(Re)birthday
by Julia Lovett
The levees broke 72 hours before
I blew out 17 candles stuck in a
structurally sound carrot cake.
A chorus sings around my dining room table,
I drown in cheer while the water flows
into living rooms,
over balconies,
submerging rooftops.
Scrapbooks mildew as Mom snaps
shots for our own family albums.
Unwrapping presents,
the National Guard raps down doors
looters ransack memories.
I open a package; a newsreel streams:
Kayaks paddling on Lake Pontchartrain
(in the French Quarter)
Families cramming on top of home plate
in the Astrodome.
Corpses floating down abandoned city blocks.
A second line march without saxophones or beads—
thousands washed up on Houston’s dry shores.
Refuge. Relocation. But, return…?
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Monday, April 20, 2009
Remembering: 10 years after Columbine
Bracing/embracing arms
by Julia Lovett
Algebra, Shakespeare, fruit flies in bio,
US Civ (Bill of Rights):
safety in schoolbooks,
pedagogical protection.
Educating the innocent,
but two bloodied the books—
a bibliographic battlefield,
students sought shelter in the stacks.
1 + 1 = evil arithmetic
2 calculate murder
violent geography mapping
a massacre.
Punnett squares can’t predict
unnatural selection.
Is homicide a recessive trait?
Packing backpacks with the
second amendment right to
bear arms—open crossfire
in classrooms.
With no use for their library
cards, they checked themselves out
indefinite due date in a celestial catalog.
“So wise so young, they say
do never live long.”*
* Shakespeare, Richard III (III, i, 79).
Monday, March 30, 2009
The Poem that Can’t Be Written
The Poem that Can't be Written
by Lawrence Raab
is different from the poem
that is not written, or the many
that are never finished—those boats
lost in the fog, adrift
in the windless latitudes,
the charts useless, the water gone.
In the poem that cannot
be written there is no danger,
no ponderous cargo of meaning,
no meaning at all. And this
is its splendor, this is how
it becomes an emblem,
not of failure or loss,
but of the impossible.
So the wind rises. The tattered sails
billow, and the air grows sweeter.
A green island appears.
Everyone is saved.
The New Yorker, 4/6
by Lawrence Raab
is different from the poem
that is not written, or the many
that are never finished—those boats
lost in the fog, adrift
in the windless latitudes,
the charts useless, the water gone.
In the poem that cannot
be written there is no danger,
no ponderous cargo of meaning,
no meaning at all. And this
is its splendor, this is how
it becomes an emblem,
not of failure or loss,
but of the impossible.
So the wind rises. The tattered sails
billow, and the air grows sweeter.
A green island appears.
Everyone is saved.
The New Yorker, 4/6
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Myles’ and Hopkinson’s Stylistic Surprises
Monday I ran into Carlos. We exchanged confusion about the next evening’s event—a science fiction writer? My confusion grew as attendees entered into our seminar room Tuesday afternoon. I feel this event drew the greatest cross-section of the Georgetown community and beyond: a large group of high school students from Kansas, a handful of professors that do not always come to Lannan events, a quorum of graduate students more interested in gender and queer theory than poetry. And then there were the six of us Lannan fellows that had very little idea what to expect. I entered with no knowledge or attachment to either author’s work, but left with a great appreciation for their creative contributions to queer literature.
I was most interested in the personal genealogy Myles presented as to how her writing style evolved in the shadow of the precedent set by other queer writers. She acknowledged the spaces of absence that fill Sapho’s poetry and her challenge to mix the public and private sphere, paid homage to the writing style of a Swiss novelist, Robert Walzer, who constructed novels out of bits and pieces (a technique that aided her transition from poetry to fiction), and referenced John Wieners’ serialization of things in his poetry as an influence in her own voice. Myles approaches art as a grand lust and sees time as the place where the queer past and queer futures meet—she uses this time as a thrift store scouring the racks of history (and futures) for meaningful material and inspiration.
Nalo Hopkinson provided a similar defense of her genre, which was particularly useful for me as a non-science fiction reader. She described science fiction as an exploration of the effects of changing communities and an attempt to use dislocation, alternative realities, reality itself to evaluate social circumstances. She identified time and space as the primary dislocations that create spaces for change. For a style of writing that I am neither familiar with nor a self-identified fan of, I really enjoyed her reading and the objective of her work. Her first short story, “Flying Lessons” was rich with modernity and the nostalgia of childhood. She was a wonderful storyteller, her characters came alive with distinct voices and her prose flew between lyrical descriptions and efficient plot details. I do not know that I will race to read a book of hers, but I loved her performance and the meaning I attribute to her text because of it.
I am however anxious to read Myles’ forthcoming Inferno. It takes gumption to title a novel Inferno, but after the selection I heard I feel it fits. Myles lucidly chronicles the confusion of her protagonist’s inner dialogue and personal experiences. She offers a genuine glimpse into sexual self-identification and creates a language to aptly express those frustrations. During the question and answer session, someone asked about her pauses, a habit I too was curious about. She had a habit in her poetry and prose to read briskly and conversationally and then breathe at the page breaks. These breaths (pauses) gave her reader a moment to process, but then she picked right back up again emphasizing the necessity to continue, to move on, to explore the queer futures she had previously referenced and encouraged we invest in.
I was most interested in the personal genealogy Myles presented as to how her writing style evolved in the shadow of the precedent set by other queer writers. She acknowledged the spaces of absence that fill Sapho’s poetry and her challenge to mix the public and private sphere, paid homage to the writing style of a Swiss novelist, Robert Walzer, who constructed novels out of bits and pieces (a technique that aided her transition from poetry to fiction), and referenced John Wieners’ serialization of things in his poetry as an influence in her own voice. Myles approaches art as a grand lust and sees time as the place where the queer past and queer futures meet—she uses this time as a thrift store scouring the racks of history (and futures) for meaningful material and inspiration.
Nalo Hopkinson provided a similar defense of her genre, which was particularly useful for me as a non-science fiction reader. She described science fiction as an exploration of the effects of changing communities and an attempt to use dislocation, alternative realities, reality itself to evaluate social circumstances. She identified time and space as the primary dislocations that create spaces for change. For a style of writing that I am neither familiar with nor a self-identified fan of, I really enjoyed her reading and the objective of her work. Her first short story, “Flying Lessons” was rich with modernity and the nostalgia of childhood. She was a wonderful storyteller, her characters came alive with distinct voices and her prose flew between lyrical descriptions and efficient plot details. I do not know that I will race to read a book of hers, but I loved her performance and the meaning I attribute to her text because of it.
I am however anxious to read Myles’ forthcoming Inferno. It takes gumption to title a novel Inferno, but after the selection I heard I feel it fits. Myles lucidly chronicles the confusion of her protagonist’s inner dialogue and personal experiences. She offers a genuine glimpse into sexual self-identification and creates a language to aptly express those frustrations. During the question and answer session, someone asked about her pauses, a habit I too was curious about. She had a habit in her poetry and prose to read briskly and conversationally and then breathe at the page breaks. These breaths (pauses) gave her reader a moment to process, but then she picked right back up again emphasizing the necessity to continue, to move on, to explore the queer futures she had previously referenced and encouraged we invest in.
Carson's Coded Poetry: A Review of Ciarán Carson's Recent Visit to Georgetown
Ciarán Carson was a firecracker! My impression of his work after reading First Language was positive, but hearing him speak about his method and science of writing left me wildly enthusiastic about him and his work. In my original reading of his work I voiced the following review: “His poems are playful; he uses words in new contexts, unexpected placements that add depth and reflection to his poems”. After hearing him speak about his work, I found confirmation in my casual observation. Carson raved about his affinity for dictionaries and thesauruses—resources very obviously used to code his poetry in a language of specificity and originality.
This tactic seems one of many that make his poetry an adventure. He aims for both the author and the reader to constantly interrogate the meaning of each word and how they operate together. His caricature of casting rhyming pairs left his audience in stitches, but also demonstrated the care he pours into each selection. Rhyming “spoon” with “moon” would be too easy and expected; but rhyme pairs like “Velcro” and “dayglo” take creativity. He concedes language is much larger than any individual and admits rhyme is an arbitrary device, but embraces it as a tool to constantly explore our own ignorance.
Free verse lyric poems overwhelm contemporary poetry, so I am encouraged by how he embraces form. I have recently enjoyed using poetic forms as skeletal rules to push my poems in innovative new directions and felt he really echoed the utility of form poems to push language to its limits. In my own work I have played primarily with established forms like pantoums and sestinas, but he encouraged me to rely less on established rules and make my own. In For All We Know he decided every line would be fourteen syllables and contain a certain number of lines, rules all his own, but useful insofar as they forced him to carefully choose his means of expression.
When I went to visit with Ciarán Carson in his office hours about my own work, his advice that came up again and again was to bury and understate my language. He dissuaded me from the obvious syntax and turns of phrase, encouraging instead syntactical choices a reader would stumble over. He also insisted upon cryptic, unexpected word choice. He encouraged a style that forces the reader to not just read but process every part of each poem. He seems less concerned with his reader’s ability to access a poem than the poem’s ability to operate independently as a self-contained commentary on verbal possibility. His love poem in Irish that he has never translated is an example of a coded poem that derives its meaning from sound rather than specifically defined interpretation. As a charge for my own writing, I have a lot to learning and experimenting left to do: there is a delicate balance between making your reader work for it and alienating him or her.
Carson has mastered this balance in a way that remarkably enhances the meaning of his poems. Lines like “she put her mouth to mine and sucked the broken English from a Gaelic tongue” surprise the reader. Hearing “she put her mouth to mine” endings of romance come to mind, but he makes it about nationalism and language of belonging. Carson’s reading has been my favorite of this semester because of his engagement with his work and his audience. The greatest lesson I take away from my interactions with Carson and the examples in his work is the warning to never idly trust your language because it has the ability to constantly surprise and evolve.
This tactic seems one of many that make his poetry an adventure. He aims for both the author and the reader to constantly interrogate the meaning of each word and how they operate together. His caricature of casting rhyming pairs left his audience in stitches, but also demonstrated the care he pours into each selection. Rhyming “spoon” with “moon” would be too easy and expected; but rhyme pairs like “Velcro” and “dayglo” take creativity. He concedes language is much larger than any individual and admits rhyme is an arbitrary device, but embraces it as a tool to constantly explore our own ignorance.
Free verse lyric poems overwhelm contemporary poetry, so I am encouraged by how he embraces form. I have recently enjoyed using poetic forms as skeletal rules to push my poems in innovative new directions and felt he really echoed the utility of form poems to push language to its limits. In my own work I have played primarily with established forms like pantoums and sestinas, but he encouraged me to rely less on established rules and make my own. In For All We Know he decided every line would be fourteen syllables and contain a certain number of lines, rules all his own, but useful insofar as they forced him to carefully choose his means of expression.
When I went to visit with Ciarán Carson in his office hours about my own work, his advice that came up again and again was to bury and understate my language. He dissuaded me from the obvious syntax and turns of phrase, encouraging instead syntactical choices a reader would stumble over. He also insisted upon cryptic, unexpected word choice. He encouraged a style that forces the reader to not just read but process every part of each poem. He seems less concerned with his reader’s ability to access a poem than the poem’s ability to operate independently as a self-contained commentary on verbal possibility. His love poem in Irish that he has never translated is an example of a coded poem that derives its meaning from sound rather than specifically defined interpretation. As a charge for my own writing, I have a lot to learning and experimenting left to do: there is a delicate balance between making your reader work for it and alienating him or her.
Carson has mastered this balance in a way that remarkably enhances the meaning of his poems. Lines like “she put her mouth to mine and sucked the broken English from a Gaelic tongue” surprise the reader. Hearing “she put her mouth to mine” endings of romance come to mind, but he makes it about nationalism and language of belonging. Carson’s reading has been my favorite of this semester because of his engagement with his work and his audience. The greatest lesson I take away from my interactions with Carson and the examples in his work is the warning to never idly trust your language because it has the ability to constantly surprise and evolve.
Monday, February 9, 2009
Old Marx (2)
Old Marx (2)
by Adam Zagajewski
I try to envision his last winter.
London, cold and damp, the snow's curt kisses
on empty streets, the Thame's black water,
chilled prostitutes lit bonfires in the park.
Vast locomotives sobbed somewhere in the night.
The workers spoke so quickly in the pub
that he couldn't catch a single word.
Perhaps Europe was richer and at peace,
but the Belgians still tormented the Congo.
And Russia? Its tyranny? Siberia?
He spent evenings staring at the shutters.
He couldn't concentrate, rewrote old work,
reread young Marx for days on end,
and secretly admired that ambitious author.
He still had faith in his fantastic vision,
but in moments of doubt
he worried that he'd given the world
just a new version of despair;
then he'd close his eyes and see nothing
but the scarlet darkness of his lids.
From Eternal Enemies (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2008).
by Adam Zagajewski
I try to envision his last winter.
London, cold and damp, the snow's curt kisses
on empty streets, the Thame's black water,
chilled prostitutes lit bonfires in the park.
Vast locomotives sobbed somewhere in the night.
The workers spoke so quickly in the pub
that he couldn't catch a single word.
Perhaps Europe was richer and at peace,
but the Belgians still tormented the Congo.
And Russia? Its tyranny? Siberia?
He spent evenings staring at the shutters.
He couldn't concentrate, rewrote old work,
reread young Marx for days on end,
and secretly admired that ambitious author.
He still had faith in his fantastic vision,
but in moments of doubt
he worried that he'd given the world
just a new version of despair;
then he'd close his eyes and see nothing
but the scarlet darkness of his lids.
From Eternal Enemies (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2008).
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Singsong
Singsong
by Rita Dove
When I was young, the moon spoke in riddles
and the stars rhymed. I was a new toy
waiting for my owner to pick me up.
When I was young, I ran the day to its knees.
There were trees to swing on, crickets for capture.
I was narrowly sweet, infinitely cruel,
tongued in honey and coddled in milk,
sunburned and silvery and scabbed like a colt.
And the world was already old.
And I was older than I am today.
by Rita Dove
When I was young, the moon spoke in riddles
and the stars rhymed. I was a new toy
waiting for my owner to pick me up.
When I was young, I ran the day to its knees.
There were trees to swing on, crickets for capture.
I was narrowly sweet, infinitely cruel,
tongued in honey and coddled in milk,
sunburned and silvery and scabbed like a colt.
And the world was already old.
And I was older than I am today.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Yogic Poems as Poses for Inspiration: a review of Li-Young Lee's visit to Georgetown
Listening to Li-Young Lee read, I felt privy to secrets: he revealed that he wanted to sing, but doesn’t know any songs, that people have been trying to kill him since he was born, that he and his sister died in childhood. Sound ricocheted back and forth between poems. The staccato repetition of “playing” in “After the Pier” and the complementary pairing of “principle” and “potential” in “A Voice’s Gaze” echo familiar “p” sounds, which are reinforced by the repetition of the word “presence” in his poems and the condition of being “present” he insist upon in his work.
I entered our seminar with Li-Young Lee unfamiliar with his work beyond the selected poems we had been given and an abridged understanding of his biography. His words on the page did not move me, and it took some time listening to him speak about his life and work before I grew enchanted under his spell. My captivation connected with him once he began talking about speech as an act that was both life sustaining and life sapping. He proposed, as one speaks, one contributes meaning to life; but as one speaks he or she has less breath and thus less life. He defined a poem as “a musical score for our dying breath”, which I internalized as the most complete poem of brevity I had ever heard.
This turn in our seminar’s focus drew me into Li-Young Lee’s spiritual and philosophical approach to language. He seemed to feel language in a way I crave and emphasized the importance of connection (spiritual, emotional, psychological) only achieved through language. A poem provides an access point to resurrect the aroma of a flower that has lost its scent. He spoke of his reliance on the practice of yoga, and the desire to write yogic poems that feel connected to the present.
I was originally uncertain as to how the words of Li-Young Lee could be yogic for me. It seemed hokey to compare and conflate the poses and positions of yoga with the performance of a poem, but once I heard him read, the connection was instantaneous. I heard his words, and connected with them deeply. I identified the good in falling asleep in a favorite chair with a book I enjoy, but also know spooning is even better. While I lingered on every word, his words inspired creativity in me I had not felt in months. Every verse he completed, I wanted to write. My journal is filled with dozens of first lines inspired not necessarily by the content of Li-Young Lee’s poems, but rather by the dedication and presence with which he shared them.
To extend Lee’s own metaphor of yoga, it was though every poem he read challenged me to reach inside myself to master a new pose. Sometimes having a master set the example provides a reference and a motivation to excel in your own pose. The beauty of yoga is you are only working for yourself, but you benefit from the energy of the bodies striving to achieve presence around you. The sounds of Lee’s poems, inspired me to look inside myself, and the concentration of everyone in the room on the lingual offerings created a buzz of excitement and creativity that suggested to me perhaps Lee’s analysis of breath and speech as strictly life sustaining/life sapping is overly simplistic. It seems his poetry and breath have a property of transferal to inspire the affirmation of life in others.
I entered our seminar with Li-Young Lee unfamiliar with his work beyond the selected poems we had been given and an abridged understanding of his biography. His words on the page did not move me, and it took some time listening to him speak about his life and work before I grew enchanted under his spell. My captivation connected with him once he began talking about speech as an act that was both life sustaining and life sapping. He proposed, as one speaks, one contributes meaning to life; but as one speaks he or she has less breath and thus less life. He defined a poem as “a musical score for our dying breath”, which I internalized as the most complete poem of brevity I had ever heard.
This turn in our seminar’s focus drew me into Li-Young Lee’s spiritual and philosophical approach to language. He seemed to feel language in a way I crave and emphasized the importance of connection (spiritual, emotional, psychological) only achieved through language. A poem provides an access point to resurrect the aroma of a flower that has lost its scent. He spoke of his reliance on the practice of yoga, and the desire to write yogic poems that feel connected to the present.
I was originally uncertain as to how the words of Li-Young Lee could be yogic for me. It seemed hokey to compare and conflate the poses and positions of yoga with the performance of a poem, but once I heard him read, the connection was instantaneous. I heard his words, and connected with them deeply. I identified the good in falling asleep in a favorite chair with a book I enjoy, but also know spooning is even better. While I lingered on every word, his words inspired creativity in me I had not felt in months. Every verse he completed, I wanted to write. My journal is filled with dozens of first lines inspired not necessarily by the content of Li-Young Lee’s poems, but rather by the dedication and presence with which he shared them.
To extend Lee’s own metaphor of yoga, it was though every poem he read challenged me to reach inside myself to master a new pose. Sometimes having a master set the example provides a reference and a motivation to excel in your own pose. The beauty of yoga is you are only working for yourself, but you benefit from the energy of the bodies striving to achieve presence around you. The sounds of Lee’s poems, inspired me to look inside myself, and the concentration of everyone in the room on the lingual offerings created a buzz of excitement and creativity that suggested to me perhaps Lee’s analysis of breath and speech as strictly life sustaining/life sapping is overly simplistic. It seems his poetry and breath have a property of transferal to inspire the affirmation of life in others.
Explosive Imagination
Explosive Imaginationby Julia Lovett
Home life changed after the explosion.
Mommy got sick from the nuclear fallout.
Chizuko and I were jumping rope when the explosion
billowed into a mushroom cloud of nuclear explosion.
It looked beautiful – a mosaic celestial imagination,
but sirens soon screamed after the explosion.
Recess ended abruptly in wake of the explosion.
Daddy never came to pick me up. I waited alone.
All our lives shattered with that bomb alone.
Abstract justifications for the explosion
mean nothing to an island of orphans.
Our shelters explode with an abundance of orphans.
My family agreed to house some orphans –
our cousins’ parents died in the explosion.
In spite of their misfortune, they are lucky orphans
to have a warm home and family unlike most orphans.
Life appeared almost normal until the fallout
heightened and the hospitals filled until the orphans
became corpses and parents left more orphans.
Funerals grew perfunctory. I started to imagine
lilies dancing to the hymns sung at my own imaginary
funeral. I saw my anticipated future children as orphans
huddled together in the front row alone.
My hollow feelings resonate now that I’m alone.
Chizuko left school, so I jumped rope alone.
She wasn’t the first; kids trickled away. Orphans
retired to crammed orphanages studying alone.
Sharing bedrooms and bathrooms, never alone,
but always lonely, absent their family lost in the explosion.
One afternoon I fell down on the walk home alone.
I spent long, dizzy nights cooped up in my room alone.
Too scared to share, my sickness was my secret. Fallout
killed people quickly; too much time passed for fallout
to punish me with the A-bomb disease. I waited alone
expecting the worst while perpetually imagining
a world with a cure. Reality burst my imagination.
Japanese legend coupled with a vivid imagination
convinced me folding a thousand paper cranes alone
would appease the Gods enough for me to imagine
a cure to my condition. Despite my affected imagination
Mom knew I was sick. The doctor for orphans
at the Red Cross’ center tried to stifle my imagination
using big words and grave terms. Imagining
her daughter’s imminent death Mom cried explosively.
Fleeting moments until I joined the other explosion
victims buried in the ground – a mother’s worst imagination.
Body bags stayed full for years from the fallout.
Empty homes of fractured families all fall out.
I died after months of misery and the fallout
of my death captured the immensity of my imagination.
Sitting in funerals I always imagined a fallout
of lilies lacing my casket. The fallout
was folded like a lily’s soft petals, but origami alone
remembered my death. A thousand small cranes fell out
from their cage hoping to soar to a fallout
of peace. One of many deaths of an island of orphans,
nothing had to change – parents still died leaving orphans,
tragic memories still haunt an island, but the fallout
shifted from tragedy to inspiration: an explosion
optimistic for peace, a positive explosion.
An island of victims of a violent explosion
united to reappropriate tragedy toward peaceful fallout.
Fulfilling the Earthly dreams of my imagination
achieving more than I ever could alone –
an indestructible explosion of peace assembled by orphans.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Thursday, January 15, 2009
A Mother's Mission
I have been spending the last few weeks in Florida and met a Mother inspired to GET OUT THE VOTE for Barack Obama. She has donated her time generously while she waits for her son to return from Iraq. This is the first of series of her poems I will post of the next few days.
GET OUT AND VOTE TODAY
By Cathy Booth
You don’t need to be Republican or a Democrat
be an Independent that is where it’s at.
You don’t need a party to tell you how to vote
everyone has their own mind and this is what I quote:
“We all are Americans living in the U. S. A.
who we put in office will be there for four years of stay!”
They must help everyone with matters everyday
whether it’s taxes, healthcare, or keeping terrorists away.
Always keeping our country prosperous and our economy strong
out sourcing jobs they should know is wrong.
Helping those who struggle trying just to make ends meet
job security, retirement or loosing their homes
from beneath their feet.
Education for our future generations
as the young one day will become our old
striving for the same things as now has been told.
Yes we elect a president for four years of stay
to serve us in the White House making decisions everyday.
It doesn’t really matter if he’s black of if she’s white
if he’s a he or she is a she seems to me quite trite.
If they make a difference
in helping everyone to make ends meet
improving our economy
and making our everyday life complete.
After all we all are Americans living in the U. S. A.
the land of opportunity the land of the free;
the land of diversity and true unity.
Listen to the news
and to what the candidates have to say
then make your own decisions everyone should have a say.
So make your voice count and get out and vote today!
Thursday, January 1, 2009
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