2009 June : Harriet the Blog : The Poetry Foundation

Archive for June, 2009

Marxist Hexameter: Genevieve Taggard in a Heroic Measure–now with audio!

mac1

Labor Day march across the Mackinac Bridge

Poem I Love: “You, Therefore” by Reginald Shepherd

I knew Reginald ages ago in Iowa City. As my mother’d say (hi Mom!), he was quite a character. In this poem and in others, I admire his use of assonance, alliteration, internal near rhyme and…botany. In his first book, Some Are Drowning, doesn’t he use the names of flowers to describe Kaposi’s sarcoma blossoming on someone’s skin?

You, Therefore

For Robert Philen

by Reginald Shepherd

You are like me, you will die too, but not today:

you, incommensurate, therefore the hours shine:

if I say to you “To you I say,” you have not been

set to music, or broadcast live on the ghost

radio, may never be an oil painting or

Old Master’s charcoal sketch: you are

a concordance of person, number, voice,

and place, strawberries spread through your name

as if it were budding shrubs, how you remind me

of some spring, the waters as cool and clear

(late rain clings to your leaves, shaken by light wind),

which is where you occur in grassy moonlight:

and you are a lily, an aster, white trillium

or viburnum, by all rights mine, white star

in the meadow sky, the snow still arriving

from its earthwards journeys, here where there is

no snow (I dreamed the snow was you,

when there was snow), you are my right,

have come to be my night (your body takes on

the dimensions of sleep, the shape of sleep

becomes you): and you fall from the sky

with several flowers, words spill from your mouth

in waves, your lips taste like the sea, salt-sweet (trees

and seas have flown away, I call it

loving you): home is nowhere, therefore you,

a kind of dwell and welcome, song after all,

and free of any eden we can name

Find this poem and more about the poet Reginald Shepherd here. Read Reginald’s Harriet blog here.

06.25.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (7)

Don Share

The line’s for real

180px-female_lion

Not infrequently, we get letters or blog-responses to individual poems published in Poetry that cite particular phrases or lines in order to prove somehow that a poem or poet (and, by implication, our taste) is lousy. It’s an invidious tactic, and it occurs to me that one can make any poem in the world look bad by pulling a line or so out of context. Summer’s here and the time is right for fun and games, so… shall we give it a try? Are there any foolproof poets or poems? Care to dissect a few? So far, the only poem I can think of that seems immune is Blake’s “The Tyger.” Or am I wrong about all this?

06.24.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (99)

Camille Dungy

The Fish

yellowfin tuna

Once or twice a year I shut off my cell phone and computer and spend a stretch of time in the great wide open. Or in some approximation of the great wide open. I always get plenty of juice out there, and I come back refreshed and full of ideas. That’s where I’ve been the last couple weeks, Harriet, running out in the great wide open. (Cue sound clip for open breeze.) This summer’s trip took me to the Monterey Bay, site of North American’s largest underwater canyon (think the Grand Canyon, submarine style), the Monterey Bay Aquarium, more Steinbeck placards than even I, an avid placard reader, could read, and a fish or two. All the fish, fishers, and fishing boats got me to thinking of my favorite fish poems. Now that I’m plugged in again, I thought I’d share a few. As ever, I’d love to hear what fish poems strike you, too.

| CONTINUE READING THIS ENTRY »

06.24.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (10)

Annie Finch

Why I Am a Woman Poet

susie-marta-rebecca-annie-april-041

My Sister-in-Law, Sister, Niece, and Me in My Mother’s Kitchen

Anna Leahy reminds us, in her recent essay “Is Women’s Poetry Passé?” in Legacy, that “in the January 2006 issue of Poetry, the three female poets who had been asked to comment on “women’s poetry” (Meghan O’Rourke, J. Allyn Rosser, and Eleanor Wilner) asserted, “we all concur that we ought to abolish the unpleasant term ‘women’s poetry.” And in the ensuing few years, consensus on this point seems, if anything, to have become wider. Even I, who claimed for myself the name of “poetess” in a 2002 essay, found myself beginning a paragraph in my recent Women’s Work post on Harriet with the caveat that “there may not be such a thing as women’s poetry. . .”

But the more I have thought about it since writing that post, the more I have decided that, whether or not women’s poetry exists, I am a woman poet, for three reasons:

| CONTINUE READING THIS ENTRY »

06.24.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (109)

Travis Nichols

2009: The Halfway-Point Reading Report

The Top Ten Most-Read Articles on poetryfoundation.org

Of all the articles on poetryfoundation.org, these received the most page views:

1. “Show Your Work” by Matthew Zapruder

2. “Going Negative” by Jason Guriel

3. “Poetry Can Be Any Damn Thing it Wants” by Mary Ann Caws

| CONTINUE READING THIS ENTRY »

06.23.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (5)

Eileen Myles

calling all poets

seven-intellectuals

I would like to draw attention to a remarkable work that is viewble in Manhattan at the Asia Society from now until September. It is Yang Fudong’s Seven Intellectuals in a Bamboo Forest. From 2003 to 2007 this visual artist from Shanghai who had previously been silent for three months in order to examine his relationship to language next made a sequence of films, one a year, which took as their point of departure the Seven Sages in a Bamboo Forest an influential and mythic 5th century work about a group of

| CONTINUE READING THIS ENTRY »

06.23.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (3)

Catherine Halley

Found on Flickr: Poetry, Texas

Photo of Abandoned House in Poetry, Texas by Noel Kerns

Look at this beautiful thing–there’s a place called Poetry, Texas. Anyone ever been?

Noel Kerns has.

One of my coworkers just reminded me that Poetry, Texas is included in a slide show of poetry in the landscape that we have on the site.

06.22.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (18)

Annie Finch

Overheard at the West Chester Poetry Conference

“Welcome to the largest conference in the country devoted to poetry.”

“Go ahead, tell us about the dactyls and the anapests, we can handle it.”

| CONTINUE READING THIS ENTRY »

06.20.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (6)

Annie Finch

An Evening with Forugh: Iranian Poetry Night

foroogh
Forugh Farrokhzād

Travis’s post and recent events call me to describe something I’ve been wanting to post about for a while. One of the most moving evenings I’ve had as an American poet occurred in Farsi.

| CONTINUE READING THIS ENTRY »

06.18.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (25)

Archive for June, 2009

Annie Finch

Marxist Hexameter: Genevieve Taggard in a Heroic Measure–now with audio!

Catherine Halley

Poem I Love: “You, Therefore” by Reginald Shepherd

You, Therefore

Don Share

The line’s for real

Camille Dungy

The Fish

Annie Finch

Why I Am a Woman Poet

Travis Nichols

2009: The Halfway-Point Reading Report

Eileen Myles

calling all poets

Catherine Halley

Found on Flickr: Poetry, Texas

Annie Finch

Overheard at the West Chester Poetry Conference

Annie Finch

An Evening with Forugh: Iranian Poetry Night

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

STAFF WRITERS

RECENT COMMENTS

RECENT POSTS

MONTHLY ARCHIVE

CATEGORY ARCHIVE

PREVIOUS WRITERS

CHICAGO EVENTS

Archive for June, 2009

You, Therefore

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

STAFF WRITERS

RECENT COMMENTS

RECENT POSTS

MONTHLY ARCHIVE

CATEGORY ARCHIVE

PREVIOUS WRITERS

CHICAGO EVENTS

NEWSLETTER SIGN-UP