The Best American Poetry

Areas of Smoke (by Sally Ashton)

The rosiest evening of the year. Earlier the sun RED and the sky strange and bilious, both from leaden smoke clouds and yellowed air. With so much suspended particulate, the air, the space between objects, has a certain incandescence and ominous presence. Now sundown and the smoke-filled clouds hold the red hue . . . The night is still and rare as a night can ever be, the light transformed by a hundred wildfires. Elsewhere there is rain and flood, late snow, death by unexpected tornado, earthquake and cyclone, but California burns, the life carbon of a thousand trees, a billion leaves hangs in the air . . . It is a night to remember. Everything luminescent. Then gray. Then white . . . like a particular omen I can’t comprehend.

I wrote the above about two weeks ago, and California still burns, the air still smoke-filled, at least in the north where I live, the hundred wildfires multiplied in the ensuing days to over a thousand due to lightning storms and drought. Dry lightning now forms part of our communal vocabulary, a lightning unaccompanied by quenching rain whose strikes spark a slow smolder, embers that can ignite in a day or two or three when wind and fuel unite. Smoke still colors each day, sometimes heavy, at others a pale yellowish-gray haze hangs. I don’t live close enough to any of the big fires to have seen them, though I had to drive by a small blaze that had ignited along Highway 17 in the Santa Cruz mountains but was contained in a day.

The smoke accompanies otherwise normal daily living, at least in the areas not threatened by flame. Most people in the Bay Area disregard the health warnings and jog, work and bicycle outdoors as always. The sounds of construction and suburban gardeners continue. The new dry lightning predicted for this past weekend failed to materialize and in spite of areas of smoke and the continued drought, officials seem confident the fires will be contained soon. For now. And everywhere plans for a “sizzling 4^th!” continue including fireworks displays. Many communities still allow safe and sane firework sales. I love America.

And so it goes. I will write more about the Left Coast, the northern California bit I inhabit, throughout the week but knowing how the media both inflates and abandons news items, and having received anxious inquiries from the east, I felt this would be a good way to begin.

Moony June departs another year. Have you written your clerihew yet?

Sally Ashton

Harold Bloom on Jazz

Harold Bloom [photo by Sue Mingus]

. . . the whole jazz tradition from at least Amstrong on features what was called "cutting." And cutting is the pure instance – from the Greeks on, and it was revived by Jacob Burckhardt and Friedrich Nietzche – of the agonistic spirit; the agon or the contest. The last cutting contest I heard was the rather unequal match between the extremely brave Branford Marsalis and Sonny Rollins – very brave of Branford. Of all living masters in jazz now, Rollins is surely the greatest extant…… Among poets it’’s always a competition. Mr. Stevens and Mr. Eliot existed at the same time. Mr. Eliot thought well of Wallace Stevens and published him in England by Faber & Faber. Stevens refused to say a word about Eliot in prose, though it entered into the letters occasionally and it was family tradition; that’’s how they told me he didn’’t like Eliot or his poetry. Didn’’t like the fact that Harmonium had been crowded out by The Waste Land in 1922……

Harold Bloom in conversation with Chris Lydon, at Bloom’s home in New Haven. http://www.radioopensource.org/at_home_with_harold_bloom_3_the_jazz_bridge/

Two Prose Poems (by Nin Andrews)

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

Yes

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

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

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

Never Say Yes

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

– Nin Andrews

Billy Collins and cartoons

<< American poet laureate, Billy Collins has a wonderful article in Saturday's Wall Street Journal on his principal source of influence, the Warner Brother's Saturday morning cartoons that he watched as a child. He writes: "Plus, characters could jump dimensions, leaping around in time and space, their sudden exits marked by a rifle-shot sound effect. Anticipating the tricks of metafiction, these creatures could hop right out of the world of cartoon and into our world...This freedom to transcend the laws of basic fiction, to hop around in time and space, and to skip from one dimension to another has long been a crucial aspect of imaginative poetry." >>

-- Midori Snyder

WWEDD?

288 (redux)

I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you -- Nobody -- Too?
Then there's a pair of us!
Don't tell! they'd advertise -- you know!

How dreary -- to be -- Somebody!
How public -- like a Frog --
To tell one's name -- the livelong June --
To an admiring Blog!

I can usually count on Emily Dickinson to get me out of a tight spot, and as I contemplated how to jump in to my guest-blogging week this livelong end of June, how to introduce myself, what foot to start out on, poem 288 came handily to mind, and with a one word fidget, how well she sums up an introduction! Croak! And I shall try my Froggiest not to be dreary.

Might Emily have blogged had there been an opportunity? I know she has the academically hardened reputation as a recluse, but her poetic range belies the idea. And #288. It has always seemed at least tongue in cheek to my reading, the second stanza ironic if not disingenuous (think: Dear Mr. Higginson . . .?). And all those exclamation points! Yes public! Like a frog! Writing and self-publishing 1775 (at least) poems and seeking to publish in the press are less than reclusive gestures. Give her a break. Women still wore corsets, couldn’t own property if married, and none could vote. What, she was supposed to leave the laundry and hop in the buggy for a book tour? Hang out with Walt in Brooklyn? I like to think the blog’s relative anonymity would have worked for her. And probably phone sex.

Speaking of, those of you who have read The Best American Erotic Poems do realize that Emily has the most poems of any American poet represented there, right?  I assume at least most women familiar with her work know the burn when they read it. You just have to get past the cultural corset. I’ve recently been made aware of another of her poems that most definitely could have been included. I participated in the Favorite Poem reading this April at my undergrad alma mater San Jose State University, where I’ll also be teaching this fall. I read #754 (tight spot=Emily Dickinson), “My Life had stood – A Loaded Gun,” and in my introduction alluded to the highly erotic and subversive nature of the piece. Not to be outdone, a current SJSU undergrad, Madison Brewer, performed the most bodacious reading of #986, “A narrow Fellow in the Grass,” that I’ve ever been privileged to enjoy. Dreary Dickinson indeed. Give it a read, below.

986

A narrow Fellow in the Grass
Occasionally rides --
You may have met Him -- did you not
His notice sudden is --

The Grass divides as with a Comb
A spotted shaft is seen --
And then it closes at your feet
And opens further on --

He likes a Boggy Acre
A Floor too cool for Corn --
Yet when a Boy, and Barefoot --
I more than once at Noon

Have passed, I thought, a Whip lash
Unbraiding in the Sun
When stooping to secure it
It wrinkled, and was gone --

Several of Nature's People
I know, and they know me --
I feel for them a transport
Of cordiality --

But never met this Fellow
Attended, or alone
Without a tighter breathing
And Zero at the Bone --

-Emily Dickinson

     (oh my! sa)

Sharpen Your Pencils - Enter the Clerihew Contest!

The Boston Globe's Miss Conduct Blog is sponsoring a Clerihew contest in honor of Clerihew day (July 10).  Go here for contest rules.  The winner will receive a copy of The Best American Poetry 2007 (and no end of glory and bragging rights).

On the evening of July 7, Miss Conduct will pick the top 5 clerihews. Readers will vote on the winners, until midnight on July 10--CLERIHEW DAY! The winner will be announced on the morning of July 11.

What is a Clerihew?  Here's Miss Conduct's definition:

1. They are about a person, and the first line is (usually) the name of that person.
2. There are four lines.
3. The rhyme scheme is AABB; the first two lines and the second two lines rhyme.
4. There is no meter; that is, the lines can be as long or short as you want.

Good luck!

-- sdh

Academic Graffiti

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

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

*

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

*

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

*

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

-- DL

Poetry and Music

Lloyd Schwartz is Frederick S. Troy Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts Boston, Classical Music Editor of The Boston Phoenix, and a regular commentator for NPR's Fresh Air. His most recent book of poems is Cairo Traffic (University of Chicago Press), and he is co-editor of Elizabeth Bishop: Poems, Prose, and Letters for the Library of America. His poems, articles, and reviews have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, The New Republic, The Paris Review, The Pushcart Prize, and The Best American Poetry. In 1994, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. 

Lloyd has agreed to post regularly over the next several weeks about the progress of the thrilling project he describes below.  Thank you, Lloyd.  -- sdh

June 25, 2008:  Before

Last February, I received a delightful invitation from the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Karen Leopardi, the Associate Director for Faculty and Guest Artists at the Tanglewood Music Center, sent me an email asking me to participate in a poetry project with the composition fellows at Tanglewood this summer. This year's composer in residence, Shulamit Ran, the Israeli-born Pulitzer Prize winning musician who has served as composer-in-residence for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Chicago Lyric Opera, decided that she wanted the six composers working with her this summer to concentrate on vocal music—each of them setting a poem by the same poet. I was the poet she selected.

I would meet with the composers a couple of times to talk to them about my poems and answer any questions they might have for me. And one more thing. At the Contemporary Music Festival this summer, the featured events are works by Elliott Carter, celebrating his 100th birthday (this coming December). I’m a longstanding Carter aficionado. He’s done some fascinating and ambitious settings of contemporary poetry, including works by Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, John Ashbery, three major 20th century Italian poets (Ungaretti, Quasimodo, and Montale), and a symphony (his Symphony for Three Orchestras) inspired by Hart Crane. In college, he was an English major; early in his career he did evocative and shockingly tuneful settings of Frost and Emily Dickinson. I’m also something of an expert on Bishop (I just edited the Library of America volume Elizabeth Bishop: Poems, Prose, and Letters—virtually her collected works). So Tanglewood has also asked me to talk to the composer-fellows about Carter’s Bishop cycle, A Mirror on Which to Dwell, which will be performed at the festival. On July 29th, there’d be a concert at the Chamber Music Hall at which the settings of my poems would be performed. At the end of the concert, I’d also participate in a discussion about musical settings of poetry with Shulamit Ran and John Harbison (the director of the Contemporary Music Festival at Tanglewood, and a brilliant text-setter himself).

Would I be interested?

I suspect most poets would be thrilled—who wouldn't want to hear what one's poems sounded like to someone else? There’ve been some extraordinary, revelatory musical settings of poetry (also some terrible ones). It would be wonderful to be a “collaborator” in a new masterpiece. I’ve been traveling around the country speaking about Elizabeth Bishop and giving readings of her poems. It’s been a joy. But how satisfying in the midst of all these Bishop events to have something in which my own work was the center of attention. But maybe this invitation even meant something more to me. I’ve been writing poems seriously for nearly fifty years. But I’ve also been a music critic for more than thirty years. Rarely does a door ever open between these two compartments of my life. Now it has!

Movie Moments - Telefon (1977)

Who says poetry makes nothing happen?

-- sdh

Cyd Charisse (March 8, 1922 – June 17, 2008)

Turner Classic Movies has abandoned its regular programming tonight to pay tribute to Cyd Charisse, who died on June 17.  "Singing in the Rain" aired at 8:00; "The Band Wagon" is just beginning.  One of my favorite movie dance numbers of all time (after Astaire's amazing "Bo Jangles of Harlem")  is in this film and it features Charisse doing a bump-and-grind with Fred Astaire at "Dem Bones Cafe."  I usually can't take my eyes off Astaire when he dances but in this clip, it's Charisse who devours the camera.  Watch the way she moves her shoulders.  And those legs! 

-- sdh