Although I live in L.A., where the weather rarely dips into the 30’s, it is still clearly evident when we have turned from summer to fall. I notice how the slant of light is more from the south, how some plants in the garden get more sun, some less. Of course there is the early darkness in the evening and the difficulty to get out of bed with the late rising of the sun in the morning. The evenings are a bit chillier. The fans are stored away and down comforters and quilts replace cotton blankets on the bed. Rain becomes a more real possibility. There are even a few trees whose leaves turn red and yellow and scatter into the streets.

A friend of mine is reading a book where the author has a theory that many of the modern day illnesses, such as cancer, heart disease, arthritis, etc, became pervasive in the culture simultaneously with the advent of electricity and the light bulb. The idea (as I understand it) is that with the ability to have light in times when there was before only darkness (or only a soft, natural light provided by flames), we shifted from following our innate cycles of activity during the hours when the sun shone and rest/sleep when it did not. Thus, with the added stress and pushing our systems beyond their inherent biorhythms our very cells began to mutate and, ultimately become diseased. I know this sounds simplistic and I am sure I don’t have it quite right, not having read the book, but I do think there’s a lot of truth in the fact that we are surrounded by artificial stimuli and we use it to facilitate more and more production, stretching the boundaries of our bodies, our minds and our psyches to keep up with our demands for doing and doing and doing.

I want to hibernate this winter. Just as when spring comes I am so ready for summer and long, lazy days, so as fall deepens I want warm tea, black and white movies, a 400-page historical novel, slippers and sweaters, soul-searching thoughts and writing long entries in my journal. Certainly one can’t make like a bear and curl up in a cave for six months, but it does seem right (my body is going Yeah! Yeah!) to take advantage of the seasons, of what they inherently offer. I’ve been traveling quite a bit since May and am ready (after two more jaunts) to stay in one place for a couple of months. I’ve got a list of movies to watch. I’ve got a ton of books to read. There are poems to revise and a manuscript of essays to be edited and compiled. That should keep me busy enough during the waking hours. When night falls, well, then I’ll make like that bear and take myself off to a quiet spot and snore away the long winter’s night.

Kinda makes me sleepy just looking at those droopy eyes.

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.

Uncle Tonoose

Bud Bloom

Poet Mom

Late Night Meanderings

Steve’s 2 Cents

I flew back to L.A. on Monday. Liza and I drove from New Jersey to Boston on Sunday afternoon. We didn’t stay until the end. It was rainy and chilly and Liza was feelin’ a bit under the weather. We had a lot to talk about on the drive through the quickly turning autumn leaves–Tony Hoagland’s morning talk on the craft of poetry was fresh in my mind, as was the early session of reading Rumi and Hafiz with Robert Bly and Coleman Barks. I sat up front for both of these presentations and even though I was shivering (my thin California blood), enjoyed every minute of the two very different experiences. Bly and Barks have a trio of musicians with a cello, flute, and drums to accompany them and they trade off reading poems or stories of their own, of Rumi or Hafiz or Mirabai. Bly likes to throw in his own little comments as he’s reading the pieces and the spirit is very high as the wisdom of the mystical Sufi poets fills the giant tent. I’ll share a couple of photos with you of the two of them (apologies for the fuzziness), plus one of Tony Hoagland.

Tony Hoagland on Sunday

Robert Bly

Bly & Coleman Barks reading Rumi, Hafiz & Mirabai

I always enjoy the mixture of the spiritual and humor that the Sufi poets bring to their poetry. They encompass the ecstatic, the tragic and the comic.

Backing up to Saturday–it was my longest day at the festival. I started at 9:30 with panel of Ekiwah Adler-Belendez, Kurtis Lamkin and Brian Turner with the subject of “Going Public with Private Feelings.” All three of these men are so very different in their backgrounds, subject matter and style. Ekiwah (his name means courage) is 19 years old and has cerebral palsy, Kurtis Lamkin is an African American poet from New York City who performs his poetry playing a stringed instrument called the kora and Brian Turner, who is a veteran of the Iraq war and wrote his first book of poems, Here Bullet, during the time he was in Iraq. After their talk I cruised the Border’s bookstore tent and picked up way too many books to list here.

Kurtis Lamkin playing his kora while Ekiwah reads a poem

Liza, Becca and I took our lunches into the main tent where we waited for the feature poets to read from 12 to 3. We all enjoyed the reading of Andrew Motion, the poet laureate of England, who read a fantastic poem about the passing of his mother when he was a young child and one about his father who passed away not long ago. I don’t have any good pictures of him but you can go to his web site at andrewmotion.com. There was also a very powerful reading by a Bangaldesh woman poet, Taslima Nasreen, who has been exiled from her country for speaking out for the rights of women. Lucille Clifton wound up the afternoon with grace and style. Becca and I dashed off right after the readings for a panel discussion on “Finding Poetry’s Inner Music, Saying the Unsayable” with Toi Derricotte, Jori Graham, Tony Hoagland and Linda Pastan. Becca had been following Jorie Graham around since the first day, fascinated with how she approached the art of poetry and I was getting my first taste of her. I found her to be insightful and incredibly intelligent. She also spoke of connecting with spirit and seeking a higher source as a participant in her writing.

The crowd under the big tent.

Lucille Clifton

Tony Hoagland, Toi Derricotte, Linda Pasten, Jorie Graham

It’s only 6:30 pacific time right now but my body is still thinkin’ east coast so it’s getting late and I’m yawning and my mind cloud over. There are still a few more pictures and thoughts to share with you but I’ll get to it tomorrow or the next day. I haven’t begun to really digest all of what went in over those four days and how it will affect my writing and reading of poetry in the future. Here’s one last photo I took on Sunday at Waterloo Village.