National Poetry Month

The Academy of American Poets is sponsoring several activities in April in celebration of National Poetry Month, including the online “poem-a-day” project, the weekly “teach this poem newsletter,” and the “poem in your pocket day” on April 18^th.  For more information, visit www.poets.org.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti Turns 100

Poet, publisher, painter, and co-founder of City Lights Bookstore, Lawrence Ferlinghetti turned a hundred years old on March 24^th, and San Francisco’s Beat Museum celebrated the milestone with a panel discussion on his life and work.  In addition, the mayor’s office proclaimed March 24^th Lawrence Ferlinghetti Day, while performances and poetry readings took place at the landmark North Beach bookstore and at other sites around the city.  Still painting and writing, he has a new, autobiographical novel, Little Boy, (Knopf Doubleday) just out.  Many happy returns to Lawrence Ferlinghetti, a living treasure and champion of free expression.

Round Robin Poetry Reading at Books on “B”

Partnering with the Hayward Unified School District, Books on B, located at Main and “B” Streets in Hayward, CA, will host a round table poetry reading on Friday, April 12^th, from 6:30 to 8:00 p.m.  Local poets will read from their work, discuss craft, and answer questions for approximately ten minutes each.

This Path of Dew: the Haiku of Mitsu Suzuki

For centuries, people from all walks of life have written haiku as a way to mark the season, and to appreciate the gifts of bare attention: seagulls gliding above a cliff, soft pink of the first camellia flower in winter, the stillness of autumn dusk, steam rising from boiled noodles, children’s voices drifting from the playground, rainwater in a hollowed-out rock, early morning light on morning glories.  This is the kind of news that informs the heart, but it doesn’t always evoke joy; it may also evoke a certain sadness at the transience of life, and this feeling may not be specific.  The most effective haiku leave something unsaid, suggesting rather than defining, and in that way they may come to live in the reader’s imagination, however briefly.

Years ago, I had the privilege of hearing Mitsu Suzuki read from her book of haiku, Temple Dusk (Parallax Press, 1992; trans: G.Wood and K. Tanahashi).  In his review of that collection, David Schneider observed that “many of the poems have the quality of ‘objective heart’ — a subtle poignancy where the ordinary becomes extraordinary.”  He cited this haiku by Suzuki as an example:

since my youngest days

the same mole

New Year’s mirror

This poem would be considered a winter or New Year’s haiku due to the inclusion of the kigo (seasonal word), “New Year’s.”  It takes us from youth to maturity, from spring to winter via the image of a mole, and in just three lines invites deep reflection.  What is it that we see when we look into the mirror?  Here, the poet may be alluding to a lifetime of various roles — as a young girl in Japan, as a wife (of Zen teacher Suzuki Roshi), as a mother and grandmother, as a tea ceremony teacher, and as a widow — through it all, there is this one abiding thing, represented by a mole. Yet apart from personal associations, the mole simply is.  Look at that, the poet says, as we might say when gazing at a full moon, or a newly sprouted tomato.

Some of the best haiku resonate with both the reader’s and the writer’s associations while intimating a broader perspective.  “The art (of haiku) depends entirely on the poet’s own realization,” Schneider observes, and that clarity “can also move the reader’s mind without warning.”  Here’s another by Suzuki, this one from her final collection, A White Tea Bowl (Rodmell Press, 2014, trans: K. McCandless, ed: K. Tanahashi):

learning from haiku

sustained by haiku —

this path of dew

As the lines above suggest, the practice of haiku may serve as a path toward enhanced awareness or self-study, but it’s a path that’s unmarked and subject to happenstance — a “path of dew” that’s ever-changing.  If you look for it only in the extraordinary, you might miss what’s right before you.  Here’s one more, from Temple Dusk:

eating a persimmon

          I remember the one

          who loved this taste

On first reading, this haiku might suggest nostalgia for someone no longer physically in the writer’s life; the tart flavor of the persimmon awakens the memory of this person.  Yet another reading may suggest that the writer is recalling herself in her younger days, as a child perhaps, and is experiencing something different as she bites into the persimmon.  What that is, exactly, the reader isn’t privy to — we can never understand the experience of others precisely the way that they do, of course.  What these lines may allude to are the subtle changes that occur in our lives: how youthful passion evolves over time, for instance, and how memory intertwines with the present, deepening our experience of the moment.

Memory may seem like a topic that’s off-bounds in a form that specializes in renditions of the now.  Yet, even a haiku that’s written in the present tense is a form of recollection, isn’t it?  The experience that prompted the writing of the haiku isn’t the same as the process of writing it.  In the same way, the experience of reading a haiku isn’t the same as the experience of analyzing it.  In the end, though, the joy of haiku isn’t in analysis but a sense of the world that’s not strictly delineated by terms such as past, present, or future.  The tart flavor of a persimmon captures this sense of timelessness.

Mary Oliver (9/10/1935 – 1/17/2019)

“To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work,” Mary Oliver wrote, and I think this may be her greatest gift, her singular instruction to us.  Whether it was the white owl “with its depths of light,” an otter displaying “brave underside to wave washings,” or the sight of goldenrod in the morning “fresh from heaven’s soft wash in the chill night,” she lavished each with her unwavering gaze. Ostensibly a “nature poet,” she was so much more than that, melding inner and outer landscapes in an unforgettable way.  Her poems aren’t simply beautiful, they’re an invitation to enter beauty, to celebrate the many permutations of the wild that she observed on her excursions to the woods, the lakes and rivers, and the beaches near her longtime home in Provincetown, Massachusetts.  The world has lost a bright spirit and a great artist in Mary Oliver, but her light will continue to shine and inspire others, and for this we can be grateful.

Gathering Voices

Mary Macconnell’s Gathering Voices: Creating a Community-Based Workshop (Yes Yes Books, 2018), gives pointers on how to run a successful poetry group in a classroom or community-based setting.  Designed for experienced teachers as well as aspiring facilitators, the book offers writing prompts and grounding techniques in the Gathering Voices approach.  Winner of the 2017 Michael Waters Poetry Prize, Macconnell earned an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and runs poetry workshops in the Chicago area.  www.yesyesbooks.com 

Eckphrasic Challenge

Rattle Magazine now offers a monthy “eckphrasic challenge” — providing art to inspire poetry.  Two winners will be selected each month for online publication.  For details, visit www.ratttle.com.

Newsletter

The Poetry Society offers a free, sixteen-page newsletter to all members.  A sample can be found online at www.poetrysociety.org.uk.

Poems and Essays by Tony Hoagland

Tony Hoagland has written about the practice of writing poetry in three essays that appeared in the New Ohio Review (Fall, 2018).  In The Pursuit of Ignorance: The Challenging Figuration of Not Knowing, he offers that “Recognizing our ignorance, we find richer hues of incomprehension — a feeling not to be conquered, but explored, and possibly extended.”  A collection of his poems, Priest Turned Therapist Treats Fear of God, was published by Graywolf Press in 2018.

Writing Prompt

Using a photo from a newspaper or magazine, a family album, or a photo you took yourself, freewrite about the image and what it elicits for you.  You may want to set a time limit such as five or ten minutes.  When you’ve finished, select the most surprising observation or emotion that you discovered in this exercise and write a poem that addresses that.

 

“Sweet things vanish, and brightness falls from the air.”  – George Herbert

I can’t think of anyone who personifies the benevolent side of Bay Area counter-culture more than Julia Vinograd, unless it’s Wavy Gravy.  Clad in a black and orange beret, flowing coat and striped socks, the Berkeley poet, a.k.a. the “Bubble Lady of Telegraph Avenue,” was a vibrant fixture around the University business district for decades, where she could be seen greeting friends and passersby, and blowing soap bubbles in the air.  A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the author of 68 volumes of poetry, she won the American Book Award in 1985 for “The Book of Jerusalem” and was honored with a lifetime achievement award in 2004 as Berkeley’s unofficial poet laureate. Hospitalized in October, Vinograd died December 5th, according to an obituary in the San Francisco Chronicle.  “Her work portrayed the life of average people. She was not one to mystify her readers,” devoted friend and publisher Bruce Isaacson told Sam Whiting of the Chronicle. Commenting on Vinograd’s Cannibal Café, New and Selected Works (2006 – 2014), poet Diane Di Prima said, “I feel nothing but the greatest admiration for her, her power and integrity, and the work she’s done both on the page and in her life over these many years.”  A new collection, “Between the Cracks,” was recently released by Zeigeist Press.

Non-binary Pronouns

Pronoun usage in poetry can be a challenge, and now it’s even more so with the arrival of non-binary gender pronouns.  Check out the article at https://bbc.com/news/magazine-34901704.

Writing Prompts

This prompt comes from Poetic Medicine, The Healing Art of Poem-Making, by John Fox (Tarcher/Putnam Books):  “Choose one aspect of the natural world which you feel has something to teach you.  It could be an animal, plant or mineral. What specific quality does it express that speaks to you about your own life?  Free write your impressions. Shape your favorites into a poem.”

New Year’s Wish, 2019

I wrote the following poem a couple of years ago after passing through Petaluma, California, where they were holding their annual Butter and Egg Days in celebration of the area’s ranch and farm heritage.  As the year draws to a close, it seems like a good time for a poem about wishing each other and the land well.

Butter and Egg Days

These are days of celebration in the town to the north of us,

for the milk that sustains us and the butter we make of it,

for the warmth of a spotted brown egg and the egg itself,

 

for shiny roosters and auburn hens in their yard,

for dark-eyed cows, grazing in the field,

for shearers of sheep and keepers of goats,

 

for builders of barns and coops and troughs,

for rabbits in the tomatoes and owls in the rafters,

for flowering apple trees, apricot, plum, and pear,

 

for avocados and almonds, walnuts and lychees,

for cranky blackbirds who feast in their rows,

for earthworms and butterflies, ants and knats,

 

for bees and keepers of bees,

for all those who farm and harvest,

and those who partake of the harvest —

 

may all flourish, may all flourish.

 

– jg

Ecopoetry

The English Department of Concordia University Irvine held a poetry reading on November 12^th to celebrate publication of the anthology, Fire and Rain: Ecopoetry of California, edited by Lucille Lang Day and Ruth Nolan (Scarlet Tanager Books, 2018).  The anthology offers “a generous record of California poets’ love and concern for their common world,” writes California Poet Laureate Dana Gioia in the book’s forward.  Co-editor Roth Nolan and contributors Thea Gavin and Candace Pearson were among those who read at the event.

Awake in the World: A collection of stories, essays, and poems about wildlife, adventure, and the environment, edited by Daniel J. Rice (Riverfeet Press, 2017), brings together diverse voices in celebration of wilderness and the practice of the wild.  “These words touch the primal self and remind us of our place in the Web of Life,” says Michael Meuers, author of Road to Ponemah.  “It is my view we need to incorporate nature into our lives to help us heal, to be healthy and happy human beings, and this reminds us how.”

Camp Fire, Butte County

11/18:  It’s the tenth day of the Camp Fire in Butte County, a disaster that’s burned approximately 135,000 acres, including the town of Paradise, California.  All over the San Francisco Bay Area, the sky is blanketed with smoke from the fire.  According to reports to date, seventy-three people have died and many more are missing.  In addition, hundreds of survivors have been left homeless.  Some of them, including children and seniors, are living in tents set up on a Walmart parking lot in the city of Chico.  Fortunately, FEMA and the Red Cross have stepped in to help with food, clothing, and temporary shelter.  To contribute, contact @redcross or @habitat_org.  For information on how to help a displaced family, log onto Facebook’s Paradise Fire Adopt a Family page.  The group now has more than 1300 members.

Writing Prompts

Revision:

Select an original poem that you’ve more or less forgotten about.  It should be one that you were never quite satisfied with but weren’t sure exactly why.  (Keep a copy of your original version for reference.)  Begin by rearranging the lines.  If your poem is in a fixed pattern such as quatrains, experiment by varying the pattern, possibly in couplets or free verse.  Play around with the line breaks, too, trying out new possibilities.  When you think you might have something, read it aloud to yourself.  Look for new openings to develop a thought, replace a word or image.  Change anything that doesn’t work until it does.  Now compare it to your original version.  Is the poem improved?  Why?  Why not?

On the subject of revision, it’s good to keep in mind Mary Oliver’s comment about “how many sweet and fine poems there are in the world — I mean, it is a help to remember that out of writing, and the rewriting, beauty is born…”  A Poetry Handbook: A Prose Guide to Understanding and Writing Poetry, by Mary Oliver (A Harvest Original, Harcourt, Inc., 1994).

Don’t be too quick to toss out a revision that falls short.  You might want to come back to it another time.

Elegy

“Elegy helps us to examine our lives and make sense of loss…”  “Later, they remind us of where we were and how far we’ve come,” writes Robert McDowell in Poetry as Spiritual Practice: Reading, Writing, and Using Poetry in Your Daily Rituals, Aspirations, and Intentions (Free Press, 2008).  McDowell offers the following prompt for collective writing; it might work best in a small, established group where people know each other well:

“Work with any number of friends to write an elegy about the environment, which concerns all of us…”  “Alternate on composition of lines.  Mentor one another as you strive to create a memorable poem.”