Listening to: Under Attack by ABBA
Lots of writing this weekend. Also just finished up some work I brought home from the office.
I'm booking a flight tonight to visit my two daughters in Phoenix. Will be able to catch the Giants in Spring Training too!
God I've been missing Giants baseball.
We had geese wonder across the street from the ball field this morning to our front yard. They are way cool.
On Tuesday I joined a host of others from my office and a couple of individuals from other departments in our conference room where all eyes and the TV set were tuned into the Inauguration of our 44th President of the United States. There was a keen respect by all for what was happening before our eyes.
When the President had finished his address and the podium was handed to Elizabeth Alexander, the poet chosen by the President to offer a poem written specifically for the occasion, a significant portion of those in the conference room rose and left amid groans at the mention of the word poem. I suppose I should not be at all surprised by this reaction, but what was more disturbing was the fact that those who remained largely talked over the reading. At one point I sensed that only myself and one other individual were actually listening. But at some point, the party of the second part (I being the first) said aloud, "What? Oh wow, this is bad." I was difficult for me to even attempt to enjoy the remainder of the reading.
When the room had cleared, I had to admit, the talking over the poem had made it difficult to potentially enjoy or at least appreciate the poem. What I recalled hearing of it actually impressed me more that I thought it might, but sadly I felt I needed to see the poem in print for myself and re-read it to really conclude anything about it.
Later in the afternoon, I approached the individual who expressed the feeling that the poem was bad and asked her what she heard. I was not surprised to learn she could not recall much of what was actually said. She did tell me that she though Ms. Alexander had jotted it down that very morning before the event.
I have wondered if others have had feedback from non-poets that they have talked with. Please share your stories in the comments.
And for the sake of everyone who has not seen/heard it, or like myself needed to see it again, here it is....
Praise Song for the Day
A Poem for Barack Obama’s Presidential Inauguration
Elizabeth Alexander
Each day we go about our business,
walking past each other, catching each other’s
eyes or not, about to speak or speaking.
All about us is noise. All about us is
noise and bramble, thorn and din, each
one of our ancestors on our tongues.
Someone is stitching up a hem, darning
a hole in a uniform, patching a tire,
repairing the things in need of repair.
Someone is trying to make music somewhere,
with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum,
with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.
A woman and her son wait for the bus.
A farmer considers the changing sky.
A teacher says, Take out your pencils. Begin.
We encounter each other in words, words
spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed,
words to consider, reconsider.
We cross dirt roads and highways that mark
the will of some one and then others, who said
I need to see what’s on the other side.
I know there’s something better down the road.
We need to find a place where we are safe.
We walk into that which we cannot yet see.
Say it plain: that many have died for this day.
Sing the names of the dead who brought us here,
who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges,
picked the cotton and the lettuce, built
brick by brick the glittering edifices
they would then keep clean and work inside of.
Praise song for struggle, praise song for the day.
Praise song for every hand-lettered sign,
the figuring-it-out at kitchen tables.
Some live by love thy neighbor as thyself,
others by first do no harm or take no more
than you need. What if the mightiest word is love?
Love beyond marital, filial, national,
love that casts a widening pool of light,
love with no need to pre-empt grievance.
In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air,
any thing can be made, any sentence begun.
On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp,
praise song for walking forward in that light.
Copyright © 2009 by Elizabeth Alexander. All rights reserved. Reprinted with the permission of Graywolf Press, Saint Paul, Minnesota. A chapbook edition of Praise Song for the Day will be published on February 6, 2009
I've taken the time off of work today to work on poetry submissions. Yeah! (I'm pretending there are cheers in the background).
It probably should not have to come to using a work holiday to crank out submissions, but whatever it takes. I did get some out on the 5th of January so I guess I'm not exactly procrastinating. I did fall off in my submissions in 2008, so I am determined to keep up with new submissions monthly this year. I guess a way to look at it is I only have 11 more months to go this year.
As difficult as it is for me to think ahead to 2010 I suppose when planning for an event with a $1.3 million price tag it's not all that early. For 12 times dating back to 1986, the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation has funded a biannual Dodge Poetry Festival in New Jersey but sadly the event which drew 19,000 people last year has been scrapped for 2010.
This is not my first blogging on hard economic times for poetry/arts, and I'm relatively certain it won't be my last. Still, I am honestly a little surprised by it, even though It probably didn't require a crystal ball or tarot cards to see it coming.
The Dodge Festival has been sort of the Woodstock of poetry and regularly draws from the ranks of the well established poets. Names like Stephen Dunn, Sharon Olds, Gwendolyn Brooks, Ruth Stone, Mary Oliver, Theodore Weiss, Stanley Kunitz, Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, Amira Baraka, and Kenneth Koch to name a few. And that is only some from the first event. Since that time, there have been many more including:
Those are just a few of the names, the list of participating poets is enormous and covers a broad spectrum of poetic voice. Perhaps the only name I think missing from the list that surprises me is that of John Ashbery.
My point in listing the names is simply to underscore the magnitude of what was been lost by the cancellation of the Festival.
It's hard to argue with the decision by the foundation. David Grant the CEO for the foundation lists a decline of 30% in the assets of the endowment from a year ago.
For the short term this is a blow to public support for poetry. The good news is that Grant says the foundation will continue to work to bring poetry to schools. He did not rule out a return of the festival in some form if not the same after taking a two year cycle off. Keep your fingers crossed.
The Main Street Rag Poetry Showcase, Sun. 1/18, 7p, The Writers Place - 3607 Pennsylvania Kansas City, MO View Map
Join Main Street Rag co-founder, Shawn Pavey, as he welcomes Iris Appelquist and Jason Ryberg as featured poets for this month's event! Iris and Jason will read from their upcoming book, Blunt Trauma.
This month will be BYO beverages and snacks. The tailspinning economy is hitting us in the pants, especially in the parts of the pants that hold the cash. As a result, there is no budget for refreshments anymore. C'est la vie. Bring what you need, bring extra to share, and we'll take a "stone soup" approach to the good times.
As always, an open mic follows our featured poets. No sign up sheet, but please limit poems to 1 at a time and less than 5 minutes.
I look forward to seeing you all there! Please feel free to repost this. Any questions, call Shawn at 816-868-2707
Time: 7:00pm - 10:00pm
Poetry Reading Series@ The Johnson County Library
Patricia Miller and Robert Stewart
January 20, 7PM - 9875 West 87th Street | Overland Park, KS 66212
Patricia Cleary Miller is the author of the non-fiction book, Westport: Missouri's Port of Many Returns, and the poetry books Starting a Swan Dive and Dresden. She holds the Ph.D. in English from the University of Kansas and taught there and at the University of Missouri-Kansas City before coming to Rockhurst University, where she has now taught writing and literature for twenty-five years. A past chair of the Department of English, she is currently chair of the Humanities Division. A former Bunting Fellow in poetry at Harvard/Radcliffe, she was granted the Harvard Alumni Association Award and the Hiram Hunn Award. In 1987, with the help of her students, she founded the Rockhurst Review, which she continues to edit.
Robert Stewart's books include Outside Language: Essays (Helicon Nine Editions, a finalist in the PEN Center USA Literary Awards for 2004, and winner of the 2004 Thorpe Menn Award), Plumbers (poems), and others. He has the particular joy of being married to a better poet than he is, Lisa Stewart. However, some of his poems have weaseled their way into Denver Quarterly, Poetry Northwest, The Iowa Review, Prairie Schooner, Stand, The Literary Review and other magazines. Anthology editorships include Spud Songs: An Anthology of Potato Poems (with Gloria Vando, a benefit for hunger relief), Voices From the Interior, and Decade: Modern American Poets, co-edited with Trish Reeves). In 2008, the magazine he edits, New Letters, won a National Magazine Award for the Essay.
The procrastination is over. I've readied my submission to an annual review that I am especially fond of. This will be my third year of submission. The first year - zing I was accepted. Last year nada. So I'm trying to remain hopeful that this years material has something that will stick. Everything all done up and stamped. Just need to drop it in the mail in the morning.
For some reason I always feel good when I submit to this review. I don't know why, I just do. Anyone feel that way about any place in particular that you send your work?
Word List:
A new year calls for a new word list. I decided this on the way home from the office tonight. I sometimes get away from my list and it really is sad, because having a list of uniquely interesting words at my finder tips often will spark something. That's just a side benefit. What I rely on the list for is to get me away from using the same words often when I'm writing. If I use it, I cross it off my list. The idea is to keep adding words even as I subtract them.
Feeling kind of yuckie tonight. Almost like I'm trying to come down with something. Headache and mussels ache. I think I'll try and read a while, if my eyes and my head will cooperate.
Listening to Savage Garden / Crash and Burn.....
It was cruel and unusual punishment working yesterday but this too has past. I need to go to the store this morning. Old Mother Hubbard is starting to look like she's among the privileged. I don't think procrastination as a plan is working. Time for the backup plan.
The sky is overcast and it's dreary out. Don't appear to be changing anytime soon.
I need to mull over some submissions I want in the mail by Monday.
Have a picture I want to work on too to submit to a journal. This would be the first time submitting photos.
Clock is ticking in my head. I hate that.
“Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. When we really listen to people there is an alternating current, and this recharges us so that we never get tired of each other. We are constantly being re-created.” ~ Brenda Ueland
I thought now might be a good time to roll out some resources for those writers looking for good start to the year.
There's a few things to get you thinking if your having trouble getting the new year started.
Best wishes to everyone in 2009!
The Jan/Feb issue of Poets & Writers is out. One of my favorite issues - the 12 debut poets for the year. The past couple of years I have known someone on the list. Not so this year. Based however on past experience with this list I need to get busy looking for some of their material. Those selected in the past have generally been a great crop of poets and for the most part they are very good reads.
Also there is a delightful piece that was written by Kim Addonizio titled First Thought, Worst Thought. Kim provides poetry exercises to inspire writers.
I haven't read it cover to cover yet, so there may be more gems awaiting me.
W.S. Merwin has become one of my favorite poets over the past couple of years. At 81 he is still quite an active writer and has yet another book coming out "The Shadow of Sirius."
PBS has done a profile and featured some of his poems and it can be seen on their web site here. I enjoyed it. I think it's worth taking a look at.
I ventured out today and shot some pictures along the Missouri River and other places close by. Still a bit of snow lingering here and there but we'll see more of it before long. Winter is yet young.
I pity those poor souls who do not have the ability to experience seasonal changes. Their internal clocks must find the year very long and unforgiving. Having four distinct season is like having four times during the year to feel like there is a fresh start.
The clock we look at to see what time of day it is, is simply a man made arbitrary measurement to time. So is the calendar. But the seasons, they are natures clock.
It's probably a poet thing to prefer natural timing to some artificially contrived medium.
Our typical vision of the muse calls upon us to look to an external source. I suppose we've all had examples of persons or even inanimate objects that have provided us with a spark of imagination that was the breakthrough of some piece of art. But I feel like deep down inside each of us, that's where the muse really is.
I know that all around us are beautiful, startling, magnificent, frightening, majestic, myopic, shocking and luminescent things that give us pause and allows us to think beyond the moment. But I suspect it is the inner muse within our own minds and not some mythology that takes those things we see and experience and goes outside the box and makes of them something new and allows us to give birth to that which is uniquely ours in a collaborative conception with our inner muse.
Here's a positive story for the spaceship earth~!
updated 9:50 a.m. CT, Fri., Dec. 26, 2008
SAN FRANCISCO - San Francisco International Airport is planning to give guilt-ridden travelers a chance to offset the air pollution emitted from their plane rides.
San Francisco airport to feature carbon offset kiosks - News- msnbc.com
Peace to one and all.....
When President-elect Obama is sworn into office the nation will hear from a poet that few of us have even heard of. Elizabeth Alexander's Wikipedia bio is shot and clearly substantiates the argument that her recitation on January 20, 2009 of a poem written by her, especially for this occasion will constitute he 15 minutes of fame.
Alexander was born in Harlem, New York in 1962. She grew up in Washington, D.C. so the so she is no stranger to the nation's capital. She received a B.A from Yale University, an M.A from Boston University, and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Pennsylvania. She currently teaches ay Yale.
Alexander is not without honors. Her fourth poetry book "American Sublime" was a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize, and she was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts creative writing fellowship as well as an Illinois Arts Council award.
Reading several of her poems today, I was not on the whole impressed. Of the ones I read, only Blues from her book, Body of Life struck my fancy. Of course I've not read but a half dozen of her poems, and she'll be writing one specifically for the occasion, so there is hope that in those few minuets she will shine. What I am most happy about is that Obama has again placed poetry in a prime time slot for America.
