The Best American Poetry

Charles Bukowski: Woodcut by Loren Kantor

 

Charles Bukowski (c) Loren Kantor

Woodcuts are by their very nature brusque, harsh & bold," writes woodcut artist Loren Kantor.  "What makes a woodcut portrait come to life are age lines, wrinkles and weathered faces." 

Kantor has been posting images of his woodcuts of actors, writers, artists, family, and friends over at Woodcuttingfool for about a year.  He sent me this likeness of Charles Bukowski last week and I love it, especially because of the way he's captured the weariness in Bukowski's eyes.  Thank you Loren for letting us share this image with our readers.  See more about Bukowski here.  Read Bukowski's The Laughing Heart (a personal favorite), here.

-- sdh

from the archive, first posted May 25, 2012

Charles Bukowski (c) Loren Kantor

Woodcuts are by their very nature brusque, harsh & bold," writes woodcut artist Loren Kantor.  "What makes a woodcut portrait come to life are age lines, wrinkles and weathered faces." 

Kantor has been posting images of his woodcuts of actors, writers, artists, family, and friends over at Woodcuttingfool for about a year.  He sent me this likeness of Charles Bukowski last week and I love it, especially because of the way he's captured the weariness in Bukowski's eyes.  Thank you Loren for letting us share this image with our readers.  See more about Bukowski here.  Read Bukowski's The Laughing Heart (a personal favorite), here.

-- sdh

from the archive, first posted May 25, 2012

James Earl Jones (1931-2024) reads "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)

For Friday the 13th:

Roadside Stand [poem by Charles Simic]

Earlybird Farm Stand (closed), Newfield NY

If you travel the back roads at this time of year, you might get lucky and come across a roadside stand where seasonal produce is for sale. Oftentimes these work on the honor system: there's a price list for the produce, and a can or box where you deposit your money. Some stands sell a single crop, others sell a wide variety of whatever is ripe and ready. Whenever I pass one of these places, I pull over. I'm reminded of this poem by Charles Simic: 

Roadside Stand
                    -- by Charles Simic

In the watermelon and corn season,
The earth is a paradise, the morning
Is a ripe plum or a plump tomato
We bite into as if it were the mouth of a lover.

Despite the puzzled face of the young fellow
In scarecrow overalls reading a comic book,
It’s all there, the bell peppers, the radishes,
Local blueberries and blackberries
That will stain our lips and tongue
As if we were freezing to death in the snow.

The kid is bored, or pretends to be,
While watching the woman pick up a melon
And press its rough skin against her cheek.
What makes people happy is a mystery,
He concludes as he busies himself
Straightening crumpled bills in a cigar box.

"Corn Dog with David Lehman" photo@Stacey Lehman

-- sdl

Four Days Until the Big Event [by Stacey Lehman]

At 7:00 am last Sunday, I took the plunge into Cayuga Lake for the second “test” swim in preparation for the 21^st Women Swimmin’ for Hospicare fundraiser. I was able to swim about one mile in just under an hour (a distance that Katy Ledecky would cover in about 15 minutes. Ponder that.).  Earlier this summer I participated in a few open water clinics where we learned strategies to keep ourselves on course and how to avoid panic and such. We learned that bumping into other swimmers, especially at the start, is inevitable but that eventually we’ll be able to swim in our own space. Several of the swimmers I've met have participated in this fundraiser from the very beginning. These intrepid women, some in their 80s, are a true inspiration and had a lot to offer first-timers like myself. By the way, there's still time to contribute to this worthy cause. 

Although I’m confident that I’ll be able to go the distance and at the same time have fun, I can’t help thinking of this poem while I'm in the water:

Not Waving but Drowning

Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he’s dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.

                         -- Stevie Smith

George Balanchine's Stars and Stripes, a ballet for the Fourth of July [by Stacey Lehman]

Few artworks arouse my raw patriotism than this ballet, choreographed by Russian emigre George Balanchine to music by American composer John P. Sousa. When asked why he would choreograph to Sousa's marches, Balanchine replied, "because they make me happy," a variation of which should be the answer to why we do most anything. Stars and Stripes is Balanchine's valentine to America. When the American flag unfurls in the finale, it's time to reach for your hankie. 

In 1981, following the end of the Iran hostage crisis, Balanchine had the New York City Ballet perform the finale of Stars and Stripes as a surprise encore at the New York State Theater, with the dancers wearing yellow ribbons. How I long for the time when the finale could be performed to celebrate a hostage release. 

This performance features Damian Woetzel and Margaret Tracy. I love the contrast of Woetzel's braggadocio with Tracy's delicacy. Plus, they're having so much fun! 

--sdh

Rereading "Staying With It: On Becoming an Athlete" by John Jerome [by Stacey Lehman]

I first encountered John Jerome's book decades ago, when I was training to compete as a "master" in the Empire State Games. My events were the 200 breast stroke and the 1500 freestyle. The time trials were my first experience as a competitive swimmer; I hadn't competed in high-school or college and while my swimming stroke was OK, no one would mistake me for "real" competitor, with long fluid strokes and sharp flip-turns. I did it for fun. My team trained at the College of St. Rose (RIP) in Albany, NY. My good friend Linda, who learned that I was a fitness swimmer, invited me to join. My first outing in the pool with other masters swimmers was humbling. Everyone else was so fast and had such stamina. At the end of each lap, I clung to gutter as if for my life. On several occasions I shared a lane with a former professional football player who was training for a triathlon. He was so big that he nearly filled the width of the lane and swimming behind him was like swimming in the churning wake of a high-speed motor boat. 

I picked up Jerome's book having read a favorable review. Jerome had decided, at the age of 50, to become an athlete and swimming was his sport of choice. At the time, I was most interested in his training regimen and the physics of swimming and I found that the book motivated me to push harder to improve my times. 

After a long hiatus, I am swimming once again. This time I'm looking for motivation because I have volunteered to take part in a fundraiser on August 10 for Hospicare in Ithaca. I'm part of a team "Diana's Divas" that is swimming in honor of my friend Diana, who died earlier this year. Barring bad weather or an algae bloom, we're going to swim 1.2 miles across Cayuga Lake. It's not a race but I don't want to humiliate myself by being unable to cover the distance. I've begun to work out with a coach and other swimmers at the local YMCA. Tackling the drills is hard and by the time the hour is up, I'm spent. Fortunately, I had kept "Staying With It" and have been reading it, hoping for encouragement. 

The first time around, I was nowhere near what seemed to me to be the author's advanced age of 50. Anything about aging seemed abstract and not something that would happen to me. Now that that age is in my rear view, I am struck by different passages than the ones that resonated the first time around. Like this one, for instance: 

The physiological downslope of one's life does command a level of attention that isn't quite possible during the upslope, or growth, part of the process. I expected that. Still, I received regular, recurring, shocks. Aging is very rude, making no attempt at diplomacy, at softening its message. No small talk: it just starts slamming doors in your face, yanking things out of reach (of your arms, your eyes, your deeper longings). 

Ain't it the truth! 

You can find out more about about Women Swimmin for Hospicare here. And if you're inclined to make a small donation, Diana's Divas and hospicare would be most grateful. 

Catching my breath after the 1500, Empire State Games, Syracuse, NY

-- sdl

Kafka: It can always get worse. . .

"Let the bad remain bad, otherwise it will grow worse." 

Happy Mother's Day

"Just call me George" [by Peter Martins]

New York City Ballet rehearsal for "Chaconne" with George Balanchine, Peter Martins and Suzanne Farrell

“Après moi, le board,” Balanchine said to me near the end of his life. I guess he wasn’t completely sure about me or the future.

The Board was always starstruck by [George Balanchine], and the dancers adored him. He was like a god, but always a constructive and supportive god. And he could be funny. Once [during a rehearsal] he was watching from the audience with a microphone when Violette Verdy made a mistake. “Oh God,” she exclaimed.

Over the PA system came the reply, “Just call me George.”

        from "A life in ballet" by Peter Martins [The New Criterion, Volume 42, N 7]

Save the Date: A Poetry Reading in Response to Antisemitism [by Stacey Harwood-Lehman]

Sunday, February 18, 2024, 2:30 PM

In Person at the Museum of Jewish Heritage
Edmond J. Safra Plaza
36 Battery Place
New York, NY 10280

Livestream

Cultural critic and keynote speaker Ruth Ben-Ghiat, author of Strongmen: How They Rise, Why They Succeed, How They Fall, will provide historical context for today’s worldwide uptick in antisemitism, focusing specifically on New York City. Curators Martine Bellen, Ruth Danon, and Andrew Levy have brought together poets Rosebud Ben-Oni, Jordan Davis, Sharon Dolin, Joanna Fuhrman, Nada Gordon, Patricia Spears Jones, Pierre Joris, Adeena Karasick, Vincent Katz, Burt Kimmelman, Basil King, Stephen Massimilla, Sharon Mesmer, Uche Nduka, Mercedes Roffe, Sean Singer, Yerra Sugarman, Anne Tardos, and Edwin Torres to share works, reflecting on this current moment. 

Find more information here.

The Conqueror Worm [poem by Edgar Allen Poe]

Who better to usher in Halloween than Edgar Allan Poe, the master of horror, suspense, and the macabre. Does your lifelong fear of being buried alive originate with Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado”? Do you ever lie awake imagining a heart is beating from beneath the floorboards? You have Poe to thank for your nightmares. He brilliantly locates our collective fears and animates them in the short stories and poems written over the course of his brief and mysterious life. His ballad “Annabel Lee” hovers over Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita,” whose protagonist’s first love is “Annabel Leigh.”  (“When I was a child and she was a child, my little Annabel [Leigh] was no nymphet to me”). Then there’s  “The Conqueror Worm,” an appropriately creepy poem that comes to us from beyond the grave. Poe describes a theater performance; the actors are “mimes,” the hero is a large worm that eats the actors. The curtain falls. Boo!

The Conqueror Worm

Lo! ’t is a gala night
Within the lonesome latter years!
An angel throng, bewinged, bedight
In veils, and drowned in tears,
Sit in a theatre, to see
A play of hopes and fears,
While the orchestra breathes fitfully
The music of the spheres.

Mimes, in the form of God on high,
Mutter and mumble low,
And hither and thither fly—
Mere puppets they, who come and go
At bidding of vast formless things
That shift the scenery to and fro,
Flapping from out their Condor wings
Invisible Wo!

That motley drama—oh, be sure
It shall not be forgot!
With its Phantom chased for evermore
By a crowd that seize it not,
Through a circle that ever returneth in
To the self-same spot,
And much of Madness, and more of Sin,
And Horror the soul of the plot.

But see, amid the mimic rout,
A crawling shape intrude!
A blood-red thing that writhes from out
The scenic solitude!
It writhes!—it writhes!—with mortal pangs
The mimes become its food,
And seraphs sob at vermin fangs
In human gore imbued.

Out—out are the lights—out all!
And, over each quivering form,
The curtain, a funeral pall,
Comes down with the rush of a storm,
While the angels, all pallid and wan,
Uprising, unveiling, affirm
That the play is the tragedy, “Man,”
And its hero, the Conqueror Worm.

 

        -- Edgar Allan Poe

(Ed note: The poster, above, is from the final of three films by British director Michael Reeves before his untimely death from a barbiturate overdose at age 25. Have you seen it? -- sdl)

---

Don't Kill Yourself [by Carlos Drummond de Andrade; selected by Stacey Lehman]

I was looking through my copy of Elizabeth Bishop's The Complete Poems: 1927-1979 for the publication date of "One Art" so I could respond to Dean Rader's challenge when I found Bishop's translation of this moving poem. -- SDH 

Don't Kill Yourself 

Carlos, keep calm, love
is what you're seeing now;
today a kiss, tomorrow no kiss,
day after day tomorrow's Sunday
and nobody knows what will happen
Monday.

It's useless to resist
or to commit suicide.
Don't kill yourself. Don't kill yourself!
Keep all of yourself for the nuptials
coming nobody knows when,
that is, if they ever come.

Love, Carlos, tellurian,
spent the night with you,
and now your insides are raising
an ineffable racket,
prayers,
victrolas,
saints crossing themselves,
ads for better soap,
a racket of which nobody
knows the why or wherefor.

In the meantime, you go on your way
vertical, melancholy.
You're the palm tree, you're the cry
nobody heard in the theatre
and all the lights went out.
Love in the dark, no, love
in the daylight, is always sad,
sad, Carlos, my boy,
but tell it to nobody,
nobody knows nor shall know.

-- Carlos Drummond de Andrade (tr. Elizabeth Bishop)

from the archive; first posted November 10, 2010

. . .is the thing with feathers [by Stacey Lehman]

Hope is the feeling you have that the feeling you have isn't permanent.

-- Mignon McLaughlin
The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960

via The American Scholar (Summer, 2008)

-- sdh

On the First of May: "While you love your lover let / blue skies be your cover-let" [by Stacey Harwood-Lehman]

You can find on Youtube many terrific cover versions of Rogers and Hart's "Mountain Greenery," a song that made its debut in the 1926 "Garrick Gaities." I love Lee Wiley's take though she omits the fabulous introductory verse as do Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore in a jazzy duet that aired in a 1962 episode of the Dick Van Dyke show. 

I'm partial to Bing Crosby's version (confession: it was my warmup song during morning runs along the waterfront in New York City). You just can't beat his phrasing, which calls attention to those witty Lorenz Hart rhymes. And dig those horns in Buddy Bragmen's arrangement!

 

Mountain Greenery (Rogers & Hart)

On the first of May
It is moving day
Spring is here, so blow your job
Throw your job away
Now's the time to trust
To your wanderlust
In the city's dust you wait
Must you wait?
Just you wait!

In our mountain greenery
Where God paints the scenery
Just two crazy people together
While you love your lover, let
Blue skies be your coverlet
When it rains, we'll laugh at the weather
And if you're good
I'll search for wood
So you can cook
While I stand look-
Ing
Beans could get no keener re-
Ception in a beanery
Bless our mountain greenery home!

In our mountain greenery
Where God paints the scenery
Just two crazy people together
How we love sequestering
Where no pests are pestering
No dear mama holds us in tether
Mosquitos here
Won't bite you, dear
I'll let them sting
Me on the fing-
Er
We could find no cleaner re-
Treat from life's machinery
Than our mountain greenery home.

-- sdl

Quote of the Day [by Harrison Ball]

NYCB Principal Dancer Harrison Ball. Photo © Ricky Cohete

Ed note: Soon after Harrison Ball was made a principal dancer with the New York City Ballet in 2022, he suffered several injuries that have ended his promising dance career. He is retiring from the company this spring, at 29. His final performance is on April 30. Here is an excerpt from a recent interview. Substitute just about any pursuit for "dancer" and the words of wisdom would still apply: 

Do you have any special words of wisdom or helpful hints to share with dancers who are either new to the art form or to the Company?

If I could give advice to dancers who are in training or beginning a performing career it would be a few things. I would say that as deeply as you work on your craft, you must work on yourself. The body is indeed the instrument you use but it is the mind that informs everything you do. Travel, travel, travel. See the world and expand your mind. You must attend performances in all theater mediums, go to museums and galleries and learn about the great artists, educate yourself on cinema and culture, keep up with the current affairs of humanity, watch other companies all around the world (social media can be a tool in this regard), learn new styles of dance, read the great literature of the world, take an acting class and learn how to be truthful in the moment, find a hobby that enhances your creativity as a performer. Most importantly, learn to be honest with yourself. It’s easy to get wrapped up in small things in the dance world. It is not life or death. Stick to the big picture. Once you get your first paycheck, you are an adult. Take responsibility in your life. There is no such thing as authority once you begin working. You will fear performance, colleagues, and faculty. Tell yourself to not be afraid anymore until you aren’t. Have no fear! And remember to not take yourself or everything too seriously. Fight to maintain your curiosity and joy. Have fun and enjoy your career no matter where you are. Work as hard as you can. It goes quickly. Most importantly, enjoy life.

You can read the full interview here. 

And it's not too late to catch Ball in his final performances. Find more information about programs and casting here. 

--sdl

Willis Reed, Legendary Center of the World Champion N. Y. Knicks, RIP [by Stacey Harwood-Lehman]

Basketball great Willis Reed spoke about his literacy project. David was eager to get his predictions for the upcoming Knicks season.

In 2003, then chairman of the NEA Dana Gioia, invited David to join him in Washington for the annual Washington Book Festival, hosted by Laura Bush. It was a great event. Dana had even arranged for David's mom Anne to come along and for all of us to join him at the White House for the breakfast ceremony preceding the Festival. 

Just as the guests were taking their seats for Bush's opening remarks, David saw former Knicks great Willis Reed enter the room. He was impossible to miss, of course; at 6'10" he towered over just about everyone in the room, with the exception of former Detroit Pistons center Bob Lanier (6'11"), also in attendance. 

Reed was on hand to talk about his literacy project. 

I watched David from across the room (he was seated among the day's speakers; I was elsewhere, with Anne). He lit up when Reed took the podium. When the proceedings adjourned and guests made their way to the exits, David practically lept over seats with the finesse of a point-guard making a layup shot with two seconds on the clock. I've seen him focus on an objective, but this was masterly. 

He reached Reed and I snapped the photo, above. 

As it so happened, my office in New York City was at One Penn Plaza, across the street from Madison Square Garden. On a whim, I phoned the Knick's publicity department with the request that Reed sign the photo, which he graciously agreed to do. I've given David many gifts over the years, but I think this signed photo of the basketball great ranks among his favorites.

-- sdl

The moment no Knicks fan will ever forget: when Willis Reed hobbled onto the court in the deciding game of the 1970 championship series with the LA Lakers. When Reed came out, the crowd roared. Reed, injured, played well. The great unselfish Knicks of Reed and Walt Frazier, Dave DeBuschere, Bill Bradley, and Dick Barnett, coached by Red Holtzman, won the game, the series, and the hearts of New Yorkers.

-- DL

"That Ship Has Sailed" by Terence Winch [by Stacey Harwood Lehman]

Terence Winch's That Ship Has Sailed (University of Pittsburgh Press) arrived last week, and reading it has given me many pleasurable hours. Here is "Father," a favorite poem that in a few brief lines conjures an entire life:

Father

I have your cuff links and tie clips.
I have a box with your IDs in them.
Your steamfitters union card from
the middle of the war. I have the toolbox
you and I made together when I was a kid.

I have the bookcase you brought home
when the Monsignor bought new furniture
for the rectory and threw it out. It's right
upstairs in my living room. I have your banjo,
which still sounds great. All I'm missing is you.

        by Terence Winch from That Ship Has Sailed 

You can read Anne Harding Woodworth's fine review in the Innisfree Poetry Journal, along with new poems by Terence Winch here.

Recommendation: "Why Dance Matters" by Mindy Aloff [by Stacey Harwood-Lehman]

Raphael Soyer Raphael Soyer (American, b. Russia, 1899-1987) "Dancing Lesson"

I've been reading Mindy Aloff's Why Dance Matters (Yale University Press, 2022) and was delighted to see this much deserved rave review by Willard Spiegelman in the Wall Street Journal (paywall). The range and depth of Mindy's dance scholarship is, frankly, astonishing. I've had the lucky experience of attending ballet performances with Mindy, and she even agreed to join me at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts to screen a film of an obscure ballet ("A Wedding Bouquet" by Fredrick Ashton with words by Gertrude Stein). Mindy's observations and insights have deepened my appreciation of ballet and now, having read Why Dance Matters, I am even more eager to contionue my exploration of the wide world of dance. 

About a third of the way through Why Dance Matters, you encounter several paragraphs that address the question "Why does looking at dance matter?" I've often left the theater having been deeply moved by a performance and desperate to hold on to the afterimages of what I've just witnessed only to have them slip away when city noise intrudes. Here's why, says Mindy:  "If you consider dancing seriously -- as something more worthy of your concentration than gazing at a Lava Lite -- then you quickly learn that even for a short, simple number there is quite a lot of information to take in, and to do so requires fast eyes, keen hearing, and a capacious memory. There are elements in any dance, regardless of the tradition or style, that are difficult simply to recognize as they go by, much less to analyze and then discuss, just as there are indeed layers of possible significance to poetry that begin to reveal themselves only after many rereadings." 

And later: 

Simply trying to appreciate what actually takes place in a dance -- the facts of dance action -- is hard enough. A more extreme brain workout is trying to witness what the dancers are doing while remaining aware of the theatrical effects or illusions their movement is intended for the audience to see. If the choreography is coordinated to a musical score, then to recognize and track points of coordination as they happen and be able to recall them later should earn you admission to Mensa. And trying to keep track of all of this while remaining receptive to whatever epiphanies of meaning the dance may provoke -- and perhaps while being overtaken by rapture, too--requires a type of multitasking in while your consciousness, so to speak, has one eye on the stage and one watching your brain be a brain. 

The reader is then invited to take a walk with Mindy among dances where "the multitasking might prove not only as usefull to brain health as sudoko but even more enjoyable."

Take the walk! Buy Why Dance Matters here. 

Dance matters. You already know this if you're a season ticket holder to the local ballet company. And it matters if you dance alone while dusting, or with your partner at a wedding or Bat Mitzvah. 

Learning how to be dead [from "Mr. Palomar" by Italo Calvino]

<<< A person's life consists of a collection of events, the last of which could also change the meaning of the whole, not because it counts more than the previous ones but because once they are included in a life, events are arranged in an order that is not chronological but, rather, corresponds to an inner architecture. A person, for example, reads in adulthood a book that is important to him, and makes him say, 'How could I have lived without having read it!' and also, 'What a pity I did not read it in my youth!" Well, these statements to not have much meaning, especially the second, because after he has read that book, his whole life becomes the life of a person who has read that book, and it is of little importance whether he read it early or late, because now his life before that reading also assumes a form shaped by that reading. 

This is the most difficult step in learning how to be dead: to become convinced that your own life is a closed whole, all in the past, to which you can add nothing and can alter none of the relationships among the various elements. Of course, those who go on living can, according to their shifting experience, introduce changes in the lives of the dead, too, giving form to what had none or what seemed to have a different form: recognizing, for example, a just rebel in someone who had felt doomed to neurosis or delirium. But these are changes that matter mostly to the living. It is unlikely that they, the dead, will profit by them. Each individual is made up of what he has lived and the way he has lived it, and non can take this away from him. Anyone who has lived in suffering is always made of that suffering; if they try to take it away from him, he is no longer himself. >>>

-- sdl

Yom Kippur, Grand Concourse, Bronx, 1948 [by Stacey Harwood-Lehman]

Renee and Huy Harwood, my parents, eager to end the Yom Kippur fast.

-- sdl

Spontaneous Aphorism: Hope

"Hope is the feeling you have that the feeling you have isn't permanent."

-- Mignon McLaughlin
The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960

via The American Scholar (Summer, 2008)

The line (which has also been attributed to Jean Kerr) makes it easier to grasp why Emily Dickinson [pictured left] ends with "despair" when "hope" is expected at the end of her poem "It was not Death, because I stood up." Implicit is the image is of a shipwreck:

But most, like Chaos - Stopless - cool -
Without a Chance, or spar -
Or even a Report of Land -
To justify - Despair.