Little Bit o’ Love

Peter Gabriel / Kate Bush Give Love on Independence Day

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And I have three new poems up at Unlikely Stories!

Stimulus Package, Survival of the Fittest, and Fake Memoir to Become Real Novel — loads more to read there.  Happy 4th of July !

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Chicago Poetry Calendar

Chicago Poetry!

I was in Chicago once for AWP.  I liked the place.  Wish I had more time to explore.  Lots of great poets there too.  I’m thinking aloud here due to recent incidents that have brought Chicago and its poetry scene to my attention.  If you’re actually interested in just how asinine one tiny pseudo-poetry promoter can be, check out Daniela Olszewska’s blog, Jenny Boully’s blog, and Becca Klaver’s blog.  And for those of you who might think C.J. Laity’s apology to Kristy Bowen is sincere, know that he has started a series of hate blogs dedicated to her.  Some apology.  Go twiddle yourself and stew in your woman-hating juices, Laity.

Moreover, if you want to know something about Chicago and the poetry that great city offers, visit the official Chicago Poetry Calendar here.

Likewise, visiting or living in New York City?  Go no further – the New York City poetry calendar awaits.

Bible Belt much?  Atlanta, GA calendar!  How about further south?  Austin, TX po po calendar!  What’s that other coast?  San Francisco, CA Poetry Calendar!  You mean LA and Buffalo have a poetry scene too?   Oh, I realize I’ve missed oodles of cities and scenes and calendars, but that’s the good thing about blogs — if you want to list your site, pop it in the comments box, please!

Except you, CJL .  “What cracker is this same that deafs our ears / With this abundance of superfluous breath?” – Shakespeare

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Ashok and Adam Are At “It” Again…

Frightened Rabbit makes the kids dance above.

~~~

Ashok and Adam Are At “It” Again…

You know, that task we fear and dread, supposedly, as a society.

Enjoy!

ASHOK — two excerpts: “The singularity of the leaf as death is distorted by our labeling the wind.

…And consider that we are beholding a bird now, beholding us.”

~~~

ADAM — two excerpts: Non-poets that look to poetry generally want to see poems that actually say something.

…The Other is rendered imaginatively, but always in a kind of negative context: we do not connect, we do not relate, despite these bodies which we share.

~~~

Off the Clock

THIS BLOG IS ON TEMPORARY HIATUS WHILE I SPEND LOADS OF TIME EDITING, AMONG OTHER LONG NEGLECTED TASKS!

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The 2009 Spring Issue of Redheaded Stepchild is up, featuring work by

Alex Grant
Alexander Lumans
Amy King
Ann Neuser Lederer
Carol Potter
Cheryl A. Townsend
Christian Ward
Diane Lockward
Joan Wiese Johannes
Kate Bernadette Benedict
Lana Hechtman Ayers
Pat Riviere-Seel
Richard Krawiec
Terry Wright
Wendy Vardaman

~~Redheaded Stepchild:  a home for rejected poems ~~

~~~~

New Stuff Up

Siren is jam-packed with springtime goodness:

Siren is back with a brand new issue,

including poetry by Michelle Bitting, Mark Cunningham, Valerie Fox, Amy King, Ryan Laks, Gareth Lee, Karyna McGlynn, Sally Molini, Natasha Moni, Cait Rappel, Paul Siegell, and Elizabeth Volpe,

and art & photography by Gundega Dege, Matina Stamatakis, and Lafayette Wattles.

Also, check out news and notes from former contributors Arlene Ang, Kristy Bowen, Stephanie Dickinson, Jehanne Dubrow, Jeannine Hall Gailey, Dorianne Laux, Rachel Loden, Kiki Petrosino, Peter Schwartz, and Alex Stolis.

~~~

Of course, my own poems, of sorts, appear.  To whet your whistle and make you click the interwebz link, the beginning of one of three:

Be Good and Be Country

When the grapes are in their wrath, I lie

low in my headless socket to see your faces

through time’s spent reading glasses.

–Cont’d @ Siren, A Literary and Arts Journal

~~~~~

p.s.  I’ve got more great news I’m itching to share, but you’ll have to stay tuned for a spell.  It’s worth it!

~~~~~

A Few Favorites

A few current faves to spice up your night!

CURRENT FAVORITE INTERVIEW WHERE I MAY OR MAY NOT BE REAL

@ Thunk:  Where Interviews Go To Die – Ryan Manning vs. Amy King

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Current Favorite Political Pundit — Rachel Maddow

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Current Favorite Poem — “Story of Learning” by Matt Rotando

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A Map Through the Mines of My Book

By Lissa Kiernan @ Arsenic Lobster [two excerpts]:

The book’s 60 poems, in savant-like methodical brilliance, are arranged in alpha-order and prefaced by a quote from Virginia Woolf’s cross-dressing, sex-changing Orlando: “Everything, in fact, was something else.” This frames things perfectly, for to exist in King’s world for the duration of this book is to implicitly agree that 2 + 2 = mud, and Points A and B are hundreds of ants apart.

…

So what of this hip-swaggering, “masculine vein” poetry coming from a woman? King’s whip-smart, red-hot poetry is a turn-on, no matter which team you play for. Forget sex as subtext— here it’s unabashedly front and center, with titles like “SLIGHTLY PARTED THIGHS”, or these lines from “AND UT PICTURA POESIS CALLS HER NAME“: Interlocking legs twirl / Voices out of words. The smallest story of two people coming.

Just as seductive is the music woven, warp and weft, throughout King’s verse …

Read the whole stellar thing @ Arsenic Lobster!

Calling All Agents

CALLING ALL AGENTS

When they come unexpected,
love and letters unsettle
as if to blow penciled hues
that prick the pupils of one
who scans a dying horizon
for wooden branches of floral text.
Hold out the web of your impulse;
turn what stands before you to Braille.
A built-in face would never last
the length of the imprisoned’s recipe—
though every striptease proves
the paper’s palpitations never-ending.

Canned matter is the newest hype
that we can miss the silence without,
so acutely put pin to word
& begin exhuming the body.
A branch overhead rattles
its one death’s leaf,
and we label the wind
an instrument to grief.

Love letters, spelling meter, insist
a figure stands by the forest’s edge,
dusk-lit with glowing orb–perhaps
a cigarette—until in the stare too long
a peacock grows
from budding tendrils
that preen and nest in the folds
of wholesome damage, your eyelets.
It is a bird’s eye view that sees you
lying in the open spine,
flat & abridged,
a crisis that brings you to this:
rising to blindness as witness,
the embryo of what’s already come
delivers the map for a return visit.

Someone Should Start a Protest Site

That keeps people updated on businesses and networks that quietly silence whole populations and their culture like that belonging to the GLBT community. I just started “Facebook Won’t Go Gay (or “How Gays Can’t Even Pay!”) over on Facebook. FCUK Facebook’s policing policies. You’ll just have to get there now to find out what the ruckus is about.

But here’s a piece of a little note I wrote by way of my fed-up-ed-ness:

Seems the little old 10 percent GLBT population should just lie around and be quiet while mammoths like Amazon and Facebook screw queer visibility into the ground — sans apology.

So if we are quiet, what happens? I say, every gay should call up and write their Queer / Straight / Otherwise friends and create an ARMY against crap like this and Amazon Fail (still no actual apology to the good folks they made a very public statement about – intentionally or not)!

Facebook says that the image “threatens user experience.” Um, WHO exactly is threatened by seeing the three women posed above? And HOW are they threatened? And WHAT “user experience” is preferable?

FCUK Facebook and all of the other conglomerates who think we “just” carry 10 percent of their business and can be snuffed out in favor of bigger pockets. We have friends in high and low places, and in between. We can do way better than affect a tiny margin. We are supported, and we support. But if you want to snuff us into quietude, we can also say NO. And let the rattle of our business, and those who support us, go invisible too.

~~~

THE FEAR OF HOPE IS ALSO BEAUTIFUL

THE FEAR OF HOPE IS ALSO BEAUTIFUL

On horseback or mixing math with philosophy,
her skin is tired,
she is nervous, a never-ending boy,
the kind with soundproof eyes that echo
the faint hymn hers persuades the hand toward
you with. Prick goes the fingertip,
when she knocks more dents
with a ball peen hammer into the sides of your soul.
You know that the punctured effect is only so that
God can grasp you better
when your feet leave the ground,
you fall in love,
holding hard to the slim slack jaw
of his readymade arms, and brother,
you’re all his, dinners out and love in the loft,
lots of milked black coffee, croissants, hair cuttings,
cancelled appointments, and cruising stars
for their place on the ship’s bow,
leaning into backdrafts just to glow with
a silk tongue along the slip of your underbelly.
You are deadline. You are at most old fashioned.
You are the tall wheat grass of commercial voids.
You turn center of the root cellar’s dark damp moist.
And I linger here, like lingering is everywhere,
taking in the burnt-out air, sucking spring
from her allergens that would have me
for her very savior, should she feel the knee
of missing a place in the chorus line lifting
a dress to reveal the shapes
of my opinion exposing her.
The fear of hope is also beautiful as we tread along
to find several sharks swimming in place.
To combat the brutality of eyes
that take these sights in,
why don’t you tug at the knots
of your wrist with your teeth
and say amen to all of the above,
draw the shades and lean below the waist,
wrapped in cloudless curtains
where we will bathe in the salts of an iron water,
swollen awake with all that hurts us.

Hymn for the Misbegotten

HYMN FOR THE MISBEGOTTEN

Not heightened or lowered, but evaporated,
so goes the chain of my being:
the thinning out of form
puts me in the body.
I become one more format
for the pleasures of God.
Even for the misamplified edge of God’s sin.
Is there such a place, his mistake?
If he made us from the dust, which is his
own mildew lifted where his skirts have passed,
then why not the need for errors
to make things perfect?
I am but one gravity in the jumbled pull
of birds that divine wires and land. Bombs
set us rotating off at a fast distance, but
the inevitable strain on the elastic waist
of this green planet strips the universe
toward pillow books & incestuous closure again.

Give it some time. Plant a clock.
See if it doesn’t find your wallet in seconds.
Come together, unclasp hands, walk apart.
Watch the rain find its ocean’s pockets.
Wear a flower, pass her seeds on to the field
she birthed her lost children in. She
grows there each season, and after the sod
has pulled up its roots, the prodigal transplant
renews its vows to the wind, who trips along
among the blind and the sighted, who
never see its true hues. Eat up to embrace
all that we do, how we pedal and love
and put trash in containers that will find
us out in sleep. We engage the zippers
and padlocks sealed to leave out
the parts of salvation we think don’t need us.
Into August, no snow, no cold, no parrot greys.

But no, we rise in the bulbs of night
to build our crosses and tie ourselves
upon the beams that balance out
what we think we never need: an eternal bladder
of forward motion, as if the past
is swallowed by hurried spirits,
gathered to the stones of our walking weight
in the vision of his excess, the blemished
rainbows and tarnished trout that swim
from the mouth-torn blessings of his newborn
words, however absent his freewill burns.
We know our purpose as we know the air
corrects desire’s motion, the way we leap
the tear-soaked armpit we call God’s love, & swim.

–Amy King

Poetry Doesn’t Need a Defense

Fake Memoir to Become Real Novel

Until the end, the professor’s sister’s faith and hope
ran rough around the edges, but her story held firm.
She was the child of a café man who cleaned the floors
of cinnamon and ate the rinds of lemons nightly.
She only dines on peach skin flesh in revolt these days.
15 years of solitude have left her a bit inept
socially, even closed off with her two Mastiff hounds,
but she won’t complain of disintegration or the neighbors
who howl below her floor’s screened hole with moon.
Some itch of anger into the surface but nothing a photo
of her brother can’t seduce away. Without it, she explodes
at street cars on her way home from the bank.
Even as she fights the urge to concoct a reason
to avoid the subway malaise, she determines that many
people draw to the myth of vampires
to rid their lives of their own identities. Who do
these monsters answer to anyway? Show me your ID?
I don’t need one. I’ll lift your lips and suck
the blood from your gums and leave you
with the memory. I am mirrorless. I am invited.
I answer to no cop, priest, or medicine man.
My shadow stands down wind. The strength I have
lurks in the apartment on rafters and wind.
You can’t take my money because my need is gone.
The woman enjoys garlic on her toast at dawn
and laughs a joke she tells her insatiable friends
with their super hearing. People remind her of tin cans.
They are labels in clothing. They want to be filled
with something warm, creeping, something sexual
that will pour from the razored slits in their skin,
make them pretty. The sister knows the bones of words
would correct the empty papers in wallets,
the flaccid muscles that shake the party hands,
and the smiles that fall when the bare-back teeth forego
the promise of love in pain, however hollow the gesture.
Until such trails become a life, she’ll sweep the floor,
hand out checks, eat the fur of night,
and name the men, in preparation, risen before her.

–Amy King

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Poetry Doesn’t Need a Defense
By Amy King

“Poetry in motion!” “Her use of poetic license awakens the spirit…” “The hands of poetry at work …”

Whether it be about a film, book, painting, or the ballet, these oft-heard review statements have one thing in common: the knowledge that compositions revealing fresh and unusual techniques, styles, and ways of seeing are the “cutting edge” of the arts. Present a work that breaks with convention, however slightly, if it bears out beyond expectation, delights, startles, or merely unsettles the world as a static notion, then you’ve created the “poetic.”

Continued here.

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Hope Your Road Is a Long One

I Love This Prince …
Will Oldham / Bonnie “Prince” Billy sings “I Am Goodbye”

~~~~

HOPE YOUR ROAD IS A LONG ONE

Hope your road is a long one.
Along the way, have some nuts
and berries; they’re not obsolete.
In my own hand, cashews, almonds,
cranberries. Don’t be irritated by
the vacant woman’s insecticide laughter.
These signs pock the landscape just so
you know what finery the world’s
remaining greens can tailor.
Intersect yourself with the occasional
lizard or bear. Offer flowers borne
by the hem of your soul. Go to work
as little as possible. Make more art,
especially if you are not an artist.
Refuse the names of corporations;
they are not worthy of your lips.
They abuse our mothers-in-need,
who sweep the hollow floors there.
Be brave when bravery is unpopular.
Avoid cool for the mask of an in.
I’ve played the enslaved piper because
of such dusts. I’m a fool and a wrench,
a mite and a coffee — try on many hats.
Annoy clerks if you have to.
Sell lattes and chai to minors, imitate
the you-child now and then. Ignore
the deficit; need only words which sustain
your mind’s eye. Break bread that is shared
and therefore akin to crocuses and oxygen:
desired. When you use two or three fingers
to eat, consider the monkeys, our friends
in earthly clamor. Junk the witchy master
who makes casts of your footprints; these
are the days past forget and remember.
We are post-time and always forever,
though the hardest part is knowing
like all the fish who don’t see water.

–Amy King

~~~~~

RIGHT-ON RESPONSE TO THE RECENT LOHAN / RONSON SPLIT:

who cares about this topic? well, MILLIONS of people have been reading, speculating and commenting about their relationship for quite a while; a lot of them have been queer people like me; and a LOT of them have been, it would seem, intensely homophobic straight people. If you care at all about how young queer women are being collectively imagined and how that affects us, then you might think this worthy of analysis. The reactions to samantha have been kind of old-school homophobic; see the first comment on this thread. She’s frightening to a lot of people/losers out there because she’s not performing femininity according to the mandatory requirements, and she’s not trying to be liked. The reaction to lindsay is more complex, because its mixed up with the weird thirst our culture seems to have to heap scorn on very young troubled women we also lust after. First there was endless, snarky disbelief that the relationship was real; then the idea that this relationship was just another instance of lindsay’s fuckedupedness. And by the way, she’s been clean for well over a year; there’s this thing when you’re on probation called mandatory testing. Meanwhile, few commentators reflected on how much her emotional instability has to do with struggling with her sexuality while her homophobic family/entourage groomed her as a teen sex symbol. I don’t know whether she’s bi or lesbian, but its clear that she is mad about Sam, enough to go public, enough to be with her non-stop for a year, enough to make a bit of a fool of herself now that she’s been dumped. (I use the word mad deliberately; the stereotypical association between lesbianism, madness, and violence is longstanding, and if you’d like a list of instances, let me know-but lindsay isn’t all that crazy, she’s a 22 year old having her heart broken for the first time). And its hard to say how much the breakup has to do with the relentless negative attention. There’s been gleeful speculation, for example, about whether Sam was violent towards Lindsay based on no evidence in a way that was never true of say, Chris Brown and Rihanna. My point is that the two of them have been interpreted in homophobic ways from the very start, and if you don’t think that’s true, I venture to suggest that that’s because you haven’t experienced homophobia yourself.

– crankyreader

~~~~~

NaPoWriMo – Every Other Day

THE TASTE OF LIGHT & OUR DIGESTIVE TRACTS

I’m portable. My mind travels
gulls and valleys between people.
I’m at its heels, the grabbing of long white trains
and veils, using their hats for sleds.
Africa is one season without snow.
I’m there too, testing the droughts for true water
under skin cracks on distant dolphins.
They resemble, in their back fins,
the arc of my casual elbow.
The others I follow also house animals.
The white hair on this front-row man hides
a pink flamingo.
Moustache: a salt & pepper mole rat.
The red-haired woman has antlers for feeling.
So much to throw away and make space for
the other parts of us: the hole in my hope,
my tribunal relationships,
the incredible ways we eat baked goods.
It’s not possible to enjoy a bite
and set it free before the swallow.
The throat, conditioned, wants completion.
The stomach demands its light.
Sweet taste is an evolutionary attribute.
Go, ask the miracle fruit.
Tell your doctor who pales to kill
my parasites, speak of my inner family.
We have talked on all fours and succeeded
in mastering the secrets of following upright
without destroying our buried interests.
People are my friends, as are all animals.
In memory of this, I bake them into shapes and
a spoon-shaped cake to taste the world with.

–Amy King

A Good Day and Then Some…

A GOOD DAY RECIPE:

I just ordered You Are STILL Being Lied To: The NEW Disinformation Guide to Media Distortion, Historical Whitewashes and Cultural Myths, found out that Wanda Sykes will host her own late night talk show, am currently reading two not-Americans’ poetry books: Caroline Bergvall’s Cropper (Torque Press) and Anny Ballardini’s Ghost Dance in 33 Movements (Otoliths), am reading in Amityville this evening (the spot known for its “horror”], am reading at Cakeshop this Sunday, and just knocked off my every-other-day poem for you folks invested in the NaPoWriMo religion. Make me tremble, go below:

Late night with Wanda Sykes

Did you ever think you’d live to see the day when an out, black lesbian got her own late-night show… on a network owned by Rupert Murdoch? Well, it appears hell has frozen over, because Wanda Sykes is finalizing a deal to host a Saturday night talk show on Fox. [Yikes, Murdoch. Article cont'd on Salon here...]

~~~~

What Is Is Not There
–for David Wolach

I was at a party with my party thoughts
in my spatial head noting all the missing:
The color of my eyes,
the sad slope of my dented plush shins,
what I see when I say the dry ice aloud,
the thought caught dangling on its thread
when you call me by the wrong name
on purpose,
how much people love
the faces before their eyes,
my wooden brain at its midnight meal
of cigar smoke and co-pilot dreams
that adopt & French kiss each interlocutor,
the story of two women who pretended elsewhere—

I’m getting plastic surgery,
I don’t have a TV,
I read anything anymore.

Post-party vibe, David’s got a farm heart.
I will fall for one woman
when his heart’s got the right circuits on board.
I till the fields till then.

Her—the other woman—greens are beetle-eaten.
People of the soluble variety don’t care where they
shoot you anymore—

In broad daylight, in the spleen, in circular twilight,
in the duodenum with its staunch bacteria
and warm resistance.
I’m beginning to admire these beasts
for their labor demands, my nausea and
advancing malaise of age. For you, I truly
would practice all night my backwards walk,
erase the erasers that never talk and
use my pencil-wood-divining rod to drink
by the neck this party’s elastic water. I’ll see you then.

–Amy King

~~~~

National Poetry Month

First, kick off April Fool’s Day and National Poetry Month with the killer song above by Andrew Bird and Martin Dosh, “Simple X.”  I’m serious:  this tune”ll make you feel good.

Next, note that you can actively participate in the forging of new poems with a whole lotta other poets who participate in “NaPoWriMo” (National Poetry Writing Month).  Read Write Poem provides a ton of prompts for daily ventures;   Bloof Books is hosting a poem a day podcast for the sake of it all.

Also, Charles Bernstein’s essay, “Against National Poetry Month and Such,” is still available online via Chicago U Press.  Take a gander.

I won’t NaPoWriMo nor will I follow the prompts; the restrictions might undo me.  Instead, I’ll write a poem every other day and become only half undone.  How’s that?

Here’s my poem for two days:

War Rhetoric from the Syrian Desert

Talk to the guns, so does not
say the French focus on no props, all character.

Your acting chops get
tested on this field, this night, where bullets speak

Their vows deep into the very wind
that envelopes your body, whistles to bring

A thousand metallic glacial deaths
at a speed no flesh nor eye nor sky nor vest

Can persuade your living seconds against.
By this red moon, you own one voice

That sweet-talks the world. All breath, to them,
you are nothing but the gun and its threat.

–Amy King

~~~

Fri, April 3rd and Sun, April 5th!

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Fri. April 3rd, Coffeehouse: Got the blues?

Friday, April 3, 2009 at 8pm come to PeaceSmiths’ Topical, A-Typical Folk Music, Poetry and Whatever Coffeehouse.

Got the blues? Come organize. It makes you feel better. We have a table full of info on local music, politics, petitions and community concerns. Come bring some literature and promote your favorite cause (or band!)

This month, featuring:

Poet Amy King: Poet Laureate of the Blogosphere
and
Phil Minissale: The Blues Boy of Long Island

Plus…
Open Time – Maybe you!

Our PeaceSmiths coffeehouses are held at:

First United Methodist Church in Amityville
25 Broadway/rt110 (Southmost end near Merrick Rd/Montauk hwy)
This is a short car trip from the Amityville Train Station. (A little too far for most people to walk.) If you call a day or so in advance, we can arrange a pick up at the train station: (631) 798-0778, leave a message.

$7 suggested donation
Less if necessary, more if possible.
Includes healthy munchies.

Polestar Poetry Series Presents…

Sunday, April 5, 2009
4 pm (special time)

Janice Erlbaum
Amy King
Joy Ladin

Downstairs at CAKESHOP
152 Ludlow Street
(between Stanton & Rivington)
Manhattan, NY

Trains to:
Delancey-Essex Sts (F, J, M, Z)
2nd Ave-Houston St (F, V)
Grand St (B, D)

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TEACHING – Oh No, Performers Coming Into Audience

SHAME – Valparaiso University removes lesbian from minority seat on student senate!

COMING OUT – Ana and I have been watching Guidling Light online.  It’s true.  Ask Otalia.

KUDOS – Margaret Atwood rejects festival over gay book controversy

MUSIC EXCELLENCE – Two brand new:  1) Indigo Girls – Poseiden and the Bitter Bug and 2) Bonnie Prince Billy – Beware

VIDEO — 1)  Peaches – “Boys Wanna Be Her” 2) The Elderly Try to Go Digital! 3) War Crimes? on Rachel Maddow & 4) Facebook in Reality

ORGASMIC — Our new press, Weekend Press, is underway!

~~~

sixth finch is fresh!

A brand new sixth finch sings out with poems and art, including new work from Ana Božičević! Go visit!

For the Ladies … Sort Of.

Portia De Rossi Apologies for Marriage

~~~~~

Jen Foster Didn’t Just Kiss a Girl (For Kate Perry!)

“Out musician Jen Foster has something to say to Katy Perry: She did not just kiss a girl. The Nashville-based singer-songwriter’s new single, ‘I Didn’t Just Kiss Her,’ is a tongue-in-cheek response to the smash fauxmosexual song, and details Jen’s experience hooking up with a straight girl.

You may have an idea how that goes, but Jen’s song, which you can hear on her MySpace page, illustrates it quite perfectly:

I didn’t just kiss her
We went all the way and I liked it
What’s the point of trying to hide it?
You never know until you’ve tried it.
She said she only kissed me for the boys’ attention.
She’s tryin’ to blame it on a little too much booze
But I can testify she knew what she was doing.
It was almost like she’d done it all before.
She’s gonna go back to her boyfriend now, before the questions come up.
She’s gonna tell him I’m stalkin’ her around the clock, like I’m makin’ the story up.”

~~~~~

By the way, Jill Sobule sang a much better, inoffensive song called, “I Kissed a Girl” long before Kate Perry back in 1995.  Click here to hear! (Unfortunately, the original video is no longer on Youtube.  It featured a cameo of Fabio!)

From Jill Sobule’s blog:

I did learn that I Kissed a Girl — either the Katy Perry version or my version — was hardly the first song about kissing girls. In 1929, Ma Rainey, the “mother of the blues,” wrote Prove it On Me Blues:

Went out last night with a crowd of friends
They must have been woman
‘Cause I don’t like men

Then from Ma Rainey I went to Bessie Smith, who, by the way once bailed Ma Rainey out of jail.

~~~~

Into the Iron-Clad Shadows…

Early Obama’s Efforts to Get People Involved — Is He Practicing What He Preached?

I heard on NPR yesterday some Brit pundit proclaiming that President Obama’s recent TV appearances are mostly for naught. Apparently, pundits think the short-term “gains” — as they weigh them — are not worth the long-term hassles he will surely reap when he is not popular, a time which will certainly arrive, they predict. Obama’s appeals to the American public and his proclamations of where he stands on AIG’s recent payoffs, among other opinions, are just ploys, according to these pundits’ limited estimations, to gain popularity — a feat they don’t get since he’s currently popular.

Well, excuse me, dear pundits, but you might shift your perspectives a bit. Perhaps Obama is not following the same old business-as-usual stance assumed when one dons the presidential role: Bush faded into the shadows at key moments when he should have been publicly attempting to instill faith in a population that, in the long run, lost all faith in the leadership position. With Obama, it seems, gone are the days of “now that I’m in I can begin my vacation days and minimal sound bites in the face of a national and international crisis.” O pundits, now — exactly now — is the time for action.  And here you have a man attempting to drum up action based in empathy, an empathy that motivates people to “build a nation” again.  Why knock his efforts because they “may hurt him later” or because he’s currently popular?   As noted, you might want to adjust those rose-tinted goggles that see only through politics-as-usual.

Obama, at risk to his current “popularity” even, is doing just that: he is handling an inherited mess from an unheard of position of transparency, a position that acknowledges we are in this together and not from the former one that would have “everyone get theirs” while the entire boat slowly sinks to the murky depths where whole parts of a population go homeless and hungry. Who’s shoulders are you going to clamber onto when the bulk of the country can’t stay afloat? As I see it, and this may be from an uninformed and idealistic, even sentimental perspective, Obama wants to obliterate that authoritarian distance of seeming withdrawn strength and independence in favor of acknowledging that we are, indeed, interdependent — that we are connected, like it or not — and we should begin the very difficult work of trying to understand that no one can survive if we don’t all survive. Let the socialist accusations begin …

So kudos to President Obama for not taking the safe, Bush-like route of retreating into the iron-clad shadows while pretending an infallible, God-like position of knowledge and authority-over-all. Look where that kind of leadership has landed us. I don’t know if this president’s plan will work, but I want so badly to believe a man who seeks to improve this country for the sake of the two daughters he so clearly loves and admires that I am willing to give up a little piece of the pie to help many instead of just the top-tier few. And don’t even get me started on how refreshing it is to see a father dote so openly and nurture his children’s well-being publicly and consistently; it’s incredibly heartening to have this role model for other men to follow instead of leaving all of the work of rearing his daughters to the little quiet lady in the big white house.

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In other news, I’m one judge among many nice ones for the April PAD challenge!

Update:  I’m still recovering, nicely, from my year-long infection, with happy progress.  However, there’s still a bit of work to be done, so upon Annie Finch’s enthusiastic advice (via her friend Susan Weed), I’m going to try my first Stinging Nettle infusion.  Thanks, Annie!  Will let you know how it goes…

Women in Love wrote a nice note about my recent review of “I’ve Loved You So Long.”

Fatally-wounded Batman to be replaced by lesbian!

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Fun Food –and Stock– for Thought

Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition.  ~Timothy Leary

Women belong in the house… and the Senate.  ~Author Unknown

I am working for the time when unqualified blacks, browns, and women join the unqualified men in running our government.  ~Cissy Farenthold

Being a woman is a terribly difficult task, since it consists principally in dealing with men.  ~Joseph Conrad

There is a special place in hell for women who do not help other women.  ~Madeleine K. Albright

Instead of getting hard ourselves and trying to compete, women should try and give their best qualities to men – bring them softness, teach them how to cry.  ~Joan Baez, “Sexism Seen but not Heard,” Los Angeles Times, 1974

I refuse to believe that trading recipes is silly.  Tunafish casserole is at least as real as corporate stock.  ~Barbara Grizzuti Harrison

Some of us are becoming the men we wanted to marry.  ~Gloria Steinem

I think, therefore I’m single.  ~Lizz Winstead

No man is as anti-feminist as a really feminine woman.  ~Frank O’Connor

Why is it that men can be bastards and women must wear pearls and smile?  ~Lynn Hecht Schafren

You know, when I first went into the movies Lionel Barrymore played my grandfather.  Later he played my father and finally he played my husband.  If he had lived I’m sure I would have played his mother.  That’s the way it is in Hollywood.  The men get younger and the women get older.  ~Lillian Gish

Young wives are the leading asset of corporate power.  They want the suburbs, a house, a settled life, and respectability.  They want society to see that they have exchanged themselves for something of value.  ~Ralph Nader

We’ve begun to raise daughters more like sons… but few have the courage to raise our sons more like our daughters.  ~Gloria Steinem

Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese. ~G.K. Chesterton

A poet’s work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep.  ~Salman Rushdie

Language is fossil poetry.  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Writing a book of poetry is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo.   ~Don Marquis

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

There’s no money in poetry, but there’s no poetry in money, either.   ~Robert Graves

Science sees signs; Poetry the thing signified.   ~Augustus and Julius Hare

You can tear a poem apart to see what makes it tick . . .. You’re back with the mystery of having been moved by words. The best craftsmanship always leaves holes and gaps . . . so that something that is not in the poem can creep, crawl, flash or thunder in.   ~Dylan Thomas

I’ve written some poetry I don’t understand myself.    ~Carl Sandburg

There is poetry as soon as we realize that we possess nothing.  ~John Cage

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Saturday: Upstairs @ Erika’s

Date:	Saturday, March 21, 2009
Time:	7:30pm – 10:30pm
Location:	erika’s loft
Street:	williamsburg
City/Town:	South Brooklyn, NY

Join me for three great writers: Amy King, Ana Božičević and Jeni Olin–

Ana Božičević emigrated to NYC from Croatia in 1997. Her first book, Stars of the Night Commute, will be published by Tarpaulin Sky Press in Fall 2009. I.e., stars will appear in the sky. Her most recent chapbook, God, Sebastian, Amy, is available from Flying Guillotine Press. With Amy King, she curates the Stain of Poetry reading series.  For more, visit nightcommute.org and stainofpoetry.com.

Jeni Olin lives in Manhattan where she rages in “posh isolation” with her maltese dog Good Times. Jeni received her BA & MFA from Naropa University. Her first full-length book BLUE COLLAR HOLIDAY was published by Hanging Loose in 2005. Her most recent publication is a chapbook of pharmaceutical sonnets about antidepressants titled THE PILL BOOK from Faux Press, 2008. She is currently working on a manuscript called EVERYBODY LEAVES. Also she is changing her name to Truck Darling and her friends call her truck…

Amy King is the author of I’m the Man Who Loves You and Antidotes for an Alibi, and forthcoming, Slaves to Do These Things (Blazevox Books). For information on the reading series Amy co-curates, please visit The Stain of Poetry: A Reading Series (http://stainofpoetry.wordpress.com/) or visit her at www.amyking.org.

Email Amy for the address [amyhappens at gmail.com].

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IN OTHER NEWS …

South Africa:  “Corrective” Rape Spreads to “Fix” Lesbians

Tax Season:  Gay Couples Pay and Pay and Pay

“And crushed his skull.”  Elvis’ “Bird Poem” up for Auction

Obama to sign U.N. Gay Rights Declaration

Huffington Post Wants “Hard Times” Poems

“Menacing” Women in Dubai Being “Re-Educated”

Oprah Discovers Lesbians

March 27th @ 7 p.m. - *Chace, Georgiou, Greenhouse, King, Peet & Price*

I’ve Loved You So Long

Elsa Zylberstein and Kristin Scott Thomas

Don’t get me wrong, I love my country, but when it comes to testing the acting chops of any thespian, I’d say French cinema is the primary place to go about such measures. No fancy props. No extreme special effects. A lot of close up, careful camera work that relies on the actors knowing how important executing pauses, facial and bodily expressions, and the delivery of their lines are. Of course, beautiful scenery is helpful, and is usually plentiful, whether filming in Paris or in the south of France.

Novelist-turned-director, Philippe Claudel, embraces this cost-efficient tradition in “I’ve Loved You So Long” in such a way that he damn-near executes a masterpiece. Foremost, he mines the talent of British actor, Kristin Scott Thomas, so thoroughly that one walks away understanding, beyond the scope of the story, how acting certainly does have its geniuses, and Scott Thomas is among the top. The premise of the film itself is quite simple: We meet Juliette, a sullen, chain-smoking woman, played by Scott Thomas, upon her release from prison, where she has spent the last fifteen years for murder. Her sister, Lea (Elsa Zylberstein), takes her into her home, enthusiastically and unwaveringly in the face of her husband’s initial resistance, to give her a place to re-enter society and renew their relationship, which was cut short when Lea was still a teenager.

Prison has done a number on Scott Thomas’s Juliette, a former doctor, as have the details of the murder, and so Scott Thomas presents us with a woman who is intelligent and sensitive, yet hardened and withdrawn. The balance Scott Thomas pulls off throughout the film is impeccable. Her disinterest in make-up and lack of concern for attire, and other niceties the world might provide, are mere superficial indicators of the struggles Juliette experiences even within the most uneventful situations. That Scott Thomas often allows us to see this tumultuousness solely through her facial expressions and body language is an art to behold. That Scott Thomas manipulates silence as a serious craft warrants the French equivalent of an Oscar and a note that this may be, so far, the best performance of her career.

While Claudel relies heavily on the talents of his cast, he also uses the traditional suspense tact of withholding exactly why Juliette killed as well as brilliantly building on numerous succinct scenes to fill out the progress made between the characters over weeks and months. He also has a keen eye for omitting unnecessary moments that may provide dramatic fodder (i.e. the melee that might follow the husband rushing home when he discovers Juliette has been left alone with the children) or build suspense, but instead expects the viewer to be sophisticated enough to fill in the gaps as he moves on to show us more productive key scenes.

The subtle, uneasy tone of the film propels this story’s development and our investment in it. Even as we are set up to settle in and sympathize with Juliette’s slow efforts to readjust to the world while our heart strings are simultaneously tugged by Lea, who desperately strives to love and help her sister, we are haunted by not knowing why Juliette was capable of the heinous murder she refuses to discuss, and so a question of motive unsettles the viewer until the very end. Juliette is at once a haunted Hamlet we suspect may be a little crazy and ill intentioned, and she is also the pained son who needs, but cannot find, alleviation in what’s left of the world. The only grace that may save her is Lea’s faith in their bond, a faith that surpasses the scope of expectation.

“I’ve Loved You So Long” deftly handles a range of emotions and characters, anchored by Scott Thomas’ seemingly “absent” Juliette. Despite her quiet resistance, many regularly come to seek Juliette out, including her parole officer, one of Lea’s university colleagues, and Lea’s older daughter, Lys. Though these relations do slowly draw her out, it is the primacy of the sisters’ relationship that makes this film special. One might expect, especially of a Hollywood-driven film, which this certainly is not, that Juliette’s redemption would come in the form of some romantic potential providing her with a clichéd reason to live and love again. But the love that is renewed and eventually finds Juliette is that of her sister’s, a love between siblings that surpasses the self-imposed desolation Juliette has inhabited and turned into a habit for so long. When Juliette utters the final words of the film, “I’m here,” the weight of that love is spoken, as is Juliette herself, and we are all left knowing her potential.

* Of special note to bibliophiles, Claudel subtly connects many characters through their relationships with books.

* Kristin Scott Thomas Discusses Her Role

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The Living Room & Office Is Your Dance Floor…

Raise the volume, dance around, and don’t forget to hear the lyrics…

Ms. Mavis Staples:

We were working there that night. Pops called us and told us, “Listen, y’all, this man Martin is here, Martin Luther King, and I want to go to his church. He has a church, Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, and would you all like to go?” We said, “Yes, pops. We want to go.” We all went to Dr. King’s church that Sunday morning for an 11:00 service.

We go back to the hotel. Pops called us again. “Listen, you all, I really like this man’s message. And I think if he can preach it, we can sing it.”

…We sang it. We started writing freedom songs.

…Our purpose was to sing songs that would uplift, you know, lift people and give them a reason to get up in the morning, you know? That’s just — we sing positive, informative messages.

–From Soul Singer Mavis Staples Vocalizes Civil Rights Movement

Walt Whitman in White Snow

Currently tucked into the driven snow on the eastern side of Long Island reading “The Road Washes Out in Spring — A Poet’s Memoir of Living Off the Grid ” — about one fourth of the way in — and am enthralled, meditative, attuned, and simply feeling extremely romantic about places I’ve never lived and the faint strains of those places in my own abode, which is why we took the man into the yard for a quick minute to run through the tundra (above).  But lo, I am too much of this world to leave it…

Two excerpts to tempt you to dive into Baron Wormser’s book:

“As for poetry, after the sporadic schoolroom encounters are over, it takes no particular effort to live one’s life and forget that it even exists.  In a city, you might see a poem on a poster in a bus or subway car.  You might hear a poem for two minutes on public radio.  Or you might be traveling in a car and be listening to the contemporary rock station, the talk radio station, the classical station, or the news station, or be talking on a phone to someone about what time you will be getting home or which brand of tortilla chips you should buy.  Poetry wants attentiveness, not distraction, and because it shows us pathways of emotion, it admonishes us that we can always feel more deeply.  Such an admonition may be hard to hear in the world science has created” (p. 30).

“We reaped a serious amount of scorn for our actions.  Our parents informed us that we were throwing away our educations, if not our lives, by going off to live on a dirt road.  They had labored to get ahead in this country.  They had put together savings accounts over decades and learned to play the stock market and invest in properties so that they could take vacations, buy big cars, and send their children to college.  They had believed that each generation materially improved on the previous one.  As we indulged a useless fantasy and rejected what they had striven to create, we were going backward.  In their calculating yet optimistic eyes, we were spoiled, callow youths who had read too many books, seen too many movies, and had far too many romantic notions” (p. 38).

–from The Road Washes Out in Spring — A Poet’s Memoir of Living Off the Grid by Baron Wormser

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Elsewhere, on greatness (so far):

Collin Kelley

Reb Livingston

Jennifer Bartlett

Adam Fieled

Sandra Beasley (Done!)

New Poems @ Wheelhouse!

WHEELHOUSE

COWS by Amy King

THE GOSPEL OF PROGRESS by Amy King

THE WORM BY THE EMBER THAT GLOWS by Amy King

THE GILDED ZERO by Amy King

EVERYTHING HAPPENS AT ONCE by Amy King

Intervals of Please, by Ana Bozicevic

God Is President, She’s the Rose of the World, by Ana Bozicevic

The Stars That Come Before the Night, by Ana Bozicevic

AND a whole bunch more by

Rachel Zolf, Rob Halpern, Elisa Gabbert & Kathleen Rooney, Matina L. Stamatakis, Reb Livingston, Andrew Lundwall, Larissa Shmailo, Joe Balaz, Meghan McNealy, Jeff Crouch, Elizabeth Kate Switaj, Nico Vassilakis, Juliet Cook, Carol Novack, Stan Apps, S. Jason Fraley, Patrick Carrington, Kristina Marie Darling, Joy and Dubblex Leftow!

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Also, “Ana Bozicevic Weighs in on Croatia” over at the New European Poets site.  Enjoy!

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On Greatness & Them That Do It

On Orr Off

In a culture where “greatness” is measured by face time via t.v. shows such as “American Idol” and the growing trend of killing people to make your fifteen minutes on the evening news, it seems the factors for “greatness” have devolved into measures I’m not sure poets ought to be distracted by, or rather, remotely invested in.  Nonetheless, David Orr in the NYT Sunday Book Review asks about the conditions by which poets might be “great” today and, indeed, if greatness is possible for poets, post-Ashbery, ever again.

A few notions impatiently gleaned from manly Orr’s efforts:

* People will play golf, even if they aren’t Tiger Woods, but longevity isn’t sustained in poetry.  Poets won’t write for a lifetime if they can’t see themselves as the next Ashbery?  Except, poets certainly do write for lifetimes, with or without Orr’s knowledge, and they do so without worrying about winning the gold cup or whatever prize golfers aim for.  There is no set goal in the “game” of poetry, though Orr’s comparison sets the terms as such (i.e. John Ashbery’s Library of America collection).  How do sports metaphors of the competitive masculine variety so often wiggle their way into measuring poetry and her cultural cache?   What team am I playing for again?  Where’s the goal line?  Who do I have to smear to get there?   Are my subjects suitably dainty as I take up the stick?

* Orr cites Samuel Johnson “exquisiteness in its kind” as a sign of greatness– pretty circular in kind.

* Orr notes, in lots of little ways, how the person’s lived life contributes to the aura of greatness the masses attribute.  I.e.  Biography is something of destiny in poetry.  Such consideration is one distracting way of perhaps indirectly getting at just what the poet’s aims and her stamina/dedication/devotion to the craft are via the usual bio-mythology of just how much she’s willing to sacrifice, study, consider, risk, etc., to the point that alcoholism, who one hangs out with,  suicidal tendencies, etc.–tend to overshadow and get conflated with her image as one of “greatness.”   The quiet poet with a steady life is not typically so “great” (though there are exceptions, especially when mystique is placed upon them a la Emily Dickinson-style).  Following this prescription, I might become a mystery or anomaly or develop a strange air about myself to pique attention and thus encourage my audience to project wild notions upon my persona if I were good at such drama and inclined towards sowing for greatness.  Even poetry movements are doing it these days …

* Ultimately, I like the first bit of Hall’s statement, cited by Orr, “It seems to me that contemporary American poetry is afflicted by modesty of ambition …” [and just a few paragraphs further is where I lost patience with Orr's article -- apologies!].  Ambition in poetry?  I’m all for it.  But we should want to be Dante?  Um, no.  Just as the task of determining greatness should not be left up to one man in a NYTimes article.  Not by a long shot.  If poetry is great, and it certainly has been and can be, then poets should be the ones to set the stage and play the game of promoting greatness in all its technicolor shades and mediums. But is naming “who” really where greatness is?  Must greatness be a signature assigned to one human?  Ashbery is great because of every tenth worthwhile poem he wrote gets attention?   Rimbaud is great because he wrote a few good ones and is followed by a crazy mythology that high school boys take to and movies are made from?

Greatness Exists

So let’s assume greatness exists.  Because it is a concept and does exist.  But it is not synonymous with “popularity,” though the standard miserably leans towards books sold and audience numbers.  Greatness is entirely subjective, despite that conflation with the democratic principle of majority rules.  Are those who don’t agree that Ashbery is great in the wrong?   Does the majority really decide who is great?  Does the majority pronounce what greatness is via the expression of their dollars?   Why does Orr’s essay not question, “What are the duties and responsibilities of greatness?  Who assigns it?”

This concept of greatness, as Orr speaks of it, is just too simple and conservative.  “Poetry needs greatness,” yes, but not the kind Orr haphazardly defines, even that of the historical variety.  We can use but are not stuck in the past.   Great role models exist, but they need not be emulated in total.  They are models, flawed and mostly gone.   The world’s scene can no longer sustain such an atrophied vision of greatness as the one Orr investigates.  We need new greatness that dismantles the status quo, opens up towards more kinds of inclusion (see Barbara Jane Reyes’ take), behaves beyond beautifying and heralding myths in the making.   What a stupid old project this making of masculine heroes has become.

And then there’s this near-definition Orr presents, “When we lose sight of greatness … we stop assuming that poems should be interesting to other people and begin thinking of them as being obliged only to interest our friends –”  I know I’m coming off as just blanketly contrary here, but what?  We must seek Orr’s loose version of greatness or our poetry will only be reduced to dull insular verse written specifically for friends?  I don’t get the presumption–at all.  I think most people who put pen to paper are attempting to “interest people”, whether they are successful or not, regardless of whether they are motivated by the “greatness” Orr has outlined, which is misguided and outdated.

Of course, practically speaking, most poets don’t want to write away in obscurity, but how many of us truly require — as motivation — the masses to pat us on the back for our greatness?  None of the poets I know expect a Tiger Woods’ trophy or his following, nor do they write while holding out for such nonsense.   Poets who have something of the greatness factor in them exhibit a stick-to-it-ness over time, a curiosity for others’ poetics, attention to craft, deep concern with the world, serious engagement with that world in other non-poetic but typically political (small “p”) ways–sans Library of America tome or even the promise of one.

Orr’s essay doesn’t deserve but needs a response–many responses– for even as golfers are folowing their game’s rules, poets are making their own ways, similarly and separately, differently and communally, as multitudes and as individuals, sans a set standard of formulas and rules.    Golf goes after stroke counts and a finish line.  Poetry goes after life and everything the concept entails.  Greatness certainly is not the little box declaring a winner vis a vis book publication or any golden laurel leaf.  Poetry is not merely words on a screen/page or how dramaticaly the poet lived her life.

The Call to Greatness

My version of greatness –the subjective one I work to promote– (& in the abstract) is the poetry that strives to confound expectations and create new awareness, esp of the social and political–however strange or discomfiting–so that from seeming “ugliness,” beauty is fostered and permitted to renew (see Gertrude Stein on Picasso and ugly here).

So with a step towards greatness and an eye towards evolving that definition, I would like to call upon ten other poets to ask how they aspire towards (or despite) this heavy word with all of its newly-polished baggage—>Sandra Simonds, Mendi Obadike, Ron Silliman, Sandra Beasley, Linh Dinh, Gabe Gudding, Adam Fieled, Anne Boyer, Collin Kelly, Jessica Smith, K. Silem Mohammad, and Reb Livingston.  And they, of course, should ask ten.  Please.  Help me understand greatness!

p.s.  okay, make that twelve.  Twelve.