpectedly finds himself in the bestiary of a labyrinth.

Together with the Traumwanderer, we discover different passages, become lost and sometimes recognize reflections of our memories, fears, and dreams in the strange and at times disturbing shapes of the imaginary beings that the Traumwanderer meets.

These beings have encounters and relationships not only with the Traumwanderer but also among themselves. There are connections and hidden clues that allow the Traumwanderer to recognize his features, even the most grotesque and foreign elements.

Is the Traumwanderer inside of the labyrinth, or is the labyrinth within the Traumwanderer? Is Time standing still while we are searching for our way, or is the labyrinth made of the same material as Time itself? Is the Wanderer's progress through the passages of the labyrinth illusory? What is passing — us or our Time?

Together with the Traumwanderer, we meet the invisible A Bao A Qu, who has lived since the beginning of Time on the spiral staircase of the Tower of Chitor. This tower is known to have the most perfect view in the world, which — as with any perfection — can never be reached. We meet the Kilkenny Cats, who get into raging quarrels and devour each other in anger, leaving behind only their tails. We meet the poor Squonk, who cries himself into nothingness. We encounter the magical binding of the gigantic wolf Fenrir, who is kept on the strongest, yet lightest chain ever made — a cord woven of six imaginary things. (Of course, Fenrir eventually breaks loose.) We experience the terror of the Traumwanderer as he becomes increasingly lost within the mirrors, dead-ends, and detours of the maze. We hear the calling of the mystical Simurgh, the immortal bird that nests in the Tree of Knowledge. The other birds (after a long and difficult pilgrimage to reach him) realize "that they are the Simurgh and that the Simurgh is each of them and all of them." And, of course, what labyrinth could be complete without its Minotaur?

I remember myself as a child, aged six, reading Greek myths and wondering: What did the Minotaur do all day long, sitting at the center of a labyrinth, in the unchanging room, looking at the same inescapable walls? I imagined him being bored, lonely, and malnourished. After all, the poor beast had to survive on an unhealthy diet of only seven young men and seven maidens per year. Always hungry, lonely, half-mad... I imagined him occasionally dancing with himself from boredom and loneliness, perhaps while thinking of some appetizing maiden. As Ovid wrote, “The man half bull, the bull half man—not simply a monster, but a sad, unloved, and a somewhat comical creature at the heart of a labyrinth it will never be able to leave.”

We encounter angels and demons, gods, monsters, and chimeras, while the three ancient Norns (Past, Present, and Future) weave the thread of our lives.

I built Labyrinth in search of a form where relationships and dynamics between the Observer and the Object of observation could be explored. Or, perhaps, I built it to create a space where the inner dialogue between the Self and the Brain (also in the form of a labyrinth!) could be imagined. Sometimes, I think that I am, myself, an imaginary being, just as my Traumwanderer. And, perhaps, it is the Traumwanderer who composed this music, and I am the one forever lost in the labyrinth without even realizing it.

This thread brings me back to the beginnings, to a poem I wrote when I was 14 years old, titled "Labyrinth." I wrote it in Russian. Here it is in its English translation by Ronald Meyer.

Labyrinth
by Lera Auerbach

   In the labyrinth of words and sounds

   I search for the riddle of life.

   Whether I'll find it or not -- I do not know,

   But I am playing upon the strings of the soul

   And in sharing this music, I find happiness.

Commissioned by San Francisco Performances in honor of Ruth Felt

Where My Dreaming and My Loving Live: Poetry & the Body: Iliana Rocha

Looking at Women

by Iliana Rocha

My father taught me how. His curious eyes, perpetually amber from drinking, would scan a woman, rest on a bold curve they liked: tits or ass. He was not a leg man. It would begin innocently enough, his arm draped across a bench at the mall, my mother shopping. I’d sit in his armpit, matted hair in Old Spice while his gaze trucked each body teetering on stilettos. Weekends, my father watched Sábado Gigante, would hoot & holler at the women wearing nothing but dark eyebrows & overdrawn lips, occasionally an accordion as a dress. ¡Damn! he would exclaim. Damn. There were also the pornos, soft-core, half-naked women with their hard breasts mistakenly attached to ribs. “Hot blonde” was a universal phrase, & brunettes became sexy only when they removed their glasses & shook their tight buns loose from their heads. Teachers can be hot too. Sometimes I slept on the living room sofa, & the TV’s glare would wake me: nude mermaids fingering each other in the gills, merman sucking their shiny pennies of nipple. Then there was the internet history. More women—some pregnant, some just chubby. I noticed my own body, legs half-tree trunk, half-lightning rod. Tried to pinch the skin around my knees & ankles into neater shapes. A waist strangled into a waist: el número ocho, la guitarra. Some have found that waist, others reached right through it to other women everywhere: one positioned obediently in the emptiness of one boyfriend’s computer screen, sunny & grinning in bikini. Continuous others popped up, contained in rectangles, snapping a thong’s hot pink. I started to look, too, at one in a commercial licking barbecue sauce from her fingers. My stare isn’t all that different than his—start from the face, scroll down. I love a woman in a tight dress, done up like a drag queen.


Iliana Rocha earned her PhD in English Literature and Creative Writing from Western Michigan University. Her work has been featured in the Best New Poets 2014 anthology, as well as The Nation, RHINO, Blackbird, and West Branch. Karankawa, her debut collection, won the 2014 AWP Donald Hall Prize for Poetry and is available through the University of Pittsburgh Press. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Central Oklahoma and lives with her three chihuahuas Nilla, Beans, and Migo. "Looking at Women" first appeared in Karankawa.

"Where My Dreaming and My Loving Live: Poetry & the Body" is the second annual offering of the Poetry Coalition -- more than twenty organizations nationwide dedicated to working together to promote the value poets bring to our culture and communities, as well as the important contributions poetry makes in the lives of people of all ages and backgrounds. A founder member of the Coalition, Letras Latinas at Notre Dame's Institute's for Latino Studies has partnered with the Best American Poetry blog to present 10 poems by women in March that engage with this year's theme, which borrows a line from U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith's "Flores Woman." The poems in this project were curated by Emma Trelles.

"Zeno’s Paradox as Paraphrased by Sholom Aleichem" [by David Lehman with thanks to Maurice Samuel]

          In my senior year of college I was nervous about getting drafted and having to go to Vietnam. Morris Simon, father of Rochelle, the curly-haired brunette on whom I had a crush, was considered the wise man of the synagogue, and it was to him that my father suggested I go to for advice. Mr. Simon was the head of the temple’s Chevra Kadisha, which undertook the community’s funeral arrangements and cemetery maintenance. After I had my say, he made this cheerful little speech.

          “There’s really nothing to worry about,” he said. “You have to go to the army. Well, one of two things will happen. Either you’ll be sent to Vietnam or you won’t. If you’re not, what’s there to worry about?  But let’s say they send you to Vietnam. One of two things will happen. You’ll get a cushy desk job in Saigon or you’ll go to the front. If you get the desk job, there’s nothing to worry about. But even suppose they volunteer you into the 173rd Airborne Brigade and God forbid they send you to the Mekong Delta as part of Operation Marauder and there are two short artillery rounds, one of two things will happen. Either you’ll get wounded in the blast, or you won’t. If you won’t, what’s there to worry about? But even suppose you do get wounded, chas vishalom, one of two things will happen. Either you’ll recover or you won’t. If you recover, what’s there to worry about? But even suppose you don’t recover, one of two things will happen. You’ll be buried in hallowed ground like a good Jewish boy or you won’t. If you’re buried in hallowed ground, what’s there to worry about? But suppose you’re not buried in hallowed ground. Well,” Mr. Simon paused, “well, then, my dear David, you’re in one hell of a fix.”

-- David Lehman, with thanks to Maurice Samuel  (3 / 22 / 18). Pictured above: Sholom Aleichem.

The Cliff Robertson Quiz

What was Cliff Robertson's most memorable role?

as JFK in "PT 109"

as the Nixon-like Cantwell in "The Best Man"

as the guy who loses Kim Novak to William Holden in "Picnic"

as the fellow who falls in love with the same woman twice in "Obsession"

as the mentally-impaired bigamist whose wives are Joan Crawford and Vera Miles in "Autumn Leaves"

For extra credit, (1) Would you have voted for Henry Fonda or his opponent in "The Best Man"? (2) Who wrote the American lyrics for "Autumn Leaves"? (3) Compare Genevieve Bujold, New Orleans and Florence in "Obsession" with Kim Novak and San Francisco in "Vertigo."

The winner's photograph will be posted on this site next week.

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"The Joker Is Wild": original trailer

 

plus Jimmy Durante brought to you by Colgate Palmolive

Next Line Please: From Beethoven to the Abyss, with Love and an Unpacked Suitcase [by Virginia Valenzuela]

On this week's installment of Next Line, Please, contributors were tasked with writing poems with lines quoted from participants' submissions in the previous week:

“He’d rather be listening to Beethoven”—Patricia Wallace
“will one day pack her suitcase”—Cheryl Whitehead
“And once, I took a turn at the bedside of a dying man”—Donald LaBranche
“and all the Patron Saints of Paranoia”—George Kaplan
“an illusion, / like loving /without losing”—Courtney Thrash
“I have been to the abyss”—David Lehman

The results are quite varied and ever satisfying. Shout to to Millicent Caliban’s “Forgive Me” which gives a taste of all 6 lines:

I have been to the abbess. She told me
to pray to the patron saint of paranoia
because I fear my faith is an illusion,
like loving without losing. How can I
be sure of my vocation? We sing hymns,
but I would rather listen to Beethoven:
more passion, less devotion, reluctant
to obey, unable to desire renunciation.
Will I one day pack my suitcase and leave?
Tonight I will take my turn by the bed
of a dying man and pray for his soul,
for his release from guilt and sin and mine.
What comes after? Is it bliss or only the abyss?

Another gold star to all the newcomers to “Next Line, Please,” specifically Koahakumele's “Baggage”:

Once, at twenty, I took a turn at
the bedside of a dying man.
Though he slept fitfully, and
snorted and wheezed his own melody,
I knew he’d rather be listening to Beethoven.

On the other hand, I, faced with his reality and
with silent time lingering,
realized I had now been to the abyss.
I prayed to all the Patron Saints of Paranoia,
recognizing my own small suitcase would be
one day packed for my own last journey.

Believing I could avoid the blank midnight corridors and
antiseptic smells was only an illusion.
Like loving without losing.

Next week’s prompt is inspired by the charming lexicon of chess, particularly the names of chess openings, including:

“Queen’s Gambit Declined”
“Sicilian Defense”
“Hedgehog System”
“Grand Prix Attack”
“Napoleon Opening”
“Vienna Game”

Choose one and do what you can. Your poem can be or not be about chess. Fourteen lines or less.

Visit the American Scholar's page to read all the other poems with borrowed lines and to enter your candidate for next week!

 

Where My Dreaming and My Loving Live: Poetry & the Body: Sandra McPherson

In Her Image

by Sandra McPherson

           
              French postcard, circa World War I

In agreeing to be the crucified woman,
she knew she would need to hang there
with no pockets, no purse, no pearls.
She would know how to stretch into it
when the time came.  Did she enjoy
an innate ballerina who could express
befitting grace?  While still her bearing
should look disciplinary, chastening.
Express duress.  She must suffer
while blooming with a boast of pulchritude
the lighting director could work with.
At the tryouts, the rest of us were already
too mangled with practice nails, and slivers.

She stepped right up, and now she is holding on.
Jesus as evangelist from girlhood, a young savant
known for finespun sayings and secrecy
revealed as sorrow.  Her death would fall
somewhere in her menstrual cycle.
Her belly invites most —  soft and so
slightly split into those two lobes
which make apricots and peaches
superior to the moon.  Lustrous,
a stage-curtain rope knots right over
pubic hair.  Feet bound with ribbon,
a satin tether to appeal to some, she
ails ungaunt, her edges sled-round,
cambered.  Coifed in the same style
as her carnality: in even waves, marcelled.

Are agony’s good looks art’s job,
or labor’s contract, or sex’s by swoon?
Whatever, they’re hers.  And the age’s.
Real senselessness, stupefying power
over lives, eventually tore men’s
faces off.  Their leaders made millions
rot millions.  Many choked on rats’ mud.
Flies had no teeth for skulls
so there it stopped.  What did this have to do
with our sacrificing, sacrificing our breasts
barely between a triangle of bleeding nails?
How we numbed evil.  How unbearable
we made goodness feel.

Sandra McPherson has twenty collections published, 5 with Ecco, 3 with Wesleyan, 2 with Illinois, and 2 with Ostrakon.  New work appears in Field, The Yale Review, Agni, Ploughshares, Kenyon Review, Ecotone, Cimarron, Crazyhorse, Basalt, Cirque, Plume, and Poetry.  She taught for 23 years at UCDavis and 4 years at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.  Her collection of 67 African-American improvisational quilts is housed at University of California at Davis Design Department. She founded Swan Scythe Press.  Her new collection, Quicksilver, Cougars, and Quartz is scheduled for 2018 from Salmon Poetry Press.  She is the great-grand-niece of Abby Morton Diaz, Plymouth feminist author and abolitionist. "In Her Image" was first published  in Ploughshares.

"Where My Dreaming and My Loving Live: Poetry & the Body" is the second annual offering of the Poetry Coalition -- more than twenty organizations nationwide dedicated to working together to promote the value poets bring to our culture and communities, as well as the important contributions poetry makes in the lives of people of all ages and backgrounds. A founder member of the Coalition, Letras Latinas at Notre Dame's Institute's for Latino Studies has partnered with the Best American Poetry blog to present 10 poems by women in March that engage with this year's theme, which borrows a line from U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith's "Flores Woman." The poems in this project were curated by Emma Trelles.