The Round Top Poetry Festival, April 17-19 2009  in Texas – between Austin and Houston –began in a down pour, with emphasis on both words. Imagine a ring-your-socks-out rain that continued for over a day. I bought the last pair of galoshes in my size – white ones! Soggy poets and wet umbrellas. Lightning. Thunder. Then, as if it never rained, Sunday morning the sun lit everything and the gardens were beautiful. Naomi Shihab Nye calls Round Top “paradise for poets,” and since my idea of poet-paradise would include Naomi and W.S. Merwin, I agree. 

  One unforgettable moment was seeing Paula Merwin leaning across the dinner table, deep in conversation with Dorothy Stafford, widow of William Stafford; the other was the answer W.S. Merwin gave to my question: In the work of translation, is attunement with the poet a serious consideration? I was in the first row, and his word blast scoured my heart and mind. All I remember was the last part, “…for translation, the best way is to LOVE the poem.” Merwin was introduced as “the Complete Poet.”  When he read his poetry his gentle tone and cadence mesmerized the audience. He read long and deeply from his grey book, The Shadow of Sirius. A day or so later, that book won the 2009 Pulitzer prize for poetry, announced April 21. Sirius is not dazzling and clever, but rather casts a solitary even gleam – like gold – that enchants the listener. I feel it is largely important because of the great lifetime of experience and longevity he brings to each poem. In his youth Merwin was mentored by John Berryman and received vital guidance from Ezra Pound. Like Milosz, Merwin shows us the perspective of an octogenerian who is wise and thoughtful. From the poem in the Sirius collection,“Worn Words:” 

…it is the late poems

that are made of words

that have come the whole way

and they have been there.

 

From “By Dark:”

When it is time I follow the black dog

into the darkness that is the mind of day

 

I can see nothing there but the black dog

the dog I know is going ahead of me

 

 not looking back oh it is the black dog

I trust now in my turn after the years                        when I had all the trust of the black dog…

 

Kudos to the co-directors, Dorothy Barnett and Jack Brannon, who made it happen. Naomi made us all feel welcome and offered us her brave, engaging poems. Other highlights included Fady Joudah’s translations of Mamoud Darwish, and poetry by Jennifer Clement and Jo McDougall, all extraordinary word-masters. Jennifer lives in Mexico City and runs the glorious San Miguel Poetry Week writers’ retreat. Merwin once said these haunting words about Jennifer: “She writes in English but she dreams in Spanish.” From New and Selected Poems, my new favorite poetry is her Lady of the Broom, forty-eight poems about a woman who died of unrequited love at the end of the 17th century. Find it and read it.

from Jennifer Clement’s Lady of the Broom:

XIX

…Without a mother,

no girl walks safely,

no other will place their body

between her body

and the bear.

Here are some jewels from Jennifer’s workshop: “Study the etymology of a word. Sincere has to do with the Roman language of marble. Flaws in a slab were hidden with wax fill. Those without artifice were sincere... If you use dialog – go to the playwrights!” She appreciated Tennessee Williams especially. One technique he used was to “…have one character ask a question and the other ignore it. Then something wonderful happens.” Coleridge wrote that “poetry is best when it is not totally understood.” [Not advice for beginners!] ~   ~    ~    ~    ~   ~ 

The stunningly elegant hall at Round Top where the readings take place.

Jo McDougall offered a class and gave excellent pointers I will talk about in another post. I met a young poet named Jeff Stumpo whose performance poems were a knock-out. More on him as well.

 The word I came home with is fascicle – [rhymes with bicycle], a small bundle or cluster, as in the clusters of poems bound in blue ribbon and placed under her bed by Emily Dickenson.  <>    <>    <>    <>    <>    <>    <>    <>    <>    <>    

 

 

 

 

 

DARWIN, A Life in Poems, by Ruth Padel, New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 2009.

Ruth Padel has written a brilliant book. It is a historical biography written in poetry with side notes. The titles are worth the price of the book. They are printed in CAPITAL LETTERS. She said that she gave up tenure in 1985 to write poems. 

Padel has a poem called, ON ASKING A MUSEUM GUARD TO DRAW THE CURTAIN BEFORE TITIAN’S VENUS . She says that Darwin went to see it in the museum, though the one he saw may be a copy. She writes that “the museum hung curtains over paintings of nudes to protect the modesty of women visitors.” Indeed!  All this information is in a very small font running down a column on the left side of the page. Meanwhile, on the poem’s right, she is drawing you into the eyes of this youth, Darwin, as he comes into his sexuality:

Her sudden body. Bare vellum, horizontal:

thighs crossed and lower knee flexed

below the upper calf. He knows the lines by heart:

her fingers curving down and nesting – he can’t see the tips….

The next poem, A DESPERATE WAY TO AVOID PAYING YOUR TAILOR describes how he signs on the H.M.S. Beagle.  His job is to attend the captain as “a gentleman companion, naturalist, and savant, for a survey of South America.”

He pulls away from a career in medicine, SLIDING GIDDILY OFF INTO THE UNKNOWN with the notes printed on the poem’s right this time: “They finally left [Plymouth harbor] on 27 December, 1831. Darwin continued to be badly seasick throughout the five years’ voyage.” Five years, seasick!!@?! Padel is descended from Darwin, and with a persistent eye for detail about his life,  pulls us onto the deck of the ship, into the jungle, and captures his delight in the dizzying new sights. On Cape Verde Island he sees his first tropical vegetation. LIKE GIVING A BIND MAN EYES 

He’s standing in Elysium. Palm feathers, a green

dream of fountain against blue sky, Banana fronds,

slack rubber rivlets, a canopy of waterproof tearstain

over his head. Pods and racemes of tamerind.

Follicle, pinnacle; whorl, bole, and thorn….

There are Darwin’s passions;  shooting guns, collecting specimens, his beloved family – and his pain; injustice, the  abuse of one human by another, and later the death of his children and his terrible illness from a tropical insect bite that tormented him the rest of his life.

BIBLICAL

…Now it’s lunatic farting, vomit, stomach-and -whole

body ache. These midnight demons, weeping and shakes,

must have organic origin – like everything.

Tears streak the greying stubble on his cheeks….

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Richard Holmes from the Guardian (British Press) writes, “She has evolved a new species of biography …This is not a mere collection, but a complete miniature biography, told through linked but highly individual poems, a selection of visionary moments: snapshots, epiphanies, symbolic fragments. For biographers, this itself is a challenging revelation of economy and selection.

And from The Economist, posted on her website: “Why does this book work so well? Why are poems a good way of illuminating a life such a Darwin’s? Padel has caught the quintessence of the man’s character as if in a butterfly net.”

For further information –New York Times review, by Charles McGrath, April 17, 2009: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/18/books/18pade.html?ref=arts