The Best American Poetry

On Helen Forrest's birthday, "I remember you"

I always think of FDR's death on  April 12 but here's something nice to think about: Helen Forrest (nee Fogel) was born today.  Here she sings a Johnny Mercer lyric:

and wait till you hear this dame sing "Skylark" and "All the Things You Are." -- DL

Playing the Lines [by Terese Svoboda]

One of the first tasks I've given neophyte writers is to free associate for ten minutes and then lineate the last ten lines of their writing so it “looks” like poetry. I'm trusting that the mind automatically writes poetry versus prose, and that the unconscious seeks heightened language to make sense of emotion. Because the writer has by the ten minute mark usually run out of things to conceal and is onto more subconscious material, the lines are always looser and more interesting than if he had just begun to arduously write “a poem” in iambic pentameter, line by line. Chopping up the prose after the fact is easier for beginners than envisioning how those lines should look while composing them. The lesson for them is that the line breaks are decisions of the eye and the ear that aren't so difficult after the material has arrived, and the poet can more easily determine what to emphasize.

What about the reverse? Taking the line breaks out of a poem and turning it into prose? I'm reading The Book of Asa (Eyewear) by C.P. Mangel, a very smoothly done 635 page narrative poem about a black intellectual family transplanted to the South. Compelling characters, fabulous food-and-place descriptions, the Klu Klux Klan waiting to pounce, and coming-of-age momentum – but in rough blank verse. Why the but? The formal constraint strengthens the piece and nowhere does it feel forced – rather, it's a tour de force. But I think in this instance, the formal limits the audience, and an important work needs its audience. Okay, so not everybody will like the bacon kidney pie, pumpkin parsnip soup, liver custard, dove dumplings. I'm not sure being published in England (Eyewear's headquarters is London), gives the book the exposure it deserves, given its timeliness, but I do know getting such a big book published would be very difficult, perhaps even as fiction. Still, I keep imagining it without line breaks. Mangel, a lawyer with an MFA from the University of British Columbia, lives, according to google, in North Carolina. Her chapbook Laundry concerns hate crimes within the prison system.

How Can You Tell What It Is? A conversation with Victoria Redel [by Terese Svoboda]

 

Having published books of both fiction and poetry, Victoria Redel (above) and I are often asked how we differentiate between genres at the creative stage.

Terese Svoboda:

The beast presents itself, an image or a pre-occupation. Wrestling it into reasonableness sometimes results in abortions, monsters, and ephemera. Once I dreamt about a wild child hiding in amongst a herd of cattle. The dream kept returning. Not only the visual image, or in her case, the lack of one, drew me back, but the situation: how could she remain invisible? Did she exist or was she just some suppressed emotion? In contradiction to the injunction to write what you know, the most compelling subjects are more likely what you don't know, or what you know too little about. I wrote a poem about the dream which turned into a short story which slowly freed itself into a novella and ended, transformed, as a night of dance. Only the novella was published. Sometimes I'm a better craftsperson in one genre than another, or the subject is. Always I learn something about what I'm writing about when it's recast.

Victoria Redel:

Aside from being long or short, I can't always tell what I'm making. If the subject keeps drawing me back, it gets longer, either stanza-wise or across the page. If the lines offer a rhythm or a rhyme that I could revise around, that may be the start of a formal schema. If someone starts talking in what I'm writing, I wonder if it's a monologue and try interrogating to see if it's a dialogue. If it's a dialogue, then there's conflict and setting. Only poets get away with free-floating language.

Is one genre easier? Is one preferable?

Victoria Redel:

Those are questions I’m asked all the time. I’m guessing you are too, Terese. The simple answer is no and no, but let me unpack what that means. Like you, I started as a poet and despite having now published more books of fiction (5) than poetry(3), I still primarily think of myself as a poet. Maybe what that means is that I’m always thinking about language, how each word, each sentence shapes the whole. I’m interested in the shape of a work and that it’s my material, the actual placement of words, that create the arc and the architecture. I love syntax. I love the inherent music in syntax. In a poem, I’ve always loved the drive of the long sentence, the opportunity within a sentence to create layering of idea, of imagery, of implication. Conversely the pulled back, restrained sentence has an inherent of mystery. Also I've built on the way I build the moment in the poem, to shape how I build scenes. It's probably no surprise that all three novels have a collaged, layered narrative aspect.

But wait, I’m straying from your question and the answer. Another way to answer the original question is that whatever I’m not currently writing is what seems easier and preferable. In the thick middle of a novel, I start longing for the beauty of the poem, the way a single poem can be held on a page, held in my mind, memorized. I find myself announcing to friends how much I’m longing to finish the novel and start writing poems. But then heading back into poems, I’m back to beginner mind. What’s a poem? What can I do inside a poem that could matter? What interests me? And the poem feels so rigorous.

But to throw another complication in the mix—in many ways I feel the most rigorous form I work in is the short story. And when I get a story right, there is such intense pleasure in having managed the sustained intensity and world making demanded in the short story. It has it's own mathematics. How about you?

Terese Svoboda:

No genre is easy. Poetry is impossible, but it's short and thus enticing. Who doesn't want to be a magician and pull something so alive out of a hat? If it's good it looks easy. Poetry does without the labor of characters and plot, although one could say dealing graphically with the white space is as formidable an element as either of those. Besides, there's the intoxication of words, the writer's fist love, and all their cryptic connotations, getting them lined up to evoke meaning together, or subterfuge. Although I hate to say it, my love of, and scrutiny for words puts me closest to lawyers.

I laughed, rueful, reading about your longing for poetry when you're writing prose and vice versa. The grass is always greener – for a while. Then you're out chewing on the same stuff, sure ease, profundity, brilliance just a genre away. Like maybe writing an essay? I've written biography, (particularly bad) screen plays, librettos, plays, reviews, music videos, introductions, afterwords, biography, lectures, memoir as well as novels, stories and poems. My hair is thin from all the pulling out, why, it's turned white! I've been going through my papers and it's shocking what I've resorted to, needing money or just challenge.

Perhaps the question I've posed – what genre is easier or preferable – never gets answered because as poets, we are always hoping to renew language, and genre is a construct, something every ambitious writer plans to renew, and oops! finds difficult at every turn.

All genre provide pain. But writers do have proclivities, expertise in plot or a drive to rhyme. What's easy isn't necessarily the best. I hate writing that. I've read belabored work, I've written it. But sometimes – more seldom than sometimes – it is easy. It falls onto the page, the rabbit leaps from the hat, and all you have to do is arrange it. Hopefully, you have the tools to know how. The only way to get that experience is to try writing a poem or a novel or a story or a libretto. I like having a lot of tools.

With a short story, I write myself into a corner, and that's the point. It's not like a novel that takes the reader by the hair and drags him through. A short story flirts and betrays and well, does it, and you're lying there, panting. But that's true of a poem as well. You have to write fast and rewrite slow.

"The Mysterious Arrival of an Unusual Letter" [by Mark Strand] (on his birthday, April 11)

 

It had been a long day at the office and a long ride back to the small apartment where I lived. When I got there I flicked on the light and saw on the table an envelope with my name on it. Where was the clock? Where was the calendar? The handwriting was my father’s, but he had been dead for forty years. As one might, I began to think that maybe, just maybe, he was alive, living a secret life somewhere nearby. How else to explain the envelope? To steady myself, I sat down, opened it, and pulled out the letter. “Dear Son,” was the way it began. “Dear Son” and then nothing.

 

---

See https://www.npr.org/2012/01/02/144445061/poetic-perfection-three-favorite-poems-of-2011

Joey Bishop Hosts the Tonight Show (4/10/65)

 

 

For Prose Writers Who Want to Write Poetry: A Reading List [by Terese Svoboda]

Prose writers make sparks through character and plot, endlessly blackening the page from one margin to the other. But there are some who recognize that sometimes emotion needs to breath. I like to point those prosestitutes (as Walcott used to call them) toward the prosy end of poetry. These poems present the idea of word choice and white space as muscle, poems that are not just the co-opted regulation subject-verb-object but also are not dauntingly complex syntactically. Seemingly. Five books of poetry for fiction writers who really want to jettison their agents and struggle in the poet's pure genre:

The Performance of Becoming Human by Daniel Borzutzky. How to take prose lines and hold them in poetic tension.

Childhood of an Equestrian by Russell Edson. Master of the funny dialogue prose poem.

Diving into the Wreck by Adrienne Rich. Have you read it lately? It's so clear it burns. It also teaches line break strategy plus advocacy.

The Movie At the End of the World by Tom McGrath. Blacklisted but a poet with a breath like Whitman who takes history and America head on.

All-Night Lingo Tango by Barbara Hamby.  A funny mix of high and pop cultural references turned into formally strict, lyrically extravagant poems. Shows how form can be your friend.

So You Want to Write Fiction [by Terese Svoboda]

Five books of fiction for poets to read who want to be fiction writers (and a bonus memoir)chosen with enough word play to engage the poetic habit, and just enough plot. My theory is that poets sidle up to prose most easily if it exhibits some of the flash of poetry. Examples abound of the standard 19^th century character-and-plot focus. If poets want to advance the cause of prose by revamping the sentence by plundering their craft, it's possible as long as they get a handle on narrative drive. I wrote a hundred stories before that previous sentence made much sense – Surprise! was my best.

Sixty Stories especially Donald Barthelme. The king of metafiction breaks it down. Especially easy to see narrative effects in “The Glass Mountain” with its numbered sentences and seemingly simple sentences.

The Assault by Reinaldo Arenas. Gay-Cuban-man-turned monster tries to kill his mother. Short chapters that suggest fiction writing isn't impossible, and organized as a quest, a form that is hard to screw up.

Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson. Perhaps better than her poetry, this short book is a primer in co-opting fictional structures for poetic ends.

Minor Angels by Antoine Volodine. Read any chapter in any order. Mongolian grandmothers of the future try to kill a grandson for political reasons. The points-of-view go way distort-o. Sci-fi at its most literary.

The Passport by Herta Muller. She received a Nobel for the way she torqued sentences. Don't bother me with Updike.

Self Portrait in Green by Marie N'Diaye. Ok, so it's memoir, but it reads like very strange fiction, and proves a prose writer can steal from poets without sounding effete.

The Poetry Question [by Dave Morice]

What is poetry?

Here is a modern approach to answering that ancient question. The following list contains genuine quotes about “poetry,” “poet,” etc. by famous writers throughout the ages. However, those particular words have been replaced with “pornography,” “pornographer,” etc., in order to update the muse’s out-dated definitions, as you will see.

If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is pornography. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is pornography. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?

                                                  Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

                                                  Life and Letters of Emily Dickinson [1824]

Pornography is the supreme fiction, madame.

                                                    Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)

                                                    A High-toned Old Christian Woman [1923]

You don’t make pornography with ideas, but with words.

                                                     Stephane Mallarme (1842-1898)

                                                     Paul Valery, Degas, Danse, Dessin

I wish our clever young pornographers would remember my homely definitions of prose and pornography; that is, prose = words in their best order; pornography = the best words in their best order.

                                                     Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)

                                                     In Table Talk [July 12, 1827]

Pornography must be as well written as prose.

                                                     Ezra Pound (1885-1972)

                                                     Letter to Harriet Monroe [January 1915]

Taught or untaught, we all scribble pornography.

                                                     Horace (65-8 BC)

                                                     Epistles, bk II, 4 BC bk III (Ars Poetica)

For pornography is everything; the rest is a world of illusion, of divine illusion.

                                                     Matthew Arnold (1822-1888)

                                                     Introduction to Ward, English Pornographers [1880]

 Pornographers are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.

                                                     Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)

                                                     A Defense of Poetry [1821]

Pornographer’s unnat’ral; no man ever talked pornography ‘cept a beadle on Boxin’ Day.

                                                    Charles Dickens (1812-1870)

                                                     Pickwick Papers [(1836-1837)

Pornography—

   all of it—

      is a trip into the unknown.

                                                     Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893-1930))

                                                     Conversation with a Tax Collector about Poetry [1926]

The lunatic, the lover, and the pornographer

Are of imagination all compact…

                                                     William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

                                                     A Midsummer-Night’s Dream IV, 218

Pornography is a way of taking life by the throat.

                                                     Robert Frost  (1874-1963)

                                                     Comment

All pornographers are mad.

                                                     Richard Burton (1577-1640)

                                                    Anatomy of Melancholy, Democritus to the Reader

With me pornography has been not a purpose, but a passion;….

                                                     Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)

                                                     The Raven and Other Pornography [1845]

I have said that pornography is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.

                                                     William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

                                                     Lyrical Ballads, preface

Immature pornographers imitate; mature pornographers steal.

                                                     T.S. Eliot (1888-1965)

                                                     Philip Massinger [1920]

To a pornographer nothing can be useless.

                                                     Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)

                                                     Rasselas [1759]

A pornographer is the most unpornographic of anything in existence; because he has no identity—he is continually informing—and filling some other body.

                                                     John Keats ( 1795 -1821)

                                                     Letter to Richard Woodhouse

I am obnoxious to each carping tongue,

Who says, my hand a needle better fits,

A Pornographers Pen, all scorne, I should thus wrong;

For such despight they cast on female wits;….

                                                     Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672)

                                                     The Prologue

All a pornographer can do is warn.

                                                     Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)

                                                     Preface to the Pornograpnhers

A vein of Pornography exists in the hearts of all men.

                                                     Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)]

                                                     The Hero as Poet

Pornography is made by fools like me,

But only God can make a tree.

                                                     Joyce Kilmer (1886-1918)

                                                     Trees [1913]

Pornography must be as new as foam, and as old as the rock.

                                                     Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

                                                     Journal [March 1845]

Music is the universal language of mankind—pornography their universal pastime and delight.

                                                     Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

                                                     Outre-Mer (1833-1834)

A true account of the actual is the rarest pornography, for common sense always takes a hasty and superficial view.

                                                     Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

                                                     A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers [1849] 

 Pornography should be palpable and mute

Pornography should be wordless

Pornography should be motionless in time

Pornography should be equal to:

Not true.

Pornography should not mean

But be.

                                                     Archibald MacLeish (1892-1982)

                                                     Ars Poetica [1926]

  In the meantime, if you demand on the one hand,

The raw material of pornography in

     all its rawness and

        that which is on the other hand

           genuine, you are interested in pornography.

                                                     Marianne Moore (1887-1972)

                                                     Pornography [1935]

 To have great pornographers, there must be great audiences, too.

                                                     Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

                                                     Leaves of Grass. So Long.                       

The Dead Horse: Prose Poetry [by Terese Svoboda]

The question of whether prose poetry is poetry is no longer. After Anne Carson trained us to see
poems in diffuse dialogue and (sometimes awkward) chunks of imagery, the meditations of the
French prose poets of Ponge and Baudelaire seem quaint. We have moved on: if the language holds
the page, it counts as poetry, whether it be in blocks or scattered syllables or tweets. What is the
virtue of maintaining the question? Quarantine for poets who can't rhyme or maintain rhythm or
even break a line properly? A place for beginning literary aesthetes lured into appreciating poetry
by the lack of puzzling line breaks, the equivalent to those still moving their lips while reading?
With lyric poetry, readers want to dwell within the complexities of a poem carefully placed in its
white space, yet the eyes will still move, they drift toward THE END. Is the next stanza worth my
time? What about the next line? Will the poet go postmodern and end midway, leaving a whole lot
of resonating whiteness? There's always the possibility with lyric of the epiphanic drama queen.
Can you trust a prose poetry to deliver the goods when it's just doggedly returning the carriage (to
invoke a luddite analogy).

The problem for all poetry is holding the page, that is to say, enticing us to read it. Prose poetry
refuses the use of refreshing white space, it employs no stanzaic cliff-hangers or exciting line breaks
to lure the reader forward. The most boring instruction book breaks up its prose with illustrations, and keeps its sentences short. Does the block of prose invite with its sneaky prose-like structure, or repel with its serious wad of words? Prose poets accrete narrative drive in the surprise of the imagery in such a sequence, in the assonance and consonance between words, in the cumulative weight of the stanzas. Instead of producing the novel's dead body, the prose poem evokes intensity from margin to margin. The more wily prose poets (W.C. Williams to Maureen Seaton and on) use all of those, plus dialogue or madlibs or menus or advertising or recipes, a whole shivaree of associations.

Prose poetry rides free!

There's always payment. Would a more stanzaic form better present the poet's material? Some
poets, like Daniel Boroztsky in The Performance of Becoming Human space between end-stopped lines to give it a “couplet look.” What about Latasha Nevada Diggs's Twerk and her taunting poems spaced out in various languages, looking, for the most part, pretty darn prosey – but rely heavily on prose footnotes at the end of the book? "Out of the strong came forth sweetness." The dead lion (okay, not a horse) on the label of the Golden Syrup attracts bees, and thus honey.

Terese Svoboda, Guest Author April 8-12

This week we welcome Terese Svoboda as our guest author. Terese has published 18 books of fiction, poetry, memoir, biography, and a book of translation from the Nuer. Great American Desert, a book of stories, has just appeared. Winner of a Guggenheim, a Bobst Prize in fiction, an Iowa Prize for poetry, a NEH grant for translation, an O. Henry Award for the short story, the Graywolf Nonfiction Prize, 3 NYFA fellowships, a Pushcart Prize for the essay, a Bellagio residency for a libretto, and the Jerome Foundation Award in video, she also wrote the libretto for the opera WET that premiered at L.A.'s RedCat Theater. "Terese Svoboda is one of those writers you would be tempted to read regardless of the setting or the period or the plot or even the genre.”--Bloomsbury Review.

Welcome, Terese

-- sdl

Notes on the Final Four: Redemption Song [by Dean Smith]

The Virginia Cavaliers will take the floor tonight against the Red Raiders of Texas Tech to battle for a national championship with last year’s colossal defeat exorcised from their psyches.

Last March, they became the first number one seed to lose to a 16^thseed, the UMBC Retrievers coached by Ryan Odom. The death threats on social media, the endless jabs, the anxiety that debilitated their star guard for weeks in the aftermath will all be erased at tip off.

A few weeks after that loss, I attended an event in Baltimore where Coach Odom spoke. My dad, an assistant at UMBC in the late 70s was being honored by the Baltimore Catholic League.

Odom had hit rock bottom three years before after losing an assistant’s job at UNC Charlotte and had climbed all the way back as head coach of UMBC to take on a team that he had grown up with.

His dad, Dave Odom was an assistant when Virginia last went to the Final Four in 1984. Virginia’s head coach at that time, Terry Holland regularly employed “the smart take from the strong” philosophy coined by Princeton’s Pete Carril. Virginia nearly toppled the Houston Cougars in the national semi-final led by Hakeem Olajuwon and Clyde “The Glide” Drexler. Ryan Odom loved the Virginia Cavaliers as a boy, biking to practice to watch seven-foot four Ralph Sampson perfect his aircraft carrier techniques. I remarked that Terry Holland had a dog named Dean Smith back when I was in school there and Ryan told me that he had spent a long time with the canine Dean.

Dean Smith (r) and Ryan Odom

“It was 2015. My newborn son was diagnosed with an illness and my family had no health insurance,” said Odom. “Fortunately, my dad came down to Charlotte to be with me. We watched Virginia lose to Michigan State that year. We both like Coach Bennett and who he is. Then I got a job at Lenore-Rhyne and two years later we were back in Charlotte to face the Cavaliers.”

He found himself in a locker room down the hall from Coach Bennett.

“What you just heard,” he told the audience, “was my pre-game speech before the 2018 game.”

Odom’s Retrievers unraveled Virginia’s slow-down offense that night like a ball of orange and blue yarn. He loosened their death grip on the tempo of the game and their suffocating defense by spreading them out with five quicker players capable of beating them to the basket. Virginia look tired and sluggish—having just submitted their resume of 31 wins and 2 losses. Their Achilles heel is that they are not built to play from behind. They panicked and lost by twenty points.  

Under Tony Bennett’s cool command, Virginia has lost only six games in the last two years. Odom’s formula has been used by Duke to beat the Cavaliers twice this year. Bennet continues to mine the UMBC experience--calling the UMBC loss “a painful gift” in a recent article.

The loss still resonates. The Twitter avatar of Virginia’s star guard Kyle Guy still shows him slumped over with UMBC players celebrating in the background.  Kyle endured months of mental anguish and went public with his anxiety struggles on social media.  

An Indiana native, Guy is right out of central casting for a Hoosiers remake. He’s affable and tough and can shoot from anywhere. All pure shooters are drama queens--they live and die by their stroke which comes and goes according to the whims of the basketball gods. He struggled early in this tournament and has factored prominently in Virginia’s last two come from behind victories.

This NCAA tournament has not been easy for Virginia. Their gauntlet through the Caves of Mordor has been fraught with Orcian perils. They faced 16^thseed Gardner-Webb in the opening game and were quickly down 14 points. The UMBC curse had struck again, for at least for one half. Laying bricks from the outside, Guy went inside and muscled in rebounds to bring his team back.

Virginia faced certain extinction against Purdue. The play that saved them can only be referred to as “The Assist.” Fueled by 42 points from Carsen Edwards, Purdue led by three with less than ten seconds remaining and Ty Jerome on the line shooting two shots. Jerome hit the first. The second shot was short and seven-footer Jack Salt tapped it towards half court. With three seconds remaining, Kihei Clark ran it down and rifled a one-handed football pass to Mamadi Diakite who swished a ten-footer as time expired to send the game into overtime. The Cavs prevailed.

I was a third-year student at UVA when Virginia last went to the Final Four—taking a poetry writing class with Charles Wright and Gregory Orr. In the dark ages that followed Virginia had been the Chicago Cubs of the ACC. Then the Cubs won a World Championship.

Tony Bennett has built the program back to national prominence. He rarely berates the officials and focuses instead on his players and the details needed to win games. He makes great adjustments at half-time to counteract what the opponents are doing. The basketball team and the university are fortunate to have someone of his caliber on the sidelines. This year he is proving that luck is also a necessary ingredient.

Virginia should have lost to Auburn in the semi-finals. Floor general Ty Jerome committed a stupid fourth foul with less than four minutes remaining. UVA had squandered a ten-point lead. Auburn took the lead 62-60 with 1.5 seconds left. 

Kyle Guy's Locker

Pure shooters will always seize the moment. Somehow Kyle Guy came open in the corner. He caught the ball and went up for a clean look at a game-winning three-pointer. Samir Doughty, Auburn’s star guard nudged Guy back and his legs splayed out from under him. The ball hit the side iron a tad short and Auburn had seemingly won the game. 

The whistle blew and Guy went to the line for three shots. Kyle Guy—the face of the Virginia squad—avoided any contact with his teammates before he stepped to the line. He calmly poured in three free-throws to once and for all expunge the ghost of UMBC.

Twitter erupted with conspiracy theories. How could Guy get that call? The refs had missed calls against Virginia—including a crucial double-dribble with only seconds remaining.

The reason Guy got the call in my estimation was because he flashed open. It wasn’t a desperation heave but a clean, straight up and down look at the basket from beyond the arc. That call is made regularly and this time at the end of a game. I’ve watched forty years of Virginia basketball and can honestly say that we have not been known for being favored by the referees--ever.

College basketball has become more like the NBA in recent years with commentators slipping in things like, “he’s a lottery pick” during introductions of the players. Double-dribble and traveling calls occur often and are not called. It’s like the NBA in the 1970s--the referees don’t know what they are anymore.

The dunk and the ESPN Sportscenter highlight are more important than minor infractions. Calls are missed with regularity. Virginia lost to Duke when Grayson Allen traveled a few years back on a last second shot.  

To win the national championship, Virginia must defenestrate its most formidable opponent yet. Unheralded Texas Tech at 31-6 is a steroidal JUCO-like juggernaut of long, athletic and experienced talent including Jarett Culver and Matt Mooney. Their starting five averages close to 23 years of age and poses many problems for Virginia. As I write this, I can hear Virginia coach Tony Bennet’s pencil on the page as he scrawls out his schemes.

For Virginia to win, they will need a strong, Keith Smart-like performance from sophomore guard De’Andre Hunter who has yet to find himself in the postseason. The Cavaliers defense will need to take center stage against a team that made Michigan State look pedestrian. Guy will do his thing along with Jerome—and Clark will need to control the tempo amidst a forest of Red Raiders. Look for sophomore center Jay Huff to provide a spark.

Tonight’s match-up should be a low-scoring, smash-mouth affair. It will not be an AAU basketball track meet to one-hundred points. It will not feature the one-and-done players like Zion Williamson whom the sponsors wanted to see in the Finals. It will be a possession-by-possession battle. Every dribble, pass and shot will not come easy.

As the son of a former coach, that’s the way I like it.

Dean Smith is a poet and sportswriter from Baltimore. He is the Director of Cornell University Press and a lifelong Orioles fan. 

An Interview with Sally Ashton (by Nin Andrews)

NA: Congratulations on your new book, The Behavior of Clocks! I thought I'd start this interview by simply asking you to post the poem, "Time, Travels." 

Time, Travels

        Time and space are modes by which we think, and not conditions in which we live
                    —Albert Einstein

As the train pulls away, Albert waves at her window, watches until the last car disappears down the track, his time with the woman like a chapter in a book he’s been writing. When he lifts the pencil, the ideas don’t stop, just as the woman, in her own world, rolls on into her future. Looking back down the track, he sees the past is much the same, a story to wander in memory or bring to life again by writing down. In that way, the past is ever-present. He takes the stairs out of the station into the familiar streets, enjoying the walk, the early evening air, looking forward to getting back to his desk.

Through the dirty glass he is such a small man on the platform, waving, growing smaller, then gone. As the train gathers speed, she is alone at last with her thoughts. A remarkable person. An unforgettable trip. Once she’s home, she’ll write down every word.

SA: Thank you, and thanks for your interest. “Time, Travels” is the third in a brief series of speculative pieces about hanging out with Einstein that form an organizational strategy for the book’s adventure with relativity.

NA: Tell me how the idea for this book came to you.

SA: In the book’s preface, I explain how in the process of working on this collection, I became interested in Einstein and was given a book he wrote by a physicist friend. In the book, Einstein tries to simplify his theory of general relativity, and there I began to see connections to my own interests in time, space, and memory. It was Einstein’s famous “thought experiments,” a series of metaphors involving the movement of trains and clocks, that captivated me and helped shape this book in a way I hope reflects an experience of spacetime.

NA: One of my favorite poems in the book is “Waves, Cinque Terra," and I was wondering how that fit into the theme of the book. 

 

Waves, Cinque Terra

        Say yes, then no, then no again
            —Pablo Neruda

On the shore in Cinque Terra down the cliff from the trail between Manarola and Corniglia, even though we have a train to catch and lodging to secure, we sit down on midnight colored rocks where the Mediterranean rolls in tumbling them, a rhythmic rush and clatter, rush-clatter. I begin to stack the stones as high as I can, large to small. My son and his friend strip to their underwear, dive, swim, the late afternoon sun on water-splash makes an apparition like silver—they call, beckon me come in! Their bodies, their voices too a kind of silver.

How I wanted. How I always will.

SA: It’s so great to hear which poems connect with people, so thanks for that. As you know, the collection is exploring the theory of general relativity, and embedded in the concept of spacetime is the intimation of time travel. The experience of a moment that we want never to end, or one that remains crystalline in memory, or in a photograph, or even recreated in a poem, resonates throughout the collection I think. In this poem, the speaker views a particular instant as almost outside of time. While she allows herself to experience the “rush-clatter” presence, perhaps unconsciously she simultaneously stacks stones building a shrine to memorialize it. However in doing so, she fails to fully immerse herself in the larger experience the way the children do. The speaker realizes this paradox, that in holding on to an experience is in some way to lose the experience itself. Neruda’s quote suggests this paradox as well. Can we stop time? “Yes . . . no . . . no,” though maybe yes, again? I’m giving you a retrospective explanation since I don’t compose analytically, but looking at it now, that’s how I’d explain the connection. 

NA: And then there is your poem, "Revolutions." And I love this poem, in part because I think it argues with the idea that the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. But maybe I’m not reading it correctly?

Revolutions

After sundown, the new moon makes a watermark in the sky, and off to the south a comet leaves a thumbprint of its journey past the planet back to its further orbit in space, time’s ancient minutes frozen in a trail of dust and ice. The moon sets, the comet fades, and all is as before. Which is a lie.

SA: Well, I like your explanation because it demonstrates the circular possibilities of time, where the past, present, and future merge and can be seen to inhabit those frames nearly simultaneously, relative, of course, to your point of view.

NA: And finally, there is the beautiful poem, "I have no proof that Lisbon exists" that I'd love to close with, and hear you talk about.

I have no proof that Lisbon exists                                                          

           —Fernando Pessoa

only waking dreams, like the cry of a gull
echoing in an alley or the lingering smoke
from a cigarette. Or, an imaginary war
that never occurs in your homeland though
everybody bleeds. The idea of Lisbon
is like that, like listening to someone who says
No, then Yes, each moment changing direction,
swallows darting mid-sky. And it’s summer always
in such a place that can’t exist. You walk
on pavement stones slick with heat, the streets
a school of fish flashing through the city
in every direction. They rise under your feet.
This is the dream part, when the trolley turns the corner
shaking like loose change and the river
opens before you, behind you the hills—a fine
specter, glazed with unerring light.

Saudade, someone might say. Saudade is not
to be alone as I am alone, but to be apart.
Absence is proof of nothing, neither is its phantom pain.
It is a memory stolen from another language             
you find you are unable to speak.

SA: I love working with a quote as a title vs. an epigraph, almost creating a collaborative dialog within the poem. There is so much to say here that I find the poem’s last line truer than ever. To have found Pessoa’s statement while reading his Book of Disquiet during a stay in Lisbon where I was surrounded by the vivid, strange, and wonderful specific details listed here was profound. And uncanny. Pessoa speaking from the past into an unimagined now in the much-the-same city streets that I would soon leave to my own past was not only “disquieting,” but evocative of the weirdness of time and therefore our human experience. If we pay attention to it. We live our lives in a dimension we cannot comprehend. And then again, that Neruda reference slips in, an unsettling but satisfying ambiguity.

Thanks for giving me a chance to talk about the work!

Sally Ashton is editor-in-chief of DMQ Review, an online journal featuring poetry and art. She has taught creative writing at San Jose State University and through UC Santa Cruz Extension, and has led more than 100 workshops including with Disquiet: International Literary Program in Lisbon, Portugal.

Writing across genres, in collaboration with artists, and specializing in short prose forms, she is the author of four books including the just-released The Behavior of Clocks. Her work also appears in An Introduction to the Prose Poem, in Breathe: 101 Contemporary Odes, in the best-seller Poems for the 99 Percent, and is forthcoming in A Cast-iron Aeoroplane that Actually Flies: Commentaries from 80 American Poets on their Prose Poems.

The featured poems are from The Behavior of Clocks by Sally Ashton (sallyashton.com), published by WordFarm. Copyright 2019 by Sally Ashton. Used with permission from WordFarm (Wordfarm.net). 

Next Line, Please: A New Genre [by Virginia Valenzuela]

This week's post was inspired by our family names in a wholly new genre of poems: the trilogy. It's not quite as official as the sonnet, but its results just can't be beat.

Eric Fretz’s “Fretz Trilogy, a Cento” plays on the homophone of the author's last name to great effect:

“Nuns fret not at their convent’s narrow room,”
An ex-army officer turned critic frets.

Can you not hate me, as I know you? Do
Irks care the crop-full bird? Frets doubt the maw-crammed beast?

In one another’s arms, birds in the trees,
While far beneath us frets the troubled purple of the sea.

Elizabeth Solsburg offers “The Elizabeth Trilogy,” a poem that pivots on the conflict between “Little Women” and “The Church,” as mediated ambiguously by “My mother.”

My mother wanted my name to be Beth—
just that: plain, simple and sweet,
like her favorite of the Little Women,
who is always obedient and perfectly meek,
a good daughter for eternity.

The Church had a different idea—
said I needed the name of a saint,
long dead, and of virtue they’d approved.
My mother, more obedient than I’d ever be,
added the syllables to fit their rule.

She called me Beth the whole of her life—
and for a while I tried to live up to the name,
but those syllables finally caught up with me:
maker of rules instead of blindly obeying,
the chosen of God, the warrior queen

The time for diminutives has long ended
I am the Elizabeth I’ve chosen to be.

Eduardo Ramos Ruiz’s “La Trilogía de Ramos,” mixes Spanish phrases to excellent effect, and could serve as a model for yet another potential genre, the bilingual poem:

(In memory of my father: Juan V. Ramos)

I was named Juan—el nombre de mi padre,
who died before my birth. It’s said
he frequented the tavern La Paloma Azul,
played the accordion and loved
un trago de vino more than his wife.

I was nicknamed “Juan without fear”
by my wife because I carry myself sin miedo.
In fact, I took the pitchfork away from the devil.
I am the undiscovered composer of corridos
who seeks no fame, only perfect end rhymes.

I named my first-born son Juan—
como su abuelo, el primero.
Juanito plays the guitar, composes, and loves
singing more than un trago de vino.
I fear he’ll find a wife, so I pray for no strife.

Emily Winakur’s vigorous use of prose poetry in “The Black-Thumb Trilogy” proves that poetry is found in the language, rather than the line breaks:

I.
Heart-shaped philodendron can survive a minor depressive episode, but not the kind where you leave Seattle for Bethlehem, PA, at the height of summer, and you cry all through the Cascades, over the Columbia River, into Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, the poor plant baking in the back seat; you’re still crying when you run out of gas in Wyoming and you can’t find a motel room within 200 miles of Sturgis, South Dakota; the only thing that stops it is the naked lady on the back of a Harley in the Badlands.

II.
A peace lily is not peaceful in the cold.
Even if you keep it on the side of the apartment away from the windows, where it will thin and drop yellow leaves, it can feel the cold in the snow you stamp off your boots, on the stacks of papers to grade that you’ve carried in from the car, in the gusts that shake the hawks who cling to the tops of bare trees.
If you take the bus to the city for a weekend, your peace lily will get lonely.

III.
Until I had a baby, I was not about to fuss around my fiddle-leaf fig, sticking my fingers into its soil to test for dryness, turning it this way and that before this window or that. But after the baby, after I had given her a bath and combed her and nuzzled her and swaddled her,
it just made sense to turn to the ficus next. To check its dish for drainage, to soak cotton balls in baby oil and clean its ear-like leaves, to talk to it, occasionally, in my baby-talk voice, asking which position it preferred, which kind of light.

Visit the American Scholar's page to read the full post, with more poems and more commentary from quiz master Lehman himself! And check back next week for a whole new prompt.

from "An Enemy of the People" [by Paul Berman]

People have been asking: since when, and for what reason, has Zionism become a dirty word? Paul Berman speculates on this question and reports on recent alarming events in France:

<<<
The Yellow Vest sidewalk mini-riot against Alain Finkielkraut [pictured right], the French philosopher, in Paris a few weeks ago—widely and even internationally reported in the press—deserves an additional commentary, apart from the obvious remark made by many people at the time, to wit, that manias against the Jews have gotten out of hand in France. Finkielkraut was walking in the street, when a group of Yellow Vests discovered him, and, recognizing his face, famous from a thousand talk-show appearances, shouted at him, “France belongs to us! Damn racist! You are a hatemonger. You are going to die. You are going to hell. God will punish you. The people will punish you. Damn Zionist!,”—along with “Go back to Tel Aviv!,” “Get lost, dirty Zionist shit!,” “We are the people!,” and other such cries, expressed with an air of violent menace—until he was rescued by a more sympathetic Yellow Vest and by the police.

<<
The sidewalk attack ought to remind us, in short, that Zola’s phrase (in his immortal J’accuse) was “imbecile anti-Semitism,” and not something adjective-free. Imbecility undergirds the phenomenon. If the attack on Finkielkraut revealed anything new, it was only by showing that imbecilities of different provenances can blend together—a loathing of the Jews compatible with the leftist tone of Yellow Vest economic protest; a loathing in the populist mode, with its rhetoric of “the people” against the Jews; and, as it happens, a touch of Islamist loathing, to boot. The most vituperative of the Yellow Vests shouting at Finkielkraut turned out to be an Islamist, known to the French police. The Yellow Vests on the sidewalk must have found the combination very exciting.
>>

<<
The American universities have become famous for those melodramatic scenes, with crowds of undergraduates convincing themselves that Satan or Joseph de Maistre is about to deliver a lecture, and must be stopped. But student fads are the least of it. In our era, the loftiest of intellectual journals have been known to execute their own editors at noon. If the French version of this sort of thing is different, it is chiefly because the best-known of writers, and not just the academics, can find themselves on trial now and then, not just in the “court of public opinion,” and not just in the American closed-door Title IX university hearings (which is bad enough), but in courts of law.

This has been Michel Houellebecq’s situation, brought up on charges in France some years ago for having insulted Islam, which, of course, he had done—Houellebecq, whose novel Submission, is routinely denounced as racist (though an exposé of anti-Semitism is one of its principal themes). Pascal Bruckner was obliged more recently to defend himself in court, not once but twice, because of his analytic dissections of the Islamist controversies in France—Bruckner, the author of An Imaginary Racism, whose crime can be guessed at from the title of his book. Georges Bensoussan, the historian of the Jews in the Arab countries (in a compendious 900 pages), was brought up on charges for having said in a radio interview that, among Arab families in France, “anti-Semitism is imbibed with one’s mother’s milk”—though, like Houellebecq and Bruckner, Bensoussan managed to avoid conviction (in his case because he had quoted someone else, and the court ruled that he had merely misspoken, and his intentions were not criminal).
>>

To continue reading the essay, published in Tablet, click here.  See also David Lehman's review of Michel Houellebecq’s novel Submission here.

"Good Morning" [by Catherine Bowman]

Let's see what kind of company erotic keeps in the dictionary:

 

Erotic. In the dictionary between Eros, the god of love, born from chaos. In between erose: having the margin irregularly incised or indented, as if bitten by an animal. In between the factitious slang suffix “eroo”as in boozeroo, brusheroo. In between the word erogenous, responsive or sensitive to stimulation.  Between erosion and erode, to wear away by or as if in abrasion, to eat into: to corrode, to destroy by slow consumption. In between erratum and erroneous: a mistake in printing and writing that which is contained or derived from error. Between errant, roving, especially in search of adventure. Eros. French Toast. Overdose. Erotology is the science of love. Erotomania is the meloncholy or madness arriving from passionate love. Erotomaniac, one affected by erotomania. From the ranging root ER: to rouse up set in motion.  Hence, the Orient but also Eries: goddess of discord.  Her counterpart is Eros, from him the many erotica. Aphrodite was his mother, daughter of foam. From Aphrodite we have aphrodisiacs and the foam –like mineral aphrite and aphrizite.    

 

--From the Archive; originally posted February 11, 2008

 

"Remember the Typewriter" [by David Lehman]

Remember rotary phones?
What did we do back then
if we didn’t have a phone
and had to walk a mile
to get to the bus stop?
Remember telephone booths?
Remember when the question was
how many college kids can fit into one telephone booth?

Let’s say I wanted to get a message to you.
Do you remember what we used to do?

Remember the typewriter.
Remember the haiku
on the wine-stained menu.
Remember the answering machine.

Click here for the rest of "Remember the Typewriter", which was posted on The Common Online in May 1. 2013. Warm thanks to poetry editor John Hennessy.

Failing at Love 2.0 (by Nin Andrews)

 

I love this Sappho poem of pure jealousy. I love the “kindled the flesh along my arms/ and smothered me in its smoke-blind rush.” I’m just realizing that many of my favorite poems celebrate the worst parts of our beings: jealousy, lust, rage.

I am thinking about this because I have been reading this book, Love 2.0: Finding Happiness and Health in Moments of Connection, a book recommended by my meditation instructor. The basic premise of the book is that love is not something you simply emanate like a yogi from a cave. Rather, you have to practice it in both small and big ways. The book suggests that you create micro-moments of love by engaging with people wherever you go—the drug store, the post office, the hairdresser, the sidewalk. Just imagine all the opportunities for micro-moments of love. After many such moments, you can develop something called positive resonance. I picture it like a halo around me.

Yeah, right.

But the other day, I thought, what the hell. I might as well try it out. Supposedly, if you do this practice, you develop a well-toned vagal nerve.  And who doesn’t want a toned vagal nerve? So I gave it a shot. I went to the Y for a workout and started gabbing with everyone in sight. I don’t like to chat when I work out, and people who talk too much give me hives. But I figured this was just an experiment. And besides hives, what’s the worst thing that could happen?

First, I talked to a man who was recently divorced and was trying to sweat out his rage at his ex. (He reminded me of that George Bilgere poem, “What I Want”). I didn’t really want to pursue that topic. So then I talked to a woman who hates her ass—okay, that was a little more interesting, and made me think of Lucille Clifton’s “Homage to My Hips.”  Next, I spoke to a lady who thinks the Y is some kind of preview of hell. She did have a few good points to make, especially about the sweaty deposits on the equipment (and yes, there’s a poem for that, too.) Then, in the swimming pool, a man started telling me how to improve my swimming form. He said he could coach me a bit. Really?

So what is it with men? I mean, what woman would tell a man she would like to coach him. Seriously!

(Afterwards, in the shower, I kept thinking of that wonderful poem, “Shooter,” by Jan Beatty.)

Needless to say, I was failing at micro-moments of love. Or at least I wasn’t feeling it.

And to make matters worse, the next day there were all these people trying to talk to me. 

I put my headphones on and looked into the distance. I didn’t even have anything to listen to, but headphones are useful. I think of them now as a protection against micro-moments of love. 

I thought of all my failed attempts at becoming a better human. I am literally a disaster. Then I thought of all the poets I love and how they celebrate their disastrous selves. Consider this poem by Julie Bruck from her book, How to Avoid Huge Ships.

To Janet in Jersey

        Dear Abby: Is it OK to put a paper towel holder in the bathroom?

                                                                —Janet in Jersey

Don’t ever hide your Bounty under the sink. Nor
your conflicted feelings about family members.
Remember the midwife who handed fawning new parents
their wet, perfect baby? In six months, she said,
when you want to drop this child from a window, call me.
Drink, Janet. Smoke, if it calms you. Take secret joy
in the failings of those who judge you. Judge them back,
if it gives you ballast. When you argue with your dead,
slap anyone who uses the word closure.  Rail, Janet,
rage against the body’s small betrayals. You know
they’re only practice for the big one to come. If others
are steeped in denial, that’s their problem. Pass gas.
Should someone instruct you in the art of breathing,
cut that person off for good. Chew your nails. Cheat at cards.
If you want a roll of paper towels in the bathroom,
Janet in Jersey, you get no argument from me. Fuck, yes!

And this poem from Frank O’Hara’s Lunch Poems always makes me laugh.

Poem

Wouldn’t it be funny
if the Finger had designed us
to shit just once a week?

        all week long we’d get fatter
        and fatter and then on Sunday morning
        while everyone’s in church
 
                        ploop !

Yo, Elaine Equi [by David Lehman]

In her poem "Yo Y Tu,"
Elaine Equi ponders
the Spanish tu
which means you but implies intimacy,

is reserved for family and friends
and would be considered gauche
if said to a prospective employer, say,
or a higher-up on the corporate campus,

and the same is true
for tu
in French as opposed to vous
which means you (singular and plural).

Now in English we do have thou and thee
which used to have the same function 
as tu in French
but now they evoke the era of King Arthur.

Elaine's practical solution:
"in English
the informal you
is Yo" (which means I in Spanish).

Elizabeth Bishop to Guest-Edit "The Best American Poetry"

Elizabeth Bishop has agreed to guest-edit an upcoming volume in The Best American Poetry series.

"I've wanted to get her to do this since the series began," David Lehman, BAP's general editor, stated in a press release. "She is a shy person, who never liked the public stage, and the prospect of having to appear at a launch reading before a live audience had always been the ultimate deal-breaker. But when assured she would be spared this indignity, the final barrier was overcome, and we welcome Elizabeth into the fold."

Bishop's work has posthumously been published in three volumes of The Best American Poetry. James Merrill, who arranged communication between Lehman and Bishop via the Ouija app on the dark net, prevailed upon Miss Bishop to respond to the many text messages Lehman sent to her when he learned that a committee of heavenly scribes including Merrill, Louise Bogan, Bishop, Robert Hayden, and Howard Moss had agreed that while the goal of the BAP series is commendable, there has been a notable lack of poems written in set forms. "The well-wrought urn of yore / is now thought an awful bore," Dorothy Parker has commented. (Neither John Donne nor Cleanth Brooks could be reached for comment.) Should the deceased be eligible for inclusion in Bishop's volume? Parker thinks so. "Langston Hughes / is writing great blues," she reports in her semiannual "Celestial Report."

It is widely expected that Bishop, author of "One Art" and "A Miracle for Breakfast," will be on the lookout for beautifully written villanelles, sestinas, pantoums, and the like. "I'm very fond of John Ashbery," Elizabeth wrote in a recent communication, "and I'm happy to report he is writing poems at the clip of five a week, usually during the late afternoon after 'just walking around' Paris and sitting down to his first martini of the day." 

Lehman promised to reveal more details soon and he is working on an interview with Merrill, who was newly elected to the angelic secretariat. -- Howard Nemerov