The Harriet Reading Series features readings and presentations by “Craft Work” and “Open Door” writers from this very blog. “Craft Work” regularly features poets, editors, and translators writing in detail about their work, while “Open Door” reports on events and community organizations around the world. Poet, performer, librettist, and “Craft Work” contributor Douglas Kearney inaugurates this bi-monthly reading series tonight at 7PM.

Douglas Kearney’s poems touch on politics, African-American culture, and contemporary music, among other themes. He describes the nontraditional layout of his poems as “performative typography.” The author of Fear, Some and The Black Automaton, a finalist for the Pen Center USA Literary Award in poetry, Kearney teaches courses in African American poetry, opera, and myth at California Institute of the Arts. A reception will follow his reading.

Read Douglas Kearney’s “Craft Work” posts here.

And I’m going to try to tell you the short but riveting tale of someone who I was assigned to introduce but didn’t, for a reason that had nothing at all to do with my reluctance and unwillingness to introduce her, but should have.

Perhaps this is a tale of language poetry, which is sort of a sweeping term for a genre I have trouble connecting to but didn’t really realize I had trouble connecting to until I was asked to introduce this person, who is a really big deal as a language poet, so I did what anyone else would have done–with no preconceived notion on my part, actually with a hefty dose of intellectual and creative curiosity, I looked her up. And yes, she was very important, actually vital, to the genre, but when I immersed myself in her work, it was like reading the inside of a machine. Lots of fragments and surprise! capitalization and some numbers in the middle of words and allusions to shadowy secretive things I would have known about if I’d known about them. At this point, I suggested someone else introduce her but that was not possible.

Then, great news! I heard that she was reading in NYC, and I thought: I will go and see and hear and talk with this person, and revelation will ensue. She will explain to me the shadowy and secretive things, and maybe even the numbers. I will be enlightened, and I will be able to introduce her adequately, maybe even excitedly, when the time comes. So I went to the reading.

And I listened. And I did not connect. And I did not understand.

I looked forward to the conversation, which I hoped would clarify things, but she was surrounded by people dressed in black–or actually the shade that’s blacker than black, if that’s possible– who did not want me to talk to her once they realized I was not an unquestioning believer. If you are meant to know, you know their eyes said. They actually formed a protective barrier around said poet, even at dinner after the reading. I enjoyed my pasta.

And although I had no proof, I began to suspect that the fragments and numbers in the middle of words and shadowy secretive things were just desperate gestures, little bells and whistles, and that anyone who got too close would be able to see that so the whole point was not letting anyone get too close. I decided that I would say that during the introduction. In a nice way.

But alas, an illness kept the famous language poet away from the event, and although I did not get to introduce her I did get to engage in a blistering little debate based on my newly-forged theory about the emperor’s new words.

Good to see/hear you on here, McD. How’s that sweet little daughter of yours?

Now I should say here that there’s a lesson to be had in singularity—that’s a sci-fi buzzword now. But the essence of surrendering control to what controls you, to the energetic vibration of trust (corny, cliche, sorry), the real matter of allowing the universe to take care of you, to follow the seeming now—hmmm, my tangent envelops the point with fingers. Tapping this laptop keyboard. Dried in simulacrums of dust. Galactic inquiries of physical impositions. The sort of celebrity that intellect dares with reason. My point…

The poet is a born being. Does he know he is—now, or later when he needs it? When she needs it? I think the poet is always there. My boy is always a poet, because his daddy is. But he is also there because he knows he needs it. If he grows to be what fills him, he is the poet. I never told him, his parents never walled him in—with artistry, with liberation, with obstruction, with desire. He knows. Innate. Innate beings, until we’re told we are.

As it turns out, he didn’t write “Yellow Butter” but he believed he did. So I said, Well, do you have any favorite poets?…waiting for Dr. Seuss to trickle out. And from his cognitive intellect, he looks at me with a confidence pointing towards what awaits in his teenage years, and with crystal clarity states, “Jack Perlovsky.” My mouth dropped open, respecting his education but wondering, what the heck are they teaching you? Which of course reflects, what the heck don’t I know?

Wow, can you tell me one of his poems, I said. I don’t remember, he said. But you like them, I said. They sound like yours, he said. Fast forward to my visit—I was a mystery guest (to everyone but my boy) waiting at the carriage house, which is the library, while all the kids and the rest of the school waited in the main building. I arranged the room a bit, I knew the kids had all made their own pocket to wear around the neck, so I made a huge pocket out of sack-fabric that could lay on the floor. A pocket as big as I was with my poems inside it, lying on the floor within the fold of its material, waiting to be discovered, birthed, imploded. A metaphor to me—to the kids, a floppy jungle gym.

“Peesacho” is a poem of mine with a life of its own. It’s a silly sound poem built around the conceit of pronouncing the silent “P” in the word “Psycho.” A great way to show students, of all ages, sound in language. I knew my boy loved its play and rhythm and felt it would be a great ice-breaker…though I’d never done it for such a young group. I wrote PSYCHO on a chalkboard and prefaced my presentation to the kids by saying if they had any questions, they could always raise their hands and I’d stop to answer them. Thereby initiating a can of worms immediately opened.

Are you Rubio’s dad? Yes. That P is silent. Yes it is. Sycho is when you make garbage new. You mean recycle. My name starts with an S. I see. Sadie Jillanne Killarney Wiggins. Great. A bicycle goes fast and everyone is fast and the track is superfast and they win. Right okay, let’s hold onto all those great ideas I’ll do the poem and we’ll ask questions later—I dived right in without waiting.

Performing with that word as my backdrop is the story of my life. The class visit was great. My wife was able to be there. Our energy, a cycle in revolution. A gyre to remind us, to bring us back before our child. The poems I would revisit today were poems she and I knew—our alphabet. Was there ever a before? How could we have thought that we were complete, traveling through Morrocco, so many years before? Of course he was always there. Hovering overhead. Pointing to now. Right now. And whatever nows wait.

I looked at her halfway through my presentation. Sitting there, earth beauty. In a moment of desperation, after performing a quiet one as opposed to the more fun silly ones, I mouthed-out, “should I do the one about the moon now?” Not being a lip reader, she gave me a wide-eyed look of, I have no idea what you’re asking but you better do something fun.

Which is when I climbed into my larger-than-life pocket to then emerge as a living poem. Again, a metaphor of what I hope to accomplish at every reading—to climb out of my poems, with the world as my backdrop.

Mary Karr reads on Tuesday, April 5 at the Art Institute of Chicago’s Rubloff Auditorium. She took a few minutes to talk about what she’s reading, what she’s read, and who she’d quote:

What line or poem do you find yourself sharing again and again?

Too many to count. My message to young writers always comes from Beckett: “Fail better.”

On your bookshelf but unread:

New book on Stalin (Bloodlands), rereading John Gardner’s On Moral Fiction.

Can you remember the first poem you read and really liked?

Winnie the Pooh, “Wherever I go there’s always Pooh…” and cummings “[in Just-].” Memorized “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” at age 12, but it’s faded and tattered as an old flag.

A cause you would attach your name to:

What cause would have me?

The picture that comes to mind when you hear the word “poetry”:

Zilch.

If forced to quote your own writing, what line or poem would you provide?

Oh God. I’d bob and weave like a boxer. Never happen.

Expression you greatly dislike:

Art for art’s sake. It was necessary when Gautier said it and through about 1950, now it’s an excuse for doily-making art that refuses to be necessary.

The longest amount of time you’ve gone without writing [creatively]?

15 months. I was very sick, told I had liver cancer.

Favorite public figure:

Jesus.

Favorite literary device:

Metaphor.

When I think of Chicago, I think of…

Studs Turkel buying me lunch at a great steakhouse. How we’d first sat in the sound booth playing Janis Joplin, who’s from my neighborhood. And he was so loud at lunch a guy came by after and said, “Nice have lunch with you, Studs.” It was  a record-breaking 109 degrees that day. I also think of the fine stories by Stuart Dybek in The Coast of Chicago, and of a great conversation Stuart and I had till 3am there once with my then student Adam Levin about Cormac McCarthy.

Poet Suheir Hammad who “blends the stories and sounds of her Palestinian-American heritage with the vibrant language of Brooklyn” performed at TEDWomen in Washington DC in December. Hammad addressed the crowd of “confused, aspiring pacifists” and spoke of how poetry prepares you to confront “man’s creative violence” in her poems “What I Will” and “break (clustered).”

On Thursday, February 24, at 6pm, Poetry magazine, the Poetry Foundation, the Columbia College Poetry Program, and the Center for Book and Paper Arts present: Performance Poetry in the Age of Language + Reception, featuring Edwin Torres. After the reading, the Center for Book and Paper Arts will host a reception for guests, where a selection of Torres’s visual text work will be on display, including his new book, Yes Thing No Thing.

Poetry wrote to Torres for a few words about his new book, and the interrelationship between word and image in his work. Here are a few of his thoughts on the matter, with glimpses of Yes Thing No Thing:

I know every book is a chapter in the writer’s life, and this one captures where my crossroads met at a time of great transition—leaving the city I grew up in, the urban nature, speed and vortex of a million flickering lights at once…replacing that with isolation, trees, endless sky and stars, a million pulsing lights. The graphic vocabulary in this book emerged from a wish to refrain from a global surface speed and rather construct from an interior minimal ground—a wish to listen more than be heard. The white space, the time implied, the geometric nature in the pages, the mantra-like repetitions, the language forged out of missing letters…there’s a slowing down compared to my previous books. Maybe a confidence in the words to let them just be, free in their world to meet the reader’s primal emptiness, a blank page we can all share, to create a symbiotic readership with the world we are all in. I think the pieces in this book have a sort of grounded fluidity that embraces the journey, the nomad I’ve always championed. Perhaps this destination is oceanic whereas previous ones have been more earth-bound. Showing the skeletal structures of the page is a way towards transparency for me, lowering the curtain behind the wizard. As a designer, I love showing support mechanisms juxtaposed with the organic uncontrolled—the balance of our personal dynamics at odds with our humanity. As I was creating the book I felt I had a chance here to quietly comment on a world out of control. The things that have run out of words, the yes and the no, how language filters through nature when words fail. So you see, I have no answer for this book’s ultimate challenge. No thing. A finite id…grateful to be caught.

About Edwin Torres
Multimedia pioneer Edwin Torres has been presenting his energetic blend of poetry, performance, music, dance and visual art since the late eighties. Born at New York City’s infamous Nuyorican Poets Café, as midwifed by the St. Mark’s Poetry Project, he has published and performed extensively in the US and abroad, and has given lectures and workshops at numerous universities, including Bard and Naropa University.

Artists throughout the last century have pushed line across the plane and into real space, thus questioning the relation between the art object and the world. The exhibition On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century addresses the transformation of drawing, mark making, and gesture, as well as the role of the political line in art and everyday life. On this special evening, Cecilia Vicuña selects international poets to read their own works about the political line, a theme explored in On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century. In addition to Vicuña, participants include poets Will Alexander, Luljeta Lleshanaku, and Dunya Mikhail, and translator Henry Israeli.

MoMA’s Modern Poets series is an extension of their historic involvement in bringing together the literary and art communities, as well as a means of honoring the legacy of Frank O’Hara, who worked at MoMA for many years and who Marjorie Perloff referred to as “a poet among painters.”

Modern Poets: The Political Line
Wednesday, February 2, 2011, 6:00 p.m.
Theater 3 (The Celeste Bartos Theater), mezzanine, The Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Education and Research Building

When The White House invited James Earl Jones to perform poetry for An Evening of Poetry, Music, and Spoken Word earlier this year, his first instinct was to go for either Dr. Seuss or Shakespeare. Knowing that he could never top Jesse Jackson’s rendition of Green Eggs and Ham, he settled for Othello.

Other clips from the same evening are available on The White House’s Music and The Arts channel and include a performance by Brave New Voices slam champion Jamaica Osorio, spoken word artist Maya del Valle, and Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman on the power of words.

The International Festival of Poetry on London’s South Bank brings to mind the fierce condemnation of the first festival from an unexpected source

What could be less controversial than a distinguished gathering of poets reading on London’s South Bank? Not much, you might think. Extraordinary then – in the week of the 2010 International Festival of Poetry – to discover that when the first poetry festival was launched, in 1967, Donald Davie wrote an article in the Guardian headed: “Go home poets” and dismissed the festival as “vulgar nonsense”. In the Observer, in a contribution entitled: “Satire, narcissism and a plethora of poets”, Mary Holland reported that Al Alvarez, former poetry editor of the Observer, had introduced the poets thus: “There’s a lot of narcissism on the platform.” She elaborated: “One poet would get carried away by the sound of his own voice and verse; others could be seen and heard champing at the bit. Auden brooded in dark glasses while an American poetess – Anne Sexton – went on and on about her ‘second suicide’.”

The implication was that poets – vain and maladjusted – should not perform . . .

What line or poem do you find yourself sharing again and again?

Here is a poem that my readers found “lyrical and meditative:”

Chùa Kim-Sơn, California

Chập chùng đồi núi nhấp nhô.

Sưong giăng chắn lối, mắt mờ rừng cây.

Bồng lai, tiên cảnh là đây.

Không gian tĩnh lặng, trời mây phiêu bồng.

Ung dung trên đỉnh núi rồng,

Chiều Kim-Sơn tự, rừng xông khói trầm.

Lối về Giác Ngộ, “Vườn Tâm,”

Thoảng hương Cam-lộ, cõi lòng vô ưu.

California:  Kim- Sơn Temple (co-translated with Nancy Arbuthnot)

Mountains beyond mountains.

Misty fog settling on trees.

Tranquility of sky and cloud

On top of the mountain shaped like a dragon.

Kim- Sơn temple, incense

and holy water, scent of dusk.

My heart, free from worries

On this path toward peace.

This poem depicts the spiritual life that is part of my belief.

Can you remember the first poem you read and really liked?

The first poem I remember I heard instead of reading was the lullaby:

Của Chồng, Công Vợ

Thịt heo rừng bóp tái xào lăn.

Rượu tam cúc em đã đậy đằng.

Mời anh lên uống xuống ăn.

Bao nhiêu quần áo, tóc khăn, em trừ.

I Earn It (co-translated with Nancy Arbuthnot)

I’ve prepared a special dish of wild pig.

Enjoy it with wine whenever you want.

I’ve earned, I think,

Those gifts you bought!

It reminds me of my grandmother who first sang it to me. I think it is not only funny but also illustrates part of the Vietnamese culture in the old time where the man worked outside which involved labor and the woman did housework inside. This lullaby is part of Vietnamese folk poetry from 1,000 plus years ago.

A cause you would attach your name to: carrying on a new tradition, empowerment

Many Asian women are still struggling to do things considered normal for most men. For example, it is sad to see any woman who has to give up on her marriage to pursue her dream to become a writer or poet. Although I highly respect Confucian tradition for the most part, its strict rules for women in particular, such as tam tòng, the “three obediences/single obey your father; married obey your husband; widow obey your son,” strike me as belonging to another time and place and inappropriate for our own (although I think one of those obediences would be acceptable if one has a great father as I did).

In sharing my personal experience with younger women Asian-American writers, I hope they can go outside the norm and take “the road less traveled” and be appreciative of the opportunities they have. It takes courage and perseverance to overcome fear, especially living in this new land, where everything seems to be possible. But if you have optimism, you can keep hope alive. I will be honored, if in any small way, my work could inspire my readers to find their dream.

The picture that comes to mind when you hear the word “poetry”:

When I hear the word poetry, I imagine two true friends enjoying a cup of hot, steamy green tea sharing their literary work or discussing other authors’ pieces while the moon shines over them. The poetry discussed would be something soulful, poetic, elegant and rare which is portrayed in their friendship called “tri am, tri ky”  in Vietnamese—only with true friends do voices harmonize.

If forced to quote your own writing, what line or poem would you provide?

During my Malaysia sojourn, to overcome life struggles in the refugee camp I discovered poetry as a form of relaxation—whenever I am challenged by anything I always refer to poetry. Here is a poem I wrote for example:

Đơn Sơ

Lạc loài trên đất tạm dung,
Dựng căn chòi nhỏ bên vùng biển êm.
Bàn tay chai cứng, đá mềm.
Đêm trăng soi bóng bên thềm đọc thơ.
Đong đưa chiếc võng chùng tơ.
Điệu ru ngày cũ à ơ ví dầu.
Chòi sau lắc lẻo nhịp cầu.
Buồm xa thấp thoáng bóng tàu lắc lư.
Bềnh bồng sóng nước vô tư.
Gió ơi, đưa mối sầu dư sang bờ!

Simplicity (co-translated with Nancy Arbuthnot)

Exiled in this strange land

We build our tent-site on sand-

Rocks feel soft to work-hardened hands.

At night when the moon shines

We recite poems. The hammock sways.

A mother’s song, à ơ ví d ầ u, lures her child to peace.
Beyond the monkey-bridge,

A boat rocks with the waves.

Wind, carry my worries

To the other side of the sea!

The metaphor regarding the line above “wind, carry my worries” demonstrates how poetry has helped me along my journey to freedom.

The longest amount of time you’ve gone without writing [creatively]?

I’m working full-time and am not self-disciplined in terms of writing (although I wish I am). So it could be a couple of months during which I do not do anything creatively.

Favorite public figure: No one else but John Balaban, an American celebrated poet who introduced Vietnamese poetic tradition to the Western readers with his acclaimed translations of Vietnamese folk poetry from 1,000 plus years and that of a Vietnamese woman poet, Ho Xuan Huong, of almost three centuries ago. His efforts to preserve the Vietnamese ancient writing system are tremendous.

Favorite literary device: Writing poetry in a metaphorical sense is challenging to me but when I do it with the ability to express the meaning behind it, it is very rewarding.

Bão Tuyết

Mùa xuân trắng ngợp trời.

Người đi rồi, vó ngựa cũng xa xôi.

Tuyết rơi.

Tuyết vẫn rơi trên đường.

Lời anh nói mơ hồ như sương khói.

Bên này, bên kia, cách mấy dòng sông?

Đại dương dập dồn sóng vỗ.

Tình yêu vỡ tung trên từng phiến đá.

Ôi tiếng nấc nghẹn ngào trong tận đáy tim ta.

Gió gào thét, gió than van!

Ngựa dừng chân, ngoảnh mặt.

Lòng ta như cơn lốc điên cuồng…

Tuyết rơi.

Tuyết vẫn rơi trên con đường vắng.

Nụ cười nào rạn vỡ.

Tình yêu bỗng trở thành huyền thoại.

Ôi mùa xuân,

mùa xuân trắng cả một đời…

Snowstorm  (co-translated with Nancy Arbuthnot)

Spring sky: a white curtain flowing—

A rider on horseback riding, riding,

Snow falling,

Still falling on the road.

All sound muffled in mist.

How many rivers flow between our two shores?

Like waves crashing against rock, love explodes.

A quiet cry sinks to the bottom

Of the heart.

How the wind cries! How the wind howls!

Exhausted, my horse stops, turning his head away.

My heart, like a churning wind. . .

Snow falling,

Still falling on the empty road.

Your smile cracks.

Love becomes myth.

Oh, spring,

That whitens my life forever. . .

When I think of Chicago, I think of confusion especially the airport, I missed a connecting flight once.

How would you describe your poetry?

Let me borrow words from my co-translator and friend Nancy Arbuthnot. In the Preface for my second book she wrote:

Waves Beyond Waves chronicles in poetry the physical, literary and spiritual life journey of poet Lê Phạm Lê. Her first bilingual collection of poems, From Where the Wind Blows (The Vietnamese International Poetry Society, 2003), describes the often painful journey from Việt Nam to the Malaysian refugee camp to her new home in the United States. The image of the wind in this first collection functions, in the words of one reader, as “a continuing metaphor that emphasizes the sense of being cast by the winds of fate into a new life.” This new collection of poems, Waves Beyond Waves, which incorporates a few of the earlier poems, elaborates on that journey, particularly with poems that recall Lê’s early life in Việt Nam and with “response poems” to poets of both Việt Nam and America. A metaphor of the sea that both separates and unites pervades the poems in Waves. Lê’s two worlds mingle in these poems, as she brings the ancient traditions of Vietnamese literature and culture to her second home in America, and as she brings to a new generation of young Americans, especially those from immigrant families, an example of how to pursue the American dream. Two other dominant subjects in Lê’s poetry–love and the practice of meditation—offer ways to move beyond the personal self to deeper experience of the world.

John Balaban was the first American audience who recognized my reading style and use the word “sing” to describe my reading style. In fact, when I write my poem it is not considered finished until I can sing it. Finishing a poem is just like putting the finishing touch to a bouquet of flowers with a loop of bear grass curving down.

Among the writers appearing during the celebration will be Diane di Prima, poet laureate of San Francisco, and Michael Rumaker, both of whom studied with Olson at the influential Black Mountain School in the early 1950s. Other readings will include Anastas himself, Ammiel Alcalay, Gerrit Lansing, Charles Stein, Ed Sanders and many others. Henry Ferrini will read his children’s book based on Olson, “Little Charlie Goes to Gloucester,” there will be accompanying exhibitions at the Sawyer Free Library and the Cape Ann Museum, and other activities including a “Maximus Walk” to landmarks written about in the poems, a presentation of Olson’s dance play “Apollonius of Tyana” (see related story), and a screening of Ferrini’s documentary about the poet, “Polis is This.”

For the full schedule, click here.

“Many of the cafes which used to be literary and cultural nodes have closed down — especially in Beirut — or have been transformed because of gentrification”….Poets often have to pay publishers to carry their work and rarely receive royalties. “The culture ministries in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere are a caricature of what they should be. Beyond the Internet, where hundreds of sites exist for publishing, young poets don’t have many outlets or forums.”

Enter Bayt al-Qasid, a cafe whose weekly poetry salons have attendees lining up hours before readings begin. Poets “take risks, reading works by exiled poets or flirting with risky political subjects,” the article reports.

But the point of the evening is not insubordination, [host Lukman] Derky insists. “We don’t do things because they are forbidden,” he says. “The night is about freedom.” That may explain why it has survived for more than two years now, in full view of a government that has little stomach for dissent.

The night is also about hearing new voices — rather than the popular writers who have been publishing for decades. And it’s about inviting foreigners to read, too. Their work gets translated on the spot from Berber, Greek, or Spanish. (At one point a  Syrian poet, translating from English, “somehow managed to quickly interpret the line ‘when you see that kestrel pinioned on its wing-bone.’”)

Mr. Derky says that “to know others is to read their poetry….Bayt al-Qasid is a place for the others.”

Since Harriet is eleven years old (or is it 150?) she had to sneak in through the back.

The contributors read from a balcony in the bar while listeners stood below. (The set-up recalled Juliet addressing Romeo, or perhaps Hitler sharing ideas with followers.) Any mystery as to their identities was quickly dispelled. Poet Dorothea Lasky read first, and her work included the words, “It’s me, Dorothea. Dorothea Lasky.” Fiction writer Sam Lipsyte read in a way that, Harriet was told, only he could ever read. Having recently learned to read herself, she enjoyed the show very much.

The rest of the evening went down in a haze of highballs.

From the Guardian:

So, as well as converting me to live readings, Mr Heaney has also turned me into someone who wants to start buying collections of poetry. I own lots of complete works, Keats and Hopkins being my favourites (they’ve even made it onto shelves), but they’re generally at least a century out of date. Christopher Reid’s A Scattering (which I love) aside, I own practically no recent poetry collections. But, before you ridicule or dismiss me, this is something I want to change. Human Chain is on my list. I love the sound of  Robin Robertson’s The Wrecking Light . But where else would you send a poetry collection novice, with small funds but a genuine desire to add new poetry to her precarious piles of books?

When Beowulf makes his entrance as a bespectacled schlub in a bedraggled costume that suggests he got lost on the way to an Olde Medieval Faire reenactment, while go-go dancing warrior babes purr, “Here he comes, it’s that guy, that guy,’’ in a ’60s doo-wop style, you know this isn’t the “Beowulf’’ of the musty page.

Hey…who said the page was musty?

If Craig doesn’t fear Beowulf, he’s less relaxed about literary criticism–and that discomfort inspires one of the play’s most significant twists:

[Craig] imagined three academics at a panel discussion, who eventually turn into the monsters that Beowulf must battle. He says he was drawn to “the idea of academia possibly destroying its own relationship with a piece of art that they love so much’’ and wanted to mock the scholarly tendency to get mired in minutiae.

Better than getting mired in battle with Grendel.

In this article in Cape Code Online, Yevtushenko champions the use of poetry as a vehicle for social change:

“When I recited for 42,000 young people, I got the feeling we are in a little room. I feel so close to them,” Yevtushenko said in a telephone interview yesterday from Tulsa, Okla., where he now lives and teaches poetry and film to college students. For more than 10 years, the Siberian-born poet has divided his time among Tulsa, Moscow, and his nearly constant travel.

He may still get “butterflies” before each performance, but “it seems that poetry is one art that makes everybody young,” said Yevtushenko, now 77, speaking fluently in what he calls his “Siberian English.” “It keeps me young myself,” he said….

Much of the hurt of Bukowski’s poems comes from his vicious, infamous rage, often directed towards women. It’s one of the reasons that his work has remained, to a surprising degree for a famous poet, marginal, if divisive on college campuses.

“Of course, it’s very sexist stuff,” Lemper admitted, “but it’s part of his legacy and part of his life story, this disdain for everything, including himself, including men and women. … I am a woman performing this, [but] I want to try to get away from the gender-specific rage in this poetry and in his body of work. I try to get a little bit more philosophical, to the analysis of the world, to emotion, to the analysis of his own life and soul and heart and mind. It’s pretty deep sometimes, and hurtful, but it gets to the point that it’s actually very beautiful, what he wrote…”

And if you want more about Bukowski as a soft, gentle dude, read Molly Young’s “Charles Bukowski, Family Guy.”

Berman’s talk in NYC last week inspired Schmall to reflect on how corporations have affected “freedom” of choice (as it relates to fashion, fast food and Saddam Hussein), at HTMLGiant:

It’s tempting to believe we have a wide spectrum of choices, and are operating at a zero-level, in which we receive information at a neutral remove—and then react—but is that possible? The amount of corporate (and other) propaganda already circulating in our minds—at the level of pre-conscious thought—is staggering. And that’s where the true power is. And precisely where that power is, you’ll find Richard Berman hard at work. There’s a detailed account up at Bermanexposed.org, but for the present discussion it’s enough to know that he goes straight to the public—with ghost-written editorials, TV ads, websites—fighting on behalf of the corporations who profit from (to name a few) genetically modified food, high fructose corn syrup, trans-fats, union busting, minimum wage stagnation, tanning beds, and puppy mills. Berman’s father is possibly the most evil man in America, according to Berman, working at the intersection of politics and industry, touching nearly every issue, and affecting how those issues are perceived by the public . . .

(Also: read Ed Park’s take on Berman’s book of drawings here)

John Cooper Clarke appears like a man out of time. He is stick thin, dressed  in shiny black boots, tight black straights, sharp shirt and buttoned-up  Sixties jacket, topped off with impenetrable Raybans and an enormous, spiky,  dyed black barnet. At 61, Clarke is wrinkled, his lips have shrunk, and his  teeth are full of bits of gold, but otherwise he looks exactly the same as  when he was the poet laureate of punk, the self-styled bard of Salford, a  comic wordsmith with almost household name status . . .

The collaboration between poet and critic Anne Carson and dancer-choreographer Rashaun Mitchell has resulted in a multi-layered mash-up of poetry and dance. Carson’s Nox, her most recent book, and Mitchell’s Bracko, her most recent dance composition, were presented by Summer Stages Dance and the Institute of Contemporary Art in a piece that illuminates how poetry can manifest itself in a physical medium. Carson used the poems of the Sappho and the Roman poet Catullus as part of her inspiration.

From the New York Times:

Ms. Carson’s involvement in ancient Greek literature and culture has  always been a prime component of her work. The  title of “Bracko” alludes to the many brackets that mark the fragmentary texts of Sappho’s poems, whose incomplete nature becomes obvious in live performance. (Alternating voices speak “bracket,” “sinful” and “bracket.”) Ms. Carson includes Sappho’s best-known and most complete poems (notably the classic “He Seems to Me a God”), but her larger point  is that our idea of this Greek poet is shaped by what we don’t know, and what we choose to imagine, about  her . . .

Dozens of poets have submitted works to the site. In “Chandeleur Sound,” an elegy to a wildlife refuge fouled by the spill, poet Marthe Reed — director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette — turns the dry corporate jargon of BP’s own regulatory documents against the company.

“Residual marsh sequesters toxicity, pompom booms mimicking widgeon-grass. A regulatory regime cut-to-fit Big Oil, profit, thirst of our idealized machines. Fill in the blank. `No clear strategic objectives’tern estuary, soak, seat`linked to statutory requirements.’ What is required?”

Read more at The Herald Scotland, or check out the award-winning poem below:

A Silly Poem

At my school the green fish digs a hole and chases the dog down the road.

In the yard the big dinosaur laughs out loud and tells me a joke.

I laugh.

Later that day I saw a bug eat my teacher for lunch.

The lion reads a book in a tree and then, a scientist with a monkey drives a car too fast through the air.

In my dream, I catch a spaceship to the moon.

I go off looking for hot dogs.

From the The Worcester Telegram & Gazette:

It was all part of the Alzheimer’s Poetry Project, which seeks to reach people suffering from dementia or Alzheimer’s by sparking their memory of poems they learned early in life. Yesterday’s program at the New England Dream Center Adult Day Health Program included Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 (“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”), Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven” and Gelett Burgess’ “The Purple Cow” . . .

There is no better way. Enjoy:

What: Sixth Annual Printers’ Ball
Where: The Ludington Building
Columbia College Chicago
1104 South Wabash Avenue
One block west of Michigan Avenue
When: Friday, July 30, 2010 6:00 PM to 11:00 PM
Admission: Free, all ages

More info here.

“See, guys like it fast,
but too bad, my name isn’t Wendy
and there is no dollar menu
and I can’t respond to
“Yo ma can I holla at chu?”
because I’m not ya mama
and you’re right next to me so you  said “Yo” just for drama.
Boy, don’t bother.”

Read more over at the Christian Science Monitor.

1) Approach strangers on the street
2) Hand them poems to read aloud
3) Videotape the impromptu performances
4) Post on blog
5) Repeat

From the National Post:

“Poetry has such a bad rap,” Leyton says. “People will tell me about how
they had to analyze Robert Frost poems in high school, and how boring it
was, but poetry doesn’t have to be like that.” She’s hoping her blog will
change the public’s perceptions about poetry and make it more accessible to
those who might otherwise shy away from it.

The Alzheimer’s Poetry Project, founded by New York poet Gary Glazner, is not built on the traditional, stand-at-the-podium-and-read poetry recital. Rather, it uses the simple rhymes typically learned in childhood or whimsical works created on the spot with audience participation. The facilitator moves among the seniors, holding their hands, touching their shoulders, gently prodding them to share their thoughts, reawakening long-ago memories.

“There was a guy in [one] group, his head was down, he wasn’t participating, and I said the Longfellow poem, ‘I shot an arrow in the air…’ ” Glazner says, recalling the initial workshop that spawned the project. “And his eyes suddenly popped open, and he said, ‘It fell to earth, I know not where.’ In that instant, he was back with us and was able to participate. It was very powerful” . . .

(Back in 2004, NPR reported on Glazner’s efforts in New Mexico. Listen here.)

“It’s going to be a Whitman freak-out jam by the waterfront,” Zach Layton said.

The Wall Street Journal has more.

King Gesar

Sitar Doje, a 20-year old Tibetan, is the youngest known singer of the “King Gesar” ballad/creation myth:

Legend has it that when he was 11, however, he had a strange dream. “I dreamed I was taken to the tent of King Gesar, on a grassland I’d never been to. Someone said, in Tibetan, ‘Yes, he’s the person we’re looking for’ and forced a huge pile of books into my mouth.”

The next day, he felt his throat was choked and saw long lines of text scrolling in front of his eyes. “They were like subtitles on the film screen and I felt my head was about to burst.”

The strange sensation drove Sitar Doje, then a third-grader at primary school, out of control and he began singing loudly for nearly two hours in class.