The Best American Poetry

Happy birthday, David Shapiro, author of "January"

David Shapiro wrote:

at 8:42pm

David, please take the test I left out in the rain.
Freud's the name, theory's the game, lying on the couch seems inane,
free association is the main, transference too is the cane,
Oedipus walks in the rain.

Take it, I'm an easy marker, for Freudian reasons and some Adlerian.
What is a test but a little joke to make the taker mad? Name the allusion.
Where was the cancer of late Freud? Where did Freud say sex was all and
every squeaking hand could make us say the wished-for words?

Love and work -- where do Freud and Reich say these are big
Responsibilities? Was Delmore Schwartz in analysis by age 23 when he said
Dreams begin Responsibilities with its lip of blue snow? Which Columbia
professor could we assume never went through analysis?
Whom did Lacan call the classically unanalysed writer (here I give in--James Joyce. O)

What was the speciality du jour of the great Lou Andreas Salome?
How long has David Shapiro been in analysis, and why?
How many of his poems are dreams?

(2009)

Happy birthday, Robert Frost

 

Who said poetry makes nothing happen? -- SDH

 

Why everything is going to be OK. [by Jennifer Michael Hecht]

Dear Bleaders,

I’m supposed to be cleaning!  I was given a specific task: straighten up the kid’s bookshelves for Jessie’s birthday party this weekend.  But then my husband, who suggested this task, took the kids and went to Goodwill to get rid of some of the heaps of stuff of which we’re getting rid, leaving me alone to sneak like a thief back to my computer to write you guys a quick post.

I figure as long as I finish by the time he’s back, I’m good.  So.  What I want to tell you is pretty important.  I spent the weekend in Omaha and now have another Homaha in these United States.  What great people I met.  Ridiculously cool people.  Ridunkulous.  And they gave me roast beast, and took me to hear Yo Yo Ma, and made jokes about Exit 420.   If you don’t get it, don’t pay it no mind, but if you do get it, you get that it is good to know.  I gave 6 talks in four days!  One to a synagogue full of clergy, mostly Catholic priests, collared and mostly grey-haired.  Some rabbis, some ministers, some visitors, a lovely woman who said she’d driven six hours to see me.

I told them that I’d come to tell them about Poetic Atheism.  There is no God, but as Durkheim said a hundred years ago, what we thought was God, was the community.  What we feel when we are gathered together, that there is something larger than us, that feeling is true.  It’s us. 

We can add to it that what we thought of as faith is love.  We have to try to believe in each other, in our mutual misery and compassion.  

The solace we have to offer one another is sufficient to our wounds.

Our feelings of meaning are sufficient to the definition of meaning.

There is no hidden world of meaning.  The feelings of meaning are the meaning.  It’s all true.

Human beings need community, meditation, and ritual.  We need to come together and pray that we will do the right thing, that we will help each other, and that we are capable of helping one another.  It’s a long shot, but it’s better than trying to believe in some third party and hoping that he will do the right thing. 

Am I telling you that all this time you’ve been alone in the dark?  Yes.  Come sit with us.  We're right here.  Turn on the light.

We must look after one another.  There is no heaven.  We are all going to die, maybe tomorrow, maybe the next day, maybe two years from now, maybe forty years from now, maybe sixty.  It doesn’t matter all that much.  There is an eternity on either side, an eternity, so who cares?  Life is not theater, you can’t miss the end.  You are here.  It’s wonderful.  We made it into existence together. 

We have to start coming together and singing, celebrating.  Health Care, people!  Gorgeous African-American president and presidential family!  Now is the time to lift our voices up.  We are all there is.  We don’t have it for very long.  We have it right now.  America is a lot of things.  I know.  Tea party.  I know.  Beck, and not the good kind.  But it’s okay.

We are here together.  We can keep each other company.  We can see that if this is the world, if our consciousness is what we have of consciousness, than what we feel and what we make is very important indeed.  You’re sacred because you are, and it’s my job to support your awareness of the true and glorious reality that is.  It’s your job to support this awareness in the rest of us.  We are getting better at this.  We are going to get even better.  That's why everything is going to be okay.

Excellent work staying alive since last week, most of you.  Let’s try to do even better next week.

By the way, on my way home from the airport we got stopped on the Brooklyn Bridge and there we stayed for two and a half hours, my whole little family and me, from around 12:30 am to 3 am, when they finally backed us off the bridge.  Meanwhile we got out of our cars.  We heard someone had jumped and saw boats and helicopters shining lights.  Then we heard there was a woman who had climbed up into the bridge girders and was going to jump.  John encouraged me to walk down to where it was all happening; given what I’d been writing about lately, I should just go down and see.  So I did, there was a woman up there, a cop up there near her, I saw him hand her a cigarette, I saw him light it for her, I saw her talking to him, I saw her move her long, brown hair behind her ear. 

Like I said, she hadn’t come down when we left, they’d turned us around to get out, but I felt sure she’d come down, she was talking calmly for hours, there were tons of people everywhere.  We googled it when we got home but saw nothing of it.  Then yesterday saw a report.  She’d jumped.  After we were home in bed.  She’s in critical condition.  A 41-year-old woman from Long Island.  Like so many of us, or thereabouts.  So forgive me, bleaders, for repeating myself.   Stay, everybody.  No more going off the deep end.  Stay.  Let’s all give up together, right here, right now, and have chocolate cake.  But don’t give any to the dog, because chocolate isn’t good for dogs.

I love you like crazy,

 Jennifer

from the archive; first posted March 24, 2010

"Saturday" [by Mark Ford]

After bursting through the allusion-barrier so dramatically, as related on Thursday [Oct. 16, 2008], there has been no stopping me, and I would like to conclude my very enjoyable stint as your guest-blogger with a poem in a genre my young self would have despised, ie. the poem about another poet –- which, come to think of it, was exactly what the poem imagining Whitman’s youthful conquests in my last post, was too. Oh well…. This one is about Hart Crane, and is in prose – to be precise it’s in the form of a letter addressed to the editor of a literary journal. The rest, I hope, explains itself. Thanks for having me, and for the many entertaining responses I’ve received; it’s been a ball…. I should perhaps say in preface to this piece that Crane was christened Harold, but shortly after deciding to become a poet adopted his mother’s maiden name of Hart.

The Death of Hart Crane

Sir / Madam,
I was intrigued by the letter from a reader in your last issue that recounted his meeting, in a bar in Greenwich Village in the mid-sixties, a woman who claimed to have been a passenger on the Orizaba on the voyage the boat made from Vera Cruz to New York in April of 1932, a voyage that the poet Hart Crane never completed. According to her Crane was murdered and thrown overboard by sailors after a night of such rough sex that they became afraid (surely wrongly) that he might have them arrested when the boat docked in Manhattan. This reminded me of a night in the early seventies on which I too happened to be drinking in a bar in Greenwich Village. I got talking to an elderly man called Harold occupying an adjacent booth, and when the conversation touched on poetry he explained, somewhat shyly, that he had himself published two collections a long time ago, one called White Buildings in 1926, and the other, The Bridge, in 1930. I asked if he’d written much since. ‘Oh plenty,’ he replied, ‘and a lot of it much better than my early effusions.’ I expressed an interest in seeing this work, and he invited me back to his apartment on MacDougal Street. Here the evening turns somewhat hazy. I could hear the galloping strains of Ravel’s Boléro turned up loud as Harold fumbled for his keys. Clearly some sort of party was in progress. At that moment the door was opened from within by another man in his seventies, who exclaimed happily, ‘Hart! – and friend! Come in!’ The room was full of men in their seventies, all, or so it seemed, called either Hart or Harold. The apartment’s walls were covered with Aztec artefacts, and its floors with Mexican carpets. It dawned on me then that Hart Crane had not only somehow survived his supposed death by water, but that his vision of an America of the likeminded was being fulfilled that very night, as it was perhaps every night, in this apartment on Macdougal Street. At the same instant I realized that it was I, an absurd doubting Thomas brought face to face with a miracle, who deserved to be devoured by sharks.
Yours faithfully,
Name and address withheld.

(Mark Ford)

from the archive; first posted October 18, 2008

"The Other Sestina" [by Janice Erlbaum]

Janice Erlbaum participated in the group reading we did for "The Best American Erotic Poems" at KGB Bar on March 10. 2008. She read her sestina ("The Temp") from the book, but time constraints stopped her from reading a second sestina, which she has posted on her own blog and which you will find below, along with a few prefatory sentences from Ms. Erlbaum.
-- DL

The "Other" Sestina by Janice Erlbaum

Janice Erlbaum at KGB Bar March 10, 2008

Because I am fanatical about not running over my alloted time at readings, especially when there are nine other people on the bill, I didn't read this other sestina, which I'm dying to read in public, especially after it was rejected by McSweeney's for being, and I quote, "too much." I present it to you now, for your consideration for the Best American Completely Unerotic; In Fact, Makes You Never Want to Have Sex Again anthology:

How do married people masturbate?

How do married people masturbate?
What do they picture when they come?
They think of the guy at the office, the girl
In the video, her asshole stretched, wincing;
Ex-girlfriends, ex-boyfriends, the ones they still hate.
There’s nothing safe to think about, they fall asleep.

This is how you prepare to go to sleep,
How you wake up, how you run home and masturbate.
Everybody does it! Why can't you? You hate
Me for wanting to fuck when you just want to come –
I turn to stroke you, you turn away, wincing.
I don't care if you think about another girl.

I would want to fuck her too, that girl,
Anybody but me, laying next to you asleep,
A big fat fucking obstacle to your wincing
Nightly ritual: Pop in a tape and masturbate,
Watch that girl get drilled. Two minutes to come.
You mop up, drift off. You burned off some hate.

Not me. I walk around with mine. I hate
What I saw on that tape. I thought, poor girl,
She's in pain and she has to pretend to come.
I lay next to you that night, unable to sleep,
Therefore you were unable to masturbate.
The clock shined mean and bright in the dark. We winced.

Some nights I straddle a pillow, wincing,
Squeezing at thoughts I don't want to think, I hate
The way you come to me when I masturbate.
Face down on my belly, I look like that girl.
I writhe a while. I give up. I go to sleep.
I don't come. It's okay. I don't need to come.

I don't care what you think about when you come,
As long as it's me you're fucking, wincing,
Waiting for you to get off and slump, fall asleep.
You are faithful. I have no right to hate
You, hate myself, hate the hundreds of girls
With their assholes stretched, so you can masturbate.

I know who you are when you masturbate. I come
Into the room, kiss your forehead, your lover girl. Why are you wincing?
Your toes curl in silence. I hate you. I love you too. Let's go to sleep.

--- Janice Erlbaum

from the archive; first posted  March 20, 2008.

Wednesday [by Mark Ford]

It was announced on the radio this morning [Wednesday, October 15, 2008] that the British Library has paid half a million pounds for a collection of the manuscripts of Ted Hughes. Hughes was a great believer in the importance of writing with a pen, rather than on a keyboard, and I remember a late letter included in his Selected Letters, which I recently reviewed for the New York Review of Books (it's in the current issue), in which he attributed the decline in quality of stories submitted for a prize for teenage fiction which he judged to the fact that the stories were all written directly on to the computer. Probably every writer has his or her set of peculiar 'conditions' which have to be met for the work to get written. Hughes had a particular penchant for writing on train journeys, and in small enclosed spaces like the tiny hall where he set up his study in the flat in Chalcot Square where he lived for a couple of years with Sylvia Plath. Speaking for myself, I need loud music to get me going, and I'm not alone in this. In 1993 I took part in a poets' tour of Japan with MIck Imlah and Simon Armitage. Simon brought over cds of the latest band to emerge on the Manchester scene - I forget who it was - which he'd play at deafening volume while knocking out a poem. I find, like Hughes, I can  write almost nothing directly on to a screen with any satisfaction. Even this blog I've been writing out long hand first, and I've an idea in the blogosphere (spelling?) that this might make it unique. If you don't believe me I'll send you my handwritten drafts - for a trifling consideration, certainly for far less than what might be fetched by an equivalent page of Ted Hughes.

Hughes was published by Faber and Faber (though in fact there was only ever one Faber -it was Faber and Gwyer initially, but Gwyer dropped out, so they  doubled the Faber to make it sound better). Hughes was taken on by T.S. Eliot after The Hawk in the Rain won the Poetry Center's First Publication Prize for 1957, judged that year by W.H. Auden, Marianne Moore, and Stephen Spender. In those days Faber were located at 24 Russell Square ('that magic address!' as Philip Larkin once exclaimed), and if it's raining and I get the tube into work, my walk from Russell Square tube station to University College London takes me past the old Faber offices, now a part of London University. A round brown plaque commemorates Eliot's editorial labours there, and I've often wanted to locate his precise office, which had two doors so he could slip out the back when Vivienne made one of her unwanted visits in quest of her errant husband. And it was there late in life that he found true love with his secretary Valerie ('Say hello to Valerie / Say hello to Vivienne' as the Bob Dylan song puts it). By then Eliot had come to be known as the Pope of Russell Square, and young poets approached his august presence in abject states of fear and trembling. The American poet Donald Hall recalls visiting Eliot on his first trip to London, and, after some desultory literary chat, finally asking the master for some serious advice. Eliot thought hard, and then asked Hall if he would be wintering in London. The eager ephebe replied in the affirmative. Eliot nodded, pondered again, and finally said, 'Then I advise you to purchase some long underwear.'

(Mark Ford)

from the archives; posted October 15, 2008

Cri de Coeur [by Jim Cummins]

Oy vey, my country!  I would sob if it weren't such … an American crisis: goofy, headstrong, distracted, with a bunch of old men in dark suits running around looking for their mommies.  And we're poets: what do WE know?

-- Jim Cummins

from the archive; first posted October 3, 2008

Who Will Stop the Mad Man? [by Lera Auerbach]

My mother was born in 1940 to a Jewish family in Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine. As Hitler's army marched East in 1941, my grandparents abandoned all their possessions (including their beloved library and cherished collection of musical instruments). They boarded the train – heading towards Siberia. The news of ghettos and the fate of Jews in Hitler's territories had reached them – all they could do was to flee into the unknown.

A few years earlier, my mother's grandfather, Berl Fishbein, the head of the family, was tortured to death by Stalin's secret police). His only "guilt" was being born Jewish. While my family evacuated, their train was bombed by Hitler's armies. Another tragedy occurred: the family lost my mother's grandmother Ettel Fishbein in the confusion and chaos. She was grief-stricken after the death of her beloved husband, frightened and confused over all the changes and sorrows that the war and evacuation brought. Somehow, after the bombing, she was no longer with my grandparents on the train. They never found her and never learned of her fate. 

With my one-year-old mother, my grandparents deboarded in Chelyabinsk – a closed industrial city at the gateway of Siberia. I was born there some thirty years later. They never returned to their abandoned homes in Ukraine.

In today's war, the invading army marches from the East, and more than a million Ukrainian refugees head West – to Germany in a mirror retrograde of history.

Earlier this year, I wrote a cello concerto, Diary of a Madman, inspired by Gogol's famous short story about Poprishchin, a government clerk who gradually descends into insanity. The concerto was premiered last month by the Munich Philharmonic, Giedrė Šlekytė, and Gautier Capuçon. Nikolai Gogol (or, more correctly, romanized from Ukrainian – Mykola Hohol) – was a genius writer, born in Ukraine, father of Russian language literature, and a visionary far beyond his time. I have been fascinated by his work all my life. Ten years ago, while composing my opera Gogol, I read and re-read everything he ever wrote. After my opera's premiere in Vienna, I received an open letter from Russia calling me "Vrag Naroda" (Enemy of the People) – the same terminology used against Shostakovich and many other artists years earlier. My website was hacked, erased, and replaced by the slogan "Death to Jews" and a skull. It felt terrible, but I was not afraid – since 1991, I lived in the West, and since 2001, I no longer had any relatives in Russia. I was responsible only for myself, my words, and my actions. 

While composing the cello concerto Diary of a Madman, I did not think of Vladimir Putin. Now, Gogol's tale carries an eerie resonance. Diary of a Madman is a story of a lowly government bureaucrat with a minimal, easily forgettable personality. In his increasingly demented diary entries, Poprishchin claims that a state cannot "be without a king." As the storyline progresses, he becomes increasingly mad, starts having delusions of grandeur, and, finally, on the "43rd of April of the year 2000" he believes himself as the King. (V. Putin was first elected president of Russia on the 7th of May of the year 2000. Gogol wrote his story in 1835!) Finally, Poprishchin ends up in an insane asylum. 

Perhaps, Gogol, the visionary and one of the greatest writers who ever lived – could see beyond the 19th and 20th century – into the heart of the 21st, where we are doomed to continue the eternal tale.

I think of my grandparents and my child-mother in Ukraine, leaving everything behind, heading into the unknown – evacuating from the onslaught of Hitler's army. Could they have imagined that eighty years later, the land of their birth would face again a very similar nightmare and that refugees would now head West to Germany to save their children?

Gogol's visions and nightmares become a reality, with the whole world turning into a lunatics' asylum as the great tragedy unfolds. Who will stop the Madman? 

from the archive; first posted by Lera Auerbach on March 04, 2022 at 06:59 PM 

My mother was born in 1940 to a Jewish family in Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine. As Hitler's army marched East in 1941, my grandparents abandoned all their possessions (including their beloved library and cherished collection of musical instruments). They boarded the train – heading towards Siberia. The news of ghettos and the fate of Jews in Hitler's territories had reached them – all they could do was to flee into the unknown.

A few years earlier, my mother's grandfather, Berl Fishbein, the head of the family, was tortured to death by Stalin's secret police). His only "guilt" was being born Jewish. While my family evacuated, their train was bombed by Hitler's armies. Another tragedy occurred: the family lost my mother's grandmother Ettel Fishbein in the confusion and chaos. She was grief-stricken after the death of her beloved husband, frightened and confused over all the changes and sorrows that the war and evacuation brought. Somehow, after the bombing, she was no longer with my grandparents on the train. They never found her and never learned of her fate. 

With my one-year-old mother, my grandparents deboarded in Chelyabinsk – a closed industrial city at the gateway of Siberia. I was born there some thirty years later. They never returned to their abandoned homes in Ukraine.

In today's war, the invading army marches from the East, and more than a million Ukrainian refugees head West – to Germany in a mirror retrograde of history.

Earlier this year, I wrote a cello concerto, Diary of a Madman, inspired by Gogol's famous short story about Poprishchin, a government clerk who gradually descends into insanity. The concerto was premiered last month by the Munich Philharmonic, Giedrė Šlekytė, and Gautier Capuçon. Nikolai Gogol (or, more correctly, romanized from Ukrainian – Mykola Hohol) – was a genius writer, born in Ukraine, father of Russian language literature, and a visionary far beyond his time. I have been fascinated by his work all my life. Ten years ago, while composing my opera Gogol, I read and re-read everything he ever wrote. After my opera's premiere in Vienna, I received an open letter from Russia calling me "Vrag Naroda" (Enemy of the People) – the same terminology used against Shostakovich and many other artists years earlier. My website was hacked, erased, and replaced by the slogan "Death to Jews" and a skull. It felt terrible, but I was not afraid – since 1991, I lived in the West, and since 2001, I no longer had any relatives in Russia. I was responsible only for myself, my words, and my actions. 

While composing the cello concerto Diary of a Madman, I did not think of Vladimir Putin. Now, Gogol's tale carries an eerie resonance. Diary of a Madman is a story of a lowly government bureaucrat with a minimal, easily forgettable personality. In his increasingly demented diary entries, Poprishchin claims that a state cannot "be without a king." As the storyline progresses, he becomes increasingly mad, starts having delusions of grandeur, and, finally, on the "43rd of April of the year 2000" he believes himself as the King. (V. Putin was first elected president of Russia on the 7th of May of the year 2000. Gogol wrote his story in 1835!) Finally, Poprishchin ends up in an insane asylum. 

Perhaps, Gogol, the visionary and one of the greatest writers who ever lived – could see beyond the 19th and 20th century – into the heart of the 21st, where we are doomed to continue the eternal tale.

I think of my grandparents and my child-mother in Ukraine, leaving everything behind, heading into the unknown – evacuating from the onslaught of Hitler's army. Could they have imagined that eighty years later, the land of their birth would face again a very similar nightmare and that refugees would now head West to Germany to save their children?

Gogol's visions and nightmares become a reality, with the whole world turning into a lunatics' asylum as the great tragedy unfolds. Who will stop the Madman? 

"One Plkus One" [haiku by David Shapiro]

    it may be too hard
    to think of me as silence
    like thirsty flowers

    in the Luxembourg
    I paused to cry for hours
    beside patient friends

    I read Thus Spake Z
    in a minute or two and
    saw my life in clouds

    and inside last clouds
    I saw my sister hiding
    behind the grillework

    snakes danced up curtains
    and a miserable pink
    of which Michaux spoke

    Half a century
    later I look at tulips
    try to see glory

    not Lawrence's kind
    but the modest buds in Bronx
    where diners pop up

    thirteen synagogues
    and some are shuls the way Saul
    Bellow preferred them

    Unlike a true Jew
    I like to go alone, weep
    (kills community)

    Today someone writes
    as if anyone around
    Frank froze him with lies

    Generosity
    is not a word for critics
    but Frank hated pricks

    haha the theory
    is he was a dead man and
    this is false theory

    But let's go back to
    say l962 or
    let's pay attention

    involuntary
    memory as in Proust is
    more than I can bear

    in England I smelled
    my mother's glitzy perfume
    and I also heard

    inside myself the
    tune of her blue jewel-box
    I still remember    

    Too tired to forget
    too rebellious to count
    lonely syllables

    well father would say
    what's so lonely about them
    the one equals one

    I want to build that
    with long Icelandic "menhirs"
    one plus one is one

    for the madness of
    my old friend the architect
    One monument one

    You pushed me into
    talking today but really
    the best rest is two

    but I want to build
    one day like white white Legos
    one plus one is one

    -– David Shapiro,
    September 8, 2008

Auden (an Aquarius, born Feb 21) on Psychoanalysis

<<
Psychoanalysis, like all pagan scientia, says: "Come, my good man, no wonder you feel guilty. You have a distorting mirror, and that is indeed a very wicked thing to have. But cheer up, For a trifling consideration I shall be delighted to straighten it out for you. There. Look. A perfect image. The evil of distortion is exorcised. Now you have nothing to repent of any longer. Now you are one of the illumined and elect. That will be ten thousand dollars, please."

And immediately come seven devils, and the last state of that man is worse than the first.

-- W. H. Auden, "Lecture Notes" (6 November 1942)

Note: Multiply the bill by twenty for 2022 dollars. The devil count remains the same.-- DL

from the archive; first posted February 26, 2011. 

Three Clerihews [by Jim Cummins] (& 3 by someone else)

Sporting Life

Wilt Chamberlain
discovered sin
required a log
to log them in.

*

Pete Rose, brother,
by any other
moniker would stink,
is what I think.

*

Joe DiMag
ruled like the Raj.
But when he passed,
they capped his ass.

She Got Pinched in the Assss. . . tor Bar! [by Stacey Harwood]

[In 2011] I visited my mom for a couple of days and while with her I went through some of her old photo albums.  Whenever I do, I find something that had previously escaped my attention.  This time, I came across this bit of memorabilia from a different age (below left, click to enlarge):

  



The Hotel Astor stood at 44th Street and Broadway, a stunning example of Beaux-Art architecture that was demolished in 1967 to make room for a 50-story office tower.  It was  walking distance from the Milk Barn, the coffee shop where my mother worked as a waitress.  Many of her customers were "garmentos" (as those who work the rag trade are now called) who would on occasion give her gifts of belts (she had a tiny waist) and monogrammed hankies.  I love imagining my mother stopping in at the Astor Bar for a post-work cocktail.  Did she?  She won't say.  But it was quite the place,  made even more famous by Cole Porter's "Well Did You Evah/What a Swell Party."  There are many great versions of the song (I like Debbie Harry and Iggy Pop's subversive take here. Listen for raunchy lyrics that Porter would have loved) but you really can't beat Der Bingle and Ole Blue Eyes in High Society as rivals for Grace Kelly, who is betrothed to another.

from the archive; first posted on February 14, 2011.

"The Variable Foot" [by Nin Andrews]

This comic is based on a few lines from the introduction to William Carlos Williams in The Oxford Anthology of American Poetry that made me laugh:

“I write in the American idiom, “ Williams noted, “and for many years I have been using what I call the variable foot.” One of the secrets of American poetry is that no one knows what “the variable foot” really is.

from the archive; first posted December 7, 2016

A Great Larkin Story (Not Mine) [by Jim Cummins]

David Yezzi's post and David Lehman's comment following bring up the basic issues all Larkin lovers (I don't think there ARE any Larkin haters, except maybe Czeslaw Milosz) mull over frequently.  When you read Andrew Motion's biography you see what a controlling, often obnoxious personality he was; the compartmentalizing of his love/emotional life is particularly repellant.  My favorite index to this side of his character is the spanking; he found spanking young girls very titillating and belonged to at least one circle of fellow spanking-lovers, the members (!) of which traded spanking magazines among themselves.  Thus assuring a spanking good time was had by all!  (I love the word 'spanking.'  Perhaps I'm a closet spanker.  Wanker, more likely.)  And of course, as both Davids imply, this control-freak aspect permeates his work and career, along with his great erudition, love of jazz, amazing intelligence, and all the other qualities that blend to give us these fabulous poems which I personally have loved since I was fortunate enough to discover them.

But my story is only indirectly about this stuff; and it comes to me from Phil Levine, another great admirer of Larkin, who was visiting England with his wife, Franny--this would be sometime in the late 60s or early 70s--and who wangled an extraordinarily rare and precious appointment with Larkin for dinner.  I don't have the details as to how this came about, but I know Phil relates it as an event that was so rare--a visiting American poet granted an audience with the Bath librarian--that he regarded it with awe and gratitude.  He and Franny were tremendously excited and felt greatly privileged; they showed up at the restaurant and eagerly awaited the poet.  Phil was particularly keen on talking to him about jazz: Artie Shaw, Coltrane.  Phil was friends with guitarist Kenny Burrell in Detroit.  Larkin was about a half hour late, or more; and when he showed up he was exceedingly shy.  Conversation was imposingly difficult; and about 15 minutes into it, Larkin contrived to spill a pitcher--not a glass, a pitcher--of water all over his stomach and lap.  He jumped up, made apologies about going to get towel--and never came back!  Phil and Franny never saw him again.

I love this story for many reasons, not least of which is Levine's ingenuousness and enthusiasm, though the joke is on him: as he tells it, he's completely on Larkin's side.  And of course it's a quick look into the personality of maybe the best British poet of the last half-century; certainly one of them.

from the archive; first posted April 18, 2009. See also https://blog.bestamericanpoetry.com/the_best_american_poetry/2009/04/larkin-in-the-tls-by-david-yezzi.html

But my story is only indirectly about this stuff; and it comes to me from Phil Levine, another great admirer of Larkin, who was visiting England with his wife, Franny--this would be sometime in the late 60s or early 70s--and who wangled an extraordinarily rare and precious appointment with Larkin for dinner.  I don't have the details as to how this came about, but I know Phil relates it as an event that was so rare--a visiting American poet granted an audience with the Bath librarian--that he regarded it with awe and gratitude.  He and Franny were tremendously excited and felt greatly privileged; they showed up at the restaurant and eagerly awaited the poet.  Phil was particularly keen on talking to him about jazz: Artie Shaw, Coltrane.  Phil was friends with guitarist Kenny Burrell in Detroit.  Larkin was about a half hour late, or more; and when he showed up he was exceedingly shy.  Conversation was imposingly difficult; and about 15 minutes into it, Larkin contrived to spill a pitcher--not a glass, a pitcher--of water all over his stomach and lap.  He jumped up, made apologies about going to get towel--and never came back!  Phil and Franny never saw him again.

I love this story for many reasons, not least of which is Levine's ingenuousness and enthusiasm, though the joke is on him: as he tells it, he's completely on Larkin's side.  And of course it's a quick look into the personality of maybe the best British poet of the last half-century; certainly one of them.

from the archive; first posted April 18, 2009. See also https://blog.bestamericanpoetry.com/the_best_american_poetry/2009/04/larkin-in-the-tls-by-david-yezzi.html

Queens or Bust [by Andrei Codrescu]

  If you are moving to New York to do your obligatory two years of poetic apprenticeship among the sophisticated, critical, merciless, and horribly smart (or not) natives, be sure that you move to Queens. You heard me right. Not to Manhattan or G-d forbid to gluten-free Brooklyn, but to Queens.

The first thing about it, it's a lot cheaper.

The second, it's full of working New Yorkers of the sort that lace their boots tight, talk with an attitude, and go to Manhattan only if an exiled relative from Cincinnati comes back before dying.

The third thing is that they speak 167 languages in Jackson Heights alone, which is just one part of Queens.

The fourth thing is that the Unisphere from the World Fair that every American has tattooed at birth in the deepest part of the brain, is in Queens, too.

The fifth is that all your friends in Manhattan and Brooklyn have a hard time keeping a smirk off their mug when you tell them you live in Queens.

The sixth thing is the restaurants that deliver 24 hours any variety of non-American or American food your cholesterol-hungry heart might yearn for. The seventh is that. the best comedians are from Queens, like Don Rickles, as are other great Americans, like Cyndi Lauper, Nicki Menaj, and 50 cent. In passing, I'll say that the Queens zoo has a hell of a puma that looks you straight in the eyes until you feel lucky there are some bars between you.

I ended up in Queens because the Romanian Great Writers' League of Queens (as opposed to the Romanian Minor Writers' League of Queens) found me a studio in a lovely apartment building reminiscent of the best Soviet architecture, which costs me less than a parking place in Manhattan. I have a view of a fire-escape and a synagogue, which is all a writer needs: a means to escape from a fire into the arms of an unforgiving G-d. My friends from the Romanian Great Writes' League in Queens know everything about New York, all four boroughs, and can barely conceal their feeling of superiority, for at least one reason: no tourists. Manhattan is all tourists and Brooklyn is all slumming rich kids who want to be famous.

Nobody in Queens wants to be interrupted by gawkers while writing novels and poetry. Regular Quuenzites don't want to be famous at all: it might attract the IRS. So take it from one who's been everywhere, the breadth and length of US and other places where they speak pigeon English: do your time in Queens, young poet. And don't ever show your MFA in public. "Keep old hat in secret closet," as Ted Berrigan said, and you'll go back to flyover America with superpowers. 

[Editor's note: We thought this provocative and engaging article would best be illustrated by a couple of Queens, Elizabeth and Venus. -- DL] 
From the archive; first posted February 6, 2018

The first thing about it, it's a lot cheaper.

The second, it's full of working New Yorkers of the sort that lace their boots tight, talk with an attitude, and go to Manhattan only if an exiled relative from Cincinnati comes back before dying.

The third thing is that they speak 167 languages in Jackson Heights alone, which is just one part of Queens.

The fourth thing is that the Unisphere from the World Fair that every American has tattooed at birth in the deepest part of the brain, is in Queens, too.

The fifth is that all your friends in Manhattan and Brooklyn have a hard time keeping a smirk off their mug when you tell them you live in Queens.

The sixth thing is the restaurants that deliver 24 hours any variety of non-American or American food your cholesterol-hungry heart might yearn for. The seventh is that. the best comedians are from Queens, like Don Rickles, as are other great Americans, like Cyndi Lauper, Nicki Menaj, and 50 cent. In passing, I'll say that the Queens zoo has a hell of a puma that looks you straight in the eyes until you feel lucky there are some bars between you.

I ended up in Queens because the Romanian Great Writers' League of Queens (as opposed to the Romanian Minor Writers' League of Queens) found me a studio in a lovely apartment building reminiscent of the best Soviet architecture, which costs me less than a parking place in Manhattan. I have a view of a fire-escape and a synagogue, which is all a writer needs: a means to escape from a fire into the arms of an unforgiving G-d. My friends from the Romanian Great Writes' League in Queens know everything about New York, all four boroughs, and can barely conceal their feeling of superiority, for at least one reason: no tourists. Manhattan is all tourists and Brooklyn is all slumming rich kids who want to be famous.

Nobody in Queens wants to be interrupted by gawkers while writing novels and poetry. Regular Quuenzites don't want to be famous at all: it might attract the IRS. So take it from one who's been everywhere, the breadth and length of US and other places where they speak pigeon English: do your time in Queens, young poet. And don't ever show your MFA in public. "Keep old hat in secret closet," as Ted Berrigan said, and you'll go back to flyover America with superpowers. 

[Editor's note: We thought this provocative and engaging article would best be illustrated by a couple of Queens, Elizabeth and Venus. -- DL] 
From the archive; first posted February 6, 2018

Happy birthday, Mozart -- and Jerry Kern [by DL]

Spring 68 at Columbia was the season of the strike,
the occupation of the buildings (Low, Hamilton, Avery
Mathematics, and Fayerwether where a righteous
mininster married a young couple), and Mitch and I
went to the West End Bar to talk tactics because
we knew the "tactical patrol force" (TPF) was
going to come and hit hard. The days went by
and the arm bands worn by angry students
went from green (amnesty for protesters)
to black (mourning for Alma Mater). But I still
had my Music Humanities final to face and I
was so ignorant I did the only thing I could do:
bought Bach's "Ein Feste Burg Ist Unser Gott,"
Mozart's Jupiter, Beethoven's 3rd, 5th, and 7th,
and Brahms's 4th. On the final the professor
played something we had not heard in class.
It was the slow movement of the 7th.
And that summer in Oxford
I heard the opening of the last movement
of the Jupiter every hour
on the hour. Years later I learned
Mozart's birthday, the 26th of January,
was also that of Kern, Jerry Kern
of Show Boat and Swing Time,
"The Way You Look Tonight"
and "Long Ago And Far Away." So I will just say
to both of these great composers: happy birthday!

Spring 68 at Columbia was the season of the strike,
the occupation of the buildings (Low, Hamilton, Avery
Mathematics, and Fayerwether where a righteous
mininster married a young couple), and Mitch and I
went to the West End Bar to talk tactics because
we knew the "tactical patrol force" (TPF) was
going to come and hit hard. The days went by
and the arm bands worn by angry students
went from green (amnesty for protesters)
to black (mourning for Alma Mater). But I still
had my Music Humanities final to face and I
was so ignorant I did the only thing I could do:
bought Bach's "Ein Feste Burg Ist Unser Gott,"
Mozart's Jupiter, Beethoven's 3rd, 5th, and 7th,
and Brahms's 4th. On the final the professor
played something we had not heard in class.
It was the slow movement of the 7th.
And that summer in Oxford
I heard the opening of the last movement
of the Jupiter every hour
on the hour. Years later I learned
Mozart's birthday, the 26th of January,
was also that of Kern, Jerry Kern
of Show Boat and Swing Time,
"The Way You Look Tonight"
and "Long Ago And Far Away." So I will just say
to both of these great composers: happy birthday!

Love / Hate [by Terence Winch]

Ed. note: I had just about exhausted every crime series available on Netflix when Terence Winch [pictured here with a friend at La Maison blanche] wrote to suggest that I check out Love/Hate, an Irish crime drama series broadcast on RTÉ Television. The show is irresistible, and I was especially drawn to Darren, a central character played by the compelling young actor Robert Sheehan. Just the other day, this poem appeared in my in-box. I love it! Thank you T.P. Winch for letting me share it here. He is pictured on the left talking to a friend at the Maison Blanche. -- sdh

Love/Hate

                        for stacey harwood

I will be upstairs in just a minute,

I promise you. But first I must

compose a long, complex symphony

dedicated to Duke Ellington, which

I have pieced together from riffs

and bits off old tinny 78s, scratched

with skips but full of musical

notes, like A, G, and E.

If I could get out of this chair,

I would. And I would ascend

then to the Throne of the

Angelic Mobsters of RTE

who are right this very moment

murdering each other on those

dark Dublin streets. It would be

a laugh and a half times two.

But I can’t get up. I am not

able to keep my promises.

The serenity prayer is a cruel

joke. Baudelaire was an alcoholic

and so’s your mother, and

that's a fact, revealed in the third

act, which I can’t stay around for.

Sorry, sorry. My bad. I’m sorry.

from the archive; first posted January 13, 2014

My Goal is to go to Mongolia [by David Lehman]

All day yesterday I tried to write a song in the Cole Porter manner beginning "My goal is to go to Mongolia," but the melody of "Columbia, the gem of the ocean" kept getting in the way. Well, I'll see what I can come up with when I'm over there. It's flattering to know they're prepping for my visit, though the cyclones and quakes do seem somewhat excesssive.

Tomorrow Stacey and I fly to Beijing; we will visit that city and two others in China, giving readings and lectures, in the next week. Then comes a week in Mongolia, where I'm hoping to ride a camel and hang out with Mongolia's poet laureate, who has promised to teach me a Mongolian verse form. If I can manage to post from those outposts I will do so, and if not I'm sure we'll have lots to tell when we get back in early June.

My Goal Is to Go to Mongolia.

My goal
Is to go
To Mongolia.

In Mongolia
I shall know
The whole of ya.

“Let me seduce thee,”
Said he.
“Only if I be
The wlling accomplice
Of a kiss,”
Said she.

O let me kiss
Her and win her back,
And ride the back
Of a camel,
An ornery animal
With the smell
Of magnolia, 
In the desert
In Mongolia.

-- DL   from the archive; first posted May 15, 2008

Academic Graffiti [by W. H. Auden]

Auden collected his clerihews under the title Academic Graffiti (1952, 1970). Here are several of my favorites from the Auden oeuvre:

When Karl Marx
Found the phrase 'financial sharks,'
He sang a Te Deum
In the British Museum.

*

Mallarmé
Had too much to say:
He could never quite
Leave the paper white.

*

When the young Kant
Was told to kiss his aunt,
He obeyed the Categorical Must
But only just.

*

Lord Byron
Once succumbed to a Siren:
His flesh was weak,
Hers Greek.

-- DL

Breslin and Buffett: "To thine own self be true" [by Mitch Sisskind]

I got turned on to Jimmy Breslin when I read his novel Table Money many years ago. Later, I read his biography of Damon Runyon -- a real masterpiece in my opinion. I was looking forward to his new book about Eppolito and Carracappa, the crooked NYPD homicide detectives. I didn't see how it could miss but it turned out to be a disappointment. There are, however, some interesting ideas...

Breslin says he can hardly stand to be around "legitimate" people anymore because they're so goddamned boring. Specifically he cites Warren Buffett as the "second richest and first most boring person in the world." Breslin says if he had to listen to Buffett talk for twenty minutes he would go out of his mind...

But does that mean listening to Warren Buffett can make us better poets? Is it possible, from a creative perspective, to go out of your mind "in a good way" by listening to Warren Buffett? Rimbaud prescribed "zee systematique derangement of zee senses," non? So how hard are you willing to work in order to be a great writer? How much are you willing to risk? Ask yourself those questions and then click (or don't) on the clip below. (It's only ten minutes, well under Breslin's limit.) You'll hear Warren Buffett say things like, "The chains of habit are too light to be felt until they're too heavy to be broken." He's a great Polonius, plus whatever else. You'll get your money's worth! (yuk yuk!)

from the archive; first posted July 3, 2008

Breslin says he can hardly stand to be around "legitimate" people anymore because they're so goddamned boring. Specifically he cites Warren Buffett as the "second richest and first most boring person in the world." Breslin says if he had to listen to Buffett talk for twenty minutes he would go out of his mind...

But does that mean listening to Warren Buffett can make us better poets? Is it possible, from a creative perspective, to go out of your mind "in a good way" by listening to Warren Buffett? Rimbaud prescribed "zee systematique derangement of zee senses," non? So how hard are you willing to work in order to be a great writer? How much are you willing to risk? Ask yourself those questions and then click (or don't) on the clip below. (It's only ten minutes, well under Breslin's limit.) You'll hear Warren Buffett say things like, "The chains of habit are too light to be felt until they're too heavy to be broken." He's a great Polonius, plus whatever else. You'll get your money's worth! (yuk yuk!)

from the archive; first posted July 3, 2008

Two Prose Poems [by Nin Andrews]

"Yes" and "Never Say Yes" (by Nin Andrews)

Yes

Orgasms are bad news. In the town where I grew up, orgasms were against the law. No one had an orgasm, not even God. By the time I was twelve, I wanted an orgasm. Just one, I begged. Then one day, everything changed. My body caught fire. Everyone knew. Everywhere I went the men took off their trousers and shoes and their skinny black socks. The men (such men!) became acrobats in disguise. Who would have guessed? And I? I was so much in love! And wanted to record their every color and size and shape, not to mention their flavors and moods. Life is so fleeting, is it not? And what is more fleeting than a man?

And so it was that I came to write A Field Guide to Nudes. A Field Guide to Desires. A Field Guide to Orgasms . . .

I was so busy with my research, I had no time to reflect. (Some say I was obsessed. It's true!) No time to consider the consequence of my acts. Of course I should have known. The people were outraged. They chased me into the streets and out of the city gates. Now I can never go back. I live alone with my desires. With my dreams that never stop dreaming. With these orgasms that never stop singing my name. Yes, it's a fact! Whatever they say, I can only sigh and say yes. Whatever they wish for, I just say yes. Yes! Yes! I say yes. Again and again, I say yes. And I will say it for you if you ask. Yes! Yes! Yes!

Never Say Yes

Each day I positioned myself carefully. I wouldn't move a muscle. I would tell myself I was in good hands. Of course, it is only natural to be a little uneasy. To think of upsetting an order so nicely arranged, every hair in place. Blown dry. Sometimes I even mastered a windblown look as if I had been flying. People suspected me of having been out on the sly. Of living a secret life. They said, it's a very bad sign. And a woman like that. Who would have thought? For so long they trusted me; they even called me one of their own. I who always yearned to be possessed. When confronted, I solemnly swore that I hadn't budged an inch. Nor had I blinked. I never let on. But gradually I began to display the tell_tale symptoms. Every crime needs a criminal. Nothing can be done about it. Spectators come in droves. Mothers warn their children, See what happens? And to think. I who was taken in by such a nice family. Good, hard_working folk. And they thought I was such a good egg. Look what happens whenever you say yes.

from the archive; first posted  June 29, 2008

Yes

Orgasms are bad news. In the town where I grew up, orgasms were against the law. No one had an orgasm, not even God. By the time I was twelve, I wanted an orgasm. Just one, I begged. Then one day, everything changed. My body caught fire. Everyone knew. Everywhere I went the men took off their trousers and shoes and their skinny black socks. The men (such men!) became acrobats in disguise. Who would have guessed? And I? I was so much in love! And wanted to record their every color and size and shape, not to mention their flavors and moods. Life is so fleeting, is it not? And what is more fleeting than a man?

And so it was that I came to write A Field Guide to Nudes. A Field Guide to Desires. A Field Guide to Orgasms . . .

I was so busy with my research, I had no time to reflect. (Some say I was obsessed. It's true!) No time to consider the consequence of my acts. Of course I should have known. The people were outraged. They chased me into the streets and out of the city gates. Now I can never go back. I live alone with my desires. With my dreams that never stop dreaming. With these orgasms that never stop singing my name. Yes, it's a fact! Whatever they say, I can only sigh and say yes. Whatever they wish for, I just say yes. Yes! Yes! I say yes. Again and again, I say yes. And I will say it for you if you ask. Yes! Yes! Yes!

Never Say Yes

Each day I positioned myself carefully. I wouldn't move a muscle. I would tell myself I was in good hands. Of course, it is only natural to be a little uneasy. To think of upsetting an order so nicely arranged, every hair in place. Blown dry. Sometimes I even mastered a windblown look as if I had been flying. People suspected me of having been out on the sly. Of living a secret life. They said, it's a very bad sign. And a woman like that. Who would have thought? For so long they trusted me; they even called me one of their own. I who always yearned to be possessed. When confronted, I solemnly swore that I hadn't budged an inch. Nor had I blinked. I never let on. But gradually I began to display the tell_tale symptoms. Every crime needs a criminal. Nothing can be done about it. Spectators come in droves. Mothers warn their children, See what happens? And to think. I who was taken in by such a nice family. Good, hard_working folk. And they thought I was such a good egg. Look what happens whenever you say yes.

from the archive; first posted  June 29, 2008