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Tuesday, May 29, 2012
May 29th forum announcement
Dear Poetry Aficionados,
Poetry & Poets in Rags blog
What about economics and poetry? Politics and poetry mix in our news items most weeks, certainly this week. But for this issue, a little serendipity took place. I met an economics major from the most economically free city on earth, Singapore. Joel is studying at BU, and told me that he wants to be a litigation attorney, advocating for people's rights. I mentioned how I have this column, and how one of the best measures of freedom in a country is how poets are left to write, even bad poetry, without fear of imprisonment, something even the UK and USA fail at. He asked for a link.
After that conversation, economy took over the news in poetry. In our lead article, Terry Glavin questions (to put it mildly) Canada's economic stance with China, and leads (as we do now) with the case of imprisoned poet Zhu Yufu. Our second story has Günter Grass once again making the news, this time writing a poem about Europe's economic treatment of Greece.
We have many more stories, and many poems we link to in this issue. I leave them to your discovery.
Thanks for clicking in.
Yours,
Rus
Our links:
IBPC: Poetry & Poets in Rags
Poetry & Poets in Rags blog
IBPC Home
~~~~~~~~~~~
Poetry & Poets in Rags blog
What about economics and poetry? Politics and poetry mix in our news items most weeks, certainly this week. But for this issue, a little serendipity took place. I met an economics major from the most economically free city on earth, Singapore. Joel is studying at BU, and told me that he wants to be a litigation attorney, advocating for people's rights. I mentioned how I have this column, and how one of the best measures of freedom in a country is how poets are left to write, even bad poetry, without fear of imprisonment, something even the UK and USA fail at. He asked for a link.
After that conversation, economy took over the news in poetry. In our lead article, Terry Glavin questions (to put it mildly) Canada's economic stance with China, and leads (as we do now) with the case of imprisoned poet Zhu Yufu. Our second story has Günter Grass once again making the news, this time writing a poem about Europe's economic treatment of Greece.
We have many more stories, and many poems we link to in this issue. I leave them to your discovery.
Thanks for clicking in.
Yours,
Rus
Our links:
IBPC: Poetry & Poets in Rags
Poetry & Poets in Rags blog
IBPC Home
~~~~~~~~~~~
News at Eleven: In a police state like China you can never
predict the lash that will cause the slave to turn on his master. Neither is it easy to discern, from all the dirty money greasing so many palms, which coin in which palm will mark the transaction that buys the final shred of decency from a democratic country like Canada.The billions of dollars in ill-gotten Chinese capital fluttering around Canada these days is being strewn about by the same corrupt Communist Party billionaires who bully and persecute the likes of You Minglei, Li Jie'e, and Zhu Yufu, and who continue to engorge themselves from the captive labour of the Chinese people.
from The Ottawa Citizen: Years in prison, all for a poem
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News at Eleven: The poem is a stinging rebuke for
Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative-led government which has insisted that austerity is the only way that Greece can balance its books. The author [Guenter Grass] accuses Europe of forcing Greece to drink from a poisoned chalice and describes it as a "country now hardly tolerated". In the poem, he says Greece has been "pilloried naked as a debtor". He writes: "You will waste away spiritlessly without the country whose spirit, Europe, conceived you."from The Independent: Günter Grass attacks Merkel for Athens policy
then Jerusalem Post: [Günter] Grass's poem hovers over German president's visit
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News at Eleven: The value of "Sanctuary in the Wilderness" is not
that it is a watershed discussion of a literary arena that was forgotten, of writers that we simply did not know we had. [Alan] Mintz is planting the flag firmly in the soil of American Hebrew poetry; his lucid discussions, however, are but the first step. "Sanctuary in the Wilderness" paves the way for a critical discussion, long overdue, of the poets represented in the volume, and of others in the American Hebrew oeuvre. The process of evaluation of the poets represented in the volume may now begin, and Mintz is the enabler of this process.from The Jewish Daily Forward: Lyrical Voices of Zion
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News at Eleven: "O hunter! why did you hold the arrow
in your bow? You opened your closed eye slowly. It looks like you started watching my youth. Yes, I am that deer in this forest.""And, the tender Talib Jan; The one with long hair, The young Talib Jan, Who used to cleanse hearts with his voice when he called the azan . . . You would not ask me why I am crying."
Those lines are from three poems in the newly published "Poetry of the Taliban", a collection that is as maddeningly confusing as it is revealing. The hatred of the west. The intimacy between the hunted and the hunter.
from Reuters: Taliban poetry, mourn the dead boy, curse the naked "daughter of the west"
then The Guardian: Poetry of the Taliban--review
then Dawn: When militants become poets
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News at Eleven: [Tracy K.] Smith doesn't flinch from these,
though she uses the astronomical to gain perspective, and perhaps even a kind of healing, though the kind of evil that drives this section can't be undone.The title poem uses the concept of dark matter to explore the darkness in humanity, including the 2009 case of Josef Fritzl, who kept his daughter locked in a basement for 24 years, human rights abuses at Guantanamo Bay, rape, torture, war, and the destruction of the planet: "How else could we get things so wrong,/Like a story hacked to bits and told in reverse?---"
from Blogcritics: Life on Mars by Tracy K Smith
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News at Eleven: Surely there's a struggle ahead for anyone
with a serious illness, but in the poem "Cancer," he offers a respite from the horror by addressing the disease from a startling, cosmic perspective.Cancer
By Stanley Plumly
from Los Angeles Times: Poem: Stanley Plumly's 'Cancer'
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News at Eleven: "[Gascoyne] was the first to write about surrealism,
and I read his work very closely through the early 1960s. He had drunk deep at the well of surrealism, and he knew a lot of them in Paris who were involved in the movement. So I suppose it just enters the bloodstream, but when I hear people talking about me as a surrealist, I am very circumspect. There is a danger of a poem being too clever, cerebral, and mechanical."These absurd arrangements of events can be really dangerous, because, for me, poetry must come from what Keats called 'The holiness of the hearts affections' or the 'emotional recollected in tranquillity' as Wordsworth put it," he [Paul Durcan] adds.
from The Spectator: Interview: Paul Durcan on poetry and art
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News at Eleven: But [Carol] Niswonger didn't recognize the name
signed at the bottom of the poem. Maybe it wasn't by a local poet, she thought. So one afternoon, she decided to Google the name, "William Stafford." That's when she realized she might have discovered an original copy of a poem by one of the 20th century's great American poets."There it was--William Stafford, poet extraordinaire," she said. "It just can't be him, I thought. It didn't have written down there, 'I am a famous poet.'"
from Austin Peay State University: Original William Stafford poem discovered in APSU library
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News at Eleven: I hadn't realized at the time how concerned
Ted [Hughes] was with the environment, and how involved he was with campaigning across the county, writing to the government about what he saw as an impending natural disaster and even giving evidence at a hearing about a proposed water treatment plant in Bideford. This letter, with its tone of optimism and boyish enthusiasm, would have pre-dated my visit to his deceased river by perhaps twenty years, and more than anything it makes me realize how much it must have pained Hughes to witness that demise.from Granta: Dear Peter: An unpublished Ted Hughes letter, introduced by Simon Armitage.
~~~~~~~~~~~
News at Eleven: "Ainadamar," meaning "Fountain of Tears" in Arabic,
tells the story of [Federico] Garcia Lorca's life, and his death at the hands of the Falangists, through the eyes of the actress Margarita Xirgu, his onetime lover and colleague. "The idea is that the entire opera occurs while Margarita hears the ballad of Mariana Pineda, this folk ballad," [Osvaldo] Golijov said. "And while she hears, she remembers her entire life together with Garcia Lorca, his death and so forth. It's like a moment that explodes three times."
from Jewish Journal: Garcia Lorca's art, death inspire genre-expanding opera
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from Jewish Journal: Garcia Lorca's art, death inspire genre-expanding opera
~~~~~~~~~~~
News at Eleven (Back Page): "On the Road" completes the holy trinity
of Beat masterpieces that have confounded filmmakers for several years, including David Cronenberg's wildly fanciful take on William S. Burroughs's "Naked Lunch," from 1991, and Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman's 2010 docudrama of Allen Ginsberg's "Howl." The Beats' core group of characters were so intertwined in their heyday that "Howl," "Road" and "Lunch" were published within three years of each other, and all three film versions feature an overlapping cast of characters, many of whom will be seen in "Kill Your Darlings," due in 2013 and based on the murder of David Kammerer by Lucien Carr, a key member of the original New York Beats.
from The New York Times: The Beats Hit the Road Again on Screen
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from The New York Times: The Beats Hit the Road Again on Screen
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Great Regulars: Yet it didn't occur to him [Wes Anderson] to go
into movies, simply because he never met anybody who knew anything about the industry. Finally, he picked up Spike Lee's book Gotta Have It: Inside Guerrilla Film-Making, which was basically a how-to guide on making movies and financing them with scrounged cash. Inspired by this, Anderson and a friend, the actor Owen Wilson--now the supreme New Quirk star--made Bottle Rocket, first as a short, then as a feature. It was a commercial failure, but Martin Scorsese named it as one of his favourite films of the 1990s, and Anderson and Wilson were on their way.from Bryan Appleyard: from The Sunday Times: Wes Anderson
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: "And I Was Alive," composed a year before
[Osip] Mandelstam died while he was in exile, is another poem translated by [Christian] Wiman that advocates for this spirit of poised defiance. It calls attention to that place in existence that is balanced between the present and the moment that follows the present when language exists as the elegy of that existence.And I Was Alive
from David Biespiel: The Oregonian: Poetry: A poet's poise in the face of evil
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: Proof, if proof were needed, that stories
really aren't what they used to be. Yesterday evening, the New Yorker began what is, for them, a novel experiment: tweeting Jennifer Egan's latest story, Black Box, in hourly instalments over 10 days from 8pm to 9pm EST. Egan's certainly not the first author to dip a toe into the waters of Twitterfiction, but when an organ as stately as the New Yorker espouses what has heretofore been the province of the out there and the maverick, what previously looked liked dabbling starts to resemble a plunge.from Sarah Crown: The Guardian: Twitter is a clunky way of delivering fiction
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Great Regulars: Despite the splash caused by self-publishing superstars
such as Amanda Hocking and EL James, the average amount earned by DIY authors last year was just $10,000 (£6,375)--and half made less than $500.With Hocking raking in sales of $2.5m, Fifty Shades of Grey's James signing up to a mainstream press for a six-figure advance and a slew of deals for other self-published successes, the sector is starting to look like a gold mine for would-be authors.
from Alison Flood: The Guardian: Stop the press: half of self-published authors earn less than $500
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: These aging American writers seem to
have little in common, but after reading their recent collections of essays, I found they share similar concerns about American culture, especially religion.Gerald Stern, 87, is an outspoken poet who endured--and never forgave--the anti-Semitism he found in his unforgiving Pittsburgh in the Depression.
from Bob Hoover: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: The common ground of worlds apart: essays by Gerald Stern and Marilynne Robinson
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Great Regulars: Church Fair
by Jane KenyonWho knows what I might find
from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Church Fair by Jane Kenyon
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Happiness
by Joyce Sutphen
This was when my daughters were just children
from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Happiness by Joyce Sutphen
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In A Dark Time
by Theodore Roethke
In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: In A Dark Time by Theodore Roethke
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The Joke That Got No Laughs
by Hal Sirowitz
You should have enough courtesy
from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: The Joke That Got No Laughs by Hal Sirowitz
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Key to the Highway
by Mark Halliday
I remember riding somewhere in a fast car
from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Key to the Highway by Mark Halliday
~~~~~~~~~~~
Looks
by Julie Cadwallader-Staub
Perhaps everyone else has forgotten it,
from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Looks by Julie Cadwallader-Staub
~~~~~~~~~~~
When I Think
by Robert Creeley
When I think of where I've come from
from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: When I Think by Robert Creeley
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: Bill Holm was a Minnesota poet and essayist
and a dear friend to many of us who live and write in flyover country. He is much missed. Mark Vinz has written this fine tribute to Bill.Absences
from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 375
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: And so in many ways Antigonick is about
the impossibility of the Hegelian tragedy in a contemporary understanding of Antigone. But in its stead [Anne] Carson doesn't offer a simple propagandistic Antigone like Bertolt Brecht's; she knows that the dialectic is the source of the play's power. And so instead she reframes the myth as the struggle of the personality against time.She does this in a bunch of ways.
from Michael Lista: National Post: On Poetry: Antigonick, by Anne Carson
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: by Ian Duhig
On Bradford likewise look Thou down/Where Satan keeps his seat,the methodist hymn goes. On this street,
from Jody Porter: Morning Star: Well Versed: Bradford Spring
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: The Bed That Is a Tree demonstrates the power
to be accessed through poetry's oldest roots, and reminds us that living trees, if thoughtlessly cut down, take much else with them.[by Kim Lasky]
The Bed That Is a Tree
from Carol Rumens: The Guardian: Poem of the week: The Bed That Is a Tree by Kim Lasky
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: This poem, the last of 11 winners
from our Third Annual Found Poem Contest, comes from Aaron, 21, of Sioux Falls, S.D.Aaron mined an Opinion piece on the most corrupt states in the union to create the poem.
from Katherine Schulten: The New York Times: Found Poem Favorite: 'Illinois Is Trying, It Really Is'
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: What will become of Mexico?
How can a country so powerful, so concerted, so modern, be so impotent, so chaotic, so backward? And how can Mexico, and all Latin America, take ownership of their futures?Of the many themes of Carlos Fuentes, the celebrated Mexican writer who died Tuesday in Mexico City at 83, those were always uppermost. This tireless writer in many genres, from screenplays to op-ed pieces, gained fame for his trenchant, postmodern fables of a people, country, and continent struggling into the light.
from John Timpane: The Philadelphia Inquirer: Carlos Fuentes, 1928-2012: A voice of Mexico past, present and future
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: The period during which the mostly fragmentary
material collected in As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh was written was also the period during which Susan Sontag published the major nonfiction works on which her reputation largely rests: Against Interpretation (1966), Styles of Radical Will (1969), On Photography (1977), Illness as Metaphor (1978), and Under the Sign of Saturn (1980). By 1980, when this selection (the second of three projected volumes) concludes, Sontag's position in American literary and intellectual life was unassailable.Her journals and notebooks, though, do not read like the chronicle of a triumph.
from The Barnes and Noble Review: As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980
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Great Regulars: The Montserrat Drum
by Edgar Nkosi WhiteGoat a dance
from MR Zine: The Montserrat Drum
then MR Zine: Always Occupy
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: A poet laureate whose position,
as the AFL-CIO noted, gave nationwide attention to a plain and outspoken affinity with working people . . .whose signature poetry collection is "What Work Is."
Let him tell it in his own words:
"The Simple Truth"
[by Philip Levine]
from People's World: A tribute to Philip Levine, poet laureate of workers
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: By Val Battenburg
In my high chair days of feeding,from Post-Bulletin: Poem: Looking for Rhythm and Rhyme Early On
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: "Burnt matches everywhere", "jam jars
soaking in water", a tea towel "slung like your signature/over the back of a chair" stir affectionate memories that threaten to overwhelm the recently separated in his struggle to create a new order. Does he cling to these heartbreaking traces of a wife's passage through the house? Or tidy her out of his life for good? It is, indeed, in the "bits and pieces" that we really see what is going on.[by Hugo Williams]
Marital Visit
from The Times Literary Supplement: Poem of the Week: "Marital Visit"
~~~~~~~~~~~
Poetic Obituaries: Janey Antoniou was a musician, artist, writer,
singer, award-winning poet and scientist. Exuberant and fun-loving, she left "a big footprint", said one friend. She also lived for much of her adult life hearing up to seven damning voices telling her she was evil, unclean and should cut or kill herself.At the age of 30, after treatment for depression, Janey was given a diagnosis of schizophrenia. Twenty-three years later, on 23 October 2010, some time after 6.30am, she died alone in her room on Eastlake ward in Northwick Park hospital, Harrow, north London. She was 53.
from The Guardian: Janey Antoniou: 'She was a person, not a diagnosis'
then The Guardian: Campaign calls for open investigations into deaths of mental health patients
~~~~~~~~~~~
Poetic Obituaries: Among his [Paul Fussell's] many academic books
were "The Rhetorical World of Augustan Humanism: Ethics and Imagery from Swift to Burke" (1965), "Poetic Meter and Poetic Form" (1965; revised, 1979), and "Samuel Johnson and the Life of Writing" (1971).These were books, he would later recall, that he was "supposed to write." Then it struck him that he might reach a wider audience by comparing the art and literature created in response to earlier wars with that inspired by World War I. What he discovered was a deep fissure between the romantic views of the past, which saw warfare as a stage for gallantry and heroism, and the disillusionment bred by the shocking slaughter and grim hopelessness of trench warfare, the hallmark of "the great war."
from The New York Times: Paul Fussell, Literary Scholar and Critic, Is Dead at 88
~~~~~~~~~~~
Poetic Obituaries: The death of Michael Macklin, a Portland poet
and editor at the Cafe Review, has united two sides of the poetic divide--page and stage. He was at Breadloaf writers' camp in Vermont with students from Waynflete School, on Sunday, May 20, when he died. The tributes to him have been pouring in, and both the page poets of the Cafe Review and the stage poets of Port Veritas are in accord: the man was a verse godsend.Steve Luttrell, editor of Cafe Review, said an upcoming issue is going to be dedicated to him.
from The Portland Daily Sun: Death of Portland poet unites two camps
~~~~~~~~~~~
Poetic Obituaries: Always a poet at heart, [Rohit] Pathak
was concerned of the common man. As chairperson of Gujarat Secondary and Higher Secondary Board (GSHSEB), he made efforts to bring new system into state education. He was credited with initiation of Shala Vikas Sankul (SVS) Study Circle to improve teaching at school level.
from Daily News & Analysis: IAS officer and poet R.K. Pathak passes away
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from Daily News & Analysis: IAS officer and poet R.K. Pathak passes away
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Poetic Obituaries: [John Tsikalas] continued to express his love of
language by writing letters to the editors of local and national newspapers and by writing poetry.from Mexico Ledger: John Tsikalas, 78, of Mexico dies
~~~~~~~~~~~
Poetic Obituaries: Jean Ann Van Houten--mother, grandmother,
teacher, singer, poet, and community activist--a resident of San Mateo County for more than 45 years, passed away April 27th at San Mateo Medical Center after a long battle with failing health.
from San Francisco Chronicle: Van Houten, Jean Ann
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from San Francisco Chronicle: Van Houten, Jean Ann
~~~~~~~~~~~
Poetic Obituaries: Born in the hills of Kentucky,
she [Lois June Mayfield Wilson] received her Ph.D. from Stanford University and was Professor Emeritus at San Francisco State University. She was married for almost 60 years to Graham Cunningham Wilson, Professor and Chairman of English at San Francisco State (DOB: 9/11/1916, DOD: 6/22/2005).from The San Francisco Chronicle: Wilson, Lois
~~~~~~~~~~~
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
May 22nd forum announcement
Dear Poetry Aficionados,
Poetry & Poets in Rags blog
Iain Sinclair of the UK writes about his encounter with Gary Snyder of CA at and approaching Kitkitdizze in the Yuba River watershed. This is where we begin this week in News at Eleven. The article begins with a 15-minute audio.On our Back Page, the eleventh of the News at Eleven articles, we find a poem that brought high school bullies to tears. Leading up to this article are a couple items that show poets reacting to bullies who have graduated from running street corners to running countries.
As every week, we have some remarkable articles and poetry in our Great Regulars section, including another verse by Elana Bell, a poet mentioned last week. And be sure to scroll through the Poetic Obituaries, our third and final section.
Thanks for clicking in.
Yours,
Rus
Our links:
IBPC: Poetry & Poets in Rags
Poetry & Poets in Rags blog
IBPC Home
~~~~~~~~~~~
News at Eleven: There was no simple retreat for [Gary] Snyder.
The land was relatively cheap because nobody had much use for it; the scars of industrial mining came close. The community to be supported included 'two grown sons, two stepdaughters, three cars, two trucks, four buildings, one pond, two well pumps, close to a hundred chickens, 17 fruit trees, two cats, about ninety cords of firewood and three chainsaws'. The bees were destroyed by black bears. The kitchen garden went dry in winter and was raided by deer. The chickens were taken by northern goshawks, red-tailed hawks, racoons, feral dogs, bobcats. The forest was full of noises.from London Review of Books: The Man in the Clearing
~~~~~~~~~~~
News at Eleven: Drawn to cemeteries, where she honors dead poets
like Anna Akhmatova, [Polina] Barskova is fascinated and repelled by suffering: homeless people, concentration camps, war. There is an element of self-consciousness in her intimate poetic discussions of these topics: "Susie Sontag's writing about war," she writes in "The New Iliad," "It'd be good for me as well, I guess . . . ," but "I cannot. I'd like to--I cannot." Later in the poem she asks: "My Patroclus, tell me, what shall I do/In this resplendent tent . . . ?" The poet compares herself to the great warrior Achilles, who spends much of Homer's Iliad sulking in his tent and refusing to take part in the Trojan War.from Russia Beyond the Headlines: Is poetry always Lost in Translation?
~~~~~~~~~~~
News at Eleven: However, in the poetry world of my experience,
in writing, publishing, editing, reading and listening, in spreading the word in education for children and adults, the question is not what style we adopt, or how we can break and re-arrange English syntax to make it new--and I'm aware I may be missing something here--but what can we say and how well can we say it.from Granta: Poetry in Britain
~~~~~~~~~~~
News at Eleven: The persona is swaggering yet (literally) divided;
the planetary order of balls on the pool table is undermined as "physics itself becomes something negotiable"; the false doppelgänger ends up seeming truer than the departing speaker; strangeness swells up everywhere through initially grounded reality. Nothing is ever quite as it seems.from The Guardian: Selected Poems by Don Paterson--review
~~~~~~~~~~~
News at Eleven: [Lloyd] Schwartz, who now teaches at the
University of Massachusetts Boston, remembered working on a short silent film with his roommate in which [Margaret] Atwood starred.In the film, a professor wages a revolution with his students, who summon each other to battle with a ram's horn.
One sequence featured three couples in bed. Of the first two couples, the male members roused themselves from bed to join the battle. Of the third, however, the woman rose to take up arms, leaping from bed and driving off on a motorcycle.
That woman was Atwood.
from The Harvard Crimson: Margaret E. Atwood
~~~~~~~~~~~
News at Eleven: When my mother was very old and in a nursing home,
she surprised me one day toward the end of her life by asking me if I still wrote poetry. When I blurted out that I still do, she stared at me with incomprehension. I had to repeat what I said, till she sighed and shook her head, probably thinking to herself this son of mine has always been a little nuts. [--Charles Simic]from The New York Review of Books: Why I Still Write Poetry
~~~~~~~~~~~
News at Eleven: Czeslaw Milosz's "Meaning" is a moving paean
of optimism in the face of a world fraught with uncertain troubles; a spiritual ballast of faithfulness, rebuffing the common cynicism of many who disdain the possibility of a greater reality than this world.from The Epoch Times: Poetry Analysis: 'Meaning' by Czeslaw Milosz
~~~~~~~~~~~
News at Eleven: Yes, there are paeans to the glory
of the battlefield and vicious parodies of enemy leaders, but also a surprising emphasis on comradeship and some chaste and ambiguous references to romantic love. In its ideology, the poetry tends more toward Afghan nationalism than global jihad, with frequent reference to past invaders, from the British in the 19th century to the Soviets in the 20th.Poetry of the Taliban is currently on sale in Britain and will be published in the United States on July 17. Here are six examples from the collection:
May I be sacrificed for you, my homeland
from Foreign Policy: Sonnets for the Mujahideen
then Macleans.ca: 'The Poetry of the Taliban' stirs controversy in Britain and beyond
then CNN World: A book of poetry--by the Taliban?
~~~~~~~~~~~
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