The yellow lift goes up and down in a sleek glass sleeve in front of me. I’m in the Royal Festival Hall lobby with it’s cafeteria and smart modern look. American jazz greats in blow-ups on the wall cycle through a slide show. On the 5th floor is a massive poetry library, The Saison. The PR tells me: “The Saison Poetry Library houses the Arts Council poetry collection, the most comprehensive and accessible collection of modern poetry in Britain. The collection, dating from about 1914, consists of most poetry from the United Kingdom and Ireland, a large selection from English-speaking countries worldwide, poetry in translation, poetry by and for children, rap and concrete poetry.” OK I’m going up after I write this.

Today in New British Poetry from Graywolf, I read a wonderful poem by British Poet Gillian Allnut. Here is a brief taste:

Scherazade

He is languid as a fed lion.

She in her salt and sackcloth gown is gone

into a wilderness of wind at noon

where the wonderful covered well of tales

is a dry waterhole

or a bell

abandoned….

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My friends the Oliviers have a massive 40 year old lego collection. On Saturday, Aiden took me upstairs and showed me all of it. I mean he has a lego snake and alligator, a cat and pirates, stuff I’d never seen in my years as a lego mom, the days of flat-out-on-the-rug-building-and-building. I took these photos with my I-camera and started thinking about legos again. I found dozens of You Tube lego film clips, and trivia I never imagined. But the most startling lego info was The Lego Book with Merwin’s poetry. 

True. WS Merwin has a poem called “To the Book” contained in a pop-up book called The Lego Poem with inkjet lego designs by Kyung Min Lee. The work seeks to examine “how the interpretation of a language can change the cultural aspect of the poem.” I want to look inside, but I can’t. Here is the picture of the book, though.It is Cloth bound with cut-out windows on front cover. Signed by the artist. Joan Flasch Artists’ Book Collection, 2007, Chicago Il. Then I searched the internet and found the poem:

to the book     by W.S. Merwin

 Go on then

in your own time

this is as far

as I will take you

I am leaving your words with you

as though they had been yours

all the time

 

   of course you are not finished                          

   how can you be finished

   when the morning begins again

   or the moon rises

   even the words are not finished

   though they may claim to be

 

 

never mind

I will not be

listening when they say

how you should be

different in some way

you will be able to tell them

that the fault was all mine

 

whoever I was

when I made you up

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Here is piece of poetry legos by Kim Hannula. It’s pretty fine.

The Red Wheelbarrow/ William Carlos Williams                  

So much depends

upon

 

a red wheel                                        

barrow …                                               

 

beside the white

chickens.

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NOT TO BE MISSED>     The You Tube short in lego-scopic humor “nice pants”  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlkd45W4TWU&feature=related

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FOODIE- Legos:

Hard to believe, but wait, there’s a review from a food critic whose name escaped on a lego truck:

“The shape of each waffle also doesn’t make it ideal for syrup. As we all know, normal waffles have deep grooves which can hold syrup, but the Lego Eggo Waffles have a shape that does the opposite. Sure you could flip the Lego Eggo Waffles over and shoot some syrup into those tight holes, but again, there aren’t enough holes to prevent the syrup from rolling off the waffle.”

I think this is about as far as I can take this…..  Jesus Lego man

if you have lots of white pieces laying around. Lego blessings to all.   

                    

[Sad, painful news in the poetry world! I‘ve been upset, walking around in a gloom after reading about Ruth Padel withdrawing from the Oxford Poetry Chair, perhaps having to do with the road to hell being paved with good intentions. (More on this in the previous post.) I need to write about a British woman author whose words can cheer me up.]

A book to celebrate. It’s my very favorite biography: Mary: A Flesh and Blood Biography of the Virgin Mother. The year: 2004. The author – Lesley Hazleton – rocks!

I didn’t want to put the book down. There may be new books on Mary (referred to here as Maryam), but this is a fantastic read. From the introduction: “There is nothing meek and mild about Maryam. She is neither pale nor passive. Se emerges as far more than we have accepted her as being: a strong woman of ability and wisdom who actively chose her role in history, and lived it to the fullest.” Lesley writes non-fiction as if she were unfolding a page-turning novel on a water slide of words. She wrote as a journalist for a long time and lived in the Middle East. She snoops and story-tracks, burrows and digs into research. She’s a tall, slim, Brit with a voice like Vanessa Redgrave; a former small plane pilot and automotive expert who shared from her book : Everything Women Always Wanted to Know About Cars… on Good Morning America. She says: “Some years ago I spent a starlit night in the sand dunes of the northern Sinai munching on giant olives and listening to Beduin elders recite long narrative poems … This is why we still speak of great story tellers, not great story writers.” Good journalists always drink from the closest source; then one thing leads to another – “Mary…” has 208 meticulous footnotes!

 I meet her at Ghost Ranch near Taos, New Mexico, at A Room of Her Own writing retreat, where she read something from her then soon-to-be-released book, Jezebel: The Untold Story of the Bible’s Harlot Queen. I hope there’s a movie coming from that book.

 

What I love about Mary is the flesh and blood part. She comes to life. “[She is] – not the gilded image in the convent school, but the wiry, dark-skinned, hard muscled Maryam, barely out of adolescence when she gave birth, her face lined by hard work and harder experience, etched deep by violence and struggle, survival and loss, determination and courage.”

 From a review  in Amazon: “Hazelton’s musings on the Resurrection and on the meaning of Mary’s virginity are dazzling to read and weighty to ponder.” Ilene Cooper

 “Each time a woman gives birth, each time a woman sits between another’s legs and cradles the emerging newborn’s head, each time a woman sings in joy or wails in mourning, seeks out knowledge or teaches it to others… the mantle of Maryam is handed on.”  (All italic quotes from Mary)

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Difficult times for Ruth Padel! The Guardian posted shocking news yesterday, May 24th, saying that Ruth Padel had withdrawn from her Poetry Chair at Oxford due to the continued controversy around Derek Walcott’s nomination. One version of the troubling report can be read here. I send Ruth my support and wishes for ease in finding her way on this rocky road …………………………. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/may/24/ruth-padel-derek-walcott-oxford-poetry  

(My earlier post – last week)  ~How sweet it is! Poet Laureate, and The Oxford Poetry Chair are both now occupied by women. The first position is for ten years, the second, five. The poets are Carol Ann Duffy and Ruth Padel; amazingly good writers. I’ve written here about Ruth Padel and reviewed her book, Darwin: A Life in Poems – [see entry for April 9, 2009]. YES for the Brits. Truthfully, I’m getting ready to spend a short time in London, so I’m reading New British Poetry from Graywolf Press, 2004. Here’s a few lines from Carol Ann Duffy from her playful nod to Little Red Riding Hood, Little Red-Cap:

…He stood in a clearing, reading his verse out loud

in his wolfy drawl, a paperback in his hairy paw,

red wine staining his bearded jaw. What big ears        

he had! What big eyes he had! What teeth!

In the interval I made quite sure he spotted me…

 

…you might ask why. Here’s why. Poetry.

The wolf, I knew would lead me into the woods…

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Some words On Carol Ann Duffy from the Press:

“It only took 341 years but, finally, Britain has a female Poet Laureate. Carol Ann Duffy will hold the 10-year post, following in the formidable footsteps of the likes of William Wordsworth, Alfred Lord Tennyson and Ted Hughes. Glasgow-born Duffy, 53, said she had thought “long and hard” before accepting the high-profile job, and gave the final say to her 13-year-old daughter [Ella]. Her response? “She said, ‘Yes mummy, there’s never been a woman.'” Glen Levy, Time Magazine, May 1, 2009.

“Duffy lives with Ella in south Manchester, in a house where the doors are painted with poems – William Carlos Williams on eating plums is on the kitchen door. From here, she can walk to the (remarkably rural) River Mersey, where she wrote most of Rapture sitting on a bench. She says her writing tends to be seasonal, with her ‘sharpening my pencils in September when it starts to get a bit rainy and melancholy and moody. Then I write until about February, until it begins to fall away in the spring.'” The Guardian, May 26, 2007.

THIS IS THE POEM that I love. See for yourself. “acred in hours?”  Oh. Beautiful.

A Child’s Sleep

I stood at the edge of my child’s sleep

hearing her breathe;

although I could not enter there,      

I could not leave.

 

Her sleep was a small wood,

perfumed with flowers;

dark, peaceful, sacred,

acred in hours.

 

And she was the spirit that lives

in the heart of such woods;

without time, without history,

wordlessly good…..

 

                     …The greater dark

outside the room

gazed back, maternal, wise,

with its face of moon.

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Jamaica Interview

May 2010:  Jamaica interviewed by  Henry Curtis

May 2010: Interview (above). I love seeing Jamaica draw from her grounded Hawaiian roots, to shine as she holds her place as a strong American woman poet. This is a very good interview — watch it!

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November, 2010 — Jamaica just posted this:

May: 2009 <> What happens to the ones forgotten? The ones who shaped my heart from their rib cages, I want to taste the tears in their names…but I    have forgotten my father’s own grandparents middle names, forgotten the color thread God used to sew me together with… I want to teach my future children how to spell “family” with my middle name, Haiole-Melekalani…

Scroll down for the link to Jamaica’s recitation of her interpretation and inspiration of Kumulipo, the Hawaiian chant of creation, all its inclusion of first life and stars, and the endless

geneologies of self and peoples, self and lands, of earth and sea and sky; spoken  at the White House.

Describing how President Obama approached her in the reception line, she recalled: “He said, ‘You’re the girl from Hawai’i.’ … And it was so amazing that I said I was from Pālolo Valley, (O’ahu) and he could actually nod his head and smile, because he got it,” said the elated 18-year-old, laughing as she savored the notion that the nation’s leader was born and bred just one green valley away from her home. “Mostly when I tell people I am from Hawai’i, they have no idea what’s going on here.” Liza Simon for Ka Wai Ola Newspaper..   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TY7fWlmE-0g&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fochairball.blogspot.com%2F2009%2F05%2Fjamaica-osorios-spoken-word-performance.html&feature=player_embedded

This You Tube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d54xhGzwM50 of her from a slam, has Jamaica and another poet giving the Hawaiian and English nearly simultaneously, in a telling of traditional stories with a fresh new slant. Her face and her words call up  deep ancestry.

Standing on the stage at the White House, she spoke her poetry: There is a culture, a people somewhere beneath my skin that I’ve been searching for… After she was congratulated by President Obama, she said that it was humbling to have her words acknowledged by him. Congratulations, Jamaica! Aloha!

NEW SITE!!  (2010)  http://www.youtube.com/user/eJAMAICAtor

GLORIOUS POEM posted 2009 August,  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HFY1s2g070

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Mothers Day: this is my favorite ancestor photo, my mother’s mother – Dellie – in a theater production at the turn of the century. I like to think some of her colorful qualities have coursed down in vivid matriarchal streams through my mother, my sister and me, and through all my god-daughters and my niece, Tiphani, and cousin Cici.  My adopted mothers of this and that;

<>Ella Fitzgerald is the mother of  how a woman’s voice can play with the air, bounce it, even.

<>Helen Hayes is mother of my first carnival midway prize, and mother of what a woman can do on the big, broad stage of life.

<>my great-aunt Marie was mother of the high life, champagne and room-service, elevators to her room.

My own mother (in her wedding dress) gave me her leather-bound Poems of John Keats, with pages cornered on some of the odes: “Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard/ are sweeter…”

I was my own earth-mother, taught myself to garden, pulled those first carrots, got a cat for the gophers. I became mother of the cat, named Alice. We lived in Nicassio. Band mother, pregnant with tunes and moves, and after some time – the guitar-players’s child!  Flower-child mother. Peace mother.

Oh Mother!

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This is the last issue of THE SOUND in the awkward morphing moment between the PDF and an elegant Web-journal at thesoundjournal.org Planned launch around July 20, 2009! Watch for more information.

Here is the May Issue: “HONORING THE MOTHER.”   You can download it here

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

 

Poetry slam: March 27th! Tonight at the Museum of Modern Art theater in San Francisco nearly twenty  young poets stood on the stage and gave us their poems. Some spoke with ferocity. They were rewarded with high scores. All were brave just to be there, never mind that they were 15, 16, 18 years old, pouring out stories of injustice, angst, and pain. Their stories mirrored life experience of audience members, most of whom roared their support. I liked Carmela Gaspar, a diminutive Asian student who had memorized her long and rapid in-front-of-the-mirror poem with fast zingers like  …palid be / like a malady… that got me wishing I had the words to that poem in front of me. She didn’t hard drive it with lots of four letter words or end the poem with SHIT! like the favorite slam-girl Ebony Donnley, who looked like a young Queen Latifa. Emcee Chinaka Hodge had a good relaxed style and kept the feel-good atmosphere going. There were some powerful male poets like Mic Turner, and Travis Eglip, but it was the young women  that held my attention.

Annelyse Gelman, a white girl from “the other side of the Caldecott,” had style (both Rachel and I liked her grey coat) and confidence. I started scribbling her phrases...smiling is just a special way to wince… and  angst is unconditional. I would have given her a few 10’s in her score, if I were one of the judges.  These five judges seemed to go for power in presentation, slam-skill, and the degree of tragedy described.  The points started at 9.1 and went to 10 and above. Every poet had a score of at least 9.1. I liked that. Lots of applause and cheers. Most poets were in the high 9’s.

Youth Speaks is getting much attention nationally. It is 13 years old. I believe I went to one of the first slams, outdoors at Fort Mason years ago.  April 11th the FINALS are at The Opera House!

And April 5th at 11:00PM HBO is presenting Brave New Voices Slam. Check it out. This is the voice of the future, y’all.

I couldn’t resist downloading this picture. It was a promo for the Quaker Oats Company. My dad, John Baker, had just cinched the legal deal with Canadian lawyers to allow a deed for one square inch of land in every cereal box – Quaker Puffed Wheat and Rice – in most kitchens in America.

OK, but what does Mae West have to do with cereal? She was an icon. She began in Vaudeville and on the stage on New York. By the fifties, when this photo was taken, Mae West had been a a cinema heavy for nearly twenty years. Here she was, holding the deed to one square inch in the Yukon! I wonder what my Dad was thinking…   Mae had great wit and sparked controversy. Actress, comedienne, and writer in the motion picture industry, she pushed the edge. Here’s a selection of scenes that show Mae as a mixture of Bette Midler and Marilyn Monroe:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVrfHXnUJFc 

Too much of a good thing can be wonderful! – Mae West

 

 

 

 

Sardines, Mackerel, Words and other Food

It was good to get the letters sardi_e down as the first move. Shabda had the N there in toner. Scrabble is still an option, if you are willing to put down the book, get off the computer – away from any screen at all, or come inside out of the chilly night.

Sardine is a lead in to my Mark Doty theme of late. Here is an excerpt from a favorite poem in Fire to Fire. The sardine is one of those  small identical fish like Mackerel… sardines remind me of salt and The Costa Brava in Spain, whereas Makerel, as everyone knows, are HOLY.

A Display of Mackerel                              

They’re all exact expressions

of the one soul,

each a perfect fulfilment

 

of heaven’s template,

Makerel essence. As if,

after a lifetime arriving                                                        

 

at this enameling, the jeweler’s

made uncountable examples,

each as intricate

 

in its oily fabulation

as the one before.

Suppose we could iridesce, 

 

like these, and lose ourselves

entirely in the universe

of shimmer –

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That is only 5 stanzas from the middle of a 17 stanza poem. Look it up. You’ll be glad.

Last week was the final time to see Mark teach or read in the Bay Area. He finished his program at Stanford University with a Colloquium, introduced by Director of the Creative Writing Program and premier poet, Eavan Boland. The subject of the paper he presented was “Memory and Desire,” with respect to Constantine Cavafy and Marcel Proust. One wrote poetry in Greek, the other,  prose in French. Both were held by the work of memory. Mark spoke of “the poetics of space,” the meeting ground between the space occupied by the reader and that of the writer.  After all, where did we store intimacy and daydreams in our childhood? We had secret places – the fort under the stairs, the attic, the tree house. He mentioned that memory is organized by the spaces which hold our intimate moments (more than by sequential time). Cavafy and Proust each set out to construct a “memory palace.” Memory, he goes on to say, “is a way of holding that which is lost” and may be “a stay against dread.” Mark Doty always has me considering new directions of thought.

The talk was geared to a group of Cavafy’s small poems about love  and love-making that occured in a room, afterwards, in the poet’s memory. This work was personal, and concise, not like his famous Waiting for the Barbarians, with the closing lines:

And now what shall become of us without any barbarians?

Those people were some kind of solution.

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 Best dining tip: Cafe Collage way out in the middle of – well, north of the North Fork of the Eel River, off Marysville road, off highway 49, there is a village called Oregon House – I never saw it – but the zip is 95962.  I guess I’m an urban girl when I’m so far out in the country that the actual restaurant seems to be a kind of hallucination.  The restaurant is elegant,  the Chef-owner,  Salim Ben Mami, is a gracious and gentle Tunisian, who takes small groups on Culinary Guided Tours of his home country. The word “pizza” on the sign is not a reflection of what is inside.  His menu mentions “fine Mediterranean Cusine.” Pizza is probably a code word to keep the rednecks thinking it’s a normal place to eat. It’s not. The food is sublime! And I am a choosey eater.I had a the best spinach pie I have ever tasted. Shabda had the Moussaka. Being with our great old friends, Ann and Terry, was also delicious.  If you are ever wanting to drive and drive and drive and eat like this, go see Salim. Call first. 530-692-2555.