The WESTPORT BRANCH of the KANSAS CITY PUBLIC LIBRARY will host a reading by a number of local poets on April 22 between 4:30 and 6:30 p.m. and the public is invited. I have agreed to read at the event.
The library is located at 118 Westport Road, Kansas City, MO 64111
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The ASU controversy is a little different and actually quite amusing if you consider the past history of the University. Notre Dame is conferring an honorary degree upon President Obama. Not an unusual exercise for a prominent speaker a University commencement. But ASA earlier in the week said their would be no honorary degree for the President. Sharon Keeler, a spokesperson for the University put it this way, "Because President Obama’s body of work is yet to come, it’s inappropriate to recognize him at this time." Following this news the chatter and editorial writers have taken on the ASU's position.
The East Valley Tribune from the Phoenix, Arizona area calls the oversight "an odd gap that besmirches the image of an excellent institution." And MSNBC's Contessa Brewer pointed out that in 1986, Kermit the Frog received an honorary degree from Long Island Southampton College and further expressed her disapproval of ASU's decision.
A list here provides some interesting names of past recipients from ASU. They include Barry Goldwater in 1961, three years before he received the Republican nomination for president and only eight years into his U.S. Senate career. There is George Romney in in 1962. He of course lost the GOP nomination for President. Sandra Day O'Connor (first woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court) in 1984, just three years into her 25 years on the Court. Rita Dove in 1995 - A Poet U.S. Laureate.
Anyway, I'm thinking we haven't heard the last of this.
POOF! The draft removed by me work work on for future submission.
* the prompt for this poem was to writ something about a Friday.
Poof! This draft removed by me to work on for future submissions
*the prompt was to write something dealing with memory or memories.
Routine
If I didn't do it everyday,
a pile of work got in the way
and played up differences
enough to sway the karma
an altogether different direction-
and people stop to flirt with me
or promise me more, or disagree
and take my shine all away
stalling progress for the day.
If summer rain would run and hide
and leave me all alone to cry
so the parched earth would soak
it up, how the world would that all look?
And I'd be stalled in all I do
to finally make it up to you.
The things we've missed
and things all broken
what's left, just a token.
The prompt for today was write about something that had to day with clean.
Sun Bleached Bones
Quarter of 11 and I'm just now getting my poem for day six posted over on Poetry Asides.
I'm excited that the baseball season is under way, I'm going to catch up on scores from some games today and then head to bed. My Giants play tomorrow opening at home against the Brewers in an afternoon game. Go Giants!
It's not like I'm about to crack or anything, but when you are in a funk and writing bad stuff it's a downer. Through several efforts today I concluded with another piece that I am unhappy with. The problem is they were not getting much better as the day went along.
I could of course claim this all sucks and chuck it. That would be one way of dealing with it. But anytime one's writing turns south, as hard as it is, the best thing one can do is write through it. Walking away from it is usually not a formulary for success. So after day five, I have four that washes and one that could grow into something. I suppose I should not complain- just keep writing.
I've completed my poem for day four - the prompt was to write about an animal. For some reason I was not enamored with this prompt, but I charged ahead. It is not a poem that will appear here, but I did post it on the Poetic Asides blog as required as part of the daily challenge. I'm hopeful the Sunday prompt is more agreeable with me.
This morning I attended an Undergraduate English Symposium that was held at the Diastole in Kansas City. A poet friend Amy Davis was one of the presenters and I attended both to support her work and to learn what I could from the presentation. The Diastole is a magnificent facility both inside and out. It has a tremendous collection of artwork in various media and the tranquility that exudes from this place is beyond belief.
The name itself is quite interesting. Diastole, pronounced (dy-AS-tuh-lee), is a medical term for the interim between heartbeats, when the heart muscle relaxes. Systole is when the heart beats and delivers life's blood downstream. The heart rests following each systole, and fills with the blood of the next pulse. This period, the heart at rest, is Diastole.
Amy's work is consistently fresh and very tight. She is somewhat of a master of reduction to the lowest necessary denominator when it comes to words. I especially enjoyed hearing the changed directions that some of these poems took in rewrites. It was well worth the time, besides being enjoyable.
The prompt was: The Problem with (fill in blank)
The Problem with Poetry
It wants to be.
Just be—
that’s all. To exist
apart from the shivering
cold of rainy spring afternoons
and melancholy silence
that hangs thick as molasses
in the air.
Poetry wants to be held tight
and listened to. To be seen
not just heard.
To lie spread-eagle
on the page; bare,
and hear only the gasp
at its raw form.
Do not argue with poetry.
Not out loud.
Any disagreement should come
as a sweet discourse
within the mind.
Judge not what is said
in those lines before you.
They are for their own part
playing out what latitude
you have allowed them—
and in the end, it is the mind
that is at fault, not the poem.
Just about a half hour ago I completed my day two poem based upon a prompt of outsider. And now that I'm done, I'm thinking about all the "outsiders" that are not getting anything out of national poetry month.
Of course, we poets and poetry enthusiasts may well be in the minority. I suppose who constitutes an outsider here is open to debate, but I really think that it has more to do with groups drawn by a common likeness. There is probably more likeness among those who cling to the love of poetry than those who don't. Among those who don't there may be a wide range in the level of disinterest. For example those with little or no exposure to poetry may comprise a portion of the whole. Then those who were exposed to it and had a strong distaste for it. Then more casually disinterested people and so on.
It seems each year I ask myself what is the big deal that sends some people running from poetry? I am again processing that question in my mind tonight.
I must confess, it rhymed. I believe my penitence will be be 2 Our Fathers and 5 Hail Marys. Oh yeah, and go forth and rhyme no more.
For a bit of a treat, here Stephen Dunn reads Talk to God from his book, What Goes On—Selected and New Poems 1995-2009. Check it out.
I want an Eskimo Pie.
I want it cold
and hard as marble.
I want to peel the chocolate layer off
in two halves.
First eat the vanilla inside.
Hold the chocolate clothing;
admire its sheen.
Afterwards consume it-
until we are one
and the rush of dopamine flashes
inside my arcade head
sending me round and round
in a ball of worked up heat
wanting more and more.
Thursday night I was fortunate enough to be in the audience at a Kansas City reading by Aimee Neshukumatathil. Aimee read from her book Miracle Fruit, her latest book titled At the Drive-In Volcano and from a newer, yet to be published manuscript.
Aimee's writer voice is not the particularly powerful voice that I usually am drawn to. Nor did she quite seem to meet the template for an academic poet. She is perhaps more in the style of Naomi Nye… a gentle voice, a voice of knowledge, a voice that is zealous and vibrant, a layered mingling of her pedigree and contemporary American culture. Among my favorites from the reading, Corpse Flower, Swear Words, and Fishbone.
She’s a very relaxed reader who commands the audience attention with a balance of humor and casual storytelling in addition to her poetry. Her tone of voice when reading is a pleasant and reassuring one.
I enjoyed reading through Miracle Fruit last night and today. Her poetry is tight and neat and relies upon a wide range of knowledge of the plant and animal kingdom as well as ethnic and cultural insight.
As news of this has trickled out to the mainstream media slowly, I'm sure some of have perhaps heard that Nicholas Hughes died on the 16th of this month at his own hands. Nicholas was of course the second of two children born to Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes.
He was in 46 and made his home in Fairbanks Alaska when he was a prominent fish biologist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Not surprisingly he inherited his fathers fondness for fishing and nature.
His passing might have only made the local papers, but the the word of his suicide made the news around the U.S. and across the Atlantic in Europe as well. He was after all the son of Sylvia and Ted. There is so much tragedy associated with the family already and this will only rekindle the debates about his mothers death.
Nicholas was less in the limelight than his sister Frieda who like her mother wrote poetry and and painted as a serious artist herself. In a statement by Frieda released as she departed for Fairbanks she noted that her brother had been battling depression for some time.
Already I've seen stories that have popped up talking about a "suicide gene." There is statistically a high percentage of suicides among individuals who have lost a family member to suicide, but so far not real scientific evidence that links the act directly to genetics. It is true that the conditions, both environmental and by some predisposition to depression may increase the tendency but that linkage is more indirect.
I want to make note of a video my daughter Meghan passed along to me and some of you may well have seen it, but for those who haven't it's an uplifting story, the kind that toughs at the heart.
I've not really had any experience with collaborative poetry in the context of shared writing. I always consider poetry to generally be a collaborative between the poet and the reader, but that's another whole matter.
I suppose it requires a special temperament for two artists, both poets, to work together to produce something that is a joint creation. C.D. Wright in a symposium I attended earlier this month, spoke of collaborating with photographers on work. That seems to me to be a particularly beneficial arrangement given the tenets under which both art forms develop.
Mutating the Signature (great name by the way) is a relatively new blog of two poets who have been actually collaborating for a while now. The poets Dana Guthrie Martin and Nathan Moore have certainly put an interesting light upon such work.
Nathan for example has explained a part of the benefit of this shared creative process this way,'"Collaborative poetry offers a respite from the struggles of solitary work. My poor, overworked ego is given a break as process and product are shared, voices are melded. It’s a fantastic feeling to be partner to the creation of a voice that’s greater than your own.'" I think any of us who've written for a while are certainly aware just how solitary the work can become.
Dana seems to derive an energy from seeing the twists and turns that can develop when two are working to meld their voices. She is quoted on their site as explaining it like this... '"The surprise of the poems we’ve written. Oh, the unforeseen turns the writing takes. Going in and not knowing where you’ll come out, or when or how. The way we each respond to the words and phrases the other person contributes. How a piece that in one moment seems like it’s headed nowhere fast can, in a word or two, find its way somewhere startling, strange and gorgeous.'"
As I've stated, I've not really worked except in the simplest terms, like at a workshop of people joining to create a poem, and that was more for fun and hardly a serious collaborative venture. I'm curious about the experiences of others, be they positive or negative. Any takers is this discussion? What's it like and perhaps you can share a bit about any rules or secrets of making it work that you'd like to share?
