Dowd on Kissinger

My favorite line from the International Herald Tribune this morning is from Maureen Dowd on Friday's McCain-Obama debate:

"And who cares what Henry Kissinger thinks? He was wrong 35 years ago, and it’s only gotten worse since then."

Harp Guitar, Pat Metheny

I received a note from my Mom about an old post of mine with a video of Michael Hedges playing Bach on a harp guitar. She asked me about the instrument, so I thought I'd post a link to a description of it, along with a video of Pat Metheny playing one:

Lousy Govt. = Lousy Economy

My favorite line from the Presidential debate last night was from McCain (from the CNN transcript):

"The Iranians have a lousy government, so therefore their economy is lousy."

I'm sure Obama noted the irony (he's far too smart not to), but I suspect he thought it would be a bad tactic to point out that McCain had just described the current state of the United States. (Tactic, not strategy, and Obama knows the difference, I'm sure.)

Miles plays the drums

Miles had another open house at the drum school Basel last week. This time he did not play with me (as he did last year); instead, he played a drum duet with his drum teacher Lorenz Hunziker (whom you can't see in the video):

Paul Newman

Back in the seventies, my favorite movie was "The Sting," and another favorite was "Cool Hand Luke." So I guess Paul Newman was one of my favorite actors back then. I had kind of forgotten about him, so I was surprised to be so sad at hearing of his death. Here are two of my favorite scenes from "Cool Hand Luke":





"What we have here is failure to communicate" is a line that crosses my mind many times every year!

Not Exactly Woody Guthrie

Here's one I like by Mark Halliday, "Not Exactly Woody Guthrie."

*

I like the two explanations of the simple act of checking "to see whether the field goal was good," the simple one in the first stanza (a social explanation), and the more complex aesthetic explanation in the second, which captures so cleanly one difference between sport and art.

Shakespeare parodies

There are three fun Shakespeare parodies up at New Verse News:

McCoriolanus, by Bill Costley
William Shakespeare's Obameo and Johniette, by Olga Wayne
Johniette's Soliloquy, by Aaron Gillego

Nice coincidence that both Wayne and Gillego came up with those names!

No on 8, you Californians!

Thanks to C. Dale Young for posting this one (and as I said in his comments, I'm 44, I like to write poems, and my sister just married her girlfriend in San Diego last weekend):

Idroscalo. Ostia

There's another new translation of mine up at lyrikline, of Dieter M. Gräf's poem "Idroscalo. Ostia."

DMB on HST and other things

My friend Don Brown quoted Hunter S. Thompson here:

"McGovern made some stupid mistakes, but in context they seem frivolous compared to the things Richard Nixon does every day of his life, on purpose, as a matter of policy and a perfect expression of everything he stands for."

(Don and I, we're just linking back and forth to each other!)

Jazz for Obama

I suspect that New York City is full of people who are jazz fans and who plan to vote for Barack Obama. If you are one of them, kill two birds with one stone and get yourself down to the Jazz for Obama concert on October 1. A great lineup, wish I could be there! Mehldau! Lovano! Stanley Jordan! Hank Jones!

Swerve, in Horizon Review

My poem "Swerve" is in the first issue of Salt's new online journal Horizon Review. It's nice to be there with such a fine list of poets (hi, Rob; hi, George; hi, James; hi, everyone).

Understanding the election

Justin Evans posted a funny, somewhat scary list of points that will help anyone understand the American election.

Here's the first, to give you a taste of it:

* If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you're 'exotic, different.'

* Grow up in Alaska eating mooseburgers, a quintessential American story.

Don Brown on DFW

Don Brown has written a thoughtful piece on (literary) suicide in response to David Foster Wallace's suicide on Friday.

Update: There's also a nice DFW piece on Caleb Crain's blog, with long quotations from an interview Crain did with DFW in 2003.

Reasons to collect books

Here's another gem from Wondermark, this time on book collecting.

Johnny Cash, by David Bauer

[My friend David Bauer wrote this article for the Basler Zeitung on Friday, September 11. I liked it so much, I asked him to do an English version, which I edited for him and am now posting here. I am not actually such a Johnny Cash fan as he has become, but I have always liked his singing and his songs, and I like the way David marks how a particular singer can become a touchstone for one's own life—for me, Jerry Garcia and Greg Brown most of all.]

What makes Johnny Cash so essential

By David Bauer (from the Basler Zeitung, September 12, 2008)

When Johnny Cash died, I did not care. Five years ago it was, but I did not remember until I looked it up. Johnny Cash was a name to me. A name that one knew, but that meant nothing to me. Love is a burning thing...nanana...ring of fire. And that was it.

Today, Johnny Cash is to my soul what oxygen is to my lungs - even though I discovered him only one year ago, by accident, in awkward circumstances. I watched the movie about his life, Walk The Line, on my laptop. The audio track was crap, so Cash started stuttering every few seconds. That was it: My "Hello, I'm Johnny Cash" moment. Johnny Cash introduced himself to me, but the man I saw was Joaquin Phoenix. I got to know his songs, but Joaquin Phoenix sung them. But still, it triggered something. I craved to learn more about this person and his music.

Pretty late I was. Cash had started his career some fifty years ago, and even the late milestones that made him known in my generation had already occurred a few years back: the movie and his late work, the "American Recordings" produced by Rick Rubin. Singing cover versions of some very well-known songs, Cash made a sweet offer to all those to whom even the word "Country" smelled a little funny. So Cash took the stage at the 1994 Glastonbury Festival amidst Britpop madness and was invited to be part of a Simpsons episode (where he gave his voice to a coyote). Yet it was his cover version of the Nine Inch Nails classic "Hurt" that eventually secured Cash a place in the 21st century. Today, Coldplay regularly cover his "Ring of Fire" at their concerts, and you even get to hear it when you wait on call-centre hotlines.

But what exactly is it that makes Johnny Cash so compelling, so essential? Even today, or maybe even more so today.

First of all, it is the music, of course. Country minus cowboy kitsch. Cash was a genius at making his songs easy with his guitar, while at the same time adding some true severity with his voice. A voice that did not fail to be haunting even when it became fragile in Cash's late years. His version of "Hurt" is simply one of the most touching songs ever sung.

Cash's song are not complex; instead, they come down to a kind of musical trinity: a melody, a voice, a story. This is true of his whole discography, from his earliest songs like "Walk the Line" and "Folsom Prison Blues" to the last songs recorded shortly before his death. True mastery lies in reduction, as only few understand.

Yet it is not only the music that makes Cash unique, but just as much where it came from.

Cash's biography is full of cracks, sparkling highs and dark lows. And there's a love story that easily matches the great dramas of world literature: His relationship with June Carter is a recurrent theme running through Cash's life. Their paths crossed early, in music and in private, and after some twists and turns, the musical duet turned into a love affair for eternity. Shortly before his seventieth birthday, Cash sang: "Love is love and doesn't change in a century or two."

This is another secret: Cash's songs are deeply rooted in life, so they just keep growing and growing.

Today, bands are disposable commodities. The music industry has turned into a rushing merry-go-round where you jump on only to be thrown off the next second. Everyone gets their 15 minutes of fame, but that's it. You rarely find true personalities in music, whose biography and work develop together, musicians that have something to say.

But why Cash? Why not Presley, why not Dylan, why not Cohen? I don't know. Comparing quality does not help. Music is not either good or bad, it's only about one thing: Does it touch you? Cash touches me to the quick, while with Elvis, I feel nothing.

What makes the difference is this je-ne-sais-quoi that you cannot describe, only experience. Like the other day, when I came across Johnny Cash again.

On the very evening I have to let my personal June Carter go, I zap through glimmering TV programmes, lost in thought, and suddenly, I come across Walk the Line. Johnny Cash and June Carter singing "Jackson." No further evidence is needed: You do not look for Johnny Cash; he finds you.

I switch off the telly, pull everything from Johnny Cash out of my record collection and let song after song have its effect on me. It's at moments like these that all the power of Johnny Cash's music unfolds. His music is the good friend that comforts you without pity. The friend who lays his hand on your shoulder and says: You're right; life's a monster that eats you. But if you're tough enough, if you believe in yourself and the good in life, it will spit you out again.

Learning from Johnny Cash is learning about life. If you listen very closely, you might even understand it one day, that strange thing, life.

DFW

I have only ever read one piece by David Foster Wallace ("Roger Federer as Religious Experience"), but that was such a beautiful piece of writing about one of my favorite subjects (tennis) that I find myself deeply saddened by the news of his death by hanging on Friday.

My friend Ulrich Blumenbach is in the last stages of writing the German translation of Infinite Jest. How odd it must be to have the author of something you are translating die while you are doing so. (Perhaps like having the author you are writing criticism on die while you are writing the criticism, something that has also never happened to me.)

Perhaps I am struck as much by the deaths of Reginald Shepherd and DFW because they are both of my generation (DFW was 46; Reginald 44; and I am 44).

Clueless

Here's a little study of Sarah Palin, "She's Not Ready," by Bob Herbert.

A Campaign of Lies

"... John McCain is running a campaign almost entirely based on straight up lies."

If you're not sure what to do about the horror of McCain's campaign, then follow the advice of Josh Marshall:

"This is clearly a testing time for Obama supporters. But I want to return to a point I made a few years ago during the Social Security battle with President Bush. Winning and losing is never fully in one's control -- not in politics or in life. What is always within our control is how we fight and bear up under pressure. It's easy to get twisted up in your head about strategy and message and optics. But what is already apparent is that John McCain is running the sleaziest, most dishonest and race-baiting campaign of our lifetimes. So let's stopped being shocked and awed by every new example of it. It is undignified. What can we do? We've got a dangerously reckless contender for the presidency and a vice presidential candidate who distinguished her self by abuse of office even on the comparatively small political stage of Alaska. They've both embraced a level of dishonesty that disqualifies them for high office. Democrats owe it to the country to make clear who these people are. No apologies or excuses. If Democrats can say at the end of this campaign that they made clear exactly how and why these two are unfit for high office they can be satisfied they served their country."

McCain may win, but those who have seen through him have to do their best to expose him as the liar he is.

Obama as a Historic Figure

Here's another spin on Obama as a "historic" figure (from Wondermark).

Reginald Shepherd

"I write because I would like to live forever."

Reginald Shepherd, "Why I Write"

Rest in peace, Reginald.

*

"A poem has never oppressed anyone ..." ("The Other's Other")

"But literature is one of the few areas of life in which I do not feel oppressed, in which I have experienced true freedom." ("The Other's Other")

"I have an intense desire to rescue these things that have touched me and place them somewhere for safekeeping, which is both impossible and utterly necessary." ("Why I Write")

A Darwinian Vision

Have you made the trip to Dayton, TN, yet to see the image of Charles Darwin on a wall?

(Some say it's Stephen Jay Gould. Some say it's Carl Sagan. Some say it's a stain.)

Avantgarde Times

Two of my poems appeared in the June 2008 issue of the online journal Avantgarde Times. You can go straight to the section with poems here. You have to search for "Daylight Savings" to find mine (or "Moths," which is the second poem), but you can also find it by just reading from the beginning until you find them!

An Artist's Text Book, by Jan Svenungsson

My friend Jan Svenungsson recently published an excellent book about writing for artists that will surely be of interest to all creative people who are thinking about writing about their own work: An Artist's Text Book.

The book is available from the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts (because that's where he taught the course that led to the book):

Finnish Academy of Fine Arts
att: Anna Herlin
Kasarmikatu 36
00130 Helsinki
Finland

or by email: anna.herlin@kuva.fi

I proofread the book for Jan, and I assure you that it is an excellent read! (There's a quote from it here.)

See Something Different: Joe Biden

I like this line from Joe Biden about speeches at the Republican convention:

"... their America is not the America I live in. They see something different than I see."

Baker Street

Marc Krebs writes a column in the Basler Zeitung every Wednesday subtitled "Yesterday's Pop on Today's iPod." This past Wednesday he wrote about Gerry Rafferty's "Baker Street," so that was the song going through my head all afternoon. Since I hardly ever listen to the radio, and I don't own the song on CD, the only place I have perhaps heard it in the past three decades, if at all, is the supermarket. ("New Kid on Town" by the Eagles is the one I always seem to hear there that I find at least listenable.) But I still have most of the song in my head.

Two other songs that came up in the course of Wednesday afternoon as Rafferty's song rambled through my brain were Al Stewart's "Year of the Cat" and Steely Dan's "Deacon Blues." Perhaps because of the saxophones, perhaps because they were all hits at approximately the same time. Of the three, "Deacon Blues" is the absolute masterpiece, but the other two are songs I'm always glad to hear (and I actually own both the Al Stewart and the Steely Dan).

I was trying hard to remember the name of Rafferty's previous band, and the name of their big hit, but I couldn't; I had to go to Wikipedia to find out. But the song is a good one: "Stuck in the Middle with You," by Stealers Wheel (Stealers ... Steely!). Like "Baker Street," it's one I have not heard for ages but that still comes to mind relatively often (how well one remembers songs from one's early teens!).

Crain on Palin

Caleb Crain has an excellent post on the "mythography," if you will, of Sarah Palin (and GWB, too).

The Ensemble, by Floyd Skloot

It seems like every time I read a poem by Floyd Skloot I like it. Today's example is on Poetry Daily: "The Ensemble."

I love the way it approaches Shakespeare without too much awe and reverence, but also without too much ambition; the poem seems pitched at just the right level. And, as Rob points out, the rhymes are delicious, as are the line breaks.

Gonna have to get me a Skloot collection one of these moons.

Donny O'Rourke and Padraig Rooney: a poetry reading in Basel, September 17, 2008

[Click on the image to see the poster in a larger format.]

Chris Smither in the UK

The wondrous Chris Smither will be touring the UK in October (starting in Worcester on Sept. 30, actually). I saw him in the summer of 2007 at the Great Waters Folk Festival in New Hampshire and was utterly floored by his guitar playing and by his songwriting. "Leave the Light On" is still one of the best new songs I have heard in years.

So for you readers of this blog who live in the UK: check out the list of shows below, and go check out Chris if he's playing near you!

You Londoners, that's October 6 at the Luminaire!

And Rob in Glasgow: that's October 12 at the Tall Ship in Glasgow Harbor!

UK TOUR DATES

9/30
WORCESTER, UK
Huntingdon Hall
01905 611427
8pm, £12/10

10/1
READING, UK
South Street Arts
0118 9606060
8pm, £12

10/2
LITCHFIELD, UK
The Garrick
01543 412121
7:30pm, £12

10/3
CIRENCESTER, UK
Sundial Theatre
01285 654228
7:30pm, £10/12

10/4
MYLOR, UK
Tremayne Hall
01872 262466
8pm, £10

10/5
TORRINGTON, UK
Plough Arts Centre
01805 624624
7:30pm, £12/10

10/6
LONDON, UK
The Luminaire
020 7372 7123
£14

10/7
BANBURY, UK
The Mill Arts Centre
01295 279002

10/9
HEBDEN BRIDGE, UK
Hebden Bridge Trades Club
01422 845265
8:30pm, £8/10

10/10
NEWCASTLE, UK
Little Theatre, Gateshead
The Jumpin Hot Club
£12, 0191 2 605 605

10/11
BROOKFIELD, UK
Brookfield Hall
01505 706346
£12

10/12
GLASGOW, UK
The Tall Ship at
Glasgow Harbour
0870 220 1116
£12, Doors at 7:30pm

Afternoon Nap

I woke up from an afternoon nap to read "Afternoon Nap," by James W. Wood!

McCain is a pain 2

It won't be smooth sailing
with Sarah Palin.

McCain is a pain

May McCain go bowl
with Dukakis and Dole.

May he end up as pale
as Walter Mondale.

May he be as bored
as Gerald R. Ford.

(A few lines in response to my friend Don's post.)

Red-Green in Basel

A statement by my friends Mirjam Ballmer and Peter Jossi:

– Red-green in Basel is a success story that should continue!

In Basel and Switzerland, there is no place for giant election campaigns like those in the USA—and there are no Obamas... The little "sister republic" of the USA only needs small election campaigns. However small they may be, though, for many Swiss with English-speaking backgrounds the local political system is still not easy to understand. As a result of the elections in 2004, there is a red-green majority in the government of Kanton Basel-Stadt, as well as (almost) in the parliament (Grosser Rat).

Mirjam Ballmer, born in the USA and a US citizen (Grossrätin GRÜNE), and Peter Jossi, father of two girls with dual Swiss and American citizenship (Grossratskandidat and board member of the Sozialdemokratische Partei Basel-Stadt, SP BS) provide a number of good reasons why Basel-Stadt must stay red-green in the future – and why both of them should be given 3 X's on every election list.

Integration for all people in Basel

An open and tolerant mindset has a long tradition in Basel. For centuries, immigrants have contributed to the cultural identity and economic success of our region. This ability to interact with different cultures and backgrounds has become very useful and important in a global world.

Red-green Basel stands for the long Swiss tradition of openness and development. We know that immigrants from all over the world have helped to build the Swiss success story. The basic rule has to be equal opportunities for everybody – to the benefit of each person and of society as a whole.

Basel – a strong center of business and research – to the benefit of all

The Basel region has a dynamic economy. Innovative businesses, highly qualified employees, and a well-developed infrastructure offering a range of services, along with openness and a high standard of living, are the basis for a successful future for all of us.

Red-green Basel is the driving force to make sure that economic development will include social and ecological sustainability.

Renewable energy – for the future of our children and grandchildren

Fossil fuels like petroleum, petrogas and other non-renewable sources are dead ends. The future lies in renewable energy: the power of water, wind, sun and geothermic sources.

Red-green Basel was the driving force in Basel-Stadt in making sure that the non-use of atomic energy has been made a binding obligation in the new consitution of Kanton Basel-Stadt. As a result, Basel uses (almost) exclusively renewable energies.

High quality of state services – responsible tax reductions for all

Under the leadership of SP Finance Minister Eva Herzog, Basel-Stadt has managed to reduce its state debt. In order to stay attractive, Basel needs to make many significant investments in the coming years. It will require strong cooperation with the neighbouring cantons and countries to address the challenges in such areas as the Universities (Universität und Fachhochschule), the health-care system and public and private transportation.

Red-green Basel has established a new tax law that gives serious tax reductions to low and middle incomes and to families, while not increasing the tax level on high incomes.

A wide variety of culture for every taste and for all ages

Basel is the social and economic center of a trinational region with about a million people. To life up to this role, we need more "freshness” and a downtown Basel full of life and culture.

Red-green Basel calls for a wide variety of culture. Besides the established institutions, we also need to actively promote new creative approaches to culture and to support the young professionals who offer them.

Strong state schools for a family-friendly Basel

The children are our future. Basel therefore has to be a city that families like to move to, where children like to grow up und where they get optimal support in our public schools. Our "Volksschulen” are the integration centers of our neighbourhoods . This is where our children get to know and respect each other, before social and/or cultural differences can cause separation.

Red-green Basel calls for early support for immigrant children to learn German. Strong "Quartierschulen mit Tagesstrukturen" support the integration process and offer children a good learning infrastructure, while taking pressure off their families.

Attractive housing and low-traffic neighbourhoods with open areas and parks

Attractive housing is in great demand in Basel. To establish new and attractive neighbourhoods is one of the most important goals of red-green Basel. At the same time, we have to make sure that there are enough open areas and parks for the whole population of Basel.

Red-green Basel is working on significantly improving public transit for the benefit of the local people and commuters. The street network for pedestrians and bikers has to be massively improved in close cooperation with the officially recognized "Quartiervertretungen,” which coordinate and communicate the needs and demands of the local people.

Mirjam Ballmer, Grossrätin GRÜNE (Liste 8, Wahlkreis Kleinbasel)

- Projektleiterin Naturschutzpolitik bei Pro Natura
- Vorstand Grüne Partei und junges grünes bündnis
- Kulturstadt Jetzt
- Pfadi

Links:
www.mirjamballmer.ch
www.jungesgrünesbündnis.ch
http://bs.gruene.ch

Peter Jossi, Grossratskandidat SP (Liste 5, Wahlkreis Grossbasel-West)

- Koordinator SP KMU-Netzwerk (BS), selbständiger Berater / www.bionetz.ch
- GL-Mitglied SP BS (QV-Koordination)
- Vizepräsident Primarschulinspektion Basel,
- Vizepräsident Quartierkoordination St.Johann

Links:
http://www.sp-bs.ch/de/index.php
www.sp-bs.ch/de/db/showportrait.php?id=58
www.smartvote.ch/smartvote/popups/candidate_portrait/portrait_overview.php?cid=10108&eid=22&visible=1&ext=0

Aeneid: A Black Swift

I guess I am as fascinated by the things that appear in Virgil in passing as I am by the overall story, for the things I want to comment on are all basically asides, such as this one:

Quick as a black swift darts along through the great halls
of a wealthy lord, and scavenging morsels, banquet scraps
for her chirping nestlings, all her twitterings echo now
in the empty colonnades, now in the brimming ponds.

(Book XII)

I have been watching swifts for years now, ever since I moved to Basel and was turned on to bird watching by my friend Dave, but I have never seen swifts flying inside any "great halls" here. That would be quite a sight!

Poetry-wise, I love the way Robert Fagles enjambs the first "now" here, allowing its meaning to open up in various directions, and allowing the second "now" to focus the meaning of the first "now."

Neil Young in Zurich, Aug. 21

Neil brought his "Electric Band" to Zurich last Thursday and tore the walls down with feedback and beautiful melodies. The sound of his electric guitar gets more complex and subtle with every tour, aging like a fine wine, with new flavors emerging every year, it seems.

The setlist:

1. Love And Only Love
2. Hey Hey, My My
3. Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
4. Powderfinger
5. Spirit Road
6. Cortez The Killer
7. Cinnamon Girl

Acoustic stuff:

8. Oh, Lonesome Me
9. Mother Earth
10. The Needle And The Damage Done
11. Unknown Legend
12. Heart Of Gold
13. Old Man

Back to the electric guitar:

14. Get Back To The Country
15. Just Singing A Song
16. Sea Change
17. Cowgirl In The Sand
18. Rockin' In The Free World

Encore:
19. A Day In The Life (The Beatles)

Highlights:

The explosive version of "Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere" ... Neil forgot the third verse of "Powderfinger" and sang the second verse twice ... The wonderfully slow chords of "Cortez the Killer" with the usual gorgeous guitar lines (so gorgeous that it does not matter if one is used to how gorgeous the song is) ... "Unknown Legend," which always grabs me, and was as beautiful as ever ... "Cowgirl in the Sand," with another round of intensely crescendoing noise and melody ... "Rockin' in the Free World," with its ever-present irony overloading when the crowd sings along on the chorus in such a celebratory way, apparently oblivious to the horrors described in the verses, and which took the crescendo of noise one step further ... making me wonder what else could still be done, and then came "A Day in the Life," in which Neil turned an unplayable song into a masterpiece of live performance.

Christ's middle finger

Back in graduate school, I took a three-hour philosophy seminar on Wednesday afternoons one semester. There was always a break after two hours or so, and one afternoon, my friend David and I went to the bathroom. We stood next to each other at the urinals, and then David said, "Look up." I looked up. And he said, "Now you're pissing on your shoes." I looked down. I wasn't pissing on my shoes. I turned to David, and he pointed at the wall, where someone had written "Look up" with an arrow pointing up, and up there it said the bit about the shoes.

I would probably have forgotten the whole thing, but soon after (and I like to think it was the next day), David and I sat next to each other at a lecture on Ulysses, in the middle of which the lecturer referred to the scene in which Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom step out into the night to take a pee. When the lecturer mentioned how they both looked up at the stars, David leaned over to me and said, "Now they're pissing on their shoes." We struggled to contain ourselves, and after the lecture and the Q&A, we explained to the lecturer why we had been choking back laughter during his talk. He said that he would probably never read the passage the same way again!

A few weeks ago, then, I went to the Kunstmuseum in Basel with a visiting friend, and I showed him Holbein's Christ, one of the major paintings here:
I had seen the painting quite a few times (I often show it to visitors to Basel), but I had never noticed Christ's middle finger before: look closely, yes, he is giving you the finger.

Just as that lecturer can't read the passage of Ulysses anymore without thinking of "pissing on their shoes," I will never be able to look at this painting again without a pleasant anachronistic chuckle.

New Dieter M. Gräf translations

I've got two new translations of poems by Dieter M. Gräf up at lyrikline:

Typhoon
The Pockmarked Man Kills W.

These links get you to the German versions; you then have to click at the top where the English version is linked.

I've got a few more to do for lyrikline in the coming weeks, so if you like these, keep an eye out for more. (Or buy Tousled Beauty and/or Tussi Research!)

Aeneid: Trash Talking

Trash talking, it turns out, is at least as old as the Aeneid (next time I read the Iliad, I'll have to keep an eye out for it). Here's one Numanus, "flaunting his own power to high heaven":

"But you, with your saffron braided dress, your flashy purple,
you live for lazing, lost in your dancing, your delight,
blowzy sleeves on your war-shirts, ribbons on bonnets.
Phrygian women—that's what you are—not Phrygian men!
Go traipsing over the ridge of Dindyma, catch the songs
on the double pipe you dote on so! The tambourines
they're calling for you now, and the boxwood flutes
of your Berencynthian mother perched on Ida!
Leave the fighting to men! Lay down your swords!"

(Book IX)

As Fagles's note says: "In Latin poetry, Phrygian often stands derogatorily for oriental, and thus for effeminate."

It's worth noting that Numanus is promptly shot down by Ascanius with an arrow through his head!

Songs and Poems

I wrote this as a comment on a post on Don Share's blog:

I first started writing poems regularly around 1983 or so, in a free-verse mode under the influence of Denise Levertov (CW teacher at Stanford). And I started writing songs regularly around 1985. For a long time, the two modes were quite separate for me: songs were in rhyme and meter, and poems weren't. In the mid-nineties, though, the boundary began to blur a bit, as I began to write more and more poems in meter (rhymed and unrhymed). For me, now, the only identifiable difference between verse written to be a song and verse that is not going to become a song is simple: if the verses contain a lot of enjambment, it's hard to make them a singable song, because it's hard to write melodies that won't ignore the lineation. But if the verses don't have a lot of enjambment, then they can easily be made into a song, if I find a good melody and chords.

Aeneid: To strike a spark from flint

Achates is first to strike a spark from flint,
then works to keep it alive in dry leaves,
cups it around with kindling, feeds it chips
and briskly fans the tinder into flame.

(Aeneid, Book I, trans. Robert Fagles)

I like reading poetry or other literature from long ago and coming across passages like this, in which everyday activities from the time of writing are described, things that we might know something about (like the lighting of a fire without matches) and sometimes things we know
almost nothing about, like the life of a housewife at the time, as revealed through a description of an early hour of the morning (or late late hour of the night) as the "hour a housewife rises":

that hour a housewife rises, faced with scratching out
a living with loom and Minerva's homespun crafts,
and takes the ashes first to awake the sleeping fires,
adding night to her working hours, and sets her women
toiling on at the long day's chores by torchlight—
and all to keep the bed of her husband chaste
and rear her little boys ...

(Book VIII)

Book V is about the funeral games for Anchises, Aeneas's father, and though I read the book in July, I did think of the Olympics as a descendant of such a description. And then there's this description of Orpheus playing music:

And Orpheus himself, the Thracian priest with his long robes,
keeps their rhythm strong with his lyre's seven ringing strings,
plucking now with his fingers, now with his ivory plectrum.

(Book V)

A better musician than I am, I guess, since I only play with a pick and hardly ever with
my fingers ... :-)

Human Shields on Myspace

I've finally got some stuff on Myspace for the trio I've been working with, Human Shields. Maybe soon we'll even organize a gig! :-)

Virgil and Horace

Before and after reading the Aeneid at the beach, I read David Ferry's translations of the Odes of Horace. Just as the Aeneid made me notice differences between Virgil and Homer, I noticed one significant difference between Virgil and Horace: while the Aeneid is splendid, I am more a Horatian than a Virgilian. The Odes are closer to me than Horace's friend's epic. Perhaps it's just that the Odes are closer to the dominant mode of contemporary poetry (lyricism) than the Aeneid is (even if I love verse novels).

(And isn't it fascinating how great poets so often come in pairs who knew each other well? Virgil and Horace, Goethe and Schiller, Eliot and Pound, etc.)

Aeneid

One general response I had to the Aeneid while reading it at the beach (in the Robert Fagles translation) was this: I was repeatedly struck by the image of Virgil actually sitting or standing somewhere and writing the poem. In contrast, when reading Homer (whether Iliad or Odyssey), I never had a sense of a person (be it Homer himself or anyone) actually writing the poem.

Of course, this could be just a side-effect of the fact that I know that a historically identifiable person named Virgil actually wrote the Aeneid, while that is not the case for Homer's epics. But I also had the feeling that this had something to do with how the Latin epic reads.

Perhaps this is something classicists have studied: Virgil as a written text vs. Homer as a text composed orally. What struck me most about it, finally, was that Fagles apparently succeeded in translating Homer and Virgil differently enough to create this sensation.

Bicycling from Todtnauberg

Browsing through the archives of Verse Daily on my return from vacation, I stumbled on the name of my friend Suzanne Zweizig, whose poem "Bicycling from Todtnauberg" (originally published in Subtropics) appeared on VD a few days ago. No wonder I thought I heard "philosophy's black cackle / at my back" (or maybe that was a "scrap-metal voice"?).

Quietude

I have not been blogging much lately, as I have been too busy with my things to do this summer. And now I'll be off-line with Virgil at the shore for two weeks.

Ratdog does Morning Dew

Bob Weir said in an interview I read a while back that he did not really want to do "Morning Dew" with Ratdog, because it was too much Jerry Garcia's song, or something like that. Well, now they've done it, and it brought tears to this old Deadhead's eyes. And probably to Bob's, as well!

Ringing Redstarts

Lovers of birds and poetry should check out Matt Merritt's wonderful "Ringing Redstarts," on Poetry Daily today.

My own poem with redstarts is called "Static." Now, why would two poems about these birds contain the word "static"? Listen to their call here.

Football and the Philosophers

There's an amusing column in the Basler Zeitung today in which Siegfried Schibli takes passages from famous philosophers and replaces one central word in each passage by the word "football." ("Soccer" to you American readers of this blog.)

The funniest one is from Schopenhauer: "Bisher subsumierte man den Begriff Fussball unter den Begriff Kraft: dagegen mache ich es gerade umgekehrt und will jede Kraft in der Natur als Fussball gedacht wissen. Man glaube ja nicht, dass dies Wortstreit, oder gleichgültig sei: vielmehr ist es von der allerhöchsten Bedeutsamkeit und Wichtigkeit. Denn dem Begriffe Kraft liegt, wie allen andern, zuletzt die anschauliche Erkenntnis der objektiven Welt, d. h. die Erscheinung, die Vorstellung, zum Grunde, und daraus ist er geschöpft." Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, Zweites Buch, 1818. Das Wort "Wille" wurde durch "Fussball" ersetzt.

One could try to the same thing with poems:

"You gave me footballs first a year ago;
"They called me the football girl."
—Yet when we came back, late, from the Football garden,
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.

*

Let be be finale of seem.
The only football is the football of ice-cream.

*

O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the footballer from the football?

*

SOMETHING there is that doesn't love a football,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,

*

Shall I compare thee to a football match?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.

*

Whither is fled the football's gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

*

For football, though it have no tongue, will speak
With most miraculous organ, I'll have these Players
Play something like the football of my father
Before mine uncle.

Football lines

A friend of mine just reminded me of this line from Gary Lineker:

"Football is a simple game; 22 men chase a ball for 90 minutes, and at the end the Germans always win."

And that reminded me of the movie Lola rennt (Run Lola Run in English), in which one of the characters quotes the German trainer Sepp Herberger: "Der Ball ist rund, das Spiel dauert neunzig Minuten." In English, "the ball is round; the game lasts 90 minutes."

When Run Lola Run appeared in English, Stuart Klawans reviewed it in The Nation and concluded his review by citing the character's citation of Herberger: "Confronted with questions about meaning, a figure at the beginning of Run Lola Run shrugs and says, 'The ball is round. The game lasts ninety minutes.' That's a good answer, if your head's filled with the same stuff as the ball."

What struck me when I read that back in 1999 (when I still subscribed to The Nation) was that no German reviewer would ever make anything of that line. In the German, it will never be anything more than a throwaway line, a funny citation of Herberger that would at most lead to the ironic remark that the movie itself is 90 minutes long.

Speedbath

Fans of Kristin Hersh (or Throwing Muses) will be interested in knowing that Kristin Hersh is releasing one song a month from her forthcoming CD Speedbath for free download with an organization called Cash Music. Go here to check out the wonderful tunes!

You can also subscribe to the download series for as little as $10 for three months. It's great to see musicians experimenting with alternative distribution methods like this. What would an analogous approach for poets be?

To Make Me Who I Am

I have mentioned this line from Borges before (several times actually), but it is one that always comes back to me: "I shall remain in Borges, not in myself (if it is true that I am someone), but I recognize myself less in his books than in many others or in the laborious strumming of a guitar."

It came back to me again in Reginald Shepherd's "To Make Me Who I Am," the long autobiographical essay which opens his Orpheus in the Bronx, when I recognized myself in this:

My gifts were also my curse, and I wished that my differences (I knew that I was smart and that being smart was better) also came with the power to defend myself against those who rejected me.

By Way of Introduction

Last month, I read Reginald Shepherd's essay collection Orpheus in the Bronx, a little while after having read his Fata Morgana (which I have been commenting on off and on for the past few weeks). In his brief introduction to the collection, Shepherd wonderfully captures something that people should keep in mind when they talk about the politics of literature: "I have been oppressed by many things in my life, but not by literature, which enacts possibility rather than closure."

I have been oppressed by many fewer things in my life than Reginald (I was not raised by a single mother in the Bronx, for example), but I could not agree with him more: one thing that has never oppressed me is literature. It has always freed me from whatever wanted to hem me in.

Light Years

In my post on previous post, on Reginald Shepherd's "With the Wind Blowing Through It," I said that it's not depth but difference that poets find interesting, while the popular conception of poetry is that depth is the point.

"Light Years," the next poem in Shepherd's Fata Morgana (you can find it here if you page down a bit) attributes the search for depth to the you that the poem is addressed to:

You walk ahead as if you know
the way, full of purpose and intent
on seeing what's to be seen
if you look hard enough, look deep
enough, so certain the world is as you find it.

Look at what the search for depth is associated with: a sense of purposeful, intentional direction; a belief that there are depths where meaning can be found; a confident belief in one's perception of the world. The poem's speaker has a different relationship to the world in the poem's final lines:

... You call me back
to the world of things, sometimes
I don't know why I should go there.

The poet, we poets like to think, is someone who "looks hard enough" and, in many strains of contemporary poetry, finds "no ideas / but in things." But this first-person voice seeks to escape from things, not into deeper meanings, not into what is hidden inside the things, but ... where?

I reread the poem now to look for clues as to how to answer that question, and while doing so I thought, "But now I am looking hard enough ..." But my answer is not between the lines; it's on the surface, in the lines themselves, and it's in the lines about surface right before the ones I first quoted above:

... Late afternoon flatters my skin
with pattern, and then the setting sun undoes
the picture. Dark, light, bright
slip through my fingers, color distinctions
fade with the day.

The poet does not look harder or deeper; the poet looks at surface patterns and traces their changes over time. — I'm not sure I really agree with that statement, but I am always tempted by the idea that poetry is not about depth, and I'm enjoying tracing the lines of that idea by thinking about Shepherd's poems.

With the Wind Blowing Through It

Poets have a tendency to present simple things as being deeply meaningful—or so says the popular understanding of poetry. One response to this understanding is to deny it—but if your poems don't aim at some meaning beyond the simple statement of the words themselves, then what are you writing them for? Another response is to accept that understanding but argue that it's not as simple as that—which accepts that understanding at a different level! A third response is to embrace it: yes, we poets are finding deep meaning in simple things. But then you risk sounding exactly like a poet is assumed to sound by those who never read poetry—the "wow, man, deep" school, if you will. A fourth response is to historicize it—poets are like soothsayers, who take their auguries from the patterns the birds fly in the sky. All this as an introduction to the last three lines of Reginald Shepherd's "With the Wind Blowing Through It" (from Fata Morgana):

The same sky keeps happening
but differently each time
(today with finches in it)

Perhaps it is the poet's willingness to see what is different in the same that makes the poet a poet, while also leading to the popular conception (misconception?) of poetry as something deep put in a simple way. But it's not the depth that is the point for the poet (or is it?), but the difference—the defamiliarization of the sky, in this case (sorry, Shklovsky sometimes rears his charming head). Or to be less theoretical and more poetic about it, in the words of Paul Celan, "something intervenes."

"Oh, wow, man, that's deep."

Summer Plans

My nephew Alex asked me what I am doing this summer, so I began to write a list. It kept getting longer:

I have lots of things to do this summer: translate essays by Durs Grünbein for a selected essays book to be published next year by Farrar Straus; translate poems by Dieter M. Gräf for lyrikline.org (check out the site; it's very cool); translate poems by Jacques Réda because that's an ongoing project; edit the project report for a University of Basel research project on "iconic criticism" called "eikones"; spend two weeks at the North Sea coast in Germany in July (where I plan to read the Aeneid); write poems as always; play guitar and mandolin; finish the demo recording with my trio Human Shields and put together a package of recording and photos to try to get gigs; prepare my classes for September; send Luisa to Kindergarten in August (a momentous occasion, as my Mom would put it); play with the kids lots in July after we get back from the North Sea because Andrea will have to work.

As I wrote to Alex: "Does that sound like enough?" And I'm sure a few things are slipping my mind!

Writer and Author

I'm correcting a German-English translation for an exam, and the German word Schriftsteller appears in it. My sense is that this corresponds to "writer," and that there is a difference between "writer" and "author," even though the two terms can refer to the same person.

I would articulate this difference as follows: a writer is someone who writes books (as a profession?), but an author is someone who has written one particular book, or a set of books. So one would say "Jane Smith is a writer," but one would say "Jane Smith is the author of Title of Her Book," or "Jane Smith is the author of four books."

Comments welcome on this distinction, of course!

Euphoria

This cartoon from the May 26, 2008, issue of The New Yorker made me laugh out loud a few minutes ago. It still makes me chuckle now!

(Are you the person it made me think of? Not quite sure why it made me think of you, but it did!)

*

(And I just browsed the Cartoon Bank for a moment and found another one that made me laugh out loud!)

Steamboat Switzerland

The wonderful Swiss jazz drummer Lucas Niggli will be touring North America with his band Steamboat Switzerland later this month:

19.6.08 US - Los Angeles STEAMBOAT SWITZERLAND ( Dominik Blum, Marino Pliakas, LN)

20.6.08 US - Oakland STEAMBOAT SWITZERLAND

23.6.08 CAN- Victoria, Jazzfestival STEAMBOAT SWITZERLAND

25.6.08 CAN - Vancouver, Jazzfestival STEAMBOAT SWITZERLAND

27.6.08 CAN - Calgary, Jazzfestival STEAMBOAT SWITZERLAND

28.6.08 CAN - Montreal, Jazzfestival STEAMBOAT SWITZERLAND

If you live in or near any of these cities, be sure to check out Niggli's band. He is an extraordinary drummer and composer!

Poetry Festival in Britain or Ireland next May

I'm toying with the idea of teaching a poetry seminar in the spring of 2009. The seminar would be based on a poetry festival taking place in Britain or Ireland in May—if I can find one.

So does anyone know of a poetry festival taking place in Britain or Ireland from May 1-3, 2009, or from May 21-24?

Those are the dates I am looking for because May 1 is a holiday in Basel, and it happens to be on a Friday in 2009, while May 21 is also a holiday (Ascension), and the Friday after Ascension is a day off from classes at the University.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

A Handful of Sand

I'm always putting things into poems
where I think they'll keep ...

These are the first two lines of Reginald Shepherd's poem "A Handful of Sand" (like all the ones I've quoted over the past few weeks, it's from his collection Fata Morgana). Again, my response to the poem (at least the one I am developing here) is more of an association from than a reading of the poem. In this case, it was nice to hear a poet articulate something that I have sometimes felt: one purpose of poems for the poet is to act as mnemonics to help one remember things that one does not want to forget.

If this becomes the poet's only reason to write poems, then it's probably time to stop trying to get published, since what one finds memorable may or may not be something one can turn into a successful poem. More than just this desire is necessary—but it's an interesting desire nonetheless.

(Sometimes I get the feeling that some published poets don't distinguish between anecdotes and poems ...)

I hope that RS is continuing to recover well from his serious illness last month. In the light of that illness, the last line of "A Handful of Sand" could have been painful to re-read now:

I will not entirely die.

Wire

Before Houdini diced with death and lost
the final bet which burst his perineum
he stretched a wire from end to end of Pest
above the childhood ghetto in his mind,

These are the opening lines of "Wire," one of five poems by my friend Padraig Rooney that are in the current issue (June 2008) of the Concelebratory Shoehorn Review. Check them out! (And the rest of the issue as well.)

The Fourth Daily Poem Project, Final Round Results

THE FOURTH DAILY POEM PROJECT, FINAL ROUND RESULTS

The winner of the final round of my fourth Daily Poem Project (see the call for votes here) is Martha Rhodes's Come to Me, His Blood, which received 7 votes out of 50 cast. As those numbers suggest, the voting was incredibly close, with Bill Zavatsky's Ode to the Maker of Odes in second place with 6 votes, and three poems tied for third with five votes: Mary Jo Salter's Point of View, John Rybicki's Her Body Like a Lantern Next to Me, and Elaine Sexton's Night. Fire. All thirteen finalists received at least one vote, and quite a few people commented on how many of the poems they really enjoyed. (Of course, each of the finalists had already been chosen in the week that it won.)

I would like to thank everyone who participated, especially those of you who took the time to vote almost every week! Some serious emailing brought in a bunch more voters for the final round, several of whom commented on how much they liked the idea. That encouragement may well lead me to start a fifth DPP in August or September ...

The Tendency of Dropped Objects to Fall

Reginald Shepherd has been quiet on his blog because he was seriously ill for weeks—close to death even. My comments on his poems were, unknowingly, made during his illness. I have more comments on them to come, as well as on his essays.

Here's another moment that reminded me of W. G. Sebald, this one from "The Tendency of Dropped Objects to Fall":

..... In exile Andromache's handmaid

builds a miniature Troy with toothpicks
and superglue, with matchsticks
from a story that she read: a helpless glitter
with tinfoil walls and someone

rolls over it in his sleep.

In The Rings of Saturn, Sebald wrote about a man who built a miniature version of the Temple of Jerusalem. There's some information about Sebald's source here.

The building of miniatures with toothpicks reminds me of Brian Phillips's comparison between poetry and shortwave-radio operators, in this essay. Poetry as toothpick temples and Troys?

Karl-Marx-Allee

I'm surely biased by my own experience living out at the end of the former Stalin-Allee on Jessnerstrasse in the former East Berlin in 1991-92, but I enjoyed this poem by John Koethe about his sense of the former East Berlin, "Karl-Marx-Allee."

The Fourth Daily Poem Project, Final Round Call for Votes

THE FOURTH DAILY POEM PROJECT, FINAL ROUND

Here are the poems to vote for in the final round of my fourth Daily Poem Project. They are the winners of the twelve rounds from Monday, February 18, to Sunday, May 11 (each week's poems being those that appeared on Poetry Daily that week; week 9 ended in a tie, hence the two poems from that week):

1. Alison Brackenbury's Edward Thomas's Daughter
2. Martha Zweig's Overturn
3. B. T. Shaw's We End, Like Galileo
4. Damian Walford Davies's Plague
5. Mary Jo Salter's Point of View
6. Bill Zavatsky's Ode to the Maker of Odes
7. Marie Howe's The Star Market
8. Adam Zagajewski's In a Little Apartment, translated by Clare Cavanagh
9a. Sidney Wade's Siamo a la Frutta
9b. John Rybicki's Her Body Like a Lantern Next to Me
10. Elaine Sexton's Night. Fire
11. Lisa Williams's Horizontally, I Moved
12. Martha Rhodes's Come to Me, His Blood

HOW TO VOTE: Please vote for only ONE poem. You can send your vote to me by email or as a comment on the blog. If you want to vote by commenting but do not want your vote to appear on the blog, you just have to say so in your comment (I moderate all comments). (If you read this on Facebook, please vote on my blog and not as a comment on Facebook.) I will post comments as they come in (unless you tell me not to post the comment, of course).

You may vote by the title, the author's name, or the number of the poem in the list above. Please make a final decision and vote for only one poem (although it is always interesting to see people's lists).

I will not set a particular deadline for you to vote by, as I will be trying to recruit lots of people to vote in this final round. (If you vote, feel free to pass on the call for votes to as many people as you like!) As long as this post does not say that voting is closed, you may still vote! (As of now, Friday, May 23, the voting is still open and I'd love to hear from anyone who is interested!)

If you would like to receive an email announcing the posting of the results, make sure to get me your email address somehow (if it is not available through your blogger profile or the like, say).

The Fourth Daily Poem Project, Week 12 results

THE FOURTH DAILY POEM PROJECT, WEEK TWELVE RESULTS

The winner of week twelve of my fourth Daily Poem Project is Come to Me, His Blood, by Martha Rhodes, which received 4 votes out of 14 cast. Aaron Baker's The Red Snake came in second with three votes, while three other poems received two votes each!

My thanks to everyone who voted. I'll be posting the call for votes for the final round of voting in a few minutes (and hence I will not list the winners of the previous rounds at the end of this message, as I otherwise have done).

Snowdrops and Summer Snowflakes, Drooping

Another moment in Reginald Shepherd's Fata Morgana that caught my attention was this, from the poem "Snowdrops and Summer Snowflakes, Drooping":

The river is silted with sentiments, Ophelia
sings flowers in hell to all the goodnight
ladies martyred to plots ...

That makes this poem a much better version of one I wrote long ago, "Gretchen and Ophelia," which toyed around with the similarities between Gretchen in Goethe's Faust and Ophelia, the way that they die over and over again on stages all over the world.

Where is Hamlet being played tonight? Who is playing Hamlet? Who Ophelia? Where is Faust being played? And who is playing Gretchen? Questions like the claim that somewhere a radio station is playing a Beatles tune as you read this. Which station? What tune? "Things We Said Today" would be my choice.

Shepherd continues with all the things he would give Ophelia, all the flowers, and concludes with this:

... What I wouldn't give
to hear her shut up that infernal singing,
walk out of sullen water open-eyed.

Things Waiting To Be Dangerous

Before Larry Craig brought gay cruising methods to public attention, Reginald Shepherd described them in his poem "Things Waiting To Be Dangerous" (first in the American Poetry Review and then in his book Fata Morgana) and then went some other places, too:

... (Bring it on, the waiting
in a basement stall for someone to sit down,
tap one foot yes, the workmen's overtime

contempt, a waste of spirit and I don't even
drink. Bring all the men in bedrooms
bathrooms backrooms bookstores alleys

who left me unsatisfied, came with me
after all. I miss them now. Bring on my
retrovirus, invisible catastrophe, distracted

palindrome and abstract doom,
another decade's style in sex, or maybe
it was imported, bring me something to drink. Something

gets tired, undresses for bed.)
...

That's quite a parentheses.

Varieties of Reading

In "In Pursuit of Reading," my old friend Don Brown has posted a long and interesting set of reflections on the different modes of reading he has gone through in his life, from his pre-college days (he only went to college at 26) of voracious reading "for himself" though the experiences of various kinds of lists chosen by others in college and grad school to lists he chose when teaching courses and all the reading of student work that he has to do. A fascinating post that I highly recommend.

Taste

Jonathan Mayhew has some sharp thoughts about "taste" here:

The mystery of taste is not why we don't like the same things, but why we ever correspond at all. If taste is subjective, then there's no reason two people would ever agree. So there has to be something in the object itself. It's not just that we like Mozart because we're told it's supposed to be great: the response is genuine.

This reminded me of some claims I made in an essay I think I have linked to before:

Taste is not an individual matter; the idea that "there's no arguing about taste" is backwards: there is only arguing about taste. In fact, tastes are the communal result of argument: our "individual" tastes only develop within a context of differing tastes in which each of us confronts others with our response to works.

Robert Rauschenberg

I have long had a quotation from Robert Rauschenberg as one of the random quotes one gets if one receives an email from me (using random signature files). I found it in a New Yorker profile a while back:

"I don't want a painting to be just an expression of my personality. I feel it ought to be much better than that."

Ms. Baroque has another good one here.

RIP, RR.

At Weep

Reginald Shepherd's poems seem to resonate with other things for me, as in my post on "Even This." The poem "At Weep" (on-line here with several other RS poems) reminded me of one of my favorite books, W. G. Sebald's The Emigrants. Here's Shepherd:

Song litters upstate New York maps
with classical towns, Attica, Utica, Syracuse,
Troy, lining the throughways with Latin

and Greek: Ithaca and the other islands
fingering slim lakes.

Here's Sebald (as translated by Michael Hulse):

Monroe, Monticello, Middletown, Wurtsboro, Wawarsing, Colchester and Cadosia, Deposit, Delhi, Neversink and Nineveh—I felt as if I and the car I sat in were being guided by remote control through an outsize toyland where the place names had been picked at random by some invisible giant child, from the ruins of another world long since abandoned.

I remember driving through the south and passing not only Athens but also Philadelphia and perhaps even a Cleveland! This from someone who spent six years living in a Toledo that is not in Spain. :-)

The Fourth Daily Poem Project, Week 12 call for Votes

THE FOURTH DAILY POEM PROJECT, WEEK TWELVE

Here are the poems to vote for in week twelve of my fourth Daily Poem Project (the poems on Poetry Daily from Monday, May 5, to Sunday, May 11):

78. Come to Me, His Blood, by Martha Rhodes
79. Like Something Christenberry Pictured, by C.D. Wright
80. The Red Snake, by Aaron Baker
81. The Hungry Gap-Time,, by Thomas Lux
82. I Lost My Horse, by Cecily Parks
83. Green Animals, by Michele Glazer
84. A Man is Stalked by a White Arctic Fox, by Jynne Dilling Martin

This is the last week of twelve weeks. Next week, all the winners will be put together for a final vote.

HOW TO VOTE: Please vote for only ONE poem. You can send your vote to me by email or as a comment on the blog. If you want to vote by commenting but do not want your vote to appear on the blog, you just have to say so in your comment (I moderate all comments). (If you read this on Facebook, please vote on my blog and not as a comment on Facebook.) I will post comments as they come in (unless you tell me not to post the comment, of course).

You may vote by the title, the author's name, or the number of the poem in the list above. Please make a final decision and vote for only one poem (although it is always interesting to see people's lists).

Please VOTE BY SUNDAY, May 18! I will still accept votes as long as I have not posted the final results, which I will do on the evening of May 18. If you would like to receive an email announcing the posting of the results, make sure to get me your email address somehow (if it is not available through your blogger profile or the like, say).

The winner of week 1 was Alison Brackenbury's "Edward Thomas's daughter."
The winner of week 2 was Martha Zweig's "Overturn."
The winner of week 3 was B. T. Shaw's "We End, Like Galileo."
The winner of week 4 was Damian Walford Davies's "Plague."
The winner of week 5 was Mary Jo Salter's "Point of View."
The winner of week 6 was Bill Zavatsky's "Ode to the Maker of Odes."
The winner of week 7 was Marie Howe's "The Star Market."
The winner of week 8 was Adam Zagajewski's "In a Little Apartment," translated by Clare Cavanagh
The co-winners of week 9 were Sidney Wade's Siamo a la Frutta and John Rybicki's Her Body Like a Lantern Next to Me.
The winner of week 10 was Elaine Sexton's Night. Fire.
The winner of week 11 was Lisa Williams's Horizontally, I Moved.

The Fourth Daily Poem Project, Week 11 results

THE FOURTH DAILY POEM PROJECT, WEEK ELEVEN RESULTS

The winner of week eleven of my fourth Daily Poem Project is Horizontally, I Moved, by Lisa Williams, which received 5 votes out of 14 cast. Two poems tied for second with three votes: Pas de Deux, by Ciaran Carson, and Slept, by Jennifer Chang. (For more on Carson's book, see my post here.)

My thanks to everyone who voted. I'll be posting the call for votes for week twelve in a few minutes.

Winner of week one: Alison Brackenbury's "Edward Thomas's daughter"
Winner of week two: Martha Zweig's "Overturn"
Winner of week three: B. T. Shaw's "We End, Like Galileo"
Winner of week four: Damian Walford Davies's "Plague"
Winner of week five: Mary Jo Salter's "Point of View"
Winner of week six: Bill Zavatsky's "Ode to the Maker of Odes"
Winner of week seven: Marie Howe's "The Star Market"
Winner of week eight: Adam Zagajewski's "In a Little Apartment," (tr. Clare Cavanagh)
Co-winner of week nine: John Rybicki's "Her Body Like a Lantern Next to Me"
Co-winner of week nine: Sidney Wade's "Siamo a la Frutta"
Winner of week ten: Elaine Sexton's "Night. Fire"

Even This; Eugene

Resonances between poems and songs are often intriguing, especially if I am pretty sure the poem and the song have never met outside my mind.

Here's a phrase from Reginald Shepherd's "Even This," from his book Fata Morgana:

... Keep walking
and the lake finds you,

That recalled Greg Brown's "Eugene," from his CD The Evening Call:

The dog is bound to find me sooner or later
Sometimes you got to not look too hard
Just let the dog find you

*

Both of these are available on-line, but instead of looking them up on-line, you should buy the collection and the album. They are both magnificent.

How People Disappear

As I have noted before, I like the effect when a poem (or story or novel or book of any kind) seems to coincide with whatever is going on around me while I am reading it.

Back in March, while reading Reginald Shepherd's intoxicating collection Fata Morgana, I noted the snow outside when reading these lines from the poem "How People Disappear":

.... Late March
keeps marching in old weather,
another slick of snow to trip
and fall into, another bank
of inconvenient fact.

(To be precise, as I noted in the book, it was March 26, and there was snow on the ground in Basel.)

"How People Disappear" is a brilliant version of a type of poem (death of a parent) that must always somehow circumvent the easy generation of feelings afforded by the sadness of its content. The poet must avoid anything that might seem like a desire for pity, while at the same time articulating the feelings that the experience generated (and making the poem a vehicle for those feelings).

A completely different point about the same poem: I searched for it and found the original publication in the archive on the Ploughshares website. But I also found several copies of the poem at various poem sites (americanpoems.com, plagiarist.com, poemhunter.com). If it weren't on the Ploughshares site (and on Reginald's blog here), then I would feel uncomfortable about using the "illegitimate" sites to refer to it. Or should I steal it from the poem-gathering sites and put it here on my blog? I could ask Reginald (if you read this, Reginald, what do you think?), but I am also wondering how others feel about such republication of poems on-line (not because someone loved your poem and put it on their blog, but because it has been put on an on-line collection of poems that, I assume, does not pay for the rights).

Ivy Alvarez and Jill Alexander Essbaum

Jill Alexander Essbaum (left) and Ivy Alvarez gave an energetic reading in Basel last Monday (May 5), mostly from their books Harlot (JAE) and Mortal (IA). I was pleased to count 16 people in attendance, which is pretty good for an English-language reading in a German-speaking city! I hope that I will be able to organize at least one reading in the fall semester. Thanks to Jill and Ivy for their excellent and compelling performances and to all those who attended for making it worthwhile! (And thanks to Mark for the photo!)

Eyewear: "Thomas Hardy Listens to Louis Armstrong"

Todd Swift features little ol' me today at Eyewear, with my poem "Thomas Hardy Listens to Louis Armstrong." Thank you, Todd!

The Fourth Daily Poem Project, Week 11 call for votes

THE FOURTH DAILY POEM PROJECT, WEEK ELEVEN

Here are the poems to vote for in week eleven of my fourth Daily Poem Project (the poems on Poetry Daily from Monday, April 28, to Sunday, May 4):

71. Question About an Old Question, by John Hollander
72. Pas de Deux, by Ciaran Carson (vote only on the first poem)
73. Belief System, by Jorie Graham
74. Slept, by Jennifer Chang
75. Shopping Urban, by Jane Shore
76. Horizontally, I Moved, by Lisa Williams
77. Sleepless in the cold dark, by Reginald Gibbons

This is the eleventh week of twelve weeks, at the end of which all the winners will be put together for a final vote.

HOW TO VOTE: Please vote for only ONE poem. You can send your vote to me by email or as a comment on the blog. If you want to vote by commenting but do not want your vote to appear on the blog, you just have to say so in your comment (I moderate all comments). (If you read this on Facebook, please vote on my blog and not as a comment on Facebook.) I will post comments as they come in (unless you tell me not to post the comment, of course).

You may vote by the title, the author's name, or the number of the poem in the list above. Please make a final decision and vote for only one poem (although it is always interesting to see people's lists).

Please VOTE BY SUNDAY, May 11! But I will still accept votes as long as I have not posted the final results, which I will do on May 12. If you would like to receive an email announcing the posting of the results, make sure to get me your email address somehow (if it is not available through your blogger profile or the like, say).

The winner of week 1 was Alison Brackenbury's "Edward Thomas's daughter."
The winner of week 2 was Martha Zweig's "Overturn."
The winner of week 3 was B. T. Shaw's "We End, Like Galileo."
The winner of week 4 was Damian Walford Davies's "Plague."
The winner of week 5 was Mary Jo Salter's "Point of View."
The winner of week 6 was Bill Zavatsky's "Ode to the Maker of Odes."
The winner of week 7 was Marie Howe's "The Star Market."
The winner of week 8 was Adam Zagajewski's "In a Little Apartment," translated by Clare Cavanagh
The co-winners of week 9 were Sidney Wade's Siamo a la Frutta and John Rybicki's Her Body Like a Lantern Next to Me.
The winner of week 10 was Elaine Sexton's Night. Fire.

The Fourth Daily Poem Project, Week 10 results

THE FOURTH DAILY POEM PROJECT, WEEK TEN RESULTS

Well, it took me a while to get to it, but here it is:

The winner of week ten of my fourth Daily Poem Project is Night. Fire, by Elaine Sexton, which received 4 votes out of 12 cast. Two poems tied for second with three votes: Grandmother, by Valzhyna Mort (tr. by the author, Elizabeth Oehlkers Wright and Franz Wright), and Treason, by James Tate. I think that was the closest vote yet!

My thanks to everyone who voted. I'll be posting the call for votes for week eleven in a few minutes.

Winner of week one: Alison Brackenbury's "Edward Thomas's daughter"
Winner of week two: Martha Zweig's "Overturn"
Winner of week three: B. T. Shaw's "We End, Like Galileo"
Winner of week four: Damian Walford Davies's "Plague"
Winner of week five: Mary Jo Salter's "Point of View"
Winner of week six: Bill Zavatsky's "Ode to the Maker of Odes"
Winner of week seven: Marie Howe's "The Star Market"
Winner of week eight: Adam Zagajewski's "In a Little Apartment," (tr. Clare Cavanagh)
Co-winner of week nine: John Rybicki's "Her Body Like a Lantern Next to Me"
Co-winner of week nine: Sidney Wade's "Siamo a la Frutta"

Week 10 vote still open

I'm going out all day, so the voting for week 10 of the Daily Poem Project is still open. Click here to see the call for votes and cast your vote! (Also, I have a tie right now, and I am hoping it will be broken!)

I'll be back in the evening (of Sunday, May 4, "tin soldiers and Nixon coming"; RIP Chris J.) and will post the final results then.