The Best American Poetry

The Importance of Martin Guerre -- Part One [by Joe Lehman]

"Martin Guerre: Now and Then; Then and Now" [by Joe Lehman]

PART ONE

“Land to last, as it's passed, man to son, when it's done as planned. Then we'll pray it will stay as good Catholic land.”

After the experience of living through the past four years, this lyric sounds a lot like Make America Great Again. At least, that was the thought that came to mind when I listened to the music of Martin Guerre in the summer of 2018.

I had the privilege of attending one of the original performances of the short-lived musical Martin Guerre when visiting London, England, in late December 1997-early January 1998, when I was fourteen. It has had a troubled existence; rarely has it been revived. I don’t believe it has ever opened on Broadway. As I was so young when I saw Martin Guerre, I didn’t appreciate its meaning. Twenty years went by, and in a dream one night, the memory of the musical came to me. The next morning, I purchased the soundtrack of the original cast recording. The musical, and the story behind it, has held a great significance for me ever since.

The tale of the sixteenth century French peasant Martin Guerre and the imposture conducted by his army buddy Arnaud du Thil was resurrected in the 1982 French-language film The Return of Martin Guerre, as well as in a nonfiction book with the same title by historian Natalie Zemon Davis. Subsequently, the story has been immortalized as a continuing trope in many incarnations, including the 1993 movie Sommersby, starring Richard Gere and Jodie Foster, where the story is transported to post-Civil War and Reconstruction-era Tennessee, and the titular character and his imposter are veterans of the Confederate Army. It has even taken the form of satire in an episode of TV’s “The Simpsons,” where the Vietnam veteran Principal Skinner is revealed to be an imposter, a former comrade-in-arms of the ‘real’ Skinner.

It is in Martin Guerre the musical that the story is placed most prominently in the context of bigotry, nativism, and religious intolerance. The history of Catholic persecution of the Protestant Huguenots figures heavily. The setting is the provincial village of Artigat. Strangely, for reasons unknown to me, the word “Huguenot” is never uttered in the show. What is known is that Artigat is populated by a Catholic majority and a Protestant minority. Martin Guerre and Bertrande de Rols are betrothed to marry at an adolescent age, so that their families will merge in attempt to keep their shared land under Catholic ownership. But Martin is unable to perform sexually and in a fit of wanderlust, finds the only way available for French peasant to gain upward mobility: He leaves the village and Bertrande, and joins the Catholic army.

Seven years pass and when Martin is seemingly felled in battle, Arnaud du Thil travels to Artigat and almost accidentally assumes his identity, his land, and his wife Bertrande, who, despite being the one who knows about the fraud, falls in love with Arnaud, and together they clandestinely convert to Protestantism. Guillaume, an anti-Protestant fanatic who is also a jealous former suitor of Bertrande’s, discovers the truth and becomes Arnaud’s main accuser. Arnaud is arrested, brought to trial, where he continues relentlessly to insist he is the real Martin Guerre. The members of the courtroom are divided across Catholic and Protestant lines, in Arnaud’s favor and against it. The surprise witness who is able to provide the ultimate evidence of Arnaud’s imposture is Martin Guerre himself, who reappears to testify to his true identity. The musical sees Artigat burn down in an orgy of violence and Arnaud murdered at Guillaume’s hands. This version differs from the historical record. In fact, Arnaud’s case was tried, appealed, and tried again before he was found guilty and executed by hanging, while Bertrande was returned to her legal husband’s custody. I can only surmise that this modification was made for dramatic purposes. The show ends with the villagers contemplating the consequences of their hateful actions and praying for forgiveness.

French historian Philippe Erlanger in his book St. Bartholomew’s Night chronicles the bloody history of France during the turbulent century of the Protestant Reformation:

The world was changing at a bewildering pace. The old order was giving way. Men had once placed all their hopes in heaven: now they were beginning to look for happiness here on earth again.

 Erlanger describes the atmosphere of the Reformation and the Renaissance:

A society which for a great while had been preoccupied with local quarrels suddenly beheld the horizon torn wide open before it; and at the same time, it became conscious of curiosities, doubts, and wild irrational beliefs.

It seems to be a constant throughout history that with the coming of liberalization and modernization of people and civilization, comes a reactionary backlash equal in force. Erlanger writes:

Intolerance bred intolerance. Fanaticism increased in the same measure as the struggle for liberation of the minds of men.

Erlanger could very well have been describing the political and racial tribalism and its ensuing chaos that exists in present-day America, where the Proud Boys battle Antifa and Black Lives Matter in vicious street confrontations.

Ed note: this is part one of a two-part article. For part two, click here.

"What Men Want" [by James Cummins]

What Men Want

A man wants to move

with cat-like grace

through his life, spill his seed

occasionally, but never

bear responsibility for it;

win the love of his peers

and the veneration

of the older men while

commanding the respect

of the young Turks, too;

then, finally, at the end,

lean a still-powerful forearm

on the frame of a window,

gaze out over the sea

one last time and flick

a glowing cigarette butt

into the garden.

-- James Cummins

Robert Harbison on Vivian Maier

An outstanding column on Vivian Maier, the little known photographer:
https://robertharbisonsblog.net/2020/11/11/vivian-maier-street-photographer/   

An Interview with Nin Andrews [by Aspen Matis]

Nin Andrews’ poems have appeared in many literary journals and anthologies including Ploughshares, Agni, The Paris Review, and four editions of Best American Poetry.  The author of six chapbooks and six full-length poetry collections, she has won two Ohio individual artist grants, the Pearl Chapbook Contest, the Kent State University chapbook contest, and the Gerald Cable Poetry Award. She is also the editor of a book of translations of the Belgian poet, Henri Michaux, Someone Wants to Steal My Name.  Her book, Why God Is a Woman, was published by BOA Editions in 2015. I had the pleasure of corresponding with Ms. Andrews via email about her newest book of poetry, her understanding of poetry’s position in our present society, poetry’s liberating role in her own life, the themes that most fascinate and inspire her, and her perspective on the most radical thing a poet can accomplish in her work.

 What is poetry’s greatest role in your inner life? Why do you write poems?

I blame my mother for everything.

She was a terrible mother, and the most wonderful mother imaginable. A semi-autistic dairy farmer, she despised touch and intimacy in all its guises and was better at handling calves than children. A brilliant linguist, she knew French, German, Latin and Ancient Greek, and studied with Richmond Lattimore in college. She spent countless hours reading aloud to her children in a voice like Katharine Hepburn’s, frequently returning to the Greek myths, the Odyssey, the Iliad. If she was anxious, as she was when I was sick (and I was sick often), she sat by my bed and read poetry. “What does it mean?” I’d ask. “Hush,” she’d answer. “And listen.”  She never liked explanations.

In my earliest memories, poetry and myths were part of my daily life and dreams. We had no TV or neighbors. The stories my mother read filled my imagination. They were part of how I understood the world. And they were magic, the only magic I knew. How could I not want to be a writer?  

What do you see as poetry’s role in our present society? A unifying force? A destabilizing force of social and personal change? A reprieve from the mundanity and suffering of day-to-day existence? An access to greater empathy? A glimpse of inspiring beauty and truth? A compass that reveals new clarity of thought, redirecting our collective course? 

Society—I’ve never been a fan of it.

Even in elementary school, I remember studying the city states. Athens, the celebrated birthplace of democracy, was where women were the property of fathers or spouses. Sparta, the terrible warring polis, was where women were educated and athletic—and exercised in the nude (at least that’s what my mom said). I wanted to be Spartan, but without the warriors. I wanted to delete the warriors. But what would Sparta be without warriors?

There’s so much of every society I’d like to delete. I’m not sure what role poets play in society. Does society care for poetry? Remember Plato wanted to banish the poets.

I suspect that the average American thinks poetry is found in Hallmark cards. I can’t stand greeting cards. So many are a way of putting syrup on life’s turds.

That said, I do think poetry is a force for personal change, a reprieve from suffering, a glimpse of truth and beauty, a compass that helped me relate to my cold and brilliant mother, and more, much more.

What is the most radical thing a poet can do in her work?

Poets can look back.

Like Orpheus and Lot’s wife. Or they can look forward like Cassandra. None of these characters are popular with society. I picture society as a city of righteous Lots.

Your book of prose poems Miss August explores racism in Virginia in the midst of desegregation from multiple perspectives. What inspired Miss August? What do you hope the book’s readers will be left with, after the final page?

I hope first and foremost that readers will enjoy my books. But I do have a habit of writing about things people tell me not to write about. Orgasms are one. Racism, another. I grew up steeped in racism. If I write about the past, I write about racism. I don’t mean just color-coded racism.  

As early as first grade, when I was a cross-eyed kid at an all-white private school, started after integration became law in Virginia, I was teased for having “ugly eyes.” A farm kid, accustomed to insults, I shouted back, “Well your mama musta’ mated with a rhino.” I was sent to the principal’s office for “talking like white trash.” And for using the word “mate.”

“What’s white trash? And why can’t I use the word mate?” I asked my mother after school. She didn’t answer—she just said I needed to stop talking like the farmhands. And she started giving me elocution lessons.

I think not-answering is a problem. Not-talking about topics—it’s like putting a lid on a hot frying pan. Society does that. If I could give anything to readers, I’d give them the willingness to lift a few lids.

In your first poetry collection, The Book of Orgasms, you introduce the orgasm as an ethereal presence, a muse who begins a dialogue with her human counterparts. And your most recent book of poems, The Last Orgasm, imagines a conclusion to that dialogue: a bold collection of wry, fantastical, feminist meditations on sexuality, desire’s origin, love’s nature, and—ultimately—desire’s ending. What inquiry or interest birthed this beautiful and subversive new collection?

I’ve been lucky. I’ve enjoyed the company of so many great poems and poets, and I’ve had time to dream, to write, to love. And I have loved deeply. But I know all good things must end—including orgasms and poems. Even while composing them now, I can see them leaving. I wanted to say farewell in this book, to prepare myself for the last orgasm and poem.

You edited Someone Wants to Steal My Name, a book of translations of the Belgian poet Henri Michaux, and in the book’s introductory essay, "Finding Henri Michaux,” you write: “With Michaux, it was passion at first glimpse. … He's not even a poet… he's something else. I still consider Michaux to be something else entirely, …I think of him as an anti-poet, an anti-god, a Buddha, a cure for my suffering. Michaux demonstrated a different method and reason for writing. …He suggested another way of being, writing, thinking, observing, so unlike any I had experienced...” What was the experience like of editing a poet you so admire? And what draws you to Michaux’s poetry? How do his words reach you so profoundly, and what have you learned from his work about what is possible for yourself as a poet?

I never felt up to the task of editing Henri Michaux. But I’ll forever love his character, Plume, happy-go-lucky Plume, who lives out some of my worst nightmares. When Plume travels, strangers wipe their hands on his coat, serve him terrible food, refuse him lodging. When he goes to the doctor, the surgeon chops off a finger. But it’s all fine with him. After all, what’s a man to do? These poems are funny and irreverent, and they expose dark, psychological truths. Michaux taught me that you can write or say anything as long as you keep smiling and laughing. 

What themes and inquiries most fascinate and inspire you?

My father used to say, “Nin, put a lid on it,” meaning keep your mouth shut.  And, “Don’t make a fool of yourself.” My theme as a writer is: be daring. Make a fool of yourself. My dad was a gay man who lived his life as a straight person. He was an artist who rarely painted. I don’t want to live or write as if I am not myself.

"Spring" [by Angela Ball]

My feelings just took a turn for the better,
While thinking of white flowers turning into strawberries,
Of clover turning into bees, of crowds of wisteria
Swelling and swelling.

People often think I have a friendly dog but it is just me:
My wide arm-span for folding tablecloths, my feet that seem worn
Not just by me, but many.

I had this feeling once before, when I was walking through rain
And wet leaves in shoes that were red and navy.
Much of me hadn't been tried out, and I liked that.

-- Angela Ball
[from NIGHT CLERK AT THE HOTEL OF BOTH WORLDS, University of Pittsburgh Press]

from the archive; first posted March 20, 2010

"Jazz" [by Angela Ball]

I’d like to know everything
A jazz artist knows, starting with the song,
“Goodbye Pork Pie Hat.”

Like to make some songs myself:
“Goodbye Rickshaw,”
“Goodbye Lemon Drop,”
“Goodbye Rendezvous.”

Or maybe even blues:

If you fall in love with me, I’ll make you pancakes
All morning.  If you fall in love with me
I’ll make you pancakes all night.
If you don’t like pancakes
We’ll go to the creperie.  If you don’t like pancakes
We’ll go to the creperie.
If you don’t like to eat, handsome boy,
Don’t you hang around with me.

On second thought, I’d rather find
The fanciest music and hear all of it.

I’d rather love somebody
And say his name to myself every day
Until I fall apart.

-- Angela Ball

From Night Clerk at the Hotel of Both Worlds by Angela Ball (University of Pitttsburgh Press).
And from The Best American Poetry 2001 (edited by Robert Hass)

from the archive; first posted  September 4, 2009

I’d like to know everything
A jazz artist knows, starting with the song,
“Goodbye Pork Pie Hat.”

Like to make some songs myself:
“Goodbye Rickshaw,”
“Goodbye Lemon Drop,”
“Goodbye Rendezvous.”

Or maybe even blues:

If you fall in love with me, I’ll make you pancakes
All morning.  If you fall in love with me
I’ll make you pancakes all night.
If you don’t like pancakes
We’ll go to the creperie.  If you don’t like pancakes
We’ll go to the creperie.
If you don’t like to eat, handsome boy,
Don’t you hang around with me.

On second thought, I’d rather find
The fanciest music and hear all of it.

I’d rather love somebody
And say his name to myself every day
Until I fall apart.

-- Angela Ball

From Night Clerk at the Hotel of Both Worlds by Angela Ball (University of Pitttsburgh Press).
And from The Best American Poetry 2001 (edited by Robert Hass)

from the archive; first posted  September 4, 2009

Glyn Maxwell: "Deep Sorriness, Atonement Song"

Glyn Maxwell b. 1962 "Deep Sorriness Atonement Song" (for missed appointment, BBC North, Manchester)   Ed. note: Just one of the funniest, sorriest, most pitiful apologies ever penned. Only thing is, it's full of allusions, some of which are best grasped if you're British. Fortunately, the editor of the one-time marvelous poetry site, "Wondering Minstrels" (Thomas ...) wrote some illuminating notes, which I reproduce with gratitude in the box below the poem. The man who sold Manhattan for a halfway decent bangle, He had talks with Adolf Hitler and could see it from his angle, And he could have signed the Quarrymen but didn't think they'd make it So he bought a cake on Pudding Lane and thought "Oh well I'll bake it" But his chances they were slim And his brothers they were Grimm, And he's sorry, very sorry, But I'm sorrier than him. And the drunken plastic surgeon who said "I know, let's enlarge 'em!" And the bloke who told the Light Brigade "Oh what the hell, let's charge 'em", The magician with an early evening gig on the Titanic And the Mayor who told the people of Atlantis not to panic, And the Dong about his nose And the Pobble re his toes, They're all sorry, very sorry But I'm sorrier than those. And don't forget the Bible, with the Sodomites and Judas, And Onan who discovered something nothing was as rude as, And anyone who reckoned it was City's year for Wembley. And the kid who called Napoleon a shortarse in assembly, And the man who always smiles Cause he knows I have his files, They're all sorry, really sorry, But I'm sorrier by miles. And Robert Falcon Scott who lost the race to the Norwegian, And anyone who's ever split a pint with a Glaswegian, Or told a Finn a joke or spent an hour with a Swiss-German, Or got a mermaid in the sack and found it was a merman, Or him who smelt a rat, And got curious as a cat, They're all sorry, deeply sorry, But I'm sorrier than that. All the people who were rubbish when we needed them to do it, Whose wires crossed, whose spirit failed, who ballsed it up or blew it, All notches of nul points and all who have a problem Houston, At least they weren't in Kensington when they should have been at Euston. For I didn't build the Wall And I didn't cause the Fall But I'm sorry, Lord, I'm sorry, I'm the sorriest of all.

Notes: 'The man who sold Manhattan for a halfway decent bangle': In 1626 Peter Minuit, the first director general of New Netherland province, is said to have purchased the island from the local Indians (the Manhattan, a tribe of the Wappinger Confederacy) with trinkets and cloth valued at 60 guilders, then worth about 1 1/2 pounds (0.7 kg) of silver. 'He had talks with Adolf Hitler and could see it from his angle': Probably a reference to Neville Chamberlain, who returned from negotiations with Hitler in Munich and famously declared "I believe it is peace for our time". It wasn't. 'And he could have signed the Quarrymen but didn't think they'd make it': 'The Quarrymen' was one of the early names of the greatest rock group of all time, the Beatles. Manager Brian Epstein sent demo tapes to literally dozens of recording companies before landing a contract with EMI/Parlophone. 'So he bought a cake on Pudding Lane and thought "Oh well I'll bake it"': The Great Fire of London, in 1666, started in a bakery on Pudding Lane. (It ended on Pie Lane, but that's a different matter altogether). 'And the bloke who told the Light Brigade "Oh what the hell, let's charge 'em"': The ill-fated Charge of the Light Brigade, immortalized by Tennyson. 'The magician with an early evening gig on the Titanic': One can safely assume that the performance sank without a trace. 'And the Mayor who told the people of Atlantis not to panic': Famous last words. 'And the Dong about his nose / And the Pobble re his toes': The Dong with the Luminous Nose, and the Pobble who has no Toes are characters from the mysterious, twilit world of Edward Lear's imagination. 'And don't forget the Bible, with the Sodomites and Judas, And Onan who discovered something nothing was as rude as' Sodomy: copulation with a member of the same sex or with an animal Onanism: masturbation, Judas: one who betrays under the guise of friendship. 'And anyone who reckoned it was City's year for Wembley': Manchester City have never won the F. A. Cup. 'And the kid who called Napoleon a shortarse in assembly': The widespread notion of Napoleon's shortness lies in the inaccurate translation of old French feet ("pieds de roi") to English. The French measure of five foot two (5' 2"), recorded at his autopsy, actually translates into five feet six and one half inches (5' 6.5") in English measure, which was about the average height of the Frenchman of his day. It's also probable that the grenadiers of his Imperial Guard, with whom he "hung out," were very tall men, therefor creating the illusion that Napoleon was very short. 'And Robert Falcon Scott who lost the race to the Norwegian': Roald Amundsen reached the South Pole about a month before Scott's doomed expedition. 'And anyone who's ever split a pint with a Glaswegian': Glaswegians are notorious for their tightfistedness... 'Or told a Finn a joke': ... Finns for their lack of humour... 'or spent an hour with a Swiss-German': ... and Germans for their boringness. 'All notches of nul points': Probably a reference to the annual Eurovision song contest, where a really bad song could get nul points. (Songs that get booed even on Eurovision - ooh, horrendous thought. 'and all who have a problem Houston': Astronaut Jack Swigert, command module pilot of the unsuccessful Apollo 13 mission, reported the first signs of trouble with this marvellous piece of understatement: "Houston, we've had a problem here". A vivid account of the subsequent rescue can bo found here: http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/history/apollo/apollo-13/apollo-13.html 'in Kensington when they should have been at Euston': Kensington: the wrong station, and Euston, the right one for trains from London to Manchester. © Glyn Maxwell

http://www.blueridgejournal.com/poems/gm-sorry.htm

Larkin, Uncensored (On Human Bondage, Donald Davie, and Barbara Pym)

Philip Larkin wrote this poem -- which he characterized as a "cri du cock" -- in 1943, when he was 21:

I would give all I possess
(money, keep, wallet, personal effects, and articles of dress)
To stick my tool
Up the prettiest girl in Warwick King's High School.

*

To the tune of "Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do," Larkin penned this 1974 epistle (unsent) to Professor Donald Davie:

Davie, Davie,
Give me a bad review;
That's your gravy,
Telling chaps what to do.
Forget about style and passion,
As long as it's in the fashion --
But let's be fair, it's got you a chair,
Which was all it was meant to do.

The last lines are the poem's weak link and Larkin 's friend Kingsley Amis suggested that he change them to "But it's got you a chair, which, let's be fair, / Was the most that you had in view."

*

Larkin had a flair for limericks. He had a high regard for Barbara Pym's writing, but that didn't prevent him from composing these lines:

The chances are certainly slim
Of finding in Barbara Pym
      (I speak with all deference)
      The faintest of reference
To what in our youth we called quim --

The three poems are from Philip Larkin, The Complete Poems ed. Archie Burnett (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012

Good old Phil, / Over the hill / From the start. / Bless his heart. 

[from the archive; posted March 20, 22 and 23, 2013]

I would give all I possess
(money, keep, wallet, personal effects, and articles of dress)
To stick my tool
Up the prettiest girl in Warwick King's High School.

*

To the tune of "Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do," Larkin penned this 1974 epistle (unsent) to Professor Donald Davie:

Davie, Davie,
Give me a bad review;
That's your gravy,
Telling chaps what to do.
Forget about style and passion,
As long as it's in the fashion --
But let's be fair, it's got you a chair,
Which was all it was meant to do.

The last lines are the poem's weak link and Larkin 's friend Kingsley Amis suggested that he change them to "But it's got you a chair, which, let's be fair, / Was the most that you had in view."

*

Larkin had a flair for limericks. He had a high regard for Barbara Pym's writing, but that didn't prevent him from composing these lines:

The chances are certainly slim
Of finding in Barbara Pym
      (I speak with all deference)
      The faintest of reference
To what in our youth we called quim --

The three poems are from Philip Larkin, The Complete Poems ed. Archie Burnett (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012

Good old Phil, / Over the hill / From the start. / Bless his heart. 

[from the archive; posted March 20, 22 and 23, 2013]

"I'm Sorry" [by Stanley Moss]

I’m sorry, exhausted, except for funds.
I wrote a check, the date October 18
without the year, to Theresa Monrose
for a hundred dollars, I did not write
the amount longhand.
My conversation with friends
is something like the way I wrote that check
when I try to tell what I owe them.
I don’t get it right, I leave off years,
the everyday debt made clear by saying
something like thank you,
in a handwritten letter.
Yes, I believe everyone’s
time of day or night is different.
I’m sure a poet I love,
who demanded punctuality,
never bounced a check.
When he died, age 66,
at the Altenburgerhof Hotel,
he did not pay his bill.
I guarantee the world will pay
for his empty Zimmer a hundred years.
I can’t get Siegfried’s Funeral March out of my ears.

Ed. note: First published in The New Yorker, May 23, 2019.

Walt Whitman’s “Reconciliation” [ by John Brehm]

At the height of the American Civil War, Walt Whitman spent three years visiting wounded and dying soldiers in the hospitals in and around Washington, D.C. He would bring them small gifts, whatever they most needed or wanted—a pair of socks, some rice pudding, a shot of brandy—and wrote letters home for those who were unable to write themselves, too sick or in many cases illiterate. Most importantly, he sat and talked with them, sharing with all who desired it the healing power of his presence. Whitman admired the stoicism with which the soldiers bore their suffering—many of them were as young as 15 and 16, with no friends or family near—and often held vigil until they died. By his own estimate, he visited between eighty to a hundred thousand of the wounded and sick. These visits lasted from an hour or two to all day and night. In critical cases he would sometimes take up quarters in the hospital and keep watch several nights in a row.

          Conditions in the overcrowded wards were ghastly—gangrene and other infections killed more soldiers than their injuries—and the long hours Whitman spent there nearly ruined his own health. And yet he considered those three years “the greatest privilege and satisfaction, (with all their feverish excitements and physical deprivations and lamentable sights,) and, of course, the most profound lesson of my life.” The compassion he brought to these soldiers opened him to “undream’d-of depths of emotion.” Nor did he discriminate between Union and Confederate, or between black and white. “I can say that in my ministerings I comprehended all, whoever came in my way, northern or southern, and slighted none…. I was with many rebel officers and men among our wounded, and gave them always what I had, and tried to cheer them the same as any.”

          Among the many remarkable aspects of Whitman’s wartime service, perhaps most remarkable is this willingness to tend to Confederate as well as Union soldiers, even though his own brother had been wounded at Fredericksburg, and would later nearly die of starvation in a Confederate prison. Whitman’s compassion made no distinctions, and that generosity of spirit informs one of his great short lyrics about the war, published in 1865, after the fighting had ended.

Reconciliation

 Word over all, beautiful as the sky! 
Beautiful that war, and all its deeds of carnage, must in time be utterly lost;
That the hands of the sisters Death and Night, incessantly softly wash again,
           and ever again, this soil’d world:
For my enemy is dead—a man divine as myself is dead;
I look where he lies, white-faced and still, in the coffin—I draw near; 
I bend down, and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin.

          Whitman places the hoped-for reconciliation between North and South within larger cycles destruction and purification, where Death and Night are personified as sisters who “incessantly softly wash again, and ever again, this soil’d world.” (The repetition of soft “s” sounds reinforces the soothing, restorative quality of the process Whitman describes). He may have been thinking of the women who served as volunteer nurses during the war, the way they would have bathed the soldiers, cleaned their wounds, endlessly it must have seemed. But from witnessing such specific acts of care, Whitman creates an image of cosmic cleansing, a sense that the masculine forces of war and violence will always be met and transformed by the feminine energies of compassion and renewal.

          In the second part of the poem, Whitman gives us a specific act of earthly reconciliation, as he bends down and kisses his “enemy” where he lies “white-faced and still, in the coffin.” He calls this fallen Confederate solider “my enemy” but recognizes that ultimately he is “divine as myself”; that there is no difference, no separation, between them; that their shared divinity—in Buddhist terms, we might say their basic goodness—is vastly more important, more real, than their allegiance to opposing sides of the conflict. But what an extraordinary thing to say, and to do. Whether or not Whitman actually kissed a Confederate solider in his coffin—it’s quite possible he may have done so—or simply imagined it, the gesture, the willingness to make contact, to bridge the physical space between them, represents an act of reverence that transcends all boundaries.

          “Reconciliation” embodies the truth of non-separation; we see that truth not only described but acted out before us. As such, the poem models a quality of loving awareness and compassionate behavior we might aspire to ourselves. Can we see the divinity in those we regard as enemies? Can we connect with the basic goodness that exists undisturbed below whatever harmful mind-states we encounter in another? Can we act with gentleness and kindness even in the midst of hatred and violence? No doubt we will often fail, but reading deeply and holding in mind poems like Whitman’s “Reconciliation” can help keep the aspiration alive.

from The Dharma of Poetry by John Brehm (c)2021. Reprinted by Wisdom Publications. www.wisdomexperience.org 
This is the first half of Brehm’s opening chapter, “Wisdom and Compassion: Walt Whitman.”
https://wisdomexperience.org/product/dharma-poetry/

Maureen Owen: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

photo by Rachael Pongetti

_________________________________________________________________________

 

Survival Song

 

Don’t worry about me        on latenight subways

coming home down snowy abandoned blvds.

I am La Coyote       she of the white track

loping through thick drifts          the stinging

crystals at my eyes        muggers drop their arms

at my approach     murderers withdraw back into

doorways   shivering       as my shadow floats over

the snow        trotting soundlessly up second ave

“German Shepherd,”  someone says to calm his

startled companion          but really I am La Loba

the she-wolf       a low hum in my throat

a terrible power in my yellow eyes          junkies

quiver           haggard & dangerous con men

skirt widely as I pass them moving at a low run

down 110^th     perverts howl & race for cover

I am La Coyote   invisible in the deepening snow

no one touches me   I make it home     everytime.

_____________________________________________________________________________

Maureen Owen, former editor and chief of Telephone Magazine and Telephone Books, is the author of Erosion’s Pull from Coffee House Press, a finalist for the Colorado Book Award and the Balcones Poetry Prize. Her title American Rush: Selected Poems was a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize and her work AE (Amelia Earhart) was a recipient of the prestigious Before Columbus American Book Award. She has taught at Naropa University, both on campus and in the low-residency MFA Creative Writing Program, in Naropa’s Summer Writing Program, and edited Naropa’s on-line zine not enough night through 19 issues. Her  newest title Edges of Water is available from Chax Press. She has most recently had work in Blazing Stadium, Positive Magnets, Posit, and The Denver Quarterly.  Click here for her Poets on the Road Tour with Barbara Henning. She can be found reading her work on the PennSound website.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

 Jackson Pollock, The She Wolf, 1943

"The Men We Marry, the Men We Fuck" [by Jill Alexander Essbaum]

This one kissed me beneath the stars.
That one fondled me up the stairs.

This one confessed his sins but to God.
That one demanded his pity aloud.

This one drove me to the store.
That one drove me like a car.

This one gave me violets and asters.
That one brought me violence and disaster.

This one wed me in the chapel.
That one ate me like an apple,

And he was as handsome as he was doomed.
Lovely as lust, but fickle as the moon.

This one built a house to live in.
That one fed me glass and poison.

This one tended a kindled hearth.
That one threw me to the dirt

And by the greenbrier patch we tangled,
Hand to thigh and lip to nipple.

The men we marry, the men we fuck:
This one doubly filled my cup,

That one used me up.

-- Jill Alexander Essbaum

(originally published in The Bedside Guide to No Tell Motel: Second Floor)

Can You Name This Dude?

Talking Pictures: "The Counterfeit Traitor" with William Holden [by David Lehman]

 Ed. note: For The American Scholar, I write a monthly column under the general title of "talking pictures" about movies worth seeing and talking about. Here are the opening paragraphs of my latest effort. -- DL

<<< The Counterfeit Traitor is an underrated espionage classic in the same league as an early Eric Ambler novel or a Warner Brothers ’40s flick, albeit one set on location and in color. My best guess for why it is underrated is that the hero (William Holden) and heroine (Lilli Palmer) do not conform to accepted norms. They are played not by an all-American boy and golden girl but by two attractive and capable, if decidedly middle-aged, adults. Holden, who plays protagonist Eric “Red” Erickson, was 44 in 1962. Palmer, cast with her mitteleuropa beauty and charm as Frau Marianne von Mollendorf, Erickson’s clandestine confederate in Berlin, was 48.

Like the patron of Rick’s Cafe Américain in Casablanca, the hero of The Counterfeit Traitor does not begin the Second World War as the champion of a cause. He must be converted, and Frau von Mollendorf is his catalyst, converting the American-born, Cornell-educated Swedish industrialist from reluctant spy to committed freedom fighter.

Erickson, an oil exporter who has continued to trade with Germany after hostilities began in September 1939, has aimed for a stance of political neutrality. But he has been denounced as a Nazi collaborator, and now Allied Intelligence, led by the sardonic British agent Collins (Hugh Griffith), wants him to play the role with a vengeance. Repeating ugly shibboleths and breaking off relations with his best friend, a Jew, Erickson gains credibility among Nazi higher-ups, enabling him to gather vital information on German oil production facilities.

Not for the first time in his Hollywood career does Holden portray a resourceful skeptic that the Allies need to recruit despite his reluctance to join the fray. As in The Bridge on the River Kwai, his character needs to have his arm twisted hard. (See my Talking Pictures piece “William Holden, Model Prisoner” on William Holden in two lauded movies of the 1950s.) You might call Erickson disillusioned, but he doesn’t appear to have illusions in the first place. Virtually coerced into the role of counterfeit traitor, Erickson sums up his situation thus: “So you want me to risk my life to get off a blacklist I didn’t deserve to be on in the first place?”

. . . . . 

I first grasped the importance of a pocket square with three wings in a man’s breast pocket when I saw William Holden wear one at a cocktail party in The Counterfeit Traitor. And it was watching the movie as a 14-year-old that I realized for the first time that the hopelessness of a love affair accentuates its romantic and sexual intensity. >>>

For the rest of the piece, click here.

Meet the Press: Plan B Press and Alan King’s Crooked Smiling Light

Dante Di Stefano: The poems in Crooked Smiling Light meditate on complicated family relationships. What are the advantages and the challenges of foregrounding the domestic and the autobiographical in your writing?

Alan King: The advantages to this approach is that the stories come off as being authentic since I’m pulling from my own experiences. These are opportunities to connect with readers on a real level because everyone has complicated relationships with a loved one.

The challenge is if my parents read my work, they’ll read it out of context and wonder why I’m “embarrassing” the family. My father and I made a lot of progress from those tense moments. There’s a chance he sees some of these poems and our relationship deteriorates, with all the work we did to get to where we are for nothing. So, there’s that.

DD: Much of this chapbook concerns itself with fatherhood. The book begins with complicated father-son relationship explored in “In Your Dream” and “Counter Punching” unfolds in dialogue with the father-daughter relationship explored in a poem like “The Land of Innocence.” Can you talk about the trope of fatherhood in your own work? Are there any father-son, father-daughter poems written by other poets that you find particularly compelling and instructive?

AK: Tim Seibles’s poems about his dad in his recent collection, One Turn Around the Sun, had a nuance that was lacking in my own poems. His poem, Ode To Your Father, really showed me how to humanize my dad while being critical of him at the same time. He tells the story of his dad that made me feel like I had a full picture of him. That’s what I wanted to start doing in my work.

DD: Who are your favorite poets?

AK: Aw man. That list changes, but the consistent ones are Tim Seibles, Destiny Birdsong, Kelly Harris DeBerry, John Murillo, Asha French, Jan Beatty, Kim Addonizio, Dorianne Laux, and Stephen Dobyns. Those are a few who come to mind.

DD: Like many contemporary love poems, “Gluttony” upends the notion of an idealized and exclusive beloved, meditating as it does on extramarital desire within a committed relationship. Why approach the love poem in this way?

AK: I felt the approach had to be real. Just because you’re married doesn’t mean you stop seeing attractive people besides your spouse or partner. Those feelings are natural, and the urges are what makes us human. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with having those feelings. It’s up to the person on whether they will act on those cravings.

DD: The killing of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter Movement directly and indirectly provide a context for Crooked Smiling Light. Could you talk about how recent events have shaped your writing life?

AK: I think Steven Leyva explained this well in his “Nerd Volta” column for the Washington Independent Review of Books, when he said that my earlier poems “were always tempered…with a kind of whimsy.” In light of recent events, “the whimsy has largely given way to an often-unguarded lament,” of what he called “a licked chop.”

I alluded to things in my earlier work. Tim Seibles, who was one of my mentors when I was going through the Stonecoast MFA Program at the University of Southern Maine, told me to stop hinting at things. Just go there. Sometimes a point-blank approach is necessary to drive the point home with readers.

DD: stevenallenmay, how did Plan B Press come into being?

stevenallenmay: Plan B Press started as the publishing wing of a 30-day poetry festival that occurred in Berks County, PA each April during National Poetry Month. The festival itself has been taking place in Berks County each April since 1999. The Press was meant to publish participants of the Festival, however over time that mission has evolved as the Press moved from Central Pennsylvania to Philadelphia, PA to the Washington DC area. The Press has been focused on giving voice to poets at the beginnings of their writing journeys since 1999.

DD: Can you tell us about your back catalogue?

s-a-m: We have published over 100 books in our 20+ year history and many of them have gone out of print for a variety of reasons. This is not an unusual occurrence for a small press which primarily publishes chapbooks. Our Back Pages is a visual blast of the journey we have been on as publishers as well. Some of the poets we have published have gone on to greater success (C L Bledsoe, Alyse Bensel, Jake Syersak, Michael Leong, and Robert Miltner to name but a few) 

DD: What does the future hold for Plan B Press?

s-a-m: We hope to rise from the pillow to slay the ennui of life each day for the foreseeable future. 

DD: What do you find most compelling about Crooked Smiling Light?

s-a-m: Alan’s voice. We had the privilege of publishing him in our most well-known book, Full Moon on K Street edited by Kim Roberts back in 2010. I have attended a number of readings of Alan’s since then and am always rewarded by his voice and delivery. He has quite a presence in a room when he reads. His work on the page is equally engaging as well. 

DD: Can you end the interview by introducing a poem from Alan’s collection?

s-a-m: “Gluttony”, probably because there is a video of this poem which is a work of art in its own visual right. Plan B Press has always been interested in the presentation of poetry beyond ink on paper. And Alan W. King embodies a multidisciplinary approach to poetry that we welcome and embrace. It’s an honor to be working with him on this project. 

Gluttony

Combing the bargain bin,
a woman, who's not your wife,
brushes beside you—asking
if the Roy Hargrove CD you're holding
is any good.

She's close enough for you to smell
her ginger-patchouli body wash.

The angle she gives you
in her leather bomber jacket—
the one unzipped, showing a white tee
retracing her athletic stomach and arms.

The jacket, with its collar flared,
makes her a bright blossom
booming its honey dew–scented tune
along her neckline.

And your father's voice,
from two decades before, warns you
about gorging on everything you see.

You were 16 the first time
he told you, when your hunger hovered
like that summer at Myrtle Beach—

sistas strutting the boardwalk
beneath a honey barbecue sun,
whose sweet light made each of them
a long stretch of marinade, a chromatic
scale of flavors along which
your tongue was burning to play.

And isn't temptation always lurking,
eager to hold our common sense hostage?

You tell the flower woman you're married
after she points to a flyer for a Roots show
and says y'all should go.

When she asks are you happy?
you remember a brotha once asking
how you could love one woman
when the world's a buffet—

the possibilities of pleasure
laid out like jumbo crab cakes,
lasagna rolls, and buffalo wings.

What's gluttony, if not a symptom
of our own hunger consuming us?

Wasn't Jack as careless, selling
his sustenance for a handful of beans?

You remember the story
of the stalk that almost made him
a hungry giant's grub.

You still hear the pastor preaching
about gluttons wearing the rags of drowsiness,
which is how your wife found you
stumbling through the days.

Your life before her was a string-less violin,
a dark garden of wilted sunflowers, a camper trailer
rusting against a moldy brick wall.

You were once a city of power lines,
boarded up clock towers, junked cars
and blazing drum barrel fires.

What she saw in you, only her heart knows.
Just like it knew you'd leave the temptress
back at the listening booth watching
the automatic doors close behind you.

At 16, you thought all there was to living
was filling your appetite—
too young to know love
is the everyday meal,
that the lack of it kills quicker
than the absence of food.

---

Alan King is an author, poet, journalist and videographer, who lives with his family in Bowie, MD. He’s a communications specialist for a national nonprofit and a senior editor at Words Beats & Life‘s global hip hop journal. King is the author of POINT BLANK (Silver Birch Press, 2016) and DRIFT (Aquarius Press, 2012). He’s a graduate of the Stonecoast MFA Low-Residency Program at the University of Southern Maine. His poems and short stories appear in various literary journals, magazines and are featured on public radio. 

 

"Auguries" [by Sharon Mesmer]

Need answers to life's persistent questions?  Then why not try . . .

Ailuromancy — divination by the behavior of cats
Alectryomancy — divination by chicken
Amnimancy — divination by the membraneous sac of a newborn
Bibliomancy/Rhapsodomancy — divination by turning to a random page in a book
Cledonomancy — divination by chance remarks or events
Copromancy — divination by feces
Crominomancy — divination by the curved patterns inside an onion
Daphnomancy — divination by the crackle of burning laurel leaves
Entomancy — divination by insects
Fractomancy — divination by fractal patterns
Gyromancy — divination by whirling
Haruspexopy — divination by examination of entrails of sheep, swine, oxen
Hippomancy — divination by inspection of horses' hooves
Lunomancy — divination by moonlight on a face dusted with silver
Metoposcopy — divination by reading lines on the forehead
Myomancy — divination by the movements of mice
Nephlomancy — divination by cloud "pictures"
Omphalomancy — divination by belly button
Ophiomancy — divination by the movements of snakes
Stolisomancy — divination by reading people's clothing/style
Tyromancy — divination by coagulation patterns of spoiled cheese
Xenomancy — divination by meetings with strangers
(My favorite: flarfomancy — divination by Google search

from the archive; first posted November 24, 2008

Revisiting "D.A.R.Y.L." [by Joe Lehman]

1985’s D.A.R.Y.L., directed by Simon Wincer (“Lonesome Dove” of TV) and starring past child actor Barrett Oliver (The Never Ending Story) is a film that could easily be called a Pinocchio story. That is to say, it evokes the image of Pinocchio as rendered in the 1940 Walt Disney classic (not the mostly forgotten, harsh, serialized 1881 story by Italian journalist and radical activist Carlo Collodi). The Disney image is that of the naïve marionette-come-alive, with a penchant for telling fibs, and a longing desire to be accepted and adopted as a live boy by his would-be father, puppeteer Gepetto.

D.A.R.Y.L.’s place in the context of the Pinocchio tale is overlooked, unlike the similarly themed and better-known Stanley Kubrick/Steven Spielberg collaborative effort 2001’s A.I. Artificial Intelligence, which references Pinocchio ever so relentlessly. Upon re-watching D.A.R.Y.L. for the umpteenth time I feel it deserves special recognition, especially from lovers of ‘80s kitsch, who seem to constitute its largest fan-base.

          The Daryl of the film’s title is a preadolescent android whose name is an acronym of Data. Analyzing. Robot. Youth. Lifeform. Daryl stands out as a kind of Pinocchio-figure that strives to become authentic as a child on a reverse course from the immortal Tuscan marionette. Where Pinocchio becomes “real” through evolving into maturity, Daryl begins as fully matured and adapts childish qualities through his social interaction with the family and friends that become his by the story’s end.

          The movie begins with the “boy’s” mysterious appearance, following the opening shot of a military helicopter chasing a speeding car, with Daryl occupying the backseat. The chopper pursues the fleeing driver until the vehicle speeds to his demise, off a cliff, but not before the driver has released the child into the woods, where passing motorists discover him and deliver him to social services. From the start it is obvious that the boy has selective amnesia, and can recall only his name, Daryl, and the ability to speak proper English. Yet he is seemingly a prodigy in almost every cognitive and academic ability. He has a perfect photographic memory and talent for reading, for mathematics, and for processing new information in general, especially machines with computers, such as ATMs, an early model of which show up in one particularly funny scene. The movie postpones the explanation for Daryl’s origin, the identity of the doomed driver, and the reason for the helicopter chase until midway. This is a smart move.

Placed in the care of loving foster parents Joyce and Andy Richardson (Mary Beth Hurt and Michael McKean), whom he instantly adores, he makes friends of a neighbor boy, “Turtle” Fox (Danny Corkill), and his older sister Sherie Lee (Amy Linker), the son and daughter of Daryl’s social workers (Steve Ryan and Colleen Camp). Daryl quickly becomes an overnight sensation in Little League and sets an all-time high score on his Atari games – games that will be so familiar to ‘80s kitsch-lovers.

In his 1985 review, the late Roger Ebert writes:

D.A.R.Y.L. is a sort of Charly in reverse. Instead of a retarded man who is allowed, through science, to have a brief glimpse of what it would be like to be normal, what we have here is a super-intelligent thinking machine who gets a taste of being a real little boy. It’s an intriguing premise, and the movie handles it with skill.

I concur with Ebert’s opinion that Daryl’s relationship with his new best friend Turtle is central to the “Pinocchio” character’s evolution into a “real boy”:

 They know there is something odd about the kid when he starts doing his own laundry. That’s not natural for a grade-schooler. Daryl has some other strange attributes. He is unfailingly polite, obsessively honest and bats 1,000 in Little League [a fact pointed out earlier]. Finally, his friend, Turtle, pulls him aside and explains that adults don’t like it when a kid is too perfect. It makes them nervous. They need to connect with him, so they can relax around him. Daryl nods gravely, and his next time at bat, he strikes out.

If Daryl is a proverbial Pinocchio, then the character of Turtle represents the conscience. Turtle, who is portrayed as a typical ten-year-old, is mischievous and adventurous. In many ways he seems the kind of scamp that Carlo Collodi presented in the original Pinocchio. By way of contrast, Daryl is the reverse-Pinocchio. It is as if the characters have mashed up.  

Rebecca West, in her lengthy examination of Collodi’s original serialized novel, asserts that while the tale has “qualities that tie it to the genre of children’s literature” it also has elements that “are more allied to the tradition of adult, ‘serious’ prose fiction.”

The last lines of Rebecca West’s study are especially pertinent: “As in many fairy tales, in Pinocchio too it is the overcoming of obstacles that pushes the tale forward, so that the hero or heroine may be rewarded with the happy ending…In order to understand better the qualities that make of the puppet's tale something much more complex than a simple fairy tale-like story of goodness and obedience rewarded.” Pinocchio achieves his humanity, i.e., his transformation from a marionette to a flesh-and-blood boy through redeeming himself of his selfishness. The preadolescent android “D.A.R.Y.L.”, as the audience bears witness, achieves his humanity by transitioning into the normality of childhood emotion and experience. He becomes simply Daryl Richardson, ten-year-old adoptee. This is achieved by the middle of the movie, rather than the end. It is here, at the midpoint of the film that Daryl’s creator -- the essential “Geppetto” of the story, a government scientist named Dr. Jeffrey Stewart -- enters the picture. He and his colleague Dr. Ellen Lamb arrive as Daryl’s “parents,” come to reclaim their missing amnesiac child from Joyce and Andy Richardson, who have by now come to love the boy as though he were their own.

Only after Daryl is returned to the laboratory from which he was conceived is the truth of Daryl’s origin finally revealed. He was designed for military purposes by the Pentagon as many in the audience will have already suspected from the get-go. Apparently, the doomed driver from the beginning of the story was Dr. Stewart’s other colleague, Dr. Mulligan. Mulligan had begun to feel sympathy for the robot-child and had absconded with him in an attempt to free him from captivity. Upon his fascination with Daryl’s newfound emotions, Dr. Stewart eventually develops the same sentimental feelings. But the android’s transformation from plaid automaton to average All-American boy does not sit well with the typically jaundiced-looking military brass, which immediately schedule Daryl for termination.

With Dr. Lamb’s secret collusion, Dr. Stewart and Daryl make a break for it, initiating the action-adventure themed final stage of the movie. This involves the usual car chases; which Daryl is prepared for via his Atari game expertise. There is even a nod to the 1982 Clint Eastwood actioner Firefox: like Clint, Daryl commandeers a stealth fighter jet. But all this is inessential to the story’s significance as a Pinocchio derivative. Dr. Stewart displays his essence as Daryl’s own Geppetto in the film’s most poignant scene, when as he lies dying from a policeman-inflicted gunshot wound he tells Daryl, “Remember, you are a real person” With his last breath, he says, “I only wish” and then passes away before completing the statement. Perhaps he meant to say he only wished Daryl were his son. Unlike Geppetto, he doesn’t get that chance.

Just as a Blue Fairy transforms Pinocchio into a live boy in the ending of the Collodi story, Dr. Lamb, the last surviving scientist responsible for Daryl’s creation, grants Daryl the same wish, upon the film’s conclusion. After ejecting from his destroyed fighter jet, Daryl lands in a river. Has he drowned? Yes, but Dr. Lamb revives him with an electric charge to the microchip that serves as his brain. This is the final act of Daryl’s transcendence. He then makes a joyous reunion with the Richardson and Fox families.

An Interview with Amy Gerstler [by Aspen Matis]

Amy Gerstler is a critically acclaimed writer of fiction, poetry, and journalism whose work has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, including The Paris Review and The Best American Poetry. Her 1990 book Bitter Angel won the National Book Critics Circle Award, and her newest collection of poems, Index of Women, is forthcoming from Penguin in April of 2021. I had the pleasure of corresponding with Ms. Gerstler via email about her newest book of poetry, her perspective on poetry’s role in our present society, the themes that most fascinate and inspire her, her current work, and her experience of and feelings about editing The Best American Poetry 2010.

What is poetry’s greatest role in your inner life? Why do you write poems?

Joan Didion, in her essay, “Why I Write,” said, “I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.” That sums it up! I also write poems to have an excuse to wallow in subjects I’m compelled by, to attempt to get inside other characters / minds (in order to better understand them), to speak to about the dead and the vanished, and to commune with and stretch my imagination.

What do you see as poetry’s role in our present society? A unifying force? A destabilizing force of social and personal change? A reprieve from the mundanity and suffering of day-to-day existence? An access to greater empathy? A glimpse of inspiring beauty and truth? A compass that reveals new clarity of thought, redirecting our collective course? 

Great list! All those things and more! Poetry can delight and comfort. Unsettle and expand consciousness. Help us comprehend/contend with being human. Allow us to pay little visits to each other’s wild minds. Keep us alert to the possibilities of language and how it differentiates and binds us together.

What is the most radical thing a poet can do in her work?

She can devote herself to following her own course, as writer, thinker, and emotional animal—whatever that may mean at different times in her life. She can cultivate and explore her own obsessions without letting anything or anybody stop her.

Your forthcoming poetry collection, Index of Women (Penguin, April 2021), showcases exclusively female speakers in poems that wrestle with mortality, animality, love, gender, and the nature of humanity. What inspired this new collection on womanhood and the magic, meaning, humor, sorrow, and struggles of our days that create the hidden meaning of our lives?

Dramatic monologues thrill me. Edgar Lee Masters Spoon River Anthology stunned me when I was young. All those vivid voices spouting dark truth from the grave! I love the poet Ai’s dramatic monologues. My interest in women’s voices, spoken or sung, and their stories and experiences was also generative. Coming across the ancient Greek poet Hesiod’s book Catalogue of Women was a fortunate and influential accident. Such an odd, compelling idea to compile a catalogue of women! I wondered why one would do that and what it would be like if a female attempted such a project.

Your book of poems Scattered at Sea explores hedonism, gender, ancestry, reincarnation, the philosophy of the ancient Stoics, imagination, drug highs, memory loss, bereavement, spirituality, and the nature of prayer—many distinct arenas and inquiries! What unifies the pieces in this collection? How did Scattered at Sea find its form?

Since the book invokes scattering via its title and poems, I felt released from pressure to make the book “unified.” Instead, I tried to pursue the opposite: making it scattery, dispersed, a bit all over the place (which is reflective of the way my brain works, anyway).

What 17th and 18th century poets do you read? And what has their work awakened in you?

Having very little formal education in poetry makes me a dubious source of intel about 17th and 18th century poets, sadly. Among the few I know I love Christopher Marlowe, John Donne, Andrew Marvell, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, each for different reasons that I fear there is not nearly enough space to enumerate here.

Are there any reliable critics? If so, who, and why is his/her perspective useful? If no, why not? What happens when poetry is critiqued? What is gained? What is lost in translation?

This is a fascinating notion, the idea of a “reliable” critic. I suppose it would depend on what you wish to rely on a critic for. Sharp, inventive writing? Humor? Interesting opinions? Erudition? Open-mindedness? Fairness? Ability to appreciate and describe the letter and spirit of a work? Historical context? Links to other works? Analysis? In other words, I think the idea of a “reliable” critic involves very individual judgements on the part of each reader, who determines for herself what she’s seeking when reading literary criticism, what she needs from it at that moment, and whether she gets that or not.

What themes and inquiries most fascinate and inspire you?

Emotion is key for me. Sex, gender, love, mortality, animals, science, pseudo-science, spiritual longing, loss, and the occult are all abiding fascinations.

What are you working on now? What creative pursuits most excite you?

I’m collaborating on a musical play with composer/actor Steve Gunderson. There’s a possible comix project on the horizon that’s in the earliest stage of discussion. I really hope that will work out as I find graphic novels and comix an amazing medium.

You edited the 2010 edition of The Best American Poetry. What was that experience like for you? How, if all, did editing the anthology affect you? Are you proud of the book? How do you feel about the process—and the product of your labor—in retrospect?

Editing that anthology taught me tons and was profoundly inspiring. I will always be so grateful to the series editor, David Lehman, for trusting me and gifting me with that opportunity. The process brought home to me what a thriving, vital, various field American poetry is. Narrowing the book down to the requisite 75 poems was the hardest part.

The Course of a Particular [by Wallace Stevens]

Wallace Stevens (1952)

The Course of a Particular

Today the leaves cry, hanging on branches swept by wind,
Yet the nothingness of winter becomes a little less.
It is still full of icy shades and shapen snow.

The leaves cry . . . One holds off and merely hears the cry.
It is a busy cry, concerning someone else.
And though one says that one is part of everything,

There is a conflict, there is a resistance involved;
And being part is an exertion that declines:
One feels the life of that which gives life as it is.

The leaves cry. It is not a cry of divine attention,
Nor the smoke-drift of puffed-out heroes, nor human cry.
It is the cry of leaves that do not transcend themselves,

In the absence of fantasia, without meaning more
Than they are in the final finding of the ear, in the thing
Itself, until, at last, the cry concerns no one at all.

– Wallace Stevens

Question: What does this poem mean?

a) What it says.
b) That "in the absence of fantasia," everything amounts to nothing.
c) Nature is indifferent to human beings and their imaginary or deceased gods.
d) When "the nothingness of winter becomes a little less," it is a positive thing,  though the phrasing and the rhyme of "nothingness" and "a little less" make you think things are even bleaker than they were.
e) One grows old and one's powers decline. (Born in Reading, PA (Oct 2, 1879), died Hartford, CT (Aug 3, 1955).)
f) The "meaning" of any sound depends on the existence of an ear.

"The People of Yesteryear" [by Loren Goodman]

The People of Yesteryear

The people of yesteryear were quite
Remarkable. Alexander the Great, for
Example, I was surprised to see, had
No arms, only one leg, and no head!

Neither Dionysus nor Aphrodite
Had noses; though they were not
Real people — merely gods
Who roamed the earth, occasionally
Interfering in human affairs

-- Loren Goodman

from The Hat. from the archive. first posted February 2009.