Universality of poetry

“Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.” ~ Aristotle

Today's bits and pieces:

• Poet Nikki Giovanni reciting poem at Virginia Tech Vigil
• In an interesting shift - the British have backed off the use of the phrase 'war on terror' citing the phrase strengthens terrorists by making them feel part of a bigger struggle. A member of Tony Blair's Cabinet brought into the open a quiet shift away from the U.S. view on combating extremist groups saying, "In the U.K., we do not use the phrase 'war on terror' because we can't win by military means alone, and because this isn't us against one organized enemy with a clear identity and a coherent set of objectives." What an interesting shift from on of President Bush's favorite phrases.
• A roundup of 5 poetry bestsellers.

Poets & Writers Exchange Contest for poetry

Congratulation to Andres Rodriguez who was the Missouri winner of the Poets & Writers Exchange Contest for poetry. Rodriguez was chosen from a pool of 112 entries. He lives in Kansas City and is the author of Book of the Heart -The Poetics, Letters and Life of John Keats

Patience

"Children and lunatics cut the Gordian knot which the poet spends his life patiently trying to untie." ~ Jean Cocteau

Patience and poetry always keep appearing together.

IN THE NEWS:

• Natasha Tretheway won the Pulitzer Prize on Monday for "Native Guard," a collection about black Civil War soldiers who helped protect a fort on Ship Island, a few miles off the Mississippi coast. [story]
• Charlie Savage of the Boston Globe won a Pulitzer for his reporting how President Bush quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office. This is a compelling piece of journalistic reporting that should get more attention then it has. (click here)

Next they'll blame the weather on us....

The poet may be used as a barometer, but let us not forget that he is also part of the weather. ~Lionel Trilling

I really like this quote and I am not exactly sure why. As we start the week, a few other annotations....

• “I have nothing to hide." is one of those reassurances that is right up there with, "I am not a crook." Sorry Alberto, it isn't working for me.
• Very intriguing site to involve teens in poetry.
• Robert Peake discusses an interesting phenomena - Poetry 2.0?

Balance

Woke up this morning to my wife reminding me not to miss New Letters (a radio program produced locally and aired at 6am Sundays on our local NPR affiliate, KCUR FM) This weeks program was an interview with Naomi Shihab Nye that was taped last year when she was in Kansas City. Missourians have a bit of a claim on Nye as she was born in St. Louis. (an insignificant fact to my post, but my over functioning self will take over on occasion).

I think it was maybe three, perhaps four years ago that I first was introduced to her when she spoke was a featured speaker at a writers conference here in town. Even aside from her poetry, she is a dynamic personality. I believe her to be an individual who truly breathes the experience of poetry and this I contend makes it hard if not impossible to separate the person from the poet.

If I were looking for a diplomatic representative to a foreign country, any country, Naomi Shihab Nye would possess the necessary temperament to break through the toughest of barriers and actually be able to achieve meaningful dialogue.

What I like about Ney is her understanding of the total range of human emotion. She is not oblivious to pain and suffering but she always seems to be looking for a way past it. With her ancestral connection to the Middle East, this is a remarkable feat. The lines from here 1994 poem Jerusalem are a testament to this... "I'm not interested in / who suffered the most. / I'm interested in / people getting over it."

In reading an interview with Nye in Pedestal Magazine.com I caught the following line which reaffirms my belief that she indeed lives day-to-day in a poetry realm: "Balance is more important than anything. I am sure I lose my balance every day. Poetry—reading it, usually—is what helps us find it again." Could it be that this is the true value to each of us in National Poetry Month? A time for us to center ourselves, to find balance in life?

Wet & Cold - Thankfully no snow...

A cold Saturday after a night of rain that was expected to turn to an April snow. Fortunately, no snow.

I share this quote today....

"Art is anything people do with distinction." ~ Louis Dudek

The right state of mind....

I've heard so much from poets about what they write with, where they write or time time of day they prefer for their task. It seems there are any number of ways to approach writing poetry and no single formula is a guarantee success for everyone. But I have discovered a T.S. Eliot quote that suggests how one's mind is best equipped for the enterprise. Eilot says, “When a poet's mind is perfectly equipped for its work, it is constantly amalgamating disparate experiences.”

What I am hearing from Eliot sounds like a process of ordering dissimilar experiences or closing them together in some sort of organized way. Melding them on a page. This of course could account for the difficulty many have with poetry, if such a thought process were to seem particularly foreign.

I recall an evening I was alone at home and set down with a pen and my journal and started to write - equating how still the night was and how it wrapped itself around the quite of the house and I felt almost a third wheel to this union. And soon I was writing how I wished you were home and I was the night...

This bit of writing came together in unusual ease. Looking back I can see the joining of dissimilar experiences and the way this developed into a short poem that I have been told by many that they especially like. Yet, it came together in very short order and without the customary multipal rewrites. Perhaps it worked so well because Eliot is on to something.