Prevent the “Artistic” Death of Another Innocent Animal

THE STORY:

In 2007, the ‘artist’ Guillermo Vargas Habacuc, took a dog from the street, tied him to a rope in an art gallery and began starving him to death.

For several days, the ‘artist’ and the visitors of the exhibition watched, emotionless, the shameful ‘masterpiece’ based on the dog’s agony, until eventually he died.

Does THIS sound like art to you?

But this is not all… the prestigious Visual Arts Biennial of Central America decided that the ‘installation’ WAS actually art, so Guillermo Vargas Habacuc has been invited to repeat his cruel action for the Biennial of 2008.

Let’s STOP HIM!!!!! Sign the petition:
http://www.petitiononline.com/ea6gk/petition.html

Here is another petition that is 2 million signatures strong. Please feel free to sign it as well:
http://www.petitiononline.com/13031953/petition.html

Please do it. It’s free of charge, there is no need to register, and it will only take 1 minute to save the life of an innocent creature.

AND, for those of you saying “This is all a hoax, etc,” here is a direct quote FROM THE ‘ARTIST’ himself!:
“I knew the dog died on the following day from lack of food. During the inauguration, I knew that the dog was persecuted in the evening between the houses of aluminum and cardboard in a district of Managua. 5 children who helped to capture the dog received 10 bonds of córdobas for their assistance. The name of the dog was Natividad, and I let him die of hunger in the sight of everyone, as if the death of a poor dog was a shameless media show in which nobody does anything but to applaud or to watch disturbed. In the place that the dog was exposed remain a metal cable and a cord. The dog was extremely ill and did not want to eat, so in natural surroundings it would have died anyway; thus they are all poor stray dogs: sooner or later they die or are killed.”

~~~~

To be fair (with lots of comments from Costa Ricans):

In his defence, the artist has claimed that what he was attempting to prove was that those who saw the suffering of the dog just walked on by and that if it had been left on the street to die, no-one would have even known of its existence.

It has also been reported that the dog did not die but escaped, and that it had been fed by Vargas and was only tied up during the gallery opening times. It has not been possible to confirm this.

The Managua exhibition attracted worldwide attention and many people believe it to have been an act of cruelty rather than art. A petition has been started in an attempt to prevent Habacuc’s involvement in the 2008 Biennial and from repeating the spectacle.

If you would like to sign the petition, visit: http://www.petitiononline.com/ea6gk/petition.html

–from Artist Guillermo Vargas - Habacuc

“Brüno: Delicious Journeys Through America for the Purpose of Making Heterosexual Males Visibly Uncomfortable”

/film: Blogging the Reel World

Ben Affleck called comedian friend Sarah Silverman after completing a sit-down interview with a person he was told was a “very famous openly gay fashion journalist”. Ben called the interview “the weirdest sit-down he has ever had with a reporter” explaining that the interviewer’s (wholm he refered to as an “idiot”) first question was “How Do You Like N–s?” After a stunned silence, Silverman asked Affleck “Was this guy’s name Bruno?” Then and only then did Affleck actually realize that the whole thing was a gag. There is no doubt that this interview will be featured in the final cut, which is currently scheduled to hit theaters in October 2008.

–from /film: Blogging the Reel World

~~~~~

Brüno vs. Neo Nazis - Hmmm, he ends the interview below by asking one of them, “Do you think that there are any skinheads that aren’t gay?”

“Dear Jay Leno…fags…I think you can do better”

“Get ready for another economic shock of major proportions — a virtual doubling of prices at the gas pump to as much as $10 a gallon.” –The Sun

~~~~~

From: “Jeff Whitty”
Date: April 21, 2006
To: (Tonight Show email address)
Subject: For Mr. Leno

Dear Mr. Leno,

My name is Jeff Whitty. I live in New York City. I’m a playwright and the author of “Avenue Q”, which is a musical currently running on Broadway.

I’ve been watching your show a bit, and I’d like to make an observation:

When you think of gay people, it’s funny. They’re funny folks. They wear leather. They like Judy Garland. They like disco music. They’re sort of like Stepin Fetchit as channeled by Richard Simmons.

Gay people, to you, are great material.

Continue reading “”Dear Jay Leno…fags…I think you can do better”" »

WOM-PO and Walt Whitman

In a scene dubbed “a bit too precious” by one reviewer, an excerpt from Walt Whitman’s poem, “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking” makes an appearance in the excellent film, L.I.E., above.

And separately, I have been graciously granted, by Annie Finch, the Women’s Poetry Listserv moderator title that she has worn many years now:

The WOM-PO (Discussion of Women’s Poetry) List was started in December 1997 by Annie Finch with an invitation to a small group of poets, critics, and lovers of women’s poetry. These people in turn invited other people to join, and the list has grown gradually by spreading through these networks. In April 2008, Amy King succeeded Annie as List Moderator for WOM-PO. Discussion on the list covers women poets of all periods, aesthetics, and ethnicities. It has been characterized by its high caliber, relatively low volume, and openness to a diversity of aesthetic perspectives.

Thanks, Annie! And friendly interlopers, please feel free to join us!

~~~

Why Can’t We Get Along?

Booger, Kitty, and Mousy look totally bored - maybe that’s why? 

Are You a Lesbian?

Lesbos islanders dispute gay name

Campaigners on the Greek island of Lesbos are to go to court in an attempt to stop a gay rights organisation from using the term “lesbian”.

The islanders say that if they are successful they may then start to fight the word lesbian internationally.

The issue boils down to who has the right to call themselves Lesbians.

Is it gay women, or the 100,000 people living on Greece’s third biggest island - plus another 250,000 expatriates who originate from Lesbos?

The man spearheading the case, publisher Dimitris Lambrou, claims that international dominance of the word in its sexual context violates the human rights of the islanders, and disgraces them around the world.

He says it causes daily problems to the social life of Lesbos’s inhabitants.

–Continued @ BBC

Moria Poetry Journal - New Issue

volume 10, issues 2 & 3
fall 2007 & winter 2008

poetry

Jesse Ferguson Mary Kasimor Davide Baptiste Chirot

Andy Nicholson Geof Huth Laurel Ransom William Garvin

Diana Magallon and Jeff Crouch Steve Roggenbuck Mark Young

Andy Gricevich Eric Weiskott Laura Harper Thomas Fink

Raymond Farr Michael Crake John Lowther Kyle Schlesinger

Adam Strauss

reviews

Mark Wallace on Maryrose Larkin

Aileen Ibardaloza on Eileen Tabios

Jake Kennedy on Andrea Baker

Laura Goldstein on Adam Fieled

The Coconut Overfloweth …

NEW ISSUE OF COCONUT!

Contents

david trinidad/jeffery conway/gillian mccain reb livingston

chelsey minnis elizabeth treadwell christopher salerno

lauren spohrer terita heath-wlaz tyler carter elisa gabbert

michael ball brenda iijima sam truitt jessica piazza

claire hero matthew zapruder james sanders linnea ogden

emily kendal frey kc trommer gina myers seth landman

Poetry Doesn’t Pay?

The Griffin Poetry Prize Announces the 2008 Canadian and International Shortlist

International Shortlist

Notes from the Air: Selected Later Poems • John Ashbery
HarperCollins Publishers/Ecco

Ripple Effect: New and Selected Poems • Elaine Equi
Coffee House Press

The Complete Poetry: A Bilingual Edition
Clayton Eshleman, translated from the Spanish,
written by César Vallejo
University of California Press

Selected Poems 1969-2005 • David Harsent
Faber and Faber

~~~

CLICK HERE for interview I conducted with our very own Elaine Equi!

~~~

Canadian Shortlist

The Holy Forest: Collected Poems of Robin Blaser • Robin Blaser
University of California Press

Notebook of Roses and Civilization
Robert Majzels and Erin Moure, translated from the French,
written by Nicole Brossard
Coach House Books

Why Are You So Sad? Selected Poems of David W. McFadden • David McFadden
Insomniac Press/4 a.m. Books

~~~

TORONTO – April 8, 2008 – Scott Griffin, founder of The Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry and David Young, trustee, today announced the Canadian and International shortlist for this year’s prize. The C$100,000 Griffin Poetry Prize is one of the most lucrative poetry prizes in the world, exemplifying the international spirit of the form. The prize is awarded annually for the two best books of poetry, including translations, published in English in the previous year.

~~~

“I Named Myself”

“We used to go over to the railroad track and play,” she said. “We’d take straight pins, lay them on the railroad track and make little alphabets out of them. We’d know just about the time when the train was either coming or going, and the train would run over the pins and mash them together, stick them right together, and we’d have a little box of alphabets of pins…. After that, me and my brother, we’d have to cut wood. We would each have a song, he had his and I had mine. We used to sing about trains. That was the beginning of me writing ‘Freight Train,’ right about then. That was a long time ago….”

Elizabeth “Libba” Cotten (January 5, 1895 - June 29, 1987) was an American musician. Her style was of the traditional blues and folk genre. However, Libba was quite original since she was self-taught and had no knowledge of conventional guitar tunings. Her unique approach to left-handed guitar playing was to hold the guitar upside down strung as standard tuning. This position required her to play the bass lines with her fingers, and the melody with her thumb. Her signature, alternating bass style is known as “Cotten picking”.

Elizabeth had retired from the guitar for twenty-five years, except for occasional church performances. It wasn’t until she reached her sixties that she began recording and performing publicly. She was discovered by the folk-singing Seeger family while she was working for them as a housekeeper.

Elizabeth Cotten began writing music while toying around with her older brother’s banjo. She was left handed so she played the banjo “backwards”. Later, when she transferred her songs to the guitar, a unique style was formed, since on the Banjo the uppermost string is not a bass string, as on the guitar, but a short high pitched string, called a drone string. This required her to adopt a unique style for the guitar, which she first played with all finger down strokes like a banjo. Later this evolved into a unique style of finger picking, and her signature, alternating bass style is known as “Cotten Picking”.

Her unmistakably original chords, melodies and finger picking techniques would go on to influence many other musicians.

–From Wikipedia

A few more tidbits:

* Elizabeth Cotten went to work, hunting for her own job door-to-door, at 11-years-old until she got one earning 75 cents a month to buy her first guitar. * She named herself Elizabeth in the classroom one day (”Her parents couldn’t agree on a name, so, she was called “Little Sis,” “Babe,” and “Shug,” until her first day of school, when she announced that her name was now Elizabeth“). * Mike Seeger later said, “Who would have known that my mother and Elizabeth, both musicians, would have met in a department store. I think that after a couple of minutes, they recognized each other. For her to come into our house, and at that time, when recorded documentation was just beginning…”. * She played with the New Lost City Ramblers, sometimes with (Mississippi) John Hurt, who can be heard by clicking here and here! * Ms. Cotten wrote many songs, including “Take Me Back to Baltimore” and “Shake Sugaree,” which Devendra Banhart does a lovely rendition of below [Click here to hear Elizabeth Cotten's version sung by her granddaughter!]:

~~~

Happy Earth Day!

Things the U.S. Government wants you to believe (& thus prevent you from making that call):

The Bush Administration is focused on achieving meaningful results – cleaner air and water, and healthier lands and wildlife habitats.

• The nation’s air is much cleaner today than it was in 1970 and progress will continue.
• The trend of annual loss of wetlands has been reversed.
• Restoration and redevelopment of abandoned industrial sites is accelerating.
• President Bush is meeting his commitment to reduce the National Park Service maintenance backlog.

–Um, yeah. Straight from EarthDay.Gov - U.S. website.

And since they’ll be inheriting the day that paves the way –”This page provides links to federal government Web sites for kids related to Earth Day and the environment.” A few selections from the U.S. Gov’t Earth Day site:

Energy Hogbusters: learn how to outsmart the hogs that waste energy.

Endangered species: games and how you can help.

Roofus the Dog’s Solar and Efficient Neighborhood: make your home energy smart.

~~~

Feminist Resurgence?!

Since Ms. Clinton began her campaign, there certainly has been a public resurgence in misogyny, starting with my long-lost father sending me Hillary Clinton jokes via email. No call on my birthday or Christmas, but I warrant jokes in which a presidential candidate ends up dead, raped, and mocked? That’s emotionally-charged action from a man worth standing up and questioning!

I don’t care if you think her politics are straight from the devil himself; what I don’t get is how so many men are freely telling jokes, using Clinton as a prop, as a basis for venting their anger toward women — and they’re doing so while the women in their lives stand by and either laugh along or remain silent. I mean, she’s just a strawman, so to speak — Clinton is being used by these guys as a cause to make fun of attributes assigned to the female population. Let’s check out a random Clinton “joke”. In fact, let’s just pull the recent one up sent courtesy of my father:

Hillary Clinton and her driver were cruising home along a country road one evening when an old cow loomed in front of the car. The driver tried to avoid it but couldn’t.

The aged cow was struck and killed. Hillary told her driver to go up to the farmhouse and explain to the owners what had happened and pay them for the cow. She stayed in the car making phone calls.

About an hour later the driver staggered back to the car with his clothes in disarray. He was holding a half-empty bottle of expensive wine in one hand, a huge Cuban cigar in the other, and was smiling happily, smeared with lipstick.

“What happened to you,” asked Hillary ?

“Well,” the driver replied, “the farmer gave me the cigar, his wife gave me the wine, and their beautiful twin daughters made passionate love to me.”

“My God, what did you tell them ?” asked Hillary.

The driver replied, “I just stepped inside the door and said, ‘I’m Hillary Clinton’s driver and I’ve just killed the old cow.’ The rest happened so fast I couldn’t stop it.”

Let’s be clear: this “joke”, like nearly all of them, has nothing to do with Clinton herself or her politics. It sounds like something Rush Limbaugh himself would have told. But nope, our fathers, brothers, husbands, boyfriends, uncles, and friends are guffawing over the basic elements of sexism, ageism (Women get old and become “cows”), the sexual trade in women (the driver’s reward is the farmer’s two daughters), and general misogyny (Clinton’s death is celebrated and rewarded in this joke, after all). If this joke cast McCain as the butt, would my father and his pals be elbowing each other in the ribs and mass-emailing the joke on to their co-workers and daughters? No, they’d be asking where women get off celebrating the death of a man with champagne and cigars. They’d be asking how this joke is relevant to the presidential campaign. They would be angry and demand that the idiots perpetuating such jokes be sat in a corner with the dunce cap on.

To the few women who are going along and “fitting in” with these guys, I offer this quote from Maragaret Atwood, “She even had a kind of special position among men: she was an exception, she fitted none of the categories they commonly used when talking about girls; she wasn’t a cock-teaser, a cold fish, an easy lay or a snarky bitch; she was an honorary person. She had grown to share their contempt for most women.” Your compliance and passivity will only get you so far. Eventually, you’ll learn to hate yourself too well. . . .

~~~

From The Feminist Reawakening: Hillary Clinton and the Fourth Wave (New York Magazine) by Amanda Fortini:

Of course, we weren’t delusional. Even before Tina Fey declared, “Bitch is the new black,” before female outrage had been anointed a trend by the New York Times, many women were clued in to the numerous gender-related issues that lay, untouched and unexamined, at some subterranean level of our culture: to the way women disproportionately bear the ills of our society, like poverty and lack of health care; to the relentlessly sexist fixation on the bodies of Hollywood starlets—on the vicissitudes of their weight, on the appearance and speedy disappearance of their pregnant bellies—and the deleterious influence this obsession has on teenage girls; to the way our youth-oriented culture puts older women out to graze (rendering them what Tina Brown has called, in a nod to Ralph Ellison, “invisible women”). But who wanted to complain? It was easier—and more fun—to take the Carly Fiorina approach: to shut up and compete with the boys. Who wanted to be the statistic-wielding shrew outing every instance of prejudice and injustice? Most women prefer to think of themselves as what Caroline Bird, author of Born Female, has called “the loophole woman”—as the exception. The success of those women is frequently cited as evidence that feminism has met its goals. . . .

Who wanted to think of gender as a divisive force, as the root of discrimination? Perhaps more relevant, who wanted to view oneself as a victim? Postfeminism was also a form of solipsism: If it’s not happening to me, it’s not happening at all. To those women succeeding in a man’s world, the problems wrought by sexism often seemed to belong to other women. But as our first serious female presidential candidate came under attack, there was a collective revelation: Even if we couldn’t see the proverbial glass ceiling from where we sat, it still existed—and it was not retractable. . . .

A greatest-hits selection provides a measure of the misogyny: There’s Republican axman Roger Stone’s anti-Hillary 527 organization, Citizens United Not Timid, or CUNT. And the Facebook group Hillary Clinton: Stop Running for President and Make Me a Sandwich, which has 44,000-plus members. And the “Hillary Nutcracker” with its “stainless-steel thighs.” And Clinton’s Wikipedia page, which, according to The New Republic, is regularly vandalized with bathroom-stall slurs like “slut” and “cuntbag.” And Rush Limbaugh worrying whether the country is ready to watch a woman age in the White House (as though nearly every male politician has not emerged portly, wearied, and a grandfatherly shade of gray). . . .

And so, in our reluctance to appear nagging, scolding, hectoring, or petty, many of us have made a practice of enduring minor affronts, not realizing that a failure to decry the smaller indignities can foster blindness to the larger ones. We then find ourselves shocked when one of the smartest, most qualified women ever to run for public office is called “fishwife-y” by a female pundit on national television. . . .

Old-guard feminists, for their part, seem not yet aware—or prepared to believe—that the younger generation is coming around. “Young women take a lot of things for granted,” Geraldine Ferraro told me . . . For another movement to reach critical mass, she said, women in society may need to experience what she calls “an accretion of insult.” But with the inequities highlighted by Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid reminding us of the inequities we experience on a regular basis, the insults may have, well … accreted. . . .

“It’s just a vibe when you’re a woman and you walk into a room and you’re in a position of power and you have to convince them of something,” a movie producer told me. “You’re constantly juggling: When you’re soft, you’re too soft; when you’re strong, you’re too strong. It’s a struggle in business and a struggle in relationships. It’s always a struggle.” . . . They may be more likable, more approachable, when playing to notions of traditional femininity (mother, wife, victim), but this doesn’t fly in the workplace. “To try to hide her womanliness or enhance it—that’s a decision Obama would never have to make,” said one woman. “I’m not saying it’s harder to be a woman. It’s just a choice she has to make that he doesn’t.” . . .

The past few months have been like an extended consciousness-raising session, to use a retro phrase that would have once made most of us cringe. We’ve parsed the gender politics of the campaign with other women in the office, at parties, over e-mail, and now we’re starting to parse the gender politics of our lives. This is, admittedly, depressing: How can we be confronting the same issues, all these years later? But it’s also exciting. It feels as if a window has been opened in a stuffy, long-sealed room. There is a thrill at the collective realization. Now the question is, what next?

–From The Feminist Reawakening: Hillary Clinton and the Fourth Wave (New York Magazine) by Amanda Fortini

~~~

ADDITIONAL READING

Fourth Wave Feminism and Real Men

On-the-go Chinese women in no hurry to wed

Feminism’s Fourth Wave by UTNE Reader

Being a Feminist in Japan; Watching the Election From Afar

The New Feminists in The Observer

Globalclasshes

They must go for Hillary Clinton: Forget all the razzmatazz over Obama. The Democrats have only one option for president

Media Girl: Feminism

~~~

P.S.  Did I mention I’m hosting this fabulous poetry reading this coming Friday?  And that I’m feeling a bit better?  And that you should come?!!!

~~~

Not One, But a Lovely Two!

Brandi Homan reviews I’M THE MAN WHO LOVES YOU in The Cutbank Review today (an excerpt):

Even though King does something that there should be more of in contemporary poetry—addresses the sociopolitical aspects of life in the 21st century head on—I’m The Man Who Loves You accomplishes much more. It is disjointed, beautifully grotesque, and unsparing, yet it is ultimately hopeful, kind, and entertaining. In “I Used to Be Amy King,” King says, “…we are bred to be the best neglected fun, forthcoming” (32). Believe you me, King is this type of fun. I’m The Man Who Loves You is not to be neglected. This book is for anyone who has ever stepped into, or wanted to step into, their own “long black dream.”

Thanks, Brandi!

~~~

And Caroline Wilkinson reviews KISS ME WITH THE MOUTH OF YOUR COUNTRY over at Tarpaulin Sky (an excerpt):

Kiss Me with the Mouth of Your Country is a potent work not only artistically but politically, more so than King’s earlier poetry. Instead of loaded words, we get moments that bring us into a body where the borders shift. In this “country,” the “I” and “you” suddenly change because the line between the two keeps moving. The borders here are insecure because they are defended by private, piecemeal methods—“a pile of ash / that blows back into you.” This “country” is the body of a woman, and it stubbornly remains in quotes because it is a permeable thing, especially when trapped inside the home. Laws about rape and incest, ineffectual in practice, help keep it that way, as does the sexist culture. As a country, this body looks real enough, but because its borders don’t mean a great deal, it isn’t. Near the end of the chapbook, King returns to her earlier more cerebral style, turning images at a manic rate, but this idea of the body and its borders lingers. The poetry is haunted by it, like a house haunted by the idea of not being there.

Thanks, Caroline!

~~~

Ikea Has a Thing For Poets

Our coffee table from Ikea was on clearance for $99. The drawers slide open on the sides for your very own personal revolving artists’ books show. Or something like that.

We also have spoons for visiting poets’ palates. Just $3.99 / 6 Pack. P.S. Be careful what pic you click here - you might end up smiling.

Aimé Césaire, Martinique poet, has died

The Associated Press - Thursday, April 17, 2008

PARIS: The esteemed Martinique poet and politician Aimé Césaire, a leading figure in the movement for black consciousness, died Thursday, the French president’s office and a hospital said. He was 94.

Césaire was involved in the fight for French West Indian rights, and he also served as a lawmaker in the lower house of France’s parliament for nearly 50 years. French President Nicolas Sarkozy successfully led a campaign last year to change the name of Martinique’s airport in honor of Césaire.

Sarkozy on Thursday praised Césaire as “a great poet” and a “great humanist.”

“As a free and independent spirit, throughout his whole life he embodied the fight for the recognition of his identity and the richness of his African roots,” Sarkozy said. “Through his universal call for the respect of human dignity, consciousness and responsibility, he will remain a symbol of hope for all oppressed peoples.”

~~~

From The liberating power of words - interview with poet Aime Cesaire - Interview

Aimé Césaire: I’ve always had the feeling that I was on a quest to reconquer something, my name, my country or myself.

That is why my approach has in essence always been poetic.

Because it seems to me that in a way that’s what poetry is.

The reconquest of the self by the self….

I think it was Heidegger who said that words are the abode of being. There are many such quotations. I believe it was Rene Char, in his surrealist days, who said that words know much more about us than we know about them.

I too believe that words have a revealing as well as a creative function…

The Abbe Gregoire(1), Victor Schoelcher(2) and all those who spoke out and still speak out, who campaigned for human rights without distinction of race and against discrimination, these were my guides in life. They stand forever as representatives of the West’s great outpouring of magnanimity and solidarity, an essential contribution to the advancement of the ideas of practical universality and human values, ideas without which the world of today would not be able to see its way forward. I am forever a brother to them, at one with them in their combat and in their hopes…

I really do believe in human beings. I find. something of myself in all cultures, in that extraordinary effort that all people, everywhere, have made - and for what purpose?

Quite simply to make life livable!

It is no easy matter to put up with life and face up to death.

And this is what is so moving.

We are all taking part in the same great adventure.

That is what is meant by cultures, cultures that come together at some meeting-point….

I think it was in a passage in Hegel emphasizing the master-slave dialectic that we found this idea about specificity. He points out that the particular and the universal are not to be seen as opposites, that the universal is not the negation of the particular but is reached by a deeper exploration of the particular.

The West told us that in order to be universal we had to start by denying that we were black. I, on the contrary, said to myself that the more we were black, the more universal we would be.

It was a totally different approach. It was not a choice between alternatives, but an effort at reconciliation.

Not a cold reconciliation, but reconciliation in the heat of the fire, an alchemical reconciliation if you like.

The identity in question was an identity reconciled with the universal. For me there can never be any imprisonment within an identity.

Identity means having roots, but it is also a transition, a transition to the universal….

We are far removed from that romantic idyll beneath the calm sea. These are angry, exasperated lands, lands that spit and spew, that vomit forth life.

That is what we must live up to. We must draw upon the creativity of this plot of land! We must keep it going and not sink into a slumber of acceptance and resignation. It is a kind of summons to us from history and from nature….

And so I have tried to reconcile those two worlds, because that was what had to be done. On the other hand, I feel just as relaxed about claiming kinship with the African griot and the African epic as about claiming kinship with Rimbaud and Lautreamont - and through them with Sophocles and Aeschylus! …

I have never harboured any illusions about the risks of history, be it in Africa, in Martinique, in the Americas or anywhere else. History is always dangerous, the world of history is a risky world; but it is up to us at any given moment to establish and readjust the hierarchy of dangers. …

At any rate, it is for me the fundamental mode of expression, and the world’s salvation depends on its ability to heed that voice. It is obvious that the voice of poetry has been less and less heeded during the century we have lived through, but it will come to be realized more and more that it is the only voice that can still be life-giving and that can provide a basis on which to build and reconstruct….

* And yet this century has not been one where ethics has triumphed, has it?

A.C.: Certainly not, but one must speak out, whether one is heeded or not; we hold certain things to be fundamental, things that we cling to. Even if it means swimming against the tide, they must be upheld.

In other words, poetry is for me a searching after truth and sincerity, sincerity outside of the world, outside of alien times. We seek it deep within ourselves, often despite ourselves, despite what we seem to be, within our innermost selves.

Poetry wells up from the depths, with explosive force.

The volcano again.

No doubt I have reached the moment of crossing the great divide but I face it imperturbably in the knowledge of having put forward what I see as essential, in the knowledge, if you like, of having called out ahead of me and proclaimed the future aloud.

That is what I believe I have done; somewhat disoriented though I am to find the seasons going backwards, as it were, that is how it is and that is what I believe to be my vocation.

No resentments, none at all, no ill feelings but the inescapable solitude of the human condition. That is the most important thing.

~

1. Henri Gregoire (1750-1831), French ecclesiastic and politician, a leader of the movement in the Convention for the abolition of slavery. Ed.

2. French politician (1804-1893), campaigner for the abolition of slavery in the colonies, Deputy for Guadeloupe and Martinique. Ed.

–The liberating power of words - interview with poet Aime Cesaire - Interview

~~~

When Lightning Bolts From My Chest …

A Few Random Poets Speak on National Poetry Month -

And We Eat …

“God has a brown voice, as soft and full as beer.” —Anne Sexton

“As for poetry ‘belonging’ in the classroom, it’s like the way they taught us sex in those old hygiene classes: not performance but semiotics. If it I had taken Hygiene 71 seriously, I would have become a monk; & if I had taken college English seriously, I would have become an accountant.” —Jerome Rothenberg

On Clouds – “…what primitive tastes the ancients must have had if their poets were inspired by those absurd, untidy clumps of mist, idiotically jostling one another about…” —Yevgeny Zamyatin

“Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits.” —Carl Sandburg

“For each letter received from a creditor, write fifty lines on an extraterrestrial subject and you will be saved.” —Charles Baudelaire

“I have been in Sorrow’s kitchen and licked out all the pots. Then I have stood on the peaky mountain wrapped in rainbows, with a harp and a sword in my hands.” —Zora Neale Hurston

“The purpose of art, including literature, is not to reflect life but to organize it, to build it.” —Yevgeny Zamyatin (The Goal, ca. 1926)

“One can smell it turning to gas; if one were Baudelaire one could probably hear it turning to marimba music.” —Elizabeth Bishop

“If the poet wants to be a poet, the poet must force the poet to revise. If the poet doesn’t wish to revise, let the poet abandon poetry and take up stamp-collecting or real estate.” —Donald Hall

“Nothing that God ever made is the same thing to more than one person. That is natural.” —Zora Neale Hurston

“I took a deep breath and listened to the old bray of my heart. I am. I am. I am.” —Sylvia Plath

“In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it’s the exact opposite.” —Paul Dirac

“Heaven is not like flying or swimming, but has something to do with blackness and a strong glare.” —Elizabeth Bishop

“Poetry is a rich, full-bodied whistle, cracked ice crunching in pails, the night that numbs the leaf, the duel of two nightingales, the sweet pea that has run wild, Creation’s tears in shoulder blades.” —Boris Pasternak

“It doesn’t matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was.” —Anne Sexton

“Wanted: a needle swift enough to sew this poem into a blanket.” —Charles Simic

“The composition is the thing seen by everyone living in the living they are doing, they are the composing of the composition that at the time they are living is the composition of the time in which they are living.” —Gertrude Stein

“Apparently, the most difficult feat for a Cambridge male is to accept a woman not merely as feeling, not merely as thinking, but as managing a complex, vital interweaving of both.” —Sylvia Plath

“There is no single face in nature, because every eye that looks upon it, sees it from its own angle. So every man’s spice-box seasons his own food.” —Zora Neale Hurston

“She even had a kind of special position among men: she was an exception, she fitted none of the categories they commonly used when talking about girls; she wasn’t a cock-teaser, a cold fish, an easy lay or a snarky bitch; she was an honorary person. She had grown to share their contempt for most women.” —Margaret Atwood

“Language is a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we long to move the stars to pity.” —Gustave Flaubert

“Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It’s that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that’s what the poet does.” —Allen Ginsberg

“I did not believe political directives could be successfully applied to creative writing . . . not to poetry or fiction, which to be valid had to express as truthfully as possible the individual emotions and reactions of the writer.” —Langston Hughes

“A diary means yes indeed.” —Gertrude Stein

“I think one of poetry’s functions is not to give us what we want… [T]he poet isn’t always of use to the tribe. The tribe thrives on the consensual. The tribe is pulling together to face the intruder who threatens it. Meanwhile, the poet is sitting by himself in the graveyard talking to a skull.” —Heather McHugh

“Poetry is the journal of the sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air. Poetry is a search for syllables to shoot at the barriers of the unknown and the unknowable. Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away.” —Carl Sandburg

“When, however, one reads of a witch being ducked, of a woman possessed by devils, of a wise woman selling herbs, or even a very remarkable man who had a mother, then I think we are on the track of a lost novelist, a suppressed poet. . . indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.” —Virginia Woolf

“This cop told me, furthermore, that it had been difficult for him to follow me because I had signaled too soon. I told him that, because I didn’t know there was anyone else in the world, any signaling was an act of faith.” —Kathy Acker

“Even in the centuries which appear to us to be the most monstrous and foolish, the immortal appetite for beauty has always found satisfaction.” —Charles Baudelaire

“I am ashamed of my century, but I have to smile” —Frank O’Hara

~~~

GO LOCAL: National Poetry Month x 10!

WHY: Eating, growing, and celebrating locally to find the world in a grain of Brooklyn and eternity in an hour or two!

WHEN: Friday, April 25^th @ 7 p.m. – Sharp!

WHERE: Stain Bar in Williamsburg, Brooklyn

WHO: ~~ BANIAS ~~ BERRIGAN ~~ BOZICEVIC ~~ BRYANT ~~ DICKOW ~~ HOY ~~ KOCOT ~~ SMITH ~~ STARKWEATHER ~~ WILLIAMSON

~~~~

ARI BANIAS grew up in California, Texas, and Illinois. He now lives in Brooklyn, NY and teaches undergraduate creative writing and literature at Hunter College. His poems are forthcoming in The Cincinnati Review, Literary Imagination, and FIELD, and have recently appeared in Mid-American Review (as a feature), Arts & Letters, and RealPoetik.

EDMUND BERRIGAN is the author of Glad Stone Children (Farfalla Press, 200 and is co-editor with Anselm Berrigan and Alice Notley of a forthcoming Selected Poems of Ted Berrigan (University of California).

ANA BOZICEVIC moved to NYC from Croatia in 1997. She’s the author of chapbooks Document (Octopus Books, 2007) and Morning News (Kitchen Press, 2006). Look for her recent work in Denver Quarterly, Hotel Amerika, absent, The New York Quarterly, Bat City Review, MiPOesias, Octopus Magazine and The Portable Boog Reader 2: An Anthology of NYC Poetry. Ana coedits RealPoetik.

TISA BRYANT is the author of Tzimmes (A+Bend Press, 2000), which collages concerns of breast cancer, Barbados genealogy research, a Passover seder and a film by Yvonne Rainer, and her first book, Unexplained Presence (Leon Works, 2007), is a collection of original, hybrid essays that remix narratives from Eurocentric film, literature and visual arts and zoom in on the black presences operating within them. She currently lives in Brooklyn, NY.

ALEXANDER DICKOW grew up in Moscow, Idaho, traveled to France, got married to a French woman, studies French literature at Rutgers, and writes poems. His work has appeared in both Yankee and Hexagonal journals including MiPO, RealPoetik, Sitaudis, Il Particolare, Hapax, can we have our ball back? and others. A full-length bilingual collection, _Caramboles_, will be published by the Parisian press Argol Editions in October 2008. Alex currently lives in bucolic central New Jersey.

DAN HOY lives in Brooklyn and is an editor for SOFT TARGETS. His poetry chapbook, Outtakes, was published by Lame House Press in 2007.

NOELLE KOCOT is the author of 3 books of poems, 4 and The Raving Fortune, out from Four Way Books in 2001 and 2004, respectively, and Poem for the End of Time, out from Wave Books in 2006, of which the NY Times Book Review deemed the long title poem, “extraordinary.” She has won awards from The National Endowment for the Arts, The Fund For Poetry, The Academy of American Poets and The American Poetry Review, among others. She lives in Brooklyn, where she was born and raised, and teaches for a living. Her fourth book, Sunny Wednesday, will be published by Wave Books in spring, 2009.

JESSICA SMITH is the editor of Outside Voices Press, which publishes Foursquare magazine. She wrote a book called Organic Furniture Cellar. She maintains a blog that incites both hate mail and proposals. She recently moved to Brooklyn and is looking for a job.

SAMPSON STARKWEATHER is a small African village patrolled by dream-fed lions. They sway in the grasses when you move. His handwriting, which has been featured in several medical journals, strong-armed him into a life of asemic writing. He is the author of The Book of Sky, a wordless text published by anyone.

DUSTIN WILLIAMSON is the author of Heavy Panda (Goodbye Better), Gorilla Dust (Open24Hours Press), and Exhausted Grunts (Cannibal Books). He publishes Rust Buckle Books and is the current curator of the Zinc Talk Reading Series.

~~~

STAIN BAR

766 Grand Street Brooklyn , NY 11211

(L train to Grand Street Stop, walk 1 block west)

718/387-7840

~~~~

“The thing about performance, even if it’s only an illusion, is that it is a celebration of the fact that we do contain within ourselves infinite possibilities.” – Sydney Smith

~~~~

Ron Padgett Sings His Poetry!

April 5, 2008

This week on A Prairie Home Companion, we’re setting up our giant radio antenna atop the historic Town Hall in New York City for three shows in April. This week’s special guests include, the phenomenon in boots and a hat, Brad Paisley, American film actress Kimberly Williams-Paisley, poet Ron Padgett, and the subject of more email inquiries at APHC than anyone else, legendary Scottish folk-singer Jean Redpath. Also with us, The Royal Academy of Radio Actors: Tim Russell, Sue Scott, and Fred Newman, The Guy’s All-Star Shoe Band, and The News from Lake Wobegon. Join us this week from action-packed West 43rd & Broadway.

Segment 1
00:00	Logo
00:11	Tishomingo Blues
03:48	It’s Only a Cyber Moon
06:09	Rhubarb script
10:09	“Caterpillar Cakewalk” - Shoe Band and Brad Paisley
13:10	GK intros Ron Padgett
14:48	Ron Padgett reads “The Drink”, “Poet As A Mortal Bird”, “Haiku” and “Morning”
18:50	“April Come She Will”- GK/ Pat/ Shoes
21:00	Jump script
22:19	GK intros Jean Redpath
24:15	“If You Could Wait A Moment Longer” - Jean Redpath and Shoe Band
28:06	Jean intros next tune
29:10	“Mally Lee” - Jean Redpath with the Guy’s All-Star Shoe Band
31:11	Powdermilk Biscuit Break
Segment 2
32:45	Guy Noir script
48:54	GK intros Brad Paisley
49:42	“I’m Still A Guy” - Brad Paisley
53:13	Brad Paisley talks to crowd
53:46	“Waiting on a Woman”- Brad Paisley
57:03	Intermission- “Somebody Stole My Gal”
Segment 3
1:01:15	Bob Elliott script
1:05:23	Sonnet Contest Announcement
1:06:17	Bob’s Bank script
1:07:50	Subway script
1:09:10	Greetings
1:12:56	“Cruisin’ Downtown” - Shoe Band and Brad Paisley
1:15:30	GK intros Ron Padgett
1:16:02	Ron Padgett recites “Dead or Alive in Belgium”, “Words From the Front” and “Bastille Day”
1:20:00	“Say You Love Me Sadie” - Shoe Band
1:20:35	GK intros Brad Paisley
1:22:16	“Ode de Toilet”- Brad Paisley
1:26:00	“Letter To Me” - Brad Paisley
Segment 4
1:31:00	The News from Lake Wobegon (Download MP3)
Segment 5
1:44:20	“The Old Woman”- Jean Redpath
1:46:23	“Steal Away” - Jean Redpath and Garrison Keillor
1:49:30	Indie script
1:54:05	Online
1:56:50	Credits, “Next Time I’m in Town” closer

Bitches

Who doesn’t love a good cat fight? Nails and hair flying, women on their knees, beating each other mercilessly, ripping out earrings, bleeding scratches, possible nudity — BUT. We intellectuals are above all that, right? Liberal men and liberal women use their brains and don’t succumb to such debased antics tinged with “lower class” heart-on-the-sleeve anger. As Ms. Mary J. Blige sings, “No more drama in my life…“

Except we do enjoy a taste of the green-eyed monster now and then. She secretly sharpens her claws and couches her hate in catch phrases and feminist jargon that is meant to portray an awareness and sophisticated awareness that couldn’t possibly betray a cut-throat misogyny. Even our beloved liberal intellectual rag, THE NEW YORK TIMES, is not immune.

Catch a few of these excerpts from BITCH Magazine’s latest article by Sarah Seltzer, “HARD TIMES: At the New York Times Book Review, all the misogyny is fit to print” as she examines and explore the surreptitious blows and betrayals feminists continue to endure in our “enlightened” times:

Despite the fact that women constitute a majority of book buyers, the Times has made merely a passing effort to achieve parity on its pages. For instance, none of the paper’s “Top five novels of 2007” were written by a woman, and only 13 of 50 on its short list were female-authored.

[Not unlike the fact that women make up about 50% of the world's population, and yet, the top 500 most powerful companies -- FORTUNE 500 -- women CEOs remains 10, and FORTUNE 1000 women CEOs is 20. Ahem.]

Beyond this, though, books that take women’s issues in hand are rarely taken seriously. It’s not just that they are criticized, which they are, but rather that the books, their authors—and heck, the whole feminist movement—are routinely treated with a mixture of giggly naïveté and barbed antifeminist prejudices. In a 2007 op-ed for In These Times, media critic Susan J. Douglas noted that there’s “a robust tradition in the Times Book Review to stereotype feminists as single-minded, humorless ideologues who march daily to some shrine where we all genuflect before images of Elizabeth Cady Stanton.” …

What’s particularly devious about the Times’ repeated use of such outdated stereotypes (besides the brazenness of including them to begin with), is that none of these arguments would be accepted from male reviewers; their words would be more easily identified as sexist tripe.

Pollitt reflected on this on the political blog Talking Points Memo soon after Bentley’s review of Learning to Drive was published. “It’s a strange experience to be attacked in virulently misogynistic language by a woman. I’m used to ‘shrill’ and ‘rant’ and other gender-coded terms.… But ‘vagina dentata intellectualis’? That’s low. If a male reviewer described a woman writer that way we’d never hear the end of it.”

By spouting these insults, the reviewers are trivializing the books’ issues rather than grappling with them. And by regularly publishing snarky, surface-skimming reviews under female bylines, the Times further undermines women’s status in the intellectual arena. …

To sum it up, the highbrow catfight is a specialty of the Times publishing. And hiring writers like Cox and Bentley, who are dismissive of feminism, is a surefire way to keep the catfights coming. It’s also a way to make sure that feminist tomes aren’t put in the same arena as the “important” history books, biographies, and philosophy the Times so adores. …

The Times’ hit squad of reviewers doesn’t go so far as to reject feminism entirely. Each piece includes a wisp of pro-feminist rhetoric. Bentley wonders why Pollitt abandoned her “brilliant” political writings to write about her own mottled love life. A year earlier, Cox, in the course of panning those very “brilliant” writings that Bentley so admires, calls herself a feminist—but adds that “strident” feminism seems “preserved in amber” or perhaps in anger. Either way, she thinks it’s “tacky.” …

Significantly, this pattern of negative reviews appears in a newspaper section where women’s names still remain too scarce, and at a time where book reviews themselves are being cut from major newspapers about the country. In 2006 and the first half of 2007, the mystery writers’ group Sisters in Crime monitored book review sections of major papers. They compared the number of female- and male-penned books reviewed across genres. In 2006, the percentage of male to female authors reviewed in the Times was 62.5 to 37.5; in the first six months of 2007, it was 65 to 35.

In my own informal accounting of three New York Times Book Review Sunday sections in late 2007, I counted 27 male-penned books to nine female and 26 male reviewer bylines to 11 female. All three covers featured male authors and male reviewers. …

The point isn’t that feminist authors should be immune from criticism; it’s that the playing field should be level. Why not hire someone like Barbara Ehrenreich or Linda Hirshman—women who have written for years on feminism—to grapple seriously with these books? Why not look for an angle that goes deeper than “These crusty old feminists just aren’t with it”? If the Times wants to remain the paper of record, it should stop seeking out hostile reviewers whose main critical thrust is one of self-aggrandizement (“Don’t worry, boys—I’m not strident like her!”) and intergenerational antagonism.

–Continued in BITCH Magazine’s latest article by Sarah Seltzer, “HARD TIMES: At the New York Times Book Review, all the misogyny is fit to print“.

Birthing…

I forgot about this kick-ass picture Jennifer Firestone and I posed for some year or so ago (Well, mostly she’s kick ass and daring while I ride her coattails here!). That is, I forgot until I got word of her new book, HOLIDAY. Then, I thought that celebrating this book would also be a means to showcase the above.

But don’t let the photo override Firestone’s new bliss! Eileen Myles writes,

“Jennifer Firestone’s Holiday makes big sense to me. It make me think largely about why I like anyone’s writing – and sometimes it’s as simple as this: I like its physicality. I like its jumps. Holiday is extremely private, extremely active. It’s notebooky in the best sense of the word because I feel privileged to get these fractured views of how Jennifer Firestone moves around the world. Her style at times is telegraphic (and insatiable) like Ginsberg. Let me say Gail Scott and Ginsberg. Also why do we bother reading. Why do we want to trail around in anyone’s else’s mind at all. Jennifer asks:

‘Is it worth
going down these steps
are the bottom rooms worth it?’

I say yeah. Enthusiastically yes.”
—Eileen Myles

I’d say she’s right on the money, and here’s a poem to further tempt you to it:

OR

Away it is creeping to find out what to do

It tunnels to a home that burns at the tip

Art barely gave

Sand was vast

All vacations fused

Red flags disappeared

There was wheat and fog

–Jennifer Firestone, HOLIDAY

Pronouncing “Louis”