Eileen Myles

Your Name

Yesterday we went up to the Hispanic Society for a tour of the museum. It’s Memorial Day weekend so it was even a stretch for me to make. Because my friend Robert had an opening in East Hampton I was calculating when I could hop on the Jitney after the tour. But you know it was going to be kind of insane out there a holiday weekend and also re one’s projects since I’m “the director” it seems I should be loyal always and then see who else comes. So it was me, Lydia Stephanie and Christine, and Stephanie didn’t really want to come inside. She was out there pacing her thing on the plaza. I mean I suppose the tour wasn’t actually relevant to our project except that exegesis always seems like the most natural approach –

05.24.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (4)

Kwame Dawes

CALABASH DISPATCH–FRIDAY NIGHT

On Friday night, the air is cool off the sea.  The breaths of wind against the microphone begin to suggest distant thunder.  A woman sitting beside me says, “Rain…”  I sit with my legs stretched out beyond the shelter of the large tent. I am in the front row of a sea of neatly organized white plastic chairs that stretch over a lush lawn.  I sense in every coolness droplets of rain.  But it does not rain.  The tent is now filling with people.  Calabashers, each of them, casual as a Sunday picnic, smiling, lounging around, waiting for things to begin.  This is how things feel before the opening readers for the 2009 Calabash Festival. I have asked Carleen Samuels who has been with the festival since the beginning, to make sure that all the readers are in place.  I have gathered together all the books by these three women poets, and I have a sheave of notes about the authors and announcements for the audience in my hand.  I am wearing my calabash uniform—a beautifully designed t-shirt of full red, with this years symbol—a peace sign made up of the multiple human forms holding hands and suggesting community.  It is good to be here.  I greet the audience, and the greet me back.  Calabash has began.

05.23.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (1)

Camille Dungy

Speaking of batting averages…

Boston (well, actually, Somerville) is the first city I lived in after receiving my poetic license.  Here again now, enjoying the sun off the Charles and the good food at Toro and the many offerings at the American Literature Association Annual Conference, I’m wondering what it means to be a publishing poet.

05.23.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (17)

Eileen Myles

NO ENERGY

I figured I’d blog today after I ran but then I just wound up on the bed. It’s May here (I know it’s May everywhere else too) and for catholics it’s the feast of the Ascension and that’s also true to New Yorkers who move their cars from side to side for alternate parking. Today is a holyday off.  It’s soft here. May is the most tremendously soft month in New York and even though a lot of things are happening this month nothing nothing compares to June when everything has to happen before summer begins. So everything is happening in June and today in May I have so little energy maybe none. The silent reading is heating up. That means many things. Going up to 155 St. three times this week basically pacing the upcoming event out like a duel. So far only I think

05.22.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (1)

Camille Dungy

Box by Box

My life is a life of boxes. It’s temporary, I trust. The hope, when one puts her whole life into boxes, is that, soon, her whole life will be out of boxes.  But my parents speak, sometimes, of the as yet unpacked boxes they packed when they moved into their current house (that move happened in 1986) and so I fear, each time I pack another box, that I will never encounter its contents again. So, as I tried to think  about what poems I wanted to share this week, I could only think, with much trepidation, of boxes.

05.20.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (6)

Catherine Halley

Lorine Niedecker

A few weeks ago, I got a tip from a coworker that a documentary film about Lorine Niedecker was being shown at Loyola University. I used to be the only person I knew who knew who Lorine Niedecker was, so naturally I had to drop everything I was doing to go see the film. I’m glad I did. The film, Immortal Cupboard: In Search of Lorine Niedecker, is written and directed by Cathy Cook. It’s full of gorgeous photography of Wisconsin flora and fauna, and offers an interesting if selective introduction to Niedecker’s life and work. In this case, seeing is hearing, and I’d recommend it to people who want help hearing her poems. The blank space in her poems is well-served by the nature shots that comprise the film.

The film made me reread her for the first time in a long while, and discover how relevant she still is. “Poet’s work“, ironically, is a poem that sees in poetry a trade from which there are no layoffs. More of her work can be found here.

05.20.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (6)

Travis Nichols

Stakes pulled. Car loaded. Leg kick. Air guitar.

In two weeks, my family unit and I will be driving from Seattle to Chicago.  A big move!  This family unit = my wife Monica, our cat Boo Radley, and a couple piles of stuff.  We all (Boo and stuff included) have been eagerly plotting the playlists and the road snacks, but we’re hung up on which route to take—-I-90, I-80, or the Canadian Way.  We’re taking into consideration time, scenery,  novelty, and—because we want to make it a bit of a challenge–poetry.  We want to visit at least one place each day that has something or other to do with that glorious and goofy art.  Did Ed Dorn beat someone silly in Billings? We want to see it!  Did Lana Turner collapse in Coeur d’Alene? Let’s do the same!  Is there a good bookstore in North Platte? A reading series in Provo? Did Amy Lowell declaim in Gillette?  You get the idea. Sounds fun, right?  No seriously, it does sound fun.  Right?  Anyways, Harrieteers, help us out.  Where should we go?

05.20.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (22)

Martin Earl

A SHORT, HIGHLY PERSONAL OBSERVATION COMPLETELY LACKING IN EXAMPLES WHICH I COULD HAVE NEVER HAVE MADE THIRTY YEARS AGO WHEN I WAS A YOUNG POET STILL LIVING IN NEW YORK, BECAUSE I DIDN’T KNOW ENOUGH TO KNOW IT WAS TRUE. BUT I DO NOW.

Germaine Greer, 
Paula Rego, 1995. (Pastel on Paper laid on aluminum
 120 x 111 cm., National Portrait Gallery).

W.H. Auden once said that he always felt that he was the youngest person in the room, even at an older age, when this was certainly not the case. I’ve felt similarly while blogging, especially when being reprimanded by commentators half my age. This could have all sorts of explanations. But for the moment let’s file them under “Monkey Glands”, aka W.B. Yeats. Today, I have a more pressing issue at hand, a comment on the younger generations of scriveners; or to reverse Auden’s impression, all of those younger than myself and involved, in one way or another, in the palimpsestic quest of poetry. I mean poets in their twenties, thirties and forties – fifty being the cut-off date.

05.19.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (111)

Annie Finch

Facebook & the New Poetry Community

I should be packing right now. I’m just about to get on an early plane to NYC with my daughter who, thanks to a great Jetblue deal, I am bringing to the Museum of Natural History and then the Dusie kollektiv reading and performance tonight at ACA Gallery. So, yes, I should be packing. But someone sent me a link to a Facebook events page for the reading—

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05.19.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (13)