tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-46681063035861866402024-03-16T03:08:13.024-04:00Poetry of RecoveryTom Lombardohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00386546238678041697noreply@blogger.comBlogger78125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4668106303586186640.post-73469263609972558722014-08-13T08:36:00.000-04:002014-08-13T08:36:09.993-04:00Tribute to Satyendra Srivastava
<P>My friend and colleague Satyendra Srivastava passed away during the summer. I met Satyendra through my work as editor of <I>After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events</i>, an anthology of 152 poems by 115 poets from 15 nations. Satyendra’s poetry graced those pages with elegance, irony, and his knack for quiet figurations. After corresponding for years, I finally met Satyendra in person during the inaugural International Reading Festival at the Morgridge Center at the University of Central Florida in April 2010. I had invited him to a panel I hosted there and to a reading with poets Marjory Wentworth and Susan Laughter Meyers. <BR>
<P>Satyendra was born in India, literally a child of the Ghandi revolution for independence. He moved to London in 1958, received his Ph.D. at the University of London, and taught at the University of Toronto and at Cambridge. He published in both English and Hindi, and he traveled the world for his readings. That world has lost one of its shining poets. His surviving widow, Munni Srivastava, has published a remembrance in Ambit Magazine, where Satyendra was a contributing editor for many years. Read it at:
<A HREF="http://www.ambitmagazine.co.uk/munni-srivastava-writes-satyendra/" >Satyendra Srivastava’s Life and Poetry</A>
<BR>
<P>Here’s the title poem from his collection published by Ambit Books, London. The poem appeared in <I>After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events</I>.
<P><B>“Sir Winston Churchill Knew My Mother”<BR> by Satyendra Srivastava</b><BR>
<BR>
Sir Winston Churchill he knew India<BR>
He knew<BR>
Because India was to him the Kohinor<BR>
Of that Empire on which the sun never sets<BR>
Sir Winston also knew the town<BR>
Which his people had built for their comfort and ease<BR>
Cutting and carving it from the Himalaya’s lap<BR>
– That child of the icy summits – that town<BR>
Which is called Mussoorie<BR>
Sir Winston knew where that town was and why<BR>
Because he had walked its long street rising and falling<BR>
Which had reminded him – somewhere somehow –<BR>
Of Princes Street in Edinburgh, another<BR>
Extremely beautiful town in the British Empire<BR>
And Sir Winston knew this too that<BR>
Also in the town called Mussoorie<BR>
A wave had risen<BR>
Shaking the foundations of Britain’s Empire<BR>
The kind of wave that would seem to him<BR>
Just the folly of that crazy naked fakir of<BR>
India’s national struggle<BR>
And Sir Winston knew this too that<BR>
In India some women who<BR>
Worshipped that same naked fakir as a father<BR>
Had laid down one day in the town of Mussoorie<BR>
In rows in the road and prevented the units<BR>
Of soldiers of the British Empire from going further<BR>
And among them had been some women who<BR>
Heavy with child could have given birth at any moment<BR>
Therefore exactly for this reason I<BR>
Went to Hyde Park Gate as soon as<BR>
I reached London<BR>
Stood in front of Sir Winston’s shut house<BR>
Bowed respectfully, then spoke out loudly<BR>
‘You, Sir Winston, knew my mother<BR>
Pregnant in her eighth month<BR>
Having received my father’s blessing<BR>
She too laid down in<BR>
That road in Mussoorie<BR>
From where the army units had to return –<BR>
I am the son born from that mother’s womb<BR>
And Satyendra is my name<BR>
And I have come to tell you<BR>
That I have now arrived in England.’ <BR>
<BR>
<P>Copyright © 2006 by Satyendra Srivastava. Reprinted from <i>Sir Winston Churchill Knew My Mother</i> (Ambit Books 2006) by permission of the poet. Appeared in the anthology <A HREF="http://www.poetryofrecovery.com" ><i>After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events</i></A>.<BR>
<BR>
<P><b>Satyendra Srivastava</b> was born in Azamgarh, Uttar Pradesh, India. He studied at the University of Poona from 1953-57, and the University of London from 1962-77, receiving his Ph.D. in history in 1978. He lectured in Indian Studies at the University of Toronto from 1968-71 and at the University of Cambridge from 1980-2003. With many published collections of poetry in Hindi, as well as plays for the stage and radio, he has also been a columnist for various Indian Publications. He writes in both Hindi and English. He has traveled widely to read his poems: from the U.S., Japan, and Russia to South Africa, Israel, and Egypt, among many other nations. His collections of poetry published in English are Talking Sanskrit to Fallen Leaves (Peepal Tree Press 1995), Between Thoughts (Samvad 1998), Another Silence (Samvad 2003), and Sir Winston Churchill Knew My Mother (Ambit Books 2006) from which three poems were reprinted in the anthology <A HREF="http://www.poetryofrecovery.com"><i> After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events</i></A>. He has received several awards for his writing. He lives in London and Cambridge and frequently travels back to India.<BR><BR>
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-EGKjlG5thhs/U-tbLCNjTCI/AAAAAAAAAPw/EiOddHeEIAE/s1600/Satyendra%2Bphoto.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-EGKjlG5thhs/U-tbLCNjTCI/AAAAAAAAAPw/EiOddHeEIAE/s320/Satyendra%2Bphoto.jpg" /></a>
<BR>
<P><b>An Interview with Satyendra Srivastava from past blog posting</b><BR>
<P><b>How did you come to write “Sir Winston Churchill Knew My Mother”?</b><BR>
<P>This is a political poem. My mother was very politically conscious and a great follower of Mahatma Gandhi. Early on she became involved in demonstrations against the British Government in India during the country’s Independence struggle. The poem portrays a lady who, on one hand, was a very traditional Hindu wife and mother, but, on the other hand, was also proud of her beliefs and anxious to take part in her country’s fight. In the poem, Sir Winston Churchill becomes a symbol of Imperialist Britain. Like millions of people, I respect Churchill’s
stand against fascism but, needless to say, totally abhor the ideal of imperialism he espoused. The poem reflects the plurality of feelings the man evokes in me and in many Indians of my generation.<BR>
<P><b>Can you tell us something about your process of writing that helped this/these poems come to life?</b><BR>
To go through such deep feeling, where even all suffering and pain becomes academic, but poetry absorbs all the suffering. As for me, poetry is a unique medium talking directly to anyone—heart to heart, and allowing one to share and invoke view and feeling, especially the deep feeling which is always with me in the presence of my memories. It comes alive even politically, as is the point with “Sir Winston Churchill Knew My Mother.”<BR>
<P>If you'd like updates on the postings to this blog, please LIKE the Facebook page at <A HREF="http://www.facebook.com/poetryofrecovery" >Poetry of Recovery's Facebook page</A>.<BR>
Tom Lombardohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00386546238678041697noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4668106303586186640.post-35277305578511420812014-06-03T18:04:00.002-04:002014-06-04T07:49:15.013-04:00Rachel Tzvia Back Translates Selected Poems of Tuvia Ruebner,Voice of Holocaust Generation<BR>
<P>The Hebrew Union College Press, in collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh Press, has just released the first collection in English of an important voice of the Holocaust generation: <A HREF=" http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=In%20the%20Illuminated%20Dark%3A%20Selected%20Poems%20of%20Tuvia%20Ruebner" ><I><B>In the Illuminated Dark: Selected Poems of Tuvia Ruebner</i></b></A><BR>
<P>The volume is translated, annotated and introduced by Rachel Tzvia Back, whose own poems appeared in <A HREF="https://www.facebook.com/poetryofrecovery?ref=hl" > After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events </A>. See her full bio below. <BR><BR>
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-UCpE7n6u_HY/U45E_FwSndI/AAAAAAAAAPE/V4fbXvYf4j0/s1600/Rachel+Tzvia+Back.Cover.Translation+of+Tuvia+Ruebner.photo.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-UCpE7n6u_HY/U45E_FwSndI/AAAAAAAAAPE/V4fbXvYf4j0/s320/Rachel+Tzvia+Back.Cover.Translation+of+Tuvia+Ruebner.photo.jpg" /></a><BR>
<P>The disasters of the 20th Century swept Ruebner from Europe to Israel, from German to Hebrew, from the familiar to the strange. Despite his truncated formal education, he became a poet and man of letters in Israel’s fledgling intellectual community, alongside other Jewish immigrant-refugee-survivors like Ludwig Strauss, Lea Goldberg, and Dan Pagis, eventually gaining international esteem as professor of comparative literatures at Haifa University and as renowned translator. For his fifteen poetry collections, from <I>The Fire in the Stone</i> in 1957 to <i>Last Ones</i> in 2013, Ruebner has received awards and accolades in Israel and Europe.<BR>
<P>Ruebner’s poetry offers an exquisite and indispensable voice of the 20th Century. His little sister, murdered in Auschwitz, and his youngest son, who disappeared in South America, wander unceasingly through his poems. Beyond the personal losses, the devastation of the century informs all of his work. Textual rupture and fragmentation echo historical rupture and fragmentation. The wonder of Tuvia Ruebner is that, after a lifetime of loss and tragedies, he remains open to the possibility of happiness. This openheartedness accommodates the many paradoxes and conflicts of life and infuses his poetry with an enduring and encompassing compassion for both the lost and for the living. <BR>
<P>Sample of poems from <A HREF=" http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=In%20the%20Illuminated%20Dark%3A%20Selected%20Poems%20of%20Tuvia%20Ruebner" ><I><B>In the Illuminated Dark: Selected Poems of Tuvia Ruebner</i></b></A>.<BR>
<P><b>MOONLIT NIGHT (2)</b><BR>
<P>I know it’s nothing<BR>
but a dream<BR>
and as a dream will flee<BR>
but this small hope<BR>
this small foolish unceasing<BR>
hope<BR>
that one day we’ll meet<BR>
on the dark side of the moon<BR>
pain does not appease<BR>
the darkest thoughts<BR>
now it’s night and you are missing<BR>
tomorrow will be day and you’ll be missing<BR>
your wisdom is missing, your voice missing<BR>
your love a weeping deeper than tears wept<BR>
but the day is not far off when I’ll be<BR>
beyond this, and the dream<BR>
lingers<BR>
you and me<BR>
on the other side of the moon<BR>
we’ll be with you and with me<BR>
you and me as one<BR>
forever<BR>
my son, my son<BR>
<BR>
<P><B>WONDER</b><BR>
<P>If after everything that has happened<BR>
you can still hear the blackbird, <BR>
the tufted lark at dawn, the bulbul and the honey-bird –<BR>
don’t be surprised that happiness is watching the clouds being <BR>
     wind-carried away, <BR>
is drinking morning coffee, being able to execute all the body’s<BR>
     needs<BR>
is walking along the paths without a cane<BR>
and seeing the burning colors of sunset. <BR>
<BR>
A human being can bear almost everything<BR>
and no one knows when and where<BR>
happiness will overcome him. <BR>
<BR>
<P><b>MY SISTER</b><BR>
<P>1<BR>
I went to find for you a form, <BR>
tenderness with no body, <BR>
sorrow with no hands no forehead, <BR>
I went to find for you<BR>
spring, a bird seeking a cage, <BR>
I walked a long way to find<BR>
your footsteps, <BR>
constellations for your long hair, <BR>
sanctuaries for your eyes. <BR>
<P>2<BR>
Always when the full moon rises<BR>
my sister’s face darkens, <BR>
<BR>
sad-eyed bird in the branches<BR>
abandoned by its orbit. <BR>
Always when the moon is renewed<BR>
my sister’s face darkens, <BR>
<BR>
empty unblessed lips<BR>
muttering bird-words. <BR>
<BR>
Oh these lofty skies, <BR>
how much we’ve asked of them! <BR>
Soon their image will be fully blurred, <BR>
bearing no tears. <BR>
<BR>
<P>Poems from <A HREF=" http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=In%20the%20Illuminated%20Dark%3A%20Selected%20Poems%20of%20Tuvia%20Ruebner" ><I><B>In the Illuminated Dark: Selected Poems of Tuvia Ruebner</i></b></A> reprinted by permission of the translator Rachel Tzvia Back. The title is linked to Amazon.com to buy. Also available at <A HREF=" http://www.upress.pitt.edu/BookDetails.aspx?bookId=36461
" > University of Pittsburgh Press.
</A>
<BR>
<P>Rachel Tzvia Back’s graceful translations of select poems representative of Ruebner’s seven-decade poetic trajectory are ever-faithful and beautifully attuned to the Hebrew originals, even as they work to create a new music in their English incarnations. Her comprehensive introduction and annotations supply the context in which these poems were produced. This first-ever bilingual edition, published as Ruebner marks his 90th birthday, gives readers in both Hebrew and English access to stunning poetry that insists on shared humanity across all border lines and divides.<BR>
<BR>
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Zjg5pE5Oum8/U45GIKZSbyI/AAAAAAAAAPM/GUjJZgjLkA0/s1600/Tuvia+Ruebmer.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Zjg5pE5Oum8/U45GIKZSbyI/AAAAAAAAAPM/GUjJZgjLkA0/s320/Tuvia+Ruebmer.jpg" /></a>
<b>Tuvia Ruebner</b><BR>
Tuvia Ruebner is Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature at Haifa University, winner of the Israel Prize, and translator of the works of S. J. Agnon, Goethe, Ludwig Strauss, and Friedrich Schlegel. Rachel Tzvia Back is a poet, translator, and professor of literature at Oranim College, Haifa, Israel. <BR>
<BR>
<BR>
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-cOJLPvxSBLA/U45GWbTCyAI/AAAAAAAAAPU/imlMHu9N6NE/s1600/Rachel+Tzvia+Back.Blue.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-cOJLPvxSBLA/U45GWbTCyAI/AAAAAAAAAPU/imlMHu9N6NE/s320/Rachel+Tzvia+Back.Blue.jpg" /></a>
<P><b>Rachel Tzvia Back </b>– poet, translator and professor of literature – lives in the Galilee, where her great, great, great grandfather settled in the 1830s. Her poetry collections include <i>Azimuth </i>(Sheep Meadow, 2001), <i>The Buffalo Poems </i>(Duration Press, 2003), <i>On Ruins & Return: Poems 1999-2005 </i>(Shearsman Boks, 2007), and <i>A Messenger Comes</i> (Singing Horse Press, 2012). Back's translations of the poetry of pre-eminent Hebrew poet Lea Goldberg, published in <i>Lea Goldberg: Selected Poetry and Drama</i> (Toby Press 2005) represent the most extensive selection of Goldberg's poetry in English and were awarded a 2005 PEN Translation Award. Back has translated into English poetry and prose other significant Hebrew writers, including Dahlia Ravikovitch, Tuvia Reubner, Hamutal Bar Yosef, and Haviva Pedaya. Back is the editor and primary translator of the English version of the anthology <i>With an Iron Pen: Twenty Years of Hebrew Protest Poetry </i>(SUNY Press, Excelsior Editions, 2009) – a collection named "haunting" and "historic" by American poet Adrienne Rich. Ms. Back’s poems have been anthologized in <A HREF="https://www.facebook.com/poetryofrecovery?ref=hl" > After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events </A>.
Tom Lombardohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00386546238678041697noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4668106303586186640.post-68619729196014430132014-05-17T13:44:00.000-04:002014-05-17T13:44:55.264-04:00Poems from Overtipping the FerrymanA New Collection by R. G. Evans<BR>
<b>Month without a Moon</b>
<p>Any night I like, I can rise instead of the moon <BR>
that has forgotten us, not a thought of our sad lot, <BR>
and roam the darkened oblongs of the dunes. <BR>
<p>Once you said the moon was some pale god<BR>
who turned away his face to cause the tides, <BR>
and once you said that, I of course believed<BR>
<p>that you were mad. Now the ghost crab guides<BR>
me to the edge where land is not land, sea not sea, <BR>
and all the sky above is one dark dream. <BR>
<p>This is the month with no full moon. You<BR>
were its prophet, and I am standing on the seam<BR>
between belief and what I know is true. <BR>
<p>I gave you a diamond. It should have been a pearl.<BR>
It should have been a stone to hang above the world. <BR><BR>
<BR>
<B>Smoke</b>
<P>What is smoke? my daughter asks <BR>
beside a campfire I can’t quite get to flame. <BR>
<P>I know it’s not a liquid, she says. <BR>
Is it a gas? Is it a solid? <BR>
<P>Simple. Straightforward. Something<BR>
I should know, I’m sure. <BR>
<P>I start to say it’s what’s left<BR>
when the wood gives up the ghost, <BR>
<P>but then I think of ash—<BR>
I always think of ash, <BR>
<P>how it’s something but nothing, <BR>
what’s left when something’s gone. <BR>
<P>There was a woman, then there was ash<BR>
her husband and the men she loved<BR>
<P>scattered on the beach. The wind<BR>
wouldn’t let her stay there where she wanted. <BR>
<P>My mother, seeding cancer, more ash<BR>
than paper dangling from her Lucky Strike. <BR>
<P>What is it? my daughter says. <BR>
Nothing, I respond. <BR>
<P>No, she says, what is smoke? I say<BR>
It’s what I make instead of fire. <BR><BR>
<BR>
<B>Experts on Mortality</b>
<P>She makes her first announcement—I awake— <BR>
then springs out of her crib just like a toad. <BR>
<P>Something in the trees, some movement, <BR>
some violence, makes it hard to forget <BR>
<P>today. The chase is on. Daddy Death<BR>
rumbles down the stairs right behind his little <BR>
<P>skeleton-in-waiting, out the door and into the wind—<BR>
she's gone. But no, she's there behind the hemlocks<BR>
<P>giggling under branches that creak and groan<BR>
like everything alive. She points up in the air<BR>
<P>says, Look! Look!—and there it is at the end<BR>
of her invisible string, the only thing she has, <BR>
<P>all that he can give her: <BR>
a sky-blue kite in a kite-blue sky. <BR>
<BR><BR>
<i>Reprinted by permission of the poet from </I> <A HREF="http://www.amazon.com/Overtipping-Ferryman-R-G-Evans/dp/0615938019/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1400347581&sr=1-1&keywords=overtipping+the+ferryman" >Overtipping the Ferryman</A> (Aldrich Press 2014).<BR>
<BR><BR>
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-eYRwwoEba9Q/U3efaKTxneI/AAAAAAAAAOw/LfjldU1IBB8/s1600/R.G.+Evans.B&W.playing+Guitar.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-eYRwwoEba9Q/U3efaKTxneI/AAAAAAAAAOw/LfjldU1IBB8/s400/R.G.+Evans.B&W.playing+Guitar.jpg" /></a>
<BR>
<P>For an interview with Evans, listen to this podcast from Ron Block’s Writers’ Roundtable from Rowan University.<BR>
<A HREF=" http://wgls.rowan.edu/player.php?podcast=http://www.rowan.edu/today/data/cast/WT20140324.mp3&name=Writers%27%20Roundtable" >R. G. Evans on Rowan University Radio</A>
<BR>
<P>Evans has been invited to read from <A HREF="http://www.amazon.com/Overtipping-Ferryman-R-G-Evans/dp/0615938019/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1400347581&sr=1-1&keywords=overtipping+the+ferryman" ><i>Overtipping the Ferryman</i> </A> at the Dodge Poetry Festival in Newark, NJ, in October.<BR>
<BR>
<P><B>R.G. Evans’s</b> poems, fiction, and reviews have appeared in <i>The Literary Review, Pif Magazine, MARGIE,</I> and <i>Weird Tales</I> among others. His book <A HREF="http://www.amazon.com/Overtipping-Ferryman-R-G-Evans/dp/0615938019/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1400347581&sr=1-1&keywords=overtipping+the+ferryman" ><i>Overtipping the Ferryman</i> </A> won the 2013 Aldrich Prize and was published by Aldrich Press. He writes, teaches, and sings in southern New Jersey.<BR>
Tom Lombardohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00386546238678041697noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4668106303586186640.post-87770884192628062082014-05-12T19:13:00.001-04:002014-05-12T19:13:41.065-04:00Path to Recovery Precarious in poem by R. G. Evans<BR><BR><b>Many Feet Going</b><BR>
by R. G. Evans
<BR>
<P>What they don't tell you<BR>
is that it's a tightrope walk<BR>
and you will be nude, body<BR>
all counterweights and pendulums. <BR>
They give you a parasol<BR>
(too small, a little frayed), <BR>
a bright red nose that makes you easy <BR>
to track, and a time limit (too short). <BR>
If you find the rope is slack, <BR>
that's normal. Keep going. <BR>
You're young and strong. <BR>
Don't be distracted<BR>
by the piles of bones below<BR>
(Boob! You thought you were <BR>
the first?)—but they are: <BR>
waxy winged, chained to rocks, <BR>
gnawed through the ribs by raptors. <BR>
Your rope has been greased <BR>
by the soles of many feet going<BR>
one way, all the while<BR>
believing they have a choice, <BR>
believing they might make it. <BR>
<BR>
<P>"Many Feet Going" reprinted by permission of the poet. Appeared in <A HREF="https://www.facebook.com/poetryofrecovery?ref=hl" >After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events</A>, an anthology of 152 poems by 115 poets from 15 nations.<BR><BR>
<BR>
<P><B>Interview with R. G. Evans</b><BR>
<P><b>How did you come to write “Many Feet Going”?</b><BR>
<P>The image of the tragicomic clown gingerly navigating his way on a tightrope over the abyss came to me after reading Beckett’s great <i>Waiting for Godot</i>. As I said at a reading in support of <i>After Shocks</i>, I didn’t realize “Many Feet Going” actually was a poem about recovery until I submitted it to the anthology. Now, I can’t see it any interpretation for it other than a way of looking at that precarious path.<BR>
<P><B>How did writing this poem affect your recovery?</b><BR>
<P>Well, as I said, the path is precarious. In the poem there are two primary images: the clown on the tightrope and the bones below of those who tried unsuccessfully to make the passage before him. Sometimes I’m the clown, sometimes I’m the pile of bones.<BR><BR>
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-pmfvILibQ-Q/U3FRSnwSK4I/AAAAAAAAAOg/78Ugj4k4Qhw/s1600/R.G.+Evans.Guitar.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-pmfvILibQ-Q/U3FRSnwSK4I/AAAAAAAAAOg/78Ugj4k4Qhw/s400/R.G.+Evans.Guitar.jpg" /></a><BR>
Photo of R. G. Evans by Mark Hillringhouse<BR><BR>
<P><B>Can you tell us something about your process of writing that helped "Many Feet Going" come to life?</B><BR>
<P>Once I read <I>Godot</i>, the image of man as a tragic hobo-clown became firmly lodged in my consciousness. Then I began to imagine how we often try to achieve goals that are just beyond our reach or forbidden to us in some way (hence the bones of Icarus and Prometheus lying under the tightrope in the poem), and the tightrope walk proceeded logically from that premise.<BR><BR>
<P><B>Who are your favorite poets or poets new to you whom you'd recommend to others?</b><BR>
<P>I always return to the classics: Shakespeare, Yeats, Rilke, to name a few. Contemporary poets whom I admire greatly are Stephen Dunn, Sharon Olds, Charles Simic, and Russell Edson. I recently discovered the twin poets Matthew and Michael Dickman, and highly recommend them, especially to adolescent readers.<BR>
<P><B>What are you working on now?</b><BR>
<P> Since the very recent publication of my collection <i>Overtipping the Ferryman</i>, I’ve been working on a collection of poems inspired by Cyril Connolly’s book <i>An Unquiet Grave</i>. I felt a very personal resonance with that book in the same way I did when I first read <i>Waiting for Godot</i> and its epigrammatic style really lends itself to writing prompts for poems.<BR>
<P><B>R.G. Evans’s</b> poems, fiction, and reviews have appeared in The Literary Review, Pif Magazine, MARGIE, and Weird Tales among others. His book <i>Overtipping the Ferryman</i> won the 2013 Aldrich Prize and was published by Aldrich Press. He writes, teaches, and sings in southern New Jersey.<BR>
Tom Lombardohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00386546238678041697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4668106303586186640.post-7201059274253413602014-05-04T18:19:00.001-04:002014-05-05T21:09:54.472-04:00Majid Naficy Iranian-American Poet Profile of Idealism, Tragedy and Renewal
<BR>
<P>It's no surprise that Majid Naficy begins his biography with the reading of a poem, but the poem's horrifying significance becomes clear only has his life story unfolds in the <A HREF=" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okfGJgf4RRI" >Voice of America Portrait</A>, now available with English subtitles. <BR>
<BR>
<P>Eight paces from the gate, <BR>
Sixteen paces toward the wall. <BR>
Which scroll speaks of this treasure? <BR>
<P>Oh, earth! <BR>
If only I could feel your pulse<BR>
Or make a jug out of your body. <BR>
Alas! I'm not a physician. <BR>
I'm not a potter. <BR>
I am only an heir, deprived, <BR>
wandering in search of a marked treasure. <BR>
<P>Oh, hand that will bury me, <BR>
This is the mark of my tomb: <BR>
Eight paces from the gate, <BR>
Sixteen paces toward the wall. <BR>
In the Cemetery of the Infidels. <BR>
<BR>
<P>Majid started writing poems at 10 while living in Isfahan, Iran, and gave his first book of poems to his older brother Hamid on his 21st birthday. It contained “Elegy of Myself” inspired by Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself.” His brother showed the poems to Iranian poets, who brought the young boy into workshops, and soon he began publishing in Iranian journals, with the blessings of iconic Iranian poets F. Farrokhzad and A. Shamlou.<BR>
<P>Majid became known as one of The New Wave poets in Iran and critics called him Iran’s Arthur Rimbaud.<BR>
<P>He published poetry, criticism, and a children’s book <i>The Secret of Words</i> on the origins of language, which won The Royal Book Prize in 1971.<BR>
<P>He joined the Iranian Students Confederation and became a devoted Marxist, and wrote poetry and essays under aliases bent to reform Iran, which at the time was ruled by the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlevi.<BR>
<P>Majid met his wife Ezzat Tabaiyan in a coffee shop near Teheran University, where they both were students. They were married in 1979.<BR>
<P>They were both involved in the Revolution that brought the new regime to power with the overthrow of the Shah in 1979, invading the headquarters of the SAVAK (secret police of the Shah) and conquering Evin Prison, where political prisoners were held.<BR>
<P>However, they soon ran afoul of the new regime, led by Ayatollah Khomeini. They were both members of an organization called “Struggle for The Liberations of the Working Class,” which took two very critical stands against Khomeini: they objected to the taking of American diplomats as hostages after the revolutionaries stormed the U.S. Embassy Teheran in 1979 and they voiced opposition to the Iran-Iraq war of 1980. Ezzat was executed by firing squad on January 7, 1982 with 50 men and one other woman, all buried in unmarked graves in Khavaran Cemetery, known as the Cemetery of the Infidels. Families were obliged to determine the burial locations by measuring paces.<BR>
<P>The poem above recounts those graveyard searches, and is entitled:<BR>
<BR>
<P>Marked Treasure<BR>
            
<i>in memory of my late wife Ezzat Tabaiyan</i><BR>
<BR>
<P>“She gave her life for freedom,” Majid says, “and freedom is always a precious pledge for me, which I will try to live up to, for myself, for people in the United States, and for people of Iran, my birthplace.”<BR>
<P>The revolutionary tribunals also condemned his brother Sa’id and brother-in-law Hossein to the firing squads.<BR>
<P>A year after his wife’s execution, he met Esmat, his second wife, and together they escaped to Turkey in 1983, just steps ahead of his own arrest, and eventually, after a brief stay in France, made their way to Los Angeles.<BR>
<BR>
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-aV-OxldBomY/U2a7FKvy4OI/AAAAAAAAAOQ/avrahT8S2_c/s1600/majid+naficy.better+one,without+type.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-aV-OxldBomY/U2a7FKvy4OI/AAAAAAAAAOQ/avrahT8S2_c/s400/majid+naficy.better+one,without+type.jpg" /></a>
<B>Majid Naficy</b>
<BR>
<P>The grief and stress of those horrifying years caused an emotional crisis during which “poetry invaded me like a waterfall.” During this time, he wrote 111 poems in 4 months, producing a collection of poetry, <I>After the Silence</i> and many anthologized poems in both Persian and English. He realized he had become the voice for “my fallen comrades in that stolen revolution.”<BR>
<P> A stanza of his poem “Ah, Los Angeles” is engraved on a wall along the pathways in Venice, California, along with 15 other poets who’ve written poems about the city.<BR>
<BR>
<P>Ah, Los Angeles! <BR>
Let me bend down and put my ear<BR>
To your warm skin. <BR>
Perhaps in you<BR>
I will find my own Sanjan. <BR>
<BR>
<P>He says that the stanza—from a much longer poem, posted in full in the blog item just below this one—represents a question: Can Iranians create a as strong a community in Los Angeles as the one created by Persians in Sanjan, India, after Persia was invaded during the Muslims Conquests of the 7th Century.<BR>
<P>In the profile, Majid opens only a small window to his writing process. “For me, writing poetry comes from the subconscious. Most of the time, I first write my poems in Persian, and then I translate them to English. Only after that do I start to edit them.<BR>
<P>“I have run 12 consecutive LA marathons, and always reached the finish line for all of them. Always, during the running, poems come to me. Parallel to by body perspiration, I have a mental cleansing as well. Many of my new poems come to me…when I’m pedaling my stationary bike on my balcony.”<BR>
<P>Who are his favorite poets? <BR>
<P>”I still read Walt Whitman now and then. He inspired me to write poetry when I was 10 years old. I also like to read classical Persian poets such as Ferdowsi, Rumi, Sa’di, Hafez Nezami, and Khayyam as well as contemporary Persian poets such as Nima Yushij, Ahmad Shamlu, Forough Farokhzad and Sohrab Sepehri.”
<br>
<P>“Majid’s poetry is becoming an exception in Persian literature,” says Poet and critic Parto Nooriala. “He creates modern poetry relying on deep emotion and deep knowledge about classical Persian literature.”<BR>
<P>“I consider myself part of that global movement in which people seek freedom and social justice,” he says. “This movement is not defined by any ideology or religion.”<BR>
<P>His son Azad was born in Santa Monica. [<i>Azadi </i>is the Persian word for freedom.] Majid cultivated roots in this second homeland. His son Azad writes hip-hop lyrics and there’s a fine example of one of his raps in the video.<BR>
<P>The profile closes with a view from Majid and Azad of the father’s slowly degenerating vision, which became evident when he was very young, diagnosed as degenerative spots on his retinas by U.S. physicians. It had been controllable, until he climbed Mt. Whitney in 2001, and altitude sickness caused the condition to worsen. Majid is nearly blind, though can get around on foot and via public transportation. <BR>
<P>“My eyesight impairment is an obstacle,” he says, “but its challenges polish my spirit and lead me to new possibilities. Blindness has made me humble, and brought me to understand the injustice to others, religious persecution, women under double oppression, or the homeless and poor.”<BR>
<BR>
<P><B>To a Snail</b><BR>
<P>Little wanderer! <BR>
Were you not afraid of my big foot<BR>
Crushing you? <BR>
Last night, in the rain<BR>
You crept into my sneaker<BR>
To find shelter. <BR>
Today<BR>
You return to your green birthplace<BR>
And I am jealous. <BR>
<BR>
<P><B>Majid Naficy</B>, the Arthur Rimbaud of Persian poetry, fled Iran in 1983, a year and a half after the execution of his wife Ezzat Tabaian, his brother Sa’id, and brother-in-law Hossein in Tehran. Since 1984 Majid has been living in West Los Angeles. He has published two collections of poetry in English <I>Muddy Shoes</i> (Beyond Baroque, Books, 1999) and <I>Father and Son</i> (Red Hen Press, 2003) as well as his doctoral dissertation at UCLA <I>Modernism and Ideology in Persian Literature</i> (University Press of America, 1997). Majid has also published more than twenty books of poetry and essays in Persian.
Majid Naficy's poetry has been anthologized in many books including <I>Poetry in the Windows</i> edited by Suzanne Lummis, <I>Poets Against War</i> edited by Sam Hamill, <I>Strange Times My Dear: The Pen Anthology of Contemporary Iranian Literature</i> edited by Nahid Mozaffari and Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak, <I>Lounge Lit: An Anthology of Poetry and Fiction</i> by the Writers of Literati Cocktail and Rhapsodomancy, <i>Belonging: New Poetry by Iranians around the World </i>edited by Niloufar Talebi, <A HREF="http://www.facebook.com/poetryofrecovery" > <i>After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events </i></A> edited by Tom Lombardo, <I>Becoming Americans: Four Centuries of Immigrant Writing</i> edited by Ilan Stavans, <I>Revolutionary Poets Brigade Anthology</i> edited by Jack Hirschman and Mark Lipman, and <I>Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here</i> edited by Beau Beausoleil and Deema Shehabi. <BR>
<P>Majid is one of the six poets featured in the film Poetry of Resilience directed by the Oscar-nominated documentary film-maker Katja Esson. He was the first writer in residence in Annenberg Community Beach House, Santa Monica in 2009-10, and the judge for Interboard Poetry Community contests in 2009. Majid has received awards in two poetry contests, Poetry in the Windows sponsored by the Arroyo Arts Collective as well as Poetry and Recipe organized by Writers at Work in Los Angeles. His poetry has been engraved by the City in public spaces in Venice Beach and Studio City. His life and work was featured in LA Weekly, February 9-15, 2001 written by Louise Steinman, entitled "Poet of Revolution: Majid Naficy's Tragic Journey Home".
Tom Lombardohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00386546238678041697noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4668106303586186640.post-32656392309213791982014-04-30T16:58:00.000-04:002014-05-01T10:48:19.173-04:00Two poems by Iranian-American PoetMajid Naficy<P><B>To the Children of Prison and Exile</b><BR>
<P>After the silence of firing squads <BR>
Still it burns in our hearts<BR>
And we carry their corpses<BR>
On our broken backs. <BR>
I want to turn this death into life. <BR>
<P>How many companions, <BR>
Who in these years of defeat and execution<BR>
Created life from an embryo? <BR>
I am talking about the children of prison and exile: <BR>
<i>Cheshmeh</I>, <i>Roza</I>, and <i>Sulmaz</I>. <BR>
<P>I want to turn this death into life<BR>
That like a jug of water<BR>
Becomes filled with the freshness of <I>Cheshmeh</I>, <BR>
And like a red rose<BR>
Blooms from the lips of <i>Roza</I>, <BR>
And like the word <i>sulmaz</I><BR>
Becomes evergreen. <BR>
I will sift, grind, and soften this death, <BR>
Until the children of prison and exile<BR>
Mold it into playdough. <BR>
I am calling you, <BR>
O newborns of years of pain, <BR>
The crocodiles in your painting<BR>
Have no teeth, <BR>
Because the names of their friends<BR>
Never crossed their lips. <BR>
<P>I want to turn this death into a poem, <BR>
That can be read like magic<BR>
When the corpse of a butterfly<BR>
Carried by ants<BR>
Makes you remember the dead ones. <BR>
<P>I want to turn this death into life. <BR>
<BR>
<P> NOTE: <BR>The names Cheshmeh, Roza, and Sulmaz respectively mean: "spring", "rose," and "everlasting."<BR><BR>
<P><B>Ah, Los Angeles</b><BR>
<P>Ah, Los Angeles! <BR>
I accept you as my city, <BR>
And after ten years<BR>
I am at peace with you. <BR>
Waiting without fear<BR>
I lean back against the bus post. <BR>
And I become lost<BR>
In the sounds of your midnight.<BR>
<P>A man gets off Blue Bus 1<BR>
And crosses to this side<BR>
To take Brown Bus 4. <BR>
Perhaps he too is coming back<BR>
From his nights on campus. <BR>
On the way he has sobbed<BR>
Into a blank letter. <BR>
And from the seat behind<BR>
He has heard the voice of a woman<BR>
With a familiar accent. <BR>
On Brown Bus 4 it rains. <BR>
A woman is talking to her umbrella<BR>
And a man ceaselessly flushes a toilet. <BR>
<P>I told Carlos yesterday, <BR>
“Your clanging cart<BR>
Wakes me up in the morning."<BR>
He collects cans<BR>
And wants to go back to Cuba. <BR>
From the Promenade<BR>
Comes the sound of my homeless man. <BR>
He sings blues<BR>
And plays guitar. <BR>
Where in the world can I hear<BR>
The black moaning of the saxophone<BR>
Alongside the Chinese chimes? <BR>
And see this warm olive skin<BR>
Through blue eyes? <BR>
The easy-moving doves<BR>
Rest on the empty benches. <BR>
They stare at the dinosaur<BR>
Who sprays stale water on our kids. <BR>
Marziyeh sings from a Persian market<BR>
I return, homesick<BR>
And I put my feet<BR>
On your back. <BR>
Ah, Los Angeles! <BR>
I feel your blood. <BR>
You taught me to get up<BR>
Look at my beautiful legs<BR>
And along with the marathon<BR>
Run on your broad shoulders. <BR>
<P>Once I got tired of life<BR>
I coiled up under my blanket<BR>
And remained shut-off for two nights. <BR>
Then, my neighbor turned on NPR<BR>
And I heard of a Russian poet<BR>
Who in a death camp, <BR>
Could not write his poems<BR>
But his wife learned them by heart. <BR>
<P>Will Azad read my poetry? <BR>
On the days that I take him to school, <BR>
He sees the bus number from far off. <BR>
And calls me to get in line. <BR>
At night he stays under the shower<BR>
And lets the drops of water<BR>
Spray on his small body. <BR>
Sometimes we go to the beach. <BR>
He bikes and I skate. <BR>
He buys a Pepsi from a machine<BR>
And gives me one sip. <BR>
<P>Yesterday we went to Romteen’s house. <BR>
His father is a <i>Parsee</I> from India. <BR>
He wore <i>sadra</I> and <i>kusti</I><BR>
While he was painting the house. <BR>
On that little stool<BR>
He looked like a Zoroastrian<BR>
Rowing from Hormoz to Sanjan. <BR>
<P>Ah, Los Angeles! <BR>
Let me bend down and put my ear<BR>
To your warm skin. <BR>
Perhaps in you<BR>
I will find my own Sanjan. <BR>
No, it’s not a ship touching<BR>
Against the rocky shore; <BR>
It’s the rumbling Blue Bus 8. <BR>
I know. <BR>
I will get off at Idaho<BR>
And will pass the shopping carts<BR>
Left by the homeless<BR>
I will climb the stairs<BR>
And will open the door. <BR>
I will start the answering machine<BR>
And in the dark<BR>
I will wait like a fisherman. <BR>
<BR>
<P>NOTES: <BR>The Parsees are the descendants of Zoroastrians who emigrated from Iran to Gujarat, India during the Arab conquests. In 1599, Bahman Key Qobâd, a Gujarati Parsee, wrote an epic poem in which he depicts such a migration on a ship from the Straits of Hormoz in the Persian Gulf to the port of Sanjan in India.<BR> The <I>sadra</i> and <i>kusti</i> are special tunics and belts worn by Zoroastrians after puberty.<BR>
<P> Both poems reprinted with permission of the poet. Both poems appeared in <A HREF="http://www.facebook.com/poetryofrecovery" > <i>After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events </i></A> edited by Tom Lombardo.<BR>
<P><B >Interview with Majid Naficy</b><BR>
<BR>
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-cXzAb5Rz0Os/U2FjaZ08DkI/AAAAAAAAAOA/6l6CxIcps9M/s1600/majid+naficy.better+one,without+type.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-cXzAb5Rz0Os/U2FjaZ08DkI/AAAAAAAAAOA/6l6CxIcps9M/s400/majid+naficy.better+one,without+type.jpg" /></a>
<B>Majid Naficy</b>
<BR>
<P><B>How did you come to write these two poems?</b><BR>
<P>One of the three children whom I have named in “To the Children of Prison and Exile” is my niece Cheshmeh who was born in Evin prison in Tehran after his father was executed in winter 1983. By writing this poem, I wanted to honor her father and make life out of his death. In “Ah Los Angeles” I wanted to accept my new identity as an Iranian-American and after ten years in exile express my appreciation for Los Angeles. <BR>
<P><B>How did writing these poems affect your recovery? </b><BR>
<P>By writing these two poems as well as similar pieces I have been able to survive after so much personal loss back in Iran and facilitate the process of passage from self-denial to acceptance as an exile in the US.<BR>
<P><B>Can you tell us something about your process of writing that helped these poems come to life? </b><BR>
<P>I did not do any thing special. They came on their own. I only made some changes later.<BR>
<P><B>Who are your favorite poets or poets new to you whom you'd recommend to others? </b><BR>
<P>I still read Walt Whitman now and then. He inspired me to write poetry when I was eleven years old. I also like to read classical Persian poets such as Ferdowsi, Rumi, Sa’di, Hafez Nezami, and Khayyam as well as contemporary Persian poets such as Nima Yushij, Ahmad Shamlu, Forough Farokhzad and Sohrab Sepehri. <br>
<P><B>What are you working on now? </B><BR>
<P>I am making some changes in a poem which I wrote for my son Azad in 1995 in order to give it to him as a gift for his 24th birthday. It was first published in my collection of poetry <i>Father and Son</I> (Red Hen Press, 2003). I have renamed it from “We Are Sitting Next to Each Other” to “Haircut.” I wrote it when Azad and I went to Supercuts.<BR> <BR>
<P><B>Majid Naficy</B>, the Arthur Rimbaud of Persian poetry, fled Iran in 1983, a year and a half after the execution of his wife Ezzat Tabaian and his brother Sa’id in Tehran. Since 1984 Majid has been living in West Los Angeles. He has published two collections of poetry in English <I>Muddy Shoes</i> (Beyond Baroque, Books, 1999) and <I>Father and Son</i> (Red Hen Press, 2003) as well as his doctoral dissertation at UCLA <I>Modernism and Ideology in Persian Literature</i> (University Press of America, 1997). Majid has also published more than twenty books of poetry and essays in Persian.<BR>
<P>Majid Naficy's poetry has been anthologized in many books including <I>Poetry in the Windows</i> edited by Suzanne Lummis, <I>Poets Against War</i> edited by Sam Hamill, <I>Strange Times My Dear: The Pen Anthology of Contemporary Iranian Literature</i> edited by Nahid Mozaffari and Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak, <I>Lounge Lit: An Anthology of Poetry and Fiction</i> by the Writers of Literati Cocktail and Rhapsodomancy, <i>Belonging: New Poetry by Iranians around the World </i>edited by Niloufar Talebi, <A HREF="http://www.facebook.com/poetryofrecovery" > <i>After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events </i></A> edited by Tom Lombardo, <I>Becoming Americans: Four Centuries of Immigrant Writing</i> edited by Ilan Stavans, <I>Revolutionary Poets Brigade Anthology</i> edited by Jack Hirschman and Mark Lipman, and <I>Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here</i> edited by Beau Beausoleil and Deema Shehabi. <BR>
<P>Majid is one of the six poets featured in the film Poetry of Resilience directed by the Oscar-nominated documentary film-maker Katja Esson. He was the first writer in residence in Annenberg Community Beach House, Santa Monica in 2009-10, and the judge for Interboard Poetry Community contests in 2009. Majid has received awards in two poetry contests, Poetry in the Windows sponsored by the Arroyo Arts Collective as well as Poetry and Recipe organized by Writers at Work in Los Angeles. His poetry has been engraved by the City in public spaces in Venice Beach and Studio City. His life and work was featured in LA Weekly, February 9-15, 2001 written by Louise Steinman, entitled "Poet of Revolution: Majid Naficy's Tragic Journey Home". <BR>
<P>A documentary portrait of Dr. Naficy aired January 2014 on VOA in Persian and now is available with English subtitles at You Tube: <A HREF=" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okfGJgf4RRI
" >Video Portrait of Majid Naficy</A>.<BR>
Tom Lombardohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00386546238678041697noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4668106303586186640.post-24127094896980085172014-04-24T17:38:00.000-04:002014-04-24T21:15:53.130-04:00Excerpt from Martha CollinsNew Collection Day Unto Day
<BR><P><i>from</i> <b>OVER TIME</b> <BR>
<P>      <i>October 2004</i><BR><BR><BR>
<P>1<BR>
<P>Not much. Less. Slip <BR>
of a finger, diminished<BR>
interval, maybe third<BR>
<BR>
of three or two. <BR>
<BR>
Water mirrors house with high<BR>
green door opening out (no <BR>
<BR>
steps) into pure air. <BR>
<BR>
<BR>
2<BR>
<P>Air pockets three<BR>
hawks. Cat got<BR>
the bird got the cat. <BR>
<BR>
Overflown. A habit<BR>
of flight. Worn cloud<BR>
on the edge of edge. <BR>
<BR>
Wisps. Little tongues. <BR>
<BR>
<BR>
3<BR>
<P>Tongues at work. <i>Talk Today</i> <BR>
<BR>
She could did for an hour or more.
<BR>
My first her, who gave me words. <BR>
<BR>
Then at the end, before, merely Oh! <BR>
<BR>
A moment of . . . of more, perhaps. <BR>
<BR>
Oh sweet and blessèd could be. <BR>
<BR>
<i>Oh my soul</i><BR>
<BR>
<BR>
4<BR>
<P>Soul slept, called in sick. <BR>
<BR>
Late sun clouds<BR>
the lake with clouds. <BR>
<BR>
Katydid down<BR>
to <i>–did –did.</i> <BR>
<BR>
Nothing to be done. <BR>
<BR>
Little sun, quarter moon. <BR>
<BR>
<BR>
5<BR>
<P>Moon covered, un-<BR>
covered, covered again, cold. <BR>
<BR>
Cold and hot, very and both. <BR>
<BR>
Disturbed the Sea of Tranquility. <BR>
<BR>
Distributed by the Moon Shop. <BR>
<BR>
Distributed self in pieces. <BR>
<BR>
Oh my broken. <BR>
<BR>
<BR>
6<BR>
<P>Broken down, or out, as in <BR>
war, or into, soon: my own him. <BR>
<BR>
How much we carry around<BR>
under our skins, many<BR>
we were, girls and boys<BR>
<BR>
<i>Now now</i> <BR><BR>
And then then. <BR>
<BR>
<BR>
7<BR>
<P>Then gone and then to come: <BR>
all the time, except the split<BR>
second, except—<BR>
<BR>
All the time in the world. <BR>
<BR>
And out of this world? <BR>
<BR>
Oh little heart on my wrist, <BR>
where are we going? <BR>
<BR>
<P>Reprinted from <A HREF="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_0_13?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=day%20unto%20day%20martha%20collins&sprefix=Day+Unto+Day+%2Cstripbooks%2C230
" ><i>Day Unto Day</i> (Milkweed Press)</A> by permission of the poet.<BR><BR>
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-CPoVL-UadEw/U1mD6fzmaMI/AAAAAAAAANw/6Q9qX8F6Qhk/s1600/Martha+Collins.Book+cover-day-unto-day.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-CPoVL-UadEw/U1mD6fzmaMI/AAAAAAAAANw/6Q9qX8F6Qhk/s640/Martha+Collins.Book+cover-day-unto-day.jpg" /></a>
<BR>
<p><B> Interview with Martha Collins</b><BR>
<P><B>Please tell Poetry of Recovery blog readers how your new collection came about.</b><BR>
<P> I began the book in 2004, and I wrote daily during a different month each year until I finally finish all twelve months. The first six parts of this project were just published as <i>Day Unto Day</I> by Milkweed Press this past March. I have two more months to go to complete the second half.
<p><b>Who are your favorite poets or poets new to you whom you'd recommend to others?</b><BR>
<P>As I said in a recent interview, I’ve been reading a lot of African American poetry lately, partly because of the writing I’ve been doing (see below). Beyond older poets like Carl Phillips and Marilyn Nelson, I’m been impressed enough with recent books by Thomas Sayers Ellis, Evie Shockley, Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon, and Major Jackson to review them in print. <BR>
<P>Emily Dickinson and Wallace Stevens—and the Bible!—were early influences. Later John Ashbery gave me a kind of stylistic license (though my writing is nothing like his), and poets like Denise Levertov, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Muriel Rukeyser allowed me to pursue the kind of subject matter that is reflected in my recent books.<BR>
<BR>
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-2u6YLc7RzQg/U1mC1eRaiEI/AAAAAAAAANc/Bb3v4P4yphk/s1600/Martha+Collins.9.2013+pic.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-2u6YLc7RzQg/U1mC1eRaiEI/AAAAAAAAANc/Bb3v4P4yphk/s200/Martha+Collins.9.2013+pic.jpg" /></a>
<b>Martha Collins</b><BR>
<P><B>What are you working on now?</b><BR>
<P>My book <i>Day Unto Day</i>, just released, followed soon after my collection <I>White Papers</i>, which was a kind of follow-up to my book-length poem <i>Blue Front</i>. Two of my books focus on race: <i>Blue Front</I> on a lynching my father witnessed, <i>White Papers</i> more broadly on issues of race as seen from a critical white perspective. A friend once suggested that I must be writing some kind of trilogy, and I <i>am</I> working on a manuscript that might in some sense follow these two—-not focused so narrowly on race, but perhaps related in some way. Or perhaps not related at all.<BR>
<BR><BR>
<P><b>Martha Collins</b> is the author of <i>Day Unto Day </i>(Milkweed, 2014), <i>White Papers </i>(Pitt Poetry Series, 2012) and the book-length poem <i>Blue Front </i>(Graywolf, 2006), which won an Anisfield-Wolf Award. She has also published four earlier collections of poems and three collections of co-translated Vietnamese poetry, most recently <i>Black Stars: Poems by Ngo Tu Lap </i>(Milkweed, 2013, with the author). Other awards include fellowships from the NEA, Bunting Institute, Witter Bynner Foundation, and Ingram Merrill Foundation, as well as three Pushcart Prizes and a Lannan Foundation residency. Pauline Delaney Professor of Creative Writing at Oberlin until 2007, Collins is currently editor-at-large for <i>FIELD </i>magazine and one of the editors of the Oberlin College Press.
Tom Lombardohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00386546238678041697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4668106303586186640.post-70501120640824696802014-04-16T21:19:00.000-04:002014-04-16T21:19:40.088-04:00Two Poems By William Greenway<BR>
<B>Pit Pony </b><BR>
<P>There are only a few left, he says, <BR>
kept by old Welsh miners, souvenirs, <BR>
like gallstones or gold teeth, torn<BR>
from this "pit," so cold and wet<BR>
my breath comes out a soul up<BR>
into my helmet's lantern beam, <BR>
anthracite walls running, gleaming, <BR>
and the floors iron-rutted with tram tracks, <BR>
the almost pure rust that grows and waves <BR>
like orange moss in the gutters of water<BR>
that used to rise and drown. <BR>
He makes us turn all lights off, almost<BR>
a mile down. While children scream, <BR>
I try to see anything, my hand touching<BR>
my nose, my wife beside me—darkness <BR>
palpable, like a velvet sack over our heads, <BR>
even the glow of watches left behind. <BR>
This is where they were born, into <BR>
this nothing, felt first with their cold noses <BR>
for the shaggy side and warm bag of black milk, <BR>
pulled their trams for twenty years <BR>
through pitch, past birds that didn't sing, <BR>
through doors opened by five-year-olds <BR>
who sat in the cheap, complete blackness <BR>
listening for steps, a knock. <BR>
And they died down here, generation <BR>
after generation. <BR>
The last one, when it dies in the hills, <BR>
not quite blind, the mines closed forever, <BR>
will it die strangely? Will it wonder<BR>
dimly why it was exiled from the rest<BR>
of its race, from the dark flanks of the soft<BR>
mother, what these timbers are that hold up<BR>
nothing but blue? If this is the beginning <BR>
of death, this wind, these stars? <BR>
<P>From <A HREF="http://www.amazon.com/William-Greenway-Selected-Poems/dp/1938853504/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1397406584&sr=1-1&keywords=William+Greenway" ><I>Selected Poems</I></A> (Future Cycle Press, 2014). Reprinted by permission of the poet.
<BR><BR>
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-j5IUXm-cAtc/U0q9z4AgteI/AAAAAAAAANE/0nl1Oly9bMw/s1600/William+Greenway.Selected+Cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-j5IUXm-cAtc/U0q9z4AgteI/AAAAAAAAANE/0nl1Oly9bMw/s400/William+Greenway.Selected+Cover.jpg" /></a><BR><BR>
<BR>
<B>Eurydice</b><BR>
<P>When my wife woke from four months <BR>
of coma after a “massive” stroke, <BR>
with chances of recovery “minimal,” <BR>
and we had finally flown home<BR>
in a tiny jet around the polar horn<BR>
of Swansea, Cardiff, Reykjavik, Goose<BR>
Bay, Toronto, Cleveland, Youngstown, <BR>
I sat by her wheelchair in a class<BR>
like a kindergarten where kids of all ages<BR>
cut colored cloth, stacked blocks,<BR>
and pieced puzzles like a map<BR>
of the world. When they shook their heads<BR>
to lament how she couldn’t remember<BR>
anything or speak, I wrote<BR>
on a big pad in crayon, “Let us go<BR>
then you and I.” <BR>
After she had read it aloud, <BR>
she went on in her whispery voice<BR>
to chant, eyes closed, the rest<BR>
of the poem from memory while<BR>
the rehab staff in their green<BR>
and blue scrubs gathered around<BR>
and stood open-mouthed as something<BR>
odd and unintelligible, yet<BR>
somehow strangely familiar, <BR>
came to them from a far place, <BR>
deep and dark where she had been, <BR>
beyond the reach of light and love.<BR>
<BR>
<P> In 2008, Greenway's poem "Eurydice" appeared in the anthology <A HREF="https://www.facebook.com/poetryofrecovery?ref=hl" ><I>After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events</i></A>, which featured 152 poems by 115 poets from 15 nations.<BR>
<P><b>Interview with William Greenway</b><BR>
<P><b>How did you come to write the poem "Eurydice"?</b><BR>
<P>It began after my wife’s stroke and subsequent two-month coma while we were in Wales on sabbatical.<BR>
<P><B>How did writing "Eurydice" affect your recovery? </b><BR>
<P>All through this trauma, I wrote poems as prayer, believing, as I always have, that poetry taps into a power outside of ourselves as well as inside. Both give us strength we don’t know we have or have access to until the trauma comes along.<BR>
<P><B>Can you tell us something about your process of writing that helped "Eurydice" come to life?</b><BR>
<P>Because I keep a journal, I’m able to objectify my experiences enough to get past mere self-pity and sentimentality and leave a sort of vacuum of emotion to draw in the reader’s emotions. I try not to hog all the feeling, and let the reader have some.<BR>
<P><B>Who are your favorite poets or poets new to you whom you'd recommend to others? </b><BR>
<P>William Stafford, William Matthews, Dylan Thomas, Philip Larkin, Sharon Olds.<BR>
<P><B>What are you working on now? </B><BR>
<P>Whatever comes my way. My life seems to follow paths that eventually become patterns that then become the organization of a book. My latest book is titled Tripwires, about those upheavals—some good, some bad—that we never see coming, but that change our lives, and us, irrevocably.<BR><BR>
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JYYXgciyl0I/U0q8Ne9YUfI/AAAAAAAAAM0/KOUDHv_tXeo/s1600/William+Greenway.head+shot.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JYYXgciyl0I/U0q8Ne9YUfI/AAAAAAAAAM0/KOUDHv_tXeo/s320/William+Greenway.head+shot.jpg" /></a>
<BR>
<B>William Greenway</b>
<P>Greenway's collection <i>Everywhere at Once</I> (2008) won the Ohioana Poetry Book of the Year Award, as did his <i>Ascending Order</I> (2003), both from the University of Akron Press. He has published in <I>Poetry, American Poetry Review, Georgia Review, Southern Review, Shenandoah</I>, and <i>Prairie Schooner</I>. He has won the Helen and Laura Krout Memorial Poetry Award, the Larry Levis Editors' Prize from Missouri Review, the Open Voice Poetry Award from The Writer's Voice, the State Street Press Chapbook Competition, an Ohio Arts Council Grant, and was 1994 Georgia Author of the Year. He’s Professor of English at Youngstown State University, where he has been awarded a Distinguished Professorship in Teaching and three in Scholarship.<BR>
Tom Lombardohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00386546238678041697noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4668106303586186640.post-34076807681285786292014-04-13T12:42:00.000-04:002014-04-13T12:42:29.503-04:00William Greenway featured on Poetry Daily Today<P> William Greenway's poem "Entrance" is featured at Poetry Daily today. You can find it at <A HREF="http://poems.com/poem.php?date=16174" >Poetry Daily: "Entrance" by William Greenway</A>. The link stays live forever, so if you miss it today, please view it at your leisure. <BR>
<P>The poem comes from Greenway's recently released <A HREF="http://www.amazon.com/William-Greenway-Selected-Poems/dp/1938853504/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1397406584&sr=1-1&keywords=William+Greenway" ><I>Selected Poems.</I></A><BR><BR>
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-j5IUXm-cAtc/U0q9z4AgteI/AAAAAAAAANE/0nl1Oly9bMw/s1600/William+Greenway.Selected+Cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-j5IUXm-cAtc/U0q9z4AgteI/AAAAAAAAANE/0nl1Oly9bMw/s400/William+Greenway.Selected+Cover.jpg" /></a><BR><BR>
<P>"Everything I love about William Greenway's poems is here in spades: the self-effacing wit, the spritely erudition, and the serious charm. Like a wry descendent of Homer who 'woke up human and Baptist in Atlanta, Georgia,' Greenway discerns in the mundane world of barbershops and flu shot lines the guises of the mythic."
—Lynn Powell, poet, <i>The Zones of Paradise</i><BR><BR>
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JYYXgciyl0I/U0q8Ne9YUfI/AAAAAAAAAM0/KOUDHv_tXeo/s1600/William+Greenway.head+shot.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JYYXgciyl0I/U0q8Ne9YUfI/AAAAAAAAAM0/KOUDHv_tXeo/s320/William+Greenway.head+shot.jpg" /></a>
<BR>
<B>William Greenway</b>
<P>Greenway's collection <i>Everywhere at Once</I> (2008) won the Ohioana Poetry Book of the Year Award, as did his <i>Ascending Order</I> (2003), both from the University of Akron Press. He has published in <I>Poetry, American Poetry Review, Georgia Review, Southern Review, Shenandoah</I>, and <i>Prairie Schooner</I>. He has won the Helen and Laura Krout Memorial Poetry Award, the Larry Levis Editors' Prize from Missouri Review, the Open Voice Poetry Award from The Writer's Voice, the State Street Press Chapbook Competition, an Ohio Arts Council Grant, and was 1994 Georgia Author of the Year. He’s Professor of English at Youngstown State University, where he has been awarded a Distinguished Professorship in Teaching and three in Scholarship.<BR>
<P> In 2008, Greenway's poem "Eurydice" appeared in the anthology <A HREF="https://www.facebook.com/poetryofrecovery?ref=hl" ><I>After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events</i></A>, which featured 152 poems by 115 poets from 15 nations.<BR>
Tom Lombardohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00386546238678041697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4668106303586186640.post-43442881626144744712014-04-07T09:51:00.001-04:002014-04-11T22:46:23.985-04:00New Collection Bend to it from Kevin Simmonds<BR>Kevin Simmonds' new collection <A HREF=" http://www.salmonpoetry.com/details.php?ID=336&a=203"> <i>Bend to it</i></A> was just released this Spring from Salmon Poetry. Kevin is an award-winning poet and musician who divides his time between San Francisco and Japan, and he's now at work on a theatrical collaboration with Theatre of Yugen, an experimental Japanese Noh theatre in San Francisco. Here's a sample poem from <A HREF=" http://www.salmonpoetry.com/details.php?ID=336&a=203"> <i>Bend to it</i></A>. <BR>
<BR><B>Tono City, Japan</b><BR>
    
<i>December, 2000</i>
<BR>
<P>Crows against snow <BR>
<P>Beauty beaten on these anvils<BR>
<P>A sky<BR>
<P>Falling apart<BR>
<P>Black anchors<BR>
<P>Crows hawking<BR>
<P>To god<BR>
<P>To me<BR>
<P>A moment's match<BR>
<P>Pushing the light from itself<BR>
<P>Pushing the light from its wings<BR>
<BR>
<P>Reprinted by permission of the poet. <BR> From <i>Bend to it</i> (Salmon Poetry, 2014). Buy <A HREF=" http://www.salmonpoetry.com/details.php?ID=336&a=203"> <i>Bend to it</i></A> at Salmon Poetry.
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-yaA9ZhKixjQ/U0KpD0A1e8I/AAAAAAAAAMM/yypgRELLRLc/s1600/Kevin+Simmonds.Bend+to+it.cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-yaA9ZhKixjQ/U0KpD0A1e8I/AAAAAAAAAMM/yypgRELLRLc/s320/Kevin+Simmonds.Bend+to+it.cover.jpg" /></a></div>
<P><B>Interview with Poet Kevin Simmonds</b><BR>
<P><B>Who are your favorite poets or poets new to you whom you'd recommend to others? </b><BR>
Lucille Clifton<BR>
Richard Ronan<BR>
<P><B>What are you working on now? </b><BR>
<P>My second collection, <A HREF="http://www.salmonpoetry.com/details.php?ID=336&a=203" ><i> Bend to it</i> </A>, is out from Salmon Poetry, who also published my debut collection, <A HREF=" http://www.salmonpoetry.com/details.php?ID=231&a=203" ><i>Mad for Meat</i>. </A><BR>
<P>I'm at work on a new collection, tentatively titled <i>Upright</i>. At the same time, I’m processing <i>Ota Benga, a river</i>, a recent theatrical collaboration with Theatre of Yugen, an experimental Japanese Noh theatre here in San Francisco. I wrote the music and co-wrote the text. It was an eye-opening experience, and I won’t soon forget the challenges of creating a work that draws from Japanese and African-American musical conventions.<BR>
<P>Finally, I just wrapped up <A HREF="https://vimeo.com/87385574" > <i>The Nudists</i> </A>, a short experimental documentary about the nudity ban in San Francisco. I collaborated with designer and artist Nori Hara to create a protest pamphlet about this in 2012, shortly before it became law in February 2013. I’m hoping some film festivals will pick it up. <BR>
<BR><BR>
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-s1wEXpFq8UU/Ux0SfDMiI2I/AAAAAAAAALs/C5RDWgETPAw/s1600/Kevin+Simmonds.head+shot.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-s1wEXpFq8UU/Ux0SfDMiI2I/AAAAAAAAALs/C5RDWgETPAw/s320/Kevin+Simmonds.head+shot.jpg" /></a>
<BR>
<P><B>Kevin Simmonds</b> is a writer and musician originally from New Orleans. His books include <i>Mad for Meat</i> (Salmon Poetry) and the edited works <i>Collective Brightness: LGBTIQ Poets on Faith, Religion & Spirituality</i> (Sibling Rivalry Press) and <i>Ota Benga Under my Mother’s Roof</i> (University of South Carolina). He has composed numerous musical works for voice and chamber ensemble, as well as for stage productions such as <i>Emmett Till</i>, a river and the Emmy Award-winning documentary <i>HOPE: Living and Loving with HIV in Jamaica</i>. He started the first-ever poetry workshop at Singapore’s Changi Prison and founded Tono International Arts Association, an arts presenter in northern Japan. A recipient of fellowships and commissions from Cave Canem, Creative Work Fund, Fulbright, the Pulitzer Center, San Francisco Arts Commission and the Edward Stanley Award from Prairie Schooner, he divides his time between Japan and San Francisco. <BR>
<P><b>Visit</b> <A HREF="http://www.kevinsimmonds.com" >Kevin Simmonds web site</A>.
Tom Lombardohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00386546238678041697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4668106303586186640.post-89424014315628280672014-03-12T22:12:00.000-04:002014-03-12T22:12:13.030-04:00After Shocks Poem Reprinted in Theologian’s New Book
<P>Noted Theologian Walter Brueggemann has used the poem “After Katrina” in his new book <i> Reality, Grief, Hope: Three Urgent Prophetic Tasks</i>. The poem, by Kevin Simmonds, was first published in the journal <i>Callaloo</i>, and was selected and published in the 2008 anthology <A HREF="https://www.facebook.com/poetryofrecovery?ref=hl" > <i>After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events</i> </A>. <BR>
<P>Dr. Brueggemann’s new book presents parallel theological crises arising from two watershed historic events: the fall of Jerusalem in 587 B.C.E. and the destruction of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Both events raise questions about ideologies of “chosen-ness” held by those in power, denial that ideologies have failed, and despair when reality is faced. Dr. Brueggemann conducts a lengthy presentation of those historic ideologies, of grief and denial, and of hope as a counter to despair.<BR>
<P>His book is available at Amazon.com <A HREF=" http://www.amazon.com/Reality-Grief-Hope-Urgent-Prophetic/dp/0802870724/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1394675870&sr=1-3&keywords=walter+brueggemann
" ><i> Reality, Grief, Hope: Three Urgent Prophetic Tasks</i></A><BR>
<P>Dr. Brueggemann chose “After Katrina” by Kevin Simmonds for his chapter “Grief Amid Denial” as an example of a lament that is voiced by the powerless in the face of events that they cannot control. He writes (page 84): We may pay attention to the rich legacy of contemporary laments that grieve over the failure of our “system” of well-being. Such laments arise among the excluded, powerless, and vulnerable—not the kind of people who constitute usual church voices. But these voices provide a script that we are able to echo, because such voices match and give freedom to our sadness….consider the following.<BR>
<p><b>After Katrina</b><BR>
By Kevin Simmonds<BR>
<P>There’s no Sabbath in this house<BR>
Just work<BR>
<P>The black of garbage bags<BR>
yellow-cinched throats opening<BR>
to gloved hands <BR>
<P>Black tombs along the road now<BR>
proof she knew to cherish<BR>
the passing things <BR>
<P>even those muted before the water came<BR>
before the mold’s grotesquerie<BR>
and the wooden house choked on bones <BR>
<P>My aunt wades through the wreckage failing<BR>
no matter how hard she tries<BR>
at letting go <BR>
<P>I look on glad at her failing<BR>
her slow rites<BR>
fingering what she’d once been given to care for <BR>
<P>The waistbands of her husband’s briefs<BR>
elastic as memory<BR>
the blank stare of rotted drawers <BR>
<P>their irises of folded linen still<BR>
smelling of soap and wood<BR>
and clean hands <BR>
<P>Daylight through the silent windows<BR>
and I’m sure now: Today is Sabbath<BR>
the work we do, prayer <BR>
<P>I know what she releases into the garbage bags<BR>
shiny like wet skins of seals<BR>
beached on the shore of this house <BR>
<BR><BR>
<I>Reprinted by permission of the poet</I>. <BR>"After Katrina" appeared in <A HREF="http://www.amazon.com/After-Shocks-Poetry-Recovery-Life-Shattering/dp/0981635407/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1394414629&sr=1-1&keywords=After+Shocks+the+poetry+of+recovery" >After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events</A>.<BR>
<P><B>Walter Brueggemann</B> is professor emeritus of Old Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, Georgia. His many other books include <I>A Social Reading of the Old Testament</i>, <i>The Threat of Life</i>, <I>Theology of the Old Testament</i>, <i>Truth Speaks to Power</i>, and <I>The Prophetic Imagination</i>. <BR>
<BR>
<BR>
<P><B>Interview with Poet Kevin Simmonds, who wrote “After Katrina”</b><BR>
<P><B>How did you come to write “After Katrina”? </b><BR>
<P>I wanted to create a poem about the experience of helping my Aunt Trina as she tried to salvage things from her home after the levees broke in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Or after the bombing of those levees. Those sloppily designed levees. I knew -- in the moments of wading through the mold and mess with her -- how important that time was. Not too long thereafter she died of cancer. <BR>
<P><B>How did writing “After Katrina” affect your recovery? </b><BR>
<P>The subject of the poem is literally about recovering objects that are imbued with memory. Objects are talismans for memory. Having those objects and the memories surrounding them alongside the poem, something that was created and then recovered in a sense, helps me go on. My mother also lost her home. Everything in it. With this poem, I retain the essence of what was lost in the physical sense. <BR>
<P><B>Can you tell us something about your process of writing that helped “After Katrina” come to life? </b><BR>
<P>This poem was different and came easily compared to other poems. I often fail at this but I want each poem to be an experience of discovery. Something without agenda or predetermined direction. This poem came from my love and admiration for my aunt. If there are resonances beyond my personal history, then it's because of love and admiration. <BR>
<P><B>Who are your favorite poets or poets new to you whom you'd recommend to others? </b><BR>
Lucille Clifton<BR>
Richard Ronan<BR>
<P><B>What are you working on now? </b><BR>
<P>My second collection, <A HREF="http://www.salmonpoetry.com/details.php?ID=336&a=203" ><i> Bend to it</i> </A>, is out from Salmon Poetry, who also published my debut collection, <i>Mad for Meat</i>. <BR>
<P>I'm at work on a new collection, tentatively titled <i>Upright</i>. At the same time, I’m processing <i>Ota Benga, a river</i>, a recent theatrical collaboration with Theatre of Yugen, an experimental Japanese Noh theatre here in San Francisco. I wrote the music and co-wrote the text. It was an eye-opening experience and I won’t soon forget the challenges of creating a work that draws from Japanese and African-American musical conventions.<BR>
<P>Finally, I just wrapped up <A HREF="https://vimeo.com/87385574" > <i>The Nudists</i> </A>, a short experimental documentary about the nudity ban in San Francisco. I collaborated with designer and artist Nori Hara to create a protest pamphlet about this in 2012, shortly before it became law in February 2013. I’m hoping some film festivals will pick it up. <BR>
<BR><BR>
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-s1wEXpFq8UU/Ux0SfDMiI2I/AAAAAAAAALs/C5RDWgETPAw/s1600/Kevin+Simmonds.head+shot.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-s1wEXpFq8UU/Ux0SfDMiI2I/AAAAAAAAALs/C5RDWgETPAw/s320/Kevin+Simmonds.head+shot.jpg" /></a>
<BR>
<P><B>Kevin Simmonds</b> is a writer and musician originally from New Orleans. His books include <i>Mad for Meat</i> (Salmon Poetry) and the edited works <i>Collective Brightness: LGBTIQ Poets on Faith, Religion & Spirituality</i> (Sibling Rivalry Press) and <i>Ota Benga Under my Mother’s Roof</i> (University of South Carolina). He has composed numerous musical works for voice and chamber ensemble, as well as for stage productions such as <i>Emmett Till</i>, a river and the Emmy Award-winning documentary <i>HOPE: Living and Loving with HIV in Jamaica</i>. He started the first-ever poetry workshop at Singapore’s Changi Prison and founded Tono International Arts Association, an arts presenter in northern Japan. A recipient of fellowships and commissions from Cave Canem, Creative Work Fund, Fulbright, the Pulitzer Center, San Francisco Arts Commission and the Edward Stanley Award from Prairie Schooner, he divides his time between Japan and San Francisco. <BR>
<P><b>Visit</b> <A HREF="http://www.kevinsimmonds.com" >Kevin Simmonds web site</A>.
Tom Lombardohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00386546238678041697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4668106303586186640.post-57840723315522602892014-03-09T21:30:00.000-04:002014-03-09T21:47:41.665-04:00"After Katrina" by Kevin Simmonds
<P>There’s no Sabbath in this house<BR>
Just work<BR>
<P>The black of garbage bags<BR>
yellow-cinched throats opening<BR>
to gloved hands <BR>
<P>Black tombs along the road now<BR>
proof she knew to cherish<BR>
the passing things <BR>
<P>even those muted before the water came<BR>
before the mold’s grotesquerie<BR>
and the wooden house choked on bones <BR>
<P>My aunt wades through the wreckage failing<BR>
no matter how hard she tries<BR>
at letting go <BR>
<P>I look on glad at her failing<BR>
her slow rites<BR>
fingering what she’d once been given to care for <BR>
<P>The waistbands of her husband’s briefs<BR>
elastic as memory<BR>
the blank stare of rotted drawers <BR>
<P>their irises of folded linen still<BR>
smelling of soap and wood<BR>
and clean hands <BR>
<P>Daylight through the silent windows<BR>
and I’m sure now: Today is Sabbath<BR>
the work we do, prayer <BR>
<P>I know what she releases into the garbage bags<BR>
shiny like wet skins of seals<BR>
beached on the shore of this house <BR>
<BR><BR>
<I>Reprinted by permission of the poet</I>. <BR>"After Katrina" appeared in <A HREF="http://www.amazon.com/After-Shocks-Poetry-Recovery-Life-Shattering/dp/0981635407/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1394414629&sr=1-1&keywords=After+Shocks+the+poetry+of+recovery" >After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events</A>.<BR>
<P><B>Interview with Poet Kevin Simmonds</b><BR>
<P><B>How did you come to write “After Katrina”? </b><BR>
<P>I wanted to create a poem about the experience of helping my Aunt Trina as she tried to salvage things from her home after the levees broke in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Or after the bombing of those levees. Those sloppily designed levees. I knew -- in the moments of wading through the mold and mess with her -- how important that time was. Not too long thereafter she died of cancer. <BR>
<P><B>How did writing “After Katrina” affect your recovery? </b><BR>
<P>The subject of the poem is literally about recovering objects that are imbued with memory. Objects are talismans for memory. Having those objects and the memories surrounding them alongside the poem, something that was created and then recovered in a sense, helps me go on. My mother also lost her home. Everything in it. With this poem, I retain the essence of what was lost in the physical sense. <BR>
<P><B>Can you tell us something about your process of writing that helped “After Katrina” come to life? </b><BR>
<P>This poem was different and came easily compared to other poems. I often fail at this but I want each poem to be an experience of discovery. Something without agenda or predetermined direction. This poem came from my love and admiration for my aunt. If there are resonances beyond my personal history, then it's because of love and admiration. <BR>
<P><B>Who are your favorite poets or poets new to you whom you'd recommend to others? </b><BR>
Lucille Clifton<BR>
Richard Ronan<BR>
<P><B>What are you working on now? </b><BR>
<P>My second collection, <A HREF="http://www.salmonpoetry.com/details.php?ID=336&a=203" ><i> Bend to it</i> </A>, is out from Salmon Poetry, who also published my debut collection, <i>Mad for Meat</i>. <BR>
<P>I'm at work on a new collection, tentatively titled <i>Upright</i>. At the same time, I’m processing <i>Ota Benga, a river</i>, a recent theatrical collaboration with Theatre of Yugen, an experimental Japanese Noh theatre here in San Francisco. I wrote the music and co-wrote the text. It was an eye-opening experience and I won’t soon forget the challenges of creating a work that draws from Japanese and African-American musical conventions.<BR>
<P>Finally, I just wrapped up <A HREF="https://vimeo.com/87385574" > <i>The Nudists</i> </A>, a short experimental documentary about the nudity ban in San Francisco. I collaborated with designer and artist Nori Hara to create a protest pamphlet about this in 2012, shortly before it became law in February 2013. I’m hoping some film festivals will pick it up. <BR>
<BR><BR>
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-s1wEXpFq8UU/Ux0SfDMiI2I/AAAAAAAAALs/C5RDWgETPAw/s1600/Kevin+Simmonds.head+shot.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-s1wEXpFq8UU/Ux0SfDMiI2I/AAAAAAAAALs/C5RDWgETPAw/s320/Kevin+Simmonds.head+shot.jpg" /></a>
<BR>
<P><B>Kevin Simmonds</b> is a writer and musician originally from New Orleans. His books include <i>Mad for Meat</i> (Salmon Poetry) and the edited works <i>Collective Brightness: LGBTIQ Poets on Faith, Religion & Spirituality</i> (Sibling Rivalry Press) and <i>Ota Benga Under my Mother’s Roof</i> (University of South Carolina). He has composed numerous musical works for voice and chamber ensemble, as well as for stage productions such as <i>Emmett Till</i>, a river and the Emmy Award-winning documentary <i>HOPE: Living and Loving with HIV in Jamaica</i>. He started the first-ever poetry workshop at Singapore’s Changi Prison and founded Tono International Arts Association, an arts presenter in northern Japan. A recipient of fellowships and commissions from Cave Canem, Creative Work Fund, Fulbright, the Pulitzer Center, San Francisco Arts Commission and the Edward Stanley Award from Prairie Schooner, he divides his time between Japan and San Francisco. <BR>
<P><b>Visit</b> <A HREF="http://www.kevinsimmonds.com" >Kevin Simmonds web site</A>.
Tom Lombardohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00386546238678041697noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4668106303586186640.post-18526120076460768922013-10-30T22:23:00.000-04:002013-10-31T21:50:57.832-04:00Susan Laugher Meyers Reads From New CollectionThis Sunday at Malaprops, Asheville
<P>Susan Laughter Meyers will read from her new collection <i>My Dear, Dear Stagger Grass</i> at the Poetrio Reading Series Sunday, November 3, 3 PM at Malaprops Bookstore, 55 Haywood St., Asheville, NC. Two poems from <i>My Dear, Dear Stagger Grass</i> appear below. Susan will be reading with 2 other poets—Kathy Nelson and Tom Lombardo, who runs this Poetry of Recovery blog. Susan’s poem “That Year,” a deeply moving poem about the year her mother died, appeared in the anthology <i>After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events</i>, a compilation of 152 poems by 115 poets from 15 nations. <BR>
<BR>
<B>That Year</b><BR>
                                —<i>for my mother</i>
<P>by Susan Laughter Meyers<BR>
<P>When the black-eyed susans begin to bloom <BR>
in the backyard, and the moonbeam coreopsis<BR>
bursts into tiny stars, I think of the year<BR>
<P>I banished yellow from my life. It was the year<BR>
I dug up the lantana, when I didn't plant<BR>
narcissus and all the buttery bulbs<BR>
<P>but chose white, and a little blue, for the garden<BR>
without knowing that I was readying<BR>
for two long years of her dying. The next spring<BR>
<P>I painted our kitchen, once a lemony gloss, ecru. <BR>
I threw out from my closet all the blouses<BR>
hinting, from their hangers, of glad canaries. <BR>
<P>Beginning that fall I dressed in a dull haze<BR>
of beige, toning myself down for the end. <BR>
I ignored the incandescence of morning, the amber<BR>
<P>of dusk, and leaned to clouds billowed in black. <BR>
The week in November she died I loaded the trunk<BR>
of my car with flats of pansies, three sacks of bulbs. <BR>
<P>I wanted my hands working the dirt, a dark loam<BR>
that would spring into jonquils, daffodils—bright<BR>
coronas of yellow, and yellow, and yellow. <BR>
<BR>
<P> From <i>Keep and Give Away</i> (University of South Carolina, 2006). First published in <I>The Southern Review</I><BR>
<BR>
<P> <B>Two poems from Susan Laughter Meyers’ new collection <i>My Dear, Dear Stagger Grass</i></b><BR><BR><BR>
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-MH87TA8wTc4/UnG76XYG2LI/AAAAAAAAALI/kAyg4KbyJ1A/s1600/Susan+Meyers.Cover.Stagger+Grass.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-MH87TA8wTc4/UnG76XYG2LI/AAAAAAAAALI/kAyg4KbyJ1A/s320/Susan+Meyers.Cover.Stagger+Grass.jpg" /></a>
<BR>
<P><B>Banding Hummingbirds<BR></b><P>
                                            <i>San Pedro River, Arizona</i><BR><P>
                              I, who know little of ornithology, <BR>
wear sticker number nineteen. This release, <BR>
the last of the day, is mine. Under the awning<BR>
the ornithologist at the table puts a straw to her lips <BR>
and blows, parting the feathers to check for mites. <BR>
There are mites. <BR><P>
                             She cradles the bird in one hand, <BR>
sexes it, names the species (Anna’s), and figures<BR>
the approximate age. Places it in a miniature sling <BR>
and weighs it, wraps the metal band around one leg. <BR>
I walk over to the designated grassy area, <BR>
both hands in my pockets. <BR><P>
                                         The day is raw. <BR>
When it’s time, I hold out a palm, now warm. <BR>
The assistant fits the tubes of a stethoscope <BR>
to my ears, pressing the disc against my bird. <BR>
I hear a low whir, a tiny motor running in my hand. <BR>
Up to twelve hundred beats a minute, she says. <BR><P>
                                         I, who know so little, <BR>
barely take a breath. My bird’s head is a knob <BR>
of red iridescence on the fleshy pad of my hand. <BR>
I am nothing but a convenient warming bench, <BR>
yet for now I am that bench. Warm. <BR>
His breast is thin—bone hollow, she says, <BR><P>
                             where he should be round. <BR>
His eyes are dark and still, his feet tucked <BR>
behind his body. He lies there, that tiny motor. <BR>
I don't think of years ago, my mother, my father—<BR>
those I loved who, having lain down, never rose up. <BR>
For once, I know the worth, <BR><P>
                             at least to me. What is unknown<BR>
is whether this bird in hand will rouse<BR>
as he did earlier, pinched between thumb <BR>
and index finger and tipped toward a feeder, <BR>
when he drank with conspicuous hunger. <BR>
You could see the tongue. <BR>
<BR>
<p>—first published in <i>North Carolina Literary Review Online 2013</i>
as a finalist for the 2012 James Applewhite Poetry Prize <BR><BR>
<b><P>Dear Atamasco Lily</b><BR>
<P>Nothing else in the swamp rises beyond <BR>
the surprise of you <BR>
                         and your sweet repetition. <BR>
<P>Your boldness I'd expect of the cottonmouth <BR>
sunning by the bald cypress, <BR>
<P>your plenitude matched only <BR>
                                        
by last year's<BR>
tent caterpillars, whose droppings, <BR>
when they fell, <BR>
                           ticked a steady shower. <BR>
<P>And what of the music in your name, <BR>
hiding your poison? <BR>
<P>You are danger, deep-throated cup<BR>
lipping the stippled light, <BR>
                           brightening the leaf mold.<BR><P>
               Dear red-stained lily. Rain lily. <BR>
Zephyr lily. Dear fairy lily. <BR>
                                         Wild Easter lily.<BR>
My dear, dear stagger grass. <BR>
<BR>
<p>—first published in <i>Linebreak</i> <BR><BR>
<P><B>Interview with Susan Laughter Meyers</b>
<P><B>How did you come to write this poem?</B><BR>
<P>I was enrolled in the low-residency MFA program at Queens University of Charlotte, and one day before class several of us were talking about colors and the emotional effect they have on us. I surprised even myself by saying that I had once, for a year or more, banished yellow from my life. Cathy Smith Bowers, poet and instructor, immediately said, “Susan, there’s a poem in that,” and I knew she was right.<BR>
<P>The back story is that I had just gone through two years of being responsible for my mother’s care before her death, and during that time yellow was simply too bright for me to invite into my life. It felt falsely cheerful to me. <BR><BR>
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-dcE11yG6pUc/UnG9R9HvWGI/AAAAAAAAALU/MP03BjV3Ts4/s1600/Susan+Meyers.Photo.2.0.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-dcE11yG6pUc/UnG9R9HvWGI/AAAAAAAAALU/MP03BjV3Ts4/s320/Susan+Meyers.Photo.2.0.jpg" /></a><BR>
<b>Susan Laughter Meyers</b><BR>
<P><B>How did writing this poem affect your recovery?</b><BR>
<P>Once I said out loud that, during my mother’s decline, I had actually rid myself of a color—and one that I had always liked—the poem began to take shape in my mind. It was a freeing experience to put into words what had before existed as only a blur. From the moment I started writing the poem, I knew that it was a fortunate part of my grieving process. Something clicked. I had been aware all along that I had begun to grieve for my mother long before she actually died, and this poem seemed to be proof. It felt hopeful to me to know that I had moved past this difficult time of no yellow.<BR>
<P><B>Can you tell us something about your process of writing that helped this poem come to life?</b><BR>
<P>Turning to concrete details—as William Blake advised, “to see a world in a grain of sand.” Had I not tried to name the ordinary traces of yellow that I had banished, I wouldn’t have been able to write the poem. The habit of trying to home in close—to stick to the particulars, to the one brief moment rather than the whole scenario—kept me writing.<BR>
<P><B>Who are your favorite poets or poets new to you whom you'd recommend to others? </b><BR>
<P>I came to poetry mainly through Shakespeare, the Romantics—Byron, Shelley, Keats—Yeats, T. S. Eliot, James Dickey, Sylvia Path, James Wright, Elizabeth Bishop. In more recent years I’ve greatly admired the work of Li-Young Lee, Larry Levis, Jane Hirshfield, Carolyn Forché, Rita Dove, Charles Wright, Tomas Tranströmer, Seamus Heaney, Yusef Komunyakaa, among others. Poets newer to me whom I admire include two poets I’ve studied with, Carol Ann Davis and Emily Rosko; as well as Atsuro Riley, Malena Mörling, Kimberly Johnson, Traci Brimhall, Jude Nutter. And, wait, I can’t forget the three Nicks: Nick Lantz, Nick Flynn, and Nick Laird. Hard to stop naming.<BR>
<P><B>What are you working on now?</B><BR>
<P>Since the completion of my last book I’ve been writing poems influenced in one way or another by Sappho. Too, I've lately been obsessed with the story of my youngest aunt, my namesake, who disappeared years ago. Mostly, though, I like to write poem by poem—whatever comes my way—without aiming myself in a particular direction.<BR>
<P><B>Susan Laughter Meyers</b>, of Givhans, SC, is the author of two full poetry collections: <i>My Dear, Dear Stagger Grass</i>, winner of the inaugural Cider Press Review Editors Prize; and <i>Keep and Give Away </i>(University of South Carolina Press), winner of the inaugural SC Poetry Book Prize, the SIBA Book Award for Poetry, and the Brockman-Campbell Book Award. Her chapbook <i>Lessons in Leaving</i> won the Persephone Press Book Award. Her poetry has also been published in numerous journals—including <i>The Southern Review, Beloit Poetry Journal,</i> and <i>Prairie Schooner</i>—and has been selected to appear in Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, and Ted Kooser’s <i>American Life in Poetry</i>. She is the recipient of fellowships from The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (VCCA) and the SC Academy of Authors. A long-time writing instructor, she has an MFA degree from Queens University of Charlotte. Follow Susan on <A HREF="http://susanmeyers.blogspot.com" >her blog</A>.<BR>
<P><i>My Dear, Dear Stagger Grass</i> is available at <A HREF=" http://www.amazon.com/My-Dear-Stagger-Grass/dp/1930781350/ref=sr_1_1
" >Amazon.com.</A>
Tom Lombardohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00386546238678041697noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4668106303586186640.post-49941465015109439392013-10-02T14:11:00.000-04:002013-10-02T14:11:16.203-04:003 Poems of Recovery by Carol Dine<BR><BR>
<b>Reconstruction</b><BR>
<p>From his VA hospital bed, <br>
the man motions to the corridor; <br>
his jaw is crooked, wide open<br>
like the entrance to a cave. <br>
<p>In the doorway the boy, <br>
saluting his father, <br>
imagines the white blanket<br>
as new snow. In the yard, <br>
<p>they are making a snowman: <br>
from his father’s pocket, <br>
a piece of coal for the nose, <br>
for the mouth, <br>
the boy sneaks a strand <br>
of Mother’s red yarn. <br>
<br><br>
<b>Refugee</b>
<BR>
<i>after Andrzej Jackowski</i><br>
<p>i.
A man sleeps <br>
on a wooden plank<br>
under a clump of date palms, <br>
its leaves covering him<br>
like a mother’s arms. <br>
<p>ii.
He dreams <br>
of rocket fire, <br>
a river <br>
of black oil<br>
rising through the floor<br>
under a single bed, <br>
what was left <br>
of his house. <br>
<p>On the sun-orange blanket, <br>
bouquets of dried flowers, <br>
tattered. <br>
<i>wife daughter son</i><br>
<br><br>
<b>Glove</b>
<p>I lost a black fleece glove, <br>
soft, sturdy<br>
under the back seat<br>
on the sidewalk<br>
on the classroom floor<br>
<i>better to have one glove…</i><br>
<p>I put its mate<br>
in my lingerie drawer<br>
beside the black satin <br>
pear-shape<br>
a woman sold to me, <br>
saying<br>
<i>sorry</i>. <br>
<BR>
<I>Poems published by permission of the poet.</I>
<BR><BR>
<p><b>Interview with Carol Dine</b><br>
<p><b>Tell us about these poems.</b>
<p>The poems "Reconstruction" and "Refugee" are from my manuscript in progress, entitled <i>Sutures: Poems of Art and War</i>. In it, I comment on specific war images, including those by Holocaust survivor, Samuel Bak, Polish exile, Andrzej Jackowski, and British war sculptor, Michael Sandle. In these cases, my poems accompany the images. There are also sections (without images) on women as both victims and survivors of war, and art that was looted by the Nazis, never to be recovered. The manuscript is under review by publishers in the U.K. <br>
<P> The poem "Glove" reflects my fourth bout with breast cancer, which I have survived. Thank GOD.<BR>
<P><B>Who are your favorite poets or poets new to you whom you'd recommend to others?</b><BR>
<P>I’m inspired by and recommend the work of David Ferry, Carol Ann Duffy, John F. Deane, and Genine Lentine.<BR>
<P><B>What are you working on now?</b><BR>
My next book, <I>Orange Night</I>, a collaboration with acclaimed artist and Holocaust survivor, Samuel Bak, will be published in April, 2014 by Pucker Art Publications and distributed by Syracuse University Press. In Orange Night, I present a dialogue on the subject of the Holocaust. I hope that the cumulative effect of Bak’s paintings and drawings and my poetic commentary transcend the artists’ individual powers and create for the reader an intimate confrontation with history.<BR>
<P>The book of twenty-four images and accompanying poems is divided into
four sections. In the first section "Orange Night", I want the reader to relive the artist’s memories of the sundered Vilna Ghetto (Lithuania), where his drawings were first displayed when he was nine years old, and from which he escaped with his mother. The second section, “Artist,” portrays the necessity of the arts for survival, redemption. In “Adonai,” I explore the question of God’s absence. In “Afterward,” I attempt to interpret the aftermath of war from the distance of time. In this final section, the reader faces a broken landscape which the artist has been, in my viewview, “cleansed with orange light.” <BR>
<P>The book will be an important addition to studies of the Holocaust and WWII,
in addition to Art History, Linguistics and Poetry. Bak’s images were be provided by Boston’s Pucker Gallery. Gallery Director, Bernard H. Pucker, enthusiastically supports this book which he calls “extraordinary.”<BR>
<P>In addition to <i>Orange Night</i>, I am now working on poems for a collection entitled <i>Resistance</i>, persona poems on women who have resisted war, terror and abuse.
<BR>
<BR>
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-sM2OQqmqWQw/UkxgcMPTE7I/AAAAAAAAAK4/iB0f-aRPNKE/s1600/Carol_Dine.jpeg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-sM2OQqmqWQw/UkxgcMPTE7I/AAAAAAAAAK4/iB0f-aRPNKE/s320/Carol_Dine.jpeg" /></a>
<BR><BR><BR>
<B>Carol Dine</b> read from her book <i>Van Gogh in Poems</i> (Bitter Oleander Press, 2009) in Amsterdam at the Van Gogh Museum, and in London at the Royal Academy. In 2011, she was awarded a grant from the Money for Women/Barbara Deming Memorial fund for her manuscript <i>Sutures: Poems on Art and War</i>. She teaches writing at MassArt & Design, Boston, where she will give the Marjorie Hellerstein Memorial Lecture in April, 2012.
Tom Lombardohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00386546238678041697noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4668106303586186640.post-57954473935205455482013-09-24T10:52:00.000-04:002013-09-24T10:52:55.448-04:00Owl's HeadBy Carol Dine<P>On the first night after you die, we make love. <BR>
Your tongue, a sparrow in my mouth. <BR>
<P>On the second night, you dye<BR>
the white egg of a parrot in beet juice, <BR>
scratch snowflakes into the waxy shell. <BR>
<P>On the third night, I boil a crow’s blue egg<BR>
in vinegar; before it cools, I swallow it whole. <BR>
<P>On the fourth night in Owl’s Head, <BR>
we lie on the shore; the tide ambles in, <BR>
wrapping us in seaweed. <BR>
We swim away<BR>
together in our green green skin. <BR>
<BR>
<P>Reprinted by permission of the poet. Appeared in the anthology <A HREF="http://www.poetryofrecovery.com"> After Shocks: The Poetry of
Recovery for Life-Shattering Events</A>. <BR>
<BR><BR><BR>
<p><b>Interview with Carol Dine</b><br>
<p><b>How did you come to write “Owl’s Head”?</b><BR>
<P>The poem came to me quite awhile after my lover, Jon Liutkus, died of a heart attack at age forty. <BR>
<P><B>How did writing this poem affect your recovery?</b><BR>
<P>The writing put me in touch with feelings of love and sensuality I had for him, as opposed to the overwhelming feelings of loss and grief that had distanced me from my poetic voice. <BR>
<BR>
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-WDgHuDYLSXE/UkGmq4TaQJI/AAAAAAAAAKo/imacnXu36TA/s1600/Carol_Dine.jpeg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-WDgHuDYLSXE/UkGmq4TaQJI/AAAAAAAAAKo/imacnXu36TA/s320/Carol_Dine.jpeg" /></a>
<BR>
<b>Carol Dine</b><br><br>
<P><B>Can you tell us something about your process of writing that helped this poem come to life?</b><BR>
The setting of the poem, Owls Head, Maine, is a place Jon often visited; it reminded him of Lithuania, the land from which he and his family were exiled; he often wrote me postcards from there, describing its haunting beauty. As for the second and third stanzas, he had told me about the Lithuanian custom of dying Easter eggs. So I put us by the sea, making love, added the sensual waxing ingredients, and my poem was cooked. <BR>
<P><B>Who are your favorite poets or poets new to you whom you'd recommend to others?</b><BR>
<P>I’m inspired by and recommend the work of David Ferry, Carol Ann Duffy, John F. Deane, and Genine Lentine.<BR>
<P><B>What are you working on now?</b><BR>
My book, <I>Orange Night</I>, collaboration with acclaimed artist and Holocaust survivor, Samuel Bak, will be published in April, 2014 by Pucker Art Publications and distributed by Syracuse University Press. I’m completing a manuscript entitled <I>Sutures: Poems on Art and War</I>. In it, I comment on specific war images, including those by Holocaust survivor, Samuel Bak, Polish exile, Andrzej Jackowski, and British war sculptor, Michael Sandle; in these cases, my poems accompany the images. There are also sections (without images) on women as both victims and survivors of war; and art that was looted by the Nazis, never to be recovered. The manuscript is under review by publishers in the U.K. I am now working on poems for a collection entitled <i>Resistance</i>, persona poems on women who have resisted war, terror and abuse.
<BR><BR><BR>
<B>Carol Dine</b> read from her book <i>Van Gogh in Poems</i> (Bitter Oleander Press, 2009) in Amsterdam at the Van Gogh Museum, and in London at the Royal Academy. In 2011, she was awarded a grant from the Money for Women/Barbara Deming Memorial fund for her manuscript <i>Sutures: Poems on Art and War</i>. She teaches writing at MassArt & Design, Boston, where she will give the Marjorie Hellerstein Memorial Lecture in April, 2012.
Tom Lombardohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00386546238678041697noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4668106303586186640.post-11156777581591693642013-09-09T22:10:00.000-04:002013-09-10T11:07:18.137-04:00Poems by Carolyn Kreiter-Foronda from her eBook Gathering Lightand Her Thoughts on eBook Publishing<BR><BR>
<B>Do You Know About the Raintree?</b>
<P> <i>Do you know about the world’s broad belt?</i><BR>
            
They say that in Brazil at the equator<BR>
            
birdsong fills the heart of the Catrimani <BR>
            
River. Its bed, teeming with diamonds<BR>
            
and gold, grows fat with this riot of light. <BR>
<P> <I>Do you know about the beehive tombs in Greece?</I> <BR>
            
Lower yourself by rope into the dark secret. <BR>
            
If the rope breaks, let your eyes adjust<BR>
            
to blindness. They say there is a sun<BR>
            
behind your lids. Climb its ascending<BR>
            
rays back to the earth’s roar. <BR>
<P> <I>Do you know about the rainbow fish?</I> <BR>
            
Solid black, they ruled the waters<BR>
            
before earthquakes opened their coffers, <BR>
            
turquoise, topaz, amethyst, jade<BR>
            
plummeting into the rivers where<BR>
            
the eyes of the dark fish shimmered<BR>
            
as they fed on the earth’s rainbow. <BR>
<P> <I>Do you know about the hidden mountains?</I> <BR>
            
They say that in Tanzania and Kenya<BR>
            
the mountains warred. Kilimanjaro<BR>
            
and Mt. Kenya pushed their broad<BR>
            
shoulders too high into sky. <BR>
            
Now, whenever they nudge God’s throne, <BR>
            
his angry breath shrouds their peaks. <BR>
<P> <i>Do you know about waters of the Grotto?</I> <BR>
            
You will find the pool off the coast<BR>
            
of Italy on Capri. Lie down<BR>
            
in the boat’s bottom to enter<BR>
            
the cave’s mouth, then feast on<BR>
            
a blue mirror that butterflies<BR>
            
carry here on their wings: pieces<BR>
            
of sky they gather learning to fly. <BR>
<P> <i>Do you know about the raintree?</I> <BR>
            
There’s a tree, invisible, with a broad<BR>
            
canopy in the sky. The earth sings to it<BR>
            
whenever it’s thirsty. They say<BR>
            
if the song’s loud enough to rise, <BR>
            
the ripest blooms will break off<BR>
            
their branches and rinse earth’s<BR>
            
green cathedral in firstlight and last. <BR>
<BR>
<P>Previously published in <I>Antietam Review</I> and reprinted in<I> Gathering Light </i>(SCOP Publications, Inc., College Park, MD, 1993), “Do You Know About the Raintree?” was recently featured in <I>Terrain.org: A Journal of the Built & Natural Environments </i>(Issue No. 21: Winter/Spring 2008: Islands and Archipelagos. The poem was subsequently selected to appear in Best of the Literary Journals.<BR>
<BR><BR>
<b><P>When Birds Speak</b><BR>
<P><I>To Shakespeare, they were not isolated objects
but living creatures.</i>
        —
Levi Fox, <i>Shakespeare’s Birds</i><BR>
<P>How can one ignore his chattering pies, <BR>
a lapwing close to earth, every goose <BR>
cackling, a strutting chanticleer? <BR>
They are all there in his drama: <BR>
dive dapper, pigeon, woodcock, wagtail—<BR>
and among them, such pretty talk. <BR>
Did he study birds to see how all<BR>
creatures work, how man in his folly<BR>
climbs commanding peaks? A vulture<BR>
circles, then swoops. In the shadow<BR>
of its wings, wren and robin hover<BR>
over their young. They are all there. <BR>
Swift flight: the swallow points<BR>
its wings and ascends while thrush<BR>
and jay harmonize with wind. <BR>
And the graceful swan, what metaphors<BR>
did he see in her: royal birth, music, <BR>
majestic curves of the universe? <BR>
He must have sat next to her, <BR>
away from paper and ink, with her<BR>
neck arced like a river’s bend. <BR>
He must have seen prisms in those<BR>
feathers, prisms in expanded wings. <BR>
When the birds spoke the language<BR>
of waves, they flew to him out of elm<BR>
and ash. Always a triumph: birds<BR>
on every branch and the playwright <BR>
in his haven learning to sing. <BR>
<P><I>Both poems reprinted from eBook</i> Gathering Light (Northampton House Press, 2013) <i>by permission of the poet.</i>
<BR><BR>
<P><B>Interview with Carolyn Kreiter-Foronda about her experience publishing Gathering Light as an eBook, through publisher Northampton House Press.</b></BR>
<BR>
<P> <B>What is your general feeling about the eBook market? Does it have a future for poetry?</b><BR>
<P>I believe the eBook market has a future for poetry. In fact, there are quite a few reputable publishers—Copper Canyon, Graywolf, Coffee House, BOA—who are moving toward digital publishing. From what I’ve read about this transition, these presses are committed to addressing the issues that cause alarm to poets. Specifically, when the screen size of an electronic device is too small or the font size is too large, a shift will occur in the typographical arrangement of a poem with long or staggered lines. Since form is an important consideration in poetry, the visual display on an electronic device matters. As soon as publishers address these concerns, then the market will attract more poets. <BR>
<BR>
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Wc77-Xu358k/Ui5_Or5yhvI/AAAAAAAAAKQ/UUKmGtwGAnk/s1600/Carolyn+Kreiter-Foronda.eBook+cover.Gathering+Light.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Wc77-Xu358k/Ui5_Or5yhvI/AAAAAAAAAKQ/UUKmGtwGAnk/s320/Carolyn+Kreiter-Foronda.eBook+cover.Gathering+Light.jpg" /></a>
<BR>
<P><b>What was your thought process coming to this decision? Difficult? Easy?</b><BR>
<P>Initially, I was hesitant to enter the eBook market, but after discussing the matter with my publisher and editor at Northampton House Press, I decided to give it a try. Since the print version of <I>Gathering Light</i> is no longer available, I wanted to enter a market that would make the book accessible to a large audience. I also considered the fact that many young readers, who are technologically savvy, prefer eBooks. Storing books on a Kindle, Nook, or a Kobo e-reader is more convenient and certainly beats hauling books around in a satchel. After weighing the pros and cons, I decided this was a viable route to take to reintroduce an out-of-print book to the market.<BR>
<P>How was it working with your publisher, Northampton House Press? Was there any vetting or acceptance process? Any editing, revision, or other editorial involvement? Or is it close to a vanity press situation, where they publish whatever is sent to them? You have published with other normal presses. How was the eBook process different?<BR>
<P>I couldn’t have chosen a better publisher for this project than Northampton House Press. Both the poetry editor and publisher worked closely with me to ensure that the end product was a well-honed work of art. I should point out that this isn’t a vanity press. And there was an acceptance process. I was initially contacted by NHP’s poetry editor, who invited me to submit a current or out-of-print book for consideration. <I>Gathering Light</i> was originally published by SCOP Publications, Inc. of Maryland, which closed its doors a decade ago. The book was always a favorite of mine for its uplifting themes. Here was a chance to reintroduce the work.
During the editing process, I made a few minor changes and took out one poem—a translation—which seemed obtrusive. Once the book reached the formatting stage, several of the poems were hand-coded to ensure that the line breaks and stanzaic shifts were honored. At one point I was asked to rework the lineation of four poems with long or indented lines. Although I was hesitant to do so, I soon met the challenge by readjusting the typographical arrangement of each piece. After the manuscript was converted to the e-book format, I was given the chance to proofread the entire work on an e-reader. Thanks to the meticulous oversight of the publisher, all seemed to be in order. However, I realize that issues might still exist for those who download the e-book to a smartphone.<BR>
<P>I found the overall publishing process similar to that of working with other presses—with the exception of being asked to re-lineate a few poems to solve display issues on an e-reader. I should also point out that NHP publishes both e-books and print editions.<BR>
<P><B>What was the cost?</b><BR>
<P>I honestly don’t know since the press covered all costs.<BR>
<P><B>Have you sold many books using eBook?</b> <BR>
<P>Ask me in a few months. We’re still in the early stages of seeking online reviews to promote the book. All of this is new to me, but thankfully, the press has an intern who will guide me through the process. I just “met” her online a week ago.<BR>
<P><B>Are you happy you’ve taken this step?</b><BR>
<P>Yes. As an older writer, I feel the need to move in the direction that the publishing business seems to be headed. Given the proliferation of writing programs in universities and the growing number of young authors entering the field each year, competition is stiff. And new books are plentiful. Having worked in the past on the editorial board of a small press, I know the challenges of publishing, promoting, and even storing print copies of books. Obviously, it’s easier to store e-books, and hopefully, they’ll remain available for a much longer period of time.<BR>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Yau0O_HIv9k/Ui5_Y1eneRI/AAAAAAAAAKY/RYeRXwcZHmU/s1600/Carolyn+Kreiter-Foronda.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Yau0O_HIv9k/Ui5_Y1eneRI/AAAAAAAAAKY/RYeRXwcZHmU/s320/Carolyn+Kreiter-Foronda.jpg" /></a>
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<P><B>Dr. Carolyn Kreiter-Foronda</b> served as Poet Laureate of Virginia from 2006-2008. She has published five books of poetry, co-edited two poetry anthologies and has two other manuscripts near completion. Her poems have been nominated for six Pushcart Prizes and appear in numerous magazines, including <i>Nimrod, Prairie Schooner, Mid-American Review, Best of Literary Journals, Poet Lore, r.kv.r.y.</i> and <i>An Endless Skyway</i>, an anthology of poems by U.S. State Poets Laureate. Her poems also appeared in <A HREF="http://www.poetrsyofrecovery.com" ><i>After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events</i></A>.Her awards include five grants from the Virginia Commission for the Arts; a Spree First Place award; multiple awards in Pen Women competitions; a Special Merit Poem in Comstock Review’s Muriel Craft Bailey Memorial contest; a Passages North contest award; an Edgar Allan Poe first-place award; and a Resolution of Appreciation from the State Board of Education for her contributions as Poet Laureate of Virginia. In 2010-2011 she served as a Literary Arts Specialist with Claudia Emerson on a Metrorail Public Art Project, which will integrate literary works, including her own, into art installations at metro stations in Virginia. She recently received the Poetry Society of Virginia’s Ellen Anderson Reader Award for 2012.
Tom Lombardohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00386546238678041697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4668106303586186640.post-21779600639828778732013-08-24T09:39:00.000-04:002013-08-24T09:39:04.371-04:00Poems After Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera By Carolyn Kreiter Foronda<BR><BR><BR>
<b>Frida and Wet Nurse</b><BR>
By Carolyn Kreiter-Foronda<BR>
<P>You do not nourish me, though you offer your breasts, <BR>
                                
<i>A wet nurse, </i><BR>
<P>while my real mother gives birth to a sister. <BR>
                                
<i>I do my duty. I sacrifice</i><BR>
<P>Your milk bitter as oleander, I call you Nana. <BR>
                                
<i>a suckling infant at home, </i><BR>
<P>I’d rather press my lips to clouds drizzling<BR>
                                
<i>shedding tears</i><BR>
<P>over a maze of leaves, engorged veins<BR>
                                
<i>buoyant as breath. </i><BR>
<P>feeding insects, giddy with song. Newly born: <BR>
                                
<i>Wiggling, you turn from me, </i><BR>
<P>a praying mantis, a monarch sucking fluid from stalks. <BR>
                                
<i>obsidian eyes, empty. </i> <BR>
<P>Estranged, I refuse to knead your chest, <BR>
                                
<i>Disheveled universe, </i><BR>
<P>releasing drops into my half-opened mouth. <BR>
                                
<i>crack open this shield. </i><BR>
<P>Indian woman, why won’t you remove your mask? <BR>
                                
<i>Reorder this life</i><BR>
<P>As moon candles the stars, cradle me<BR>
                                
<i>saturated with providence</i><BR>
<P>so I can fold back time and dream my mother<BR>
                                
<i>among splashes of rain, </i><BR>
<P>nurses me, her milk—consecrated by a kiss—<BR>
                                
<i>spilling from a holy font. </i><BR><BR><BR>
<P><b>Diego and Calla Lilies</b> <BR>
By Carolyn Kreiter-Foronda<BR>
<BR>
            
<i>Kneeling on a petate mat, </i><BR>
The basket, deep enough, <BR>
            
<i>an Indian woman sits upright, </i><BR>
supports our long, firm stems. <BR>
            
<i>her unclothed frame scented. </i><BR>
We settle into clots of dirt. <BR>
            
<i>Is it sandalwood? Mahogany? </i><BR>
Like absinthe, we intoxicate<BR>
            
<i>I paint her broad shoulders: </i><BR>
the artist who shapes the woman’s arms<BR>
            
<i>earthy dabs of nutmeg, hyacinth </i><BR>
with the mastery of sun<BR>
            
<i>so she can thrive like the flowers, </i><BR>
so she can embrace us. <BR>
            
<i>so she can feel the florets swell. </i><BR>
Her hands, smelling of freesia, <BR>
            
<i>Soon, she will rise out of shadows</i><BR>
reach out to our trumpets blaring<BR>
            
<i>to gather bluets, yarrows. </i><BR>
as though she hears a mariachi horn, <BR>
            
<i>What is happiness, if not this need? </i><BR>
feels our desire to return to marshes, <BR>
            
<i>See how she rests—a saint—holding</i><BR>
watery fields, shallow pools far from<BR>
            
<i>pearls, luminous as fire? </i> <BR>
the lover who approaches a street vendor—<BR>
            
<i>Now, maybe you understand who I am. </i><BR>
scissor snips ringing through the market, <BR>
            
<i>In the city, in the valleys, </i><BR>
fleshy tubes and arrow-shaped leaves<BR>
            
<i>I wander in search of legends</i><BR>
rolled into wrapping paper, sold for a few pesos, <BR>
            
<i>to begin anew. Oh, these calla lilies! </i><BR>
the blooms’ swanlike hearts pounding. <BR>
<BR>
<P>Both poems reprinted from <i>The Embrace: Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo</I> (San Francisco Bay Press, 2013) by permission of the poet. <BR>
<BR>
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-SpFv3g_np_c/Uhi3J3TPVDI/AAAAAAAAAJ4/2QPt1mRi7F8/s1600/Carolyn+Kreiter-Foronda.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-SpFv3g_np_c/Uhi3J3TPVDI/AAAAAAAAAJ4/2QPt1mRi7F8/s320/Carolyn+Kreiter-Foronda.jpg" /></a>
<BR>
<B>Carolyn Kreiter-Foronda</B>
<BR>
<P><b>How did you come to write “Frida and Wet Nurse” and “Diego and Calla Lilies” and the entire collection <i>The Embrace: Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera</i>?</b><BR>
<P>As a painter, I have long been inspired by the artwork of Diego Rivera and still recall how moved I was when I viewed his paintings ten years ago in a special exhibition at El Museo del Barrio in New York City. In fact, one of the highlighted paintings, <i>Calla Lily Vendor</i>, inspired “Diego and Calla Lilies,” a simultaneous poem, spoken in the voice of both the artist and the calla lilies. I chose the two-voice format to broaden and enrich the interpretation of the painting, which reveals the artist’s empathy for Mexico’s indigenous people. <BR>
<P>To deepen my understanding of Rivera and Kahlo, I devoted several years to researching their lives and subsequently traveled to Mexico City on two occasions to view Rivera’s monumental murals, Kahlo’s self-portraits, and each artist’s home and studio. In the Museo Dolores Olmedo, I saw the heartrending painting, <i>My Nurse and I</i>, which prompted me to create “Frida and Wet Nurse.” Here, I sought to depict Kahlo’s longing to be nursed by her own mother, who at the time was caring for a newborn sister. The painting portrays Kahlo in the arms of a wet-nurse, whose face is masked and solemn—a far cry from the devotion the infant sought.<BR>
<P>After the research trips, the poems about this celebrated couple emerged relatively quickly. Before long, the collection gained a unified direction and centered on Rivera’s revolutionary stance and on Kahlo’s difficulties with her husband’s infidelities, her physical disability, and her inability to bear children. Despite the intricacies of their relationship, the artists remained devoted to improving the plight of the common man—a goal that remains relevant in today’s world of revolutionary uprisings.<BR>
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-MdkaIKgRz_E/Uhi3X1rqHHI/AAAAAAAAAKA/igiXRAmDqVs/s1600/Carolyn+Kreiter-Foronda.Embrace.Cover+shot.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-MdkaIKgRz_E/Uhi3X1rqHHI/AAAAAAAAAKA/igiXRAmDqVs/s320/Carolyn+Kreiter-Foronda.Embrace.Cover+shot.jpg" /></a>
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<P><b>You are also a visual artist. Can you tell us a bit about your work in that field and how it affected your work on <I>The Embrace</I>?</b><BR>
<P>For seventeen years I studied art in the Washington D.C. metropolitan area, close to museums where I could examine the techniques of a variety of artists, ranging from Vincent van Gogh to Georgia O’Keeffe. One day in class my professor took me aside and encouraged me to test the realm of experimentation. Jackson Pollack’s non-representational art and Sam Gilliam’s abstract innovations led me to create abstract works that relied on color to speak emotionally to viewers and to move them spiritually. While searching for my artistic voice, I read several art books weekly to shore up my knowledge of other artists’ philosophies and techniques. Rivera and Kahlo were part of this study. Early on, I was drawn to Rivera’s goal to celebrate the indigenous people of Mexico, to highlight their festivals and address their hardships as laborers. I admired his innate ability to capture something as large as the history of Mexico in murals that covered the walls of buildings. I was drawn to Kahlo’s thirst for self-awareness in her portraits that capture the challenges she faced following a childhood illness and a debilitating injury in a bus accident during her adolescence.<BR>
<P>My background as an artist equipped me with the tools to more fully understand the artistic renderings and goals of Rivera and Kahlo. As a proponent of ekphrastic poetry, I found this couple’s embrace an appealing metaphor for exploring their lives, political beliefs, and philosophies. As one who thrives on experimentation in both art and poetry, I relied on the two-voice poem and the monologue to draw readers into the book by allowing them to hear the artists telling their own stories. Other speakers include a doll, a mask, calla lilies, vines, or another symbolic object assuming an imagined life of its own in a vibrant painting.<BR>
<P><B>Can you tell us something about your process of writing that helped this collection come to life?</b><BR>
<P>Perhaps the most compelling moment for me was when I settled on the monologue form as a unifying element of the manuscript. I can’t count the number of times I felt as if Diego and Frida were actually speaking through me. Whenever I sat down to write, I transformed myself into another entity to lend credibility to the writing. By immersing myself in Diego’s autobiography and Frida’s letters, I familiarized myself with their voices and sought to reenact vital moments in their lives in much the same way an actor would dramatize a role in a movie or on stage. <BR>
<P>Every month or so, I would organize and reorganize the poems that I’d written to date. In time, I started noticing thematic consistencies in the collection. A structure emerged. The poems fell into two sections—the first centering on Diego’s strengths as an artist and his weaknesses as a husband and the other focusing on Frida’s psychological burdens and indisputable gifts as a painter whose unique vision would stand the test of time. The collection solidified when the monologues and dual-voice poems brought to life these world-renowned artists, who shared the mutual goal of social justice for all.<BR>
<P><B>Who are your favorite poets or poets new to you whom you'd recommend to others?</b><BR>
<P>First, let me mention Julie Kane, a poet, whose work I’ve recently read and admire. Julie is Louisiana’s current poet laureate. Her book, <i>Rhythm & Booze</i>, was selected by Maxine Kumin as a 2003 winner in the National Poetry Series. Her poems are light-hearted, yet offer a glimpse into the undercurrents of life in various Louisiana cities. What I admire most is her grasp of formal poetry and her ability to bring it alive in some of the most illuminating villanelles I’ve read in contemporary poetry.<BR>
<P>A younger poet, whose work deserves a close look is Dean Rader, author of <i>Works & Days</i>, recipient of the 2010 T.S. Eliot Prize. As one who welcomes experimentation in our genre, I delighted in reading a book, which opened my eyes to new possibilities in form and structure. I applaud Rader’s work for its innovation, its craftmanship, and vision.<BR>
<P>One of my all-time favorite poets is Ai, a former professor of mine, whose masterful dramatic monologues led me to explore the form. I could never tire of reading her books, which allow the reader to enter the lives of an array of figures, ranging from Elvis Presley to Alfred Hitchcock. I feel fortunate to have benefited from her guidance.<BR>
<P><B>What are you working on now?</b><BR>
<P>I’m currently working with several other poets on collaborative projects. Joyce Brinkman, a well-regarded Indiana poet and former poet laureate of the state, sparked my interest in the <i>kasen renga</i>, a linked verse form originating in Japan. Thus far, we’ve produced several <i>rengas</i> in collaboration with poets from Japan, Germany and Mexico, who have translated our poems into their native languages. We’re hoping a book will emerge from our efforts.<BR>
<P>I’ve also collaborated recently with other state poets laureate on a <i>renga</i> project, led by Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg of Kansas. During a recent gathering of current and former state poets laureate in New Hampshire, Caryn launched this effort.<BR>
<P>Simultaneously, I’m working on poems that center on the intricate role nature plays in my life. As a resident of eastern Virginia, the year 2011 stunned us with the residual effects of an earthquake, a tornado, and a hurricane—natural disasters that have sparked poems exploring the environmental consequences.<BR>
<p><b>Dr. Carolyn Kreiter-Foronda</b> served as Poet Laureate of Virginia from 2006-2008. She has published five books of poetry, co-edited two poetry anthologies and has two other manuscripts near completion. Her poems have been nominated for six Pushcart Prizes and appear in numerous magazines, including <i>Nimrod, Prairie Schooner, Mid-American Review, Best of Literary Journals, Poet Lore,</i> and <i>An Endless Skyway</i>, an anthology of poems by U.S. State Poets Laureate. Her awards include five grants from the Virginia Commission for the Arts; a Spree First Place award; multiple awards in Pen Women competitions; a Special Merit Poem in <i>Comstock Review’s</i> Muriel Craft Bailey Memorial contest; a <i>Passages North</i> contest award; an Edgar Allan Poe first-place award; and a Resolution of Appreciation from the State Board of Education for her contributions as Poet Laureate of Virginia. In 2010-2011 she served as a Literary Arts Specialist with Claudia Emerson on a Metrorail Public Art Project, which will integrate literary works, including her own, into art installations at metro stations in Virginia. She recently received the Poetry Society of Virginia’s Ellen Anderson Reader Award for 2012.
Tom Lombardohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00386546238678041697noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4668106303586186640.post-31130413946271280352013-08-15T22:02:00.000-04:002013-08-15T22:02:28.023-04:00Motherby Carolyn Kreiter-Foronda
<br>
I fear night<br>
        
     
until I find<br>
        
        
        
moon. <br>
After dark, she scoops me<br>
     
        
up into her<br>
        
        
        
brightness<br>
where I wander<br>
        
     
among spirits<br>
        
        
        
let loose<br>
from the heavens: my mother, <br>
        
     
thirty years<br>
        
        
        
dead, <br>
visits me often. <br>
        
     
Sometimes I see her<br>
        
        
        
running free<br>
through luminous fields. <br>
        
     
Once from a cloud’s<br>
        
        
        
savannah<br>
she tamed a thunderbolt’s<br>
        
     
whiplike snap<br>
        
        
        
at my feet. <br>
Tonight moon dips<br>
        
     
into <i>Sagrada Familia</i>, <br>
        
        
        
Notre Dame, <br>
into all of the world’s churches. <br>
        
     
Mother alights in the sanctum<br>
        
        
        
of my heart. <br>
Here, she teaches me<br>
        
     
about stone’s durability, <br>
        
        
        
what it means<br>
to outlast illness, <br>
        
     
how to take<br>
        
        
        
the years<br>
I’ve been given and to fling<br>
        
     
them into air<br>
        
        
        
so they multiply, <br>
so they ring through darkness. <br>
        
     
I gather up<br>
        
        
        
her words, <br>
then retreat to my study. <br>
        
     
In the picture of us<br>
        
        
        
on the wall, <br>
I am a child, kneeling<br>
        
     
at her feet, <br>
        
        
        
listening. <br>
<BR>
Reprinted by permission of the poet from <A HREF="http://www.poetryofrecovery.com" ><i>After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events</I>
</A><BR><BR>
<P><b>Carolyn Kreiter-Foronda</b> served as Poet Laureate of the Commonwealth of Virginia from 2006-2008. She holds a B.A. from Mary Washington College, now the University of Mary Washington, and a M.Ed., M.A. and a Ph.D. from George Mason University, where she received the institution’s first doctorate. In 2007 both universities gave her the Alumna of the Year Award. She has published six books of poetry and co-edited two poetry anthologies. Her poems have been nominated for six Pushcart Prizes and appear throughout the United States and abroad in magazines, such as <i>Nimrod, Prairie Schooner, Mid-American Review, Hispanic Culture Review, El Quetzal, Best of Literary Journals, Poet Lore,</i> and <i>An Endless Skyway</i>, an anthology of poems by U.S. State Poets Laureate. Her numerous awards include five grants from the Virginia Commission for the Arts; a <i>Spree</i> First Place award; multiple awards in Pen Women competitions; a Special Merit Poem in <i>Comstock Review’s</i> Muriel Craft Bailey Memorial contest; a <i>Passages North</i> contest award; an Edgar Allan Poe first-place award; a Virginia Cultural Laureate Award; and a Resolution of Appreciation from the State Board of Education for her contributions as Poet Laureate of Virginia. She currently serves as a Literary Arts Specialist on a Metrorail Public Art Project, which will integrate poems, including her own, into art installations at metro stations in Northern Virginia. Carolyn is an accomplished visual artist, whose works have been widely displayed. As an adjunct faculty member, she teaches art-inspired poetry workshops for the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.<BR><BR>
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<BR>
<b>Interview with Carolyn Kreiter-Foronda</b><BR>
<P><B>How did you come to write the poem “Mother”?</B><BR>
<P>I had long sought to write a tribute to my mother for the wisdom she imparted during her brief lifetime. I also wanted to acknowledge the role she played in saving my life when I was close to death from an illness as a teen. Vigilant, she had remained by my side until I healed. The poem emerged thirty years after she died while I was writing <i>Death Comes Riding</i>, a book which explores my spiritual growth. “Mother” appears in the book’s initial section, entitled “Lifelines,” as an expression of gratitude to a family member who nourished my love of knowledge and encouraged me at an early age to develop my poetic talents. Just as I had risen out of my body in a near-death experience while seriously ill, my mother returned to me often after she died, usually in dreams so real I couldn’t ignore her guidance and advice. One night remains vivid in memory. I awoke suddenly from a deep sleep, and there she stood at the foot of the bed, not as a ghostly presence, but as a protector, a guardian angel, a teacher who would continue to bring answers to questions my overactive mind explored in dreams. Although my mother passed away at the relatively young age of 59, her years on earth were filled with brilliant observations on how to live one’s life productively and wisely. As I see it, I willed her back, so I could return to childhood and kneel “at her feet, listening”—as the poem’s closing lines state.<BR>
<P><B>How did writing this poem affect your recovery?</b>
<P>Poetry for me is therapy. I find solace in writing and exploring what haunts or taunts me. Solutions to problems appear unexpectedly while I’m in the zone. As one who loses herself completely in the creative process, I often stumble upon insights I’d never discover if I relied only on analytical thinking.<BR>
<P>The lesson the poem taught me is to dig deeper and seek an inner strength. That’s how I outlasted illness, and that’s how I’ve chosen to live my life since. My mother taught me “about stone’s durability . . . / how to take/ the years/ I’ve been given and to fling/ them into air/ so they multiply,/ so they ring through darkness.”<BR>
<P><B>Can you tell us something about your process of writing that helped this poem come to life?</B><BR>
<P>Although “Mother” emerged relatively quickly, I relied on revision to enhance the musicality and to arrange the poem on the page to suggest the wandering of “spirits/ let loose/ from the heavens.” I initially titled the poem, “Wisdom,” then “Mother Returns from the Dead,” and finally settled on the more succinct and apt title of “Mother.” I also altered the imagery significantly. In earlier drafts, I alluded to Van Gogh’s colors, even to an African savanna before settling on a depiction of the world’s churches, where my mother’s everlasting spirit “alights in the sanctum of my heart.” I strove for unification by referring to the ethereal “moon,” a female image tied intricately to both “brightness” and “light,” which, in turn, relate to the knowledge I acquired from my mother. Finally, I selected the symbolic “stone” to suggest durability. As is my common practice, I revise with the intent of chiseling a poem to perfection.<BR>
<P><B>Who are your favorite poets or poets new to you whom you'd recommend to others?</b><BR>
<P>First, let me mention Julie Kane, a poet, whose work I’ve recently read and admire. Julie is Louisiana’s current poet laureate. Her book, <i>Rhythm & Booze</i>, was selected by Maxine Kumin as a 2003 winner in the National Poetry Series. Her poems are light-hearted, yet offer a glimpse into the undercurrents of life in various Louisiana cities. What I admire most is her grasp of formal poetry and her ability to bring it alive in some of the most illuminating villanelles I’ve read in contemporary poetry.<BR>
<P>A younger poet, whose work deserves a close look is Dean Rader, author of <i>Works & Days</i>, recipient of the 2010 T.S. Eliot Prize. As one who welcomes experimentation in our genre, I delighted in reading a book, which opened my eyes to new possibilities in form and structure. I applaud Rader’s work for its innovation, its craftmanship, and vision.<BR>
<P>One of my all-time favorite poets is Ai, a former professor of mine, whose masterful dramatic monologues led me to explore the form. I could never tire of reading her books, which allow the reader to enter the lives of an array of figures, ranging from Elvis Presley to Alfred Hitchcock. I feel fortunate to have benefited from her guidance.<BR>
<P><B>What are you working on now?</b><BR>
<P>I’m currently working with several other poets on collaborative projects. Joyce Brinkman, a well-regarded Indiana poet and former poet laureate of the state, sparked my interest in the <i>kasen renga</i>, a linked verse form originating in Japan. Thus far, we’ve produced several <i>rengas</i> in collaboration with poets from Japan, Germany and Mexico, who have translated our poems into their native languages. We’re hoping a book will emerge from our efforts.<BR>
<P>I’ve also collaborated recently with other state poets laureate on a <i>renga</i> project, led by Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg of Kansas. During a recent gathering of current and former state poets laureate in New Hampshire, Caryn launched this effort.<BR>
<P>Simultaneously, I’m working on poems that center on the intricate role nature plays in my life. As a resident of eastern Virginia, the year 2011 stunned us with the residual effects of an earthquake, a tornado, and a hurricane—natural disasters that have sparked poems exploring the environmental consequences.<BR>
<P>I work best when I’m engaged in several projects simultaneously. Thankfully, I’m able to move effortlessly from one project to the other and find the change of focus refreshing. <BR>
Tom Lombardohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00386546238678041697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4668106303586186640.post-59073326431241626582013-06-28T14:26:00.000-04:002013-06-28T14:26:23.030-04:00A Poem for My Daughter by Anthony Abbott<p><i>Our God our help in ages past<br>
Our hope for years to come.<br>
Our shelter from the stormy blast<br>
And our eternal home.</i><br>
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
Isaac Watts<BR>
<p>1.<br>
<br>How young we were then, my darling, how little <br>
we knew, you and I, when you slipped into<br>
that final sleep so quietly—no time <br>
for words, no words we knew to say. <br>
<p>At the service we sang Isaac Watts. <br>
I mouthed the rhymes dry eyed as always. <br>
I wore a suit and stood up straight. You<br>
followed me everywhere, down the yellow<br>
brick road, Dorothy to my Tin Woodsman. <br>
I wanted a heart. I feared tears would turn<br>
me to rust. You slept in the field of poppies<br>
your breath in my ear. You were the lamb<br>
in the basket grown leggy and wild. <br>
You followed me to school, I saw you<br>
in the eyes of the girls. I fell, down, down<br>
the hill. You tumbled after, laughing. <br>
<p>2.<br>
<br>
Suddenly you’re forty-five. Oh my dear, <br>
how you would love it here now. Women<br>
at forty-five just coming into the sweet<br>
beauty of their primes. Not like the days<br>
when they were old at thirty. God, you would<br>
dazzle them now, the way you’d walk into<br>
a room all smiles and wisdom like the grey<br>
heron standing in the pond, wings furled, <br>
ready to take off. Beauty is always<br>
almost gone, says Hopkins.. Maybe so. <br>
You left with yours intact and brought it back<br>
transformed. I didn’t know that until you<br>
came to me with everything God taught you<br>
all those years—a thousand ages like<br>
an evening gone—and here you are to teach<br>
me what I need to know. <br>
<p>3. <br>
<br>
Muse, angel, companion of these later <br>
years, now I know that, bidden or unbidden, <br>
you were with me all along, even when <br>
I thought you had surely gone, like sun<br>
at four o’clock on winter afternoons. <br>
I know your guises now—the eye<br>
of the stranger in the street, asking why, <br>
the woman with the green shawl looking<br>
back over her shoulder. And yes, I see <br>
you, too, in the blue waters of the lake<br>
and the small purple flowers that grow wild<br>
on the bank in the rocks among the day lilies. <br>
<br>
I stop here now and wait for your touch. <br>
<P><b>How did you come to write “A Poem for My Daughter”?</b><BR>
<P>My daughter died when she was just short of her fourth birthday in 1967. I began writing poems for her in the 1970s. I wrote “The Girl in the Yellow Raincoat” to celebrate her college years. In a previous posting on this blog (see Tuesday, November 6, 2012), “The Man Who Speaks to His Daughter on Her 40th Birthday” was part of a series of poems I have written—in 5 year intervals—celebrating her life as it might have been. This one above, “A Poem for My Daughter,” marks her 45th birthday in 2008, and I have already written one to celebrate her 50th this year, and it is out for publication right now.<BR>
<BR>
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dbHi8jvnkNI/Uc3U2Hs7TsI/AAAAAAAAAI4/zp4YFxFAmJk/s297/Tony+Aabbott.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dbHi8jvnkNI/Uc3U2Hs7TsI/AAAAAAAAAI4/zp4YFxFAmJk/s297/Tony+Aabbott.jpg" /></a><BR>
Anthony Abbott <BR><BR><BR>
<P><B>How did writing this poem affect your recovery?</b><BR>
<P>This poem and the others I have written in her memory have kept her alive in my imagination, which is critically important to me. Recovery is in part the result of turning something painful into something that heals. The writing of these poems has been a central part of the healing process.<BR>
<P><b>Can you tell us something about your process of writing that helped this poem come to life?</b><BR>
<P>I think I have already alluded to the process of consciously celebrating her life in poetry every five years. So I being to think quite consciously of what she might have been like at 40, 45, or 50. That conscious imagining is central to the whole process of creating the poems, but the poems also must come in and of themselves. I can’t know everything in advance or there is no surprise. No surprise no emotions. So the whole last scene in the poem is pure imagination, pure surprise, pure joy of having her appear.<BR>
<P><b>Who are your favorite poets or poets new to you whom you’d recommend to others?</b><BR>
<P>Poets I have worked with in recent years who have meant a great deal to me include Jane Kenyon (absolutely essential), James Wright, Maxine Kumin, Sharon Olds, Mary Oliver, William Carlos Williams, and Walt Whitman.<BR>
<P><b>What are you working on now?</b>
I published two books in 2011—<i>If Words Could Save Us</i>, a book of poems with accompanying CD, and an anthology I edited, <i>What Writers Do</i>, which celebrates the writers who have been part of the Lenoir Rhyne University Visiting Writers Series. I am very busy teaching and doing readings from these two books this year.<BR><BR><BR>
<p><b>Anthony S. Abbott</b> is Professor Emeritus of English at Davidson College. He is the author of two novels, including the Novellow Award winning Leaving Maggie Hope. He has written six volumes of poetry, the most recent of which is <i>If Words Could Save Us</i> (Lorimer Press, 2011). He is the 2012 winner of the Rose Post Creative Nonfiction Award of the North Carolina Writers Network.
Tom Lombardohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00386546238678041697noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4668106303586186640.post-4441017041938503642013-05-28T13:08:00.003-04:002013-05-28T18:10:32.557-04:00Poet Barbara G.S. HagertyReading May 30 At Piccolo Spoleto
On Thursday, May 30, poet Barbara G. S. Hagerty will be reading at the Piccolo Spoleto Sundown Poetry Series at 6:30 PM in the Dock Street Theatre Courtyard, located at 135 Church St., Charleston, SC. It’s free and open to the public. A reception and book signing for Barbara will follow at the Martin Gallery, 18 Broad St. <BR>
<P>Bassist Anthony del Porto, of the bluegrass band Southern Flavor, will accompany her reading.<BR>
<P>Barbara’s reading is but one of 10 that will go on during the festival as part of the Piccolo Spoleto Sundown Poetry series. All readings at 6:30 PM in the Dock Street Theater address above. Find out more about the festival readings, now through June 7, at <A HREF="http://www.piccolospoleto.com" >Piccolo Spoleto</A>. Poccolo Spoleto.<BR>
<P>Barbara’s poem “Visiting Virginia P.” appeared in <A HREF="http://www.poetryofrecovery.com">After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events</A>, an anthology of 152 poems by 115 poets from 15 nations. The poem is reprinted below, followed by an interview with Barbara.<BR>
<P><b>Visiting Virginia P.</b><BR>
<P>By Barbara G.S. Hagerty <BR><BR>
<P>We grow hollyhocks, paint glistening tomatoes, <BR>
watch how light fractures a glass of water, <BR>
look up words in the middle of the night. <BR>
Our bones and narrows rearranged, <BR>
we gave birth seven times between us. <BR>
Once we followed Berryman, <BR>
we were blond disciples<BR>
of his cauliflower syntax, his gothic architecture<BR>
and small houses, the ruined porch, <BR>
the bridge, the truss, the ice, <BR>
the freefall into madness. <BR>
Nothing could save us<BR>
from the gravitational pull of alcohol<BR>
until we washed up at AA<BR>
among the molded plastic orange chairs, <BR>
meetings, coffee, smoke—those were the days<BR>
when chain smoking was encouraged<BR>
as an antidote to worse things—<BR>
among the old timers who spoke in slogans<BR>
<i>One Day at a Time, First Things First, Easy Does It.</i> <BR>
I thought I’d landed on a planet full of ashtrays<BR>
run by an editorial committee of the <i>Reader’s Digest</i>. <BR>
Today you recalled I once said <i>Pray<BR>
for the unknown help that’s already on its way</i>. <BR>
Now I meet your son, for the first time, he’s 18, grown well<BR>
and sturdy, like someone whose boughs we could climb into. <BR>
<BR>
<p><b>Interview With Barbara G.S. Hagerty</b><BR>
<p><b>How did you come to write “Visiting Virginia P.”?</b><BR>
<P>Chronological time is somewhat collapsed in “Visiting Virginia P.” Although I'd attended various 12-step meetings with Virginia in the late 70's and early 80's, and kept in touch with her after I had moved away, I did not meet her son until he was 18. In those intervening years, Virginia and I had, via both effort <i>and</i> grace, grown generally happier, healthier, and wiser--and had both become mothers. When I met her son, he struck me as whole and wholesome, traits attributable at least in part to healthy mothering. Tall, strong, towering over both of us, he brought to mind the qualities of a tree: sturdy, substantial, grounded in the earth, rooted in the real world. So the triggering event and the original experience it alludes to are separated in time by more than 25 years. Which is one of the bewitching things about poetry: all memory and all experience are available to the poet, always and in abundance.<BR>
<BR>
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ZqPbHISJ9uo/UaTisezGoMI/AAAAAAAAAIo/vpKzYJfeihU/s1600/Barbara+G.S.+Hagerty.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ZqPbHISJ9uo/UaTisezGoMI/AAAAAAAAAIo/vpKzYJfeihU/s320/Barbara+G.S.+Hagerty.jpg" /></a>
<BR>
<i>Barbara G.S. Hagerty</I><BR>
<P><b>How did writing this poem affect your recovery?</b><BR>
<P>It didn't directly, as it was written so many years after the process of recovery began. But I would like to answer the question more broadly, to say that the act of writing is, for me, always salubrious in some way, always revelatory. I think of the pen as an epistemological tool, akin to an archeologist's probe or chisel. Writing helps excavate the layers and uncover the hidden strata, to see ways--often extraordinarily unexpected-- in which absolutely everything is interconnected. And, you know how the sages say you can't step in the same river twice? Similarly, no two days of excavating are ever alike--the finds are always different, even when you are probing similar territory.<BR>
<P><b>Can you tell us something about your process of writing that helped this poem come to life?</b><BR>
<P>My poetry-making mind is omnivorous; that's the case, I think, with most poets. A phrase, a sound, a mood, an image, a sensory impression, a conundrum, a curiosity--almost anything can get me started. In this instance, the experience of meeting the young man elicited a flood of associations and memories. That John Berryman would appear in the poem just seemed organic and natural. Again, I marvel that imagery like "planet full of ashtrays," which must have been incubating somewhere in my mind for a long time, just seemed to emerge from the shadows when the poem demanded to be written. <BR>
<P><b>Who are your favorite poets or poets new to you whom you'd recommend to others?</b><BR>
<P>Rhett Iseman Trull (<i>The Real Warnings</i>); Allen Peterson (<I>All the Lavish in Common</i>); Sandra Beasley (<i>I Was the Jukebox</i>); and Lisa Fay Coultey (<i>In the Carnival of Breathing</i>) are four poets I admire whose work is fairly new to me. I also admire the poetry of Gilbert Allen, Paul Guest, Lucia Perillo, D. Nurkse, Spencer Reece, Dan Albergotti, Susan Meyers, and Carol Ann Davis, among many others. The work of Larry Levis is important to me, and I recently read the remarkable <i>Letters to a Stranger</i> by Thomas James (who died in 1974 at the age of 27). Not to mention Li-Young Lee, Pablo Neruda, Yehuda Amichai, and Czeslaw Milosz....so many favorites! Recent prose works on poetry that I have read include <i>Close Calls with Nonsense</i> (Stephen Burt) and <i>Real Sofistikashun: Essays on Poetry and Craft</i> (Tony Hoagland). Finally, the one prose work I would take with me to that proverbial desert island is <i>A Joseph Campbell Companion</i> (edited by poet Diane Osbon). Essential!<br>
<p><b>What are you working on now?</b><BR>
<p>I have just completed a new manuscript entitled <i>Twinzilla</i>; as the title suggests, it explores the duality of the self. I am tuning this manuscript up at the moment, as well as working on other individual poems in various stages of dishabille.<BR>
<p><b>Barbara G.S. Hagerty</b> is author of <i>The Guest House</i> and <i>Motherfish</i> (both from Finishing Line Press, in 2009 and 2012, respectively). She was awarded the Fellowship in Poetry from the South Carolina Arts Commission in 2010. She was also awarded a fellowship at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Her work, both poetry and prose, has appeared widely. She lives in her native Charleston, SC, where she co-coordinates The Piccolo Spoleto Sundown Poetry Series (with Susan Meyers) and serves on the board of The Poetry Society of South Carolina. She has also worked as a magazine writer, journalist, photographer, curator, and teacher of poetry and creative non-fiction. She holds an MA in Creative Writing from The Johns Hopkins University's Writing Seminars.<BR>
Tom Lombardohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00386546238678041697noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4668106303586186640.post-54584732016357254752013-05-25T10:54:00.000-04:002013-05-25T11:12:22.886-04:00"Last Surviving Hymn to Hathor" by Nehassaiu deGannes
<p>Who leads us, moon-drunk, into clover <br>
and sweeps the starch rectangle of the blank half<br>
of the bed? You love him? You love him not? <br>
Lolling on the dark howl’s tambourine. <br>
<i>Honey, can’t find true love ‘cuz yuh too afraid to die</i>. <br>
The train is in the cattle yard again, <br>
clattering up and down the lonely tracks. <br>
<p>Gourd of lullabies and rich dark earth, <br>
what makes us cough, plump the pillow, rise<br>
to take a piss, catch the distance lowing in our ears—<br>
Is that Ella all <i>glissando</I>? <br>
What floods our hearts with thunder? <br>
The train is in the cattle yard again, clattering<br>
up and down the lonely tracks. <br>
<p>Look how her tail’s a metronome. Her eyes are bells<br>
of iron. Those daddy-long-leg lashes flint and there are sparks<br>
of hammered iron flying ‘bout the room. She’s crying<br>
<i>Why, when a man gets too close with a bunch of cow-slip<br>
orchids growing from his fist, you cock your head, go very still—<br>
wonder what he plans on doing with his other fist?</i> <br>
You’re hiding in the cattle yard again. <br>
<p>Pull a ream of paper from the white shelf of sleep<br>
“blankness + me = possibility unchained;” <br>
and drown the tinkling cowbells in the toilet’s oceanic hiss. <br>
But our conductor drop kicks her orchestra again. <br>
She’s lounging on your moon-white pillow. <br>
<i>Fool, love won’t find you. Can’t find you.</i> <br>
Her bassoon now quaking all the orchids in the room. <br>
<P>Why not lay your head down on her chamois lap? <br>
She’s scattering an entire confluence for you<br>
of what is done and gone and lost for good<br>
<i>Life’s a dung-hill and you plant your seeds in that</i>i<br>
of what’s to come is yours and can be yours to trust<br>
<i>Not in punishment but in sanctified pleasure. Cross over. <br>
Cross over.</i> The train is in the cattle yard again. <br>
<BR><BR><BR>
<b>Interview With Nehassaiu deGannes</b>
<br>
<p><b>How did you come to write The Last Surviving Hymn to Hathor?</b>
<p>“Last Surviving Hymn To Hathor” began as a failed sonnet. I became enthralled with the notion of writing little songs devoted to human failure, and while the sonnet form did not prove conducive to this particular meditation on failed love or the failure to love, the blues motif did. In the same way that traditional blues weave together the sacred and profane, this poem wanted to inhabit both the mythic and mundane. Here an earthy mythic voice whispers in the ear of a woman who tells herself she has awakened simply because she needs to take a piss. Nothing else. She’s ‘content’ and in control inside her protective shell of distrust and ambivalence, a shell that is a hard-earned armor, the result of childhood and adult sexual traumas. Yet something is gnawing at her. Tickling at her. Crooning in her ear. The truth that to truly survive we must relearn how to be vulnerable, to cross the tracks from victim to wholeness with all the risks that that entails, to trust, to break, to sing ourselves into wholeness---all of this was in the poem’s first seed, it’s first impulse, but it took several revisions to find it’s form and its meditation. <br>
<BR><BR>
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-rusi9dHwpic/UaDO9IaUkiI/AAAAAAAAAIY/EwLuLMtw814/s1600/Nehassaiu+deGannes.2.0.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-rusi9dHwpic/UaDO9IaUkiI/AAAAAAAAAIY/EwLuLMtw814/s320/Nehassaiu+deGannes.2.0.jpg" /></a>
<BR><BR>
<p><b>How did writing this poem affect your recovery?</b>
<p>I remember reading, while I was still an undergraduate, Alice Walkers’ IN SEARCH OF OUR MOTHERS’ GARDENS, in which she speaks of writing the books she needs to read. My poem is indeed a poem I need to read. I am both the distrusting ambivalent woman and the fairy-godmother-goddess-cow (as in Hathor/ as in the cow that jumped over the moon). I am the one in need of the message and the one in which the message resides. Writing this poem helped me give voice to a slowly-dawning realization that to stay on this side of the hard-bitten tracks wasn’t going to be enough.<br>
<P><b>Can you tell us something about your process of writing that helped this poem come to life?</b>
<P>I rewrite and rewrite and rewrite, often allowing weeks and months between revisions. I listen and listen and listen, for as one of my first teachers, Sonia Sanchez, told me, “Listen to the poem. Always listen to the poem. It will tell you what it needs.” With this poem, I may also have employed a strategy that Rita Dove shared at a Cave Canem summer retreat: “Tear the poem in half length-wise. That will often reveal the dross.”<br>
<P><b>Who are your favorite poets or poets new to you whom you’d recommend to others?</b>
<P>Right now, four of my favorite poets are Tracy K. Smith, Aracelis Girmay, Natasha Tretheway and Ross Gay. Some of my perennial favorites include Gerard Manley Hopkins, Kamau Brathwaite, Aimé Cesaire, and Lorna Goodison.<BR>
<P><b>What are you working on now?</b><BR>
<P>I am an actress and writer and am currently making my debut at the Stratford International Shakespeare Festival in Canada, playing "Lady Capulet" in Romeo & Juliet, directed by Tim Carroll of the UK's Old Globe and Factory Theatres, and "Anne of Austria, Queen of France" in The Three Musketeers, directed by Miles Potter. I will also be appearing in The Merchant of Venice, directed by Festival Artistic Director, Antoni Cimolino. It will be a robust eight months.<BR>
<P>Of the many projects I've collaborated on this past year, last Spring I played Diana Sands, opposite Broadway veteran actor and choreographer Hope Clarke, in a two-person play about Ms Sands' life and art. Diana was a brilliant African American actress, activist and pioneer, who passed away in 1973 at the age of 39, thus for many of us her work is little known or forgotten. She originated leading roles in Broadway productions of Hansberry's and Baldwin's plays, played Shaw’s “St. Joan” at Lincoln Center and was the first in a color-blind lead on Broadway, starring in THE OWL AND THE PUSSYCAT opposite Alan Alda, as well as many many other stage and film credits. <BR>
<P>Whether acting or writing, my work lays claim to several cross-cultural literary and theatrical legacies: British, American, Caribbean and Canadian, classical and contemporary. I constantly claim the right to play roles both written for and those not written expressly for black women, and fortunately I have had several opportunities to do just that. Thus, learning about Ms Sands and embodying her legacy was a profound experience.<BR>
<b>Nehassaiu deGannes</b> is a theatre artist & poet. Winner of the 2011 Center For Book Arts Letterpress Chapbook Award, the 2010 Inaugural Cave Canem Fellowship to the Vermont Studio Center, and several grants and awards to develop her one-woman show, <i>Door of No Return</i>, excerpts of which are featured in The Museum on Site’s book <i>A Thousand Ships: A Ritual of Rembrance</i>. Her poetry has appeared in <i>Callaloo, Poem Memoir Story, American Poetry Review, Caribbean Writer, Painted Bride Quarterly, Tuesday: An Art Project, TORCH, Encyclopedia Project, After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery Anthology, The ARAVA Review</i> and the <i>Cave Canem Anthology XII</i>. Recent acting credits include: "Kate" in Good People (Hampton Theatre); “Cordelia” in King Lear with Frankie Faison and Andre Braugher (Luna Stage); “Carmen” to Amy Irving’s “Madame Irma” (Red Bull Theatre); “The Nurse,” in Tony Walton’s production of EQUUS opposite Alec Baldwin (Guild Hall); the world premiere of The Tallest Building In The World (Luna Stage); “Betty,” <i>A Song For My Father</i> by David Budbill (Oldcastle Theatre), poet & mover in the national tour of <i>Rigidigidim De Bamba De: Ruptured Calypso</i> with Cynthia Oliver’s COCo Dance Theatre; and “Roberta Charles,” <i>Room For Cream</i> (Theatre of The Two-Headed Calf & LaMAMA ETC). Nehassaiu holds an MFA from Brown University and is a graduate of Trinity Rep Conservatory. She has taught poetry at The Rhode Island School of Design and Brown University, and was a part-time Assistant Professor of Theatre at Rhode Island College (2007-12). Visit her web site at <A HREF="http://www.nehassaiu.com" >Nehassaiu's web site</A>.
Tom Lombardohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00386546238678041697noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4668106303586186640.post-17899538158693278012013-05-08T09:45:00.000-04:002013-05-08T17:50:34.490-04:00After Shocks Poet John McAllisterTells Why He Wrote The Station Sergeant His New Detective Novel Set in Ireland
<P>Irish poet and novelist John McAllister has just released his 2nd novel, <i>The Station Sergeant</i> (Portnoy Publishing, Dublin). His essay on why he wrote this murder mystery follows a brief synopsis of the book. <BR><BR>
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/--itQAZquMjE/UYpTUM8Ge3I/AAAAAAAAAHs/ARipZOdURkg/s1600/JOHN+McALLISTER.Cover+The+Station+Sergeant.JPG" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/--itQAZquMjE/UYpTUM8Ge3I/AAAAAAAAAHs/ARipZOdURkg/s320/JOHN+McALLISTER.Cover+The+Station+Sergeant.JPG" /></a>
<P><I>The Station Sergeant</I>, set in the late 1950s and early 1960s in turbulent Ballymena, Northern Ireland, concerns the discovery of the body of a local farmer. Station Sergeant John Barlow’s investigation hits up against local hoodlums who steal cattle to order, an escaped WWII German soldier, and a new boss who hates Barlow.<BR>
<P> Meanwhile, Barlow’s violent schizophrenic wife, his teenage daughter’s waywardness, and his affair with another woman distract him, but will tantalize readers. <i>The Station Sergeant</i> evokes the turbulence of the post-WWII period in Ireland and represents the best elements of classic crime writing. Available now at Amazon.com at <A HREF=" http://www.amazon.com/Station-Sergeant-John-McAllister/dp/1909255009/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1368016640&sr=1-1&keywords=the+station+sergeant
" ><i>The Station Sergreant</i></A>.
<BR><BR>
<P><b>WHY I WROTE <i>THE STATION SERGEANT</I></b><BR>
<P><b>By John McAllister</b><BR>
<P>Way back at the start of the “Troubles”, the police in Belfast were being overwhelmed by the scale of the rioting. To help out, officers were shipped in from the country areas. Of course the city police made fun of their “country cousins”, none more so than of a slow moving, slow talking, slow thinking constable from way out in the bogs.<BR>
<P>This “country cousin” said nothing: didn’t retaliate, didn’t show annoyance, but when the time came for him to go back to his country station he stopped at the door and looked back. <BR>
<P>He said, ‘I mightn’t know much about police procedurals or all this modern policing stuff they teach you boys now. And I might spend more time herding cows off the road than chasing robbers, but I would know if someone had set up a poteen still in the house next to the police station.’<BR>
<P>It worked the other way too. A young constable from a police patrol stopped to talk to a farmer. A cockerel jumped onto the wall beside them.<BR>
‘That’s a fighting cock,’ said the young constable.<BR>
‘It is not,’ said the farmer.<BR>
‘I tell you it is.’<BR>
‘And what would you, a city man, know about fighting cocks?’<BR>
My father kept them,’ said the young constable and walked on with the patrol.<BR><BR>
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-p5Wr3qmq2Bc/UYpTpe0wXHI/AAAAAAAAAH0/ZSukCcEv91Q/s1600/JOHN+McALLISTER.JPG" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-p5Wr3qmq2Bc/UYpTpe0wXHI/AAAAAAAAAH0/ZSukCcEv91Q/s320/JOHN+McALLISTER.JPG" /></a>
<BR>
                    John McAllister
<BR><BR>
<P>The John Barlow in my book is such a man. He was modelled on a real-life policeman of the same name. In my youth story after story about the “doings” of Barlow were whispered around my home town of Ballymena. He was sly, he was cute, he was sleekit. He had a reputation for being stupid and, according to rumour, he blackmailed the District Inspector to get staying on in Ballymena when the man wanted him posted.<BR>
<P>Barlow joined the RIC and stayed on after partition when it became the RUC. He apparently served in Ballymena for forty-five years. Mention him to one of my brothers-in-law and his blood pressure shoots up. Yet an old friend, Harry McLarnon, says, ‘John Barlow, now there was a great man'. <BR>
<P>I was at Trinity College Dublin reading for my masters in Creative Writing. I always wrote on the train going to and coming from Dublin, but one night I was really tired and didn’t feel up to it. Rather than surrender entirely to my tiredness I promised myself “ten minutes and then I’ll stop”. I put the pad in front of me with absolutely no idea what I wanted to write about. Something about one of the “Barlow” stories of my youth popped into my head and I wrote it down. Ten minutes and a page of recollections later I had the basis for five stories. Five stories populated by real people from my youth.<BR>
<P>Edward Adair “gentleman and drunk by profession” really did exist in the form of two people. Ballymena always seemed to have a tramp who was well known and popular with the townspeople. One of them, like Edward, really did live under a dry arch near Curles Bridge. When he went into hospital the hospital management had to beg people to stop clogging up the phone lines wanting to hear how he was doing and did he need anything. The local papers undertook to publish a weekly update on the tramp’s progress.<BR>
<P>The second person that Edward is based on was a pleasant, very well spoken man who lived in digs near my home. He was a cousin of the then prime minister of Northern Ireland and related to the lords O’Neill. When he died suddenly at an early age he was found to have done complex mathematical calculations on the margins of newspapers. We’d all thought him a bit “soft”. In those days none of us had ever heard the expression “idiot savant”.<BR>
<P>Ballymena also had a notorious family: utterly polite when sober, demons when drunk and occasionally more sinned against than sinning. Their antics as I grew up gave me the idea for a local family of – shall we say – chancers.<BR>
<P>My mother’s mother was a Dunlop. The Dunlops were and are big farmers, leading lights in the local Orange Lodge, town mayors and extremely nice people. Out of sheer devilment I used their name and the ner-do-well Geordie Dunlop and his family were born.<BR>
<P>The setting for the stories was easy. I just took Ballymena as I remember it in the fifties and sixties, relocated the real Curles Bridge to the Penny Bridge area and Adair Castle to the site of the new municipal cemetery. River Road really exists under another name but I put two bends in the adjoining river that you will never find on an ordinance map.<BR>
<P>The five “Barlow” stories were published in my short story collection, <i>The Fly Pool</i>. Even now, ten years on, people still contact me to talk about the collection and always, always, always they want to talk about Barlow and the things he got up to.<BR>
One friend, who shapes a cross with his fingers to ward off evil if I even mention the RUC, kept nagging at me for another Barlow story. Way back I had started a sixth story but abandoned it for various reasons. I went back to that story and somehow a novel grew out of it. A very minor theme in the original version suddenly gripped me and <i>The Station Sergeant</i> as it now stands was born.
<P>I kept John Barlow’s real name in my stories and book, to celebrate and keep alive the memory of a man who strode Ballymena like a goliath in his day. In real life, John Barlow was a mere constable but have I accorded him the long delayed accolade of Station Sergeant. <BR>
<BR>
<P><b>John McAllister</b> was an Accountant in Practice and a Tax Consultant for forty-five years. He has now retired to become a fulltime writer. He read for an M. Phil. in Creative Writing at the Oscar Wilde Centre, Trinity College, Dublin. His poems have been published in Europe, Australia and in the USA. His poem “Dog Days” appeared in <A HREF="http://www.poetryofrecovery.com" >After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events</A>. His collection of short stories, <I>The Fly Pool</i>, was published in 2003 by Black Mountain Press. He is currently working on a second collection. His first novel, <i>Line of Flight</i>, is available for Kindle. His latest novel, <i>The Station Sergeant</i>, from Portnoy Publishing is now available on Amazon.com for Kindle, click here to order <A HREF="http://www.amazon.com/The-Station-Sergeant-John-McAllister/dp/1909255009" ><i>The Station Sergeant</i> by John McAllister</A>.
Tom Lombardohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00386546238678041697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4668106303586186640.post-58601533545088609642013-05-05T09:46:00.000-04:002013-05-05T09:46:44.917-04:00"Dog Days" by John McAllisterA Poem on Loss of Innocence<BR><BR>
<b>Dog Days</b><BR>
<P>It was a row, a humdinger. <BR>
In the end the young bride damned<BR>
her marriage to hell, called the dog<BR>
and caught the train home to mother. <BR>
<P>Which row it was she never said. <BR>
But she was always shifting furniture<BR>
so perhaps it was the time he got home from work<BR>
and went from bath to bedroom in the dark. <BR>
<P>He gave her a few days, until it was plain<BR>
her temper would last as long as her red hair, <BR>
before he appeared at the door. <BR>
He said, I’ve come for the dog. <BR>
<BR><BR>
<P><b>Interview with John McAllister</b><BR>
<BR>
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-UDBvcwhqQGQ/UYZiW9Ud4GI/AAAAAAAAAHc/WCBQf3771pc/s1600/JOHN+McALLISTER.JPG" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-UDBvcwhqQGQ/UYZiW9Ud4GI/AAAAAAAAAHc/WCBQf3771pc/s320/JOHN+McALLISTER.JPG" /></a>
<BR>
<P><b>How did you come to write “Dog Days”?</b><BR>
<P>I was never able to write a poem about my mother during her lifetime. Granny Sarah featured in several poems, and her strong character has inhabited some of my stories and books. But mother no. <BR>
<P>Soon after mother’s death I went to a weeklong literary event in Killybegs, County Donegal. On the final morning mother’s stories of her early married life coalesced into “Dog Days” which was more or less written in one sitting.<BR>
<P>I had just shown the poem to friends, Joan and Kate Newmann of Summer Palace Press, when I got a phone call to say that our family pet, a pug, had been knocked down and killed. <BR>
<P><B>How did writing “Dog Days” affect your recovery?</b><BR>
<P>My mother was quietly religious. She never preached but led by example and she felt that life, with all its ups and downs, should be celebrated. She was left a widow in her mid thirties with three children, all of whom had serious health problems. Instead of wrapping us in cotton wool she opened the door and told us to get out there and enjoy ourselves. She herself played bowls (doubles with an international champion) until months before her death. Writing the poem and remembering mother’s laughs as she recounted the different elements in it made me remember how she brought laughter to her own deathbed. When the Marie Curie nurse appeared she knew that the end was close. Instead of being tearful she introduced us as “This is my three children, but I have lovely grandchildren.”<BR>
<P><b>Can you tell us something about your process of writing that helped this poem come to life?</b><BR>
<P>The only way prose or poetry can come to life is if you are involved in life itself. My best writing is where I am tapping a memory from childhood or dealing with something I regard as a miscarriage of justice. Sometimes I take a real-life character and twist. In my published novel <i>Line of Flight</i> the main character is based on a real SAS soldier BUT in the book he is so useless at defending himself that he has to get his baby brother to fight his battles.<BR>
<P><b>Who are your favorite poets or poets new to you whom you'd recommend to others?</b><BR>
<P>Recommending favourite poets is like sending someone into a library to pick a novel. They’d be lucky if they find one they really like. It’s the same with poets, but I’ll mention three whom I know well both personally and through their work. Professor Nigel McLoughlin, University of Gloucestershire, England. In appearance and voice Nigel sounds like an all-American footballer, but he writes with great delicacy. Paul Maddern is originally from Bermuda and has recently taken up a lectureship in creative writing in England. Right from the first day we met at the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s University, Belfast, I knew that Paul had a special gift. Jean O’Brien has won several international awards for her poetry. In spite of the fact that she has a low opinion of men generally, she still regards me as a friend.<BR>
<P><b>What are you working on now?</b><BR>
<P>I have one novel with a publisher which should be issued this year. The Priests’ House is about an Irish Catholic priest turning up at his new parish with his girlfriend. I have just published a novel about Ireland of the 1960s which is currently available NOW for Kindle at Amazon.com from Portnoy Publishing. <A HREF="http://www.amazon.com/The-Station-Sergeant-John-McAllister/dp/1909255009" ><i>The Station Sergeant</i></A> is about an ageing policeman who likes being grumpy and hates being caught out in kindnesses. A mad gunman is killing people seemingly at random. Eventually the sergeant has to make some hard decisions before he can bring the killer to justice. <BR>
<P>Having got that lot out of the way for a time I hope to get back to writing some poetry.<BR>
<BR>
<b>John McAllister</b> was an Accountant in Practice and a Tax Consultant for forty-five years. He has now retired to become a fulltime writer. He read for an M. Phil. in Creative Writing at the Oscar Wilde Centre, Trinity College, Dublin. His poems have been published in Europe, Australia and in the USA. His collection of short stories, <I>The Fly Pool</i>, was published in 2003 by Black Mountain Press. He is currently working on a second collection. His first novel, <i>Line of Flight</i>, is available on Kindle. His latest novel, <i>The Station Sergeant</i>, from Portnoy Publishing is now available on Amazon.com for Kindle, click here to order <A HREF="http://www.amazon.com/The-Station-Sergeant-John-McAllister/dp/1909255009" ><i>The Station Sergeant</i> by John McAllister</A>.
Tom Lombardohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00386546238678041697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4668106303586186640.post-50959218668329593962013-04-24T09:28:00.000-04:002013-04-24T09:28:00.185-04:00After Shocks Poet Nancy Tupper LingSeeks Submissions for Anthology of Toasts<p>Nancy Tupper Ling is seeking submissions of poems that would serve as toasts, graces, and blessings for an anthology that she is co-editing with June Cotner.<BR>
<P>The main purpose of <i>TOASTS: The Essential Collection of More Than 500 Toasts, Graces, and Blessings</i> is to offer inspiration and confidence to those who will be giving toasts. Readers should be able to find toasts that will be appropriate and enjoyable for every occasion, from anniversaries to funerals to all holidays to weddings. The list is very broad. <BR>
<P>The editors’ desire is to find new and creative toasts that will appeal to a broad range of readers, including those in their 20s and 30s. TOASTS will be the primary book consulted when a toast is expected at an event. <BR>
<P>The categories will include the following: Adventures, Anniversaries, Art and Inspiration, Award Presentations, Babies, Best Wishes, Birthdays, Bon Voyage Parties, Business Events, Charity, Children, Christenings, Class Reunions, Creativity and Imagination, Family, Family Reunions, Fortune & Prosperity, Friends, General Blessings, General Celebrations, General Toasts, Good Luck, Graces, Graduations, Gratitude/Joy, Guests, Happiness, Health, Homecoming, Host & Hostess, Housewarming, Love & Romance, Memorial/Funeral Gatherings, New Job, Patriotic Toasts, Pets, Retirement, Roasts, Weddings, Wisdom. Plus holiday toasts, including: New Year’s, Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, April Fools’ Day, Passover, Easter, Mother’s Day, Memorial Day, Father’s Day, Fourth of July, Labor Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Chanukah, Christmas, and Kwanzaa. <BR>
<P>Submissions must be emailed or mailed no later than April 30, 2013, following these guidelines:<BR>
<P>Please email no more than three submissions, each as a separate Word document and all inside one email message. If your submissions are exactly what we’re seeking, you will be invited to submit more.<BR>
<P>All submissions must be double-spaced in Times New Roman 12 with all of your contact info single-spaced on the upper left corner.<BR>
<P>Use TOASTS as your subject line followed by your last name. <BR>
<P>Submissions should be anywhere from 2-6 lines and easy to say out loud. Submit only those selections that can be spoken easily in a group setting. “Graces” and “Blessings” should also be short. All Graces and Blessings should be interfaith. The editors encourage the submission of humorous toasts, too!<BR>
<P>Email submissions to submit@finelinepoets.com.<BR>
<P>If submitting via postal service, you will receive a response if you enclose an SASE along with your submissions. Please mail submissions to Fine Line Poets, Executive Center #247, 1600 Boston Providence Highway, Walpole, MA 02081.<BR>
<P><i>TOASTS: The Essential Collection of More Than 500 Toasts, Graces, and Blessings </i>will be published by Viva Editions. They publish “Books for Vivacious Living!” and they were founded four years ago by Brenda Knight at a pivotal point in time, as the stock market plummeted, the economy softened, and businesses tightened and cut back. Viva focuses on expansion, courage, and joy in life. In short, Viva is about the very best in the human spirit. Please visit them at <A HREF="http://www.vivaeditions.com" >Viva Editions </A>.<BR>
<P>Payment is one copy of the book for each published selection for non-exclusive rights. You retain all rights.<BR><BR>
For full information on submissions, feel free to visit <A HREF="http://www.junecotner.com/jccallsub.html" ><i>Toasts Anthology</i></A>.<BR><BR>
<P><b>Nancy Tupper Ling</b> is the winner of the prestigious Writer's Digest Grand Prize and the Pat Parnell Poetry Award. <br>
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-7Fdmk1sUZaM/UXVSFfw5mYI/AAAAAAAAAG8/98yBa2Nle48/s1600/Nancy+Ling.head+shot.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-7Fdmk1sUZaM/UXVSFfw5mYI/AAAAAAAAAG8/98yBa2Nle48/s320/Nancy+Ling.head+shot.jpg" /></a>
<P>She draws her inspiration from the multicultural background of her family and the interwoven fabric of familial culture which is, on the surface, seemingly everyday. She is the author of <i>My Sister, Alicia May</i> (Pleasant Street Press) and the founder of <A HREF="http://www.finelinepoets.com" >Fine Line Poets</A>. Currently she resides in Walpole, Massachusetts with her husband, Vincent, and their two girls.
Tom Lombardohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00386546238678041697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4668106303586186640.post-18472574326929907662013-04-17T09:37:00.000-04:002013-04-17T17:43:36.619-04:00“Another New England Winter”by Nancy Tupper Ling
<P>By February we’re weary. <BR>
Four o’clock’s darkness<BR>
descends again over<BR>
our sterile snow drifts, <BR>
trapping us behind doors, <BR>
drawn curtains that keep<BR>
drafts and neighbors at bay. <BR>
Even diehard Yankees wonder<BR>
if spring will come. <BR>
<P>We’ve faced such dormancy<BR>
before: five years waiting<BR>
for a tiny life to flower<BR>
inside my womb. Then, too, <BR>
we shut shades early<BR>
against sounds, voices<BR>
of nearby children<BR>
sledding into our gully, <BR>
alone with Mourning. <BR>
<P>Come March we notice<BR>
first buds unfurling. <BR>
We crack our windows, <BR>
let in light breezes. <BR>
They carry pollen, <BR>
fresh and sticky<BR>
to our sills. <BR>
<BR><BR>
Reprinted by permission of the poet from her chapbook <i>Coming Unfrozen</i> (<A HREF="http://www.bluelightpress.com" >Blue Light Press</A>, 2010). The poem also appeared in the anthology <A HREF="http://www.poetryofrecovery.com" ><i>After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events</i></A>
<BR><BR><BR>
<b>Interview With Nancy Tupper Ling<BR>
<BR>
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-G3_L8X3BJdQ/UW6lXkjnFJI/AAAAAAAAAGk/JEWWFmIRans/s1600/Nancy+Ling.head+shot.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-G3_L8X3BJdQ/UW6lXkjnFJI/AAAAAAAAAGk/JEWWFmIRans/s320/Nancy+Ling.head+shot.jpg" /></a>
<BR><BR>
<P>How did you come to write “Another New England Winter”?</b>
<P>I wrote this poem in winter, a New England winter, when we tend to retreat into our homes, away from our neighbors. I remember listening to the voices of children sledding into the next door gully and that brought me back to a time of great sadness in my life, waiting for years to have our first child. When I wrote, I was emerging out of the darkness of infertility. I felt the renewed hope that comes with spring. <BR>
<P><b>How did writing this poem affect your recovery?</b><BR>
<P>I was on the other side, having emerged from the longing and loneliness of infertility. At last we had our long-awaited child, but it was bittersweet. I didn’t want to forget where I’d come from, or lose the empathy I had for others suffering the same heartache.<BR>
<P><b>Can you tell us something about your process of writing that helped this poem come to life?</b><BR>
<P>More than any other time in my life, words overflowed onto the pages of my journal. Looking back, I know these poems weren’t my best work, but they were a healing work. During this time of crisis and afterwards, I began to submit my poems to the world. One of the hardest things about any life-shattering event is the lack of control. The very process of writing and submitting my work took my mind off of the things I couldn’t control, and brought joy back into my life. Eventually, I collected my published poems into a book called <i>Laughter in My Tent,</i> hoping to reach other couples who battled with the same emotions. <BR>
<P><b>Who are your favorite poets or poets new to you whom you'd recommend to others?</b><BR>
<P>I love so many of the poets in <A HREF="http://www.poetryofrecovery.com" ><i>After Shocks</i></A>. Recently, I discovered Michael Miller’s book, <i>Darkening the Grass</i>, published by CavanKerry Press. What a work of beauty by a man in his eighth decade of life. It gives me hope! Also, being totally biased, I will mention some of my fellow Fine Line Poets: J. Lorraine Brown, JoAnne Preiser, Fran Witham, Marcia Szymanski, Virginia Bradley, and my mom, Jean Tupper. Do I sound like someone receiving her Oscar?<BR>
<P><b>What are you working on now?</b><BR>
<P>So nice of you to ask! I’ve been concentrating on my picture book manuscripts. Also, I am co-authoring a book called <i>Toasts: The Essential Collection of More Than 500 Toasts, Graces, and Blessings</i> with June Cotner. It’s being published by Viva Editions and submissions are welcome to <A HREF="http://www.junecotner.com/jccallsub.html" ><i>Toasts Anthology</i></A>.<BR><BR>
<P><b>Nancy Tupper Ling</b> is the winner of the prestigious Writer's Digest Grand Prize and the Pat Parnell Poetry Award. She draws her inspiration from the multicultural background of her family and the interwoven fabric of familial culture which is, on the surface, seemingly everyday. She is the author of <i>My Sister, Alicia May</i> (Pleasant Street Press) and the founder of <A HREF="http://www.finelinepoets.com" >Fine Line Poets</A>. Currently she resides in Walpole, Massachusetts with her husband, Vincent, and their two girls.
Tom Lombardohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00386546238678041697noreply@blogger.com3