My father passed away peacefully on Sunday morning. I missed seeing him by a few hours and have been in Portland with the family all week. I wrote a piece on my father a few months ago when he was having a high school auditorium dedicated to him. If you’d like to read it you can CLICK HERE. Tomorrow we commit his ashes to the earth and celebrate with family and friends his rich and dedicated life. It will be a good day with friends and loved ones and I’ve no doubt he’ll be there, baton in hand, directing the whole procedings as if it was one of his concerts or a march down Main Street. He was always the consumate showman and we’ll do our best to get it right, to do him proud.

Below is a well-known poem by Robert Hayden that says so much about understanding love and its many ways of being expressed. I’ve also included one I wrote this week in his honor.

 
Clyde Moore 1921-2007 

Those Winter Sundays

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?

Robert Hayden 

********** 

We Remember Him
 
for what he loved: music
first and country, the beauty
of a woman, her brilliant smile,

a small dusty town, the kids
who picked up a flute, lifted
a trumpet to their lips, rolled

a pair of drum sticks between
their fingers for the first time.
Like a pearl the legacy of a man

is ground and polished by the grit
of tenacity, unwavering generosity.
We are what we do every day: rising

to dress, the long walk to work, stoking
the holy spark of others to flame.
I gave a damn, his life says. And like

the sassy-sweet croon of a sax hanging
on a high note, such a man echoes
forever in the hearts of the living. 

I wrote the piece below, THE STORY, THE MOMENT, for the weekly P.E. e-letter. I also wanted to share a few poetry related books and websites with you.

Dog Years (HarperCollins): Mark Doty’s new memoir. I haven’t read it yet but it got a great write-up in the L.A. Times last week and I’m taking it on my trip to Oregon this week as my main read.

Ten Poems to Last a Lifetime (Harmony Books):The latest (and last) compilation of poems by Roger Housden, where he brings a few stunning poems to the page and includes his own short essay on the poem. Great gift — for yourself or someone, anyone, who can use the inspiration.

Poetry.LA: A new website started by my friends, Hilda & Wayne, with video of the local Open Mic poetry venues around town. Includes featured readers, interviews with the hosts and open mic readers. 

Billy Collins Poems with Animation: I found these poems on many sites. Charming and creative ways to "see" the poem as well as hear it. 

A Chaos of Angels (Word Walker Press: This is a lovingly compiled collection of poems that touches on the culture of psychotropic drugs–how the individual for whom they are prescribed struggles, both with the with and without them, to be real, be themselves. The poems speak as well for their family, friends and society at large as we all seek to understand and respond to the ever increasing numbers of men, women and children who walk among us who are living drug-induced intellectual and emotional lives. It is the soul seeking to break free that is heard in these poems, the voice of the individual, of the poet inside of all of us, fighting for its very life in an increasingly electronically spinning world. Thanks to Alice Pero and Lois P. Jones, two local L.A. Poets, who dedicated themselves to the creation of this book of poems.

THE STORY, THE MOMENT

I’ve been going through some old cast aside poems, going back three, four or more years, fiddling with them to see if they have any juice, any life left in them if I shear a few words or lines or even whole stanzas off here, change a word there, rearrange the stanzas, make the lines shorter, longer. There are two minds at work when I flip through these poems; the cold-hearted editor, who has no qualms about slashing and burning what was once thought so sacred to the life of the poem, a mind bent on crafting a work of art, words that shimmer and shake with the essence of what the poem wants to say. The other mind that shows up is prone to drift off into memories of where I was when the poem was conceived:  on a country road in New Mexico, a hotel in Costa Rica, after washing the dishes in my L.A. home, standing at a window at midnight in Oregon. Of course, recalling the place recalls the mood, recalls the times and who I was then, what I was struggling with and how things have changed one way or another, since then.

Poems are signposts, markers in our lives, a biography that doesn’t spell it out as plainly as prose, but has the inherent faculty to be infused with deep emotional content. This is done, as I see it, through the language, the syntax and the form the poem takes. A vivid picture can be painted with a poem that strips away pretense and takes the reader into the heart of the moment, laying bare the soul of the poet and touching the soul of the reader. It is a delicate balancing act to be able to “tell the story,” as well as infuse the poem with the emotionality needed to transfer the interior of the individual writing the poem to the individual reading/hearing the poem. This is where “becoming a poet” requires both of those minds—the one that can form and mold the words, willing to cut and slash as well and the one who has developed the interior landscape of their soul, allowing him or her access to thoughts and feelings which are both individually felt and universally experienced.

In a panel discussion at the AWP Conference on The Narrative Poem, B.H. Fairchild spoke about how every poem, by its very nature, will contain both narrative and lyric elements in it. There is always some kind of “story” and there is always some kind of “transcendent moment” occurring in every poem—at least in every poem that has any resonance at all for a reader. This is how it is in life: we exist here on earth, in time, in space, eating, drinking, eliminating, getting older, having relationships, children, and finally leaving our body. But that can’t be all. It isn’t all. To be fully alive, to be our own “poem” we experience grief, awe, intuition, love, forgiveness, wonder, joy and gratitude. In every day, every moment and every breath we are both connected with our earthly self and our otherworldly self. It is only to the degree that we are aware of the latter that we experience ourselves fully. I thought when I first started writing poetry that it was about making a nice piece of writing that would “say” something and for people who read to find it interesting and clever. Thank God, after many knock-down-drag-outs with my ego, I know now that poetry is for me another way of connecting me with me and me with others and me with the vastness we call God or Allah or Sat Nam or The Unknown and that is why it is worth the time and the effort to develop the skills to craft a poem, because it is, as well, a crafting of the self to a higher attunement, another inch moving towards being a more aware human being, to truly being a poet.

Yesterday, at the Ruskin Art Club here in L.A., I took an all day workshop with David St. John, a USC professor of poetry and well-known local poet. I had heard so many great things about his workshops from my fellow poets in the last couple of years, but this was the first time I actually made it to a workshop. The title was Lyric Inspiration in Contemporary American Poetry: Cinema, Fragmentation and Erasure. The content of the session was far more accessible than the title. David gave us a general overview of how the cinema and pop culture has affected literature and poetry in particular, especially in the times following the first and second world wars. Poets like Frank O’Hara, Larry Levis, Norman Dubie and John Ashbery. He also talked about how the fragmentation of the culture, the move away from an agrarian society to an industrial one particularly was a catalyst for poets to speak more personally, to seek connection and community through their writing and to speak as the “I” and represent the “we.” T.S. Eliot’s, The Wasteland, was one of the first poems of this kind.

Somehow I missed getting the email with instructions for the day, so neither brought a well-known poem to illustrate the cinematic influence, nor did I bring a poem of my own to be workshopped in the afternoon. No loss though, the day was thoroughly enjoyable. There were several friends of mine in attendance and David has an ease of manner and an openness that makes everyone feel uplifted and relaxed sharing their thoughts and their poems (which were all quite good). Because I was having such a good time I completely forgot to take a picture—which can often be a bit awkward in these small groups, anyway. I’m definitely getting on the email list to get notice of David’s workshops in the future. Besides, I have a one-poem credit to get critiqued for the next one—kinda like a gift card for $20 from Best Buy or Trader Joe’s, but infinitely more delicious!

One of the several Larry Levis poems read in the morning session:

    Photograph: Migrant Worker, Parlier, California, 1967

    I’m going to put Johnny Dominguez right here
    In front of you on this page so that
    You won’t mistake him for something else,
    An idea, for example, of how oppressed
    He was, rising with his pan of Thompson Seedless
    Grapes, from a row of vines. The band
    On his white straw hat darkened by sweat, is,
    He would remind you, just a hatband.
    His hatband. He would remind you of that.
    As for the other use, this unforeseen
    Labor you have subjected him to, the little
    Snacks & white wine of the openings he must
    Bear witness to, he would remind you
    That he was not put on this earth
    To be an example of something else,
    Johnny Dominguez, he would hasten to
    Remind you, in his chaste way of saying things,
    Is not to be used as an example of anything
    At all, not even, he would add after
    A second or so, that greatest of all
    Impossibilities, that unfinishable agenda
    Of the stars, that fact, Johnny Dominguez.

    Larry Levis

I got home on Sunday night. It seemed that half the plane was L.A. poets. All in all the experience in Atlanta was a success–both informationally and inspirationally. The focus of the conference is to support teachers of literature, so I have to admit some of the panel discussions did waft over my head a bit, but I found something of value in everything I attended. I especially enjoyed the readings and on Saturday went to the University of Tampa one, where my mentor, Sarah Maclay, was one of six readers representing the UT Press and Tampa Review. There were also panels on "How Poems Begin" and "More Than One Way to Tell a Story."  The latter included Stephen Dunn as one of the speakers, a poet who’s work I very much enjoy. He has a great book out about poetry called, Walking Light: Essays and Memoirs, that is funny, poignant and inspiring writings about his life and his life with poetry.

Hilda and I finished up around 4:30 then headed out for an early dinner with a short walk around downtown Atlanta before the reading at eight with CD Wright and Coleman Barks. Barks read mostly his own poems, with a couple of Rumi’s in the mix. CD Wright read from her soon to be released book of poems, One Big Self: An Investigation. The poems are taken from a previous published art book where her poems accompanied photos by Deborah Luster taken in  three prisons in Louisiana. It was riveting stuff–powerful in the use of language and the woven emotional textures of the sorrow, resilency and brutality of the inmates, wardens and the reflections  of the writer herself.

I’m happy to be home now and happy I went. I met some great people and connected with some folks in the bookfair, publishers of journals I wasn’t familiar with and came home with a folder full of flyers, postcards and pamphlets to pour over. Not to mention the half-dozen books I picked up that I had to stuff in my already bulging suitcase. With all the stimulation I’m ready to pull out a stack of poems and match them up with some journals and send out those submissions. I got a good start today just printing out the poems, doing some quick revisions here and there and making a preliminary list of the journals. I plan on having ten submissions in the mail by the end of next week. Wish me luck. Below are the last photos from the conference and a couple of what I saw of Atlanta–not much, I’m afraid.

Coleman Barks & CD Wright before the reading. That’s Hilda right behind them and my empty chair. 

Sarah & Holaday hanging out before the reading. 

Stephen Dunn 

I’m digesting–a dinner of edamame and vegetable fried rice from the Pacific Rim Bistro–and the days events. It’s Saturday evening, with only one more event to go before the conference wraps up. There are readings tonight in fiction and poetry, with the poets being two southerners, Coleman Barks and C.D. Wright. But, let’s get back to yesterday. It started out a little more relaxed as I skipped over the first session of the day, finding nothing compelling to attend, thus having some time to putz about, eat a late breakfast and get over to the Hilton for the 10:30 panel on Narrative Poetry: Past, Present, Future with B.H. Fairchild, David Mason, Kate Daniels and David Rothman. It proved to be highly engaging and, unlike the day before, my eyes did not glaze over with mental overwhelm, rather I found their arguments and advocation for the narrative poem not only intelligently outlined, but passionately felt. What I came away with was the understanding that every poem tells some kind of story, even if it is simply random words on the page, the mind will seek to make associations, to create a story. It is what we do as humans–and that a poem that is purely narrative is not a poem. It must have lyricism, it must sing, to connect in the way a poem, by its very nature, is required to connect. Otherwise, it is reporting, dry and unimaginative and leaves the reader with no emotional reverberation.

At noon I went to the Graywolf Press reading, which was lively — and after listening to mainly poetry for the last two days, it was great to hear some fiction and essay pieces read. The room was packed and the energy high. I particularly enjoyed the essay read by Anders Monson from his book of essays, Neck Deep about technology; from the telegraph to high speed internet–really how we communicate and connect, what goes obsolete and what never changes. Really lively and funny and true.  

I took a cruise through the masive bookfair, stopping at various booths to pick up a flyer, a postcard, submission guidelines, a couple of chocolate kisses, small yellow buttons with the Chinese letters for Poetry on them from Copper Canyon Press, and of course bought enough books to weigh down a small donkey. It’s the proverbial candy store for someone like me, and I suspect a good majority of the poets and writers and teachers of both, who mill about touching the covers, flipping through the pages and making small talk, while they calculate in their heads how much $$ they can spend and how much weight they can pack into their suitcases to take home. (Books are HEAVY!)

There were great readings by Charles Wright and Terrance Hayes in the afternoon. I had read Wright and especially love his new volume, Scar Tissue. He writes poems that speak plainly but with deep eloquence about place, relationships and our relationship with our interior landscape. Terrance Hayes is a young man, one who was a college athlete (basketball player) and an artist and has landed as a poet who has a strong sense of musicality in his poems, humor, and telling his story, as a young black man growing up in the south, with sensitivity and deep felt awareness. I was very impressed with him as a poet and a thoughtful and emotionally whole man. Unfortunately, due to the limitations of my camera, or more likely the limitations of my knowledge of the camera, the photos I took didn’t turn out for this reading or the reading in the evening with Thomas Lux, Marilyn Hacker, Cornelius Eady and David Bottoms. And, very unfortunately, Dean Young wasn’t able to make it. He got stuck in an ice storm in Iowa. It was my first time hearing Eady & Bottoms, both of whom (as well as Hacker & Lux) were a delight to hear. It was an affirmation, with the incredible diversity in the work of these four prominent poets, that the form is always secondary to the hand and heart that craft the poem. Below is a poem by Cornelius Eady he read about his parents.

 Cornelius Eady (Photo by Howard Gotfryd)
 

I’m A Fool To Love You

Some folks will tell you the blues is a woman,
Some type of supernatural creature.
My mother would tell you, if she could,
About her life with my father,
A strange and sometimes cruel gentleman.
She would tell you about the choices
A young black woman faces.
Is falling in with some man
A deal with the devil
In blue terms, the tongue we use
When we don’t want nuance
To get in the way,
When we need to talk straight.
My mother chooses my father
After choosing a man
Who was, as we sing it,
Of no account.
This man made my father look good,
That’s how bad it was.
He made my father seem like an island
In the middle of a stormy sea,
He made my father look like a rock.
And is the blues the moment you realize
You exist in a stacked deck,
You look in a mirror at your young face,
The face my sister carries,
And you know it’s the only leverage
You’ve got.
Does this create a hurt that whispers
How you going to do?
Is the blues the moment
You shrug your shoulders
And agree, a girl without money
Is nothing, dust
To be pushed around by any old breeze.
Compared to this,
My father seems, briefly,
To be a fire escape.
This is the way the blues works
Its sorry wonders,
Makes trouble look like
A feather bed,
Makes the wrong man’s kisses
A healing.

From Autobiography of a Jukebox
Carnegie Mellon Poetry, Publishers 

I’ve only got a few minutes before I need to get going over to the conference for this second day of panels and readings and the bookfair that stretches into infinity. There’s a Poetry Extravaganza tonight with Thomas Lux, Dean Young, Cornelius Eddy, David Bottoms, Tree Swenson & Marilyn Hacker (filling in for Brigit Pegeen Kelley). But that’s later… Yesterday the weather was blustery and on the walk from the Sheraton to the Hilton it went from drizzle to downpour in one block, leaving me completely drenched, as my umbrella was almost torn from my hands by the wind. Nevertheless it was a great morning inside, where it was warm and comfortable.

I am sitting in on talks both about poetry and personal essay, crossing over into the latter territory is new for me, but because I’m looking to publish both it’s a good opportunity to poke my nose into what’s going on in that genre. There was even a panel discussion on poets who write nonfiction and the conflicting emotions that can arise from doing so. There was a really interesting panel on writing collaborative poems that was facilitated by Denise Duhamel (great poetry and great energy). Charles Harper Webb was also on this panel. He teaches at Cal State, Long Beach and I was in a workshop taught by him at Idylwild a couple of years ago–a great teacher and generous human being. By six pm, after a full day of sitting in those "seminar chairs," I was done for and headed back to the room to order Thai food and chill out with my roommate, Hilda, as we debriefed on our experiences of the day. It’s a lot for the brain to take in and, even though we missed the evening keynote address, we were both happy to eat some healthy food, take baths and get to bed early.

This morning the sun rose in brilliant colors and the sun is shining. Reading the paper I saw that there were tornadoes in parts of Georgia yesterday. Luckily, they bypassed Atlanta. There wasn’t a topic calling to me for the first session so I’m heading over around 10 to cruise the gigantic bookfair and then start at 10:30 with a panel on "Narrative Poetry." Before I go I’ve got to sit down and figure out a little bit more of what I’m doing with my new camera. One of the thrills of the day for me yesterday was figuring out how to operate the zoom. Today, I’ve got to get down the best way to take indoor shots. Some of the ones I took yesterday I had it on the right setting and some I didn’t. Technology strikes again! 

More tomorrow… 

Denise Duhamel on Collaborative Poetry.

Charles Harper Webb on the Collaborative Poem

Panel Discussion on "Getting to the Heart of Syntax."