
The literati are like aliens. Some are cute. Some are hostile. All talk funny, and all require diplomatic outreach. (Daniel Nester recently described this phenomenon in his riotous, depressing takedown of the New York poetry scene, “Goodbye to All Them.”)
I here present the strategies I have observed and developed at literary gatherings, in hopes that you, reader, will not someday find yourself lying on a couch in a grungily chic neighborhood of San Francisco at 4 a.m., claiming, along with a bald, 13-year-old Norwegian you’ve just met, to be a Macarthur Fellow.
The recent announcement that Herta Muller won the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature came as a huge surprise to me as I’m sure it did to many Americans. While Muller has written twenty books, only 5, according to the New York Times, have been translated into English. The tiny percentage of Muller’s work translated into English is hardly an aberration. Rather, it is a sad symptom of a much larger problem. There has been a steady decline in the number of literary works translated into English, and in the United States the decline has perhaps been even more precipitous than in other English speaking nations.

Was William Safire a poet?
No.
He was a Nixon speechwriter, a conservative pundit, a four-time novelist, and a funny, fastidious observer of English usage.
But can we detect his influence, however great or small, on such dextrous manipulators of contemporary verse as Matthea Harvey, Heather McHugh, and Paul Muldoon (among others, perhaps including you, dear commenter)?
Yes.
And could anyone encounter a poem about a bartender, say, without recalling Safire’s column on bartenders, barmen, barmaids, barkeeps, innkeepers, and so forth?
I certainly can’t.
Some background:
I was deep in the heart of the heart of the country on September 11, 2001, and spent much of the day trying and failing to fight off abstraction, to somehow worm my way into the reality.
Poems can sometimes help with that.
The Poetry Foundation has these poems available for your perusal today. No offense, fine poems, but kind of a weird list, isn’t it?

It’s municipal election day where I live. I went by the activity center at a Baptist church to vote on my way to work. Got there early and was first in line when the doors opened at 7:00, so I got to be the very first person to sign in. The poll workers were still drinking their coffee, still a little unclear on the procedures, still a little flusterable: the nice lady, who must have gotten up at 4:00 a.m. to do her meticulous silver hair, kept looking for my name in the registry among the scores of “Browns.” A poll watcher designated by one of the candidates hovered, frowning, alert to the possibility of fraud. But finally I received my ballot, that oddly large sheet, discovering on it, as I knew I would, just one opportunity to make my mark. (The current school board commissioner for district 4, Bryan Chandler, is facing a challenge from newcomer Kelly Horwitz.) I filled in one of the two ovals — right there on the table in front of the workers, not much caring who knew how I was voting — got my “I Voted” sticker from another amazingly coiffed senior, and fed my ballot into a machine, which, to much general consternation among the poll workers, kept spitting the sheet back out, making me wonder if I’d made the right choice, until finally someone pointed out that the poll workers had forgotten to tear off the little perforated receipt along the bottom. Problem solved, vote recorded. Outside, along the sidewalk across the street, beyond the required 30-foot perimeter, supporters for the candidates stood with signs. I suppose they’re working in shifts, since the polls will be open until 7:00 tonight. That’s a long time to stand up for your candidate for school board.
Last fall the NY Times printed a number of poems as part of their election day coverage. This was my favorite of them:
INFOMERCIAL 2
The old mule delivers the goods.
Nugatory diddlings are on the decline.
Stateliness has its day.
There are indeed many encouraging signs
in the weather and in handshakes.
Still there are those who mistake dark clouds
for raffish hucksterism. They have never savored
the elation of an empty crystal ball.
To them I say, seconds will call upon you
in the morning. Tonight there are dreams to be thumbed through
before the complicated, awful business
of summoning beautiful particles after the horse is stolen.
That’s Ashbery, of course. You can hear him read the poem here.
Elsewhere, the election news is not so good. Can’t blame the mules, though. They seem to have performed admirably.

Pop quiz: What do Gore Vidal, Norman Mailer, Joseph Heller, Frank McCourt, Art Buchwald, Pete Hamill, Edward Abbey, Elmore Leonard, Mario Puzo, James Dickey, James Wright, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Randall Jarrell, Frank O’Hara, Anthony Hecht, Richard Wilbur, A.R. Ammons, Paddy Chayevsky, Rod Serling, Aaron Spelling, Terry Southern, Walter Matthau, Robert Duvall, Tony Curtis, Harry Belafonte, Rod Steiger, Gene Hackman, Clint Eastwood, Paul Newman, Jason Robards, Charles Bronson, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Rauschenberg, Leo Krikorian, Dan Spiegle, Robert Miles Runyan, Kenneth Noland, LeRoy Nieman, Richard Callner, Ed Rossbach, and Robert Perine have in common?
Answer after the break. Don’t click until you’ve made your guess. One thing you’ve already noticed is that they’re all men. That’s sort of a hint.
Have you yet read Lisa Robertson’s Magenta Soul Whip? I haven’t, fully, due to the previously mentioned feelings of deep inadequacy my first foray brought up. I picked it up and read umpteen pages, and then skimmed the rest, flipping it like a flip book to see how the texture of the language makes an image rise up, holographically from the pages. I AM going to read it, for real, soon, O reading, posture of stillness and the eyes darting, and the experience of reading it will be much bigger-better-faster-quieter than the experience of talking about it–not so different from theater, really, Joel, I think: to some extent, you have to be there. And maybe there’s the dynamic and distinguished difference between poetry and criticism/response to poetry. Not to say that poetics or writing about poetry or thinking and feeling about poetry is necessarily not describable as poetry, but maybe at least for me there is somehow a qualitative difference in the experience of reading it. Or maybe that’s bull-hockey
Ahoy hoy! Sibilance! Sibilance!
The editors of Harriet have kindly invited me to join their merry band, and I’m honored to be here. Scared, too, though, that I won’t have much of interest to say. I guess we’ll find out. I may be posting snapshots of my tomato plants before my hitch is up.
Earlier this week was Sovereignty Day, and today is Independence Day. To celebrate, please turn off your computer and go eat some ice cream in a park. Come back and read the rest of this tomorrow.

Roy Finch at Sarah Lawrence College, mid 1960’s
Father’s day came and went, and I’ve been wanting to say something about my dad, and all my poetic fathers,
Anselm Berrigan
Abigail Deutsch
Tonya Foster
Melissa Friedling
John S. O'Connor
Barbara Jane Reyes
Amber Tamblyn
Edwin Torres
Cathy Halley
Michael Marcinkowski
Travis Nichols
Fred Sasaki
Don Share
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