In honor of our new Poet Laureate I went back to my Vermont College essays and pulled out this one on Charles Simic’s book of poems, The Voice at 3 A.M. I’ve also included one of my favorite poems of his at the conclusion.

Charles Simic is a complex man with complex thoughts. He possesses a large cache of memories from his childhood in Yugoslavia where he lived through the German and Allied bombings, as well as those as a young immigrant to the U.S. in the fifties and sixties. The chaotic and frightening circumstances of his childhood in combination with the educated and articulate adult he grew to be create poetry that combines tenderness and vulnerability with an often acerbic or pragmatic view of the world. Simic is not willing to allow one emotional force to rule his experiences, rather he gives himself permission to put on the page the very duplicity that haunts, as well as informs him.

 Simic’s poetry dwells frequently on the subject of death; how he observes its affect on people, contemplating his own, and the temporal nature of our soul inhabiting such a fragile vessel. He has seen much death from an early age and has respect, as well as an almost casual familiarity with the way it goes about its appointed task. In the poem “Death, The Philosopher” death is personified, is said to have an “unfortunate passion,” to love “the way the summer dusk fell” and to give “excellent advice by example.” In the last four lines Simic brings himself into the poem:

Miraculously lucid, you, too, came to ask
About the strangeness of it all.
Charles, you said,
How strange you should be here at all!

The sense I had when reading this poem is that there are so many mysteries in life and you can dwell on how dreadful it is, how confusing, and how there seems to be no way to “figure it out,” but in that truth is the strangest of all truths; the unfathomable miracle of your very existence.

Simic has a talent for stringing disparate images together in a poem to create a strong mood, whether it is playful, sensual or somber. One of my favorite lines in the selection is seen in these two stanzas from the poem, “Promises of Leniency and Forgiveness”:

…Someone rising to eloquence

After a funeral, or in the naked arms of a woman
Who has her head averted because she’s crying,
And doesn’t know why. A hairline fracture of the soul
Because of the way light falls on these bare trees and bushes.

Sea-blackened rocks inscrutable as chess players…
One spoke to them of words failing…
Of great works and little faith of blues in each bite of bread.
Above the clouds the firm No went on pacing.

These lines speak of the beauty of sorrow, of how we reach out in our awkward way to comfort each other in times of loss, even though we are inadequate to the task. The line that is most striking is “A hairline fracture of the soul…” It describes a moment of being caught off guard by a slant of light through the trees, or the scent of jasmine on a summer’s evening, or the cry of a child and how, in that instant the soul cracks open, reveals itself, and we are nothing but pure energy.

Although a good many of the poems in this collection (which are selections from 1986 to 2003) dwell on the dark and disturbing aspects of life in the 20th century and the struggle of an individual who has seen more than his share of pain and suffering, there are poems that touch the lighter side and those that exhibit a sweetness and serenity. “De Occulta Philosophia” is one of the latter, and perhaps my favorite poem in the book. Here the narrator speaks to the evening sunlight and “Seeks initiation / Into your occult ways.” There is humility in the voice of the speaker, who is in awe of the incredible majesty in such a display:

Tell me something of your study
Of lengthening shadows,
The blazing windowpanes
Where the soul is turned into light—
Or don’t just now.

The narrator exhibits a longing, a desire to touch the elusive quality of light, of shadow, of the quiet power in the setting sun. In the end the narrator realizes that he is but a mortal, “Seated in a shadowy back room / At the edge of a village,” and although he is given a certain knowledge in his experience of the sunset, he will forever be unable to understand such a profound phenomena in the way he craves.

One of the primary strengths in Simic’s poems is his ability to bring forth images that are both vivid and unusual. They reminded me of French or Italian art films, with the shadows and sharp edges of black and white photography and the sparse, poignant lines of the actors. He is a master at creating mood in his poems as seen in the first stanza of “Against Whatever it is That’s Encroaching:

Best of all is to be idle,
And especially on a Thursday,
And to sip wine while studying the light:
The way it ages, yellows, turns ashen
And then hesitates forever
On the threshold of the night
That could be bringing the first frost.     

Using the words “idle,” “ages,” “yellows,” “ashen,” and “hesitates” there is a strong sense of suspension of time, a slow motion, a remembrance, as if in a dream where all is seen as a movie, and the dreamer knows it is a dream. The melancholia sets up the next two stanzas where a young boy is watching a man (perhaps his father) with two “loose” women whispering and drinking together. We see this all as through a thin veil until the last lines, when the boy reveals his thoughts as he sees in all this revelry the conflicting emotions of one of the women:

The grown-ups raise their glasses to him,
The giddy-headed, red-haired woman
With eyes tightly shut,
As if she were about to cry or sing.

Above all I admire the honesty of Charles Simic’s poetry. There is not an iota of pretension. His poetry requires the reader to slow down and listen carefully to what he is saying to be able to go with him, but when you do (as I finally did), the originality of his perceptions and his sensitivity to human suffering is an enriching and emotionally fulfilling experience.

STONE

Go inside a stone
That would be my way.
Let somebody else become a dove
Or gnash with a tiger’s tooth.
I am happy to be a stone.

From the outside the stone is a riddle:
No one knows how to answer it.
Yet within, it must be cool and quiet
Even though a cow steps on it full weight,
Even though a child throws it in a river;
The stone sinks, slow, unperturbed
To the river bottom
Where the fishes come to knock on it
And listen.

I have seen sparks fly out
When two stones are rubbed,
So perhaps it is not dark inside after all;
Perhaps there is a moon shining
From somewhere, as though behind a hill—
Just enough light to make out
The strange writings, the star-charts
On the inner walls.

The following is a short essay I wrote while I was in school at Vermont College a couple of years ago. It’s on the book, Poetry as Survival by Gregory Orr, which is still one of my all-time favorites on the power of poetry to transform the individual, be it the writer or the reader. I’ve also included a few quotes from the book at the end and if you click on his name it will take you to the poets.org page on Mr. Orr.  Because of the length of the piece you have to click "Read On" to get it all.

At the age of twelve Gregory Orr was responsible for a hunting accident in which his brother died. He was devastated for many years. He eventually found his way back to a fulfilling and productive life through writing lyric poetry where he could express the guilt, shame and horror of that day. Orr has written and taught the art of poetry for the past twenty-five years and says of lyric poetry: “Everything I’ve learned in that time reinforces my own experience that the personal lyric helps individual selves, both writers and readers, survive the vicissitudes of experience and the complexities and anguish of subjectivity and trauma.”           

This book, especially in the first couple of chapters, read like a love story. I found myself richly absorbed in this homage to language, to language in the form of the personal lyric, where the hurts and longings of the soul can spread out onto the page as a salve upon a festering wound. Orr speaks authentically, with a wisdom and clarity that allowed me to take in what he had to say as if he was speaking as a friend, not as a scholar expounding with unquestionable authority. It is in Orr’s willingness to simply state what he has found true for himself, through experience and investigation, that I found myself relaxed and confident that we were in this together and he had my best interests at heart.

Orr gives the poet permission to be “self-centered” in writing the personal lyric. In fact, he insists it is essential for the speaker in the poem to “absolutely believe that he or she is the central point around which all meaning constellates.” He goes on to say that, of course, this is not healthy as a principle for daily life, but without the assertion of the poet’s confidence in the writing of the personal lyric the poet, as Antonio Machado says, “wanders disoriented again among objects.” It is heartening and empowering to hear this call to the poet to stand firmly in his or her experience, to claim dominion over the expression of their poem as truth, if only for them, if only for that moment. It is at once liberating, and a responsibility, to be taken seriously in the crafting of a poem; keeping attuned at all times to the honest nature of what is emanating from the self into the language of the poem. To do otherwise is to create something lifeless, words that will suck energy from the reader, rather than imbue him/her with a kind of life-juice, an electrical current flowing from poet to poem to reader.

Orr illustrates the transformative powers of the lyric poem through the examples of a multitude of works where the poets have written of struggles, tragedies and transcendence. He speaks of the need, no matter what our level of trauma, to create order from disorder; to have a methodology in which our psyche can comprehend the incomprehensible. Often, as can be seen in the mentally and criminally ill, a distorted order has been achieved, one which has not been allowed to be expressed healthily, to be heard in a way that brings a peaceful resolution. When one does not use an outlet, such as art, to “make sense” of the paradox which is human existence, the mind is stuck, as a scratched record, repeating the trauma over and over, until there is an implosion or explosion.

(Read on …)

We have a wonderful woodstove here in our Oregon house that heats the whole upstairs, so I decided to get it going to take the chill off this morning. I opened the lid and began wadding sheets of newspaper and stuffing them inside. I was all business and just about had a heart attack when a small bird flew straight up out of the stove, whizzed past my head and landed across the room. I was immediately startled, completely awed and a little bit frightened by the sudden presence of this wild creature. I figured it must be a fledgling as it only flew in short spurts and not very high. It was covered with a dusting of ashes and although it wasn’t trembling or chirping I sensed the bird’s fragility as it sought to orient itself in this foreign environment of “inside.” Also present in this diminutive creature was the indomitable will to survive and to escape, as it headed straight for the clear glass of the windows, to the tall trees and patches of sky it saw there. Because the day before had been quite warm the stove had remained unlit, making me aware that it was very likely the bird had been in that soot-blackened stove for 24 hours or more with no means of escape.

To get some counsel on what to do with the bird I called my husband in L.A. He was a boy scout in his youth and an experienced woodsman. I rely on him heavily for his clear head and practical advice when it comes to navigating such situations. After giving him all the details together we concluded that to release the bird, instead of capture it and take it to a sanctuary, was the best course of action. It appeared healthy and, as it was capable of flying on its own, we felt it would be better served by being returned to its natural habitat. After taking a picture of the confused little guy as it crouched halfway under the sofa, I caught it and cupping it close to my chest, carried it to the window and let it go. It rocketed out of my hands and flew in a ragged pattern diagonally across the driveway, landing in the tall grass under a pine tree.

The sensation of that small, vibrating body nestled in my palms stayed with me throughout the day and into the night. The whole experience felt holy somehow, like the bird and I had acted as catalysts, each for the other, revealing both the tenuous nature of our existence and the unbridled wonder of it, in such a tender and forgiving way. I will never know if the bird survived, if its mother found it, as my husband suggested she might. I do know that the spirit of the bird and the memory of our brief encounter will live on as message and metaphor in the lore of my own mythology, to be savored and re-savored–a little bit of winged magic fallen from the sky one spring day.

Later that same day…

I finally got out for a walk in the woods across from our house, here at the foot of the mountains. It’s been ten days and for some reason or another I’ve been avoiding it. I practically had to push myself out the door, away from the couch and the TV and my desire for comfort. I followed the deer trails. I would start out on one and then wander off, only to find another going a completely different direction. I veered away from the roads and houses, the sound of people talking. There were the tiniest of wildflowers blooming in the dry soil. I fell in love with each violet, yellow, and rusty red blossom. There were twisted, old stumps laying on their sides, slowly sinking back into the earth. I skirted several red anthills, a hawk circled, a solitary deer bounded through the bitterbrush and sage. There was a heart shaped lava-rock that fit perfectly in my closed hand and two rusted cans that had been used for target practice. (These last three items I picked up and brought home for some reason I can’t explain.) As I stepped out from the woods and crossed the paved road, drawn to the meadow and the golden grasses shimmering in the fading light, I was so grateful for the wisdom of nature, how absolutely embracing she is, how she draws no line between the living and the dead, the budding and the decaying, how they mingle amongst each other as an enduring reminder to the short-sighted of what has always been true, of how we are simultaneously of this earth and not of it. I turned back to the asphalt road and back to my sweet house on the meadow, taking what I found, leaving a few footsteps in the dust.

A BIRD CAME DOWN THE WALK

A bird came down the walk:
He did not know I saw;
He bit an angle-worm in halves
And ate the fellow, raw.

And then he drank a dew
From a convenient grass,
And then hopped sidewise to the wall
To let a beetle pass.

He glanced with rapid eyes
That hurried all abroad, –
The looked like frightened beads, I thought
He stirred his velvet head

Like one in danger; cautious,
I offered him a crumb,
And he unrolled his feathers
And rowed him softer home

Than oars divide the ocean,
Too silver for a seam,
Or butterflies, off banks of noon,
Leap, plashless, as they swim.

Emily Dickinson
The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson
Barnes & Noble, Publisher

FULL MOON THAT STRIKES
THE EARTH COLD

or to be young geese again
on the night of their first
migration: two angled lines
joined only at the vertex.
A week ago the full moon

that strikes the earth cold
began a thin blue air
in the distance that parted
for the V of your leaving.

Karen McCosker
A Poem A Day
Steer Forth Press, Publisher 

Green chilies, red chilies, tamales, sopapillas, guacamole! It’s New Mexico and the food is hot and tasty. Last week when I was in Espanola (a small town north of Santa Fe, south of Taos) I went to dinner with some friends at one of our favorites, Gabriel’s, out on Hwy 25, where they make the guacamole fresh to your specifications right at the table. The tortillas are freshly made too and the green chili knocks your socks off. Well, it’s not that hot, but it sure does get the tongue dancing.

Thought I’d look around for some “foodie” poems and found these three. Also took some snaps at Gabriel’s. Mmmm, is it time for dinner?

Entrance to Gabriel’s 

Twins that were too cute to resist not taking their picture. 

The busy dining room at dinner time.

Making the guacamole–so much color! 

Close up of the guacamole prep–love how that lime juice looks coming out of the press. 

Where are the mariachis who go under these hats? 

This was dessert–the desert at sunset. You can see some snow on the farthest peak. 

POPCORN

When Plato said
that what we see are shadows
flickering on a cave wall,
he must have meant
the movies.
You let a cigarette lean
from your mouth precisely
as Bogart did.
Because of this, reels later,
we say of our life
that it is B-grade;
that it opened and will close
in a dusty place
where things move always
in slow motion;
that what is real
is the popcorn
jammed between our teeth.

Linda Pastan
Carnival Evening
W.W. Norton & Co., Publishers

ODE TO FRENCH FRIES

What sizzles
in boiling
oil
is the world’s
pleasure:
French
fries
go
into the pan
like the morning swan’s
snowy feathers
and emerge
half golden from the olive’s
crackling amber. 

Garlic
lends them
its earthy aroma,
its spice,
its pollen that braved the reefs.
Then,
dressed
anew
in ivory suits, they fill our plates
with repeated abundance,
and the delicious simplicity of the soil. 

Pablo Neruda
Ode to Common Things
Bulfinch Press, Publisher 

RED ONION, CHERRIES, BOILING POTATOES, MILK– 

Here is a soul, accepting nothing.
Obstinate as a small child
refusing tapioca, peaches, toast. 

the cheeks are streaked, but dry.
the mouth is firmly closed in both directions. 

Ask, if you like,
if it is merely sulking, or holding out for better.
The soup grows cold in the question.
The ice cream pools in its dish.

Not this, is all it knows. Not this.
As certain cut flowers refuse to drink in the vase. 

And the heart, from its great distance, watches, helpless. 

Jane Hirshfield
Given Sugar, Given Salt
HarperCollins, Publishers

I was thinking about peace today and feeling weary. I used to shout about it, used to march about it, wanted to tear down buildings and burn flags about it. I was thinking about Ghandi, about Martin Luther King Jr., about how I’ve been at war with my own thoughts for 55 years now and how it’s time to lay down the sword, the shield, the desire to win and do what Christ and Nanak and Muhammad and John and Oko said to do: to love, to see what that can do. Yeah, it’s corny and naïve and let’s the other guy “win.” But it seems that winning is the object of war, so peace must be some kind of surrender, if only to the struggle. Don’t get me wrong, doesn’t mean I won’t put on my marchin’ boots again one day, won’t put my vote where my heart is and won’t keep praying every day for peace. It’s the conflict, the back-and-forth that I’m tired of having around. So, here’s my tribute to peace in the written word, photos and a bit of John Lennon to inspire. I wish for you true peace within that spreads like morning sunlight across the surface of this planet into every heart that beats.

All poems are from Poems to Live By in Uncertain Times, edited by Joan Murray, Beacon Press, Publishers. 

THE PEACE OF WILD THINGS

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Wendell Berry
 

ON PRAYER

You ask me how to pray to someone who is not.
All I know is that prayer constructs a velvet bridge
And walking it we are aloft, as on a springboard,
Above landscapes the color of ripe gold
Transformed by a magic stopping of the sun.
That bridge leads to the shore of Reversal
Where everything is just the opposite and the word is
Unveils a meaning we hardly envisioned.
Notice: I say we; there, every one, separately,
Feels compassion for others entangled in the flesh
and knows that if there is no other shore
They will walk that aerial bridge all the same.

Czeslaw Milosz
Tr. by Robert Hass 

I know the truth –
give up all other truths!

I know the truth—give up all other truths!
No need for people anywhere on earth to struggle.
Look—it is evening, look, it is nearly night:
what do you speak of, poets, lovers, generals?

The wind is level now, the earth is wet with dew,
the storm of stars in the sky will turn to quiet.
And soon all of us will sleep under the earth, we
who never let each other sleep above it.

Marina Tsvetayeva
Tr. by Elaine Feinstein

Give Peace a Chance by John Lennon from The Best of John Lennon

These two poems by Jane Kenyon were recently featured in issues of Writer’s Almanac and I couldn’t help but reprint them here. Kenyon writes with such beauty and lucid tenderness about what it is to live fully in this world and to step over into the world beyond. Her poems ring as that kind of truth that moves beyond all boundaries of cultures, faiths and generations.

For more information on Jane Kenyon and her poetry you can CLICK HERE.

BRIEFLY IT ENTERS, AND BRIEFLY SPEAKS

I am the blossom pressed in a book,
found again after two hundred years… .

I am the maker, the lover, and the keeper… .

When the young girl who starves
sits down to a table
she will sit beside me… .

I am food on the prisoner’s plate… .

I am water rushing to the wellhead,
filling the pitcher until it spills… .

I am the patient gardener
of the dry and weedy garden… .

I am the stone step,
the latch, and the working hinge… .

I am the heart contracted by joy… .
the longest hair, white
before the rest… .
I am there in the basket of fruit
presented to the widow… .

I am the musk rose opening
unattended, the fern on the boggy summit… .

I am the one whose love
overcomes you, already with you
when you think to call my name…

Jane Kenyon
Collected Poems
Graywolf Press, Publishers
 

NOTES FROM THE OTHER SIDE

I divested myself of despair
and fear when I came here.

Now there is no more catching
one’s own eye in the mirror,

there are no bad books, no plastic,
no insurance premiums, and of course
no illness. Contrition
does not exist, nor gnashing

of teeth. No one howls as the first
clod of earth hits the casket.

The poor we no longer have with us.
Our calm hearts strike only the hour,

and God, as promised, proves
to be mercy clothed in light.

Jane Kenyon
Constance
Gray Wolf Press, Publishers 

The liquid that descends from the clouds as rain, forms streams, lakes, and seas, and is a major constituent of all living matter and that when pure is an odorless, tasteless, very slightly compressible liquid oxide of hydrogen H2O which appears bluish in thick layers, freezes at 0° C and boils at 100° C, has a maximum density at 4° C and a high specific heat, is feebly ionized to hydrogen and hydroxyl ions, and is a poor conductor of electricity and a good solvent (Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary).

On Sunday I spent a lot of time immersed. We have a beautiful oval-shaped pool in the back yard of the house we’ve been leasing for a couple of years, as well as a two-person hot tub. One of the best therapies for body, mind and spirit is to alternate between the frigid cold of the pool (we rarely heat it due to the cost and we’re not much into swimming) and the 103 degrees of the hot tub. By the end of 30-45 minutes of that you can melt right down onto the bed and sleep peacefully through the night. I felt like I needed an extra dose of hydrotherapy to ease some of the physical effects of travel and the still very present emotional effects of the passing of my father, so I took advantage of it being a quiet Sunday morning and dipped in and out of the warm and cold water, then wrapped myself in a cotton quilt a friend had brought me from India, sunk down onto the bed in our darkened guestroom and for the next two hours watched the film WATER, written and directed by Deepa Mehta.

 The film held me mesmerized. Set in India in 1938, but filmed in Sri Lanka after a public protest drove it from India, it is the story of an eight year-old girl who is widowed and then must live in seclusion and poverty with other widows, as society sees them as only “half-living” now that their husbands have died. There is great sorrow and great spirit in this film and such incredible beauty in the filming of it. The “ashram” where the women live is in a city on the banks of the Ganges, the Ganga—the Mother River, where Hindus bring the ashes of their dead and the devout make pilgrimage to bathe and cleanse their souls. I was absorbed into this film as a stream is merged with the river. It was a world so far away from my present-day reality and yet, the practices portrayed in the movie exist even today. I saw these women, as all women are — as water; fluid, ever-changing form, mercurial, emotional, powerful when provoked and as generous as the clouds that pour forth their bounty upon the earth. As everything is a teacher, so water is an endless source of wisdom, its lessons of compassion and of destruction always there to open us to the perfect rhythms of this world, as well as the vastness of its mysteries. Take a hot bath. Swim in the ocean. Drink long and slow from a pure mountain stream. Rent the movie WATER. Invite your loved one under the quilt with you. Let the tears roll. It’s so, so good for the soul.

Below are a few "water" poems written by women.

It was like a stream
   running into the dry bed
   of a lake,

               like rain
   pouring on plants
   parched to sticks.

It was like this world’s pleasure
   and the way to the other,
                                          both
   walking toward me.

Seeing the feet of the master,
O lord white as jasmine,
   I was made
   worthwhile.

Mahadeviyakka
tr. by A.K. Ramanujan
Women in Praise of the Sacred
HarperCollins, Publishers

FOREST LAKE

I was alone on a sunny shore
by the forest’s pale blue lake,
in the sky floated a single cloud
and on the water a single isle.
The ripe sweetness of summer dripped
in beads from every tree
and straight into my opened heart
a tiny drop ran down.

Edith Sodergran
tr. by Stina Katchadourian
Women in Praise of the Sacred
HarperCollins, Publishers

 
TO DRINK

I want to gather your darkness
in my hands, to cup it like water
and drink.
I want this in the same way
as I want to touch your cheek –
it is the same –
the way a moth will come
to the bedroom window in late September,
beating and beating its wings against cold glass;
the way a horse will lower
his long head to water, and drink,
and pause to lift his head and look,
and drink again,
taking everything in with the water,
everything.

Jane Hirshfield
Of Gravity & Angels
Wesleyan University Press

 
WATER PICTURE

In the pond in the park
all things are doubled:
Long buildings hang and
wriggle gently. Chimneys
are bent legs bouncing
on clouds below. A flag
wags like a fishhook
down there in the sky.

The arched stone bridge
is an eye, with underlid
in the water. In its lens
dip crinkled heads with hats
that don’t fall off. Dogs go by,
barking on their backs.
A baby, taken to feed the
ducks, dangles upside-down,
a pink balloon for a buoy.

Treetops deploy a haze of
cherry bloom for roots,
where birds coast belly-up
in the glass bowl of a hill;
from its bottom a bunch
of peanut-munching children
is suspended by their
sneakers, waveringly.

A swan, with twin necks
forming the figure 3,
steers between two dimpled
towers doubled. Fondly
hissing, she kisses herself,
and all the scene is troubled:
water-windows splinter,
tree-limbs tangle, the bridge
folds like a fan.

May Swenson,
Nature: Poems Old and New
Houghton Mifflin, Publisher
 

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