Month: June 2009

Not Lorca’s Green

Perhaps this has already been done, perhaps it is tasteless, but it is what I needed to write, and I only half believe those detractions may be true. Modified triolets are the only way I can parse the news.

Do you recall when Michael Jackson died?
The crowds, their rhythmic fists, the scenes
of Tehran bleeding in a sea of green?
That Neda Agha-Soltan died
for a democracy the whole world had denied?
We listen but that bridges no divide.
Do you recall when Michael Jackson died?
Tehran, bleeding, in a sea of green.

The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

  • I’ve successfully relocated to Nashville, and just need to find a job, and submit everything that’s been rejected since around February, and the dozen or so good poems I wrote in April. Phew. How are you-all doing?
  • The first issue of Rat’s Ass Review (for which I designed the website, but have no editorial influence) went up yesterday.
  • Also yesterday, the Wallace Stevens Walk was dedicated.
  • I love these poems (especially the second one) by Sarah Pape.
  • Isn’t Mary’s book cover gorgeous?

What Feeds Us

I went to hear Diane Lockward read at the Dire Literary series in Cambridge.

There was an hour of open mic readings (which I arrived moments too late to sign up for), a break, and then the 3 featured readers. I enjoyed all the featured readers, although I thought Kim Adrian’s piece was a little too long to listen to.

I had never heard Diane read before and it was a treat. She’s so expressive, both in her tone and her phrasing. I’ve never heard anyone read the way she does and it is enchanting.

Because they are mostly free verse poems, I think it is impossible to capture how she does read on the page. Even metrical poetry wouldn’t notate the pitches she uses. So I encourage you to hear her, if she’s ever in your neck of the woods.

Read “Pyromania” (scroll down to the bottom of the page), which opens:

The heart wants what the heart wants,
and what it wants is fire.

Thank you, Diane!

the net is lowest in the middle

Over at the New York Times tennis blog, Thomas Lin (no relation to me) posted this afternoon on Poetry in Motion. He quotes Robert Pinsky at length, embeds a YouTube video of Federer and Nadal reciting Kipling’s “If” (apparently arranged by the BBC circa during last year’s Wimbledon), and invites readers to post their own lyric commentary if so moved: “Got a French Open storyline you’re itching to put to verse? Send us your tennis poetry in the comment form below, be it a sonnet in iambic pentameter, haiku, free verse or a simple couplet. One request: keep it short and sweet.”

(As I note at my fandom journal, I actually do have some tennis poems starting to make a racket in my head, but they are unlikely to be either short or sweet by the time I get around to serving them up — which won’t be tonight in any case. It also just now occurred to me that once I upload my snapshots from a Paris “poetry garden” to their online album, I should tell all y’all more about it — it certainly helped rescue a somewhat-futile afternoon (short version: rode Metro across Paris (three transfers!) and waited in queue for Roland Garros evening pass; didn’t get it; consoled self with roses and people-watching).