The Best American Poetry

Charlie Simic's BAP

Launch reading for BAP 1992: Pictured are Charles Simic, David Lehman,.Jonathan Aaron, Lynda Hull, Rosanna Warren. Hull and Simic are in the second photo. We chose a Joserph Cornell box for the book's cover art. Charlie was writing a book on Cornell. -- DL

Archie Ammons and friends at the launch reading of BAP 1994

from left to right, A. R. Ammons, James McManus, James Cummins, A. E. Stallings, Angela Shaw. The reading was sponsored by the Academy of American Poets, William Wadsworth executive director. The Academy sponsored the BAP launch reading from 1992 through 1995. For digging up the photo, we're indebted to Jim McManus.

Francisco’s Rubén: A Latinx Poet Gathers His Graces [by Michael Dowdy]

After Rubén : A Book Launch for Francisco Aragón with Fellow Macondo Readers takes place on Tuesday, March 3, from 6:30 pm to 8:30 pm at the Central Library, Latino Collection and Resource Center as part of Writer's Week at San Antonio Public Library, 600 Soledad Street, San Antonio, Texas.

The following is excerpted and adapted from the Foreword to After Rubén (Red Hen Press, 2020), by Francisco Aragón. 

Alan Pelaez Lopez has argued that the “X” in “Latinx” signifies an historical wound rather than a rhetorical trend. In Pelaez Lopez’s formulation, the wound of Latinidad emerges from four sites that correspond to the four sides of the X. The violences of settler colonialism, anti-blackness, and heteropatriarchy—the inability of language to fully articulate their impacts and define how vulnerable bodies navigate daily life in the Americas. At the crossroads of this volatile equis, I’d like to propose, Latinx poetry has the unique capacity to gather the worlds of the wounded: their tongues, triumphs, and hardships, their wounds and the words for drawing near them, perhaps even the words to begin building another world from within their aches and sorrows. Readers are fortunate to encounter in Francisco Aragón’s new collection of poems and prose After Rubén a passionate, wise, and sensitive guide to these worlds.

With joy, pluck, and a welcoming hand, Aragón’s lines and sentences take us to meet the people and their places. His mother, “head brimming with phrases” in English and amulets for escaping the sweatshop. His father, “portly, sugar / in his blood, a whiff of something // on his breath as he speaks of the Sacramento / River.” A sister, her voice “sturdy as the metal / table and chairs / in the patio.” Cities north and south, where numina float and settle, “as if a place—León, / Granada—could speak, / whistle, inhabit / a timbre.” A Nicaraguan woman testifying about the Contra War, whose words “gather and huddle / in my throat.” Unitedstatesian scoundrels, alas, such as Joe Arpaio, one of the empire’s cast of grotesques—“we’ve caught a glimpse / in the jowls of your sheriff: / bulldog who doubles as your heart.” And, approaching rapture, the poets who whisper and sing in Aragón’s ears and in the poems in his book.

Aragón has collected in After Rubén several lifetimes of a life in letters. From the “short / skinny boy” with a skateboard and “books in my backpack,” to the man in a hotel mirror who’s come to resemble his father, the constant is poetry and poets. Here, Aragón is a poet fierce and compassionate, wizened and empowered by his experiences as a gay Latinx man. Here is the tireless advocate for other poets, who share our air or breathe within poems we share with others. After Rubén meditates on family, both inherited and made, through filiation, through the words of living and dead. And our guide animates his dead, for, as he writes, “the dead are very patient.”

The Rubén of the title is, of course, the Nicaraguan poet Rubén Darío (1867-1916). Rubén—innovator of Latin American modernismo, not to be confused with Anglo-American modernism. Darío—recently “discovered” queer poet whose poems Aragón reinvents and reinvigorates. Rubén—beating heart of the collection, a body of poems and poets in communion across space and time. Consider the line just above. Borrowed from Jack Spicer’s book After Lorca, it serves as the evocative epigraph to After Rubén, where the dead are present, vigilant, and sensuously alive.

In this urgent book, and in our urgent times, after Rubén has many meanings: temporal (i.e., succeeding Darío); homage (praising Darío); inspiration (creating versions, riffs, and imitations inspired by Darío); trajectory (following in Darío’s footsteps); and pursuit (chasing Darío). These meanings converge in “My Rubén,” the gorgeous autobiographical essay that concludes the volume. Aragón’s beloved poet encompasses his mother’s—on demand she would recite sentimental lines to young Francisco. And his father’s—his favorite was Darío’s fable of St. Francis of Assisi, which Aragón rewrites as “The Man and the Wolf.” Of After Rubén’s many achievements, the most enduring may be Aragón’s intimate, generous, and deeply generative reintroduction of his Rubén Darío to readers in North America. Our charge is clear: to reread the mariposa modernista with the grace, care, and solidarity with which his compatriot Francisco Aragón has read him for us.

 

Francisco Aragón is the son of Nicaraguan immigrants. He is the author of Puerta del Sol and Glow of Our Sweat, as well as editor of The Wind Shifts: New Latino Poetry. His poems have appeared in twenty anthologies, most recently The Wandering Song: Central American Writing in the United States (Tia Chucha Press) and Nepantla: An Anthology Dedicated to Queer Poets of Color (Nightbook Books). Others include Inventions of Farewell: A Book of Elegies (W.W. Norton), Deep Travel: American Poets Abroad (Ninebark Press), and Poetry of Resistance: Voices for Social Justice (University of Arizona Press). In 2017, he was a finalist for Split This Rock’s Freedom Plow Award for Poetry & Activism. A native of San Francisco, CA, he directs Letras Latinas, the literary initiative at the University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Latino Studies. Aragón divides his time between Washington, D.C. and South Bend, IN.  

Michael Dowdy is a poet, critic, editor, and essayist. He is the author of Broken Souths: Latina/o Poetic Responses to Neoliberalism and Globalization (University of Arizona Press) and the co-editor, with Claudia Rankine, of American Poets in the 21^st Century: Poetics of Social Engagement (Wesleyan University Press). As a poet, his works include a book, Urbilly (Main Street Rag), and a chapbook, The Coriolis Effect. He is an associate professor at the University of South Carolina where he teaches poetry and Latinx literature. He's been a faculty fellow at the National Endowment for the Humanities and at the Center for Place, Culture and Politics at the CUNY Graduate Center. Originally from Blacksburg, Virgina, he taught at Hunter College/Cuny for a decade before moving to South Carolina. 

SAVE THE DATE ITHACA: February 27, 2020 David Lehman reads from "One Hundred Autobiographies: A Memoir"

Thursday, February 27, 2020 5:30 pm  Reading, Q&A, and Book Signing 215 N Cayuga St, Ithaca, New York 14850 607 273 8246 [email protected]

In One Hundred Autobiographies, poet and scholar David Lehman applies the full measure of his intellectual powers to cope with a frightening diagnosis and painful treatment for cancer. No matter how debilitating the medical procedures, Lehman wrote every day during chemotherapy and in the aftermath of radical surgery. With characteristic riffs of wit and imagination, he transmutes the details of his inner life into a prose narrative rich in incident and mental travel. The reader journeys with him from the first dreadful symptoms to the sunny days of recovery.

This "fake memoir," as he refers ironically to it, features one-hundred short vignettes that tell a life story. One Hundred Autobiographies is packed with insights and epiphanies that may prove as indispensable to aspiring writers as Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet. Set against the backdrop of Manhattan, Lehman summons John Ashbery, Kenneth Koch, Edward Said, and Lionel Trilling among his mentors. Dostoyevsky shows up, as does Graham Greene. Keith Richards and Patti Hansen put in an appearance, Edith Piaf sings, Clint Eastwood saves the neighborhood, and the Rat Pack comes along for the ride. These and other avatars of popular culture help Lehman to make sense of his own mortality and life story. One Hundred Autobiographies reveals a stunning portrait of a mind against the ropes, facing its own extinction, surviving and enduring.

"Lehman’s exquisite essays illustrate the ways that beauty can flow out of pain." Publishers Weekly 

"Lehman’s memoir pulses with life and memory." from "Writing In The Face Of Death,"Sandee Brawarsky, New York Jewish Week

David Lehman and Johnny. photo 2020 © Stacey Lehman

Poetry in Times of Oppression/Virtual Poetry fest in honor of Ernesto Cardenal [by Mihaela Moscaliuc]

Poetry in Times of Oppression/Virtual Poetry fest in honor of Ernesto Cardenal

As I mentioned in yesterday’s posting, for the second year in a row, the International Poetry Festival of Granada, Nicaragua, now in its 16^th edition, will take place only in virtual format. As they announced the cancellation of the ‘physical’ event, the organizers explained that the current political situation in Nicaragua creates “no favorable environment for any festive activity.” According to the Human Rights Watch 2018 World Report, “Ortega’s government has aggressively dismantled all institutional checks on presidential power,” which has allowed his government “to commit egregious abuses against critics and opponents with complete impunity.” (https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2019/country-chapters/nicaragua). The same document reports that “a crackdown by national police and armed pro-government groups in 2018 left 300 dead, over 2,000 injured, and hundreds arbitrarily arrested and prosecuted.” The numbers quoted by other sources are even higher.

In the January 22/24 issue of Confidencial, writer and Festival board member Gioconda Belli declared that at this time the people of Nicaragua are in mourning for the deaths, dissapearances, and imprisonment of those voicing dissent. In this “jailhouse atmosphere” of repression and harassment, “the only poetry that fits,” Belli wrote, “is that of protest.” (https://confidencial.com.ni/the-daniel-ortegas-regime-ties-to-hijack-poetry-festival-in-nicaragua/). She also suggested that a celebration like that of previous years would be an affront to Nicaraguan people’s suffering. In past festivals, poetry events were interspersed with local music and dance, and integrated also into a day-long, spectacular carnival/traditional masquerade that celebrated life and death, and which always included a ritualized “burying” of a particular evil such “intolerance,” “hatred,” or “violence.” (Photos from the 9^th edition of festival & carnival: https://designyoutrust.com/2013/02/the-ix-international-festival-of-poetry-in-granada-city/

 

This year’s virtual festival will be honoring Ernesto Cardenal, one of Latin America’s most revered literary and revolutionary figures. Poets from around the world will be read a poem in his honor and the event will be streamed through Facebook from Feb 20-Feb 25. You may watch it at https://www.facebook.com/FIPGNicaragua

 

Cardenal was born in Granada in 1925. On January 20, he turned 95. Active in the Sandinista revolution that ousted Anastasio Somoza in July 1979, Cardenal served afterwards as the Minister of Culture, but gradually broke away from the Sandinista government, becoming an increasingly outspoken critic of the current Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and his authoritarian rule. A prolific writer who has authored over forty poetry collections and whose work has been translated into dozens of languages, Cardenal has occupied, over the years, ideological positions that have at times stirred controversy. He has been hailed or criticized for being an iconoclast, a visionary, a mystic, a Marxist, and a leader of the liberation theology movement. In his writings, whether addressing injustice, corruption, greed, the world’s transient beauty, or love, he documents and witnesses with eloquence and urgency, often by bringing religion, politics, and science in conversation with one another.

 

Priest, writer, translator, sculptor, diplomat/politician, social activist, Cardenal founded both a spiritual/religious commune (Solintiname, on Lake Nicaragua) and a cultural foundation (Casa de los Tres Mundos, in Granada, where I met him briefly in 2017). He was declared person non grata by Samoza for seeking justice, ‘suspended’ by Pope John Paul II for being political, and reviled by politicians for prizing integrity.

 

I don’t see Cardenal as a poet of contradictions (as I may seem to suggest above), but of human plenitude. I admire his reverence for, and commitment to, the earth and the cosmos—a commitment reflected also in what he has called his work’s “exteriorismo” (which translates, in simplified terms, into a preference for direct observation instead of metaphorical articulation). Robin Bower argues, in an appraisal of Cardenal’s work (“Remembering things past: Reading history, writing memory, and the poetics of agency in Ernesto Cardenal”), that critics have often rushed to assign his work to reductive categories, and suggests that we look instead at how in Cardenal’s body of work “the denunciatory, the religious, and the epic are all part of a self-reflexive poetics grounded in a conviction of the transformative power of poetry itself in its capacity to refashion memory, subject, and society.”

 

Poetry as diplomacy, communion, individual and communal transformation--

 

Cardenal writes about pre-Columbian history or the U.S. imperialist interventions in Central American history (see, for instance, “La Hora 0” / “Zero Hour,” with its “trucks and trucks loaded with crates of arms/all marked U.S.A., MADE in U.S.A.,/arms to catch more prisoners, to hunt down books,/to steal five pesos from Juan Potosme”—tr. Donald D. Walsh) with the same frankness with which he celebrates bodies and stars or, as in “Zoológico de Iquitos” / “The Zoological Garden of Iquitos,” a Peruvian zoo’s “Amazonian animals”—"the great leopard in repose/ (…) / the papagayo birds draped in flags of color/the sloth with terrifying yet weak claws / (…) / the ecstatic tortoises, each on its own rock/the elastic otter.”

 

This poem takes its time honoring each imprisoned creature, then shifts the tenderness toward the “nine-year-old Indian guide” who

 

picked up from the ground an immense

                                    red petal

that had fallen from a tree

            and said to me:

‘Touch it; it’s as smooth as the leopard’s coat,’

and, indeed, it was as smooth as

            the silky fur with quadrilateral spots

                        that we did not touch.       (tr. David Draper Clark and Cesar Ferreira)

 

Protest poetry or politically-engaged poetry can feel like the only poetry ‘fit’ for certain times, absolutely. The months before and for many months after the U.S. 2016 presidential election, I did not write at all because I felt I needed to --and wanted to, and couldn’t--write only about what was happening. (Since then, a number of poets have confessed to similar experiences.) However, re-reading Cardenal’s work I was reminded that poems do not have to engage with politics or current events in order to do significant work and to benefit us during historical and political crises. I thought also of Neruda’s view of poetry as “an act of peace,” and how the metaphor itself posited writing as an engagement with conflict, and how it also conferred poetry-making the status of a political act. While not writing, I translated. In 2016 I was translating from the Romanian a collection of poems by our contemporary Liliana Ursu—Clay and Star, published this past fall by Etruscan Press (https://etruscanpress.org/shop/clay-and-star/). These were not poems of protest. They were not, by most measurements, even slightly political. Further, Ursu, like Cardenal, is a religious person, which I am not, and her poetry is deeply spiritual, while my own is anything but. One thing that had attracted me to her poems, I realized then, was precisely that they provided me, in disconsolate times, with possibilities for accessing hope where I saw none, and beauty when my own work could no longer contain it. This was not escapist poetry, but poetry that insisted that I learn to renew hope in our common humanity, and that helped me recharge emotionally and spiritually. I had also grown up in a political system (Ceausescu’s dictatorial regime) in which religious practices were akin to acts of dissent, so Ursu’s monasteries, nuns, and monks stood, if not close to God, at least far away from daily corruption and repression.

 

Though ostensibly radically different, Ursu’s and Cardenal’s works converge to engage each other. To honor “El Padre” Ernesto Cardenal, I will end with a poem Ursu dedicated to Thomas Merton--the scholar, poet, and monk under whose tutelage Cardenal lived in the Trappist monastery at Gethsemani (Kentucky) between 1957-1965.

 

 

Liliana Ursu (tr. Mihaela Moscaliuc)

 

The one who leaves few footprints in the snow

                                                                         To Thomas Merton

 

He splits wood,

leaves few footprints in the snow—

their life shorter than that of the small

pine tree fire

above which he warms his hands

before dovetailing

the icon frames—

before taking back to his hut an ice cube,

water he’ll use at twilight

to make coffee,

its black eye—sole indulgence,

its fragrant eye—sole gratification.

 

He leaves few footprints in the snow

and they’re quickly erased by birds

for whom he sows wheat and crumbs

under the window where he reads the Psalms.

 

Kentucky, Abbey of Gethsemani, January 21, 2000

           

Dream Pairing: Amy Gerstler and Matthew Zapruder at Beyond Baroque January 17

Fri, January 17, 2020
8:00 PM – 10:00 PM PST

Location

Beyond Baroque
681 Venice Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90291

Nationally acclaimed poet and former New York Times Magazine Poetry Column editor Matthew Zapruder reads from his latest book, Father’s Day. He’s joined by legendary Los Angeles poet Amy Gerstler.

Matthew Zapruder is the author of five collections of poetry, most recently Father’s Day, from Copper Canyon in Fall 2019, as well as Why Poetry, a book of prose. He is editor at large at Wave Books, where he edits contemporary poetry, prose, and translations. From 2016-7 he held the annually rotating position of Editor of the Poetry Column for the New York Times Magazine. He teaches in the MFA and English Department at Saint Mary’s College of California.

Amy Gerstler has published thirteen books of poetry. Scattered at Sea, a book of her poems published by Penguin in 2015, was longlisted for the National Book Award, shortlisted for the Kingsley Tufts Award, and was a finalist for the PEN USA Literary Award. Her book Dearest Creature (Penguin, 2009) was named a New York Times Notable Book, and was short listed for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Poetry. Her previous books include Ghost Girl, Medicine, Crown of Weeds, which won a California Book Award, Nerve Storm, and Bitter Angel, which won a National Book Critics Circle Award. In 2010 she was guest editor of the annual anthology Best American Poetry. Her work has appeared in a variety of magazines and anthologies, including The New Yorker, Paris Review, American Poetry Review, Poetry, several volumes of Best American Poetry and The Norton Anthology of Postmodern American Poetry. She currently teaches in the MFA Creative Writing Program at the University of California at Irvine.

-- sdl

Mary Jo Bang and David Lehman Read Their Poems at DIA

Happy birthday, Mary Jo Bang. . .

International Poetry Festival: Sunday, Oct 20, 7 PM, School of Visual Arts (NYC)

International Poetry Festival

Sunday, October 20, 7 pm
SCHOOL OF VISUAL ARTS MFA SOCDOC
136 West 21st Street, Manhattan

 

Readers to include Vladimir Gandelman, Andrey Gritsman (pictured), Anna Halberstadt, Helga Landauer, David Lehman, Basil Lyoff, George Tenev, and other Russian and American poets

 

Theme: Accents of New York

 

 

 

Three Books, One Reading: Powerhouse Arena, Thursday, Sept 26, 7 -9 PM

Book Launch: Best American Poetry 2019 and two new books by David Lehman

who will read from

Playlist: a poem in 57 daily parts (U of Pittsburgh Press)

One Hundred Autobiographies: A Memoir (Cornell University Press)

&

The Best American Poetry 2019 (guest ed. Major Jackson; Scribner)

Thursday Sep 26, 2019
7:00 pm - 9:00 pm

POWERHOUSE @ the Archway
28 Adams Street (Corner of Adams & Water Street @ the Archway)
Brooklyn , NY 11201

<<<

We are celebrating two new books by David Lehman – the memoir One Hundred Autobiographies and the poetry collection Playlist, and the 2019 edition of The Best American Poetry—“one of the mainstays of the poetry publication world” (Academy of American Poets)—which he edits (this edition guest edited by Major Jackson, award-winning poet and poetry editor of the Harvard Review.)

 

In One Hundred Autobiographies, David Lehman "brilliantly captures the despair, uncertainty, and anger he felt [upon receiving a cancer diagnosis] in these 100 short reflections on life, death, and writing." (Publisher's Weekly, starred review) 

Since 1988, The Best American Poetry has been the leading anthology of contemporary American poetry. The Washington Post said of the 2017 edition, “The poems…have a wonderful cohesion and flow, as if each contributes to a larger narrative
about life today…While readers may question some of the selections—an annual sport with this series—most will find much that resonates, including the insightful author notes at the back of the anthology.”

The state of the world has inspired many to write poetry, and to read it—to share all the rage, beauty, and every other thing under the sun in the way that only poetry can. Now the foremost anthology of contemporary American poetry returns, guest edited by Major Jackson, the poet and editor who, “makes poems that rumble and rock” (poet Dorianne Laux). This brilliant 2019 edition includes some of the year’s most defining, striking, and innovative poems and poets.
>>>

This is a free-access event — entrance will be on a first-come, first-served basis. Find more information here.

Steven Rea, Guest Author September 9-13

This week we welcome back Steven Rea as our guest author. Steven is the author of The Hollywood Book Club: Reading with the Stars, just out from Chronicle Books, and also Hollywood Cafe: Coffee with the Stars and Hollywood Rides a Bike: Cycling with the Stars. Formerly the film critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer, he lives and works in Philadelphia and Maine, and keeps a collection of archival Hollywood photographs that now numbers in the thousands. He posts new photos several times a week at Rides a Bike. Follow Steven Rea on Facebook and Twitter, @Steven_Rea.

Welcome, Steven.

In other news: Don't miss the Best American Poetry 2019 launch reading on September 19, 7:00 PM to 10:00 PM (EST) at the New School. (The Auditorium, Room A106, Alvin Johnson/J.M. Kaplan Hall, 66 West 12th Street, New York, NY 10011. More information here) 

-- sdl

SAVE THE DATE: September 19, 2019, The Best American Poetry 2019 Launch Reading

7:00 PM to 10:00 PM (EST).

The Auditorium, Room A106, Alvin Johnson/J.M. Kaplan Hall. 
66 West 12th Street, New York, NY 10011

The celebration to kickoff fall in NYC! Series editor David Lehman and guest editor Major Jackson headline an all-star roster of poets included this year's volume of the celebrated annual anthology. Featuring: Dilruba Ahmed, Catherine Barnett, Joshua Bennett, Chen Chen, Laura Cronk, Thomas Devaney, Martín Espada, Nausheen Eusuf, Camille Guthrie, Edward Hirsch, James Hoch , Bob Holman, Didi Jackson, Major Jackson, Deborah Landau, David Lehman, Gail Mazur, Shane McCrae, Jeffrey McDaniel, Kamilah Aisha Moon, Andrew Motion, John Murillo, Sharon Olds, Nicole Santalucia, Philip Schultz, Lloyd Schwartz, Jane Shore, and Kevin Young.

This event is free and open to the public. Books will be for sale and contributors will be available to sign your copy. 

Find more information here. 

--sdl

On JA's Birthday, Four Introductions to His Poetry

From Jacket here are introductions made by Richard Howard, Kenneth Koch, David Lehman, and Susan Schultz to poetry readings given by John Ashbery. Kenneth's is from 1963; Richard's from 1967; Susan's from 1996, and Lehman's from 2008.

That Lamp Is From the Tomb [by Philip Brady]

I'd like to end this blog week with some fun--a few clips from readings. The Poetry Reading is a strange event, since most poets and writers aren't trained performers, and they don't always live up to the moment. But when poet and moment connect, it can be mesmerizing. After that, I'll sign off with a piece about poetry readings from Phantom Signs, called "That Lamp Is From the Tomb."

A wonderful performance of a chapter of a very special memoir.

I love the way that H.L.Hix incorporates the works of Gwendolyn Brooks and W.S. Merwin (spoken by heart) into his reading.

One of the great poets of his generation, and a great performer and presence at the National Book Award ceremony.

David Lehman at the Hammer Museum, Thursday, May 9, 7:30 PM

Coffee, tea, and book signing with the author to follow the reading.

Hammer Museum
10899 Wilshire Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90024
(310) 443-7000 

ATTENDING THIS PROGRAM?

Ticketing: Free tickets are required and available at the Box Office one hour before the program. One ticket per person; first come, first served.  
Member Benefit: Members receive priority ticketing until 15 minutes before the program.
Parking: Parking is available under the museum. Rates are $7 for the first three hours with museum validation, and $3 for each additional 20 minutes, with a $20 daily maximum. There is a $7 flat rate after 6 p.m. on weekdays, and all day on weekends. Cash only. 
Restaurant: Enjoy a meal or drink before or after the program at our restaurant Audrey. Members and UCLA students receive 10% off. A late-night happy hour offers 10% off at the bar Tuesday–Saturday, 9–11 p.m.

a poem from The Awl by Josh Bell [posted by Mark Bibbins]

As many readers will be aware, the annual Association of Writers & Writing Programs conference is currently in full swing. We are ever on the lookout for Josh's "free-range / angels slumped out / on conveyor belts" here. —[M.B.]

Vince Neil’s Apologia Pro Vita Sua, As Transcribed by Josh, in a Crowded Hotel Bar One Afternoon, Being a Poem Spoken in the Future, During the Upcoming AWP Conference of 2014, in Seattle, Washington

1.

Of the latter heroes I was most

supine, handed out

warnings to women who were pregnant

or were likely to become pregnant,

hope tucked bloodless

into saddlebag, neither hunter

nor borrower, sometimes

referred to myself as It—

as in charity is

its bird machine—a strap-on fashioned

out of bits of the foregone cross

coming at me from the future

in the tiniest and the most

lineal of dreams, my preferred

haruspex pondering

her retirement and my new

address as quickly

dirty as the last, in times of war

immune to alarum,

at least fifteen minutes away

from sword and armor, the valves of my heart

opening and closing slowly

like the wings of a new butterfly

at rest upon the battlements

of overweening Troy, and all

the maidens and immortals

2.

and the handful of princes who,

in those days, took time away

from their own troubled narratives

to stop and save me from myself or from

the ancient boy-scout Death

are now themselves long dead

by natural and/or

mythological causes. Don’t mention it

they seemed to say with their great

careful bodies

as they turned them from me in departure.

Don’t mention it and drifted leonine

and smooth toward the assault

on their promised

constellations and perhaps

the foreign-funded rebellions

of their homicidal children,

got upon or beneath majestic animals

and graduate students, ears crisp

but not always white

as snow. And where was I—year

of the jellyfish, cossacked,

bowing feastless

before capital—when they

in their turn required me

                                                [continued]

Big Doings Coming Up At the Russian Samovar: Ruth Padel, Andrey Gritsman, David Lehman, and Vlad Mayakovsky

On Sunday, March 17, 2019, at 6 PM, at the Russian Samovar (256 West 52nd Street, NYC)

Intercultural Poetry
proudly presents

Ruth Padel
David Lehman
Andrey Gritsman
&
Vladimir Mayakovsky, the yellow-vested champion of Russian modernism

Ruth Padel (above left), professor of poetry at King’s College London, and fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, is the author of  Darwin – A Life in Poems (Knopf),  a verse biography of her great (to the third degree) grandfather, Charles Darwin. Her other books include On Migration (Counterpoint Press) and Emerald (Chatto & Windus, Random House). Her rendering of a long passage from Pushkin's  “Eugene Onegin” will be a highlight of the evening. This is a rare opportunity to meet this distinguished English poet, who is in New York City briefly, working on a fascinating project about which she may choose to reveal some details while the opening four notes of Beethoven’s Fifth are played.

David Lehman (above center) will read his translations of the great Vladimir Mayakovsky’s “Brooklyn Bridge” and excerpts from “The Cloud in Trousers.”

Andrey Gritsman (above right), organizer and host of the series, is a poet and editor, born in Russia and resident in Manhattan. Like Zhivago he is a medical doctor as well as a poet. He is the author of Live Landscape and Long Fall, is an authority on Russian modernist poetry, and has translated Mandelstam as well as Mayakovsky. He will read Mayakovsky in the original as well as several of his own poems and translations. 

Intercultural Poetry is a vital organization that reflects the growing awareness of elective affinities between the foremost American and Russian poets.

The Russian Samovar Restaurant and Piano Bar, a legendary locale, was established by Mikhail Baryshnikov, Joseph Brodsky, and Roman Kaplan in 1986. The Russian Samovar is located on West 52^nd Street, aka “Swing Street,” famous for jazz bars and the dive in which Auden wrote “September 1, 1939.” The Samovar offers a world-class selection of flavored vodkas as well as poetry and song expressive of the American and Russian sensibilities. 

Free

Celebrating the Best American Poetry 2018 at Villanova University: February 6, 2019 5:00 PM

Connelly Center Cinema 6:15 (St. David’s Room) Reception and Book Signing to follow the reading

This event is sponsored by the Honors Program, the Villanova Center for Liberal Education, the Department of English, and the Department of Humanities.
For more information, contact James Matthew Wilson, at [email protected]

Maureen Owen & Barbara Henning on the Road (Terence Winch)

 

Watch out, Mobile, Austin, San Diego, and any number of other cities in the U.S.: Maureen Owen and Barbara Henning are on the road and heading your way, armed with the power of poetry and good will. Transformations may take place, mirth may ensue, and who knows what else may happen.

These two illustrious writers are an inspiration to septuagenarians everywhere. They have over-loaded a 2007 Civic (with “only” a 130K miles on it, says Barbara) with pots and pans, sleeping bags, bags of books, food, yoga paraphernalia, and suitcases filled with anvils, and headed out into the poetry-starved American landscape for an 8-week road trip/reading tour.

I had the pleasure of reading with them on their second stop---Washington’s DC Arts Center---on Sunday (January 20, 2019), and of hanging out with them for the weekend. I asked each of them to read a poem, which they graciously did. (I apologize for the slightly distorted audio quality, but you will still get the idea.)

 

Maureen and Barbara are publishing an on-going blog that documents their odyssey. And you can check their agenda to see if they’re coming soon to a spot near you.

 

 

Here’s Maureen Owen reading “balmy tomorrow/saturday more snow predicted/the lilacs are in turmoil”  from Poets on the Road:

And Barbara Henning reading “Here We Are” from A Day Like Today:

 

 

The Best American Poetry 2018 at the Southern California Poetry Festival Sunday, November 18, 6:00 PM

At Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center
*681 Venice Blvd.
Venice, CA 90291

November 18,  6:00 p.m. *Free

James Schuyler's first poetry reading: November 15, 1988

 

When James Schuyler gave his first ever poetry reading, it was at DIA's SoHo headquarters -- on Mercer Street, if memory serves -- and there was a long line snaking around the block, and I remember seeing Henri Cole, and Douglas Crasew, and Jonathan Galassi, and a whole lot of other people, and John Ashbery introduced Jimmy by saying "he makes sense, damn it" and getting a loud laugh for some reason when he said "this is not the time and placer to discuss" something or other. 

With thanks to Andrew Epstein, and acknowledgment of his splendid "Locus Solus," New Yor School-centric blog, we can post this rare video of that reading of November 15, 2018 -- thirty years ago today. -- DL

https://newyorkschoolpoets.wordpress.com/2015/11/30/new-video-of-james-schuylers-legendary-debut-reading-in-1988

Thursday, November 15, 6:00 PM: An Evening with the Poets of Sage House

Cheryl Quimba, Ange Romeo-Hall, Dean Smith, & Carmen Torrado Gonzalez with David Lehman 

Thursday November 15 | 6:00PM - 7:00PM

Buffalo Street Books
The Dewitt Mall
215 North Cayuga Street
Ithaca, New York 14850

Spend an evening with the poets of Cornell University Press: Cheryl Quimba, Ange Romeo-Hall, Dean Smith, and Carmen Torrado Gonzalez! By day – they publish some of the leading academic and trade books in the country and world. By night – they emerge from Sage House to write and share their own evocative, imaginative, and inventive works. Join us for a reading with Ithaca’s poet-publishers & special guest David Lehman!