2009 January : Harriet the Blog : The Poetry Foundation

Archive for January, 2009

Jason Guriel

Lost and Found: A Reading of a Poem I Like

In the audio commentary for his film Two-Lane Blacktop (1971), Monte Hellman notes the great advantage of working with “non-actors” like James Taylor and Dennis Wilson, innocent amateurs who don’t try to act. The great advantage of the speaker in Canadian poet Brian Bartlett’s recent poem “Dear Georgie” is the fact that he doesn’t know he’s in a poem. If only more poems’ speakers sounded like him, a natural who’s not angling for Academy recognition. Poems’ speakers usually sound like poets.

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01.31.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (19)

Wanda Coleman

FEAR OF BLOGGING

As a poet and writer, still struggling in the woeful margins of our society, gathering the courage and mustering the time to participate on HARRIET has been challenging. Too, being born on the cusp of the first Baby Boom—a post-WWII generation that refuses to kowtow to Father Time, but many of whose intellectuals remain stubbornly recalcitrant in their embrace of cell phones and computers—has caused me to be more than skeptical as I’ve wrestled circumstances, trying to accomplish the task. Contemplative time, insisted upon by some of our finest bards, has always come at a premium in these quarters. When stymied, I hear my father’s Robesonlike commands: “Don’t think about it. Do it.” Or “Get a move on, Big Girl.” Or the softer proverbial tut-tut, “Rise and shine.” In humble quarters where money was eschewed over aesthetic values and love of one’s art, avocations and motivations are reexamined in haste and awe. When reading about the legalized white-collar theft of corporate billions, it’s tough not to feel bitter. The adage “changing the world” presumably for the better rings hollow, until names like Buddha, Martin Luther, Jeanne d’Arc, or Mahatma Gandhi fire in the synapses. But on this very American literary terrain, poets and writers are usually not religious leaders, and rarely become political leaders, if an occasional poetry lover becomes President. Forums online appear to have become a permanent way of progress, fostering the ongoing human dialogue in amazingly unanticipated ways. It has been a privilege to participate.

01.31.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (1)

Wanda Coleman

WHAT TILLIE OLSEN TAUGHT ME

Would that cultural, literary and community action panels were less about self-promotion (my book, my poem, my looks), more about the issues at hand—a true dialogue, if in brief, under the pressures of public scrutiny—and less dull (like those unfortunately bookish or ill-spoken, if deserving, souls who appear so frequently on C-SPAN). Perhaps it’s the unmitigating circumstances of tinny PA systems, indifferent microphone placement, and banquet rooms where acoustics were never a thought let alone an afterthought. Given 40 years of technological advancement, the phenomenon that gave birth to the phrase “talking heads,” should have more greatly improved. Focusing on content, it was writer Tillie Olsen (Tell Me a Story, January 14, 1913-January 1, 2007) who taught this once shy and tongue-tied poet the value of not being an aggressively well-spoken advocate while under the kliegs. (See http://www.thetillieolsenfilmproject.com/.) The occasion was a Los Angeles writer’s conference panel circa 1978 that also featured Sci-Fi writer Robert Silverberg. I was fairly burning to score points about the difficulties faced by young Black writers, but stewed as Olsen, high off the success of her best-selling Silences, overrode my inarticulate self-consciousness and Silverberg’s diffident sourness. Rather than be angry or resentful, I took the experience to heart and revamped my public persona. Grateful, if still shy in her light, I looked her up in 1989, thanked her for the lesson, and got my copies of her books autographed.

01.31.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (2)

Wanda Coleman

ON ORAL WORD— BEAT TO “DEAF” JAM SLAM

Slams—once the bane of poetry, if the boon of grungy environs, has left the barrooms and stormed academia, as the first conference on hiphop and rap took place in Norfolk, Virginia at the turn of this century. Still—the Def Jam generation has yet to produce giants as impressive as Ginsberg, Kerouac and Kaufman, although it has been a joy to see the spoken word so enthusiastically refreshed. One of my favorite moments of being blasted out of my ears took place in the sweaty confines of a Pacifica radio booth when Austin Straus and I interviewed Jack Micheline (aka Harry Silver, November 6, 1929 – February 27, 1998), on our defunct Poetry Connexion program circa 1995. Feverish in his delivery, Jack forgot himself, sprung up from his chair and began to swing his arm as he sang his paean to Kerouac with the reverence of a Bau gong. The Naropa Institute, in the dedicated hands of Beat survivor Anne Waldman (the eye of the falcon, on fast speaking music) fosters the oral tradition as well as the written. In my playbook, the Tracie Morris “musical poet” experience ties with Ayisha Knight (until, empowerment records), a deaf poet who redefines the art. I laugh out loud whenever I “hear” Ralph LaCharity’s electrifying “Bob” poem, performed at the “post-Beat,” “pre-hiphop” Bisbee, Arizona poetry festival. Say what one may say about “the oral tradition,” connecting to another’s humanity via living forums is an unparalleled event, regardless of venue, place or time.

01.30.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (9)

Wanda Coleman

BELATED VALENTINE

Needing a quote for a project in 2006, I tracked down Eileen Kaufman, wife and amanuensis to poet Bob Kaufman (the Black Rimbaud, April 18, 1912-January 12, 1986), with the help of San Francisco’s Kush Cloudhouse. She was in an assisted-living facility in the Richmond, California area. After a number of false starts, we finally connected. She was pleased to grant my request, and I said that I would send a permissions letter with SASE. I did so, twice, but never heard back. Further research revealed that the rights were owned by a publisher, and subsequently I obtained them. Too, I suspected, from previous experience, that mail was often lost or forgotten after its arrival to homes for the elderly for reasons other than staff shortages. A year and a half later, in February of 2008, I happened to be in the Bay Area on business. Accompanied by my husband, Austin Straus, we decided to look up Eileen at the El Cerrito Royale, one of the classier senior centers. She was getting along splendidly and looked great. Having visitors from out-of-town aroused envy in nearby peers, as we chatted in the dining room, where a band played old favorites and ever-spry residents fox trotted and waltzed. We brought Eileen up to date on contemporary poetry scenes, then I presented my gift—the book in which Bob was quoted. As we started to leave, she took my wrist, leaned forward and smiled fiercely, “Wanda, let ’em all know I’m STILL kicking!”

01.30.09 PERMALINK | NO COMMENTS

Martin Earl

Translation and its Discontents: Part I

At the end of last year, in the wake of the annual Nobel to-do, during which J.M.G. Le Clézio took the literary prize, Horace Engdahl, permanent secretary of the jury, publicly declared that “There is powerful literature in all big cultures, but you can’t get away from the fact that Europe still is the centre of the literary world… not the United States…The US is too isolated, too insular. They don’t translate enough and don’t really participate in the big dialogue of literature… That ignorance is restraining.”

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01.30.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (22)

Wanda Coleman

A NATIONAL MUSEUM OF POETS & WRITERS?

In the mid-90s I became aware of competing factions writing proposals for a museum celebrating American poets, from Antoninus to Zukofsky. I did not keep up with their progress—if any. It was a great idea, although criteria for such an edifice might prove a nightmare, given the diversity and pettiness of American poetry. Too, if I had my druthers, I’d further broaden the idea to include writers of fiction, and memoirs—since literary writers tend to be among the least rewarded if often the most remembered, quoted and paraphrased. Walks and halls of fame and the like have sprung up across the nation only to die. Outside the Library of Congress, art museums frequently provide evenings of poetry and slams, usually hosted by literary organizations. University enclaves like the Lillian Vernon Creative Writers House at NYU, and centers like Cave Canem abound. Sometimes, cultural centers like Milwaukee’s Woodland Pattern or Just Buffalo in upstate New York constantly rededicate themselves to honor The Muse. The National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum includes a cowboy poetry archive. Salem College in North Carolina boasts a Literary Hall of Fame, and even Venice Beach, California, more widely known for muscles and bikinis, has its Poet’s Walk. Who would finance such a venture and where should it be located? What kind of public would enjoy what kind of exhibits or make use of its archives? Who would be inducted and who would be overlooked?

01.29.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (8)

Wanda Coleman

MY OWN PRIVATE INAUGURATION

It is January 20th, 2009 and I am here. I come from every state and territory, and from all over the world. I walked, I bicycled, I hitchhiked, I drove by car, I flew by plane, I rode the A-train—I watched on TV and listened on the neighbor’s radio. I am the millions who made the hajj to Washington, D.C., recorded and documented—bona fide witnesses of The First. My coat is raggedy, my coat’s fine, mine is a cloak of dreams. The future blows blithely from the White House, the Library of Congress, the Lincoln Memorial, and from the mountaintop. I am drinking in the wine, the water, the milk and the glory. We eat donuts, pizza, share sandwiches, dine in grungy cafes and upscale restaurants, we don’t have anything but potato chips, candy bars and manna, but we are all sky high on hope. I am warm, my head is elated, my heart is full, my feet are on clouds, my soul is with Aretha. I watch the parade and go to every ball. I groove to “At Last” on shining parquet, gleaming tiles, the beat-up rug, in mosh pits and the streets (they play the Beyoncé version but I hear Etta James). I gather memories on camera and buy everything collectible. Then I gather myselves up for the struggles ahead on the road that goes on-and-on, that eternal journey home, smiling so hard my face breaks with justice. We gots happy tears and wild wild laughter.

01.28.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (2)

Travis Nichols

The Making of the Pré

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On Saturday, Cabinet Magazine will host “Untitled New York,” an all day festival of experimental writing at their Event and Exhibition Space in Brooklyn. The event is a continuation of “Untitled: Speculations on the Expanded Field of Writing,” a Cal Arts sponsored showcase from last October that featured many of the same writers and themes.
That West Coast event was similarly organized by Christine Wertheim and Matias Viegener, the two intrepid editors/impresarios responsible for the 2005 L.A. conference on the legacy of the French math and linguistics club, the Oulipo. That get-together yielded the dizzying Noulipian Analects anthology, featuring Harryette Mullen, Bernadette Mayer, Doug Nufer, Harry Matthews, Johanna Drucker and plenty of others enacting and/or reminiscing.
(A thoughtful review here, and another here).
Saturday’s event begins at 1:30 with a panel of writers—including Vanessa Place, Steven McCaffrey, Kenneth Goldsmith, and Julie Patton—discussing literary appropriation in contemporary works, a topic which is sure to touch on such perennial Harriet hits as “Flarf vs. Conceptual,”, the the Pirate Poetry Anthology, and, perhaps, Barry Bonds.
Then at 4pm, Wertheim, Latasha Diggs, Rob Fitterman, and Shanxing Wang will discuss writers the use of “non-linguistic elements” and “invented literary systems” in contemporary writing for a panel called “Litterality,” which may or may not touch on D.A. Powell’s Conceputal Poetics: A Practicum
Finally, at 8pm Chritine Wertheim and Matias Viegener will host a reading of works by all participants, which is sure to be a studied vacation from normative reading practices.
The event is free and open to the public. For more information email untitled.writing@gmail.com.