Archive for June, 2007
Rachel Zucker
Anatomy of a Story
Friday night there was a big party for my mother to celebrate her 40 years of service to the city. People told stories and offered reflections about my mom and then we all watched a movie about my mom’s career. There’s one story in the film that I can’t shake and that has shaken me up.
It was a really well done film and talked about my mom’s life and career in moving and interesting ways. In the late 1960s and early ’70s my mother told stories twice a day, 5 days a week, in schools all over Manhattan, Harlem and the Bronx. She had a weekly radio program, Stories from Many Lands, on WNYC for years. She’s written 23 books, traveled the world–she’s had an incredible career and is still going strong. The movie contained interviews with friends and other storytellers (I was interviewed as were my kids) and also showed amazing still photographs I hadn’t seen. It felt very real, much less idealized than I would have imagined. But this one story:
Patricia Smith
Oh, HELL yeah…
In a review of my book “Teahouse of the Almighty” in the Summer/Fall 2007 issue of Gulf Coast, in the best review I’ve ever received of anything I’ve ever written, in a strikingly glowing review, in one of those reviews that makes me wanna kiss the reviewer’s toes, in one of those reviews that makes me wanna–as the Godfather of Soul James Brown might say–jump back and kiss m’self, I was called…
wait for it…
here it comes….
“a speech pathologist’s wet dream.”
You may now talk among yourselves.
Jeffrey McDaniel
berlin in the haus
On the train ride from Munich to Berlin, (6 hour ride). Matthea Harvey, Ron Winkler and I (along with some help from Kevin Young and Uljana Wolf intermittenly) discuss a rough draft translation of a poem of Ron`s into English. We go through it line by line, phrase by phrase, discussing many little details, like the different implications of “fact” and “data”, and trying to figure out of there is an expression in English for a boy whose ears stick, something more elegant than Dumbo. It is fascinating to look at all the choices that get made, and how you sometimes need to deviate from the literal to get to a poem´s essence.
The 4 poets we are touring with are all doing very well career-wise in Germany. Steffen Popp has a well recieved novel and a book of poems. Uljana Wolf just won a big award that resulted in her doing readings all over the country, and Ron Winkler has two books out and has won several prizes. Jan Wagner is doing good stuff too.
I am hoping that this tour is just the beginning of a longer relationship. Ron will be in the US in November; his poems are being used in a musical performance at Zankel Hall (Carnegie Hall). I am hoping that some of these poets will have work appear in US literary journals. We US poets need to hear and read the work of young poets from around the globe. We need to be exposed to different poetic traditions and different ways of approaching a poem.
This is totally a poetic wet dream, but imagine a young poets convention somewhere on Earth where 10 poets under 40 from every country assemble for a week to share work. I hope it happens quick: my days of being under 40 are severely numbered, I turn 40 in 10 days.
Tonight we will have our final reading in Berlin, at the Literaturhaus. The next night, Saturday, Derek Walcott is reading outdoors as part of some huge week-long, city-wide poetry festival.
Jeffrey McDaniel
München
On the third day of a short, week-long tour through Germany with poets Kevin Young, Christian Hawkey, and Matthea Harvey. Matthea’s husband (and editor of Jubilat) Rob Caspar is also with us, as well as 4 young German poets (between 27 and 36) who have translated our poems.
Our typical day has been: wake up and have a huge German breakfast (deli meats, rolls, many forms of jam, hard boiled eggs, fruit), then take a train (from Berlin to Leipzig, then Leipzig to Munich, tomorrow it is Munich back to Berlin), check into new hotel, have a nice lunch and explore the city a little, go to the reading around 7, then go out to a big dinner with the people who organized the event.
The Munich reading was in the Lyrik Kabinett. There were about 40 people in attendance. We read sitting down at a table on a stage, with microphones. 4 or 5 people would sit at the table at a time. 2 US poets and 2 or 3 German translators, with a break in the middle.
It’s been so energizing hanging out with this group of nine poets, in so many different contexts. We have talked a LOT of poetry, some politics, some music. We’ve also played chess and poker on the train, laughed a ton. It’s nice to hear people’s poems on consecutive nights. With each new listen, I hear more and more. I still have some jetlag and am sleeping in pieces. Our hosts have been so kind. I am blown away by the physical spaces that the writing organizations inhabit. The Berlin Literaturhaus is a huge mansion, with offices, a lovely garden, and an exquisite restaurant where regular stylish people (with $) go for a nice meal. It is on a whole other level than anything that I have experienced in the US. It’s like the Morgan Library in New York.
Jumping around, last night in Leipzig we met some students of one of the very few creative writing workshops in Germany. There is a lot of doubt about the worthiness of such an endeavor, but the students seem to be really happy there; they get to go for free, and it is an honor to be selected (20 people selected out of 600 applicants).
Tonight we ate at a place called Cohn’s, a Jewish deli in Munich. We have been earting lots of schnitzel and rump steak, but other things too, like giant stalks of white aspragus (which are in season), with thin slices of ham and a butter sauce. Delicious.
More soon from Berlin. xo
Rachel Zucker
Write Where You Are?
Except I can’t. The problem is technical: hands. The baby must be held. In the sling he falls asleep and I eat and try to sleep make food for my older boys and aim for 15 minutes of attention to each one a day (can’t say that I make my goal very often). So the problem is also logistical: time. Somehow there is more of it now that day and night have blurred into one another and also no time at all. At least, no time with hands.
I nurse in the nursing chair, rocking back and forth, turning over words that disappear before I’ve burped him and even tried to put him down. And he does NOT like to be put down.
I want to describe how he smells. I want to describe how this mostly cranky alien, so new to the world, and, frankly, so dyspeptic and fusspotty in his temperament has stolen my heart. Rationally I am unmoved by his cries and grunts and moans and there I am again moving to move him—swing him, rock him, tuck him in close to my body and when all else fails I strip us down and get in the bath where he stares at me wide-eyed and completely calm. But he has already woken up. Even the sling doesn’t work for more than 15 minutes if I am not moving.
He is three weeks old today. I’d love to tell you what it’s like here but—(fade out with the sound of screaming in the background…)
Patricia Smith
Does it come with a set of Ginzu knives…?
Everybody’s sayin’ it: “PhDs are the new MFAs.”
Say it ain’t so. I’m out of money.
Anybody out there got a PhD in creative writing? Why? Is it sexier? Do you get more dates? Does it make you smarter? Whaaat?
Patricia Smith
Sometimes they’re just really looooong poems…
I have a friend named Rachel Kann. Her new book, “10 for Everything” is fresh off the press; I got my copy in the mail today. Turn the book over and marvel at one of the most sizzling author photos I’ve ever encountered–all gams and attitude, adorned with pigtails and an unflitered cig. The girl ain’t playin’.
Rachel Kann is a poet. She says so herself in that little self-indulgency called “About the Author” that so often pops up on a book’s last inside page, where no one actually manages to look. But there it is, black and white, loud and clear: Rachel Kann is a poet.
“10 for Everything” however, is not a poetry book. It’s a sexy, quirky,revelatory work of fiction which quickly becomes an addiction. The underlying spark for that addiction is that fact that…well, Rachel Kann is a poet. The inventive yet lyrical irreverence that make her such a whiz at stanzas infuses her fiction with twists of language that quickly become addictive.
And I just finished “She’s Gone,” an amazing debut novel by by our own Mr. Kwame Dawes. In this textured tale of lust and politics, his sizzling prose sports a signature that will be instantly familiar to anyone who knows and appreciates his poetic voice.
In fact, my favorite poet of all time has also penned twenty–count ‘em, twenty–novels. And while he tries his best to squelch his poetic tendencies in the pages of his mysteries, he fails miserably. I’d recognize that poetry anywhere.
I’m thrilled to read Kann, Dawes and my all-time favorite poet, to savor those fictional passages long and aloud. Which got me to thinking…who are some other poets who are also successful fiction writers, or fiction folks who also write poetry? And are poets naturally drawn to fiction with a heavy poetic element?
Poetry Foundation
E.P. on P.E.
On April 10, Patricia wrote: “Phebus Etienne is dead. That won’t mean anything to most of you…Phebus was a reverent Haitian lyric, a deft conjurer of language and light, a Cave Canem sister, an insistent glow…She was only 41.”
I e-mailed Patricia that, oddly enough, it did mean something to me…
Jeffrey McDaniel
on the ground in berlin
I just arrived in Berlin. I will be blogging from Germany for the next week. I am embarking on a three city tour with three other American poets, Matthea Harvey, Kevin Young, and Christian Hawkey. We are doing readings to support an anthology that just came out in Germany and Austria, Schwerkraft, edited by Ron Winkler.
What has happened so far: got a late start leaving my house, massive traffic jam on the way to JFK, on one of those buses from Grand Central. Just made the plane, then we sat on the tarmac for three hours. Fun talking with Kevin and Matthea. The flight was 11 hours, with the three hours on the tarmac. No sleep for me. Lots of Earl Grey tea. Did edit my new poetry manuscript, The Endarkenment. I like editing on planes when everyone else is sleeping. No big problems with the person next to me over personal space or arm rest. Did drop a slice of pizza in JFK. Had eaten half while waiting to pay. It was soo good. Tried to play it off, but I was bummed. That is a hard thing to play off. We have a get together in a few hours with our hosts. Staying in the Hotel Bogota. My room is very dorm-like. Wondering if there is a Pablo Escobar suite. Having a hard time typing–keyboard is different–z and y are switched, plus I cut my fingernails too quickly and too short and have a very tender index finger on my right hand–that is a crucial finger for my primitive typing. Decided against taking a and am just trying to power through till tonight. In Prenzlauerberg now, one of the coolest neighborhoods anywhere. I love Berlin, was here last year with my wife, (she has a name: Christine Caballero). Tomorrow we go to Leipzig. Anyone want me to bring back some German pretzel bread?
Kwame Dawes
FATHER’S DAY
In June 1961, my father was in the Soviet Union on a tour. He took the time to write a daily journal. On June 16th, he wrote:
…My birthday. Gilly Osei’s present –Lenin’s MATERIALISM AND EMPIRIOCRITICISM.
Gorky Collective Farm. Saw Repair-Service station, dairies, crèche, school, hot-houses for vegetables. The Party Secretary who showed us around knew about Ghana and Nkrumah. Studied the plan for the development of the farm in to an agricultural town and its detailed place in seven-year plan.
Visited a hostel of Friendship University; saw three Ghana students. Conditions not so good but new University buildings are nearly complete: the Ghanaians are looking forward to that.
Celebrated my birthday on a river restaurant. Drank quantities of champagne and brandy provided (as well as a gift) by Alexander Ivanovitch. I had a bad cold, though. Perhaps it would turn out to be symbolic that I spent my middle of the way birthday in Moscow.
He was then thirty-five years old. He expected to make it to seventy (three score and ten) and saw it as perhaps symbolic that he would be in Moscow for his birthday. He was still a young man and his faith in Marxism was intact. He was on a delegation to the USSR sponsored, it appears, by the Nkrumah government that was engaged in dialogue with the Soviets, much to the annoyance of the USA. These were cold war years. My father was clear about where he wanted to be and what he hoped for in Ghana and the rest of the so-called Third World. Yet what moves me is the speculative quality of his phrasing: “perhaps it would turn out”… There is something ominous about the phrase, as if he was planning to do something, to be involved with something, something he was not sure was going to happen. I am not sure what that might have been. What I do know is that his eyes were open in The USSR, and yet his heart was also open to the world he saw and the humanity he felt connected to.
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