The Best American Poetry

Daniel Nester and Jonah Winter's proposed names of poetry books

Poet-slash-evil genius Jonah Winter and your guest blogger [Dan Nester] spent an afternoon in Pittsburgh not too long ago, talking of our lack of faith in Jesus Christ as our personal savior as well as making fun of poetry book titles. They all seemed so aggressively portentous, imbued with such fawning obsequiousness. To exorcise ourselves of the real-life titles we were mentioning, titles that shall not be mentioned here, we played a word association game wherein either Jonah or myself would think of the second word of a two-word poetry book title, which would after after whatever the other participant named as the first. 

So, for example, Jonah would say “Imprimateured,” while I kept in mind the second word for the title, “Meanderings,” thus giving us a title ready for someone’s poetry manuscript, Imprimateured Meanderings. (That's Jonah in full evil genius mode pictured up on your left, reading at UMaine's reading series awhile back; do check out his books, the very un-portentously, unobsequiously named  Maine and Amnesia.)

Sometimes we would even think of the press one of our proposed books titles might be associated.  TransDarkness would fit right beside those titles published at the experimental Ahsahta Press, for example, while Tremulous Beaver might be more feasible for, say, Knopf.

Without further ado, here’s our list. Got any others?  Add them to the Comments box.

The Orchid Sac
Lunar Guest
Concrete Pedigree
Beviled Desires
Standard Flow
Leftward Thwartings
Modified Rapture
Tremulous Beaver
Uninformed Highwayman
TransDarkness
Uninformed Tomorrowings
Imprimateured Meanderings
Sluiced Regret
The Sentinel Awakes
In situ, Storms
Alarm Morningwood
Darling; Wandering
Streaked Pugnaciousness
Variegated Cock
Woman House
Descartes’ Pancakes
Fugitive Contraband
Entering Beaver
Airport Beaver
Damage Thruway
Matchstick Haven
Unsublettable You
Earning, Toward
The Felt Apogee
Technical Vulva
Tree Entrance
Veinous Miriam
Unvisited Stickerbush
Polished Lendings
Stiff Flowering
Penelope’s Nubbin

from the archive; first posted May 30, 2008.

Let Us Now Praise People We Want to Have Sex With [by Janice Erlbaum]

The praise poem was all the rage in certain circles in 1993. Kathy from Pussy Poets started it; she wrote a praise poem for Bobby Miller, and one for me, called “Mary Jane Girl.” “Mary Jane Girl” was all about how I would get her high and listen to her relationship problems with DC, and how awesome of me that was. I loved Kathy, too, but I never wrote a praise poem for her.

I never wrote a praise poem for anyone. The closest I came was a poem I wrote for Eliza, which wasn’t written so much for her as it was written to impress her. The poem was named for my old friend Melissa, and it implied that Melissa and I had slept together; in fact, we had not. But I wanted Eliza to think I had some credibility as a lesbian so that she would like me, and isn’t wanting someone to like you one of the highest forms of praise?

Eliza didn’t have any praise poems, though she had a response poem, which was kind of the same thing; just another way of flirting. Maggie Estep had a poem called “Fuck Me,” so Eliza wrote a response poem called “No, Fuck Me,” and of course Maggie heard about it and was flattered, but she didn’t swing that way, so Eliza read it to me, dancing ahead of me on the sidewalk on Allen Street, really performing the hell out of it. I was dying to swing Eliza’s way, and I almost did, for a few weeks there, after which she dumped me in the middle of Tompkins Square Park. Then I wrote a poem with Eliza’s name in it, but it wasn’t a praise poem.

I started dating Paul, who put me in just about every single one of his poems, which was his way of paying me back for letting him live with me and supporting him while he smoked all of my weed. He read one on stage at the Nuyorican one night – “And Janice will fill you up! And Janice will set you free!” – and I cringed, ashamed. Everyone knew how cheap I was, that I could be bought for the price of a few lines of not very good poetry.

In the meantime, DC wrote a praise poem for me. It was called “For J.E.,” and the word “genius” was used. This caused me to think about dumping Paul for DC, who had his own apartment, and a job, and was also a much better poet than Paul was. So I wrote a poem dedicated to DC. This caused Kathy to retire her praise poem for me, and to change one of the characters in the screenplay she was writing from a wonderful best friend type to an inane slut.

I guess what I’m trying to say here is that no poem will get you laid faster than a praise poem, but if you use one to sleep with another poet, you’re either going to wind up supporting them while they smoke all your weed, getting dumped in the middle of Tompkins Square Park, or alienating your best friends. Probably safer to stick to limericks.

from the archive, first posted April 2, 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

An Interview with Terence Winch [by Aspen Matis]

January 21, 2021

You are the author of eight poetry collections, a short story collection, and a collection of non-fiction stories, and your first novel, Seeing-Eye Boy, was published in October of 2020. What inspired your transition from poet to novelist and the creation of this first book-length work?

I got interested in YA fiction when my son Michael was approaching adolescence; it was at that point that I started getting him YA books, sometimes even reading them to him. That's when I realized that there was a lot of good writing and storytelling going on in that arena. The next step was to try my own hand at it.

How has Irish music influenced you and your development as an artist?

Irish music goes back further and deeper in my life than any other form of expression. I have a storehouse of songs and tunes in my head that I think help shape, most often in ways I’m not really conscious of, much of my writing.   

Where do poetry and music intersect? And where do they diverge?

There’s a close relationship between poetry and song, which in humanity’s past often meant the same thing. Good poems have a deep musicality coded into them, just as great song lyrics often show an attention to the metaphoric concision of the best kind of poetic language. Obviously, not every poem makes a good song, and not every set of lyrics can stand alone as a poem. But Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for Literature, and that made perfect sense to me.

What themes and inquiries most fascinate and inspire you?

I never think in terms of themes and inquiries. But sex and death, those twin pillars of poetic obsession, have not escaped my attention.

Do the best books win the poetry prizes? Why do great works so often fall through the cracks of our literary foundation, into obscurity?

When you have found the answers to those questions, please let me know.

Do you have any wisdom or guidance you’d like to share with young poets? 

When I was a student, a long time ago, I loved the work, and the workings of the mind, of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. I still think, along with many others, that “Kubla Khan” is the best poem ever written in English. I also read and loved his prose, including his great classic, Biographia Literaria: Or Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions. In the Biographia he writes, "With no other privilege than that of sympathy and sincere good wishes, I would address an affectionate exhortation to the youthful literati, grounded on my own experience. It will be but short; for the beginning, middle, and end converge to one charge: NEVER PURSUE LITERATURE AS A TRADE" [caps his]. I think that’s still good advice.

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

I'm finishing up work on a new manuscript of poems. I like writing poems. Writing something you’re happy with produces a very pleasant high that you can’t get any other way. It's a benign addiction. Songs and instrumental compositions come less frequently, but are also a kick. 

What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Stronger [by Michael Fontaine]

That's Diogenes up above, the Greek philosopher who famously lived in a wine barrel.

This post is #4 in the series on How to Drink. Click here for parts one, two, and three. Fair warning: this one's longer, so pour a glass of wine, fire up the music, and get a little stronger. 

 

Nietzsche said it first, but Kelly Clarkson said it better:

“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”

She's right, and if you don't believe it, then lifting heavy or running a couple dozen sprints will remind you. (I’ll come back to that topic tomorrow.)

In the meantime, Clarkson goes a long way toward answering an ancient question, namely, where do good ideas come from?

As you'll see below, Vincent Obsopoeus is the first person in world history to write a How-to manual for drinking alcohol.

Strange as it now seems, nobody had ever thought to do that before. How did he come up with the idea?

Start with Hollywood. In 2006 a dark comedy came out called Smokin' Aces. It’s a terrible movie but it features a brilliant performance by Jeremy Piven.

Piven plays a Las Vegas card illusionist who gets tangled up with the mob, and in every scene -- no matter what’s happening, even when he's getting beaten up  -- he keeps fiddling with his playing cards and pulling tricks. Those cards are an obsession, a part of him. “They're kind of like worry beads for the character that I kind of incorporated,” said Piven at the time.

That's exactly the kind of guy Obsopoeus was, only with wine instead of cards. 

When an influential man once offered to help Obsopoeus get a prestigious job, he replied that the advertised salary was so low, “it won’t even quench my thirst.”

And when Obsopoeus asked Joachim Camerarius to blurb The Art of Drinking, Camerarius replied,

If you publish this book, you won’t easily convince everyone of your sobriety (as you claim). ... People assume speech tracks one’s true feelings.

In other words, thought Camerarius, everyone would assume Obsopoeus was an alcoholic because he wrote a poem in praise of drinking wine. It's inevitable. 

Events proved Camerarius right. A couple years later, Obsopoeus wrote another book and in it, he tucked away a tiny comment about drinking games:

I wrote a lot about that topic in The Art of Drinking, and I hear a lot of people are trashing me behind my back for publishing it. They say I went too far. Whatever. Obsopoeus doesn’t care. They can go on hating and criticizing me until they explode.

That sounds deeply bitter, and it is, but it's also totally hilarious. Why?

The tell is the phrase I translated here as "Whatever. Obsopoeus doesn't care."

In Latin it's Haec non sunt curae Obsopoeo et Hippoclidi, literally, "Obsopoeus and Hippoclides don't care."

In ancient Greece, Hippocleides was a young man who ruined his chance to marry a princess by getting drunk and acting stupid at a party. In his drunken state, he quipped, "Hippocleides doesn't care."

In time that response became the classic ancient Greek expression for "f#ck it."

And it shows that even at the very moment he was accused of drinking too much, Obsopoeus couldn't resist making a joke about drinking too much.

That brings me to the letter I’d like to share with you.

Because of space restrictions, I didn’t have room to include Obsopoeus' original preface in How to Drink. It’s a gem, though, and I’m pleased to publish it here online among fellow lovers of literature, instead of burying it in some specialist journal.

Even better, it’s now generously seeded with hyperlinks for the curious and indulgent to follow. It’s the first translation into any language, and it’s a fascinating insight into how and why Obsopoeus came to write his poem on The Art of Drinking – the very first, as he points out, that anyone had ever thought of.

Specifically, the preface reveals how great literature can spring from a combination of disappointment, resentment, a lot of wine, and a determination to prove all the bastards wrong.

In it we learn that Obsopoeus – a gifted translator – had recently lost out on some commissions to translate classical literature, apparently on the grounds that he wasn’t a serious enough person to handle great “works of art.” And that's why, he says, he turned his attention to the one “art” that everyone thought he was worthy of: the art of drinking.

It all goes to show that Kelly Clarkson was right. What didn’t kill Obsopoeus, made him stronger.

 

The Preface to The Art of Drinking

(For the original 1536 Latin text, click here. My translation is from the slightly slimmed down version he included in the 1537 reprint, here.)

 

To John Hartung,

the illustrious and humane gentleman, and

Judge of Heilsbronn Abbey,

Vincent Obsopoeus sends his warmest greetings

The people of Corinth were shocked at first and paralyzed with fear when the news dropped that a hostile army, led by King Philip of Macedon, was about to invade their city.

Then, though, they all kicked into high gear, competing to make all necessary preparations to defend their homeland. One started furbishing weapons, another was gathering stones, a third was patching the city walls and fixing portions that had collapsed or that were weak with age; yet another was erecting towers and battlements. In short, everyone everywhere was working their tails off to do whatever the situation demanded.

Diogenes the Cynic saw all this energy in action. And, since he didn’t have anything to do (nobody was asking him for help!), he hitched up his tunic and started frantically rolling his dolium—the wine “barrel” he lived in — up and down the streets of his neighborhood.

When a friend asked him why, he answered,

“I’m rolling my barrel so I won’t look like the only one here who’s a slacker!”

*          *          *

What’s the point of this story, my good Hartung?

It’s this: that given the tidal wave of authors writing and publishing books—well, the same thing’s happening to me that happened to Diogenes back then.

You see, there’s no shortage of people writing and publishing endless books (good ones, too!) every single day and on every topic under the sun, and certain people are so gripped with the irresistible urge to write something that ¡they’re shamelessly “decanting” the Greek and Latin classics into modern languages! And by doing that, they’re whoring out all their humanistic education and even the Muses themselves, whoring them no different than a disgraceful pimp exploits naïve young women. ¡As if—thanks to the behavior of certain loudmouths—the Classics weren’t already in crisis, and suffering plenty as it is!

(By contrast, when philosophers in the ancient world transmitted their dunderheaded philosophy to their students, they wrapped it up in certain secret signs and symbols so that none of it would accidentally get shared with the uninitiated!)

And that’s why—given this huge throng of writers and mass of popularizing translations — I thought it was a good idea for me to roll my barrel with Diogenes for a while. I don’t want to be the only one sitting around doing nothing!

(here comes the sarcasm...)

Because I know I’m "not up to writing up a systematic treatise" on those truly great works of literary art, and because nobody really needs my help to translate them, I’ve settled on just one “art”—yes, it does sound funny at first glance, but it’s probably the richest and most popular—namely, the Art of Drinking: because who doesn’t see how widespread drinking is?

Still, for an art that virtually everyone on planet Earth is eager for, it’s regrettable that until now, there haven’t been any guidelines or recommendations for people to follow, and hence learn to drink with greater knowledge, moderation, and sophistication.

I guarantee you that people ignorant of grammar don’t make as many mistakes in language on any given day as the number of gross mistakes you see made every single day by drinkers who get tripped up because they aren’t educated in the art of drinking.

It’s also pretty well established that as institutions, the Greeks had designated roles for those who dictate how much wine to drink and those who have to drink it, and the Romans had their own “symposiarchs” and “dictators” and the custom of appointing “kings” for their parties.

If an Art of Drinking was ever taught by anyone at any point, though, I haven’t found it. You see, in the various Convivial Questions and Symposiums written by Plutarch, Athenaeus, and even Plato and Xenophon — and by Macrobius on the Latin side — people tend to be long-winded and talkative, not alcoholics.

Only a crackpot, however, could have the temerity to deny that specific guidelines for the art of drinking can be found the same way they can for other arts. Because I realized this, and because I pitied the human race for being left helpless in this one exclusive domain, I quietly made notes of certain observations I’d stumbled upon through frequent experimentation.

I organized them into the three books that follow, and published them in order to equip people that are smarter and better educated than me with a more expansive reason and opportunity for reflecting and writing on the subject.

I’m content myself to have blazed some trails to the Art of Drinking; if others can come refine and enlarge it as their abilities allow, I won’t resent it.

And so, as I said, given the whirlpool not only of people writing, but also of people binging and emptying out wine barrels night and day, it’s been a pleasure to roll this Diogenes-barrel of mine: unlike everyone else, it’s not my fate (</sarc>) to serve a Corinthian crisis or greater literature—no, not with the “cold blood in my breast limiting my inspiration.”

I’m also glad to realize what I can and can’t do, having taken a good hard look at the financial straits my family is in. That’s why I have willingly followed Horace’s recommendation and undertaken to write about a subject matter that isn’t completely beyond my strengths.

(here comes the venom)

My other reason for “rolling this barrel” is the false opinion some people have of me, and the smears that certain trash talkers have put out there.

When they go accusing me to one and all of being a “world-champion wine drinker” (which isn’t true, and nothing I’ve ever done to them ever provoked them to say that, other than their being unable to live without blackening someone else’s good name); — those stupid idiots don’t understand that they’re actually “insulting” me in the most honorably way possible.

You see, the famous Plato, prince of philosophers, doesn’t think it’s absurd for the most beautiful reward for virtue to be being drunk for all eternity, even though I’m not aiming at that reward for my virtues (they’re far too small, you see, to be graced with so incredible a prize </sarc>).

You see, I do like wine more than water, but I’ve always controlled my enjoyment of it with such moderation that I’ve made sure that no one’s ever gotten misled or hurt by my drinking.

Meanwhile, those sobriety-worshippers who are slandering me—who go around signaling their virtue in public while binging in private—they’ll surely spell the doom of no few people with their destructive teaching, contaminated as they are by far more disgraceful sins and behavior.

Besides, I’d rather get called a slightly immoderate wine drinker than be accused — and rightly so — of being a riot-starter or teacher of evil or blasphemer or ghostwriter or perverter of scripture or disturber of the gospel’s peace and harmony or the author or abettor of a pernicious heresy or a church robber and nefarious Sacramentarian or an Anabaptist fanatic or, I might add, a disgraceful man-whore or imposter or plagiarist.

But enough—I’ll respond to my slanderers in a separate essay, and I’ll make sure they haven’t caught “a cicada by the wing.”

Still, if they do want to see how with what “fairness” and virulence they’ve been traducing my name, then allow them to direct their malicious eyes at me. Keep maligning me, and I’ll make sure they hear plenty about the malfeasance of their actions!

*          *          *

I dedicate this dabbling of mine to you, my dear Hartung — the majority of which I dashed off riotously and off the cuff, over drinks. Although your excellence deserves a greater gift, I had to limit myself not to what you deserve, but to what I could provide. And if I can’t honor you with a golden statue as you deserve, then please be content in the circumstances with this marble one—or rather, mud or clay—I’ve set up for you. If it’s modest and beneath your dignity, please consider that “God, too, looks fondly on our best efforts.”

Please don’t assume, though, that I dedicated these books on How to Drink to you because I think you’re getting debauched night and day in whorehouses overflowing with wine (nobody is more temperate than you are, and there’s no need to haul you back to a more productive life), or because even when the circumstances don’t require it, you’re a pro at playing the part of a friendly dinner companion, wherein, on account of your affability and poise, you deserve to be called a “man for all seasons.”

No, the only reason I’ve dedicated How to Drink to you is so that this poor, little homeless book of mine will have you for their patron. Under your patronage, it’ll fly free among the hands of women and men, protected from all the backbiting, smirks, and sneers of sycophants. I know it.

Please commend me to the Reverend Father, Abbot John. Pass my greetings on to Mr. Sebastian Hamaxurgus, the grain supervisor. In the past, we often—well, we didn’t roll Diogenes’ barrel together, but we did empty a few barrels of Bacchus…

Ansbach, January 1536

 

Notes in the Margin

Plagiarism goes a long way back. In 1577 a man name Franciscus Iunctinus of Florence ripped off Obsopoeus’ preface entirely – verbatim! Little did he know he'd get exposed by Google Books in 2020. There's a lesson there...

The Dos and Don’ts of Social Drinking [by Michael Fontaine]

Social drinking can be a lot of fun. It can also be a major source of stress and anxiety, and a gateway to problem drinking. Not good. 

As I mentioned in my first post, the end of book one in The Art of Drinking discusses responsible drinking at social functions, while the entirety of book two is devoted to excess drinking. (I’ll discuss that in tomorrow’s post.)

That structure suggests Obsopoeus was especially alert to the gateway aspect of social drinking, and that may explain why he devotes so much attention to the topic. He knew that work parties, holidays and weddings could be make-it-or-break-it events.

Amazingly, Obsopoeus' advice for those occasions seems as wise and useful today as it was 500 years ago. Let me share some examples.

He starts by stressing the importance of etiquette, beginning the moment you walk through the door. First and foremost, he says, keep it light – even if you're upset about something:

If some hidden worry does happen to be gnawing at you, then lay your cross down the moment you step through the door or dispel it ASAP with a drink of wine—there’s no surer remedy for worries than alcohol.

You'd be hard pressed to find a textbook offering advice like that today, but Obsopoeus is sure it's sensible. In his experience, a single glass of wine – if necessary – won't inevitably send you down an irreversible path.  

He then offers a long series of dos and don’ts, elaborating on each point. For example,

• Do Follow the Conversation. No other interest, no pet hobby or topic that you bring up on your own, should force people to follow your inappropriate digression if they aren’t into it. No, you follow them. Surrender your ego to your group of friends. That’s how you avoid antagonizing people and the fallout that comes with it.

• Do Say Nothing Rather than Something Stupid. Nothing exposes the inferiority of a subpar intellect faster than a tongue droning on unthinkingly. Many win a reputation for wisdom through their silence and then lose it through their stupidity.

Ever met someone like that at a party?

Some of this may come instinctively to you. Unfortunately, it doesn't come instinctively to everyone. If you find yourself scratching your head at any of these next points, I encourage you to read his elaboration of each one:

• Don’t Try to Win Arguments
• Don’t Try to Impress People with Your Intelligence
• Do Be Careful with Your Jokes
• Don’t Use Foul Language
• Don’t Make Jokes at Other People’s Expense
• Do Keep Your Bodily Functions under Control

One of the best pieces of advice he offers is how to give a proper toast – and how to politely deflect peer pressure to join in if you're not into drinking. Here’s what you should say, he says:

 

“My fine friend, don’t you know how the Homeric warlords drank wine? They’d drink as much as each one’s heart desired. Everyone should down drinks as they please! I don’t know of any of those heroes ever acting like you were and telling someone, ‘Match that drinking!’ I grant I’m no epic hero, but what’s stopping us from following the heroic code?”

The heroes of the Iliad and Odyssey are shown drinking wine on many occasions, but never in any kind of competitive way. So, if those tough-as-nails guys — guys like Achilles and Agamemnon and Ajax — if those guys didn’t feel compelled to pound drinks, then you shouldn’t either. Brilliant! (And all the better if your host doesn't know who Homer was, because the last thing he or she will do is ask.)

Obsopoeus also offers some actionable advice about how best to refuse a drink when you're not into it:

Still, to avoid offending someone by refusing their offer of wine, do have a single drink if they’re pressuring you.

This is not the advice contemporary programs would offer today, but Obsopoeus has a point:

And that’s why—to avoid hurt feelings—I’m frequently drinking: it’s not because I’m thirsty, but so I won’t be a sober killjoy.

That said, he immediately admonishes us to never pressure other people to drink:

Forcing someone against their will is as serious a crime as chasing them away from flowing water when they’re thirsty. The sweetest glass is a drink that’s downed by choice, whereas forcing hurts the drinker and the wine alike. Wine makes friends and breaks friends; being forced to drink wine isn’t universally liked.

Obsopoeus finally sums up his advice with a golden rule borrowed from Ovid's treatise on sex education:

• Moderation must forever be your guiding principle.
• Everything needs to be kept within finite limits; and
• Consent to memorize the same thing Ovid taught his young man in love:

“I’m going to give you a specific drinking limit: Your mind and feet should both be doing their job.”

Again and again Obsopoeus comes back to that point, that moderation is the key to lasting sobriety, and if you're having trouble talking or walking, then you're past your limit. Time to head home.

I’ll talk about what happens when you don't in tomorrow’s post. In the meantime, I’d like to end this post with a liminary poem I didn’t have space to include in How to Drink.

When you wrote a book back in the Renaissance, it was customary to hit your friends up to write short poems—called “liminary” poems—to celebrate the publication. They were blurbs, basically, and the best of them enlighten and enhance the book that follows.

In How to Drink, I reprinted a liminary poem in Latin by Joachim Camerarius, a famous scholar of the German Renaissance. I didn’t have room for a second one Camerarius wrote in ancient Greek, and I’m pleased to share it here.

The conceit is that wine can be a bucking bronco, and art — and specifically, Obsopoeus’ "Art" of Drinking — will give you the confidence you need to "ride" it. (The conceit goes back to ancient Greek comedy and gets picked up elsewhere in the Renaissance; see footnote nine here):

Get set, all you wine enthusiasts out there!

     If your heart is willing but

your puny body lacks the strength,

     then smile and say hello to wine’s intoxication!

Vincent has devised the therapies in this Art for you

     so that you can drink wine without fear.

You little fellas don’t have to fear a big, tough guy anymore,

      because look, with art, even a kid can ride a mighty horse.

Here’s the Greek for those who can read it. (The phrase I translate “wine enthusiasts” literally means “suffering from the gentleman’s disease,” and it’s a recherché allusion to Aristophanes’ comedy Wasps, line 80.)

Θαρσεῖθ’ ὅσσ’ ἀγαθῶν ἀνδρῶν νούσῳ κατέχεσθε,         

      οἰνώδη θ’ ἱλαραῖς φρεσσὶ φιλεῖτε μέθην,

εἰ μὲν θυμὸς ἔνι στήθει πρόφρων, δύναμις δέ

      λείπετ’ ἐν ἀβληχρῷ σώματι δαμναμὲνη·

τοίης Νικήτης τέχνης τάδε φάρμακα πᾶσιν                  

      θῆκεν ὑμῖν ἀδεῶς οἰνοποταζέμεναι.                            

μή τινα νῦν δείσητε μέγαν μικροὶ ἄνδρα θρασύν τε.

      τέχνῃ παῖς ἵππον πόσσον ὁποῖος ἑλᾷ;       

We Have Sex Education. Should We Teach Drinking Education, Too? [By Michael Fontaine]

It sounds heretical to even ask, doesn't it?

In this world of ours, though, we’ve grudgingly come to admit that a few things that seem instinctive, really should be taught. Sex is one. Driving a car is another.

In all my life, though, I’ve never heard of anyone offering a course in the art of drinking alcohol.

I don't mean a twelve-step program to quit alcohol, mind you. I mean a course in how to enjoy alcohol responsibly, sustainably, and with discrimination.

Controversial? Sure. Risky, dangerous, potentially disastrous? That too.

But maybe it's not as nutty as it sounds – especially with so many of us stuck at home and drinking more than usual.

What might drink education look like? In fact, it might look very much like the book I recently rediscovered and translated as How to Drink: A classical guide to the art of imbibing. And even though it's five centuries old, the ideas it contains are as insightful, timely and actionable as ever. You simply won't believe it.

In much of the world, booze is an all-or-nothing thing. Thirty percent of us in the U.S. never touch the stuff. The other 70% of us do, with varying degrees of success. And for better or worse, virtually all of us learn about alcohol in the same hit-or-miss way that people once used to learn about driving cars or sex.

Five hundred years ago in Germany, a man named Vincent Obsopoeus saw a better way. Obsopoeus (pronounced Job? So pay us!!) was a very experienced drinker, and he decided to do the world some good by systematizing his experiences as rules and committing them to paper.

Incredibly, he wrote his treatise as a poem – a poem in classical Latin, the language spoken in ancient Rome 1,500 years before his time.

Obsopoeus' poem became an instant classic. It was read and reprinted – until the book was suddenly banned. It disappeared for centuries and was eventually forgotten.

No, Obsopoeus wasn't a rock star. He was the principal of an elite high school in Bavaria, and in his time he witnessed the birth of a poisonous new culture among young men of bingeing, hazing, peer pressure, and competitive drinking.

German universities had fraternities way back then – and frat parties, too. Drinking competitions started popping up, where the goal was to make the other guy pass out. Sounding like a critic far ahead of his times, Obsopoeus regarded this flush of hardcore masculinity he was seeing as “toxic.” (He says so explicitly.)

Worse, boozing was taking over professional life, too. The pressure to join in was overwhelming.

Obsopoeus saw all this and sought to halt it. He lifted his pen and composed a three-part poem called De Arte Bibendi, The Art of Drinking. He was inspired by a famous three-part poem from ancient Rome called The Art of Love, the world's first- or second-oldest course in sex education. (The competitor for that honor is India's Kama Sutra.) 

The difference between Ovid and Obsopoeus is that Ovid wasn't really serious about most of the advice he offers. Obsopoeus was, and he speaks with the candor of someone who's been around the block a few times.

The surprising thing is that unlike Alcoholics Anonymous, Obsopoeus doesn't just advocate teetotalism—that is, abstaining from alcohol completely.

Better, he thought, to take stock of the main occasions for drinking, see what works for most people best, and then systematize and institute some rules to guide our behavior.

In that respect, we can see a clear analogy with sex education in schools today. Sex ed typically recommends keeping sex within the bonds of a committed relationship. It doesn't recommend lifelong celibacy, which – if you look around – clearly isn't a sustainable way of life for most people.

Obsopoeus thought of booze the same way, and he uses that central insight to develop a number of practical strategies for managing our relationship to alcohol.

He begins by pointing out that there are three occasions on which we drink:

1. At home by ourselves,
2. Going out to meet friends, and
3. At social functions, like work parties and weddings.

Interestingly enough, Obsopoeus says home is far and away the best place to drink. Why? Because drinking at home gives us a chance to spend time with our significant other.

Obsopoeus spends the rest of his first book discussing how much to drink and how to behave on each of those occasions. He helps us identify the best drinking buddies, advises what to say and not say, and even how to give a toast.

In the second book, he turns to a far darker topic, excessive drinking, and repeatedly admonishes us not to go down that path.

In book three he does a complete about-face, and offers to teach us his secret way to win competitive drinking games--and it's not what you think.

In a series of blog posts this week, I’ll share some of Obsopoeus' insights and practical advice. I’ll also reveal some fascinating background material that I couldn’t squeeze into my book, material that reveals the creative impulse that led him to write it in the first place.

To listen to a podcast expanding on some of these thoughts, click here.

I’d like to end this first post, though, by reflecting on a problem I kept coming up against in translating the poem: namely, the choice between “drunk” and “alcoholic.”

Obsopoeus wrote his Art of Drinking in the 16^th century, long before it occurred to anyone to consider excess drinking a disease. Of course he recognized that drinking to excess can be self-destructive, that it ruins your family, finances, health, and even life; he says so himself. The idea of “alcoholism,” though, literally didn’t exist back then.

When I went to translate his poem, then, I faced a dilemma—and a morally loaded one.

Latin has many words, like vinosus, for someone who drinks too much. So, should I translate them “drunk” or “alcoholic”? The first is faithful to Obsopoeus and his world, the second to our own. But the second is anachronistic, and hence faithless to the author.

“In the animal kingdom,” remarked Dr. Thomas Szasz (1920-2012), the late professor of psychiatry, “the rule is, eat or be eaten; in the human kingdom, define or be defined.” Nothing proves his point like having to choose between drunk and alcoholic. One of those words brings naught but condemnation and stigma; the other brings compassion, help, even health insurance payments.

“No one can serve two masters,” quipped Jesus. Meanwhile “the translator is a traitor,” runs a famous Italian proverb (traduttore, traditore). Faced with the impossibility of serving both, I chose to betray both. I wound up charting a middle course, letting the context dictate whether to say “drunk” or “alcoholic.”

I hope readers will tell me what they think.

Notes in the Margin

In a nice review yesterday, Philip Martin wonders about one of my translations. 

Obsopoeus wrote, wine "has no steering wheel."

Wait, he was writing in the 16th century. Did they even have steering wheels then?

They did – on boats! (The Greek proverb literally says “Wine lacks rudders.”)

Eleven Questions for Eleven Poets, including Dana Levin, Max Ritvo, Tony Trigilio [by Alan Michael Parker]

When offered a guest appearance on the Best American Poetry blog, I decided not only to write a couple of articles that I’ve been mulling over, but also to celebrate new books of poems coming out this fall. I put out a call via Facebook and Twitter, and had such a strong response I was made to choose among submissions. I did so: I read the galleys and selected eleven poets to interview. (And I apologize to those this feature could not accommodate.) So, on July 2, eleven poets received the following charge:

Please answer five of the questions below. Elaborate upon your replies—that is, please explain your thinking, and explore the examples you’re citing—and nonetheless limit each answer to a paragraph or two. Concise, substantive responses would be preferred.

1. Which of these poems predicts your future?
2. What two moments in the volume, or two images from the poems, would you like your reader to remember most?
3. Which of the following two is your book about: Love, Art, Beauty, Death, God, Self, Ethics, Dreams, Mom, Dad, Ambition, The Body, Loneliness, Friendship, The Natural World, Human Failings, Sensuality, Perception?
4. Which poem in your book should be read aloud first—that is, not the volume’s first poem?
5. Which two or three poems might compete to be the volume’s singular ars poetica?
6. Which poem in your book arrived mostly whole?
7. What are you doing formally in this book that’s new for you?
8. List five books that mattered to you during the writing of your book.
9. List five events in your life that mattered to you during the writing of your book.
10. Which poem in this book could begin your next book?
11. Which poem in this book scares you the most?

One sad note: as many of you know, the poet Max Ritvo died this summer at the age of twenty-five. We are fortunate to have his poems, and also fortunate that even in his decline he was able to contribute sparkling responses to the interview questions. My condolences to his family and friends.

And in case you’re wondering, Eleven Questions for Eleven Poets took 143 emails.

Now the poets and their answers, a sampling of some of the brilliance we find in poetry today: Elizabeth Colen, Carolina Ebeid, Dana Levin, Max Ritvo, David Rivard, Chris Santiago, Lee Sharkey, Clint Smith, Megan Snyder-Camp, Tony Trigilio, Monica Youn. 

Elizabeth J. Colen is most recently the author of What Weaponry, a novel in prose poems. Other books include poetry collections Money for Sunsets (Lambda Literary Award finalist in 2011) and Waiting Up for the End of the World: Conspiracies, flash fiction collection Dear Mother Monster, Dear Daughter Mistake, long poem / lyric essay hybrid The Green Condition, and fiction collaboration Your Sick. She teaches at Western Washington University.

  

Carolina Ebeid is a the author of You Ask Me to Talk About the Interior (Noemi Press, Fall 2016). She is a student in the Ph.D. program in creative writing at the University of Denver, and holds an MFA from the Michener Center for Writers. She has won fellowships and prizes from CantoMundo, Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, the Stadler Center for Poetry, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Her work appears widely in journals such as The Kenyon Review, Gulf Coast, Colorado Review, and more recent work appears in Linebreak, Bennington Review, jubilat, and in the inaugural Ruth Stone House Reader.  

Dana Levin's new book of poetry is Banana Palace, out this October from Copper Canyon Press. A grateful recipient of fellowships and awards from the Guggenheim, Whiting, and Rona Jaffe Foundations, Levin serves each fall as Distinguished Writer in Residence at Maryville University in St. Louis. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. [Photo by Anne Staveley]

 

Max Ritvo (1990–2016) wrote Four Reincarnations in New York and Los Angeles over the course of a long battle with cancer. He was also the author of the chapbook AEONS, chosen by Jean Valentine to receive the Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship in 2014. Ritvo’s poetry has appeared in the New Yorker, Poetry, and the Boston Review, and as a Poem-a-Day for Poets.org. His prose and interviews have appeared in publications such as Lit Hub, Divedapper, Huffington Post, and the Los Angeles Review of Books.

 

David Rivard’s most recent book, Standoff, was published by Graywolf in August. He is the author of five other books: Otherwise Elsewhere, Sugartown, Bewitched Playground, Wise Poison, winner of the James Laughlin Prize from the Academy of American Poets and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award, and Torque, winner of the Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize. Among Rivard’s awards are fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, Civitella Ranieri, and the NEA, as well as two Shestack Prizes from American Poetry Review and the O.B. Hardison Poetry Prize from the Folger Shakespeare Library, in recognition of both his writing and teaching. He teaches in the MFA in Writing program at the University of New Hampshire, and lives in Cambridge. News & reviews of Standoff can be found at his website: www.davidrivard.net.

 Chris Santiago is the author of TULA, winner of the 2016 Lindquist & Vennum Prize for Poetry, selected by A. Van Jordan. His poems, fiction, and criticism have appeared in FIELD, Copper Nickel, Pleiades, and the Asian American Literary Review. He holds degrees in creative writing and music from Oberlin College and received his PhD in English from the University of Southern California. The recipient of fellowships from Kundiman and the Mellon Foundation/American Council of Learned Societies, Santiago is also a percussionist and amateur jazz pianist. He teaches literature, sound culture, and creative writing at the University of St. Thomas. He lives in Minnesota.

Lee Sharkey’s Walking Backwards will appear momentarily from Tupelo Press. Her earlier collections comprise Calendars of Fire (Tupelo, 2013), A Darker, Sweeter String (Off the Grid, 2008), and eight other full-length poetry books and chapbooks. Her work has been published in Massachusetts Review, Crazyhorse, FIELD, Kenyon Review, Nimrod, Pleiades, Seattle Review, and other journals. She is the recipient of the Abraham Sutzkever Centennial Translation Prize, the Maine Arts Commission’s Fellowship in Literary Arts, the RHINO Editor’s Prize, the Shadowgraph Poetry Prize, and Zone 3’s Rainmaker Award in Poetry. A lifelong writer, editor, and teacher, she leads a creative writing workshop for adults recovering from mental illness and serves as Senior Editor of the Beloit Poetry Journal. [Photo by Al Bersbach]

Clint Smith is a writer and doctoral candidate at Harvard University and has received fellowships from Cave Canem, the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop, and the National Science Foundation. He is a 2014 National Poetry Slam champion and was a speaker at the 2015 TED Conference. His writing has been published or is forthcoming in The New Yorker, American Poetry Review, The Guardian, Boston Review, Harvard Educational Review and elsewhere. He is the author of Counting Descent (2016) and was born and raised in New Orleans. More of his work can be found at www.clintsmithiii.com. Counting Descent is available for purchase here.

Megan Snyder-Camp is the author of three books of poetry, most recently Wintering and The Gunnywolf. Her website is www.snydercamp.com. She lives in Seattle.

 

 

  

Tony Trigilio’s most recent collection of poetry is Inside the Walls of My Own House: The Complete Dark Shadows (of My Childhood), Book 2 (BlazeVOX [books], 2016). He is the editor of the chapbook Dispatches from the Body Politic: Interviews with Jan Beatty, Meg Day, and Douglas Kearney (Essay Press, 2016), a collection of interviews from his poetry podcast Radio Free Albion. His other books include, most recently, White Noise (Apostrophe Books, 2013), and, as editor, Elise Cowen: Poems and Fragments (Ahsahta, 2014). He plays in the band Pet Theories and teaches poetry at Columbia College Chicago, where he is Interim Chair of the Creative Writing Department. [Photo by Kevin Nance]

Monica Youn is the author of Blackacre (Graywolf Press 2016), which is currently on the longlist for the 2016 National Book Award, Ignatz (Four Way Books 2010), which was a finalist for the National Book Award, and Barter (Graywolf Press 2003). Her poems have been published in Poetry, The New Yorker, The New Republic, Lana Turner, The Paris Review, and The Best American Poetry. She currently teaches at Princeton University and in the Warren Wilson and Sarah Lawrence MFA programs. A former lawyer, she lives in New York.

Part I: Questions 1-5

Question 1: Which of these poems predicts your future?

Carolina Ebeid: The closing poem of the book “M, Marina” predicts a kind of future. In fact, the poem was supposed to be part of the next work. I decided to include it in You Ask Me to Talk About the Interior precisely because it didn't fit perfectly, to my mind. Therefore the book itself doesn’t actually feel shut. Rather, the poem acts as a leading to the next book. In formal ways, “M, Marina” also describes my present. It is written in serial form, made up of short, variegated pieces. While the poem centers around Marina Tsvetaeva, the serial poem is a form open enough to allow many observations into its orbit. Both this poem and “Veronicas of a Matador” function in the same way formally; much of the work I am writing presently relies on the same methods of seriality.  

Dana Levin: “At the End of My Hours,” of course!

But seriously: I don’t think I’d ever survive civilization’s collapse. I’m over fifty, not in apocalypse-withstanding shape, and trained to teach poetry. My only hope would be to convince a rag-tag band of survivors that they needed a shaman bard crone wom­­an.

Max Ritvo: All the ones that predict my imminent death due to Ewing's Sarcoma. I'm pretty sure they're hitting the nail on the head. And by "the head" I mean my head.

Lee Sharkey: Allow me to subvert the question to talk about a dream that led me on a journey. In the early summer of 2011 I woke in the middle of the night hearing the words “Tonight I am walking backwards”; I scribbled them in my journal before falling back to sleep. The sentence had the peculiar quality of utterance that has led me over the years to germinal poems, yet I had no idea what it might refer to. In a month I was to fly to Vilnius for an SLS seminar, an opportunity for me to explore the Jewish history and culture of a city that had witnessed both their heights and their depths, but I made no conscious connection between the trip and the image of walking backwards.

In Vilnius, I lived in the garret of an old building on one of the seven streets that had constituted the Jewish ghetto during the Nazi occupation. Between 1941 and 1943, over 35,000 people were confined there; almost all would die at the hands of their captors, the majority by execution in the nearby killing fields of Ponar. I literally walked in their footsteps as I traveled the cobbled streets and as I climbed four flights of crumbling stairs to a room some number of them had crowded into and tried to sleep. By chance or fate I found myself “walking backwards” into the vexed history I claim as my inheritance. Night by night in that haunted room, in the company of the poetry of the Yiddish poet Abraham Sutzkever, I listened to the silence as the poem of walking backwards grew into “In the capital of a small republic.”

Clint Smith: It’s difficult to say which poem predicts my future, but I know which poem speaks to the future I hope to live in: No More Elegies Today. The book, as a whole, is exploring the marathon of cognitive dissonance with regard to coming of age as a young black man in America. How does one reconcile ever-present tension between belonging to a community and family that celebrates them, and a larger world that dehumanizes them? What I want, for all of us, is a world in which that tension no longer exists. A world where the violence dissipates and black children grow up with the humanity left uncompromised, a childhood not shaped by its relationship to violence. As a writer, I think, I have a responsibility to both reflect the world as it is and then imagine the world as it can be. The role of the art is to operate in that imaginative space, to push beyond the boundaries of what we see. The violence black people experience is a part of our reality, but it is not our only reality. We are and always have been more than that which kills us.

Question 2: What two moments in the volume, or two images from the poems, would you like your reader to remember?

Carolina Ebeid: First: one of the sections in “Veronicas of a Matador” with the subtitle “weilian” says:

            With all the books
            I’ve read, my
            shadow makes
            a heavy thing,
            like a desert
            mammal having just
            eaten a creature
            smaller than itself,
            that had been eating
           a creature even smaller.

There are many figures for what the act of reading might be, and this is one.

Second: the title poem takes the image of the Merrill Lynch bull-statue on Wall Street and imagines the autogenesis of bees, a ritual performed on a heifer as described in Virgil’s Georgics, Book IV. The bees are said to be born from the decaying flesh of the animal after following the precise method. In my poem, the bees glisten like coins.          

David Rivard: One would be the final image in the title poem: a hole that’s been chopped in the roof of a house—in an attic room that no one knew existed—through which you can see a great bridge that seems to stretch over a vast expanse of ocean. This long poem funnels down entirely into that dream. A dream that I had over and over again for ten or fifteen years, and that I hope will return some day.
And maybe this, from “Here We Go,” the final poem in the book:

and samurai armor, those dragon scales
humbler than the pants that boys put on
between 5^th grade & 6^th

Simply, I like the kind of connection this image makes. The way it leaps between the worlds of men and boys, the quickness of it, which I like to think of as the product of a certain kind of wit based in perception. I write and read poetry to be surprised—to say something I didn’t know I had in me. For the freshness that carries. To demand that it happen is useless—it either happens or it doesn’t. But you can make yourself available to being surprised, and that practice has always been my favorite as a writer.

Monica Youn: The book has two recurring images—the tree and the trellis—which keep showing up in various guises and states of disrepair. I went fairly old-school with the symbolic motifs. I think of the tree as the totem of a kind of life force, “the force that through the green fuse,” etc. —a life force that can be absurd, or grotesque, or scary depending on its situational context. What’s gripping to me about trees, plants, anything alive is their unthinking determination to remain alive, to grow. It’s a kind of automatic pragmatism. If you cut a tree down, it will sprout from its stump, if you split it, it will try to knit itself back together, if you impose an obstacle, it will grow around and through that obstacle, it will incorporate that obstacle into its own body. Lots of terrible things happen to trees in this book, and there’s a damaged tree anchoring each section—the torn olive tree of “Hangman’s Tree,” the atrophied host tree of “Epiphyte,” the doomed fantasy tree of “Brownacre” and the grafted tree of “Blackacre.” I wanted the these tree images to inform each other, to grow and root through the book and take on their own life independent of any particular poem.

And the trellis—or the rope, or the mast, or the mold, or the yoke or the field—is necessity, the given, the factual, what the life force, the imagination cannot transform. I recently read a parenting book that proposed the French concept of cadre, or frame—of limits, but freedom within those limits. Blackacre is similarly about leeway and limits, about the acre you are allotted and the ways in which you can, and cannot, transform the given.

Question 3: Which of the following two is your book about: Love, Art, Beauty, Death, God, Self, Ethics, Dreams, Mom, Dad, Ambition, The Body, Loneliness, Friendship, The Natural World, Human Failings, Sensuality, Perception? Which of the following two is your book about: Love, Art, Beauty, Death, God, Self, Ethics, Dreams, Mom, Dad, Ambition, The Body, Loneliness, Friendship, The Natural World, Human Failings, Sensuality, Perception?

Elizabeth Colen: Wow! I see a list like this and I think: all of this, yes. Which is probably a common response. Maybe less ambition, less god and art and dreams, maybe. But those are in everything also. The loneliness of the body, through the lens of our human failings in love, through the death of the natural world, and mom and dad and the failings of perception. If I have to pick two I will say The Body and Loneliness. With everything I’ve done, there is a focus on the body, on the visceral. How perception sanctions action, how we move through the world. How sex and violence enacted physically bleeds in, distorts perception, damages communication and connection. The book retells a falling apart, a disintegration, motivated partly by loss and damage and partly by various forms of exile.

Carolina Ebeid: I adore lists such as the one you’ve made. I want to nod yes to each category. Yes, my book is about Loneliness. Yes, my book is about Human Failings. I was in a workshop in Austin with Mary Ruefle, and by the end of the semester, she wrote a poem naming a thematic “obsession” for each of us in the class according to the work we presented. Mine was “God.” Yes, of course, my book is about God and about the Body. I’m interested in this word “about.” One of Heather McHugh’s poems asks the question, “So what are your poems about,” to which she answers “They’re about / their business, and their father’s business and their / monkey’s uncle, they’re about // how nothing is about, their not / about about.” Yes, my book is about Perception and about The Natural World and about Dad. I feel confident this is true especially when I consider an obscure meaning of the word “about” used to denote a tree that has budded or “abouted.”  

Chris Santiago: Aren’t there only two subjects for poems? I heard Li-Young Lee say that, at least, at a reading; he then went on to argue that there is really only one subject. But if my book is preoccupied with Love and/or Death, it isn’t my death per se, or the death of what I love, although those are both part of it. It starts with filial love, and then looks backward/inward to imagine what died—both of the human and nonhuman worlds—so that my family, and other families in the Philippines and the U.S., could live.

My mother’s father, for example, never made it to the U.S.: he died of a stroke not long after he lost two sons to the dictator Ferdinand Marcos. One of these sons was my uncle Flu, who was put in solitary confinement for several years for opposing Marcos; the other was my uncle Virgil, who was smart, well-loved, and musical, and who was killed by Marcos’s secret police at the age of twenty-one. My book digs into these absences, and explores their consequences, and the consequences of being an immigrant’s son.

But the poems also embrace and appropriate the unknown, and the half-known—the few words of Tagalog and Ilonggo that I know, for instance. To me, these syllables are like fragments of urns or maps. I try to use them to elegize the ancestors, the way of life, and the way of speaking that were never really mine, except by blood. Those losses that are specific to my family are broadened out, and traced back to older roots: the Japanese occupation during World War II; the American War and occupation of the Philippines; the long occupation of the Spanish before them; the Islamic, Chinese, and Austronesian histories that shaped the islands before them.

Tony Trigilio: Mom and Death, absolutely. Well, Sons and the Undead, too, I suppose. Dark Shadows (the television show) functions a conduit for my autobiographical writing: some of the book’s most revealing and vulnerable moments, for me, occur when ekphrasis and life-writing collide and the experiment takes me to unexpected and unchartered autobiographical ground.

In many ways, this book is an elegy for my mother, focusing specifically on the daily half-hour time slot we spent in front of the TV during the pre-linguistic and early-linguistic period of my life until I started kindergarten (the same year Dark Shadows was canceled). Barnabas Collins, the vampire of Dark Shadows, was a central figure in nearly all my childhood nightmares. My mother was a huge soap opera fan, and I watched the show with her every day in the first few years of my life. My earliest memories are of watching the show with my mother and then, at night, falling into recurring Barnabas nightmares. I was terrified of Barnabas and I couldn’t look away from him. I fell asleep each night with my shoulders hunched to prevent him from biting my neck.

Death is a major part of the book, too, and not just because the dead can’t seem to stay buried in Dark Shadows. I can trace the origins of this project to the deaths of several close family members from 2001 to 2010, a period of my life which also included an amicable but emotionally painful divorce. I had been trying to write about my Dark Shadows fixation all of my adult life, and these losses somehow triggered this project—the constant presence of death tapped something in me that allowed me, finally, to write about the show’s effect on my life. The book is also an effort to confront, and even court, my own mortality. I still have over 800 episodes of the show to watch—over 800 sentences to write—and I hope I stay alive long enough to finish the project.

Question 4: Which poem in your book should be read aloud first—that is, not the volume’s first poem?

Elizabeth Colen: To me, all poetry should be read aloud. If I start reading a collection out loud and the sounds don’t please, I’m highly unlikely to finish the book. That to me more than anything is what separates / elevates poetry from prose. I know other readers / writers of poems are led by image, or by the movement in logic. I’m moved by those things as well, but always as they are in the service of the sounds.

So, every poem in What Weaponry should ideally be read out loud? But that’s not what you asked, so I’ll try again: A devotee of Stein, I’m attracted to the various methods by which repetition can be utilized—sounds, rhythms, words. Direct repetition of phrase is something I’ve become more attracted to as I settle a bit more into trusting my own craft and process. Two poems that come together midway through What Weaponry and allow heavy usage of repetition of phrase are “The Balance of Terror” and “Hesitation Cut.” I think these two especially happen better out loud.

Parts of “The Balance of Terror” have a fluid movement between internal and external conversation that seems (to me, anyway) particularly heady when read out loud:

“The neighbor came over with a stack of our mail, saying something’s not right with that mailman. You had blank black eyes with that circle of blue; he could see right through you. And me standing in the doorway, saying silently not this time, not this time, eyeing the shotgun leaned against the wall. Bird in the fire and he spied this, saying nothing’s wrong. Not this time.”

“Hesitation Cut” follows and has several instances of repetition, the anaphora (and cataphora) toward the close reads: “I wanted to crack his nose or I wanted to kiss him. I wanted to slice his ear with a penknife or I wanted to kiss him. I wanted to wake him, shaking your father’s rifle at his cock or I wanted to cover his mouth with my mouth and breathe all the boy from him.”

Dana Levin: Gut response: “My Sentence.” I guess it offers prologue for the book. What I am doomed to love, and lose, and how those two drives—to love and to save against time—ignite the making of art. A first hint of what we all stand to lose, or encounter unrecognizable, in the wake of climate change.

David Rivard: “Swerver.” It’s the poem I most enjoy reading aloud myself. I like the way the language is inside the lifetime’s worth of experience that it’s narrating. I remember when I wrote that I felt as if music alone were holding all the disparate moments in this woman’s life together. It’s the music of a “spoken” language, and evidence of the narrator’s thinking and feeling about this woman. I wanted him to sound slightly surprised by what he’s saying, and hoped to get that sort of on-the-spot invention and improvisation into all the poems in the book.

In each of my books I’ve written about a woman I’ve never met, returning to her for reasons not at all clear to me. She has some features of character and biography that are a composite of a number of women I’m close to, it’s true—I’m provoked often to write about her because of something one of them does or says. But she isn’t any of them. I might say that she’s a projection of my anima, if I were a Jungian. I’m not. In these poems, as in “Swerver,” I meet her at different times of her life—some times she’s a child, others quite elderly. In a way, time is the true subject of these poems, its mysteries. That’s true of all the poems in Standoff.

Chris Santiago: “Some Words,” if only because it’s a personal favorite. It’s about having our first child, and how in those first few weeks, time seemed to both stop and to flash by. The poem is also about joy, and this idea that all language is translation; our words can’t help but fall short, especially when we try to use them to describe something as fleeting as joy. But words are still a kind of miracle. And by failing to recreate the “original,” so to speak, we create something new. The original for this poem was the clean sheets/nightbloom scent of our newborn son, especially right at his nape; in failing to contain or transcribe that joy, I ended up with this poem, which I consider a fair trade.

Lee Sharkey: “The City” began as an exercise, an attempt to work with the form David Ferry invented in his “One Two Three Four Five”: a single word is repeated in each line of a five-line poem, first placed at the front of a line and with each succeeding line moving further toward its end. I had been thinking about the vision of the City on the Hill and reading about cities of refuge in ancient Palestine, where those who had committed involuntary manslaughter were protected from punishment for their crimes. It was only when Jeffrey Levine accepted the completed manuscript of Walking Backwards for Tupelo and the press asked me to write a brief description of it that I realized the quest for a city “with water for cleaning and drinking” and “bread to quiet hunger” had become the thread that holds the book together. So, if you’re not wont to read books of poetry from the beginning, do turn to “The City” and read its fifteen lines aloud. I didn’t adhere strictly to David’s form, but the principle of progressive repetition in his model helped me construct a parable that opens the door to the journey.

Question 5: Which two or three poems might compete to be the volume’s singular ars poetica?

Max Ritvo: “The Curve”—this poem is kind of a creation myth in which Humans are not God's True Children, but Language is. We learn human beings are basically a rough draft to be God's incarnation on earth, and He or She learned that His or Her reality is better represented by the shifting, fluxing, self-contradicting, non-solid, neurotic medium of language. And so our human bodies are turned to God's soil, and language His fruit. I've always harbored the suspicion that I exist for the sake of poetry, and that it really doesn't give a lick about me at the end of the day!

“Touching the Floor”—this poem features a vision brought to mind by my sense organs, the miraculous and healing sensation of the marble tiles in my bathroom surging from my palms pressed into the tiles and up into my shoulders, like bulls charging up my arms. The poem then turns to the despair of the mind trying to make this image, The Bulls, last in language, or in memory, and the horrible unsuitableness of our poetry-making faculties, of the Mind itself to do the Body and its wonder's justice. This is my angry ars poetica—it's not a surrender of the Body to the Christ of Poetry so much as it is a wish that Poetry could somehow summon the world with the strength of a Body.

David Rivard: “Flickering,” the earliest poem I wrote for Standoff, could be an ars poetica. It’s totally explicit about the multiplicity that runs throughout the book—that sense that we’re composed of many selves—an amalgam of moods, feelings, guesswork, insights, and experiences. The sum of those selves is an enigma: an enigma that is both powerful and vulnerable. We catch a glimpse of it at odd, unexpected moments. We sense it more than see it: like sitting at a picnic table in a foreign country, and hearing a flock of swans pass overhead in the fog.

The title poem, “Standoff,” addresses the other sensation that runs through the book: that feeling that, while we live intensely in the world and are part of its colors and sounds, we live simultaneously in our heads. There’s something both wonderful and troubling about that to me—we’re searching for something in both places. It’s typical of the book as a whole that the poem flows through these seemingly random, “accidental” moments that have so much indecipherable meaning: some street food in Rome, a wintery night in Boston, news about a drone strike. The mystery takes place at street level. You’re standing on solid ground there, but how did that happen, and who are you really?

Day 5: In Praise of Philip Dacey [by Lisa Vihos]

I knew before I started blogging for BAP this week that I wanted to end my gig with some words for the man who got me back on the path to poetry, Philip Dacey. Phil passed away earlier this month, on July 7. It was a sad day for poetry. We lost one of the great ones.

I am, with Stacey's permission, reprinting a piece I wrote that day for the Stoneboat blog. It doesn't tell you everything Philip ever did, where he taught, who he knew, or even the names of all his books.It is just my personal response to him, his poetry, and his generosity. He taught me a lot, even from a distance. And, he still will, I think, even though he has moved on. That's what poets do, here or not here. Teach us with their words. 

Listen to the voice

of each dead poet

as if it were yours.

It is.

  

        --Philip Dacey

        From Mosquito Operas, 2010 

 

The sad news came today that a poet and good friend to Stoneboat, Philip Dacey, has died after a long illness. I only met Philip in person on one occasion, and that was at the Great Lakes Writers Festival at Lakeland College back in 2007. At the time, I had not tried to write a poem for many years. I was on major hiatus as far as poetry was concerned. But meeting Philip and hearing his work, I was impressed by his poems and by his welcoming nature. He was not snobbish about poetry. He did not make it seem like an enterprise for only some special sect of people. He helped me see that poetry is there for anyone who wants to partake of it. He was a true mentor in that regard.

Later on, when we became email correspondents, he wrote to me often about "the vineyard." This was the place that he designated as the ground where all poetry comes from, and he believed that anyone who was willing to do the work of caring for the roots, fertilizing the soil, and tending to the vines would be able to enjoy the wine, eventually. He never said it was easy, but he also did not say it was impossible. The work was there to be done, if one so wished to engage in the endeavor. He always made poetry look like a vocation worth having.

Philip was clearly generous with his time and talent. He did not make distinctions, I think, between "high end" and "low end." For example, when we were in the process of devising our first issue of Stoneboat, I wrote to him and asked if he would be so kind as to send us some poems. He immediately sent six. He did not say, "Oh, you are below me, little upstart literary journal." He simply sent some work. It was quite a boost to my editorial ego to be given the opportunity to select three poems from a repeat Pushcart Prize-winning poet and include them in our debut effort.

Many years later, when Stoneboat celebrated its fifth anniversary, he submitted some poems to us without being asked. We were so happy to include them. His presence in our anniversary issue reminded us of how we had grown. Philip seemed to take pleasure in reminding poets (and editors) about what they were doing right. This kind of encouragement was part of his generosity of spirit.

I learned a lot from Philip over the years, even though our only contact was via email. It was Philip who told me that a poem could be just as fictional as any story. In other words, that a poem could tell a story that was not necessarily true. That was a new one for me! He also taught me that the "negative spaces" of a poem—what is not said in words—are as important, maybe more important, than the text. He got me to think about how creating a poem is like carving a sculpture, releasing the poem from its block of marble. He also admonished me to always take criticism as a kind of "structural stress test." To look at the suggestion, weigh its merit, and make a decision based on what felt right to me, the poet.

Philip taught me not to worry about rejections from editors. He said, "I get them still, all the time. No editor is obliged to take my work." He taught me to roll with the punches and keep trying. I remember one of his favorite encouraging phrases was "Go, go, go!" I use it now myself when I feel excited about what a fellow poet is up to. Philip taught me to be excited about the success of others, not envious. He taught me to trust my own voice, and to feel confident in what makes me unique as a writer. Keep doing the work. Visit the vineyard.

As for his poems, I was always so enamored of the way he could make use of forms (sonnets, triolets, pantoums, and more) and make them very readable, using common language, but taking its use to new heights. Together with David Jauss, he created the book Strong Measures (HarperCollins, 1986). This is a book that explains many, many poetic forms by providing real-life manifestations of these forms from poets across the spectrum. It remains a great repository of helpful examples to both the budding and the seasoned poet.

My favorite Dacey collections are all the ones I have read: The Boy Under the Bed, The Deathbed Playboy, Vertebrae Rosaries, Night Shift at the Crucifix Factory, Mosquito Operas, and Gimme Five. I must admit, I have not read his collections of poems about Walt Whitman or Gerard Manley Hopkins, but I'm quite sure I would love those, too. There are fourteen books in all, and I know now that I need to fill in the ones I have missed.

In one of his last emails to me at the end of April, he told me he was weakening, and that walking was getting hard. He wrote, "[I'm] working on three posthumous collections—last poems, selected poems, and selected essays." I was very sad knowing that he was preparing to go. But this is what happens, right? Philip knew he was dying, and he knew he wanted to leave us gifts to continue to inspire us.

And so, we have things to look forward to. There is much to learn from the life and poetry of Philip Dacey. He may be gone from this physical plane, but his poems will nourish the vineyard that all of us will be invited to visit for a long, long time to come. 

Let me end with one of his:

Reading a Book of Poems by a Friend Newly Dead

I think these words are still warm.
Bend close—there is a breath
coming from them. See
how the lines rise and fall, pulse,

how he is slow to leave these poems,
in which he has lived for many years.
In time he will turn them completely
over to us for safekeeping, but not yet.

I face this book as I often faced him.
He could be hiding behind it, wearing it
like a mask before he slips from the words
into the spaces between the lines

and then into the margins. Now this book
has a new life as a handshake, a long one,
so long it becomes instead a handclasp,
though the flesh is papery, dry.

And lines keep revealing themselves
to be a goodbye wave, each a rehearsal
more for our sake than his. It is not
his fault that we missed the gesture.

I am afraid to put this book down,
afraid to close it. I did not know
a book could be raw, skinned, as it were.
Afraid to touch it. Afraid not to.

                                --Philip Dacey
                                  In Stoneboat, 5.1, fall 2014

We miss you, Mark (Strand, 11 April, 1934 - 29 November, 2014) [by Moira Egan]

Strand in L'Aquila (wonderful, hospitable place; tragically affected by the earthquake), upon his having won the Laudomia Bonanni Prize in poetry, 2008. 

"Solemn truths! Lucid inescapable foolishness! None of that for me! To be the salt of Walt, oceanic in osteality! Secure in cenotaph! The hysterical herald of hypogea! The fruit of the tomb! The flute of the tomb! The loot of gloom! The lute of loot! The work of soon, of never and ever! Saver of naught. Naughtiness of severance. Hoot of hiddenness. I give you my graven grave, my wordy ossuary, tell-tale trinket of transcendence, bauble of babble, tower of tripe, trap of tribute, thought-taxi from one day to the next, nougat of nothing, germ of gemini, humble hypogeum!"

-- from The Monument, Ecco Press, 1978. If you don't know this one, get ye to the bookstore. Harold Bloom tells us that it "teaches us to bear the truths of Unamuno, Nietzsche, Whitman and the other seers of poetic narcissism." Also, it's hilarious, brilliant, and, in its own sardonic way, very touching. 

Cynthia Macdonald (1928-2015) [by Moira Egan]

Cynthia Macdonald died last month at the age of 87. Typical for our Social Media Age, I found out about her death on Facebook. This sad news was often relayed with a comment along the lines of "I hadn't known her work, and it's blowing me away." Cynthia had published half a dozen searing and beautiful books and won many of the major prizes for poets; she wrote libretti, was an opera singer, and a psychoanalyst. Cynthia was one of the most formative and helpful people in my life, as I made my slow and complicated way back into being a poet.

Cynthia was my professor for two summers at Columbia University. I had to take the summer courses because I was working full-time at the Law School to get the tuition exemption so that I could pay for this extremely expensive degree. I couldn't skip out from work more than twice a week to take the requisite classes, almost all of which were held during the 9-5 work day. What was born of necessity soon became one of the most meaningful and useful experiences of my time in the MFA program. 

In those days, Cynthia was co-teaching the summer class with Richard Howard. With Richard's lexicographical, polyglot genius and Cynthia's wicked wit and brilliant way with metaphor, they were an utterly formidable team. Things I remember from the class: poems by Thomas James, in those now-famous, "samizdat" xeroxed copies; they came to mean a great deal to many of us. Words like susurrus, palp, and estrenar, which, though I rarely see or use them, take me back every time to those summers of intelligent immersion in the beauty of words. Cynthia's pronouncement that "writers who are subject to writer's block are usually adults who didn't play as children." That hit home. 

Another time, I don't remember why this happened, but I certainly remember that it happened: Cynthia, imitating the improbability of operatic deaths, let out a classically trained, high-something note that went on for what seemed like hours, and that shook the windows of our dingy little classroom in Dodge Hall. Someone had graffitied "DUCK DON'T" just above the "DODGE" that was emblazoned on the pillar of the old brick building that housed the School of the Arts. This was Dodge Hall before the coffee bar in the lobby, the Dodge hall whose wooden railings up the stairs had been known to inflict serious splinters in the hands of those foolhardy enough to grasp onto them during the ascent to the 4th floor Writing Division.

That second summer was the real font of memories. My father had died in February of that year. When Cynthia showed up again, so happy to be back in her natural habitat of New York City, she asked me how my previous school year had gone. "Well, my father died," I answered, first thing. She truly understood what a blow it had been, on so many levels. We talked about his life as a poet, about his frustrations and failures, and what I would then do with that. After a kind and in-depth conversation about my loss, we moved on to gossip and chat: about the rather notorious visiting prof we'd had ("That must have been very difficult for you," she'd said), and about the ever-changing cast of characters in the cosmic game of musical chairs that was the poetry department at that time.

That summer, for reasons I won't go into here, I had asked for an additional reader for my graduate thesis. Cynthia was the one who had drawn the short straw. "Moira," she said to me after a week or so, "I come here in the summer to teach and to be in New York, not to read somebody's thesis, and when I was told I was going to be a reader for your thesis, let me tell you, I wasn't very happy." Pause. "But, after all that, I'm really enjoying it!" 

I will always be grateful to her for having understood my over-the-top metaphors and fast-and-loose use of form. Her thesis evaluation was so eloquent and lovely that part of it formed the basis of the blurb she wrote when, years later, my first book was published. 

But I'm getting ahead of myself. To borrow the title of her last full-length collection, "I can't remember" the extent to which we kept in touch during those in-between years, but I know that we did. In the summer of 1998, I was getting ready to leave for a teaching job in Greece. Cynthia was in New York, and so was I, packing up my life and figuring out how I was going to do this monumental thing: move to a country I'd never even visited, where I knew not one soul. And Modern Greek? How would I communicate?

I do remember that she and I arranged to meet at a restaurant on the Upper West Side. We ordered cold white wine and fried calamari, and we talked and gossiped like old friends. She asked what my various classmates were up to. She told me about the challenges and joys of her psychoanalytic practice. She told me how much she missed the beau she'd been with for a few years, with whom she'd recently had a break. I won't say here exactly what she told me, because it was rather personal, but it was poignant and sweet. I told her of my excitement about going to Greece, and my fears about not speaking the language. "Well, you know your etymologies," she said, encouragingly. She insisted on picking up the check. 

We hugged good-bye, and that was the last time I saw her. 

And that's how I'll remember Cynthia: generous to a fault, smart beyond all reckoning, a veritable force of nature. If you aren't familiar with her work, please do seek some out, and be prepared to be astonished and maybe even a little bit frightened by just what a metaphor can do.  

Rest in peace, Cynthia. You are much missed. 

[photo of Cynthia Macdonald by Gay Block, from the Folger Library]

 

 

 

L'uomo che cammina un passo avanti al buio (Mark Strand, 1934-2014) [by Moira Egan]

I don’t know how many times the word “dark” appears in Mark Strand’s Collected Poems, which recently appeared at our doorway with a glorious thump. I guess someone at Knopf can tell us. But I can tell you that the word “dark” appears 126 times in L’uomo che cammina un passo avanti al buio, a bi-lingual selection of his poems from 1964-2006, which was published here in Italy in 2011. And yet, when, early on, his poems were criticized as being too dark, he famously replied, “I find them evenly lit.”

Mark and Dark. There have been some dark hours over here, as the phone calls and sympathy messages keep pouring in, from poets, editors, critics, publishers, and admirers of his work. We're functioning as the Italian center for condolences, and it's so sad, yet it's also a great honor. Mark himself referred to Damiano as his “voice in Italian,” even inscribing one book to Damiano “from his American brother, or twin. Or author of twin texts. Or necessary precursor of Damiano’s poems.”

In another book (which one it is will become immediately obvious), he has written: “The man cannot thank you enough—and the camel thanks you too. Seriously, thank you for this second life.” Much has been (and will continue to be) written about Mark’s place in American letters. But this “second life” as a major force in Italian poetry has grown exponentially since 1999, with the publication of L’inizio di una sedia, the first bi-lingual edition of his work here.

Here I sit, surrounded by upwards of a dozen of Mark’s books in translation, “a cura di Damiano Abeni,” and, more latterly, with my name on the cover, too. They were published by various houses, ranging from the small, beautiful, and arty to, well, about as big as they get—and in the series that’s considered by many to be the most prestigious for contemporary poetry in Italy. In Italy, too, Mark won just about every prize that can be awarded to a foreign poet. There’s even a DVD, “Ehi, Mark! Scusa il ritardo, scusa il ritardo...” which features Mark and Damiano reading poems in various locations around Rome, playing, too, on that idea of the “necessary belatedness of the translator.”

But it’s not just the influence of Mark’s own work, nor that “second life” that his poems took on in their beautiful and fated-seeming Italian versions. In 2003, Mark and Damiano co-edited West of your cities: nuova antologia della poesia americana. It was the first time in large circulation that the Italian reading public came to know work by the contemporary American poets, born in the 1930s up through the 50s, whose names are so familiar to us: Bidart, Gluck, Graham, Hass, Koethe, McHugh, Pinsky, Simic, James Tate, C.K. Williams, Charles Wright, and yes, Mark Strand. In his introduction, Strand explains (and I’m back-translating from the Italian here): “for a large number of foreign readers, American poetry seems to have stopped with the Beats, the Black Mountain poets, and the New York School. This volume is an attempt to update the attentive reader and to show that American poetry is alive and well.”

There’s comfort in knowing that the mind and heart of a poet will remain ever “alive and well” in his or her books. A number of friends have made that observation to us in the past few days. I take that to heart, here among these books that offer darkness and light, wisdom and humor, and some brand of comfort, on an afternoon that can’t decide if it wants to be cloudy or bright, dark or light.

Tucked inside one of these books is an airmail envelope, the old-school kind, postmarked June 5, 2002, 80 cents to wing it over from The University of Chicago to Rome. It’s too perfect. It’s this poem:

 

2002

I am not thinking of Death, but Death is thinking of me.
He leans back in his chair, rubs his hands, strokes
His beard, and says, “I’m thinking of Strand, I’m thinking
That one of these days I’ll be out back, swinging my scythe
Or holding my hourglass up to the moon, and Strand will appear
In a jacket and tie, and together under the boulevards’
Leafless trees we’ll stroll into the city of souls. And when
We get to the Great Piazza with its marble mansions, the crowd
That had been waiting there will welcome us with delirious cries,
And their tears, turned hard and cold as glass from having been
Held back so long, will fall and clatter on the stones below.
                                   O let it be soon. Let it be soon.”

 

This typescript has a different phrase at the end of the ninth line, as well as a penciled-in revision. But the poet has chosen well with his “delirious cries,” which is the way the poem appears in his Collected, that gorgeous, 510-page celebration of “his canonical work.” He’s inscribed our copy: 

                                    For Damiano and Moira

                                    Much love                                   

                                    Many thanks

                                    Mark Strand

 

And we’d like to take this opportunity to say the same, back to him.

 

                                    Dear Mark

                                    Much love

                                    Many thanks

                                    Moira and Damiano

 

2002

Non sto pensando a Morte, ma Morte pensa a me.

Si rilassa in poltrona, si sfrega le mani, s’accarezza

la barba e dice «penso a Strand, penso

che nei prossimi giorni uscirò in cortile, brandendo la falce

o guardando controluna la mia clessidra, e Strand si mostrerà

in giacca e cravatta e insieme sotto gli alberi spogli

dei boulevard passeggeremo fino alla città delle anime. E quando

giungeremo nella Gran Piazza dai palazzi di marmo, le moltitudini

che lì attendevano ci saluteranno con pianti deliranti,

e le loro lacrime, rese dure e fredde come vetro dall’essere state

tanto a lungo trattenute, cadranno e scrosceranno sul selciato.

                        Oh, che sia presto. Che sia presto.»

 

Tempus fugit, or Late August [by Moira Egan]

(Seamus Heaney & Damiano Abeni, Casa delle Letterature, May, 2013)

 Blackberry-Picking

        for Philip Hobsbaum

Late August, given heavy rain and sun

For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.

At first, just one, a glossy purple clot

Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.

You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet

Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it

Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for

Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger

Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots

Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.

Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills

We trekked and picked until the cans were full,

Until the tinkling bottom had been covered

With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned

Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered

With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's.

We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.

But when the bath was filled we found a fur,

A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.

The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush

The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.

I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair

That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.

Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not.

 

(from Death of a Naturalist)

 

This year, my intention for teaching is to get the students to think about physical details from all five senses. This is the poem I'm taking in for the first day. Thank you, Seamus. 

Happy Thanksgivukkah from Over Here [by Moira Egan]

Though I worry that it sometimes veers into corniness, gratitude practice can be a lovely and helpful thing. I know that when my mood has swung very low, no sweet chariots in sight, I start to think about the things for which I am grateful. Though I live in a city that often drives me crazy, I am grateful that it's a beautiful city (and that you can't beat the food and the wine here). I am grateful that it seems that the Italian Parliament has finally voted to kick Berlusconi out. (Long time coming, but still.) I am grateful that my husband loves me despite the aforementioned mood swings, low and high, sweet chariot. And I am extremely grateful for the surprise of a 2013 book of poems that, well, if it doesn't exactly celebrate the mood swings, it certainly talks about 'em: thank you, Passager Books, for the really beautiful objet that you made out of my Hot Flash Sonnets. 

I am grateful for the extraordinary friendship that Damiano and I have struck up with the guys of Osteria di Monteverde -- the restaurant that always tops our list of answers to the oft-asked question "where should we go to eat in Rome?" And I am grateful that we got to start our Thanksgiving week by cooking dinner for them. (Scary to cook for such accomplished restaurateurs? Hell Yeah!)  

I am so grateful that I found the little plastic hoojie that allows our ancient food processor to work, so that I was able to make the tricolore hummus specialty of the house, I mean, this house. It's plain old, cuminy hummus, cilantro hummus, and chipotle hummus. I am grateful that I have discovered where I can find cilantro and chipotle in this town.

Yes, I'm grateful for our nearby "exotic food store," where I can find cranberry sauce and maple syrup for times such as these. They're there alongside the other exotic things: coconut milk, tahini, ginger pickle, oatmeal. When that cranberry sauce starts to move off the shelves in mid-November, the shopkeepers begin to get a sense that that American holiday is coming up soon. "Ah, si', il vostro giorno del ringraziamento. Auguri!" they say, and I say, "Grazie." 

But still, it's a weird feeling to be celebrating this day when no one around you even knows it's a holiday. If you managed to forget something for the evening's meal, well, all the shops are open: that's an advantage. But it feels as if you're walking around in a holiday nostalgia bubble, quite alone, as the normal Thursday people and the loud traffic whirl by, all unawares. 

Italians often ask me: But don't you miss your family? Of course I miss them, and on days like today, walking around in my holiday nostalgia bubble, I feel it very keenly. And though I'm grateful for my friends here, I very much miss the folks I left behind (you know who you are). 

Finally, I am extremely grateful that tonight I won't be cooking. Instead, we will be joining the ranks of numerous adults and children with various North American ties, all celebrating this day of Thanksgiving, coming together into one big holiday nostalgia bubble in a dining room in the middle of Rome. 

Happy Thanksgiving to all, and let the wild spatchcocking rumpus start! 

A Selection of Contemporary Australian Poems (Week 3)

 Pet

The new teacher takes me out:
orchestra, revolving restaurant, lesbian bar.
I burn my leg on the exhaust of her bike.
Next she comes around with a bottle of gin
and her admiration for Olivia Newton John.
Mortified, I let her do as she pleases.
When she moves in with me and my boyfriend, an alcoholic poet,
I develop a fever like Villette (which I haven’t read yet).
On the bus to school she cries about other girls,
jobs she has had to leave in a hurry.
She shows me their bewildered letters, I disassociate.
When I stop having sex with her
she calls me a bourgeois bitch and joins a gun club.

Kate Lilley 

In 2009 I wrote of Pet by Kate Lilley (1960-) ‘…we have something nostalgic yet immediate, loving yet bitter. In a resurrection of ‘confessional verse’ this should be an example to follow: publicly heartfelt yet private without hysteria.’ This of course still holds. Ladylike (2012) is Kate’s second volume of poetry, following on from Versary (2002). She is an Associate Professor in the English Department at the University of Sydney.

Call Me Right Away When You Get This [by Amanda Smeltz]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The epistle is a poetic form I am enamored of. I come to know it first through biblical epistles, those madcap New Testament letters to fledgling communes. But I found it again in Richard Hugo’s book 31 Letters and 13 Dreams, a book that was criticized in ’77 when it was released -- for being too chatty or something absurd. The dream poems in the book I don’t love, but a handful of the letter poems I adore. There is one, Letter to Simic from Boulder, that you must read. It is as strong an anti-war piece as any I know, without any liberal haughtiness. Do it.

Another poet I’m friends with, Matt Hart, loves Hugo’s epistolary poems like I do. He writes them to his loved ones as Hugo does, and sometimes the technique of address lands in his published work. His most recent book, Debacle Debacle, includes this poem I’ve heard him read recently to great effect. Might just be because I have a super tender soft spot for poems about fathers and daughters, but I treasure it. I reproduce it here, for you: it’s proof that documenting the details of a day can be deeply pleasureable and is worthwhile; doing it for someone you love, more so.

This form seems to me a way of curing an aspect of contemporary poetry I despise, which is this seedy brand of intellectual aloofness. It’s for prigs. You’re not a philosopher or a scientist, you’re a poet, and philosophers largely make shitty poets because they’re always trying to find an pseudo-scientific or Wittgensteinian stance. Be biased, have some personality. It’s human anyway, and your poems will be worlds more interesting.

Go write a letter-poem to someone you love. Or someone you hate. Those are good epistles, too.

*

TO YOU AT FORTY FROM ME RIGHT NOW

Matt Hart

 

You are four and I am forty, and it is Friday at 4:40

in September, 2010. I have been waiting

 

for this moment to tell you some things,

or maybe this moment has been waiting for me.

It’s hard to know much of anything, but

 

everything seems in perfect alignment,

and I am not one to argue with perfection

 

when I can find it, though I do take issue with the way

things seem. Here is a grain of salt for you

to take me. The two of us kicking a ball in the yard.

 

This morning we were running late, and when you couldn’t

find your rabbit, you cried, so I helped you look for her,

 

but then I couldn’t find her either. You took a pony

to school to show your friends instead

and I came back to a mountain of work

 

and looking some more for your rabbit.

Another cup of black coffee. Another list to check off

 

this lucky and frustrating life, this stressed-out every second,

this incredible constant scribble. At breakfast

you made a drawing for me, and we talked about expression.

 

I showed you pictures in a Cy Twombly monograph.

You said those are just like “me” and then

 

one of the sculptures you compared to the bones

in your arm, and I thought of dinosaurs, but didn’t

bring it up, and when I showed you the Basquiat drawings,

 

you pointed to one with a coal black face, “That’s me

when I’m angry” and a few pages later

 

you were tickled by a “monster” with “one pink ear

colored pink.” “Why is that one pink,” you asked, and I said

because expressive works aren’t necessarily about the way

 

things look, but about the way the artist feels and thinks.

You made another drawing with bright fast strokes.

 

Rabbit exploding with a runway tongue, devil-blue devil

in a suit with a contract. Everything happens so fast

I can’t take it. Yesterday is already tomorrow and the next day.

 

The grass and the leaves on the trees stay green,

and then suddenly it’s Halloween, it’s July, I’m in China.

 

You’re in Martha’s Vineyard. You’re at Kings Island.

If you’re reading this poem, I am seventy-six, or maybe I am not.

You miss me or I miss you, or we miss each other,

 

even in the midst of being together. It is always this way

with people. Call me right away when you get this.

*

To You at Forty from Me Right Now is from Debacle, Debacle, on H_NGM_N Books, 2013.

You Should Have Been A Pretty Girl, Madrid [by Amanda Smeltz]

I’d like to mention one of the reasons I cherish my friend Anthony Madrid’s book of jewelrybox marvels, I am Your Slave Now Do What I Say. There are many reasons, but this is one I don’t believe anyone’s mentioned on the interwebs.

Madrid is a poet working toward dismantling moronic, objectifying images of women. As I know him to be a hater of pedantry, I don’t think he would like me saying he is doing that in his poetry, but I'll say it anyway; to me it seems clear. Where so many books are rife with women who appear as objects, not subjects, Madrid’s lines about them are mystified, insightful, and delighted. That’s not to say he’s pious or fastidious about them. It’s clear his viewpoint is hetero, and he likes to subvert gender roles naughtily. Moreover, he goes to town on some ugly ways we do damage to ladies. There’s something really healthy about all of this. Lemme draw your eye to some lines where he does it.

 

*

When people walk around naked, they all look like people I know.

My tutor taught me long ago that bodies are all the same.

 

‘The male is caught in a cleft stick.’ Better write that one down.

 

*Ÿ

Young woman walking the road to Rome, with a book of Latin poetry in your jacket,

Come over here and read something alound – to me and my family.

 

Ÿ*

Of the many hymns to the goddess Kali, only one is worthy a poet’s respect.

I mean the one wherein her ankles are hung with severed arms;—

 

I mean the one where her face is lit up with cruel pleasure, and she has a beard of sweat

As she has rear-entry intercourse with Vishnu.

 

Ÿ*

You should have been a pretty girl, MADRID. The whole world might have been spared

All this body-resenting satire in the tone of a parting shot.

 

Ÿ*

NO more epigrams against sluts. For it galls me to have to hear

These pig men and buccaneers complaining against every little unauthorized blowjob.

 

*

For if the word vagina means sheath, then every baby is a sword.

 

Ÿ*

I AM no longer cut to the heart to watch her laughing with my rival.

Any man who gives her pleasure I consider my emissary.

 

Ÿ*

So, let’s up on our stiletti, gentlemen! Let us not for a moment forget

How winning it is when a sexy young thing is clumsy on her heels.

 

Ÿ*

Stand aside, you lesser beauties, for MADRID is coming through!

Miss Queen Teen Photogenic, soon to be seen on Pay-Per-View!

 

*

Are not all women beautiful? Babies seem to think so.

But I’m not like the other boys – I don’t go by looks.

 

*

Nadya, why does not everyone desire you? Why are you not swarmed with love?

Your virtue is a five-mile-high geyser of liquid nitrogen.

 

Ÿ

These go on. I’m simply glad to see women – infants, little girls, teenagers, grown loves – regarded in so many iterations in this book. The joy, mischief, and subversiveness with which Madrid wrangles restores some happiness to women appearing in literature. I hope young male writers especially read him and get a tutorial in how it’s done.

I’ll leave you with this bit, a poem where Madrid turns himself into a tranny. This is the good shit, people.

 

*

And now MADRID’S ascending into heaven! Here’s our chance to look up his dress!

Oh, but God! The thing I see there–! It’s like a shark shaking the life out of the back wheel of a tractor!

Are You Going to Your Stretching Class? [by Amanda Smeltz]

Last year, I spent six months or so in San Francisco. There, my dude talked me into trying yoga, which I’d badmouthed for a long time. I’m all, spare me your woo-woo shit. My great-grandpa was a coal miner. Etc.

But, when in Rome. We started going to hatha classes with some very kind and articulate instructors. I fell for it. What little I know of yoga practice is meditative and expressive, challenging and rewarding. It’s difficult the way poetry is difficult: you have to work at it a lot to find its fullest expression, but you also shouldn’t “work” the joy right out of it. There’s paradox near the heart of the practice, much the same as verse.

Despite the fact that there is nothing more grating than a privileged-looking twat on the L train bumping people with her yoga mat and Whole Foods grocery bag (i.e. me), I do think there’s room to explore that old Western-made gap between mind and body. When poetry becomes embodied in the vocal chords and mouth, I delight. I feel satisfied and at home, the way I do when singing. And yoga leads into some fascinating embodiments of mental activity, too.

Here are two contemporary poets who I admire hanging out in a mind-body space with yoga poems. I like that Simond’s poem below still lands on the skeptical side, and I love where Ish Klein’s wild mind flies to when musing on Virabhadrasana I, or the pose known as Warrior One, pictured at the top.

 

Yoga

Sandra Simonds

 

From 2007-2009, I did a lot of yoga.

            I was in graduate school and full of hope.

I believed in literature and love.

     Well, maybe I was a bit cynical.

            It’s hard to remember.

I fell in love with someone

            named Craig Wesley Freeman.

Recently, he has told me things that

     I can’t recall from the beginning

of our courtship. “This car

            smells like semen and wine,”

he said I said back then.

     He told me that we were both passed

out at a Waffle House and when

     we woke up in the red booth he couldn’t

remember where I lived and I couldn’t either

     so we drove around Tallahassee

for four hours asking people where

     Sandra Simonds lives and everyone

gave us directions to a different

     Waffle House, which is so inconvenient

and shitty. When we finally got home,

     I wanted to sit in the backyard alone

and look at the pecan tree even though

     it was five a.m. I remember staring

            at a bright celestial body and asking,

     “Jesus H. Christ, is that the sun

or the moon?” and for a split second

     I was so freaked out it made me think

that everyone in my life had died at once

     and I was left alone and that the feeling

of being abandoned was equivalent

     to the feeling of emptiness that

            would make me want to slit

     the throat of a soft pig.

 

Yoga was incredibly boring.

     My mom called it “stretching.”

Over the phone she would ask,

     “Are you going to your

stretching class?” How did

     she get so cynical? The women

who taught yoga were mostly

     beautiful and had Barbie-long arms,

legs, plastic vaginas without holes, and wore

            outfits with suns and moons on them.

They made ordinary looking

     women with soft folds

of fat flesh around the abdomen

     and neck feel bad about themselves so

     what’s the deal anyway?

     This too is a kind of cruelty.

They always told us

     about the charity yoga workshops

they taught and “Couldn’t we spare

     something, even a smile” to help them?

 

I resent beautiful women who are flexible

            and talk about Deepak Chopra

     like they’re fucking him.

     I resent other things too.

I resent it when people tell me to

     “be like the Buddha.”

Hey, fuck you.

     I’ll be like the Buddha if I want to.

 

 *

 

Warrior One

Ish Klein

 

No center. I hold

every action’s reaction and again:

consequences beyond my neck.

 

One life: to feel!

In every way!

Enough!

 

The warrior way to learn: men fight.

It is a dance: deflect and/or rearrange

the onslaught of force.

 

Childlike I began:

first I ran, then begged,

then let death catch up my feebleness.

 

There is no hiding.

When you are killed

you are absorbed by the killer.

 

A part of the heart at least.

1970, so long to my country. Its greenery, its song.

My match knew it too, allowing an opening.

 

Buddha is a beast and trained spirit

and can access those willing.

A strong man, a soldier is good to hide in

 

to align with while reaching.

I think therefore I am elsewhere.

Nearly touching: to be everywhere.

 

Nothing directly. Too explosive. Force, fear, love and self-

protection determine my direction. I pray: do not put me

near hate too long, it’s exhausting, let me be in love.

 

A cut worm is not killed.

Each side grows again.

The plow is for working.

 

It does not only displace:

it doesn’t pave or willfully put worms on a black top

to serve them to the sun. It teaches detachment.

 

It’s run by someone, sometimes two beings run.

A person and an ox

appreciate that soil is sown by worms.

 

We have each been through tubes:

in earthworms

and dead relatives too.

 

All earth is an altar.

As oceans will illustrate.

Have you been in the waves?

 

Have you panicked?

Undertow taking you way out

and the sun a hot mean hand on your head?

 

Waves take; the sand wants to record.

Silicon! A devilish element!

So in ocean you are in and a solution.

 

One wants

beyond one form.

There is more to record.

 

Sense is interested. Not fashion, or before.

Essentially we are each all our time.

We are beautiful somewhere.

 

I would like slow. Roll the plains

for fun. I would like to be allowed to hang around

as an avid apprentice to a master craftsman.

 

Part-time. I am not the only.

I have a boat I can row out,

I have an inflatable raft for sleeping.

 

In sleep I get back to my body.

It used to hurt. A man steers the plow,

the ox pulls.

 

A girl/me met a man, fell under.

Get up, get up, the adults say.

Mad, I stayed down.

 

In response am cut.

The tongue, back, up,

leg, back, tongue again, back, leg, back, neck.

 

Mister, this is history.

You must get over it. You too missy.

you have to work to learn to fight to like to work

 

and know with whom

this earth churns—a star with and against whim.

Tides take what will let them. Motion essence.

 

Why do I think there is a gold castle that will have me?

In the middle of the ocean?

Because I can be anyone who loves me?

 

Castle as of first house;

gold as for protection.

 

Yoga is from Sandra Simonds’ book Mother Was a Tragic Girl, from Cleveland State University Poetry Center in Cleveland, Ohio, 2012.

Warrior One is from Ish Klein’s book Moving Day, from Canarium Books in Ann Arbor, Berkeley, Iowa City, 2011.

The Bravest Grope a Little [by Amanda Smeltz]

A brief reading of Emily Dickinson’s We Grow Accustomed to the Dark.

 

We grow accustomed to the Dark --

When light is put away --

As when the Neighbor holds the Lamp

To witness her Goodbye --

 

A Moment -- We uncertain step

For newness of the night --

Then -- fit our Vision to the Dark --

And meet the Road -- erect --

 

And so of larger -- Darkness --

Those Evenings of the Brain --

When not a Moon disclose a sign --

Or Star -- come out -- within --

 

The Bravest -- grope a little --

And sometimes hit a Tree

Directly in the Forehead --

But as they learn to see --

 

Either the Darkness alters --

Or something in the sight

Adjusts itself to Midnight --

And Life steps almost straight. 

 

The poem formally performs the encounter with darkness Dickinson describes:

Physical sensation of lights going out in stanza one.

Halting attempt to get one’s bearings back, stanza two.

A turn toward metaphoric darkness – & all its possible meanings – in stanza three.

Then! Ethical instruction in stanza four. The Bravest – grope a little…

And in stanza five, the results: what happens if someone in the darkness is brave.

I admire the halting motions of the early stanzas of this poem, all those dashed clauses inside the lines, emulating the uncertainty of being in literal dark. Then in the last two stanzas, the caesurae, the halting go away almost entirely.  She suggests, in the lines’ fluidity, what gracefulness awaits the brave.

I especially admire the slant rhyme at the poem’s end: sight / midnight / straight. Dickinson wants us to be brave in the dark and grope around for insight. Noted. But that slant rhyme lets us know she doesn’t think life will go perfectly straight from our bravery. I like that measured encouragement. Dickinson knows too much about life to suggest we’ll get perfect sight back after being plunged into darkness. Anyone who’s grieved a death or had something wretched and wrong happen knows that. Losses are real.

But I also like that mischievous moment where she says, listen. If you grope around in the dark, as you should, you will crack your skull into a tree. That moment where I stub my toe – Fuck! – because I was rooting around in my dark kitchen at 3 am for treats and end up with a bodega BLT all over my couch, a pig in shit.

What am I trying to say?  It’s hard to feel okay when I am having an Evening of the Brain. When life plunges me into darkness. I won’t feel okay and I shouldn’t. Anyone who tells me to smile at my job while I feel lost can go pound sand. But if I can at least muster the courage to feel around a bit in my discomfort and confusion… perhaps I will find new contours in the room. Or at least the roast beef in the back of my fridge. 

-- Amanda Smeltz

Preview: David Lehman, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, Jackson Taylor, Joseph Quintela and Friends at Dumbo Sky, 10 Jay Street, Suite 903, October 17th, 7-10 PM [by Nora Robertson]

In its inaugural exhibition, Dumbo Sky presents artist and poet Joseph A. W. Quintela’s sculptural series, Portrait of the Artist as the Cast of You in Eye. Molded from shredded dictionaries on Quintela’s own body, this collection of self-portraits engages questions of self-definition, blurred identity, multiple personas, and building an understanding of others via de-formation of self.  The closing reading this Thursday will feature such poets as Best American Poetry series editor David Lehman, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, Jackson Taylor, Maya Pindyck, Ronnie Norpel, and Joseph A.W. Quintela.  The poets will read in pairs with short intermissions following a closing celebration.

Lehman received considerable attention for his daily poems in The Daily Mirror, which he characterized as “bulletins from within,” and he will be reading on this occasion from the forthcoming New & Selected Poems that collects his work to date, “a retrospective hall of mirrors.” Named an emerging poet to watch by O Magazine, Griffiths is known for her literary portraits and is at work on Poets on Poetry, an interview project on individual human experience and culture in poetry. Director of P.E.N.’s Prison Writing Program and a founder of the MFA program at The New School, Jackson Taylor is the author of The Blue Orchard, a novel that won acclaim for its portrayal of a scandal in the life of the author’s own grandmother. He is currently directing the writing program at St Joseph's College.

Dumbo Sky is a new literary and visual art space located at Dumbo’s waterfront, launching this fall with literary events, art exhibitions and theatrical performances. Thursday night October 17, 2013, the closing reception is at 7 PM, reading at 8 PM, open wine / beer bar, FREE. -- Nora Robertson