The Best American Poetry

Indran Amirthanayagam---Poetic Globalist (Terence Winch)

Indran Amirthanayagam is one of the most remarkable figures roaming the contemporary poetic landscape. Like some of the poets he most admires—Cavafy, Neruda, Hikmet (all mentioned in the poem below)—he is a citizen of the world. Born into the Catholic Tamil community (a minority within a minority) of Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) in 1960, he left with his family for England when he was eight, seeking refuge from his native land’s ongoing strife as well as care for an autistic brother. He lived in the U.K. for six years, attending grammar and primary school there. When he was fourteen, the family moved again, this time to Honolulu, where his father, also a poet, had been offered a job. In Hawaii, Indran was one year ahead of Barry Obama, whom he knew slightly, at Punahou School.  In 1978, he left Hawaii for Haverford College in Pennsylvania. After getting his B.A. there, he moved to New York to become, like Lorca, “a poet in New York.” He picked up a master's at the Columbia School of Journalism and remained in New York until 1993, when he got a job with the U.S. Foreign Service, having  become a U.S. citizen in the late ‘80s.

Indran reading “Fire Department”

His Foreign Service positions have included stints in Argentina, Belgium, the Ivory Coast, Mexico, India,  Canada, Peru, and Haiti. This is a man who gets around.

He writes and publishes in English, French, Spanish, Haitian Creole, and Portuguese (but sadly and ironically, he has forgotten Tamil, his first language). In the DC area, where he has many friends, he runs a reading series at a Haitian restaurant called Port au Prince and has just become editor of the Beltway Poetry Quarterly, an online journal. He is indefatigable; he works full time; he writes a poem a day, at a minimum; he travels constantly. In the first half of this year alone, he felt he simply had to go to San Francisco to help celebrate Ferlinghetti’s hundredth birthday; he caught a train from DC to New Orleans to take part in a literary festival; he brought his 83-year-old mother back to Sri Lanka for the first time in 30 years; he’s made several trips to New York. He may be the most ubiquitous poet on the planet.

He always wears a hat. 

His poems (the ones in English, anyway) have a directness, almost a plainness, about them. His work is deeply literary, full of reverence for his fellow poets, but devoid of stylistic pretensions. The poems are like enhanced emails, addressed to his friends and readers, but made resonant and luminous through the work of the imagination.

 

Gift at the End

I woke up the other day and thought about the best gift

I could offer friends turning a year older on the various

continents—I know people everywhere like you, thanks

to powerful social media—a poem, certainly, electronic

card, phone call, even a visit? Can you imagine boarding

 

a steel and aluminum plane—wood used only

for some interiors in first class, the metallic bird

driven by a well-rested pilot and a series of computers--

to say hello to you in Rotterdam, or Madras,

or in the port city of Alexandria? But I know only

 

Cavafy there, through poetry, and in Moscow,

Nazim tootling about in a car, metallic also, not yet

with dynamite under the hood, and Neruda straddling

a horse through the Andres on the way to Argentina,

walking on the beach at Wellawatta with his mongoose.

 

So how to justify these loose associations, stream

of consciousness running through the World Wide Web

without any brake, no formal mechanism to stopper

imagination and force, at least, the appearance

of form, migration certainly the only truth.

 

and the need to finish the poem, walk it back home,

stop the beast in the kitchen, give him a treat,

some Wilfred Owen, just days before

the War’s end, shot dead—dulce et decorum est—

or straight to the point, the full stop.

 

—Indran Amirthanayagam,  10 July 2019

 

 

 

Poem for Father's Day (Terence Winch)

My father, Paddy Winch (1905--1971), worked as the custodian of St. Thomas Aquinas elementary school in the Bronx, which this poem commemorates. He was a very generous and loving man, much beloved by his children and all who knew him. The photo shows him playing the banjo in 1958 in the house in Cahercrea, County Galway, Ireland, where my mother, Bridie Flynn, was born and raised. My parents were in Ireland that summer, their first trip back in almost 30 years. (Dublin cousins Noel Rogan and Martin Dawson are also seen in the photo.)

 

Custodian

            for charlie fanning

_________________________________

 

I ran the shovel along the street,

a razor path through the sidewalk face,

snow lather parting for me, for my father,

our feet crunching in the city night.

 

We grabbed the garbage cans from school

and church and dragged them up the iron

stairs.  I lugged burlap bags stuffed

with bingo cards, light as cream puffs.

 

We swept the auditorium with green sawdust

from huge drums.  We hammered and drilled

in his workshop, where tools hung on pegboard,

their images silhouetted behind them 

 

For instant identification and placement.

Once he sawed his index finger in half

on the power saw in a moment of inattention

in a life otherwise built of skill and care.  

 

Once a year the Monsignor made him climb inside

the giant boiler and clean it out

with enormous pipe cleaners till he was black

with soot that took days to wash off.

 

Sonny boy, he called me, and laddie buck.

He always said just do your best. 

We loved to watch him fall asleep

on the couch, Daily News over his face

 

Snores filling the apartment

with the music of rest well deserved.

His finger took years to heal enough

for him to play again but a black scar

 

Ran down its center. He’d give me a rub

with his unshaven face, rough as sandpaper.

He’d pretend he didn’t know me, scrubbed from

the tub, the lovely lie delighting me every time.

 

from Boy Drinkers (Hanging Loose Press, 2007)

 

Whitman in Washington [by Terence Winch]

For six years I worked in the old Patent Office Building in Washington, where the Smithsonian’s American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery are located. The building began its service to the people in 1840, making it one of Washington’s landmarks. I worked there as an editor from 1986 to 1992, before the recent renovations, completed in 2006. In my time, the building still had the feel of the 19th century. I entered every morning through the basement, which always made me think of the catacombs—bulging, thick walls, narrows corridors, stairs that might have met the building code a hundred-plus years ago.  Here's a daguerreotype from 1846, showing the building in its early days (and the early days of photography):

What really made this a special place for me was that Walt Whitman had trod these very same corridors during the Civil War, when the building became a makeshift hospital: "Overflow casualties were housed in the Capitol, in churches, taverns, and schools, in the Georgetown prison and General Lee’s Alexandria mansion. Whitman found them lying between rows of glass display cases in the Patent Office, ‘noblest of Washington’s buildings.’ The Greek Revival shrine to American ingenuity was normally an exhibition hall for models representing ‘every kind of utensil, machine, or invention, it ever enter’d the mind of man to conceive.’ …Now it was a hospital, ‘a curious scene, especially at night when lit up. The glass cases, the beds, the forms lying there, the gallery above, and the marble pavement under foot—the suffering and fortitude to bear it in various degrees—occasionally, from some, the groan that could not be repress’d.’” (from Justin Kaplan’s life of Whitman). I would often imagine Whitman making his rounds in the same building where I worked, sometimes even sensing his presence.

“Whitmanesque” has come to mean that big-hearted, empathetic embrace of whatever life places in one’s path, that exuberant appetite for experience. Whitman’s invention of American poetry has a lot to do with that expansive spirit, and with his frankness, whether about war or sex. He did not back down, or look away. He did not write like anyone who came before. His use of language—open, plainspoken, direct—is the antithesis of poetic. He remains alive in his work because the work itself is so immediate. It is language with a pulse.

There’s a remarkable 1875 chalk on paper drawing of Whitman by Thomas Dewing in the American Art Museum’s collection. Reproductions of it fail to capture its depth and power. When you look at the original, you almost feel like you’re face to face with Walt himself. Because of conservation concerns, the work is very rarely displayed, but I used to ask one of the curators to take it out of storage and show it to me every once in a while.

When the museums in the Patent Office building re-opened in 2006, I was delighted to find a little room in the Portrait Gallery solely devoted to Whitman—with paintings and photographs, and rare copies of his work on display. I went back there last Wednesday evening after work to further explore the Whitman room, only to discover it had been replaced. Too bad—they should have made it a permanent exhibition.

For my week of guest blogging on the BAP site, I think I’ll mostly stay on the subject of Washington poets, or at least some of those poets I’ve been fortunate enough to know.

My current attentiveness to Whitman I believe derives from a visit to the Walt Whitman rest stop on the Jersey Turnpike on the way back from Connecticut a few weeks ago:

Namesakes

OK. We get on 95 and drive all day.
We stop at the Walt Whitman rest stop
on the Jersey Turnpike, and the dog and I
both pee in a secret wooded area just beyond
the trash cans and parked cars. We are hurtling
through space and time, through Connecticut,
New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland.
O Walt—and Joyce Kilmer—your poems have earned
you Turnpike rest stops! Horrible places jammed
with anxious travelers in need of a bathroom.
I buy bacon and egg on a croissant and wash it down
with water. But these are not the worst of monuments.
Joyce could praise those leafy arms, while Walt would
love the salt of the earth in their restless wandering.

(ed note: This post first appeared on July 27, 2008)

Brendan Behan Remembered [Terence Winch]

There’s a picture of Brendan Behan standing outside the Dublin Zoo with a bemused look on his face and a large snake curled around his neck.  The photo reveals much about Brendan, who died 55 years ago today, on March 20, 1964, at the age of forty-one. He was a comedian who liked to shock people and who wasn’t afraid to take chances.  He was an unstoppable ham who would do nearly anything to entertain his audience.  His life, or legend, nearly overshadowed his work in its claim on public attention.  His fans were sometimes more interested in the snake around his neck than in his writing.

He was a man of many talents, with the charm and magnetism of a movie star.  An accomplished singer who knew hundreds, maybe thousands, of songs, Brendan came from a musical background—his father played the fiddle, his uncle wrote the Irish National Anthem, his brother Dominic wrote “The Patriot Game,” one of the best-loved Irish songs to come out of Ireland’s struggles.  Brendan himself composed many songs, some of which are part of his plays and one which he claimed was written with a threatening pistol at his head.  He was fluent in the Irish language and wrote the first version of The Hostage (an Giall) as Gaeilge.  He had lived in France, spoke good French, and claimed to have written pornography in Paris. He was precocious writer, turning out reasonably good verse as early as age nine.  He first started drinking when he was a boy, so his two major activities in later life—drinking and writing—were off to an early start.

As he grew older and more famous, his taste for “the gargle” took greater hold of him.  In his late twenties and early thirties, when he was turning out the work on which his reputation would ultimately rest, he was capable of long periods of hard work without any intake of alcohol.  But as he conquered the public with his brilliant memoir Borstal Boy and his two best plays, The Quare Fellow and The Hostage, he lost the stamina to keep on producing work of the same stature.   His public demanded the famous tough-talking funny Irish writer, and Brendan hated to disappoint a ready audience. It wasn’t, of course, all the public’s fault.  Brendan loved pub life, good times, music, talk.  He was certainly aware of how he was ruining himself and his future as a writer, but that awareness was no match for his thirst.  

As a boy and young man he was a political extremist, having taken part in a 1939-40 IRA bombing campaign (one with numerous parallels to the later IRA bombings that were part of the Troubles in Northern Ireland) in Britain, where he was arrested in Liverpool at the age of sixteen and sentenced to three years in borstal (something like reform school). Although he had abandoned active participation in the IRA by the time he was an established writer, the same wild and rebellious spirit that landed him in borstal—and in an Irish prison for his part in a shoot-out between the Irish police and the IRA less than a year after his release from borstal—also landed him in numerous bars on both sides of the Atlantic, wherein he challenged his health rather than the established order.  It was in the pubs that he played Brendan Behan, the famous ex-con with a big mouth and great talent. 

Ultimately, the booze got the best of him.  Friends, family, doctors, editors—many of the people in his life—tried to help him control his need for drink.  But he wasn’t up to the task.  There was a public hungry for the character Brendan Behan had created, and he wanted to come through for his fans.  His drinking, though it was bringing him closer to an early death with every passing day, was also a central element of his public act.  Towards the end he was in and out of hospitals frequently. His wife Beatrice, or some friend perhaps, would discover him unconscious in his hotel room in a diabetic coma and rush him to a hospital.  He amazed medical people with his powers of recovery and disheartened those who loved him with his many drunken escapades and self-destructive compulsions.  Much of his talent was destroyed along with his liver, so that at the end he was almost a parody of himself, trying desperately to live up to his reputation as legendary raconteur and tireless literary comedian.

His life was full of contradictions.  He hated and feared death and didn’t even like the subject brought up in his presence.  Yet he destroyed himself at an age when he should have been just reaching the peak of his powers as an artist.  He was known throughout the world as a brawling macho Irishman, yet he was also bisexual and wrote at least one early story, unearthed by Ulick O’Connor in his fine biography of Brendan, which can clearly be categorized as gay.  Even Borstal Boy includes many touching scenes (no pun intended) among the imprisoned boys that are obviously sexual in nature.  Brendan apparently worried about what a public revelation of his sexual complexities would do to his image, but such an expose never occurred in his lifetime.

Brendan’s last books were all spoken into a tape recorder and later put together with the help of his devoted editor, Rae Jeffs.  He had lost the ability to sit down at a typewriter and work at his craft.  In the end, Brendan was in the hospital, dying of alcoholism, when he got hold of some drink through a misguided visitor.  That apparently finished him off.  There were to be no more miraculous recoveries. 

Borstal Boy was Brendan’s masterpiece, the book in which, as they say, he found his voice. In the making over a period of many years, it displays all Brendan’s talents as a story-teller and humorist.  A moving account of his life from his arrest in Liverpool to his release from borstal and return to Ireland, the book is put together with exacting skill and literary vitality. Borstal Boy is in the tradition of portraits of the artist as a young man and rivals Joyce’s more highly regarded Portrait.  If Brendan had gone on to write something approaching the brilliance of Ulysses or Finnegans Wake, Borstal Boy would perhaps have a higher rank in literary history than it now enjoys. 

The best-known of his plays, which are both performed from time to time, are The Quare Fellow and the Hostage. They are first-rate works that clearly demonstrate Brendan’s gift for dialogue and his ability to create authentic human drama.  The rest of his output—more plays, two “travel” books, a novel, and a follow-up to Borstal Boy are second-rate only in comparison to Borstal Boy and the two major plays. 

When I was a high school kid in the 1960s, my two favorite writers were James Baldwin and Brendan Behan. I couldn’t get enough of their work. I was thrilled when Brendan released two LPs back in those days. In fact, I pretty much memorized Brendan Behan Sings Irish Folksongs and Ballads, so much so that I can  still instantly summon up his voice in my mind any time night or day.      (Photo below: Visiting Brendan at his permanent residence in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin, Oct. 2016; photo by Dominick Murray.)

Maureen Owen & Barbara Henning on the Road (Terence Winch)

 

Watch out, Mobile, Austin, San Diego, and any number of other cities in the U.S.: Maureen Owen and Barbara Henning are on the road and heading your way, armed with the power of poetry and good will. Transformations may take place, mirth may ensue, and who knows what else may happen.

These two illustrious writers are an inspiration to septuagenarians everywhere. They have over-loaded a 2007 Civic (with “only” a 130K miles on it, says Barbara) with pots and pans, sleeping bags, bags of books, food, yoga paraphernalia, and suitcases filled with anvils, and headed out into the poetry-starved American landscape for an 8-week road trip/reading tour.

I had the pleasure of reading with them on their second stop---Washington’s DC Arts Center---on Sunday (January 20, 2019), and of hanging out with them for the weekend. I asked each of them to read a poem, which they graciously did. (I apologize for the slightly distorted audio quality, but you will still get the idea.)

 

Maureen and Barbara are publishing an on-going blog that documents their odyssey. And you can check their agenda to see if they’re coming soon to a spot near you.

 

 

Here’s Maureen Owen reading “balmy tomorrow/saturday more snow predicted/the lilacs are in turmoil”  from Poets on the Road:

And Barbara Henning reading “Here We Are” from A Day Like Today:

 

 

Doug Lang reading "Pandaemonium Sonnet" (Terence Winch)

Last Thursday (8 Nov 2018), while visiting my friend Doug Lang, the great Welsh/American poet, at his studio apartment in downtown Silver Spring, Maryland, the subject of movies about poets came up.  We discussed Gwyneth Paltrow as Sylvia Plath in Sylvia; Bright Star, the film about John Keats; Patterson, Jim Jarmusch's excellent 2016 film about a (fictional) poet that used real poems by Ron Padgett; and other movies as well. Doug reminded me that he has a poem on this very subject in his 2012 collection dérangé.  He agree to read it for the cameras:

[click to enlarge text]

 

"Terence Winch defies to be tagged. . ." [by Anne Harding Woodworth]

From Anne Harding Woodworth's review of Terence Winch's latest book:

<<<
Terence Winch is not a narrative poet all the time, though The Known Universe contains some lovely stories in verse. Nor might he be pegged a singularly lyrical poet, though his cadences and vocabulary flow as real as music. No, Winch defies to be tagged.

 

One marvels at his known universe. It is an amalgam of humor, pathos, love, longing, self-effacement, observation, wisdom, reverence and irreverence, a place the reader can enter comfortably with eyes and ears wide open, warmly ready to believe and disbelieve. It is a place filled with sounds, memories, family, vignettes, Ireland, rites of passage; and the path within this universe, though not necessarily chronological, meanders through youth, middle age, and the years in which the end of life seems near.

 

And there’s Winch’s craft, filled with the spark of occasional rhyme, metaphor, message, and laughter. Winch can’t stop himself from having fun with words and then using them to pluck at the reader’s heartstrings. But he is never saccharine. He doesn’t know what a cliché is, and even in those times when he becomes irreverent, he never goes over the edge.

>>>

 

For more, click here.

Tom Clark: Try to look upon death as a friend (Terence Winch)

No one who knew Tom Clark would ever deny that he was irascible, brilliant, generous, difficult, funny, erudite.  He was also immensely prolific—even in old age, he published his blog, Beyond the Pale, on a daily basis. BTP was a relentless illustrated catalogue—with scores of photos spanning the globe—usually revealing world’s woes and conflicts, often complemented with various texts he admired. He also wrote and published dozens of books of poetry and prose. His illustrious literary career is outlined here.

I felt really shaken by the news of his death yesterday: he was hit by a car near his house in Berkeley and died several hours later in the hospital.

We had met in person only once, back in April of 1978, when he came to DC to read in Doug Lang’s Folio Bookstore reading series. I have a distinct memory of taking him somewhere on the DC Metro.

We got to know each much better in recent years, mostly through emails. He liked my work and posted poems of mine from time to time in Beyond the Pale.  We had many exchanges about poetry, music, our shared Irish heritage, etc.  I am haunted today by his occasional references to the perilous streets of his neighborhood, where pedestrians had to risk their lives to take a walk. Indeed, he had been injured in an earlier accident some years ago. 

Here is what he wrote me in June on this very subject:

“Admire your getaroundability. Could never ride on any airplanes nevermore no!! Cannot lift right leg off ground. Get on bus impossible. Cross street a prayer every time, plus plenty straight out hate speech outa me, unheard by robo drivers on software cruise control. They never talk back. I set up in shooter stance w metal cane pointed like assault weapon, they smile and laugh and roar past w/o stopping @alleged pedestrian crosswalk!

Little known fact you probably won't believe or care why should you, but the stop lights here are "smart" - that is, have sensors to detect approaching vehicle, stay green for same, but green goes to yellow in 2 seconds (literally), if you're a ped, and if there is a more unliveable country on earth, defining living as having a soul, I want to go there, just to comparison shop - but I've never owned a credit card or a cell phone, have no i.d. and indeed no idea how to shop, so there might be a problem there, but no worries.”                    email from Tom Clark, June 2018

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tom will be missed and mourned by his many friends and colleagues. My deepest condolences to Angelica Clark, his wife of 50 years.

Here are two recent poems of Tom’s that I especially like:

Nocturnal Resolutions

Be opaque

Have no memory

Make no attempt to be understood

Stop suffering fools

Be kind to animals no matter what

Listen to the angel

Try to look upon death as a friend

Accept pain as the condition

Be more patient

Don’t turn on the light

 

The Edge of the Forest

Poems ought to have memories.

They should remember other poems.

At this moment the noisy city

has fallen quiet, and the edge

of the forest is abuzz with voices,

the voices of poems beneath the old trees

talking quietly about the poems that were

once here but are not here any longer,

remembering each other.

 

both poems from Truth Game (BlazeVOX, 2013)

 

Mother's Day [by Terence Winch]

Mother’s Day

 

My mother did not live to be a hundred
like the old nuns in the Sacred Heart
convent, sheltered from life. She was
fifty-five when she died. I was the baby
of the family. It does not seem so long
ago to me that I snuck into bed
between her and my father, no greater
antidote to fear than that. Life is not
a slow read. We speed through it,
pages flipping. After her funeral,
I hated the smell of flowers.

She used to make my brother take me
to the movies to help me breathe
in the cool dark of the air-conditioned Elsmere.
Now all I want to do is watch movies in bed,
central air humming through the house. I cried
so much when she died that it still embarrasses me.

 

She used to visit me in my dreams,
even sometimes speaking to me from
the beyond. But I haven’t seen
or heard from her in years.

My own heart thumps
wildly in my chest sometimes,
when I think about the story ending.

My arms are swollen from allergy shots,
my son examining bumblebees
in the backyard. I inhale as deeply as I can.
Flowers don’t bother me anymore.

 

[This poem was written, I think, ca. 2000. The photo shows me, checking the time, and my best friend, Dennis O'Toole, sitting on my mother's lap in 1948 in Rockaway Beach, NYC. My mother was Bridie Flynn from Co. Galway, Ireland.]

Terence Winch's "Known Universe" isn't caviar to the general [by David Lehman]

 

Terence Patrick Winch's new book is The Known Universe

and it is now Michael Lally's new favorite book.

The Known Universe should become better known

because it is universally appealing.

Among my favorites is "Small Potatoes,"

which is what Hyman Rioth says to Michael Corleone

about someone the latter wants bumped off.

"Small Potatoes" is not small beer. It is not small time.

It is living large and dining with the gusto of a fat man having dinner.

I was lucky enough to interview the author who confided

about his writing "process," which is a word I hate,

"You have to break a lot of eggs to make an omelette,

and the proof of the pudding is in the brandy you light, the fig-infused vodka you use to make a vesper

with gin and a little Lillet, shaken not stirred, like the hero of at James Bond movie in the glory years,

or when the champagne flowed in the locker room after the Brooklyn Dodgers won the World Series.".

-- David Lehman

 

"Sex Elegy" [by Terence Winch]

My lovers have vanished. I used to have many.
One moved to Boston and married a Japanese photographer.
Another became a famous actress. Another one, who for a long time
I mistakenly believed to be dead, now lives in Manhattan.

We used to know each other so intimately,
sucking and munching on each other, inserting,
penetrating, exploding. Becoming as one.  Funky
smell of sweaty bodies. Clothes strewn on floor
and bed. Candles burning. Smoke of cigarettes and joints
curling up the bedroom atmosphere. Now we never touch,
barely talk. Some I have lost all contact with.

But memories of our pleasure together, my dears,
still play in my mind. My body can still feel your touch.
My tongue still remembers your taste.
Everything else I seem to have forgotten.
The present is the life insurance premium automatically
deducted from your paycheck, while the past burns
out of control in a vacant lot on the outskirts of town.

—Terence Winch

Visiting Raftery the Poet in the Cemetery of the Poets [by Terence Winch]

Many decades ago, my brother Jesse took a beginners’ course in the Irish language. Out of that experience, he memorized a short, beautiful poem by Anthony Raftery, usually called “Mise Raifteirí.”  When we were last in Ireland, in October of 2016, he suggested that we visit Raftery’s grave, which turns out to be in the vicinity of the town of Loughrea, in county Galway, the same area where our mother was from. So, with our cousin Martin Flynn and our good friend Dominick Murray, we took the short ride from the Flynn household in Cahercrea to the Reilig na Bhfilí (Cemetery of the Poets) in Killeeneen where Raftery is buried.

As Wikipedia informs us, Raftery (30 March 1779–25 December 1835), who composed in Irish, is often called the last of the wandering bards.  He lived almost exactly a century later than the great Turlough O' Carolan, the itinerant harper who composed hundreds of gorgeous musical pieces that are still widely played today, just as Raftery's poems, which were never written down in his lifetime, are taught today in Irish schools.  Raftery also played the fiddle, and I have a special affection for musician-poets. Both men were blind, a misfortune that had no apparent negative effect on their creative abilities.

I thought I had taken a photo of the signage regarding the other poets buried in the Reilig na Bhfilí, but if I did I can’t find it. One Internet source gives their names as Marcus and Peatsaí Ó Callanáin. I believe the signage stated that they were brothers and both rivals of Raftery. I don’t know if any of their poems are extant. [Please see the comment below by my old friend Gearóid Ó hAllmhuráin, who provides some invaluable information on Peatsaí Ó Callanáin.]  In any case, Raftery is without question the top dog in this beautiful, serene little graveyard. (photo of Terence Winch, Oct. 2016, by Jesse Winch)

There we were in this place to which the paths of glory but lead, caught up in its eerie, decaying beauty, when my cousin Martin gathers us to show us something. He holds up a white envelope sealed in a plastic cover. “Someone has left me a check!” he jokes. We all laugh. We debate the propriety of opening this mystery letter, but really there is no other choice but to do so. This place is nearly abandoned, with no office or staff or any other visitors. So Martin opens the envelope. Inside is a card showing a photo of children playing with a homemade little plane, with a real plane in the background, ca. 1940, and a caption reading, “ YOU WILL NOT DO INCREDIBLE THINGS WITHOUT AN INCREDIBLE DREAM.”  There’s also an indecipherable message in longhand. But here’s the kicker: folded in the card is a 20 Euro bill. Money, after all. Graveyard money!  We spent it all on caffeine and cake in a coffee shop in Galway City. Thank you, Mr. Raftery. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

photo of Martin Flynn by Dominick Murray; photo of Raftery's grave by T. Winch)

Here is his poem, with an English translation:

Mise Raifteirí, an file, lán dóchais is grá le súile gan solas, ciúineas gan crá Dul siar ar m'aistear, le solas mo chroí Fann agus tuirseach, go deireadh mo shlí Feach anois mé mo dhroim le balla, Ag seinm ceoil do phocaí folamh.

I am Raftery, the poet,    full of hope and love    With eyes without light,    silence without torment.    Going back on my journey,    with the light of my heart    Weak and tired,    until the end of my way.    Look at me now    my back to the wall,    playing music    to empty pockets.

And, finally, Raftery's work continues to make its way into the world, as this lovely song inspired by his poem---and performed here by Eleanor Shanley and John McCartin---attests. (I'm not sure at this point if they are the composers).

 

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)