The Best American Poetry

What's My Line Jackie Gleason, 1953)

 

 

"Entrapment" [by Terence Winch]

Terence Winch

The people in the songs want out.
They will not be your baby anymore.
You cannot call them sweetheart.
You must stop telling them how
lovesick you are, how you can’t get
by without them. How you cry, smoke,
walk the floor. How you can’t stop
loving them. They don’t want to hear
about your dumb hurt, your feelings
about rain and moonlight, how much
you miss their kisses. How you want
to hold their hand. What you think
about their lips and eyes. They’re done.
Your desperate love has stolen all their fun.

Bonus question:: Reading this poem do you hear Ray Charles singing "I Can't Stop Loving You" or The Beatles's "I Wanna Hold Your Hand"?

From Beltway Quarterly Review,  this poem from "inside the beltway" comes from a formidable poet who has been named by Irish America Magazine as one of its “Top 100 Irish Americans.”  For a second poem by Mr. Winch click here. 

What if poetry were something else entirely? Remembering John Ashbery (Terence Winch)

I met John Asbery in November of 1973 when I went with a group of friends to hear him read in DC. Maybe it was the Library of Congress. I can’t remember. Michael Lally had turned me on to John’s 1970 book, The Double Dream of Spring, which knocked me out.  This was poetry that was at once grand, symphonic, silly, profound, and comic all at once. His formal virtuosity and his mastery of language set a new standard for many of us young poets back then.

We stayed in touch over the years. John read in Washington with some regularity and would often put me on the guest list for pre- or post-reading get-togethers. He loved a good party, preferably one that included plenty of drink, dope, wit, and attractive young men. [photo at left by Allan Penn from the New York Times Magazine]

He was extraordinarily prolific. In his 60s, he published one of my favorite Ashbery books—the dazzling, monumental Flow Chart, a 216-page epic of the imagination that I regard as one of the most significant works of literature in English (“It’s my Sonata of Experience, and I wrote it for you”).  I count another 14 books after that (not including his essays, translations, and art criticism), an astonishing late-life output that continued up to 2016’s Commotion of the Birds.  It seemed like every 18 months or so, a new Ashbery book would show up. I waited for, bought, and read each one, hoping they would keep coming forever. John’s death yesterday, 3 September 2017, at age 90 brings that streak to an end. Though I hope a few more posthumous books will appear to help all his friends and readers adjust to a world that no longer includes him.

My deepest condolences to David Kermani, John’s spouse, friend, collaborator, and companion for the past 40 years or so.

This evening I read though Flow Chart. Here are a few excerpts that called out to me:

 

Words, however, are not the culprit. They are at worst a placebo,

leading nowhere (though nowhere, it must be added, can sometimes be a    cozy

place, preferable in many cases to somewhere)...        

◙

 

  

 

...Still, life is reasonably absorbing

and there’s lots of nice people around. Most are well fed

and relaxing, and one can improve one’s mind a little

by going out to a film or having a chat with that special friend; and before

you know it it’s time to brush your teeth and go to bed.”   

◙

So what’s

to feel nervous about? We all know that we have to live for a certain time and then

unfortunately we must die, and after that no one is sure what happens. Accounts vary.  

◙

...I have the feeling my voice is just for me,

that no one else has ever heard it, yet I keep mumbling the litany

of all that has ever happened to me, childish pranks included, and when the voluminous

sun sets, its bag full, one can question these and other endeavors silently:

how far wrong did I go?    

◙

I’m the experimental model of which mankind is still dreaming, though to myself

I’m full of unworked-out bugs and stagefright...     

◙

Any day now you must start to dwell in it,

the poetry, and for this, grave preparations must be made, the walks of sand

raked, the rubble wall picked clean of dead vine stems, but what

if poetry were something else entirely, not this purple weather

with the eye of a god attached, that sees

inward and outward? What if it were only a small, other way of living,

like being in the wind?    

◙

I must ask you now to leave. It seems we are fresh out of turnips.   

 

Remembering Liam Rector on the 10th Anniversary of His Death (Terence Winch)

It's difficult for me to accept that 10 years have passed since my old friend Liam Rector took his own life. We had known each other since my early days in Washington, DC, where we were both part of the Mass Transit open poetry reading group started by Michael Lally in the early 1970s. We became better friends in the '80s and after, and I still miss his often outrageous, but always smart and funny perspective on life and poetry. I wrote about him here a year after his death. And Wikipedia offers this short bio. [photo at left by Parrish Dobson]

I learned of his death very quickly after it occurred from his longitme friend and protege David Fenza. I was shocked, but in some ways not surprised. Liam had hinted very clearly that suicide was something he regarded as a real option for him. It was over-the-top, dramatic, arresting, absolute---an act, in other words, that fit his personality perfectly. I respect his right to take his own life. I don't know what he was contending with that pushed him to this extreme, but I suspect it was a combination of medical problems and spiritual despair. He left behind his wife, Tree Swenson, herself a significant figure in the New York literary world back then; his daughter Virginia from his second marriage; and a multitude of friends, colleagues, and students.

He is a hard person to forget, and I miss him still. Here is a message he left on my answering machine sometime not too long before his death. I offer it not because of its flattering praise of my work, but to give a sense of the kind of friend he could be---full of appreciation and support for the people he cared about:

Liam Rector phone message

Here are two of my favorite poems of Liam's:

OLD COAT

Dressed in an old coat I lumber
Down a street in the East Village, time itself
Whistling up my ass and looking to punish me
For all the undone business I have walked away from,
And I think I might have stayed
In that last tower by the ocean,
The one I built with my hands and furnished
Using funds which came to me at nightfall, in a windfall....
Just ahead of me, under the telephone wires
On this long lane of troubles, I notice a gathering
Of viciously insane criminals I'll have to pass
Getting to the end of this long block in eternity.
There's nothing between us. Good
I look so dangerous in this coat.

 

MENTAL MOMMY

Home from school at six years old, first grade,
And uncle there to tell me Mommy
Gone, Mommy not be coming back any
Time soon, Liam, Mommy had to go to
Mental hospital. Nervous breakdown.
Years later Mommy, when she gets out
Of mental, often says, "If you're
A bad boy for me Liam you're
Going to send me back, back
Into mental hospital, like you did
First time." At 13
I find out Mom had been doing years
In a federal prison all that time,
For stealing, so no mental hospital for
Mommy. Breakdown ours alone.
I was on my own.

---Liam Rector

_______________________________________

Finally, here is the New York Times obituary (I have no doubt Liam would have been thrilled to know he merited a Times obit):

 

 

 

Tim Dlugos [by Terence Winch]

The last time I saw Tim Dlugos was 30 December 1989. We met for dinner at Kramer Books & Afterwords, the first bookstore/café in the land (as far as I know). It’s one of the few independent bookstores still going strong in DC, but probably more because of the food than the books. Tim had been battling AIDS for a while, and I remember being a little apprehensive about seeing him, wondering to what extent the disease might have changed him. So his arrival came as a relief, a cause for optimism—he looked better than ever, and seemed full of energy and purpose.

Starting in the early 1970s, Tim and I were part of a group of poets who participated in an open reading every Monday night in a room over the Community Book Shop in Dupont Circle in DC. The readings, called Mass Transit, were started by Michael Lally in 1971.  Mass Transit was a poetry lab, where all experiments were welcome, or at least tolerated. Many poets came up through Mass Transit, and became friends—Ed Cox, Lee Lally, Beth Joselow, Tina Darragh, Pete Inman, Liam Rector, Lynne Dreyer, Phyllis Rosenzweig, and Bernie Welt, to mention a few. We hosted a reading series at the Pyramid Gallery, bringing poets like John Ashbery to town to read with local poets. We also started a publishing venture called Some of Us Press, bringing out chapbooks by everyone from Ed Cox to Bruce Andrews. Michael left for New York in 1975, and I think Tim left town around the same time. Fortunately, Doug Lang appeared on the scene and, in his capacity as manager of Folio Books, also in Dupont Circle, became the same kind of catalyst that Michael Lally had been. Doug’s Folio readings featured Ted Berrigan, Tom Raworth, Ray DiPalma, Barbara Guest, Maureen Owen, Susan Howe, Fielding Dawson, Ted Greenwald, and dozens of others, each usually paired with a DC poet. Doug, who started a small press called Jawbone and was part of another called Titanic Books, also hosted a number of workshops, whose participants included Diane Ward, Joan Retallack, and others.

In fact, Some of Us Press published High There by Tim in 1973, which I believe was his first book, and in 1977, Jawbone brought out Tim’s chapbook For Years. In New York, Tim seemed to flourish. He became editor of the St. Mark’s Poetry Project newsletter for a while, his magnetism and openness as a person always drawing people to him. He also partied hard in the big city. Later, in poems like “Powerless,” he would write with great passion about getting sober.

Tim’s masterpiece is the poem “G-9,” named after the AIDS ward at Roosevelt Hospital in NYC. I’m not an expert in the literature to come out of the AIDS epidemic, but it’s hard to believe there is anything in that body of work more vivid and powerful than this poem (here's the text of "G-9"). In November of 1989, Tim sent me a fat envelope of poems—“Here are the fruits of my hospital stay and my first week out.” I was blown away the contents, which included “Powerless” and “G-9.” He was doing his best work in his final year of life.  “G-9” was accepted by the Paris Review not long before Tim died, of complications from AIDS on December 3, 1990, at age 40. He never lived to see the issue (#115) come out, but he was delighted to know that it would be in the magazine.

The good news is that Tim’s friend, the poet David Trinidad, is working on the first complete poems of Tim Dlugos. I’ve looked at a chunk of this manuscript, and I very much believe its publication will be a landmark literary event, bringing back to public attention an amazing and important writer. Like Whitman, Tim, through his poems, seems to be with us still. (Wikipedia entry on Tim: click here.)

In his research, David came up with a poem by Tim that I had no memory of, but was very grateful to have. I think the poem is from 1973, when I was the poetry book buyer at a shop called Discount Books:

THINGS I MIGHT DO
for Terry Winch

Might write a letter to Jim Carroll
this p.m., I finally found his address.
Might get an answer; probably not.
Might start crying when Joey calls
tonight. Might wonder if he slept
with Michael; probably won’t ask.
Some time might remember the name of
the star that the statue on the fountain
at the Circle resembles: not Leslie Howard,
but that’s pretty close. Might quit
work today, might dream about my job
again tonight, the 4th night in a row.
Might lose something if I keep on
working. Might forget to cash my check
again. Might go out dancing
with Billy whom I might call this afternoon,
and might go to bed with when parents split
for West Coast in just two weeks. Might
look for an apartment. Might make
a tremendous break and move to New York City

Might do the streets. Might get crabs.
Might be missing the world’s most beautiful
boy by writing now. Might get a sunburn.
Might go bald. Might fall asleep on the bench
like some old bum. Might leave the Circle.
Might check the poems out at Discount Books,
find Joe Brainard, find Geraud. Might wave
to Terry as I just walk past, his waving back
a p.m. highlight and distinct possibility.

-- Tim Dlugos

-- Ed. note: Terry's post with Tim's poem was originally posted on July 28, 2008, which was John Ashbery's eighty-first birthday, also Gerard Manley Hopkins's and Jackie Kennedy's.

 

Happy St. Patrick's Day! Introducing "This Day Too: Music from Irish America" by T.P. Winch et. al.

We're thrilled to announce that Terence Winch's most recent album, This Day Too: Music From Irish America is now available for download from the Free Dirt site, Spotify, iTunes, and Amazon. You will find in these songs the same talent and insights that we so admire in Terence's poems. I love this video of the tender "Childhood Ground" with its haunting evocation of a lost time and place, made all the more moving by the spare arrangement and Eileen Este's pure, clear soprano. 

You can purchase This Day Too here. 

-- sdl

"fiercely loyal and full of appreciation and affection." Remembering Ted Greenwald (1942-2016) by Terence Winch

Ted Greenwald and I had been friends for more than 40 years. Around 1973, I saw a poem of his in a poetry magazine & loved it. I don’t remember the poem or the magazine. But I got in touch with him soon thereafter and we became lifelong friends. Ted would come to DC to do readings and hang out. And I would see him in New York on my visits back to my native city. He died earlier today and I will miss him greatly, as will his many other friends.

And he was a true friend and steadfast comrade. He was also a brilliant and stunningly productive poet. I believe that recognition of the significance of his achievement as a writer will only increase with the passage of time.

We talked---for the last time, as it turned out---last month. He had been sick for a number of years, but was doing better and sounded optimistic. And whatever the conditions of his life, he remained prolific to the end, with several new books out this year alone.

Ted was the most straightforward, no-bullshit person I’ve ever known. He told you exactly what he thought in a style that could sometimes be imperative, but which I always took delight in. He insisted, e.g., back in the ‘80s that I figure out quickly how to get a song I had written, which was very Irish and traditional-sounding and which Ted loved, to Frank Sinatra. He was convinced that Frank would jump at the chance to record my song. Ted dismissed my argument that this song didn’t really seem to be up Frank’s alley. He was like that as a friend---fiercely loyal and full of appreciation and affection.

Here’s an excerpt from a review I wrote of one of Ted’s books: “Ted Greenwald’s work has always been rooted in speech, street language, word of mouth. ...Greenwald often conjoins street talk and technical innovation. ...Ted Greenwald knows what real American talk sounds like, understands the rhythm and pulse of the language, and knows how to write poems that are built around that knowledge. He is one of America’s most ambitious and provocative poets.”

I want to pick up the phone right now and call him back to us.

Remembering Easter, 1916 [by Terence Winch]

On Easter Monday of 1916, 150 or so Irish rebels took armed action against their British rulers, seizing the General Post Office (GPO) in Dublin. After a week of fighting, they lost to the thousands of British troops arrayed against them, but the Rising ultimately led to Irish independence from the mighty British Empire. Given the musical and literary traditions of the Irish, it is no surprise that the rebellion also gave rise to poems, songs, movies, and books. (In fact, Patrick Pearse, one of the leaders of the Rising, was himself a poet.) Probably the best-known of the poems is William Butler Yeats's "Easter 1916":  

Easter 1916

I
I have met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

II
That woman's days were spent
In ignorant good will,
Her nights in argument
Until her voice grew shrill.
What voice more sweet than hers
When young and beautiful,
She rode to harriers?
This man had kept a school
And rode our winged horse.
This other his helper and friend
Was coming into his force;
He might have won fame in the end,
So sensitive his nature seemed,
So daring and sweet his thought.
This other man I had dreamed
A drunken, vain-glorious lout.
He had done most bitter wrong
To some who are near my heart,
Yet I number him in the song;
He, too, has resigned his part
In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in his turn,
Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

III
Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter, seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.
The horse that comes from the road,
The rider, the birds that range
From cloud to tumbling cloud,
Minute by minute change.
A shadow of cloud on the stream
Changes minute by minute;
A horse-hoof slides on the brim;
And a horse plashes within it
Where long-legged moor-hens dive
And hens to moor-cocks call.
Minute by minute they live:
The stone's in the midst of all.

IV
Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is heaven's part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death.
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead.
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse --
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

_________________________

One of the best of the many songs that came out of the Easter Rising is "The Foggy Dew," written in 1919 by Charles O’Neill, a parish priest from County Down. This version by the great Dublin singer Frank Harte, who died a few years ago and who was once described by my friend Doug Lang as having "a voice like a tenor sax," is my favorite (listen here to "The Foggy Dew"), though Sinead O'Connor's rendition with the Chieftains also gives me the chills.   

 

And here let me offer a BAP scoop. One of the heroes of 1916 was the socialist and labor leader James Connolly, whom the Brits executed sitting down, as his battle wounds had yet to heal. One of the most stirring songs about Connolly was composed by poet-songwriter-playwright Patrick Galvin, from County Cork. Paddy, now in his 80s, visited my brother Jesse's house outside D.C. in February of 1981 for a house party, a few days after Paddy and Celtic Thunder, the band started by me and Jesse, had performed in concert together.  We recorded him talking, reading poems, and singing. So here is Paddy himself singing his composition "James Connolly" from that magical evening ('James Connolly'). Jesse, currently Cathaorleach (chairman) of our local chapter of Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann (the worldwide Irish music society), accompanies Paddy on the bodhran (drum).  Ten years earlier, we got to spend some time with Brian Heron, James Connolly's grandson and the founder of  the National Association for Irish Justice, one of a number of groups that were formed back in those days to support the civil rights movement in the north of Ireland. [right: Brian Heron, 1971; © Jesse Winch]  

The Easter Rising became the starting point for modern Irish history, its echoes clearly audible throughout the recent Troubles in the north of Ireland (as this song of my own, called "The Streets of Belfast,"demonstrates). In the years immediately following the Rising, the struggle for independence from Britain continued, eventually leading to the partition of Ireland as a condition for the establishment of the Irish Free State. Partition, in turn, spurred a terrible civil war among Irish nationalists that tore the country apart. This grim and bloody period has inspired a number of searing films, including two of recent vintage: The Wind that Shakes the Barley,  Ken Loach's 2007 film starring Cillian Murphy, and Michael Collins, the 1996 Liam Neeson film written and directed by Neil Jordan. But for me the greatest of them all is the 1935 John Ford classic, The Informer, based on a Liam O'Flaherty novel and starring Victor McLaglen as Gypo Nolan, an ill-fated "gutter Judas," to use the New York Times's memorable phrase.  (Here's a clip of McLaglen at work.)

Happy Easter & Up the Republic!

 (ed note: This post first ran on April 4, 2010)

Poets on Thanksgiving: A Roundup [by Stacey Harwood-Lehman]

Thanksgiving
 

Later, after dinner, we examine your uncle’s photos

of trees, flowers, waterfalls, birds

until I just can’t stand it another second.

I am not at one with nature.  Never was.

Some of the people can be fooled all of the time,

even when you yawn right in their faces.

 

Guests, or ghosts, have taken over the house,

lounging in the living room, watching t.v.

Ugly images of war and politics are all I see.

Cancel the rest of the holidays, please, until this

knot can be untied and our hearts released.

 

-- Terence Winch

 

Happy Thanksgivukkah from Over Here [by Moira Egan, 2013]

"I'm already sick of turkey" (by Karen Resta, 2012)

Boxed in, Blue Humorous and Bleary Eyed (Bildungsroman Holiday by Jessica Piazza, 2010)

How to Chop a Fuckton of Onions (more Bildungsroman Holiday, by Jessica Piazza, 2010)

Bildungsroman Holiday (by Jessica Piazza, 2010)

Thanksgiving, 1977, Albany NY (by Stacey Harwood, 2010)

A Poem for Thanksgiving (by Martha Silano, 2009)

Happy Thanksgiving (by Jennifer Michael Hecht, 2009)

A Poem for Thanksgiving Week (by Laura Orem, 2009)

Venerdi Nero (?) by Moira Egan (2009)

Happy Thanksgiving (2009 - photograph)

"We Gather Together" (2009 - video)

A Thanksgiving Post (by Laura Orem, 2008)

Thanksgiving and Black Friday (by Jennifer Michael Hecht, 2008)

Your Brain on Turkey and Fixings (by Martha Silano, 2008)

Live Poetry Blogging on Thanksgiving (by Sharon Mesmer, 2008)

(Not so) Live Blogging, 10:54 pm [(by Sharon Mesmer, 2008)

Live Thanksgiving Blogging 12:26 pm (by Sharon Mesmer, 2008)

Happy Spanksgiving, from the flarflist [by Sharon Mesmer, 2008]

Pre-Thanksgiving Emergency Narrowly Averted (by Martha Silano, 2008)

September 10, 2015: Reading and Discussion with Donald Berger, Joshua Weiner, and Terence Winch

7:00 p.m.

Upshur Street Books

827 Upshur St NW,
Washington, District of Columbia 20011

(202)726-0380

Come join the conversation with a brilliant triumvirate of poets!

Donald Berger: poet and author of The Long Time.

Joshua Weiner: poet and author of The Figure of a Man Being Swallowed by a Fish.

Terence Winch: poet, writer, musician, and author of This Way Out.

-- sdh

Everything Must Go: Selling the Past, with Regrets (Terence Winch)

 

I found the poem below recently in a pile of papers from around 2008. I had no memory of having written it, but I’m sure many writers have the same kind of experience. Forgetfulness enshrouding us all. What intrigued me is that the poem seems to predict what happened a year or two after I wrote it. In late 2010, I sold a precious piece of my past—an Irish button accordion I got when I was around 8 years old. I can still dimly remember going to Manhattan with my father and his best friend P.J. Conway to buy this instrument, which I think cost about $200, a fortune for my family in those days. It was beautiful but hard to play—the keyboard action was high and stiff.

The Black Box, painting by Susan Campbell

When I retired from the Smithsonian in 2009, I needed to look for some extra money, and that’s when selling the old box occurred to me. I’d hardly touched it since 1980-81, when I replaced it with a succession of instruments that are easier to play.  I don’t think it was a bad decision to sell it. My father had a kind of Zen-like non-attachment to material things, and I think he would have blessed the de-accessioning of the box.  It was bought by a Dublin accordion-player of impressive ability named Ray Dempsey (pictured below). He in turn sold it to a Frenchman named Laurent Jarry, who presides over an accordion emporium in the Paris suburb of Montreuil that I would love to visit one day.     

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

Black Box

 

My father took me downtown

and bought me the most amazing

black box. A beauty, with flags,

harps, and flowers,

all in rhinestone. My name

affixed to it, in big block

letters, also of rhinestone.

To me, they were white diamonds.

 

The box was very heavy.

As I got older, it grew

even heavier. Because only

an expert could open it,

I never put anything into it.

After my father died, I put

the black box into a bigger

box and didn’t think

about it for many years.

 

Until a few weeks ago, when

I was overcome with a sense

of the past, which has a distinct

smell, like that of someone eating

Doritos in the Metro, and I looked

everywhere for the box. But it’s

gone, and all those ancient

attachments, so glittery

and fragile, gone with it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Laurent Jarry's Accordion shop

Ted Berrigan in Irish America [by Terence Winch]

I’ve played Irish music and written poetry for most of my life, but have generally kept these two worlds separate.  A major exception to this practice took place at St. Mark’s Church in lower Manhattan on November 10, 1982, when an Irish-American night at the Poetry Project (organized by my friend Bob Callahan, who passed away last year) took place. Bob asked me and a number of other poets to read, and also invited my band, Celtic Thunder, to play a concert set after the reading.In addition to Bob and me, the line-up included Maureen Owen, Robert Kelly, Susan Howe, Eileen Myles, and Ted Berrigan. It was a historic night — I’m not sure Irish America has seen anything like it before or since.

 

A friend of Bob’s, whose name I’ve forgotten, took some photos that night, and for reasons I don’t recall, Bob gave me a contact sheet. The photo above is from that contact sheet and shows, left to right, Ted Berrigan, Maureen Owen, Robert Kelly, me, Bob Callahan, and Susan Howe (Eileen Myles, for whatever reason, is not in the photo).  At that point in our history, Celtic Thunder included Dominick Murray (guitar, vocals), Linda Hickman (flute, vocals), Tony DeMarco (fiddle), Jesse Winch (bodhran [drum], bouzouki), and me (button accordion).  Tony was sick the night of the reading, but the photo below (taken by the late Pat Cady) shows Celtic Thunder's 1982 line-up at a ceili in, I think, Baltimore.

There were many great moments that night at St. Mark’s.I especially remember Eileen Myles striding to the microphone dressed as a Catholic schoolgirl, much to the delight and enthusiasm of the audience, and then delivering a terrific reading.Everyone, really, was at his or her best.But the highlight for me was Ted Berrigan’s uproarious and masterful performance.

Ted had a huge number of friends, fans, and followers, attracted by his charisma and humor, but most of all by his deep love and commitment to poetry and his inventive, expansive, inspiring work.Michael Lally (who, if he hadn't moved to L.A. back then, would certainly have been part of the St. Mark's reading) turned me on to Ted’s book The Sonnets in 1971, right after I moved to D.C. from New York, and I was hooked.  Besides the night of the reading, I think I met Ted only one other time, in October of 1977, when Doug Lang invited him to D.C. to read at Folio Books, the site of Doug’s legendary reading series.Ted hung out for a couple of days and we got to know each other a bit. He even signed my copy of Red Wagon  with “For Terry, whose poetry I like very much, best, Ted Berrigan.” That was a compliment I was happy to get.    

About four years ago I bought a CD recorder so I could start digitizing some of my old LPs, which I never got rid of, as well as hundreds of cassette tapes, mostly from the ’70s and ’80s, stuffed into empty tissue boxes.  Last week I digitized the 1982 reading.  I’ll include Ted’s segment (in two parts that overlap: Download Ted Berrigan 1, with intro by Bob Callahan; Download Ted Berrigan 2). Ted once said, in an interview: “My poetry is mostly talk, and sometimes it’s heightened speech.  It’s not the words of rhetoric so much as the tone of rhetoric; it’s an Irish kind of speech—sometimes I’m making speeches, other times I’m talking—like I’m talking a walk to the store to buy the paper and back.”  You'll see what he means when you listen to his reading.

On July 4th, 1983, just eight months after the Irish-American event, Ted died, at age 48. What a tremendous loss this was. There was a memorial reading at St. Mark’s four days later in which a number of his friends (including Kenneth Koch, who concludes his remarks with a reading of the last two pages of Ted's "Tambourine Life": Download Kenneth Koch remarks)  paid tribute to him. I digitized that tape yesterday, and was halfway through the process before it dawned on me that yesterday was the 26th anniversary of Ted Berrigan's death. 

-- Terence Winch

(ed. note: This post originally appeared on July 5, 2009.)

Saturday, November 8, 2014 - Well Versed: A Celebration of Poetry from Ireland and America

 

For registration or other information, visit the American Irish Teachers Association or contact Doris Marie Meyer at dorismeyer@aol.com or 917-691-2883

Poem: "The Documents" by Terence Winch

In celebration of American Archives Month, the National Archives has partnered with the Academy of American Poets to present original poems inspired by the holdings of the National Archives.

Ray DiPalma’s Obedient Laughter (Terence Winch)

 

Ray DiPalma’s new book, Obedient Laughter (Los Angeles, Otis Books /Seismicity Editions) is made up of six sections, all of which showcase DiPalma’s lifelong exploration of the uses of language “without a fixed destination, as a matter of form,/bargaining notations, mnemonic targets, omertà.”

The longest and most engaging section of the new book is called “Equivoques,” which consists of forty-five pages of mostly two-line pieces that seem to be part fortune cookie, part fractured syllogism, with puns, mondegreens, and other odd, playful, wise, and inventive uses of language throughout. Here are some of my favorites:

AS THOUGHT OCCURS

Microcurrents are detectable in the finger muscles.

 

WHEN I DIE

That’ll be the day.

 

JUNKYARD DOGS

Now living in the penthouse by the reservoir.

 

A WHITE SPORT COAT           

And a pink potato.

 

OUT OF EGYPT           

Into the frying pan.

 

DOGS FOR THE DEAD

’Scuse me, you misunderstood, it’s dogs for the deaf.

 

SACRED AND UNDENIABLE

No, Tom, let’s go with self-evident.

 

BUT DON’T GET ME WRONG

I wish they all could be hallelujah girls.

 

THE DEAD MARX BROTHER

Groupo.

 

HE’S A GREAT IRISH MUSICIAN AND POET

But how many more times can he get beat up?

 

CORRUPTION DEMON WORSHIP AND SORCERY

Further reasons the pump don’t work.

 

COPLAND’S APPALACHIAN SPRING OR BARBER’S MEDEA SUITE

Neither one.

 

WRITING SLOWLY ENOUGH

For the ink to flow through the letters.

 

HOW HAVE YOU CONDUCTED YOURSELF IN THIS LIFE

Because now awaiting you on the other side are 72 vegans.

 

Yo, Dude: Shelley & Milton Meet Doug Lang [Terence Winch]

 

 

In honor of  Percy Bysshe Shelley's recent birthday and John Milton's perpetual relevance, here are two pieces from Doug Lang’s funny, dazzling, and supremely inventive sonnet collection, dérangé (which full disclosure requires me to acknowledge that I happily helped bring to publication):  

 

Paradise Dude sonnet

 

Of Mans First Disobedience, dude, and the Fruit

Of that Forbidden Tree, dude, whose mortal taste

Brought Death into the World, dude, OMG, and all our woe,

With loss of EDEN, dude, till one greater Dude, dude,

Restore us, dude, and regain the blissful Seat, dude,

Sing Heav'nly Muse, OMG, that on the secret top

Of OREB, dude, or of SINAI, dude, didst inspire

That Shepherd, dude, who first taught the chosen Seed, dude.

In the Beginning, dude, how the Heav'ns and Earth, dude,

Rose out of CHAOS, OMG: Or if SION Hill, OMG

Delight thee more, dude, and SILOA'S Brook that flow'd, dude,

Fast by the Oracle of God, dude, WTF; I thence

Invoke thy aid to my adventrous Song, dude,

That OMG with no middle flight intends to soar, dude, just sayin’

 

 

 ___________________________________________________________________

Yo, Yo, Oz sonnet

 

Yo, yo, I met a traveler from an antique land, yo,

Who said: Yo, Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert, yo. Near them, on the sand, yo,

Half sunk, yo, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, yo, and sneer of cold command, yo,

Tell that its sculptor, yo, well those passions read, yo,

Which yet survive, yo, stamped on these lifeless things, yo,

The hand that mocked them, yo, and the heart that fed, yo;

And on the pedestal, yo,  these words appear:

“My name is Ozymandias, yo, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair, yo!”

Nothing beside remains, yo. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, yo, boundless and bare, yo,

The lone and level sands, yo, stretch far away, yo.

 

Contentment Is Wealth: The Top Ten Ways to Ultimate Success & Happiness in Life [Terence Winch]

Last week, on 17 May 2014,  in the Theater at Madison Square Garden, I gave the graduate commencement address and received an honorary doctorate from my alma mater, Iona College.  A number of friends have suggested I post the text of the speech, and so here it is.

____________________________________________________________________

 

Thank you, Iona faculty & staff, friends & family.  It’s an honor to have this opportunity to speak to you, my fellow Gaels,  this afternoon here at Madison Square Garden.  I’m still recovering from a recent vocal cord surgical procedure, so please excuse my fragile voice.

Like all of us vulnerable humans who finally finish with formal schooling, at least for now, you are about pursue a post-student life of fear, doubt, ambition, and self-delusion.  To assist you as you confront the universe as newly credentialed, highly educated persons, I offer you my address today, which is called   

Contentment Is Wealth: The Top Ten Ways to Ultimate Success & Happiness in Life

 10. Self-Forgiveness—Learn to forgive yourself, for you know not what you do much of the time, at least if you’re like me. It’s harder than one might think to engage in self-forgiveness.  Sometimes it’s actually easier to go with guilt, depression, anxiety, anger, self-loathing— these and other well-established choices are always available to our needy psyches. But shun them. Life is too short, something those of us who are getting up there know better than anyone. And while you’re at it, try even to forgive others. See also: self-acceptance.

9. Anger management—Do not press “send” when you’re pissed off without first having someone you trust read the crazy diatribe you’ve just written.  I have learned the wisdom of this directive through ugly & painful firsthand experience.

8.  Hygiene—Get your teeth cleaned professionally twice a year.  Believe me, you’ll save a lot of money and grief in the end.

7. Accomplishment—If there’s something meaningful you want to accomplish, don’t get overwhelmed. Achievement is most often the result of an accumulation of many minor incremental steps that are really no big deal.  Alcoholics Anonymous encourages recovering drinkers to take it one day at a time.  The truth in that advice applies to many of life’s struggles.  The great novelist & short-story writer Flannery O’Connor wrote in one of her letters, “If you do the same thing every day at the same time for the same length of time, you’ll save yourself from many a sink. Routine is a condition of survival.” Scholars talk of how African-Americans—over centuries of spirit-crushing slavery and its long aftermath—practiced the art of Making a Way Out of No Way, of transcending suffering as much as possible through resilience and creativity. And through that fierce commitment to make a way out of no way, came incredibly rich traditions in music, literature, and other areas of accomplishment, not the least of which were sheer survival and endurance.  Never give up.

 [left: Flannery O'Connor]

 6. Finances—Don’t lend money to poets or fiddle players. Although I must make clear that poets and fiddlers occupy a place of high status in my own worldview.  I am also very fond of button-accordion players, to whose ranks I belong.  I started playing music as a kid, but I never really had much by way of instruction, so I wound up a musical illiterate, which sometimes drives my son Michael, who is a very accomplished musician, a little crazy. I like to say that I’m self-taught, and that I had a really bad teacher. But here, let me say something about perfection:  perfection is another thing to shy away from.  During my years at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian in DC, I helped produce many publications, and among the first of them was a book on Navajo blankets. I learned that it was and is the practice of Navajo master weavers to always introduce something they call “the spirit line,” a little flaw woven into the pattern of the rug, so as not to compete with, and thus offend, the Creator, the Great Spirit.  Imperfection, in any case, makes life more interesting.  Oh, and let me retract what I said at the start of this number:  If you want to be favorably immortalized by poets or have musicians compose a tune in your honor, always lend them money, or, even better, save yourself the trouble & just give them the damn cash.

 5. Have Mercy—I love the sound of the word mercy. A one-word poem. I want some mercy. For me. For everybody. Forgiveness implies a wrong erased, but mercy is more the simple  bestowing of benevolence. Visit people in the hospital or the nursing home even though you, along with the rest of us, hate hospitals and nursing homes. Significant intangible power is generated when mercy is released into the atmosphere.

 4. Critical Thinking—Don’t respect your elders or people in authority unless they have actually earned that respect. Let me here recommend a piece of writing that I first read as an undergraduate at Iona & that has stayed with me since, and that is George Orwell’s essay, “Politics and the English Language,” written in 1946.  Orwell [photo left], who once memorably assailed what he called “all the smelly little orthodoxies which are now contending for our souls,”  was a prophetic writer, as his novels 1984 and Animal Farm clearly show.  Orwell will help you de-construct all the intellectual malware infecting our political discourse.  For me, critical thinking involves inventing your own definitions by thinking about what any concept really means to you. People today often say, for example, they are “spiritual” but not necessarily religious, and I felt I needed to define spirituality for myself, which I decided means having an inner life, interior life, the life of the mind, the examined life. It means to go deeper into yourself. Likewise I define “critical thinking” as intellectual wakefulness, mindful attentiveness to whatever you encounter. Not always easy to do.   Let me also salute William Blake [right], the great visionary & eccentric 19th-century English poet, who said: “Without Contraries Is No progression,” and “The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind. “    Those are among a number of Blake’s proverbs I memorized when I was an Iona undergraduate & they’ve stayed with me all my life.  And they seem as true to me today as they did in the 1960s.

 3.  Fake It—Sometimes you will have to fake it, you will have to make it up out of nothing, you will have to just go on your nerve, as the great poet Frank O’Hara once prescribed, and those are often the times when you break through to a sense of clarity & insight about yourself.    O’Hara also wrote, in one of his poems, that

            the only thing to do is simply continue
            is that simple
            yes, it is simple because it is the only  thing to do
            can you do it
            yes, you can because it is the only thing to do

I have always found great comfort in those lines, in their wonderful assertion of spirit & tenacity.  And speaking of faking it, don’t forget the Imposter Syndrome, that sense we have that we’re all just pretending to be something we’re not. It’s okay, it’s all part of faking it. Let it go. Live with it. We are all imposters. Forgive yourself (see #10).

 2.  Risk Taking—Never get the extended warranty. And always buy the raffle ticket—I’ve won the raffle at least 3 times in my life; if you want to be an opera singer, or work with chimpanzees, or start your own detective agency, don’t wait till you’re an old person. On the other hand, don’t drive blindfolded.   

 1.  The last & most important of the top 10 ways to ultimate success & happiness in life—The  Moll Niland Principle.  My mother was a farmgirl named Bridie Flynn from Loughrea in county Galway in Ireland. She was one of 11 children, and she died in 1962 when I was 16 and still in high school, and I still miss her, 52 years later. Out of those 11 in her family, only 3, my mother and 2 of her brothers, came to the U.S. So I have many relatives back in Ireland, including cousins in Ballyvaughan, county Clare, on my father’s side. And in 1980 I went over there with my band—the one, true, authentic Celtic Thunder (not to be confused with that slick PBS tv program that, shall we say, borrowed my group’s name)—and asked my then-girlfriend Susan, whom I married the following year, to come with us.      

During that trip, we had many adventures, but the highlight for me was when I took Susan to meet my Auntie Moll, the eldest of my mother’s siblings, amazingly still alive & going strong in 1980 at age 96.                                                              

 [photo: My mother, Bridie Winch [nee Flynn],wearing the dress with the big bow, with friends & relations, Galway, 1930.]

She lived in a very humble, thatched-roof cottage in the countryside, where she still cooked on an open hearth turf fire. She had these beautiful, big eyes and a benevolent aura about her. Recalling her now, remembering the richness of her spirit, brings to my mind the title of a well-known traditional Irish tune called “Contentment Is Wealth.” Susan and I sat next to each other, Auntie Moll facing us. We chatted for a bit, but then at one point she took hold of our hands, grabbed them firmly, and looked us both in the eye and said, “Are ye enjoying life?”   We thought for a moment because it felt like the most important question we’d ever been asked, & then said yes we were. She squeezed our hands happily and said, “That’s good. Enjoy life.”  I know—it’s not a complex or arcane idea, but coming from this extraordinary old woman who had lived so long & knew so much, it felt to us like the most profound and profoundly simple & necessary lesson of human existence:

ENJOY LIFE.                                 

Thank you, and congratulations to all of you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Terence & Jesse Winch with Auntie Moll (Niland), Ireland, 1980

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Tuesday, April 29, 7:00 PM: Hanging Loose Press Showcases Award Winning Authors Meghan O'Rourke, Michael Lally, and Terence P. Winch

 

 (L to R: Meghan O'Rourke, Michael Lally, Terence Winch)

 

Tuesday, April 29, 2014 7:00PM

Brooklyn Public Library

Central Library, Dweck Center

10 Grand Army Plaza
Brooklyn, NY 11238

718-230-2100

Founded in 1966, Brooklyn-based Hanging Loose Press is one of the oldest independent presses in the US. This reading will showcase the latest work from three of their award-winning authors: Meghan O'Rourke, Michael Lally, Terence Winch.

Meghan O’Rourke’s books of poetry include Halflife, which was a finalist for Britain's Forward First Book Prize, and most recently Once.  She is also the author of the memoir The Long Goodbye, a chronicle of mourning written after the death of her mother.  She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Terence Winch's most recent book of poems is This Way Out (Hanging Loose, 2014), which was preceded by Lit from Below (Salmon, 2013) and Falling Out of Bed in a Room with No Floor (Hanging Loose, 2011). Boy Drinkers, a series of mostly narrative poems that center around religion and Winch's New York brand of Irish-Catholicism, came out in 2007. His collection of non-fiction stories, called That Special Place: New World Irish Stories, grows out of his experiences playing traditional Irish music with Celtic Thunder, a band he startedwith his brother Jesse in 1977. Terence Winch lives in Washington, D.C. 

Michael Lally is the author of twenty-seven books, including two collections of poetry and prose from Black Sparrow Press — one an American Book Award winner for 2000, It’s Not Nostalgia — and the long poem March 18, 2001, jointly published by Libellum and Charta, with artwork by Alex Katz. He is also the author of Cant Be Wrong from Coffee House Press, which won the Oakland PEN Josephine Miles Award for “excellence in literature.” He has appeared in many films and TV shows and worked as a scriptwriter, or “doctor,” from the late 1970s to the early 2000s.

For directions to the library, go here.

-- sdh

How I Lost My Virginity [by Terence Winch]

Ed. Note: We have been interviewing poets who are ex-virgins about how they lost theirs. Our inspiration: this poem by Terence Winch from his new book "This Way Out" (Hanging Loose Press, 2014). Keep those anecdotes coming.

How I Lost My Virginity

I cannot tell you how I lost my virginity.
It’s a secret that to some extent depends
upon the meaning of virginity. When I go out
at night, as I did tonight, and I wander these
beautiful 19th-century rooms, which is what
I did, and I speak to very smart people about
art and books, and who might run for president
next time around, I do not tell any of them how
I lost my virginity.  No. Instead, I tell them one
of my many pig jokes, and they are very amused,
as they should be, for these jokes of mine
about pigs are very funny and I’m pretty good
at delivering the punch line. 

Later, in the car on the way home, I sit
in the back and we have an intense discussion
about some very serious fallings-out among
our erstwhile friends. One of our old friends,
it turns out, is a child molester, but a lot of people
are unaware of that about him. Even I, for many
years, compartmentalized this information
and remained his friend until it slowly
began to dawn on me: this guy’s a child
molester. Until it happens to you with
someone you care about, you won’t
really understand what I’m talking about.

So don’t judge. As for my virginity, I lost it
a thousand times, once in an apartment,
and once outdoors at the beach, with a
full moon above, the two of us pretending
to be in love. And on one other occasion,
I never lost my virginity at all,
as far as I can recall.

-- Terence Winch

Love/Hate by T.P. Winch

(Ed. note: I had just about exhausted every crime series available on Netflix when Terence Winch wrote to suggest that I check out Love/Hate, an Irish crime drama series broadcast on RTÉ Television. The show is irresistible, and I was especially drawn to Darren, a central character played by the compelling young actor Robert Sheehan. Just the other day, this poem appeared in my in-box. I love it! Thank you T.P. Winch for letting me share it here. -- sdh)

Love/Hate

                        for stacey harwood

I will be upstairs in just a minute,

I promise you. But first I must

compose a long, complex symphony

dedicated to Duke Ellington, which

I have pieced together from riffs

and bits off old tinny 78s, scratched

with skips but full of musical

notes, like A, G, and E.

 

If I could get out of this chair,

I would. And I would ascend

then to the Throne of the

Angelic Mobsters of RTE

who are right this very moment

murdering each other on those

dark Dublin streets. It would be

a laugh and a half times two.

 

But I can’t get up. I am not

able to keep my promises.

The serenity prayer is a cruel

joke. Baudelaire was an alcoholic

and so’s your mother, and

that's a fact, revealed in the third

act, which I can’t stay around for.

Sorry, sorry. My bad. I’m sorry.