Category: Today’s Pillar of Poetry (Page 6 of 8)

Things to Check Out (or not)

December 3, 2014 / Big Bang Poetry

Last spring I listed The Anthology of Really Important Modern Poetry by Kathryn & Ross Petras on my list of books to check out in the celebrity poetry genre. I was hoping this book was an anthology of poems written by celebrities, poems collected which had never appeared in full-length collections.

It was billed as having "Timeless 'Poems' by Snooki, John Boehner, Kanye West and Other Well-Versed Celebrities." However, this book does not include any poetry written by celebrities. Instead, the authors have culled bad, embarrassing quotes from press interviews and twitter feeds and turned them into faux poems with snarky line breaks. The authors skewer not only celebrities, but political figures and they slay democrats and republicans alike.

On the one hand, I did enjoy the ridiculousness of the quotes and the author’s ruthless mockery of them. But on the other hand, I am nagged by the worry that making fun of ridiculous things celebrities say only encourages more celebrities (and all of us really) to make really idiotic comments in order to score some attention. After all, any spotlight is a good spotlight in modern America.

Highlighting the really ignorant comments of celebrities and politicians does not discourage the behavior, it simply lowers the bar.

I've recently come across this new poetry website: http://poetry.newgreyhair.com/ which promises "Punch in the Face Poetry."

I'm way behind on my trial subscription of Poets & Writers but the July/August 2014 issue (find it at your library) is all about finagling a literary agent (for you novelists) and the magazine continues to occasionally deconstruct and analyze good pitch letters.

There's also a good column inside on writing groups for military veterans and one on the life of teaching poetry in prisons. If you're like me you've probably already read quite a few of these testimonials but this one, by Wendy Bron-Baez, was particularly good.

And I want to give kudos to one in the mass of MFA advertisements inside the same issue. Pine Manor College uses images of the published books of its graduates to say all that needs to be said. Very impressive on many levels.

Poems Found in Truth or Consequences

September 4, 2014 / Big Bang Poetry

In June I took Monsieur Bang Bang to Truth or Consequences for his birthday. We stayed at The Firewater Lodge, one of the old 1940s-era motels in town being renovated by neo-hippies. We liked this one because the rooms actually have hot springs inside and you can bring your dogs.

So you can do this combination of soak/sleep/soak/sleep which is pretty darn nice.

While we were there we visited the Geronimo Hot Springs museum, the local town museum. There I came across two poems. The one below is titled "Hell in New Mexico." This is the same poem Johnny Cash sings on his Mean as Hell album, except (as I remembered from my many listenings as a kid), in the Johnny Cash version, "Mean as Hell," Cash changes the reference from New Mexico to Texas. I like that version better. Read along with Johnny Cash.

Farther on, I found a stack of books by a poet named Eugene Manilove Rhodes. (Manilove sounds like a Barry Manilow fanclub). He was dubbed the cowboy chronicler.

Here is the poem the museum had on display called "Engle Ferry:"

Maya Angelou Passes Away

May 29, 2014 / Big Bang Poetry

In 2011 Oprah aired a show with Maya Angelou called Master Class. I was so enthralled with Angelou's infectious profundities in that episode, I became hooked on the whole series. In honor of her passing, I re-watched the episode last night.

Angelou talks about how much she loves aging. She loved her 70s and was excited about her 80s. She was writing music, poetry and publishing a cookbook. In her lifetime, she published 30 books. She died at age 86.

In the poetry world, I found that you either loved Maya Angelou or you didn't. I often heard critics charge her with simplicity and sentimentality. However, she used poetry not to challenge language but to challenge hatred. She wrote to teach. She wrote to help. She was one of those people with an amazing presence. Oprah said she carried herself with an "unshakable calm and fierce grace."

She spoke 6 languages and worked with both Malcolm X and Martin Luther King. She was also a singer and a dancer. Although she initially made a living as a singer, she said, "you can only become great at things you're willing to sacrifice for."

She gave the inaugural poem for President Bill Clinton. She also recited a poem for the world at the request of The United Nations. She said when she was working on these public poems, she spoke to priests, rabbis and many people. She generously opened the poem up to other ideas beyond her own.

In Master Class, she recited Shakespeare's Sonnet 29 ("When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes") from memory and later said:

"Words are things. I'm convinced….Someday we'll be able to measure the power of words. I think they get in the walls. They get in the wallpaper. They get in your rugs, in the upholstery, in your clothes, and finally into you."

She bravely spoke about humility. Irreplaceable Maya Angelou. She was poem unto herself. She was an ambassador and a blessing.

Watch an excerpt of Master Class.

Tony Hoagland’s 20 Poems That Could Save Amercia

February 2, 2014 / Big Bang Poetry

Perusing a local-paper poetry-themed insert I came across the mention of a new essay by Tony Hoagland called "Twenty Little Poems that Could Save America" from Harpers magazine: http://harpers.org/blog/2013/04/twenty-little-poems-that-could-save-america/

I support the idea of revamping the way we teach poetry in secondary schools and in college. Poetry has slipped outside of mainstream culture and there are many reasons for this. Baby steps back may involve rethinking the cirriculum, something many forward-thinking teachers are already doing. Hoagland wants to use more contemporary poetry and has created a list of poems he believes "the kids today" can relate to.

I anticipate resistance to this idea (so does Hoagland) and I think it goes back to poets worrying that their favorite poems will be lost forever. This fear actually hides another bigger very secret fear that someday their own (future famous) poems might also be judged out-of-date, old fashioned, or just not modern enough and therefore doomed to be forgotten as the new poems and poets continually roll in and take over. Perinneals entombed in concrete will prevent this slippage.

But Hoagland loses me when he goes off on pop culture. In the beginning he says "Culture is always reanimating itself" and then goes on to say celebrity culture is "a kind of fake surrogate for the culturally significant place gods and myth once held in the collective imagination….just as junk food mimics nutritious food, fake culture [fake culture??] mimics and displaces the position of real myth. [Real myth???] Real culture cultivate our ability to see, feel and think. It is empowering. Fake culture [again, fake culture??] makes us passive, materialistic and tranced-out."

First of all, obviously mainstream movies and music can cultivate our ability to see, feel and thik and are also empowering and can encourage us to be active and not passive. To argue otherwise is to be willfully ignorant. Not to mention there is no such think as an unreal or fake culture. Culture is what it is. Football, Kim Kardashian, violent video games, expensive cars and shoes…that's the culture now. Like it or don't like it. What you think of the prevaling culture is irrelevant. It reanimates regardless of the judgements on it from you or me.

But then Hoagland goes on to appreciate Glengarry Glen Ross and Citizen Kane. The thing is, nobody can be the judge of what is is specifically that moves someone else. It's not fake. It's just not your thing.

Anyway, we shouldn't throw out the baby with the bathwater. This essay continues the ongoing conversation about the role of art in schools and how we can better teach an appreciation of poetry.

I'm sure it will elicit many petty 20-poem list wars among poets battling it out for supremacy. But for those of us on the ground, a good weekend reading list if nothing else.

Tourist Poem Written After an Execution

January 28, 2014 / Big Bang Poetry

First of all, it's amazing where you come across poetry in your travels. Second, it's always moving to find a poem serving as an appeal to the afterlife.

On our way home from Pennsylvania after Christmas, Monsieur Big Bang wanted to stop in Fort Smith in order to do some research on Belle and Pearl Starr for his consulting project with the show Quick Draw.

At the Fort Smith historic site, I came across this poem called "My Dream" written by Rufus Buck on the backside of a photograph of his mother. It was found in his cell after his execution for rape on July 1, 1896.

I've cleaned it up…there's a piece of punctuation after practically every word…blame his fragile state of mind…and I've fixed the spelling.

The poem reads,

I dreamt I was in heavenamong the angels fair;
I'd ne'er seen none so handsome
that, twine in golden hair.
They looked so neat and sang so sweet
and played the golden harp.
I was about to pick an angel out
and take her to my heart
but the moment I began to plea
I thought of you, my love.
There was none I'd seen so beautiful
on earth or heaven above.

Goodbye my dear wife and mother,
also my sisters.
Rufus Buck,
Yours truly.

1 Day of July
in the year of
1896

Father, Son, Holy Ghost, Virtue, Resurrection
Remember me Rock of Ages

American Poet & Why the Scottish Poetry Library is So Great

December 8, 2013 / Big Bang Poetry

American Poet

Enjoyed my latest issue of American Poet magazine, especially Danez Smith's new poems "mail" and "basic standards test." Really interested in his studies on the racial issues working in both gay sexuality and standardized testing. There's also a passionate and rational essay by Mark Wunderlich about the dangers of reading Sylvia Plath's poetry through her biography:

"What are we to make of criticism…by Terry Castle and others who examine and judge the poet for, among other things, having been sexually active as a younger woman? And why are we asked to consider what sort of mother she might have been….Do people really have opinions about the sort of father Ted Hughes might have been? I suspect they don't."

This reminds me that all poetry is ultimately political and people read into not only poetry but the lives of their poets with political ends.

I once had an argument with visiting Sarah Lawrence professor David Rivard about M.S. Merwin. He suggested I read him. I hated him. After taking the Modern & Contemporary Poetry MOOC and after reading the Merwin review by Edward Hirsh, I seem to be opening up on this guy. Oh, they innocence and passion of youth. What can I say? You find your books when you find your books. Not sooner. Not later. There's also a manuscript study on Robert Lowell's poem "Epilogue" that I enjoyed.

And a review in the back of David Trinidad's new book Peyton Place: A Haiku Soap Opera made me go out and buy one of his older books, The Late Show because his poems on pop culture attracted me but I never watched Peyton Place so didn't feel this book would be a great place to start.

Today's Pillar of Poetry: The Scottish Poetry Library

The Annual Review from the Scottish Poetry Library reminded me why I freakin love this organization so much. And no, I don't love them so much because my name sounds so Scottish (McCray) or because my maiden name (Ladd) sounded so Scottish either. I'm sure I'm yoked up with quite a bit of Scottish but my family pride and mythology doesn't venture far back past the New World.

No, I love them because they are so good at it. Their annual review even has style. I even read the damn annual review! I love them because they love the anonymous book sculptures. I love them because they produced pocket-sized anthologies of poetry for medical graduates with poems chosen to "provide emotional support to new doctors." One thankful doctor said, "just the thing to help doctors maintain and develop their humanity in the face of protocols and tickboxes."

They also had a program to connect poets to historians called the Ghost of War sessions.

I love them because they truly and creatively reach out beyond the bubble of typical poetry communities.

Three Jim Morrison Books

October 19, 2013 / Big Bang Poetry

In my quest to build a shelf of celebrity poetry, I took on Jim Morrison's three books last month. Yes, I used to make fun of celebrity poetry…because that's what poetry snobs do; but for the last few years I've decided to approach these books with an open mind. After all, celebrities can't help it if they're famous and also trying to express themselves in verse. If you became famous, would you stop writing poetry? No, you wouldn't…even though it would be potentially embarrassing and a big laugh to non-celebrity poets such as you used to be.

I took on The Lords and the New Creatures first, a volume of "revealing, early poems from the voice of a generation." My husband, Monsieur Big Bang, laughed when he saw me reading this. He said only angry teen boys read Jim Morrison. I've never been a Doors fan or a teen age boy but I dove into the project anyway.

In any case, this was my least favorite book of the three. These were his poems at their most enigmatic. In some cases his thoughts were indecipherable and maybe in early stages of something experimental. The problem with experimental poems is that they can be awfully indistinguishable from drug-induced pieces. And I'm saying that without judgement. Drug writing has its own value ("Kubla Khan"). You just can't read too much into it, unlike more sophisticated experimental work. But occassionaly, Morrison would catch my attention with some pithy scrap of thought, (usually when he was talking about fame or show business or his possible messiah complex), all bits which were disappointingly rare. I did find a quote or to which will be of use in my next Cher Zine,

"But most of the press were vultures descending on the scene for curious America aplomb. Cameras inside the coffin interviewing worms."

i will say this, Morrison is good at noticing what's going on around him. In this book he mulls over ideas of voyeurism and participation, film studies (he was a film student), issues of power and possession, alchemy, and a few interesting comments about motherhood. The random notes included are not fully formed. They seem almost like notes for future essays. And many of the poems seem like a string fo terse images in search of a vague mythology.

One of the most interesting things about this used book I found in a Santa Fe bookstore was the inscription on the inside cover: "To Adam (Pedro)/Love Always, Amy/Christmas '96/The Doors Rule!"

I surmise Adam did not feel so much love for The Doors forever or I would not have acquired his Christmas gift book.

I read Wilderness next and then The American Night, companion volumes which came out after his death and were best selling books in the 1980s and 90s.

Wilderness was my favorite book of the three. Maybe I was just beginning to get into his idiosyncrasies like his shorthand or his capitalizing randomly. This book coheres much better as a book about American culture from Morrison's point of view. There are scattered southwestern images from his young life (he mentions the Sangre de Cristo mountain range, rattlesnakes and cattle skulls) and over and over again he considers his idea of wilderness where he is referring to the wild city of Los Angeles and "the American night." The word 'LAmerica' appears a great deal over the two volumes as poem titles and in the text as does the phrase, "the American night." My favorite parts were discussions of androgyny in Los Angeles and "miles and miles of hotel corridors." There are sexual poems here too and contemplations of the poet,

"Real poetry doesn't say anything,
it just ticks off the possibilities."

and more sad reflections on fame and futility:

"But I deserve this,
Greatest cannibal of all.
Some tired future.
Let me sleep.
Get on w/the disease.

Again, his free association writing can feel almost language poetry-like. He believes a great deal in the meditative power of the ritual of writing poetry and this is as valid as anybody else's use of it.

When I read great lines like "Each day is a drive through history" I wonder why he was so enegmatic for most of this and if his fragments had anything to do with a fear of fully telling.

I guess The American Night felt like a whole lot more of the same. And it's jacket hyperbole fell flat with me, "a literary last statement from rock's poet of the damned."

I'm always interested in sexuality poems, like "Lament for the Death of My Cock." But they seem so tame now. I'm sure they were scandalous at the time.

In fact, this might be part of the problem with Morrison's legacy over all: it's the Cher/Madonna/Britney Spears/Milley Cyrus exponential reveal: what was so shocking yesterday becomes deflated in our hyper-drive culture of pushing boundaries. In light of Miley Cyrus making so much offence at this year's Video Music Awards, Morrison's sexuality seems almost old-fashioned.

Which sort of renders the art of shock sort of flaccid at the end of the day. How far can we go beyond S&M?

In this book, I sensed some racist undertones in a few poems (see the Paris Journal for an example). This book is also propped up with various reprinted lyrics. One lyric from the song "When the Music's Over" was a haunting prediction of our current culture of rampant narcissism and insatiable greed:

"I hear a very gentle sound,
With your ear down to the ground.
We want the world and we want it…
We want the world and we want it,
now, now, NOW!

In the end, Morrison seemed to view death as a clean slate, from "Hurricane & Eclipse" where he says, "I wish clean/death would come to me" to "If Only I" where he claims "If only I could feel/me pulling back/again/& feel embraced/by reality/again/I would gladly die."

Maybe it's this very state of mind that appeals to teen boys, stressed out by the fog of adolescence and living a life not yet fully in control.

Seamus Heaney Dies

September 9, 2013 / Big Bang Poetry

News stories:

The New York Times ("Seamus Heaney, Irish Poet of Soil and Strife, Dies at 74")and Financial Times ("Seamus Heaney and the death of poets")

Because I was in full moving-mode and off-line for three
weeks, it was Monsieur Bang Bang who told me Seamus Heaney died. He also told
me Heaney reminded him of my grandfather because of his Celtic-looking head and
down-turned mouth. I asked my mom to send me a picture of my grandfather to
post here and she said she didn’t think her father looked like Seamus Heaney at all.

Because I’ve moved, I will miss the formal class on Nobel
Prize winning poets (part 2) at the Santa
Fe Community College.
But in honor of Heaney’s death, I’ve decided to pursue the list on my own,
continuing with Heaney at these sites:

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1995/heaney-bio.html

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/seamus-heaney

Poets on Stamps

September 9, 2013 / Big Bang Poetry

While we were at our local post office trying to get our
mailbox key (attempt failed), Monsieur Bang Bang picked up a catalog of
collectors stamps available now. He was looking to see what the Georgia
O’Keeffe stamp looked like in the American Modernists set. He pointed out that
many of the modernists included in the set were from O’Keeffe’s modernist
circle of friends (although she never gets credit for being a modernist).

On page 20 of the catalog, I found there was a collection of
Twentieth-Century Poets. It’s on the same page as the O’Henry stamp and the
Bugs Life stamp. A fantastic juxtaposition. Anyway, the poets included
are not necessarily American-born and include in this order:

Joseph Brodsky
Gwendolyn Brooks
William Carlos Williams
Robert Hayden
Sylvia Plath
Elizabeth Bishop
Wallace Stevens
Denise Levertov
E.E. Cummings
Theodore Rothke

From the post office you can buy the stamps themselves in a
panel, or purchaser a ceremony program, a notecard set or a commemorative
panel poster: https://store.usps.com/store/browse/uspsProductDetailMultiSkuDropDown.jsp?productId=S_468808&categoryId=subcatS_S_Commemorative

Something nice to frame for your office wall.

Opera About Oscar Wilde

August 11, 2013 / Big Bang Poetry

A few years ago I heard that the Santa Fe Opera would be doing an opera about Oscar Wilde in 2013. Although I'm hot and cold about the Santa Fe Opera and opera in general, I have seen about five of their shows (years ago in regular expensive seats and now usually in standing-room only). I was excited there would be a new opera about a famously flamboyant writer.

I even went to my Eldorado library to get Richard Ellmann's biography of Oscar Wilde.

Monsieur Big Bang took me to see the show two weeks ago, playing its second night of a World Premiere. We did the $15 SRO and unfortunately the house was packed so we never had the opportunity to be moved up to un-purchased seats. Due to our move and preparations for the writing sequester weekend, I was already exhausted and had to prop myself up for most of the show.

The opera focuses on Wilde's persecution for "gross indecency," the first half building up to his sentencing and his refusal to flee and the second half dealing with his time in jail. We spend no time learning of his early successes in criticism and theater or about his life after prison. And this is by design. The opera is solely about his persecution for being unapologetically gay.

In some ways I get this and in some ways I miss those lost plot points. We never see Oscar at work writing or being witty at parties and salons. We do get to hear some of his amazing children's tales and their stunning metaphors (but only a line here or there). The play also glamorizes Wilde somewhat and by not addressing his tragic after-prison life, this reinforces that. In truth, Wilde probably should have fled. He ended up exiled in France anyway, mistreated and broke. By fleeing, he would have probably salvaged more of a life for himself. The play tries to give him honor in facing the dragon.

I love the program artwork for the show. It shows an iconic portrait of Wilde built out of his famous lines. I bought a t-shirt of it. I loved some of the opera's figurative special effects as well: the jack-in-the-box judge, the crib that becomes prison bars.

What's special about the Santa Fe Opera is not only the quality of its programs but the uniqueness of its dedication to all types of opera fans (from tourists to obscurists), its interest in showcasing new operas and its stage design which opens out to display the scrub of juniper hills stage right and the Santa Fe mountains (through the stage and to the left). Many shows also include some dramatic weather in the background. I have also come to really enjoy the free lectures before shows.

During the Oscar lecture, we delved into some of his best aphorisms, an overview of the aesthetic movement, a bit of his biography, and we were read in entirely two of his tales for children (beautiful long poems surely), "The Happy Prince" and "The Nightingale and the Rose." We also learned about the opera's musical motifs and some supposedly familiar half-steps that were not familiar at all to me.

How does the opera handle Lord Alfred Douglas? I really liked how they handled him actually. "Bosie" was represented in the Ellman biography and in the opera lecture as an irresponsible, spoiled rich kid. He does not speak or sing in the opera but is ever-present as an obsessive thought in Oscar's mind. His character takes many guises but is always recognizable as the thin, effeminate Boise who performs a series of ballet segments that become very passionate and physical with Oscar.

The opera also includes a characterization of Walt Whitman who serves as kind of a guiding angel for Wilde. He is dressed all in white with a straw hat. His shadow looms large over the set. The opera merges his writings with Oscar Wilde's regarding the soul and the body. Frank Harris is another large character in the book. Harris was a publisher and friend of Oscar's who wrote the first famous (but inaccurate) biography of Oscar Wilde. William Butler Yeats and George Bernard Shaw are also mentioned in the opera as supporters of Oscar during his trial.

Monsieur Big Bang is actually an opera-aficionado (unlike a more ambivalent me) and he enjoyed the opera; but as he said, you won't come out of this one humming an aria. The music seems understated in service of the story. I feel this way about most of the more obscure operas I've seen in Santa Fe. The local fans we know here are liking the opera, being fans of its star, but the reviews have been mixed. Some local fans have told us all new operas seem to get mixed reviews by default.

The opera was directed by Kevin Newbury and written by Theodore Morrison and John Cox especially for newly famous countertenor David Daniels. Creators felt he was a good match for Wilde's alleged Mezzo-like voice.

Although the opera doesn't cover the breadth of Wilde's life, its aim is more to serve up a message and a warning in light of current events. Near the end of the opera the character of Oscar says, "I have made my choice; I have lived my poems." I respect not only that sentiment but these opera creator's choices of focus in not letting a rambling biography limit them in telling the story they wanted to tell.