BookTalk.org

It is that time again, Poetry Festival time. October 11 - 14, 2012. I expect come October I will find myself in Newark, NJ listening to poetry. Will you?
http://www.dodgepoetry.org/

Event page:
http://www.dodgepoetry.org/at-the-festival/

Here are a few of the poets that will be reading at this year's Festival:

Amiri Baraka
Terrance Hayes
Ada Limón
Juan Felipe Herrera
Eavan Boland
Thomas Lux
Arthur Sze
Natasha Trethewey
Henri Cole
Fanny Howe
Raúl Zurita
Gregory Orr
Jane Hirshfield
Nikky Finney
Kurtis Lamkin
Juan Felipe Herrera
Dorianne Laux
C.K. Williams
Patricia Smith

U.S. Poet Laureate
Philip Levine

Over the next few months I will try to post poems from each of the festival Poets. This little activity gives me a chance to figure out who it is that I will put on my list of poets to hear.

Lighthead's Guide to the Galaxy
by Terrance Hayes

Ladies and gentlemen, ghosts and children of the state,
I am here because I could never get the hang of Time.
This hour, for example, would be like all the others
were it not for the rain falling through the roof.
I'd better not be too explicit. My night is careless
with itself, troublesome as a woman wearing no bra
in winter. I believe everything is a metaphor for sex.
Lovemaking mimics the act of departure, moonlight
drips from the leaves. You can spend your whole life
doing no more than preparing for life and thinking.
"Is this all there is?" Thus, I am here where poets come
to drink a dark strong poison with tiny shards of ice,
something to loosen my primate tongue and its syllables
of debris. I know all words come from preexisting words
and divide until our pronouncements develop selves.
The small dog barking at the darkness has something to say
about the way we live. I'd rather have what my daddy calls
"skrimp." He says "discrete" and means the street
just out of sight. Not what you see, but what you perceive:
that's poetry. Not the noise, but its rhythm; an arrangement
of derangements; I'll eat you to live: that's poetry.
I wish I glowed like a brown-skinned pregnant woman.
I wish I could weep the way my teacher did as he read us
Molly Bloom's soliloquy of yes. When I kiss my wife,
sometimes I taste her caution. But let's not talk about that.
Maybe Art's only purpose is to preserve the Self.
Sometimes I play a game in which my primitive craft fires
upon an alien ship whose intention is the destruction
of the earth. Other times I fall in love with a word
like somberness. Or moonlight juicing naked branches.
All species have a notion of emptiness, and yet
the flowers don't quit opening. I am carrying the whimper
you can hear when the mouth is collapsed, the wisdom
of monkeys. Ask a glass of water why it pities
the rain. Ask the lunatic yard dog why it tolerates the leash.
Brothers and sisters, when you spend your nights
out on a limb, there's a chance you'll fall in your sleep.


I could definitely read more of this poet's work. What do you think?

"...troublesome as a woman wearing no bra
in winter. " What?

And I do so love these lines:
Thus, I am here where poets come
to drink a dark strong poison with tiny shards of ice,
something to loosen my primate tongue and its syllables
of debris. I know all words come from preexisting words
and divide until our pronouncements develop selves.

I adore the poem and he has a beautiful way with words (although I feel the bra thing is out of place). But "tiny shards of ice" and "syllables of debris"..... such beauty with words! And then you realise what pain and "garbage" one must endure to produce poetry--these are re-born into beauty. I don't think I have ever read such a potent description on the birth of a poem.

Yep, Saffron.....give me more!

oblivion wrote:"...troublesome as a woman wearing no bra
in winter. " What?

Something that is very enticing and therefore distracting. Don't you think? I have finally come to the conclusion men (straight men) cannot help their fascination with breasts; it's just a biological fact.

Yep, Saffron.....give me more!

I've read over a few of Terrance Hayes' poems, he is a very American poet, with many reference that would be a challenge to people not familiar with American culture. I haven't read to the bottom, but the poem below seems like one that anyone could access.

The Blue Terrance

If you subtract the minor losses,
you can return to your childhood too:
the blackboard chalked with crosses,

the math teacher's toe ring. You
can be the black boy not even the buck-
toothed girls took a liking to:

the match box, these bones in their funk
machine, this thumb worn smooth
as the belly of a shovel. Thump. Thump.

Thump. Everything I hold takes root.
I remember what the world was like before
I heard the tide humping the shore smooth,

and the lyrics asking: How long has your door
been closed? I remember a garter belt wrung
like a snake around a thigh in the shadows

of a wedding gown before it was flung
out into the bluest part of the night.
Suppose you were nothing but a song

in a busted speaker? Suppose you had to wipe
sweat from the brow of a righteous woman,
but all you owned was a dirty rag? That's why

the blues will never go out of fashion:
their half rotten aroma, their bloodshot octaves of
consequence; that's why when they call, Boy, you're in

trouble. Especially if you love as I love
falling to the earth. Especially if you're a little bit
high strung and a little bit gutted balloon. I love

watching the sky regret nothing but its
self, though only my lover knows it to be so,
and only after watching me sit

and stare off past Heaven. I love the word No
for its prudence, but I love the romantic
who submits finally to sex in a burning row-

house more. That's why nothing's more romantic
than working your teeth through
the muscle. Nothing's more romantic

than the way good love can take leave of you.
That's why I'm so doggone lonesome, Baby,
yes, I'm lonesome and I'm blue.

I enjoyed this one as well but was taken aback a bit by the use of epizeuxis in such a modern poem (bring on the Greeks!!). I think this might call for buying a book of his poetry.

How about we try the next poet on the list - Ada Limón.

Sharks in the Rivers
by Ada Limón


We'll say unbelievable things
to each other in the early morning—

our blue coming up from our roots,
our water rising in our extraordinary limbs.

All night I dreamt of bonfires and burn piles
and ghosts of men, and spirits
behind those birds of flame.

I cannot tell anymore when a door opens or closes,
I can only hear the frame saying, Walk through.

It is a short walkway—
into another bedroom.

Consider the handle. Consider the key.

I say to a friend, how scared I am of sharks.

How I thought I saw them in the creek
across from my street.

I once watched for them, holding a bundle
of rattlesnake grass in my hand,
shaking like a weak-leaf girl.

She sends me an article from a recent National Geographic that says,

Sharks bite fewer people each year than
New Yorkers do, according to Health Department records.

Then she sends me on my way. Into the City of Sharks.

Through another doorway, I walk to the East River saying,

Sharks are people too.
Sharks are people too.
Sharks are people too.

I write all the things I need on the bottom
of my tennis shoes. I say, Let's walk together.

The sun behind me is like a fire.
Tiny flames in the river's ripples.

I say something to God, but he's not a living thing,
so I say it to the river, I say,

I want to walk through this doorway
But without all those ghosts on the edge,
I want them to stay here.
I want them to go on without me.

I want them to burn in the water.

These are very beautiful lines: "I cannot tell anymore when a door opens or closes,
I can only hear the frame saying, Walk through."


I like the poem in general. (Did you pick this out for epizeuxis as well:)?) If this is the quality of poets this year at the Dodge Poetry Festival, then I am truly sorry I can't be there!

I am only familiar with a few of the poets on the Festival line up, but as I read a poem from each poet I am assured it will be a wonderful event. Next up is an Irish poet.

Quarantine
by Eavan Boland


In the worst hour of the worst season
of the worst year of a whole people
a man set out from the workhouse with his wife.
He was walking – they were both walking – north.

She was sick with famine fever and could not keep up.
He lifted her and put her on his back.
He walked like that west and west and north.
Until at nightfall under freezing stars they arrived.

In the morning they were both found dead.
Of cold. Of hunger. Of the toxins of a whole history.
But her feet were held against his breastbone.
The last heat of his flesh was his last gift to her.

Let no love poem ever come to this threshold.
There is no place here for the inexact
praise of the easy graces and sensuality of the body.
There is only time for this merciless inventory:

Their death together in the winter of 1847.
Also what they suffered. How they lived.
And what there is between a man and woman.
And in which darkness it can best be proved.

Thanks for the poem Saffron, the events in Ireland and Scotland in the 19C were dramatic and brutal and changed those landscapes forever. I like the lines "But her feet were held against his breastbone. The last heat of his flesh was his last gift to her." I looked up the Dodge Festival and I was thinking about New Jersey and the Arts ... wondering if it can't help living in the shadow of New York, maybe like a kid sister? I've never visited NJ but I have been to New York several times and find it a rather overwhelming, intense place but a lot of fun.