Digesting the morning

Saturday morning, post instant Maple & Brown Sugar Oatmeal. The dishwasher is churning in the kitchen and I sit in the great room holding court over Barry, Mo and Klaus (the boy's as we refer to them... dogs). They are all happy from the most part. Resting quietly, for which I am grateful. No doubt they are conserving energy for an afternoon romp.

Siting back and surveying the news and whatnot around the world, (who knows what fodder this may give me in the weeks ahead for NaPoWri Mo) a number of interesting things pop up.

For example, Barack Obama is in the news not for some major policy statement, but for poetry he wrote in his student years. [click here]

D. Thomas Jenkins in an op-ed piece asks a very simple but profound question about the future of the United States commitment to the war in Iraq. [click here]

When one of the nation's leading ethanol research and development companies too on the name- Poet, it sure seemed like a bunch of hot air to me. [click here]

My Sweet Lord [click here] a nude, anatomically correct chocolate sculpture of Jesus Christ was canceled Friday amid a choir of complaining Catholics that included Cardinal Edward Egan.
Ok, when I first heard this story yesterday before it was cancelled, I e-mailed the link to all of my immediate family asking if they felt this was distasteful art. Since we are all Catholic, I wondered if my family members looked at it the same way. I said nothing about my thoughts one way or the other not wanting to influence their responses. Not one of them was shocked or outraged. One said they don't know it they would chose to display an anatomically correct Christ in their home, but saw nothing per say wrong with someone using chocolate as a medium for the artwork or that it was nude. Another made a very good point, saying... " that people who get mad about this better also be mad about the American Flag on a magnetic sticker for cars or beach towels made to look like the flag."

Drama Students Students at Wilton High Commended by Music Theatre International

The saga of Wilton High School's "Voices of Courage" continues. A Broadway musical licensing agency that has been around since 1952, has created a special award to recognize Wilton High School drama students for writing a play on the Iraq war that school school official have blocked from production.

It is not uncommon for the company to give awards to school theater departments for singing, dancing, directing and stage design."However, we are aware that theater is not just about acting, singing, dancing and excelling in performance," says a letter to the students from the company."It is also about positive risk taking for students, working as a community and utilizing theater skills, to present points of view on the stage which comment on the world in which we live."

School principal Timothy H Canty and School Superintendent Gary Richards have censored the production, not only disallowing it on campus, but off campus as well.

NaPoWriMo

Cindy asked about a link for NaPoWriMo and I suppose others may wonder the same. It seems that Poetry Free For All is hosting a special thread on their forum for this exercise in craziness. There may well be other locations doing something, but I am not aware of any. Personally I've done a number of poetry forums in the past and have gravitated away from them. I have no experience with wit Poetry Free For All - this will be my first time using this forum. I do intend to do a separate blog for my NaPoWriMo creations and will link it back to this blog. Anyway, for Cindy and anyone else asking - there is the main deeliebopper.

A poem a day for a month.... Starting April Fools Day. That must say something about us all. ::grin::

Misc on my mind

From my deck this morning, the ornamental tree that rises next to it is praising spring.

A few items of note:

Let me add Wilton Public Schools Superintendent Gary Richards to my 5 thumbs down award for his part in the Wilton High School cancellation of Voices In Conflict. [see earlier post] It appears that Richards along with school principal Timothy H. Canty were both in decision making roles with respect to cancelling this performance by students.

I have taken the dive into NaPoWriMo / a poem a day for thirty days in April.

Yesterday, I read Autobiography and Poetry in Slate. Dan Chiassonto and Meghan O'Rourke tackle confessional or autobiographical poetry, or if you will, the presumptive reader in some cases. I found the commentary between these two (if it really happened) to be thought provoking. Both making interesting points. Wonder what others are thinking out this piece? I'm going to sit on my thoughts for the time being. Anyone else who read it wanna share?

Richard Wilbur on the Poet's Audience

"It is true that the poet does not directly address his neighbors; but he does address a great congress of persons who dwell at the back of his mind, a congress of all those who have taught him and whom he has admired; they constitute his ideal audience and his better self. ... To this congress the poet speaks not of peculiar and personal things, but of what in himself is most common, most anonymous, most fundamental, most true of all men." ~ Richard Wilbur

The End of Periods

In terms of my own poetry, I tend to move in and out of the usage of punctuation I suppose based more on mood than anything. Exactly why, I could not say and this bothers me. Sometimes in the process of rewrites I’ll add it and at other times I’ll take it away. There seems to be no real rhyme (no pun intended) or reason for my adherence or departure from punctuation. It bothers me not that I punctuate or not punctuate. What disturbs me is that if asked, I could not justify my decision. Line breaks, stanzas, etc. I’ll be able to give you a reason.

Some time in the 1960’s W.S. Merwin, whose work I greatly admire, moved away from punctuation. Merwin writes that, “By the end of the poems in The Moving Target I had relinquished punctuation along with several other structural conventions, a move that evolved from my growing sense that punctuation alluded to and assumed an allegiance to the rational protocol of written language, and of prose in particular. I had come to feel that it stapled the poems to the page. Whereas I wanted the poems to evoke the spoken language, and wanted the hearing of them to be essential to taking them in.”

I find a great deal of favor with Merwin’s justification, at least the idea of separating my poetry from prose. Yet, I am from the school that believes seeing the poem on the page can be an essential part of enjoying it as well. The spacing, open or closed on the page, the length of lines can so often speed up or slow down the reader to give the poet some control over tone. I don’t deny that punctuation can add to that process as well. Perhaps this is one reason that I have trouble making the break altogether.

I do find some comfort in knowing that Merwin’s change seemed to be an evolutionary transformation and did not just occur over night.

Play About Iraq War Divides a Connecticut School - New York Times

Play About Iraq War Divides a Connecticut School - New York Times

Natalie Kropf, 18, Seth Koproski, 17, Devon Fontaine, 16, and James Presson, 16, are students at Wilton High School in Wilton, Connecticut. Timothy H. Canty is the principal at Wilton High. These are a few principal players in an off stage drama about an on stage drams, "Voices in Conflict."

Wilton students in an advanced acting class were taking on the challenge of creating an original play about the war in Iraq. Last week, principal Timothy H. Canty canceled a play to be put on by the school's advanced theater class citing questions of political balance and context. Efforts were made to make some concessions in the script by the students. Even the thought of doing the performance off campus at night was out. Students say Canty had indicated that the material was too inflammatory, and that only someone who had actually served in the war could understand the experience. “He told us the student body is unprepared to hear about the war from students, and we aren’t prepared to answer questions from the audience and it wasn’t our place to tell them what soldiers were thinking,” said Sarah Anderson, a 17-year-old senior.

Two things come to my mind about this story....

• From a purely artistic point of view, principal Timothy Canty is way out of line. I'd have to give him my tops of 5 thumbs down for censorship of a piece of creative work by students that no doubt took significant commitment on their part. Perhaps (and sadly) their greatest learning experience from all this is the distaste for censorship in art when they could have been taking away more positive life experiences.
• Outside my artistic mode, I have to again give Mr. Canty my maximum 5 thumbs down for like many, sticking there head in the sand (I had another place in mind) with respect (and I emphasise the "R" word here) to treating these students in such a demeaning manner. Students like Natalie Kropf are old enough to be serving in Iraq, and of course many other students are not far behind. Why hide in the safety of comfort and pretend this war in not in the room. It is a fucking elephant he wants to pretend it is not there. Gives these students a lot of credit for wanting to undertake this and ask the hard questions that too many adults in this country are afraid to ask. Maybe if people had asked more questions earlier and engaged in meaningful dialogue there would not be 3234 U.S. serviceman dead and we would not have spent $410 billion plus on a war the has no end in sight. A war that has left deep divisions and civil-war strife between the Iraqi people themselves. Give these you people a little respect. We ask them to fight our wars, don't talk down to them like we know what we are doing. If we did, things would be a lot different after four years.