The Best American Poetry

He'd Walk a Mile for a Camel (by Stacey Harwood)

For the events leading up to this spectacular photo of our man in Mongolia, watch this video:

We took a ride last Thursday night to the country outside Ulaanbaatar.  Along the way, we encountered this camel.  The voices you hear in the background are of the young Mongolian man trying to negotiate the terms of a ride; U.S. Ambassador Mark Minton; Kevin Nolan, an intern in the Embassy (whose speech moves fluently from English to Mongolian); David; me ("I don't want to get on") and the compliant camel. 

-- sdh

(This post appeared originally on June 2, 2008)

Endless Genghis Khan adventure movie....

This goes on for about thirty more episodes -- in Chinese or Mongolian, your guess is as good as mine. Genghis Khan (real name: Temujin) was a pretty bad guy but what the hell. The Mongols under GK and his successors did great until defeated by the Mamluks in 1260, partly because the Mamluks had stronger horses. The Mamluks were also horrible. Interesting that a couple of Mongol expeditions sent against Vietnam by Kublai Khan were defeated by the Vietnamese guerilla fighters. I guess "Charlie" had some tricks up his sleeve even then. As longtime visitors to this site know, Mongols today are very interested in poetry. The film entitlted "The Weeping Camel" is a wonderful resource about contemporary Mongolia.

Dispatch from Istanbul by Ming Holden

Ed note:  Our friend Ming Holden, whom David and I met while visiting Mongolia in 2009 traveled to Istanbul last fall to take part in WALTIC 2010.  We asked her to share her thoughts and impressions with us. -- sdh

"I know his popularity has gone down, but I did find it very inspiring a few years ago when Obama said, 'Yes we can.'"

                                                            --Olov Hyllienmark, Keynote Speaker, WALTIC 2010, Istanbul

             Sometimes I think of contemporary American poetry as a really great crowded party in a really great bohemian apartment, a party with a bunch of mind-blowingly intelligent artists, and everyone's paired up and in small groups.  Each conversation (and participant) is interesting and pertinent, compelling and admirable.  Each is also markedly different, and I struggle to locate the unifying thread.

             But what, in this metaphor, is the apartment?  What defines contemporary American poetics besides a pervasive fragmentation engendered by a plentitude of lively voices?  And what does it look like from the outside, this party?  I think many Americans are worried about the reputation of our nation as a world leader in recent years; has its literary reputation and leadership, taken a hit as well?  What role is American poetry playing now when in many nations the literary party goes underground because the voices that would make up the merry din are silenced? 

             I got a few answers to these questions when I attended the second-ever convention of the Writers and Literary Translators International Congress (WALTIC).  WALTIC began in the Swedish Writers Union, and for an international literary development to have its genesis in a relatively small and quiet nation is exciting in itself.

             WALTIC is an exciting international development for other reasons, among them the fact that the only other worldwide convention to discuss freedom of expression, copyright, and other contemporary issues facing writers is the annual PEN congress.  Unlike PEN, WALTIC is open to the international literary community at large, and while PEN officials have attended both conventions, WALTIC welcomes freelance translators, journalists, and, say, a random 23-year-old -- that would be me -- tagging along with some Mongolian dudes.

Seven Haiku for a Mongolian Master [by David Lehman]

Under the general editorship of the eminent Mongolian poet G. Mend-Oyoo, an important dual-language anthology of American poetry has appeared in Ulaanbaatar (Mongolian Academy of Culture and Poetry). It's called simply American Poetry and it includes selections from Whitman, Dickinson, Poe, Longfellow, Stephen Crane, Frost, Langston Hughes, Allen Ginsberg, Kenneth Koch, Joseph Brodsky, Billy Collins, and Sherman Alexie,among others. Brief introductory notes are provided by Mend-Ooyo and by former U. S. Ambassador to Mongolia Mark Minton, an enthusiastic friend of the project and a lifelong champion of Kenneth Koch in particular and the New York School in general. A team of translators worked on the texts. A second volume is in the works.

Congratulations go to Mend-Ooyo also on the appearance of a new selection of his poems in English, A Patch of White Mist, translated by Simon Wickham-Smith, who has cemented his reputation as the leading English-language translator of Mongolian verse. I hope to have more to say about the book in time but for now am simply savoring the characteristic imagery of a sky in tumult ("Snowfall tumbles like white stallions") and a landscape in motion (mountains charging like a phantom herd of cattle).

In Mongolia, Stacey and I spent time with Mend-Ooyo, an accomplished calligrapher as well as the nation's leading man of letters. After a leisurely and literary lunch he celebrated the occasion by giving us Mongolian names -- mine is Tsolmongerelt (meaning "light of the morning star") and Stacey's is Odontuya (meaning "starlight"). Mend-Ooyo's own name tranlates roughly as "Man of the Secret Code," and a woman we met is "Lucky Violet." When I wrote seven haiku for Mend-Ooyo, I incorporated some of these details and other examples of how in the Mongolian imagination images substitute for abstractions. Marriage, for example, means "linked pillows" in Mongolian.

Seven Haiku for Mend-Ooyo

Lunch on the silver
edge of the wide bridal sky
in Mongolia.

Wife starlight blossom:
honeydew of honeymoon:
two melons ripe, sweet.

Man of the secret
code of the poet: ciphers
of Mongolia.

Paired pillows, the luck
of sweet violets, horses
on hills with white hats.

In Mongolia
seven Buddhas reign at night,
rain all afternoon.

Guest and host embrace
as the dark side of the moon
is loved by the night.

Evening's first star wears
her seven jewels and shines
in Mongolia.

-- David Lehman

Mongolia at Tibet House and Eating Aaruul with Leigh Wells [by Stacey Harwood]

Ever since David and I traveled to China and  Mongolia in 2008 as guests of the American embassy,  I’ve paid particular attention to all things Mongolian-related that might happen in New York City. When an item about Hamid Sardar’s photography exhibit at the Tibet House appeared on  Manhattan Users Guide (scroll down),  I invited my friend Leigh Wells to see it with me.  Leigh lived in Mongolia for two years as a Peace Corps volunteer and is herself a talented photographer. She’s just back from a month-long  visit to her old stomping grounds.

As so often happens in New York, our signals got crossed and I ended up going solo  but I’m hoping to return with Leigh to get an insider’s take on the photographs from both a cultural and artistic perspective.

Sardar’s images are breathtaking. If you live in New York City or are planning a visit,  put this show on your agenda.  It’s on view through August 20. 

Beginning in 2000, Sardar traveled to Outer Mongolia to make a record of the country’s remaining nomad tribes.  He followed horse-breeders, bear-hunters, wolf-tamers, eagle-masters, and reindeer riders on their seasonal migrations.  His intention was to capture  a nomadic culture on the brink of the great and irreversible change brought on by a fledgling democracy and encroaching technology. 

The 25 pictures on display are large – 18 ½" x 27 ½" -- and in addition to depicting the brutal conditions facing nomads traversing the mountains during the harshest weather imaginable (to this city dweller), they include intimate portraits of family life: a young girl performs the morning milk dance, a grandmother pacifies her grandchildren on a wolf pelt (above).  “Kazak Mother Wolf”, is particularly memorable for both its subject matter and its composition.  A  Rembrandt portrait comes to mind, where the central figure appears to glow from an interior light.

Each photograph is accompanied by Sardar’s helpful description. Some explain the  lore behind a particular ritual captured by the image;  others are suspense-filled tales of man facing the elements. A series taken over a period of days in 2006 shows hunters struggling over a mountain during an especially brutal snow storm.  Sardar can hear avalanches “crashing down the mountain slopes.”  The visibility is so poor that he can “barely see ten feet ahead.”  At one point the fresh snow gives way under his feet and he plummets down a twenty-foot funnel. From behind, he hears the voice of a hunter: “Isn’t this wonderful,” the hunter says, urging Sardar to  “push ahead until we reach the bottom of the bowl.”

Find out more about Sardar here and here.

***

 Leigh and I did manage to catch up this afternoon over ice-tea and coffee at City Bakery on 18th Street. Leigh handed over a gift bag of aaruul (right), the popular Mongolian snack made of dried milk curd.  I had sampled it during our 2008 stay and have been haunted by its flavor ever since.  It looks like nuggets of dried toothpaste and starts with the funky flavor of a strong cheese but has a sweet finish. (Some varieties are not sweet.)  After chewing a few pieces Leigh and I agreed that it would enliven a salad of bitter greens and dried cherries tossed with a balsamic vinaigrette.  You heard it here first!  Mongolian aaruul, the next big thing!

-- sdh

Much Depends on Dinner: Cooking with Rob Shore

all photos by Bradd Shore

We met Rob Shore in May, 2008, during a trip to Mongolia where he was working as a Peace Corps volunteer. Today Rob lives in Atlanta, Georgia where he is a writer, producer, and photographer.  His essays are forthcoming in Harvard University Press and the Peace Corps at 50 Anniversary Story Project and his photography has appeared in Fifth Wednesday Journal and elsewhere.  Rob is at work on a documentary film series about American family rites of passage, funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.  He graduated from Emory University in 2006 with degrees in anthropology and film. See more of his work here.  Rob has this to say about cooking and today's recipe for ceviche:

From 2006-2008 I lived alone in a yurt on the Mongolian steppe.  My desire to cook was more out of nutritional necessity than any inherent interest.  A diet consisting of boiled sheep’s innards, dried milk curd, and the odd potato, carrot, or onion, is enough to drive anyone to culinary experimentation. 

In Mongolia I made peace with meat’s more cute and cuddly exteriors, as opposed to the cling-wrap and Styrofoam of American grocery stores.  I learned to sharpen knives on the underside of bowls and mugs.  The militarily punitive aspects of potato peeling were replaced by a deep affection for the Zen-like rhythms of the chore. 

Today, I cook because it is one of ways in which my mother and I relate as adults. I cook because good, home-cooked food is an incontrovertible excuse to drink good wine. I cook because people don’t expect twenty-something men with unruly hair to have secret ingredients.  I cook because no one else makes it spicy enough.

I like simple recipes that allow for a lot of experimentation and personalization.  I love dishes that are better on the second day, where leftovers can be the main event.  I love fish.

In the summer of 2007 I took up residence next to a river, miles from the village and without a neighbor in sight.  I lived almost solely on what I caught from the river: fat, beautiful rainbow trout.  I learned every conceivable way to prepare them: baked, smoked, sautéed, fried, boiled, stewed, and stuffed in dumplings.  I even took the risk of trying trout sashimi-style.  No cooking method, however, satisfied as much as cleaning a freshly caught fish, sprinkling it with salt and pepper, and laying it over the hot coals of a fire built on the banks of the river. 

B Yavuuhulan's 80th Anniversary [by Simon Wickham-Smith]

Finally, I promise, I received the following text from Mend-Ooyo this morning, commemorating what would tomorrow, March 15th, have been his teacher (and this week's first subject) Yavuuhulan's 80th birthday. I understand that my English translation of his collected poems will also be published tomorrow. This is the text which Mend-Ooyo posted on his blog this morning, about the events surrounding Yavuuhulan's early death at the age of 53 in February of 1982.

Download YAVUU’S LAST WORD

Modern Mongolian Literature in Seven Days: a finale of sorts [by Simon Wickham-Smith]

So there you have it.  Modern Mongolian literature in seven days.  How wonderful is that?  Of course, seven writers cannot in any way tell very much about the wide range (even within the tradition) of techniques, styles, themes and voices.  And Mongolia is a country of poets, after all, a country where poetry is the defauly literary expression and where people sing and recite poems long into the night, and drink too, so long as they remain standing up and relatively conscious.  

Where now then?  Contact me at wickhamsmith@gmx.net, the Mongolian Academy of Poetry and Culture at info@poetry-culture.mn (English is fine) and order books either from the MAPC or from Shopmongolia.  To close, here is a picture of some happy poets halfway up Bogd Uul (the holy mountain outside Ulaanbaatar) on Poets' Day a couple of years ago.  How I would like to claim that i was there and had taken the picture, but alas this is not the case.

You might recognise Mend-Ooyo (second from left) from Amarhüü's picture...the one in the beige ski-hat is Bavuudorj (Thursday's hero) and the one at far right is Urianhai, the venerable sage of Mongolian letters and a very wonderful and influential poet.  

I'd like to thank Stacey Harwood and David Lehman for having me blog this week, particularly since neither I nor my subject matter constitutes the best of American poetry.  Nonetheless, I hope that this week has opened the door onto this unknown literary land just a crack and that you, dear readers (as they still address us in the introductory essays to Mongolian books), have enjoyed the journey.

Mongolian Culture from Another Angle [by Simon Wickham-Smith]

Meet Mongolian rap artist Ice Top.

This is a video to the song "76d" which is an excoriation of the 76 members of the Great Hural, the country's parliament.  The images are not especially subtle, I personally like the two ostriches and the strangely shaggy lion, and those who know what President Enhbayar looks like will appreciate the movement of his eyes, but the music and the movement (although clearly influenced by western rap) are nonetheless remarkable somehow.

I thought that this would be an interesting adjunct to the more literary offerings thus far...

Modern Mongolian Literature in Seven Days - Part 7: L Ölziitögs

L Ölziitögs (b1972) is one of a growing number of younger poets who, while not totally rejecting the traditional thematic and stylistic concerns of Mongolian poetry, are nonetheless looking outside the country and incorporating and adapting the ideas of foreign literatures into their own work.  Her short stories (represented in today's downloads by "A Bond" and "The Aquarium") recall the Latin American magic realists, and especially Jose Luis Borges, although there is a sinister side which is also reminiscent of the early C20 writer Natsagdorj.

The third file available below contains thirteen of her poems, which are similarly modernist in spirit and treatment, although more traditional somehow in their themes.  Together with such writers as G-A Ayurzana, G Delgermaa, B Odgerel and B Galsansuh, Ölziitgs represents a spirit of innovation and experimentation which, until recently, had been all but lacking in the literature.

These poems are also important because they are some of the only poetry translations made by my friend and colleague, Sh Tsog.  Tsog was a fine man and a fine translator, originally trained in Germany as an economist, who became bored with Francis Fukuyama and who embraced the vision of revealing Mongolian literature with me to the west.  We collaborated on  Very Big White Elephant:  New Voices in Mongolian Poetry (eventually published in Ulaanbaatar in 2007) and on An Anthology of Mongolian Literature (2008), but both of these books appeared after his untimely death, at the age of 55, in 2006.  

Download ÖLZIITÖGS

Download A BOND

Download THE AQUARIUM