The Best American Poetry

The Grief Tourist

From the mixed-up files of your Coeur Despondent:

I am in Switzerland.  I have come--ostensibly, insensibly--to praise, honor, mourn, and conjure the endings of some things.  I have two endings in mind. 

The ostensible: I have traveled all this way to find the ending of my novel.  The novel’s set in Switzerland and I am fully convinced that my ending’s hidden somewhere here.  Behind a wall clock or in a bank vault, I am sure.  

The insensible: I have come here to revisit (for reasons entirely pathological) a precise and beckoning sadness, a sadness that was, upon the collapse of my marriage, my sole companion.  A sadness I am at once in love with and am indifferent to.  I am staying in Wallisellen, a town near Zürich, at the home of poet, publisher and altogether enchanting editrix, Susana Gardner.  Wallisellen is one town away from Dietlikon, where I lived.

If you know me even tangentially, you know that my relationship with Switzerland is multivalent.  Would that there existed a single word broad enough in its own connotations to describe the all-at-once sensation of aggression, bewilderment, despair, pathos, boredom, longing, and straight-up anger that jolts through me when I spend any real time thinking about this place. But think about this place I do.  And think and think and think about it. 

So like the criminal who returns to the scene of her crime, or the ghost that haunts the rooms of the house she died in, I have come to Switzerland, that I might holiday in the land of my hopelessness, vacation in the place that vandalized me.  That I might wander once more the paths that woe-ed me, wounded me, made me weep.

For I am a tourist of grief, you see.

Major Jackson's Favorite Covers [by Phoebe Putnam]

I had no choice but to ask poetry editor of Harvard Review and poet, Major Jackson, for his covers after admiring his website (click his name): a veritable thing of beauty.  Major hasn't disappointed; his covers are ones a graphic artist might choose, of blacks, blues, and whites in highest, starkest contrast.  And they are lightly informed, like his website is, by a postwar, Blue Note aesthetic.  Which means, when it comes down to it, that Major's covers suggest the possibility (among others) of the poetry volume as album, and hence the poetry cover as album cover, reminding us of the songs within.

Major's choices:

1. Sonia Sanchez's We a BaddDDD People (1970)

"The appropriation of the African mask and other iconography in modernist art is well-known, but many African-American poets have also used African art to signal their political and cultural awareness, and aesthetic choices. Many of the books published by famed editor and poet Dudley Randall of Broadside Press in the 1960s and 1970s indicate a renewed pride during that time in Africa as cultural source and inspiration for African- American artists.  

The people in Sonia Sanchez’s We A BaddDDD People are of course, black Americans but also diasporic and continental Africans alike.  African-American poets continue to don black artists on their book jackets."

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 2. Harryette Mullen's Muse & Drudge (1995)

"I am a fan of simple design yet depth of meaning.  My friend and co-worker at the Painted Bride Art Center, the poet Gil Ott, was a dedicated small-press publisher who adored and admired Harryette Mullen’s poetry.  This is evident in his publication of her two collections S*PeRM**K*T and Muse & Drudge; the latter is a personal favorite.

It’s an amazing, innovative collection whose cover always reminds me of that Louis Armstrong song  “What did I do to be so black and blue?” [begins at 42 seconds -pfp] But also, the cover makes an implicit connection between the poet and the blues singer, who is one of the personae contained in the collection."

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3. Michael McClure's For Artaud (1959)

 

"Because of its rich simplicity, Michael McClure’s book jacket has always been a favorite; it's one of those jackets that does the near impossible of playing with dimensionality and depth."

Whew.  So good.  Thanks, Major.

Tune in Saturday morning after breakfast for our last post this week, with Mary Jo Bang.

- phoebe

PS: more blue note covers can be found on this japanese website....

 

David Lehman's Favorite Covers [by Phoebe Putnam]

Good morning!

Very pleased to bring you today the favorite poetry covers of David Lehman, poet, occasional painter, and founding editor of the BAP series.  The image above is a picture of Larry Rivers, next to Grace Hartigan's hat, both of whom (Rivers and the owner of the hat) are also, as we have seen, primary interests of Don Share.  (For more poets on covers, see Nick Flynn & Jesse Ball's picks.)

In a more intensive way than for Don, however, David's interest in collaboration is at the heart of his interest on covers.

It's a great subject, the cover art of poetry books, especially considering the overlap in sensibility between practitioners of the literary and visual arts, and how often it happens that a painter writes poetry (and really good poetry) and a poet makes watercolors or collages.

In descending order, beginning with one out of many of Rivers's covers for Koch, here are David's choices and the larger questions they seem to raise.

3. Kenneth Koch's New Addresses (2000).

Question: Shall a cover be the canvas that sponsors a literal collaboration between image and lyric text?

"The complementary nature of Rivers's art and Koch's poetry is remarkable and worth examining in detail..... The cover of New Addresses splices reproductions of poems, adds a cameo photo of Koch, and uses splashes of color not so much to highlight a text as to show that beyond their meaning, the words function as visual signs and markers. It's exceptional, and I find it inspiring.

As one who paints when he gets the chance, I can testify to the purely visual pleasure of alphabets -- including those of foreign languages little known. Some of Franz Kline's black-on-white drawings look like Chinese calligraphy smuggled behind the occidental curtain."

2. Houseboat Days (1977) by John Ashbery. Cover R. B. Kitaj

Question:  Shall a cover serve as a second title to the work, a visual title that elaborates the linguistic title?  If so, should the poet not choose the second title just as he chose the first?

Ashbery got to pick the covers for a number of his books: "Houseboat Days," "As We Know," "Your Name Here," "Flow Chart," as well as for  his art criticism, "Reported Sightings." He has marvelous taste and many friends who are painters, and a look at such covers as I've mentioned gives you an idea of the extraordinary range of his affinities[...]

My favorite Ashbery cover is the one featuring the black-and-white painting R. B. Kitaj did for "Houseboat Days (Viking, 1977). A young woman in an old-fashioned dress holds a paddle on a boat. But the chiaroscuro effects (the sky is an uproar of clouds), the look on her face, and the strong diagonals in the picture combine to create an eerie or uncanny feeling as if someone from another decade were serenely paddling into our pond.

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1.  Hymn to Life (1974) by James Schuyler. Cover, Fairfield Porter.  Image not available

1. A Few Days (1985) by James Schuyler.  Cover, Darragh Park.

Question:  Shall a cover reveal what the poems themselves reach out towards and seek but cannot obtain?

"The covers of James Schuyler's books spring to mind... I'm torn between Darragh Park's cover for "A Few Days" (Random House, 1985) -- lush purple loosestrife on light green grass amid dark green trees -- and Fairfield Porter's almost abstract rendering of a tree for the cover of "Hymn to Life" (Random House, 1974). Both pictures are so right for this poet who turns to landscapes not simply as an aesthetic choice but as a way of dealing with the anxieties and actualities that make such pastoral tranquility so attractive and so hard to come by."

Thanks much for these haunting, impossible dreamscapes, DL.

Do the questions that David's covers suggest resonate for you?  Mary Jo Bang has different questions, as we'll see soon.  What are yours?

Another sonnet [by David Lehman]

And here's another hot one by David, for your sizzling summertime reading delectation.

Here’s to the duality of flesh
and blood, neck and rope,
and the temporary flush
of skin, absence of hope.

As far as foreplay is indicted,
here's to his length and her depth.
The whole vice squad is invited:
gambling, booze, dope, and death.

He will paint her not as a painter paints
a woman but as a painter paints a wall.
If fucking is the athleticism of the saints,
here’s to her autumn and his fall.

You will become addicted to his smell,
so use it well or not at all.

Bar Napkin Sonnet # 24 [by Moira Egan]

BAR NAPKIN SONNET #24

It’s wicked to admit I love these bruises,
the set of fingerprints along my hip
that an FBI Agent could dust and use
to track him down.  I love the boy-stung lips
from hours kissing, lips soft, but his whiskers
grown rougher with the hours into night,
and rougher still, we move together, quicker,
as if our muscles’ work brought on the light.
Mornings like this, I’m torn between two notions:
Are love’s inscriptions like a form of art,
or injuries incurred from constant motion:
tennis elbow, carpal tunnel, arrhythmic heart?
And  you should see my scars  I sit alone,
a glass of wine, a napkin, and my pen.

SONETTO SUL TOVAGLIOLINO DI UN PUB #24

E’ perverso ammettere che adoro queste ammaccature,
la serie di impronte digitali sui miei fianchi
che un agente segreto saprebbe rilevare e usare
per rintracciarlo. Adoro i graffi d’uomo stanchi
dopo ore di baci, labbra morbide, ma le sue basette
irruviditesi con il passare della notte
sono piu’ ruvide ancora, e ci muoviamo insieme, ancora
piu’ svelte, come se i muscoli in moto accendessero l’aurora.
Le mattine cosi’ ho due pensieri, e mi tormento:
i graffiti dell’amore sono forme artistiche
o solo danni inferti da ininterrotto movimento –
gomito del tennista, tunnel carpale, aritmie parossistiche?
E “dovresti vedere le mie cicatrici”: resto sola al tavolino
con la mia penna, un tovagliolo di carta e un bicchiere di vino.

-- Moira Egan

Steve Burt's Cease & Desist List [by Phoebe Putnam]

"Poets and book designers should stay away for at least the next five years from cover images by:

Mark Rothko

Vincent Van Gogh

Jackson Pollock

Barnett Newman

and Jan Vermeer

I thought that rule would go without saying until I saw more than one serious, thoughtful new poetry book this year that violated it."

                         - poet and poetry critic Steve Burt

Do you agree?  Would you add to this list?

Image of Rothko's No. 3, 1949 can be found here; real painting can be found in nyc, here.

Round 3: Jesse Ball's Favorite Covers [by Phoebe Putnam]

After Don Share's playful typographical covers, and Nick Flynn's chromatically saturated, sinuous ones, we continue today with the covers of poet, novelist, and former spy Jesse Ball, who may or may not be on your radar screen right now.  But I suspect he will be.  He has this to say about covers:

I have actually made a brown paper cover to cover over paperback covers that I didn't like while I was reading the volume in question.

And this:

I will say that what I like best of all is just cloth without a dust jacket. If a book has nice cloth I usually discard the dust jacket.

(Don't you here find yourself conjuring up secret memories of cloth covers?  how rare it has become, the textilic touch of a book...)

Here are Jesse's three.  They are austere, wind-beaten, starkly beautiful.

1. Rilke's Duino Elegies, translation C. P. Snow

"The Rilke is elegant and in some ways represents both Rilke's grace and the gentleness and fineness of Snow's translation."

2. WCW's Pictures from Brueghel

"The wheat in the WCW cover gives a beautiful impression of chaos and also of learning, of indebtedness to what has been, and resistance to easy grasping. It is a shame that it mentions the prize at the bottom corner, but such things seemingly must be."

3. Simic, Selected Early Poems

The Simic is a hardcover, but not cloth, so it must keep its dust jacket. I like the quietness and relevance of this cover. Typographical covers often have that effect:  they are just telling you what's inside, and that is kind and correct, particularly for a selected poems.

I included a shot of the spine and back because they are crucial. Here the image of Simic is in tension with the simple title on the front. The fact that these are his "early" poems gives the book an immediate narrative and a poignancy.

Jesse has glossed these images so well that I'll keep mum.  But do let me know what you think.  Thanks for these, JB.

To Summer [by David Lehman]

It's sizzling summer sonnet time here on the BAP blog. This one by David Lehman first appeared on Nerve.com.
Enjoy!

To Summer

Shall I compare a season to a day,
a woman to a body like a violin?
Summer is the reason for my grin,
and on that violin I would play.

In the nave of her church I would pray.
Though summer’s lease hath all too short a date,
I shall fall into winter and spring to my fate,
and while you wait I’ll be frank and sing “My Way.”

But just as a whole is greater than the sum
of its parts, or `twere a bummer, rank indeed,
so a garden outlives its fiercest weed
to blossom under my green thumb.
On her I shall gaze from head to bum.
Where summer follows I shall lead.

Sonnenblumen Lehman

Opfikon, Switzerland.  One franc per stem.

Bar Napkin Sonnet #23 [by Moira Egan]

BAR NAPKIN SONNET #23

Sometimes you have to swallow.  I love you
might otherwise escape your lust-dumb lips.
By dumb I mean here dim-witted, not mute,
though I have learned the Helen Keller trick
to see no, hear no, speak no thing like truth.
How could this big dumb guy I’m sitting with
have made me come so hard I damn near swooned?
And now he’s watching baseball as if it’s
a new religion.  Jesus Christ.  Who knew
that goddamned oxytocin spike I get
could trick me into thinking amour fou.
It’s bitter, but I just dry-swallow it
like aspirin, or confession.  I get used
to walking out, my ass and soul both bruised.

SONETTO SUL TOVAGLIOLINO DI UN PUB #23

A volte si deve inghiottire. Altrimenti
Ti amo potrebbe sfuggire da labbra ebeti di piacere.
Per ebeti intendo qui ottuse, non silenti,
anche se so bene il trucco di Ellen Keller:
non vedo, non sento, non dico niente che sia verità.
Come ha potuto questo giuggiolone con cui sto seduta
farmi venire così forte che sono quasi svenuta?
E adesso guarda il baseball come se fosse
una nuova religione. Santo Cielo. Chi lo sa-
peva che quel dannato picco di ossitocina potesse
ingannarmi fino a farmi pensare amour fou.
E’ amaro, ma senz’acqua lo butto giù
come un’aspirina, o una confessione. Sono abituata
a lasciarli, col culo dolente e l’anima ammaccata.