A Few More Words on Dodge
I want to share a couple of poem and a few more photos from Dodge before moving on to other thoughts. It’s taken me this week just to get a little bit of a perspective on what I experienced there. If I was to say anything about what was lacking at the festival, for me it was more personal contact with the poets, real conversation about how they make their poetry and how they make their way as a poet in the world. The panel discussions and craft talks were fascinating and provocative and even though questions were always taken from the audience, a real discussion was not possible with the time constraints and the nature of the format. I guess it’s asking a bit much for a four-day extravangaza with thousands of people and only a handful of poets. It was a sampling that made me think about what poets I would want to hear again and perhaps take a workshop from in the future.
It could not be escaped, while we were there, the sentiment against the Bush administration and although there was little “political” poetry (Anne Waldman provided some powerfully presented pieces, however) there was poetry that did speak of the physical and emotional suffering born out of the conflict in the Middle East. Taha Muhammad Ali, a Palestinian poet living in Lebannon, who published his first poems at the age of 52, read an amazing poem called “Revenge” on stage the first day. I bought his most recent book of poems So What thinking it would be in there, but it wasn’t. I will share another one of his poems, followed by one by Brian Turner, a veteran of the Iraq war.
Taha Muhammad Ali w/translator, Peter Cole
Warning
Lovers of hunting,
and beginners seeking your prey:
Don’t aim your rifles
at my happiness,
which isn’t worth
the price of the bullet
(you’d waste on it).
What seems to you so nimble and fine,
like a fawn,
and flees
every which way,
like a partridge,
isn’t happiness.
Trust me:
my happiness bears
no relation to happiness.
Taha Muhammad Ali
So What: Publisher, Copper Canyon Press
*************
In the Leupold Scope
With a 40×60mm spotting scope
I traverse the Halabjah skyline,
scanning rooftops two thousand meters out
to find a woman in sparkling green, standing
among antennas and satellite dishes,
hanging laundry on an invisible line.
She is dressing the dead, clothing them
as they wait in silence, the pigeons circling
as fumestacks billow a noxious black smoke.
She is welcoming them back to the dry earth,
giving them dresses in tangerine and teal,
woven cotton shirts dyed blue.
She waits for them to lean forward
into the breeze, for the wind’s breath
to return the bodies they once had,
women with breasts swollen by milk,
men with shepherd-thin bodies, children
running hard into the horizon’s curving lens.
Brian Turner
Here Bullet: Publisher: Alice James Poetry Cooperative, Inc.
I had this thought that with all the survellience by the NSA on the internet that they might be searching sites that mention Muhammad and might even stumble on Poetry Evolution and read the poems thinking there could be something subversive going on and how the poems just might give whoever read them the tiniest bit of awakening, of tender thoughts of the pain of war. It’s possible.
A few more photos and if you’d like to check out some other websites with Dodge related commentary here are a few I found on a blog by a guy who was there and did the research to find the sites and included P.E.
