The Best American Poetry

Jim Cummins Lands Seventeen Punches

It's a little known fact that the poet Jim Cummins, our Midwest correspondent, is an ace at ice hockey. Born in the Wolverine State, Cummins played right wing for the Michigan State University Spartans and was drafted in the fourth round (sixty-seventh over all) by the New York Rangers in 1989. His greatest success came in a Chicago Black Hawks uniform. The 6'2 wing established a tough-guy reputation, never backing down from a fight. Though he played for seven NHL teams, he successfully kept his sestina writing a secret from his teammates. When a reserve goalie for the Colorado Avalanche discovered Jim's book The Whole Truth, it sparked an unexpected interest in verse and prose forms culminating in the selection of Robert Bly's four-part prose poem "The Hockey Poem" as the Avalanche's official poem read annually at year-end ceremonies.

Here's Jim on the ice at his feisty best:

-- DL

Where Have You Gone, Shoshana Marx?

The first time I met Kenneth Koch, I was twenty and I couldn't speak.  No, I mean, literally, I couldn't speak.  It wasn't just extreme shyness; it was pathological.  I wasn't just the perfect rube: I was an object of satire, someone who's ego was so undeveloped it was all he could think about.  Everywhere I turned, I blundered into myself, smiling vaguely and nodding.  When the host of the small party disappeared with Kenneth in the general direction of the airport, I threw myself down in shame on a convenient bed and hid my face.  An extremely attractive young woman named Shoshana threw herself down next to me, put her arms around me, and tried to comfort me.  I had had a crush on Shoshana for months.  I wasn't alone; several of the young poets around at the time did, too, and would have given anything to be me that night.  I would have given anything to be me that night, whoever that might have been.  I'd never thought I'd have a chance with Shoshana (cf, ego problems, above); not only was she gorgeous, she lived and breathed an unaffected sexuality that stopped my heart.  This is not as good as it maybe sounds; it's where the blood comes from, after all.  But there she was, lying next to me, my heart's desire, stroking my face and telling me it was all right, my feverish head on her breasts--and we could have been in separate rooms, so little did it register.  I could feel only my  own humiliation and despair.  I think I had read Crime and Punishment a few weeks prior to this.

Channeling Mr. Nabokov

The Sunday Times had a sweet interview with 74-year-old Dmitri Nabokov, the novelist's son, about his father's final work, a "not quite finished manuscript" called The Original of Laura.  Nabokov wrote on index cards, often or mostly in his car, and this novel totaled 138 3x5 index cards.  We all have our "masters" whose work means more to us than other perhaps equally great writers, and Nabokov is one of mine.  Dmitri told the story of how his father almost burned the original manuscript of Lolita, and how its original title was Juanita Dark.  His talk utterly charmed me: the thought that there's another instance of his father's voice about to waft over time to my ear again was like a wholly unexpected gift.  It brought to mind a few things.

A few years ago a young writer friend of mine, a fiction writer, decided to go through the University of Chicago's one-year graduate writing program.  I think the only writer of note to come out of that program has been Philip Roth, but Philip Roth's a pretty big note.  And the U of Chicago is beautiful, and big time, and she was excited.  So she went to her first fiction workshop.  There were 13 students and the instructor asked them to write on a slip of paper the name of the writer they most wanted to emulate.  The instructor then read off their choices.  One student--my friend--had chosen Graham Greene; the other twelve had written down "Vladimir Nabokov."

My friend asked what I thought of this: how had all twelve picked the same author?  I said in my usual wrongheaded absolutist way, "They're not writers."  She thought this was too harsh.  Of course, she had a vested interest in my being wrong: she had to live among these people and honor their attempts for a year.  Obviously, she wanted me to be wrong.  But what I meant was, they were critics; they were well-educated sons and daughters of liberals who were looking at writing from the outside for a year before they moved on to law school, English departments, etc, while spending a U of Chicago-size tuition bill to do so.  I was betting that to them Nabokov looked like a writer, someone they could defend to themselves as a writer.  It was a hip, cutting-edge choice, much cooler than the election of plodding moralistic Graham Greene, whom criticism had got the goods on, and society had passed by as an emblem of "the writer." 

I can't say that I was right about those twelve students, mostly because no one ever knows where good writing is going to come from, but by the end of the year they all seemed to have left the fiction fold.  But Dmitri's words jogged another consideration: the influence his father has on young men who are actually writers. 

Lolita, like Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, is a book that implicates its audience in its crimes.  The gorgeous brilliant thrill of language is in the service of a pretty sad monstrous plot.  In our sound-byte culture, I seem to see many young men who understand the former, but not the tar pit of the latter, and hasten to become entertainers rather than artists.  So what, you say; life's short.  I agree.  But sometimes you have to sit through their, um, zaniness.  Recently, I've seen a number of these readings.  One guy prefaced his reading with a 15-minute tribute to Kurt Vonnegut, then followed with thirty minutes about his penis.  I'm not kidding: a full thirty-minute you-better-laugh-you-sombitch paean to his penis.  At the end of this he offered to take questions (read: prisoners).  After acknowledging a woman in the back, he interrupted her as she started to speak, saying, "I refuse to take questions about my penis!"  General laughter and applause.  Afterward, someone said, "Man, he's really OUT THERE!"  My thought was he was out HERE; i.e., the provinces. 

IncreduLit.com (by Jim Cummins)

When you're invited someplace, it's always wise to arrive with a gift, a bottle of wine or some flowers, so I thought I'd begin my blogging week with a gift for those poets among us who teach, which is to say most of us.  I've found a great site, IncreduLit.com, whose scholars can provide terrific literary history and criticism support for our students.  I thought I'd post a recent exchange between a young poet friend of mine and an IncreduLit scholar.

"Dear IncreduLit:

I got into some Dickinson tonight & have this question in regards to poem no. 223 (Final Harvest):

A Dying Tiger--moaned for Drink--

I hunted all the Sand--

I caught the Dripping of a Rock

And bore it in my hand--

His mighty Balls--in death were thick

WAIT!  'HIS MIGHTY BALLS'?  What is going on here?  Is Emily masturbating a gigantic dead tiger?  Plz say it is so.'

-JW

The IncreduLit scholar sent this reply:

"Dear JW,

Yes!  You're absolutely right!  Obviously, this caused great consternation among her relatives when they came across this poem after her death.  In fact, it was this poem and a companion piece

A Mighty Cock--crowed at the Bar--

And much his Plumage told--

Of Nights alone--but with his Hand

So little space--Console'd

that were the main items of evidence presented in the famous Dickinson 'Censorship Trial' in 1893.  They were discovered in a tightly-bound fasicle containing other seemingly erotic works, like the famous 'dog poems,' for example--in particular, the one that begins

The Dog whose Tongue--cannot make Light

The Hole whose source--is Dark--

or the best, in my opinion, of the other twelve or so, the one that starts out

I sniff a Nectar--never Brewed--

etc.  Along with this fasicle were discovered: a little orange fetish whip; a pair of 6" black spike heels; two tickets, never used, for the performance of 'The American Cousin,' at Ford's Theater on April 14, 1865, the night Lincoln was assassinated; a pair of 'French' fishnet hose; a condom with a small rubber 'head' on it in the likeness of Robert E. Lee; and a completely nude photo, frontal view, of Ralph Waldo Emerson.

There's speculation that the Emerson photo had been given to Walt Whitman, in exchange for a similar photo of Walt; the Whitman photo has never been found.  Questions about how Emily came into possession of the photo of Emerson now center on the recently-discovered 'Mister Letters,' which constitute a critique of Emerson's Transcendentalist philosophy, particularly as to how it was conveyed in a lecture Emerson gave in Amherst on December 16, 1857, while he was staying at the Evergreens, the residence of Emily's brother, Austin, and his wife, Susan, which was next door to Emily's house.  Some critics postulate that one of the dog poems distills her 'take' on Emerson,

The cunning Canine--of the Teeth--

Displays--the foxy Guile--

The circle laps--its Hindmost up--

Upon the inner--Stile--

and so on; but at least in the 'Mister Letters' her thoughts on Emerson follow that of the Hampshire and Franklin Express in their review article of December 18: 'Ralph Waldo Emerson's lecture greatly disappointed all who listened.  It was in the English language instead of the Emersonese in which he usually clothes his thoughts, and the thoughts themselves were such as any plain common-sense person could understand and appreciate.'

While this information is significant to Dickinson scholars, the true interest of the 'Mister Letters' lies in the veiled and not-so-veiled references to her younger sister Lavinia's return home in the middle of the night from visiting the Evergreens during Emerson's stay.  Lavinia stumbled into the house, obviously intoxicated, slurring her words as she tried to tell Emily of an intimate game she had played with Emerson that evening, which he kept calling, 'Where's Waldo?'  'I am seeded,' Lavinia kept repeating, each time dissolving into an uncontrollable fit of laughter.  Lavinia either gave Emily the Emerson photograph, or Emily retrieved it from her person as she was helping Lavinia douche.  In any case, Lavinia--as Emily reported in an as-yet undiscovered letter--stuck her finger into the center of the photo and whooped, 'There's Waldo!'

I hope this has proved helpful to you.  And be sure to try IncreduLit again! 

Sincerely,

IncreduLit.com"

Lehman is Shutting Loan Unit

“Lehman Is Shutting Loan Unit”

I was leafing through the Times, heading
for the sports page because I’ve become
a bit of a Yankee fan though I live in
Cincinnati, and even in Cincinnati I’m
aware of the chaos in the housing industry,
but all the exigencies and catastrophes had
eluded me until there, eye-poppingly, I read
“Lehman Is Shutting Loan Unit”!
Oh I’ve acted perfectly disgraceful when
it comes to amortization, and the date
due remains for me an approximation but
I’ve never actually defaulted on anything,
and I’m making progress, I’ve learned
debentures aren’t false teeth, oh I can’t
imagine closing an entire unit of loaning!
Lehman, we love you, keep forking over!

-- Jim Cummins

Is This Thing On? Can You Hear Me Now? by James Cummins

I have no clue whether I'm actually posting or not.  I've never blogged before, even read a blog.  I wondered what to do until I saw DL's description of what we guest bloggers would produce: "brilliant insights."  Okay, now that's clear; I'm with the program.  What brilliant insight of mine would anyone care about?  Well, I just got back from lunch, which time I spent cleaning my dog's backside of the clumps of shit the poor constipated baby got glued into her hair and orifices.  My insight might be that it was remarkably not gross, since I love her so much; which gives me yet another glimpse into love. 

I was thinking all week about love, since Valentine's Day is at the end of this guest-blogger week, and something in me is celebrating this new "Best American Erotic" volume, too.  It's probably unwise to admit this, but it's the first book of poems that's made me read compulsively in a long time.  So many books have a sheen of coolness about them that puts me off; but this one is like playing doctor when you're a kid.  (In fact, it reminded me that I DID "play doctor" when I was a kid, with Susie and Jimmy Vecchio, another piece of the puzzle.)  My gold standard for erotic poem anthologies is the Faber Book of Blue Poetry, a pretty traditional, and English, and effective, compendium.  This (Best American Erotic) is so much more like an intimate sexy book.  I'm loving lines, images, whole poems, I'm eagerly loving and licking it up.  "Like a seltzer in my crotch"--that's so American, what can I say?  Deborah Landau's poem is like a combo of Whitman's woman watching the bathing young men and an Edward Hopper painting.  "Suck and tongue you till my touch is much"; Strand's and Dobyns's poems; Richard Howard's edgy photo of something the word "pedophilia" just doesn't capture--these are some of the highlights for me.  Tony H.'s gleeful misogyny; "A man is masturbating his heart out"--the anxious, the dreamy, the sublime that we are, is here. 

When my younger daughter was a baby she and I would often go for a ride at night, so she could calm down and maybe fall asleep.  We'd have these great talks some nights.  When she was three she had her tonsils out and it was a bit more traumatic than she supposed it would be; in fact, she was mad at me afterward for not warning her sufficiently.  But here's a transcription from a notebook of our first ride after the operation, starting as we pull out of the driveway:

"Daddy, I'm going to marry Gabriel and have six dogs, and four babies, and two cats."

"That's wonderful.  Do you love Gabriel?"

"Yes, I wuv him and he wuvs me."

"That's really neat."

"Daddy, Gabriel has a penis."

"Yes, he does."

"That's because he's a boy.  Steve and you and Gabriel have a penis."

"Yes, we do."

"And I have a vagina."

"Yes."

"It would be bad if boys had vaginas and girls had penises, wouldn't it?"

"Well, I guess it's better that boys have penises and girls have vaginas."

"Daddy, why would it be bad if boys had vaginas and girls had penises?"

"Well, I mean, it's good whatever a person has, don't you think?  Whether it's a penis or a vagina?"

"So it wouldn't be bad if a boy had a vagina?"

"No, honey, if he has a vagina, it's fine."

"And people shouldn't make fun of other people, and be mean to them and call them names, should they?"

"Oh, no, they shouldn't do that."

"They shouldn't call them names like--like--'Smudgy Face' or 'Tree Tree', should they?"

"No, sweetie, they shouldn't."

"And people shouldn't say to other people, 'Boy, you're really stupid!' should they?  They shouldn't say that, should they, Daddy?"

"No, honey, they shouldn't."

Then she fell asleep. 

Ah, American anxiety.  No brilliant insights about it, just the observation that after being the father of two daughters--the older one, at age two, once turned to me and said, her face beaming, "My bagina is so soft and fweet!"--it's impossible not to hear the longing in our sex poems, and nervousness, and because of that they seem so truly sexy to me.

I wonder if this is too much blog or not enough.  (Anxiously)  (Am I in?)

-- JC