Politics in poetry?

I recently attended a reading
where the feature stated, “I hate political poems,” as he then proceeded to read what may or may not have been construed as a “political poem.” But this begs the question: Is there a place for politics in poetry?

I would argue that any thought-provoking topic has a place in poetry (or art), be it nature, religion, unrequited love, or even politics. I would argue that the problem is whether or not politics is approached with open-mindedness by both the audience and the artist.

Yes, that’s right. The artist too.

Exhibit A. I once attended a reading where this very issue became more than just a hypothetical question. A young man, who said he had never attended a poetry reading before, stood up to read during the open mic portion of the evening. He introduced himself as just having returned from a tour of duty in Iraq, and he read a few very sincere pieces about his personal experience with war.

The very next open mic reader of the evening stood up and read a bombastic, anti-war piece.

Shortly thereafter, the young veteran stormed out the door. I’ve never seen him at a reading anywhere around town since.

Exhibit B. I don’t know if this happens to anyone else, but often at readings, I’m approached by people (often those who don’t know me very well) who begin a political monologue with me. Regardless of whether or not I agree with the speaker, I’m immediately made uncomfortable because the speaker almost always approaches in such a way that he or she assumes that I automatically agree. I generally answer with polite silence, and the person strolls off happily, assuming, still, that I agree.

Yes, I know that as writers, we’re supposed to espouse the values of freedom of speech and all that entails. Yes, I know that, as artists, we need to be open-minded to other, often conflicting opinions.

But isn’t open-mindedness a two-way street? Doesn’t the poet need to be open-minded enough to recognize that even though someone may disagree, he or she shouldn’t be made to feel immoral, ignorant, stupid, evil, Neanderthal, or insert your disparaging adjective of choice here. Opinions can be stated and complex issues SHOULD be discussed, but in such a way that there is enough wiggle room left for someone to state an opposing opinion without being subject to—pardon the reference—a pre-emptive strike.

Dogmatism, whether you’re talking about religion, politics, or the best brand of ketchup, does nothing to improve inter-human relationships. And more often than we care to admit, I think political poetry unfortunately veers into dogmatism. Shouldn’t poetry be opening the doors to discussion and free exchange rather than closing them to maintain a pool of homogenous opinions?

Blind Review Friday

Blind Review Friday.

The author shall remain anonymous (unless they chose to divulge themselves in the comments.)

Those commenting are also welcome to remain anonymous if they wish.


Incendiary comments will be removed.

If you would like your piece thrown to the wolves send it to salinger@ameritech.net with "Workshop the hell out of this poem" as the subject line.

(if you had work submitted and it has not yet appeared in BRF please resubmit - we unfortunately lost our backlog due to an e-mail accident.)

Last review's offering of "All Summer Long" is written by Carol Frost - this weeks selection is also from an established author:

September Song

born 19.6.32 - deported 24.9.42
Undesirable you may have been, untouchable
you were not. Not forgotten
or passed over at the proper time.

As estimated, you died. Things marched,
sufficient, to that end.
Just so much Zyklon and leather, patented
terror, so many routine cries.

(I have made
an elegy for myself it
is true)

September fattens on vines. Roses
flake from the wall. The smoke
of harmless fires drifts to my eyes.

This is plenty. This is more than enough.

Tweet Poem (Auto poetry, part 3)

I'm not sure why
I'm so fascinated by auto-poetry generation.* It's not really "poetry" in any real sense, but perhaps the raw material of which poetry is made. It can be a Rorschach test, a stream of babble that we put together to give us look into our own minds, or it can be a kick to the commonplace consciousness, putting together images and thoughts in weird combinations, stimulating sparks of thought. I was amazed, for example, how both Jim Stanley and Shelley Chernin took the same "beatnik ramble" and put it together into different, but both quite insightful, poems

So, check out the "longest poem in the world": Romanian student Andrei Gheorghe wrote a 'bot that grabs the real-time twitter feed, selects out posts that rhyme, and aggregates these into a continuous feed, with about 4000 verses added every day.
OK, frankly, it doesn't really make much sense:

I bought the wine and gushers. You bought the broken heart.

Ready for the summer to end and fall to start.

Early to bed early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise:

why do the bad girls get the good guys and the good girls get the bad guys

It's all false love and affection

and my lil pony collection

No, not really "poetry" in any real sense, but like a lot of auto poetry, it can be weirdly hypnotic. The tweet poem is a window into the collective consciousness, a look at an instantaneous zeitgeist which is equal parts quotidian and philosophical, romantic and mundane and cynical.
And every now and then there'll be a good line.

I used to have a handle on life. And then it broke.

Desperately trying to cut down on the booze and smoke.

(thanks to slashdot for the link)
-----
*Maybe because I'm too lazy to actually write poems.

Scifaiku: the Universe in Three Lines

"Scifaiku" is a poetic form codified by Tom Brinck with his 1995 Scifaiku Manifesto. Cleveland's notable haikuist Joshua Gage* just put together a little flyer, "The Universe in Three Lines," a sampler of scifaiku that was handed out at both the recent Haiku North America conference in Ottowa and also the recent Science Fiction world convention on Montreal.
If you're interested, check it out. Josh notes "It's a neat little tri-fold sampler with some cool 1950's graphics and really excellent scifaiku."

Or check out the scifaiku.com website.

----

*who posts here under his nom d' net pottygok)

Poetry back in the Woods – Estrogen Edition

Poetry Back in the Woods
Thursday September 24, 2009
7:00 PM - 8:30 PM
Bertram Woods Branch 

10 Women: A Conversation in Poetry
Poetry Back in the Woods begins its season with a presentation by ten women poets.
 

Mary Biddinger is the editor of the Akron Series in Poetry, and the director of the NEOMFA. She is also co-editor-in-chief of Barn Owl Review.

Susan Grimm`s poems have appeared in The Journal, Poetry East, Crab Orchard Review, and others. Her book of poems, Lake Erie Blue, was published by BkMk Press. She edited Ordering the Storm: How to Put Together a Book of Poems which was published by Cleveland State University Poetry Center.

Bonnie Jacobson is Whiskey Island’s creative non-fiction editor and author of two poetry collections, Stopping for Time (GreenTower Press) and In Joanna’s House (Cleveland State University Poetry Center); and two chapbooks, On Being Served Apples (Bits Press) and Greatest Hits (Pudding House invitational). Her poems have appeared in The Gettysburg Review, The Iowa Review, Prairie Schooner, Rattle.

Laura Kennelly, associate editor of BACH: Journal of the Riemenschneider Bach Institute at the Baldwin-Wallace Conservatory of Music, is an arts columnist in the Cleveland area.

Amy Kesegich teaches English at Notre Dame College of Ohio. She has published poetry in Whiskey Island, California Quarterly, Frost Notes, Poetry Motel, White Pelican Review and Rubbertop Review. She has a chapbook, Spare Change, published by Bits Press.

Lynn Powell has published two books of poetry, Old & New Testaments and The Zones of Paradise. Her poems have been included in 180 More: Extraordinary Poems for Every Day and The Norton Introduction to Literature (forthcoming) and have won recent awards from the Ohio Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Jessica Schantz teaches composition and creative writing at Cleveland State University.

Karen Schubert is the author of The Geography of Lost Houses, and her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in 42opus, Fifth Wednesday, Zoland Poetry, Redactions, Reconfigurations and others. She received nominations for a Pushcart Prize and awards from American Academy of Poets and dA Center for the Arts.

Amy Sparks,editor at the Cleveland Museum of Art, is the author of serious red (Cleveland State University Poetry Center) and queen of cups (Burning Press), and has published in Barn Owl Review, DMQ Review, Hobble Creek Press, Harpur Palate, and more.

Jennifer Sullivan, Department Head of English at Barberton High School, is a poet from Akron, Ohio. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in American Poetry Journal, Barn Owl Review, DIAGRAM, The Laurel Review, New York Quarterly, and Nimrod.

Astropoetica (Poetry of Science 2)

Continuing the discussion of poetry of science, poets have found star-gazing to be a source of inspiration for years. In the era of Hubble images, exoplanets, and new discoveries in cosmology, there's more to astronomical poetry than just Keats' watcher of the skies and Whitman's learn'd astronomer.
I just got a note from editor Emily Gaskin, announcing that Astropoetica just launched their summer issue. Astropoetica is a web 'zine devoted to poetry of astronomy, and the summer '09 issue features poetry from John Bennett, F.J. Bergman, P.S. Cottier, Mary Cresswell, Neil Ellman, Kendall Evans, Andrei Dorian Gheorghe, Taylor Graham, Tim Jones, S. A. Kelly, me, John Mirisola, Dan Mitru, Rae Pater, Dave Shortt, and Meg Smith.

They also have a nice list of links to other sites with astronomy-based poetry.

Stargazing, anyone?

A Sense of Place (Montreal, Damascus, Cleveland)

I just got back

from a long weekend in Montreal*, where-- among other things-- I met poet Amal El-Mohtar, the other winner of the 2009 Rhysling for best poem. (photo of Amal and me); not to mention a number of other speculative poets, too many to name**.

Amal is one heck of a poet. (She's also one of the three editors of the internet quarterly Goblin Fruit, which features mythic and fantastic poetry***). She won for her poem "Song for an Ancient City," a love-letter to the city of Damascus.

What strikes me most about Amal's poem is how deeply and beautifully it is evocative of place.

Amal placed third for the long poem Rhysling as well, collaborating with Cat Valente (a former Clevelander) on "Damascus Divides the Lovers by Zero," another poem deeply evocative of place.

So I've been thinking of poetry of place recently. There is some body of poetry of place about Cleveland, of course-- in fact, the Deep Cleveland poem o' the week is a long-running attempt to capture the city in all its myriad fragmented poetic angles, somewhat channeling the spirit of D.A. Levy.

Windfall has a nice little essay essay discussing poetry of place.

"Paul Shepard thinks that the lack or denial of our connection to the plants and animals in a given place makes us crazy. Rootless, detached people are dangerous. On the other hand, sanity happens when people understand that where they are is who they are. "

Any thoughts on poetry of place from the clevelandpoetics cabal?

-----

*for those of you who look for my usual post on clevelandpoetics every Sunday or early Monday, that's why I didn't post last week.

**I was originally going to list them all, but it occurs to me that with my sketchy memory I'd probably leave somebody out, and that person would then assume I was snubbing them deliberately.

***"fantastic" is often used as a generic adjective meaning "really good," but in this case I mean it in its literal sense (not that the figurative sense isn't also applicable). If I were Edgar Allen Poe, perhaps I'd say "phantasmagorical."

Blind Review Friday

Blind Review Friday.

The author shall remain anonymous (unless they chose to divulge themselves in the comments.)

Those commenting are also welcome to remain anonymous if they wish.


Incendiary comments will be removed.

If you would like your piece thrown to the wolves send it to salinger@ameritech.net with "Workshop the hell out of this poem" as the subject line.

(if you had work submitted and it has not yet appeared in BRF please resubmit - we unfortunately lost our backlog due to an e-mail accident.)

Last week's offering of "Any Fool Can Get Into an Ocean" is written by Jack Spicer - this weeks selection is also from an established author:

All Summer Long

The dogs eat hoof slivers and lie under the porch.
A strand of human hair hangs strangely from a fruit tree
like a cry in the throat. The sky is clay for the child who is past
being tired, who wanders in waist-deep
grasses. Gnats rise in a vapor,
in a long mounting whine around her forehead and ears.


The sun is an indistinct moon. Frail sticks
of grass poke her ankles,
and a wet froth of spiders touches her legs
like wet fingers. The musk and smell
of air are as hot as the savory
terrible exhales from a tired horse.


The parents are sleeping all afternoon,
and no one explains the long uneasy afternoons.
She hears their combined breathing and swallowing
salivas, and sees their sides rising and falling
like the sides of horses in the hot pasture.


At evening a breeze dries and crumbles
the sky and the clouds float like undershirts
and cotton dresses on a clothesline. Horses
rock to their feet and race or graze.
Parents open their shutters and call
the lonely, happy child home.
The child who hates silences talks and talks
of cicadas and the manes of horses.

Macs Backs Wednesday Reading

Kathleen Calby, Mike Goldstein and Brian Taylor will read & perform, followed by open mic.

Kathleen Calby is a poet, but she won't be reading tonight. Instead she will bring quartz gem crytal bowls, ancient Tibetan singing bowls and Solfeggio tuning forks to create sound environments, what she calls poetry without words. Kathleen has been working with sound and harmonics for over ten years ----it will be a fascinating aural experience.

Mike Goldstein writes that he will read satirical poems about current events and serious poems about Buddhism. He also will bring along his saxophone and bassoon and play them in unflattering positions. Mike has been a regular at Mac's readings for many years and was first featured in 1994.

Brian Taylor is a poet, photographer and rider of his bicycle all around town. He has been writing and reading his work at venues throughout Cleveland since the early 1990's. He has competed in the Haiku contests at the National Poetry Slam and has participated in several Haiku Death Matches.

7:00pm - 9:00pm

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Cleveland Heights, Ohio

1820 Coventry Rd.

Tickling Ohio's Ivories

Ohio is a piano.

This phenomenon was uncovered by Andy Woodruff, a cartographer (who lives in Massachusetts, damn fur’ner). Woodruff was driving through our state when he suddenly realized that Ohio has 88 counties, a piano has 88 keys, and, well, the next step is obvious..............create a musical map of our state on which each county is assigned one of the 88 piano notes. Woodruff’s map can play you through the drive from Cleveland to Cincinnati or through a variety of data-based organizations of the counties, from average family size to number of farms.

But wait. Does this have anything to do with poetry? I think that any symbolization or substitution of one thing for another that transforms the original is poetic, but I’d like to know what you think.

But wait again. Before you tell me what you think, I’ve borrowed Woodruff’s idea of using Ohio’s counties to create something else, but I’ve done it with words rather than musical notes. Is it poetry? Again, I’d like your feedback.

In my first pass at it, I found a poem with 88 words, including the title. Disappointment, by August Kleinzahler (a poet I highly recommend reading). I assigned each word of the poem to each of Ohio’s counties – the words of the poem in the order of the poem, starting with the title, and the counties in alphabetical order. Then I made what I’m going to call poems.

Here is a trip along the shore of Lake Erie, east to west:

smell leaking
the shoulders
and mouth
bequeathing

Or perhaps you’d prefer to follow the Ohio River:

eyelids big
that disappointment close
out growing
pang of look
then embroidering whole
give

I’ll let you read bottom up to enjoy the poems of the return trips.

Next, I made a poem using words found within the names of the counties. This gave me more word choices. Again, the trip along the lake shore:

bush lake guy
in ire
tow us

The river journey:

bum offer
melt more
wish
then I lag anew
too mad
won no man

Lastly, sound poems. Trying reading them aloud and attending to how you feel as you do it before you dismiss them.

The Lake: Ash-La-Cu-Lo-Er-Ot-Luc

The River: Co-Je-Bel-Mo-Wash-At-Me-Ga-La-Sci-Ad-Bro-Cler-Ha

So, poetry?

What I’m getting at here are really questions about creativity (What is it? Does it serve a purpose and if so, what?) and meaning (Must creative work have meaning? Must it have the same meaning for everyone? Since humans are meaning-creating machines, can a poet leave it to others to create the meaning in a poem?).

As a reward for reading through this post and thinking about these questions, please enjoy this rendition of She Blinded Me With Science, sung by online dictionaries.

Mea Culpa

The main reason we didn’t have a Blind Review Friday Poem this week is because I lost our submission. I picked up my E-mails while on the road and accidently erased two days of correspondence into the emptiness of cyber nothingness.

So, if you had a piece submitted for Blind Review Please re-submit. And if you’ve just been thinking about sending in a piece – please do so. We will resume our regularly scheduled BRF next week.

Mindfulness Practices and Writing

Mindfulness Practices

and Writing

I’ve had an inclination and interest in Eastern thought for many years. Long before I became a writer or a poet. And have found its teachings and practices a resource I go back to over and over for inspiration in a lot of areas of my life.

A recent article I read in Shambhala Sun Magazine, the September 2009 issue reminded me it also could be a wonderful source of inspiration and creativity for writing.

The article that stimulated those thoughts for me is titled, “Love, Lose and Anxious Times”, written by Norman Fischer a poet and Zen teacher from San Francisco.

http://www.shambhalasun.com/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=3419

Unfortunately, the online link to the article is a mere teaser to the real thing, they really wish for you to buy the magazine. So I’ll have to share here, as briefly as I can, what I thought so interesting.

The crux of the article deals with relying on spiritual practice to initiate change and deal with loss. The central idea being that when we feel most challenged is when we should most rely on simple regular practices that can support us, help us grow and help us get through tough times.

The thought came to me in reading the article that these practices are especially useful to us as writers when we struggle; and some of them are already commonly recommended by writing experts for good writing. For many poets and writers our muses are often fickle and unreliable. Disappearing at times because of illness or stress or for absolutely no reason at all--seemingly coming and going with the wind. Often when we have trouble feeling inspired we stop writing rather than writing through the difficulties.

Several practices are highlighted in the article which I feel can be relevant to a writer who is going thru a period of struggle.

The first is journaling, an old standby for any writer. But here it is suggested with the purpose of removing blocks and negative thinking that obstruct by writing those thoughts and feelings down. An important point I think for someone trying to fight through writer’s block or move into a new area of creativity. Confronting, accepting, and “being” with the negative thoughts and feelings is a recommended way of working through them to the other side in eastern thought.

Emptying out the mind by free writing for 10-20 minutes a day is also recommended, writing down what ever comes to you… unfiltered. The regular practice of carrying a notebook for writing down ideas and thoughts throughout the day is mentioned, and jotting down arresting words and phrases that catch our attention to use as writing prompts. Cueing off things you’ve read or written, writing down what you’ve been thinking or feeling in a coherent stream of thought, all of these act to free up stuck thinking and help creativity to flow again.

Active listening and sharing is also an idea that was mentioned. Taking a thought or an idea prompt and bringing one or more friends together in a small group, after 5 minutes of silence and collecting your thoughts, have each person in turn share their thoughts spontaneously for 5 to 7 minutes… uninterrupted. The others just listen--no questions, no comments. Afterwards, one person simply reviews for the speaker in their own words what they heard him or her say. Listening to what you’ve said repeated back to you in another’s voice can be extremely illuminating.

And meditation, even in its simplest form, quietly sitting, noticing the breath, noticing the thoughts and feelings, perhaps also the sound of the room, the stillness there, helps to allow other things to come to the fore. A reawakened sensitivity to your inner and outer environment is always good for a writer. I think often we start to have problems with inspiration when we’ve stopped hearing and seeing things that are naturally there in our environment; all those things that give texture and nuance to our writing. Sometimes, for one reason or other we lose touch with that.

Anyway, I thought the article very thoughtfully written and shared by someone who himself is a writer and poet. And I found the thought of using some of these practices in a new way very helpful to me. I hope maybe some of this is also helpful to others. ~~ Christina Brooks

Poetry of Science

The New York Times blog TierneyLab ran a guest post on the Poetry of Science, focusing on the poems of Kimiko Hahn, and most particularly on her book Toxic Flora, coming out from Norton next year, a collection of poetry inspired by the science section of the New York Times.

I'm a great fan of science poetry, as anybody who's read my work most likely already knows (about half of the poems in Iron Angels are about science, or science fiction, or both).

There is an innate tension between science and poetry, the reflection of our society's perception of an opposition between the literary and the scientific ways of viewing the world; between, as C.P. Snow would put it, the "two cultures" of humanities and science. Yet (as I posted in a comment on the Tierney blog), poetry and science also go together; in their way, they are similar ways of doing the same thing: At its best poetry combines insight into the workings of the world with metaphors based on combining diverse observations– and science is a superb generator of both observations and insights.

As I read Hahn's poetry, I'm struck by the insights she finds in biology, and in how apt and particular the correspondences between biology and day to day life. Her poetry deals with bumble bees, and Moray eels; with plants, and planets.

"Others read the story of a pond or a patient the way she [Hahn] reads a poem. Interested in experiencing something foreign, she reads essays on science, on the world and on language. Whatever she finds intriguing and frightening becomes a poem. She writes a lot about extinction. She is writing a collection of poems inspired by science, called Toxic Flora. “There is poetic truth and factual truth,” she said. She is respectful of science and how the writers of science get their information correct. She is an artist because of the license to be irresponsible." (from Robert Flynn).

Is there a contradiction between science and poetry, or a consilience? Do you find insights for poetry in the workings of science?

--

For the Newbie...

As writers in general, we always hear, "you gotta work on your craft." There have been many times where I've questioned what that meant. As a poet, I'm starting to hear this more often. What does 'working on your craft' mean? Specifically. What is the best advice, without using this statement, you could give to a new poet?

I'm sure the responses will be interesting.

Stay peace

Desert Island Poetry

I've always been fascinated by desert island lists - both my own (which are ever changing) and other folks' (which may be as well). Today I'm curious... if you knew you were going to be stuck on a deserted island (or locked in a cell or otherwise removed from libraries, bookstores and the internet) for exactly one year with no reading material besides ten books of poetry, which ten would you choose? My list would be a fairly even mixture of books I haven't read in their entirety and books I've finished but am aching to re-explore. I'd also lean heavily toward heavier books, ones with lots of pages and poems - and, if permitted, I'd define poetry as loosely as possible. Here's the list I'd make this morning:

The Complete Poems by William Blake

ukanhavyrfuckinciti bak by d.a.levy

Collected Poems 1912-1944 by H.D.

The Complete Works of Shakespeare (preferably ed. by David Bevington)

Collected Poems by Federico García Lorca (revised bilingual edition)

The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats

The Complete Poems by Anne Sexton

"Spain, Take This Chalice from Me" and Other Poems by César Vallejo (bilingual)

The Poetry of Pablo Neruda (bilingual, ed. by Ilan Stavans)

Ulysses by James Joyce (I told you I'd define it loosely)

I've included three bilingual books both because I love their poetry and because their inclusion will be good for maintaining and refreshing my rusty Spanish. Why should I stop multitasking just because I'm on a desert island?

Now it's your turn. Which ten books of poetry would choose to have on your island? And why?

.

The Printer's Ball

A great article today in the Chicago Sun-Times about the fifth annual Printer's Ball. It starts like this . . .

Robert Frost was never this hot. Guns. Empowerment. Mass media. Those were some of the popular themes at the Brave New Voices summit here, where more than 900 teenage poets and spoken-word artists from across the world gathered to bring poetry into a new convergence of hip-hop, choreography and guttural rhymes.

Words have always helped to make sense of a turbulent world. In this regard, hip-hop and slam poetry is an extension of the 1950s Beats' link between jazz and poetry. "The Beats taught everyone poetry doesn't have to be homework," said Tony Trigilio, 43, director of creative writing and poetry in the English department of Columbia College, which offers the nation's only undergraduate poetry major. "They used the elaborate rhythms of jazz. They brought poetry back to its roots in music."

Read the rest of the article here. And did YOU know that Columbia College offers the nation's only undergraduate poetry major? I dig it.

Tech Tip: Poets – make Word stop capitalizing!

 

Out of the box, Microsoft Word is good for a lot of writing assignments, but not if you’re a poet. Here’s a quick fix to reconfigure Word to make it more poet-friendly.

The Problem: Word automatically capitalizes the first word of every sentence and every new line. You do not write poetry in that format, and are tired of backspacing and changing all those words.

The Solution: A few simple checkboxes.

(The steps are for Word 2007; menu choices will be different for other versions)

1. Click the Office icon at the top left of Word, then choose Word Options from the bottom of the menu.
2. Click Proofing
3. From the screen on the right, click the box “AutoCorrect Options” in the first section, called “AutoCorrect Options”
4. Uncheck “Capitalize first letter of sentences”

Word will now no longer automatically replace what it considers “incorrect” lower case letters.

But it will still mark this error with a green squiggly “Grammar Error” line. To turn off that annoyance:

1. In the section called “When Correcting Grammar and Spelling in Word” click the “Settings” button.
2. Uncheck “Capitalization”
3. Click OK

Now Word will stop reminding you that as a poet you don’t know what you’re doing.

If you’re likely to make other grammatical errors in your poems – unusual spelling, syntax, punctuation, click one more box in this screen, “Hide grammar errors in this document only”

Finally, you can set Word to ignore capitalization in all new documents or just the current one. The very bottom of the screen has a drop-down box called “Exceptions For.” Choose either the current document name, or All New Documents.

Blind Review Friday

Blind Review Friday.

The author shall remain anonymous (unless they chose to divulge themselves in the comments.)

Those commenting are also welcome to remain anonymous if they wish.


Incendiary comments will be removed.

If you would like your piece thrown to the wolves send it to salinger@ameritech.net with "Workshop the hell out of this poem" as the subject line.

Last week's offering The Yellow Bicycle was by Robert Hass - This weeks piece is also by an established poet. In honor of vacations at the beach:

"Any fool can get into an ocean..."

Any fool can get into an ocean
But it takes a Goddess
To get out of one.
What's true of oceans is true, of course,
Of labyrinths and poems. When you start swimming
Through riptide of rhythms and the metaphor's seaweed
You need to be a good swimmer or a born Goddess
To get back out of them
Look at the sea otters bobbing wildly
Out in the middle of the poem
They look so eager and peaceful playing out there where the
water hardly moves
You might get out through all the waves and rocks
Into the middle of the poem to touch them
But when you've tried the blessed water long
Enough to want to start backward
That's when the fun starts
Unless you're a poet or an otter or something supernatural
You'll drown, dear. You'll drown
Any Greek can get you into a labyrinth
But it takes a hero to get out of one
What's true of labyrinths is true of course
Of love and memory. When you start remembering

New Monthly Poetry Salon

Pudding House Salon

Poetry Workshop in Cleveland

Pudding House Salon brings its dynamic workshop to Cleveland, where intermediate and advanced poets find mutual support, critique and development. Following the longstanding Columbus Pudding House Salon, every month we’ll do read-around, share poetry news, hone mic skills and scout publication opportunities. Afternoon intensive critique focuses on strengths and weaknesses of each poem and asks, has the poet dropped down into the deepest level to which the poem calls?

Pudding House is the largest literary small press in the U.S. with over 1,000 titles in print. Beginning this September, Cleveland Salon runs every second Saturday of the month at the Cleveland Heights-University Heights Coventry Village library in Cleveland Heights, from 9:30 a.m. till 4 p.m., facilitated by longtime Columbus Salon member Sammy Greenspan*.

There is a nominal fee for the eleven-month series, (some need-based partial scholarships available). No required degrees or publication list. To determine if this workshop is a good fit, please submit three of your best poems and any questions to:

sammygreenspan@mindspring.com

Shatner Does Palin (07/27/09)

Video Recaps | Full Episodes | Webisodes

NEO Poet Field Guide

Full name: Philip Metres (Honestly, my “full name” is Philip J. Metres III, but that sounds a little too Thurston Howell for my tastes. Plus, I feel as if I’m at least three people when I write—a patryoshka, if you will.)

Age: On the left side of 40.

Habitat: University Heights of the Mind.

Range: http://behindthelinespoetry.blogspot.com/, John Carroll University, Purvis Park Pool (summers), Chicago, Boston, (have yet to travel to two states: North Dakota and Alaska), Russia (mostly in dreams), the Middle East.

Distinguishing Markings: To See the Earth (2008), Behind the Lines: War Resistance Poetry on the American Homefront (2007), among the recent.

Diet: There is too much great art in the world, and not enough life to live it. Have you taken your Chekhov this morning? Don’t forget: three shots of Whitman every day, a little bit of Hopkins (aperitif). The sort of punk rock that riles you up just enough that you almost forget the words, but find them haunting you later. I’m the sort of twisted individual that finds depressing documentaries uplifting and cathartic.

Predators:Self-congratulators, imperialists, fundies, haters, free market capitalists, narcissists.

Prey:Self.

Call:

Son(s)net (from “Ode to Oil)

During the 1991 Gulf War, U.S. fighter pilots were shown

“motivational films;” i.e, images of disrobing women.

This is an argument with

the shape of a sex organ, a poem

in the arc of a dinosaur

skeleton. This is a porn flick,

the dope of a moper, a heart

attack in the slope

of a stiffening shoulder, a lube job

rubbed on the rods

of excited fighter pilots, a fuse

that refuses to choose, an ode

to a code that ignites

on and we ride it into the burning

West, the postcoital sun as it sets.

Contact: pmetres@jcu.edu

The death of poetry... again

Serena Agusto-Cox, in The Examiner, and Marc Bain, in an article "The End of Verse?" in Newsweek, discuss a NEA report announcing that the number of American adults reading fiction had increased... and ("as an afterthought") that the number of adults reading poetry had dropped, from 12.1 percent in 2002 to 8.3 percent last year.
...

Even if readership is down, Bain writes, not everyone is concerned. "In fact, popularity is itself a fraught subject in the poetry community.... Today, to call a poem "accessible" is practically an insult, and promotional events like National Poetry Month are derided by many poetry diehards as the reduction of a complex and often deeply private art form to a public spectacle."

John Barr, president of the Poetry Foundation, says it's "not necessarily a bad thing" if fewer people read poetry. The goal is to find each poem "its largest intended audience."

...
Barr continues: "Of course, poetry has been supposedly dying now for several generations. In 1934, Edmund Wilson published an essay called "Is Verse a Dying Technique?" Fifty-four years later, Joseph Epstein chimed in with "Who Killed Poetry?" and former NEA chairman Gioia gained fame with a 1991 piece titled "Can Poetry Matter?" In answering their titular questions, all three to some degree concluded that poetry's concentration in the hands of specialists and the halls of academia was bad for the art form's health.

"Former poet laureate Hall, who published an essay called "Death to the Death of Poetry" in 1989, has heard it all before. "I'm 80 years old," he says. "[For] 60 years I've been reading about poetry losing its audience."

Despite what national surveys may suggest, and despite rumors of its demise, poetry seems likely to persist, in one form or another."
--

"To call a poem 'accessible' is practically an insult"... is that really true? Does accessibility cheapen a poetry? Is popular poetry necessarily bad?

Mac’s Backs Wednesday Reading series

The first time I ever read my work in public was at Mac’s Backs paperbacks sometime back in the ‘80’s in the days when Mark Hopkins was booking the readings and advertising them with woodcut print featured fliers and cars ran on coal. Mac’s has been ubiquitous with the poetry community in Cleveland for as long as I can remember. Suzanne there has always been a champion of the local publisher and writer. I can’t say for sure – but I would venture the supposition that the Wednesday reading there is the longest running series in town.

This past Wednesday I made the trek to their Cleveland Heights 1820 Coventry Road location to catch a reading by a couple of the area’s long time established poets. I don’t make many of these readings anymore, certainly way less than when I used to live across the street from the shop) but I try to check in a couple times a year. The readers were Robert McDonough and Jerry Roscoe.

The reading was scheduled to start at 7pm but true to PST (Poetry Standard Time) it really got rolling closer to 7:30. Just two features no open mic so the whole shebang was done by twenty after eight. Before the reading commenced Suzanne made some short announcements making everyone aware of the late start. I chatted with Sammy Greenspan about Mary Oliver and literacy. I told her about a writer of several teachers professional books who was denied permission of using an Oliver piece in a text book because Oliver “Didn’t want her work interpreted.” I wondered if that also meant she didn’t want her work read – because in my opinion all reading is an interpretation.

Jerry Roscoe was the first reader. He is the author of several collections and the recipient of two Individual Artist Fellowships from the Ohio Arts Council. He opened his set with a piece about his son then proceeded in quick succession to roll one piece into another with little pause and no commentary separating the poems. His subject matter ranged from Catholic grammar school reminiscences the big bang theory and sex. His reading style fell into an academic sing song and I found myself struggling to piece a narrative to his work. Occasionally I was pleased to catch a nice turn of a phrase but his habit of ending a piece on an upswing, as if there were more coming left me feeling like the works were not finished. I did however buy one of Roscoe’s chapbooks so that I could get a better idea of what his work was like. I don’t know if this is the most effective marketing plan.

Here’s an excerpt of Roscoe’s poem AGAINST REVELATION from his chapbook, s-e-x published by Pudding House Publications:

What do we care if the moon

Provides no light of its own?

It is cunning enough at least

To get in position to cheat

Off the brightest student in the class.

The basement of Mac’s Backs is where the readings take place – thankfully the temperature outside was not too high – but nonetheless the room was humid and the crowd of twenty or so folks occupying the wooden folding chairs approached the limit of comfortable capacity. A woman up front languidly fanned herself with the front section of the New York Times as Robert McDonough replaced Roscoe at the podium.

McDonough opened his set with a piece about his daughter – both men began with poems about their children. This got my mind wandering about how we as poets pick our subjects or perhaps more Zen – how our subjects pick us. Most of Robert’s material came from his collection of Greatest Hits, a chapbook also coincidentally, published by the Pudding House Press. McDonough’s reading seemed a bit more relaxed and conversational than Roscoe’s. This I believe can be attributed to home field advantage. McDonough has been leading a monthly writing workshop in the basement space for around seventy five years or so. He introduced his pieces with applicable anecdotes that didn’t explain the poem to follow as much as they set the table for their serving.

McDonough’s work is personal, observational without becoming confessional and spiced here and there with humor. His piece on writer’s block titled, Dry Humping the Muse from Greatest Hits, Pudding House Publications:

It’s a hard grind. She doesn’t even say

she has a headache, she just lies

there, polite enough, face set

in a little smile. And she lets you try:

you can touch her in all the secret places

that worked once but don’t now,

you can try new things you’ve never

dreamed of, get a little rough with her.

She doesn’t mind as long as some things are clear:

It’s not her fault, she’d be

perfectly willing if you could…

and she won’t fake it. Sorry,

she says, straightening her clothes,

she doesn’t want to hurt your feelings

but if you’ve forgotten how,

she can always find someone else.

McDonough finished his set ruminating on the phrase “close enough.” Poetry he decided should be closer than enough.

Then boom, just in time for my parking meter to expire the reading was over. I grabbed my new chapbooks promising myself that Mac’s backs and I need to cross paths more often. Mac’s Backs Wednesday readings – get ya some.

Blind Review Friday

Blind Review Friday.

The author shall remain anonymous (unless they chose to divulge themselves in the comments.)

Those commenting are also welcome to remain anonymous if they wish.


Incendiary comments will be removed.

If you would like your piece thrown to the wolves send it to salinger@ameritech.net with "Workshop the hell out of this poem" as the subject line.

This week's offering is from an established poet and picked in honor of the Tour De France.

The Yellow Bicycle

The woman I love is greedy,
but she refuses greed.
She walks so straightly.
When I ask her what she wants,
she says, "A yellow bicycle."

.

Sun, sunflower,
coltsfoot on the roadside,
a goldfinch, the sign
that says Yield, her hair,
cat's eyes, his hunger
and a yellow bicycle.

.

Once, when they had made love in the middle of the night and
it was very sweet, they decided they were hungry, so they got up,
got dressed, and drove downtown to an all-night donut shop.
Chicano kids lounged outside, a few drunks, and one black man
selling dope. Just at the entrance there was an old woman in a
thin floral print dress. She was barefoot. Her face was covered
with sores and dry peeling skin. The sores looked like raisins and
her skin was the dry yellow of a parchment lampshade ravaged by
light and tossed away. They thought she must have been hungry
and, coming out again with a white paper bag full of hot rolls,
they stopped to offer her one. She looked at them out of her small
eyes, bewildered, and shook her head for a little while, and said,
very kindly, "No."

.

Her song to the yellow bicycle:
The boats on the bay
have nothing on you,
my swan, my sleek one!

Sixteen Floors Above the Ground

Sixteen Floors Above the Ground: a Benefit for the Sudanese Lost Boys of Cleveland

took place last November to raise monies and awareness for the young men from Southern Sudan, known as Lost Boys because they lost their homes and families to widespread genocide. The name of the event is from Langston Hughes' poem "Life is Fine". This November Green Panda Press plans a 2nd event, and seeks poets willing to find sponsorship from local businesses and organizations, to read their poems of hope and perseverance. In addition to the poetry reading, a silent auction of arts and crafts by locals will take place, raising money for the Friends of the Sudanese Lost Boys of Cleveland, a non-profit raising citizenship and other costs for the boys.

Last year we raised $1974.00 thru sponsorships and artwork sold. The goal is to exceed this number. If you can commit to getting sponsored by a local business (or businesses) for a minimum of $60.00, and want to read your poems, OR are a local artist and want to donate work for the auction, please email:

greenpandapress@gmail.com