2009 February : Harriet the Blog : The Poetry Foundation

Archive for February, 2009

Javier Huerta

OCHO#22: DEAR AMERICA, DON’T BE MY VALENTINE

Miguel Murphy (Editor) discussed his call for submissions for this issue of OCHO in his intelligent, passionate, and poetic guest post here on Harriet. I just wanted to say that the issue is now available and features the wonderful work of the following poets:
Eduardo C. Corral, Mary Meriam, Jeremy Halinen, Christine Leclerc, C. Dale Young, Julie R. Enszer, Matthew Hittinger, Steve Fellner, Linda Benninghoff, Scott Hightower, Franciszka Voeltz, Brent Goodman, Christian Gregory, Jen Currin, Charles Jensen, Tamiko Beyer, D.M. Solis, Brian Leary, Dean Kostos, Julie Weber, Blas Falconer, Francisco Aragon, Elizabeth J. Colen, RJ Gibson, Jee Leong Koh, Carol Guess, Christian Gullette, Monica Teresa Ortiz.

02.07.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (1)

Jason Guriel

The Poetry in the Prose: Part One (and If You Haven’t Read The Savage Detectives Consider Yourself Spoiler Alerted)

The only piece missing from The Savage Detectives, Roberto Bolaño’s 648-page puzzle of a novel about avant-garde poets in Mexico, is, oddly enough, their poetry. In an online conversation with David Orr and Marcela Valdes, Carmine Starnino points out that this poetry “is, quite likely, terrible,” especially since Bolaño’s poets spend most of their time making mischief, manifestos, these sorts of things. Orr, however, argues that the mythical poetry of Bolaño’s bards, through its very absence, retains the possibility that it is good. In general, it’s probably best for mythical works of art to stay mythical – that is, unmade but unmarred.

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02.06.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (6)

Annie Finch

Letter from London

I’m just back from a whirlwind peek at the ins and outs of the British poetry scene, and I have lots to report. Before AWP I thought I’d post a few snapshots, snap judgements, and other impressions about a poet’s lot on the other side of the big puddle. . . .

Inside the Poetry Cafe, Poetry Society, Betterton Street

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02.06.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (30)

Daisy Fried

Prufrock Moment

There’s a particularly lovely bit in Stephen Colbert’s interview with Elizabeth Alexander the night after the inauguration.
Colbert: [mock-pathetic] “Poems aren’t true, right? They’re made up, right…because I recently read this thing called The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock which is about a guy, you know, in his mid-40s like I am, and he’s facing mortality and he’s got a sense that no matter what his achievement is in life, he’s never really gonna be great. That’s not true, right?
Alexander: [pitch-perfectly playing the straight woman] A poem should be in some way emotionally true…Prufrock might speak to you because there’s something in the poem that resonates, that feels true to you. And that’s how people connect with poems.
Colbert: [mock-distressed] He says ‘I’ve heard the mermaids singing each to each/ I do not think that they will sing to me.’ They—they’re still singing to me, though, aren’t they?
Alexander: [mock-maternally] They are if you want them to be.
Colbert: Desperately!
Prufrock is a comically-delivered tragic poem, of course, and Colbert/Alexander’s comedy on the subject had just enough, well, emotional truth in it, to make it more than poet-insider wisecracking. Maybe it’s a sign of how deprived poets are of any kind of mainstream recognition, but this actually seemed to be the most serious, and seriously informative, non-poetry-world exchange on poetry in a long time. (More informative than many in the poetry world too, come to think of it.)
In any case, it’s a Prufrock moment. Maybe it’s always a Prufrock moment. The Academy of American Poets recently unveiled this year’s National Poetry Month poster.

AAP’s own press release calls the image “Daring”—by which they may mean not stinking of Uplifting Messages of Poetical-Educational Opportunity for the Benighted. I don’t know if the poster is daring, really –the word is thrown around quite a bit—but the Paul Sahre design certainly is startling, elegant, and something of a departure from past Academy efforts.

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02.05.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (57)

Travis Nichols

Serious Play and Dental Surgery

Robert Frost called poetry “serious play” and this month’s Scientific American makes a claim for its primal importance to childhood development (they don’t mention poetry explicitly, but we know what they really mean). The magazine cites new studies that say children need unstructured free play for proper cognitive development. This “free play” is more than just signing up for rule-bound games at recess, but indulging in creative free-for-alls which help children develop strong social as well as communication skills.
To wit:
The child initiates and creates free play. It might involve fantasies—such as pretending to be doctors or princesses or playing house—or it might include mock fighting, as when kids (primarily boys) wrestle and tumble with one another for fun, switching roles periodically so that neither of them always wins. And free play is most similar to play seen in the animal kingdom, suggesting that it has important evolutionary roots.
(Could the same need for serious play apply to the development of poetry itself? Anyone from “Untitled New York” care to respond?).
And on a related note, this kid is just back from dental surgery:

02.03.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (2)

Javier Huerta

¡El que no brinque es migra!

My first creative attempts as a child were narcocorridos. Influenced by movies and songs like La Banda del Carro Rojo, my friends, cousins, brothers, and I played “narcotraficantes,” a game that always ended in the heroic tragic death of the narcos. As we lay on the ground, I composed corridos that narrated the events of our role-play. My father made it his goal in life to become notorious enough to have a narcocorrido written about him, preferably by Los Cadetes de Linares. His exploits didn’t land him a song; no, they landed him in a Jalisco prison for the last two decades. Perhaps the desire to write that song for my father is what drove me to write poetry in the first place. With the special role that the corrido has played in my life, you can understand why when my friend Oscar Bermeo alerted me to the news that the Border Patrol is now in the business of producing corridos I felt as if something essential had been stolen from me.

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02.03.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (2)

Don Share

I’ve decided to draw poems…

Jason Guriel recently took a keen-eyed look at the visual poetry we presented in the November 2008 issue of Poetry. One of our readers, Jerry Payne, in Clearwater, Florida, wrote in to say:
“Look, let’s call “visual poetry” what it really is—visual art. Some of us are in love with language and the way in which words—just words—can be put together in relationships that say something. Let’s not continue to water down the concept of poetry any more than it already has been.”
Well, I guess we’ve upped the ante in the February 2009 issue.

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02.02.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (45)

Archive for February, 2009

Javier Huerta

OCHO#22: DEAR AMERICA, DON’T BE MY VALENTINE

Jason Guriel

The Poetry in the Prose: Part One (and If You Haven’t Read The Savage Detectives Consider Yourself Spoiler Alerted)

Annie Finch

Letter from London

Daisy Fried

Prufrock Moment

Travis Nichols

Serious Play and Dental Surgery

Javier Huerta

¡El que no brinque es migra!

Don Share

I’ve decided to draw poems…

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