Monthly Archives: November 2017

9 posts

War & Peace in 14 Lines

poetry reading poetry

brian turner

Sometimes I don’t pull books off the shelf to read in the conventional sense. Sometimes I pull them to simply read a page or two, an essay, a single poem. This past weekend, the one we designate to gratitude, I happened to pull Brian Turner’s 2005 book of poems, Here, Bullet.

Opening the book randomly, my eyes fell on page 47 to the poem, “Curfew.” Reading it, I found a study in contrasts–if Tolstoy will forgive me, the stark difference between war and peace.

But the contrast doesn’t work unless you live in a war zone.  As Turner served as an infantry team leader for a year in Iraq, he could see more clearly what folks back home could not. Blinded by peacetime, it’s more difficult to see the beauty in a policeman enjoying the sun, a child helping his mother hang clothes, the faithful going to prayer. See what I mean:

 

Curfew by Brian Turner
                                               The wrong is not in the religion,
                                                                       The wrong is in us.  — Saier T.

A dusk, bats fly out by the hundreds.
Water snakes glide in the ponding basins
behind the rubbled palaces. The mosques
call their faithful in, welcoming
the moonlight as prayer.

Today, policemen sunbathed on traffic islands
and children helped their mothers
string clothes to the line, a slight breeze
filling them with heat.

There were no bombs, no panic in the streets.
Sgt. Gutierrez didn’t comfort an injured man
who cupped pieces of his friend’s brain
in his hands; instead, today,
white birds rose from the Tigris.

 

The poem’s effectiveness derives from the shocking imagery of stanza three–specifically the idea of a man holding pieces of his friend’s brain in his hand. Also bombs, panic in the streets–the stuff war zones are made of.

Then, with his reader dismayed, Turner turns back to a peaceful image: “instead, today, / white birds rose from the Tigris.” The transition word “instead” followed by another two-syllable word, “today” (each in rhythm with the other, each slowed by a comma) work perfectly before the idyllic image of white birds rising from the river.

This is what normal looks like. This is what most people fail to observe while normal plays out around them in peacetime. But there’s no taking it for granted in countries torn by war. By contrast, the beauty and the stillness and the ordinariness of what life is supposed to be practically leap out at the observer–in this case the observer, the recorder, the poet.

I closed the book and gave thanks for both poem and peace. And I vowed again to observe the little things that are so immense: dusk, bats, white birds rising for the heavens. War, after all, can visit any country….

The Yellow Bus of Marketing

marketing poetry poetry

bus

Polishing, polishing, polishing. Revision’s the thing. The best part of writing poetry, too. But what happens when you put your little children on the big yellow bus?

It’s tough, let me tell you, watching ten new poems–your babies, noses pressed to the window–as the bus pulls away.

The schools are far away. The poems will be gone for many months. Half a year or more. Heck. They may grow an inch or so while they’re absent. And it’s no mail home allowed. No calls. No texts or e-mails.

As the saying goes: Absence makes the heart get to work. None of this growing fonder stuff. Whip cracking. New brood. And fast. Before the hollow feeling takes root.

No writer should grow overly attached to his writing. What if they come back rejected–kicked out of school?

What if. You’ll be busy if and when that day comes. Waving a new bunch off, fondly but not sentimentally.

A bit cold-hearted, this marketing bit. Part of the game. Your personal public education, so to speak. The yellow bus of marketing that leaves you in its exhaust.

Turn your back, live your gathering life, read, and write.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

The Lovely Vice of Rhetorical Devices

poetry

tools

With the Thanksgiving weekend coming to a close (seems like an ordinary Sunday to ME, anyway), let us give thanks for rhetorical devices. Have you ever stopped to think of your favorite? Have you ever wondered which one you use the most? Have you ever realized that these devices are often the lifeblood of what you write and read?

In case you haven’t guessed, I have a special place in my heart (the right aorta, I think it is) for anaphora. In his reference book, A Poet’s Glossary, Edward Hirsch tells us it comes from the Greek for “a carrying up or back” and goes on to define it as “the repetition of the same word or words at the beginning of a series of phrases, lines, or sentences.” He goes on to say, “The words accumulate mysterious power and resonance through repetition.”

Emilia Phillips, writing an article called “Repeat After Me” in Ploughshares’ Week in Review newsletter, finds a bit of science in anaphora’s magic, too. She writes, “In her Poetry Foundation article ‘Adventures in Anaphora,’ poet and creative writing educator Rebecca Hazelton writes, ‘Humans are pattern-seeking animals, pre-tuned to the music of language. We are pleased when we hear patterns in language, perking our ears in recognition, and can be both vexed and delighted when those patterns are broken.’”

Admit it. You love a pattern. You probably picked one out as a gift on a shirt or dress over this endless Black Friday shopping weekend.

Think of that pattern as language. Think of it as sound. Think of it as a refrain you begin to subconsciously hum. Something like “And miles to go before I sleep, / And miles to go before I sleep” — a case where the repetition extends beyond the beginning but seems not only reasonable but just right.

So…what rhetorical device are YOU thankful for?

A Japanese Cure for the Thanksgiving Hangover

poetry reading poetry

zengarden

Long, long ago a singer named Maureen McGovern sang “The Morning After,” which included the simple line: “There’s got to be a morning after.” On the day after Thanksgiving, the words resonate particularly. One crazy holiday behind us, one to go (and, as they said of the Wicked Witch of the West, “she’s much worse than her sister!”).

But seriously, the antidote is a few Japanese poems from Kenneth Rexroth’s One Hundred Poems from the Japanese, is all. Note how they provide balance and restore order. See how the yin and yang of eastern life can level the playing field of three-too-many football games on television yesterday. Notice how peace fills the vacuum of political arguments that might have over-salted the turkey and lumpy gravy:

  • The guests arrived early! The turkey took longer than expected to reach 170 degrees Fahrenheit! We ran out of cheese and crackers!

Autumn has come
To the lonely cottage,
Buried in dense hop vines,
Which no one visits.
— The Monk Eikei

  • My uncle, after one wine too many, decided to share the joy by accidentally knocking his glass of pinot noir over ,where it ran a red river across the white tablecloth and onto my lap!

A strange old man
Stops me,
Looking out of my deep mirror.
— Hitomaro

  • Aunt Winnie went on and on and on, sucking the bandwidth out of the dining room with the beautiful sound of her own voice. You had all you could do to get “pass the butter, please,” in edgewise!

The colored leaves
Have hidden the paths
On the autumn mountain.
How can I find my girl,
Wandering on ways I do not know?
— Hitomaro

  • The kids left the table immediately after they finished eating. They retired to the den where the television was tuned to the “seasonal channel.” As they had been out partying the night before, they fell asleep on the furniture.

If only the world
Would always remain this way,
Some fishermen
Drawing a little rowboat
Up the river bank.
— The Shögun Minamoto No Sanetomo

  • The dishes took a goodly hour and a half to wash. The dryer rejected half of the dishes as “not passing quality control.” Just when I thought I’d reached the end of the dirty-dish-conga line, someone would bring in a forgotten bowl or tureen from the dining room. “Here you go,” they’d say, as if doing me a favor.

All during a night
Of anxiety I wait.
At last the dawn comes
Thought the cracks of the shutters,
Heartless as night.
— The Monk Shun-E

  • One of our guests got violently ill after everyone else had left. She had to stay over so as to remain near the bathroom, where she could noro- her -virus to her stomach’s desire. This morning, she will leave. Question is, despite all the Lysol we can muster, will she leave the virus, too, as a parting thanks?

The deer on pine mountain,
Where there are no falling leaves,
Knows the coming of autumn
Only by the sound of his own voice.

— Önakatomi No Yoshinobu

  • Ahh. So calming, these little snippets of life long ago. Let us give thanks to Rexroth for rendering them in English, and to the Japanese poets for rendering them with the future Thanksgiving-addled in mind!

Random Thoughts: The Gratitude Edition

humor poetry

cornucopia

Some random thoughts before people wake up in this house and the madness of Thanksgiving begins:

  • First of all, I won’t bore you with the usual thankfulness for family and friends and health and roofs over one’s head.
  • Whoops.
  • Has anyone else noticed the rise in comfort food consumption (CFC) since the electoral college’s election of Trump?
  • Free verse. Whoever captured it in the first place? And how did its rescue become such a cause célèbre?
  • Sunrises. Always be grateful for sunrises. By comparison, sunsets are rather commonplace.
  • Poetic touchstones: Frost, Yeats, Kooser, Wright, Gilbert, Dickinson, Szymborska, Kenyon, Roethke, WCW, Stevens, the Chinese and the Japanese of old.
  • I’m grateful for two books under the belt, with #3 off to the races.
  • I’m grateful for readers who support new poets whose books are unavailable at local libraries (to the tune of ABBA’s “Take a Chance on Me”).
  • And economists who speak up when thrifty sorts balk at the price of poetry books: “That’s only 30 cents a poem! And besides, why aren’t you so thrifty when it comes to your daily ice coffee (size: Honkin’), your monthly phone plan (size: Macy’s Parade balloon), your cable bill (size: outrageous), and your cases of bottled water (size: totally unnecessary)?” (Good question!)
  • I’m grateful for perspective.
  • Can we give thanks for the resurgence of print books? As was true with Mark Twain, news of its death was greatly exaggerated.
  • And what about local bookstores run by mom and pop? If they’re close enough, talk to your economist again and forego that amazon discount. Less to a conglomerate capitalist behemoth and more to writers. As a reader and patron of the arts, isn’t that what you’re about? Put your money where your principles and precepts are.
  • Has anyone else noticed the rise in people watching comfort movies on Hallmark  (CMOH) since the electoral college’s election of Trump?
  • Shakespeare. Always give thanks for Shakespeare. And reread two plays (minimum) a year, one comedy, one tragedy–each metaphors for your life.
  • Speaking of classics, have you ever noticed how many poets read the King James Version of the Bible, especially its most poetic books (e.g. the Psalms) for inspiration and rhythmic tutelage? Amen to that!
  • Personally, I take comfort in Ecclesiastes, easily my favorite Old Testament book.
  • If any of your grandparents are still alive, give thanks. If one or both of your parents are still alive, give thanks. And overlook their shortcomings by reminding yourself of your own.
  • I am thankful for people who are kind on-line, a place where trolls in basements virtually proliferate and pillage virtual villages of good will. It’s easy to be an anonymous bad-ass, but to be an anonymous decent person? Less so.
  • I’m thankful for the first ritual of the day, my daily coffee (bread was otherwise occupied).
  • Let’s hear it for poetry markets, for poetry editors and readers who take huge swaths of their time to read would-be, wanna-be, and is-be poets’ best efforts!
  • Has anyone else noticed the rise in people drinking alcoholic beverages (PDAB) since the electoral college’s election of Trump?
  • Which reminds me, we give thanks for newspapers, journalism, objectivity, facts, and truth… the victims of demagoguery the world over.
  • Speaking of, give thanks for every country in the world where peace rules the land. May we do our best to spread it to countries where that is not the case.
  • For ars poetica and ars blogica.
  • For any reader who made it this far. Thank you! May you stay cool, calm, collected and well-read as we enter the holiday season!

Rich Poets and Other Mythological Beasts

humor poetry

benjamins

A lot of people want to be writers, but the day-to-day reality of it isn’t easy. What works is being obsessed with writing. Like looking at your cellphone–instead of “I can’t get through my day without constantly checking for texts,” it’s “I can’t get through my day if I don’t write!” Instead of “Must. Look. At. My. Cell.” it’s “Must. Write. Something. Now!” Instead of ignoring the person across from you at the dinner table by engaging with your binkie (read: phone), it’s ignoring the person no longer across from you at the dinner table because you stole away to your writing place (read: your writing place).

It is both tempting and amusing for writers to dream big. They think of fame in their chosen field. Not only fame, but its trickster cousin twice removed, fortune. The mansion. The pool. The publishers on the phone begging for another book because they just sold movie rights to the last.

I suppose there’s a camel-through-the-eye-of-a-needle chance that these dreams might come true for novelists and screen writers, but poets? It is to laugh.

Can we really picture Billy Collins wearing sunglasses at night (á la Corey Hart) while he goes to New York restaurants so he won’t be mobbed by groupies for autographs (which he would be forced to sign in blank verse, of all things)?

Or how about Mary Oliver living in one of those “looks simple but costs a fortune” ranches out in the wilderness (which her lawyer bought for her)? The great unwashed can work 9 to 5, but Mary punches the clock by going outside at 10 a.m., watching a few Canada geese fly over, and returning home for lunch served by a nutritionist/cook. Her afternoon looks like this: a nap.

Since we truck in literary terminology, let’s get this straight right out of the proverbial gate: “Rich poet” is an oxymoron. No poet ever made his or her fortune on poetry. But it’s human nature, I suppose, to happily delude oneself. Like buying scratch lottery tickets. “Maybe this time… maybe me…”

Uh, no. “Maybe not” is what you’re looking for.

So it’s Onward Christian (or Jewish or Muslim, Buddhist or Hindu, atheist or agnostic) Soldier. You can’t write for the money, you must write for the intrinsic reward. And intrinsic rewards, on the going market, don’t pay much. Hope, then, that they pay attention. At the very least. For poems, attention is as good as cash. Readers are riches. If a hundred people read your poem, it’s as good as a hundred dollars.

Instead of Benjamin, just picture readers crowded onto that legal tender. And keep the change!

*************************************************************************

Two copies of  Lost Sherpa of Happiness left at Amazon. More on the way! (That’s click bait. That’s also rich.)

Poems That Date Themselves

poetry reading poetry

football

When you say a literary work “dates itself,” you might mean it is old-fashioned or representative of another era, as in a classic work by John Donne or John Milton, maybe. It’s possible, however, for a more recent work to date itself, too, in that society’s norms change, sometimes more swiftly than we expect.

If you want to know if a poem has dated itself in this manner, there is no better laboratory than a younger generation of readers. Reading Gary Gildner’s “First Practice” to young sports lovers may lead to some surprises. Some “mysteries” for them would be easily interpreted by their parents and grandparents.

The poem details a first football practice (though the sport is not mentioned) led by an old-school coach and veteran of war. Let’s take a look at the poem first:

 

“First Practice” by Gary Gildner

After the doctor checked to see
we weren’t ruptured,
the man with the short cigar took us
under the grade school,
where we went in case of attack
or storm, and said
he was Clifford Hill, he was
a man who believed dogs
ate dogs, he had once killed
for his country, and if
there were any girls present
for them to leave now.
No one left. OK, he said, he said I take
that to mean you are hungry
men who hate to lose as much
as I do. OK. Then
he made two lines of us
facing each other,
and across the way, he said,
is the man you hate most
in the world,
and if we are to win
that title I want to see how.
But I don’t want to see
any marks when you’re dressed,
he said. He said, Now.

 

Right out of the gate, the first two lines, which reference a rather routine physical practice done by doctors to prospective football players before any season began, would perplex today’s youth. More perplexing still might be these words:

the man with the short cigar took us
under the grade school,
where we went in case of attack
or storm

Readers might be mightily challenged by the words “under the grade school” and “in case of attack,” even in this age of nuclear saber rattling. Who can blame them? Who can conceive that people of an age familiar to me were once told to crouch under school desks in the event of an atomic bombing?

Younger readers might be given pause by the lines “if / there were any girls present / for them to leave now” if they take it literally. The thought of boys being called girls as an insult by an adult? Dated, probably. So politically incorrect in this day and age that it just doesn’t happen (and if it does, like kitty videos, it’ll “goes viral” in a hurry).

You might even find readers who are convinced this poem was about war, not sports, unless they wisely point out the words “if we are to win / that title I want to see how.” Unfortunately, the final lines might muddy the waters anew: “But I don’t want to see / any marks when you’re dressed.”

Marks? On clothes?

You see the problem. Read in the 1960s — the decade Gildner was no doubt recalling — “First Practice” is a simple and charming take on authority abused and innocence bewildered, so much so that the poet recalls it all these years later. But without the benefit of 50 years, the poem’s assumptions about its readers hits some turbulence. Kids might be intrigued by the poem, but they’re more likely to be perplexed.

Time does funny things, in other words, just as much to more recent poems as to truly ancient ones, but one purpose of poems is to become snapshots in time, historical records, remembrances–if you’ll forgive–of things past, such as of a first practice, for instance. One that becomes a lasting impression. And a very good poem.

And Now, the Book Tour

humor Lost Sherpa of Happiness poetry

Sherpa

Ah, yes. The dreaded book tour. Writing a book is long and arduous, sure, but the marketing? As they say in Central America, “Aye, Dios.” And as they say of high rises, it’s a whole ‘nother story!

My editor has set up a most complicated plan, but that’s the price you pay when you play in the high-demand field of poetry. As P.T. Barnum once allegedly said, “The masses must be pleased.”

I’ll start in Boston, of course, because it’s closest. The theme here will be “Banned in Boston!” It sure helped sales of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Nothing like a bunch of Boston Brahmins frowny-facing your poems. “What’s in these poems?” the poetry-reading population will wonder. “Surely something better than woodpeckers and bumble bees and a summer’s day!” As my editor is fond of saying: “Racy sells. So does censorship.”

Then it’ll be on to Worcester. Pronounced “Wuss-tah,” people. Please do not give me that “War-chester” stuff. Take it to Ohio, or some other state of confusion.

Third stop? New Haven. Boolah-boolah. Pom-poms. Ping-Pong. My stop there will be brief and hyphenated. The books will be pre-signed (editor’s idea). I must slash out my name on the facing page and sign it below. I have no idea what this means or why it’s done, but my editor says it means something and must be done. It’s what authors do. And I’m playing author (“all the world’s a stage”). Forget the backstory.

Brooklyn bookstores are fourth. Readings, readings, readings. To be followed by Q & A. For the thousandth time: “Who’s lost? You or the sherpa?”

For the thousandth-and-first time: “Read the last poem. The eponymous one.”

“The hippopotamus one?”

Then I will feel my editor tugging at my elbow-patched tweed sport coat, pulling me away. I’ll want to ask her, “Who does this anymore? Don’t poets just make racy commercials for their poetry collections and upload them to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, from the comfort of their homes?”

“They do,” she said. “But they’re mostly 23-years-old writing about love and lust and ego while puckering up to the camera.”

“That’s legal?” (Incredulous)

“In Ohio. Let’s go….”

 

 

 

It’s a Sherpa!

Lost Sherpa of Happiness poetry poetry books publishing

Sherpa

The new book is a preemie. Expected in December, arrived in November. And it’s a Sherpa! Most unusually, a lost one. I figured, if I ever hired a sherpa to see me to the summit, that’s exactly what would happen. Nowhere to go but up, and we still get lost.

A few people have asked, “Do the poems in Lost Sherpa of Happiness have something to do with Nepal or Mount Everest?” Uh, no. Like most things in life, it’s more complicated.

The idea started with the story of Siddhartha Gautama, the Indian prince who would eventually become the Buddha. Legend has it that he lived a royal life in a royal palace when his royal curiosity got the better of him (sound familiar, Adam and Eve?). When Siddhartha journeyed outside the protective walls of his royal digs, he encountered old age, sickness, and death. This shook him up mightily. So much so that he gave all his worldly goods up and set out on a quest for enlightenment and nirvana (which look a lot like happiness in my book).

These poems, then, are about man’s endless–and often rocky–search for happiness. Thomas Jefferson called it “the pursuit of happiness,” and Buddhists and Hindus call it samsara, but round and round it goes because the line is not a direct one and may take more than this lifetime.

Why? Because life isn’t easy and the obstacles are many. Interestingly enough, these obstacles exist as much INSIDE your head as OUTSIDE your body. Thus, the poems range from the challenges of childhood to middle age to the wintry days of our lives’ Decembers.

The second of the new book’s three sections (called “searches”) treats exclusively on animals. We’re not the only ones who have it rough, trust me. My hope was to mirror life by including humor, sadness, nostalgia for the past, hope for the future, desperation, and joy. And as was true with my first poetry collection, The Indifferent World, nature poems are as profuse as birdsong in April.

My sophomore effort: If I smoked, I’d light up a cigar to celebrate. If I drank, I’d pour myself a tumbler of Jameson Irish whiskey. As I do neither, I’ll just take a deep breath, inhale the crisp air of gratitude, and try to keep up with my sherpa, who seems to be losing me….