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Urgency and Tradition in Jericho Brown’s Latest Collection

One of the traditions referred to in Jericho Brown’s Pulitzer Prize-winning collection, The Tradition (Copper Canyon Press, 2019), is poetical — he’s writing in the lyric tradition, short poems that express intense feelings about his experiences as a black, gay man from the south.  (He’s currently an Associate Professor and Director of Creative Writing at Emory University in Atlanta.)  Another is political, echoing those writers before him who have depicted the pain and injustice African Americans have experienced in this country for hundreds of years.  In their citation for the Pulitzer, the judges stated that his lyrics “combine delicacy with historical urgency in their loving evocation of bodies vulnerable to hostility and violence.”  This is especially apparent in the title poem, which compares the lives of at-risk black men to the brief lives of flowers, and in Bullet Points, both of which have been widely circulated since the violent deaths of George Floyd and others at the hands of police.  Bullet Points “was not born out of a sense of protest from me.  It’s a poem born out of a sense of desperation that comes from a fact in my life.  I don’t want anybody saying that I killed myself if I’m ever in police custody,” Brown has said (The Guardian, June 5, 2020).  Demonstrating that the personal is the political, these poems “question why and how we’ve become accustomed to terror in the bedroom, the classroom, the workplace, and the movie theater…”, the publishers have written.  “Brown interrupts complacency by locating each emergency in the garden of the body, where living things grow and wither — or survive.”  The Academy of American Poets offers lesson plans for poems about social justice, including The Tradition; for more information, visit their site at www.poets.org.

In the Lateness of the World, by Carolyn Forche’

In Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness (Norton, 1993), poet Carolyn Forche’ gathered the work of more than 140 twentieth-century poets who bear witness to war, imprisonment, torture, censorship, or exile, defending “the individual against illegitimate forms of coercion” (Mason Gazette).  The landmark anthology appeared twelve years after the second collection of her own poetry, The Country Between Us (Jonathan Cape, 1981), which was based on her experiences in El Salvador in the 1970s with Amnesty International.  Writing in the Los Angeles Times Book Review, Art Seidenbaum observed that those poems “chronicle the awakening of a political consciousness and are themselves acts of commitment: to concepts and persons, to responsibility, to action.”  The 1981 Lamont Poetry Selection, it was also the winner of the James Laughlin Award.  Now, in her most recent volume, In the Lateness of the World (Penguin Press, 2020), Forche’s unflinching gaze takes in landscapes from five continents, scarred by the effects of violence and environmental degradation.  In The Museum of Stones, the first poem in the collection, the poet gathers images of stones from “ruins of choirs and shipyards…from temples and tombs…stone from the tunnel lined with bones…stones where the bells had fallen, where the bridges were blown…”, curating them on the page with the dedication of an anthropologist.  Contemplative and elegiac, the poems invite us “to consider the sometimes unrecognized, though always felt, ways in which power inserts itself into our lives and to think about how we can move forward with what we know,” writes Hilton Als in the New Yorker.  A selection of Forche’s poems can be found on the website of The Academy of American Poets, along with lesson plans; for more information, visit www.poets.org.

Behind the Mask: New Poetry Anthology by Humboldt Poets

News stories about the pandemic that cite the alarming rise of cases around the country can leave you feeling depressed, if not hopeless.  An abundance of facts and figures often leaves out the human element.  A new anthology of poetry: Behind the Mask, 40 Quarantine Poems from Humboldt County, edited by David Holper and Anne Fricke, addresses that gap.  Holper, who is Poet Laureate of Eureka, CA, says that “the book captures the range of emotions that many people are feeling during this time,” according to an article from The Lost Coast Outpost (www.lostcoastoutpost.com).  The new book evolved from a Facebook group, “Poetry on the Edge.”  After the site had accumulated over 100 poems, Holper thought it would be a good idea to collect them in a book and solicited further submissions, asking poet Anne Fricke to help with the project.  “It’s frightening— the virus, the economics — some people are depressed by it,” he said.  “I think you’ll see that in some of the poems.  But some are also whimsical.  We tried to include a range.”  Behind the Mask is available to purchase in print or can be downloaded free from the above site.

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Poetry of the Pandemic

The first poem I read about the pandemic was written by Lynn Unger, San Francisco Bay Area minister and author of Blessing of the Bread, and it’s still the one that resonates with me most.  Pandemic originally appeared on her blog and later was the subject of an article in the Chicago Tribune, March 13th.  Reflecting on the practice of social distancing, Unger offers that it’s not something we do to remove ourselves emotionally from others, but to affirm a sense of compassion for each other.  It’s a message I’d yet to hear from Washington, and I don’t think we can hear it often enough.

Poets have written about epidemics in the past — Thomas Nashe (1567-1601) wrote A Litany in a Time of Plague, John Davies wrote The Triumph of the Dead, and Christina Rossetti (1830-1894) wrote The Plague, to name just a few examples.  More recently, Rafael Campo (1964 – ) wrote Silence = Death about the Aids epidemic and Simon Armitage, Poet Laureate of the U.K., wrote Lockdown.

Not Shutting Down in a Shut Down

The demands of sheltering in place can be daunting.  “Feelings of anxiety can creep up when you’re sheltering in place,” according to Jei Africa, Director of the Behavioral Health and Recovery Services at the Marin County Health and Human Services Department.  In a recent story in the Marin Independent Journal, he’s quoted as saying, “You could have trouble sleeping, not feeling like eating or eating too much, shortness of breath, heart racing or feeling irritable or impatient.”  Keeping stress levels down is important, and this can be done by “controlling the things you can control,” he says.  His advice: “Exercise, limit exposure to news and social media, keep in contact with friends and family, eat healthy, get enough sleep and make sure to have a solid connection with your main health care provider.”

Saving City Lights

Like other small businesses that are suffering from the economic impact of the health crisis, the futures of many independent bookstores are threatened, including the legendary City Lights bookstore and publishing company in San Francisco’s North Beach.  Founded by poet and painter Lawrence Ferlinghetti, it helped to launch the careers of Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Lenore Kandel, and many others.  A recent message from Elaine Katzenberger, Publisher and CEO of City Lights Booksellers and Publishers, described City Lights as “a steady beacon…there whenever we need a place to feel at home with our fellow humans, their ideas and aspirations, their curiosities and their wild dreams of a new beginning.”  The landmark store, opened in 1953, has been closed since March 16th and currently has no way to generate sales.  The good news is that a GoFundMe campaign exceeded the initial goal of $300,000 in just a few days, raising over $400,000.  The store will go on, Katzenberger says, at least for now.  “Knowing that City Lights is beloved is one thing, but to have that love manifest itself with such momentum and indomitable power, well, that’s something I don’t quite know how to find words for.”

Acknowledging Grief

In an interview with Amapour & Co. on PBS (available on YouTube), grief and dying expert David Kessler observes that many people are now grieving for the loss of loved ones but, in addition, we’re also mourning for the world we’ve lost.  “Everything has changed,” he says, and “it’s sinking into us that next week the world’s not going back to normal.”  Acknowledging grief over our losses is important, he adds.  “If we name it, it allows us to be sad, to cry, to feel those emotions…suppressing them isn’t going to work.”  His most recent book, Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief (Scribners, 2019) explains that these six stages aren’t linear, and that in acknowledging our felt experience, we can begin to find meaning, and healing, in that.  The process is deeply personal one, and what’s meaningful for one person may not be for another.  For Kessler, it comes in the form of helping others through his lectures and writing.

West Marin Review

Thanks to West Marin Review of Point Reyes Station, California, and especially to co-founder Madeleine Corson, whose attention to my poem Temple Snow helped it come to life.  Their website describes the journal as “influenced by the natural beauty of the land and water, and the surrounding agricultural lands and open space.”  A collaborative effort with Point Reyes Books and Black Mountain Circle, the latest issue is due shortly.  https://www.westmarinreview.org

 

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The Comfort of Haiku

The practice of haiku cultivates awareness of what is, and this awareness can offer a kind of psychological comfort for what ails us. Shiki, who suffered from tuberculosis, rarely addressed his condition directly in haiku.  Yet, his verses provided him with a more expansive lens with which to view his condition and the world, one that encompassed both light and dark.  I like this one:*

winter cold —

gulping medicine, saving

the tangerine for later

Here, the tangerine suggests a healing purpose as much as whatever formula Shiki was ingesting: beauty is medicine, too, and so is color, shape, and texture.  And then, what a comfort to hold a small, perfectly ripe tangerine, to peel it, expose the pulp, release the pungent scent, and taste the juicy tartness.  Even on his sickbed, Shiki noted the allure of all this.

African-American novelist Richard Wright (“Native Son”) was introduced to haiku through the translations of R. H. Blythe in 1959 and, during the last eighteen months of his life, he wrote hundreds of them.  Struggling to recover from amoebic dysentery and often bedridden, “he was never without his haiku binder under his arm,” writes his daughter, Julia, in the introduction to Wright’s collection, “Haiku, The Last Poems of an American Icon,” (Arcade, 2012).  “I believe his haiku were a self-developed antidote against illness, and that breaking down words into syllables matched the shortness of his breath…”, she observes.  Others have suggested that his passion for haiku was something more than therapeutic, that it offered the structure (and brevity) for deep contemplation, and for transcending the political and racial boundaries of his work.  I think that both of these suggestions are probably true — that writing haiku kept the streams of Wright’s creative imagination alive during a time of stress and suffering, and helped to allieve that suffering, as well.

*version by j.g.

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Picking Berries

So many of my favorite poems are about picking berries.  I’ve always loved one by Lisel Mueller, Picking Raspberries.  The first four lines are memorable: “Once the thicket opens/and lets you enter/and the first berry dissolves on your tongue/you will remember nothing/ of your old life”  (Alive Together, Louisiana State University Press, 1996, Baton Rouge, LA).  Mary Oliver has written two that I know and admire — Blackberries, and Blueberries (Devotions, Penguin Press, 2017, NY, NY), and there’s Galway Kinnell’s Blackberry Eating, that compares the ripeness of berries to “certain peculiar words/like strengths or squinched,/many-lettered, one-syllable lumps…”  (Collected Poems, Galway Kinnell, Houghton, Mifflin, Harcourt, 2017, Boston, NY).  Then, there’s Seamus Heaney’s Blackberry Picking with its compelling turn at the end (Death of a Naturalist, Faber & Faber, 1966, London).

The Music of What Happens

Reviewing the BBC production of Seamus Heaney and the Music of What Happens (The Guardian, November 18, 2019), Rebecca Nicholson observes that the documentary “stands as an excellent tribute to the man and his work.”  Heaney’s poetry has beguiled readers since the publication of his first major collection, The Death of a Naturalist in 1966, and continues to do so.  Like his countryman, W. B. Yeats, to whom he’s often compared, Heaney has a gift for finding the music in both the somber and the prosaic, especially as it refers the rural life he knew and loved.  In his commentary on the title poem of The Death of a Naturalist, poet Andrew Spacey notes that the “language is typically rich with what has become known as clusters of sound — alliteration and assonance juxtaposed…”   This is poetry that begs to be spoken, not only read.  For Spacey’s line by line analysis — in effect a mini-course in poetic devices, go to www.owlcation.com.

Historic Greta Hall

If you’re in the market for an historic house with a literary pedigree, Greta Hall in England’s Lake District may be just your cup of tea.  The three-story, Georgian style house was variously the residence of poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey, and has hosted such notables as William and Dorothy Wordsworth, Lord Byron, and John Keats over the years.  Boasting ten bedrooms and a 335 year-old fireplace, it served most recently as a B&B.  Not to be missed: the Venetian window and view of the woods from Southey’s one-time study.  www.mansionglobal.com

Line Breaks and Enjambment

Hannah Huff’s article, Dear Bad Writers: Read This Poetry Line Breaks Guide offers some good tips on the effective use of line breaks and enjambment.  The examples are especially helpful.  www.notesofoak.com

Pushcart Nominations

Three poems that appeared in Rumors of Wisdom have each been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.  The poems are “Looking Out at the Stream,” “Shed,” and “Crow Makes a Scene.”  Many thanks to Concrete Wolf Press and Editor Lana Hechtman Ayers for this recognition.

Poetry and the Contemplative Life

In the article Poetry and the Contemplative Life (Commonweal, July 4, 1947), Thomas Merton wrote:  “It is obvious, then, that contemplation has much to offer poetry.  But can poetry offer anything in return, to contemplation?”  What poetry offers, I think, is an invitation to experience the sacred in our everyday lives, which Merton — himself a poet — likely intuited.  This may also be one reason so many people are instinctively drawn to it, both as readers and writers.

Wishing you all the joys of the season, and a happy and healthy new year!

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Special Feature

Working in Multiple Genres: an Interview with Aline Soules

Interviewed by Jerome Gagnon

It’s a privilege to have poet and historical fiction writer Aline Soules as my guest today.  Author of Meditation on Woman (bit.ly/meditationonwoman) and Evening Sun: A Widow’s Journey (bit.ly/evening-sun), her poetry has appeared in such publications as Kenyon Review, Houston Literary Review, Poetry Midwest, and the Galway Review.  I thought it would be interesting to see what she’s up to these days and, in particular, to ask about her experience working in multiple genres.

Q. I know you’re a fairly voracious reader.  What are you reading these days? Do you read more for information, amusement, or some other thing?

A. Answer to your last question first:  Yes, yes, and yes—information, amusement, fun, the cereal box, I don’t care.  I read all the time and have several books going at once, depending on where I’m reading—my comfy chair, my outdoor chaise longue, in bed.  Right now, I’m reading the following: The Secret History of SOE, by William Mackenzie and Code Name: Lise: the true story of the woman who became WWII’s most highly decorated spy, by Larry Loftis, both as research for my novel; Lovers and Dancers, by Heather Ingman, for fun; some of the Collected poems of Louis Macneice (always read poetry); conversations with W. S. Merwin, by Michael Wutz and Hal Crimmel (so sad—no more poems from him).  As you can see, anything goes.

Q. Can you share with us some of your favorite poets and novelists?   What’s the appeal for you?  

A. So many poets.  I’ll start with Seamus Heaney, not just for his famous poems, like “The Field,” but also for Beowulf.  I’ve noticed that, in “English” classes, students are often presented with the Iliad or the Odyssey. That’s fine, but why not our English classic, Beowulf?  Heaney’s version is accessible and wonderful.  Gerard Manley Hopkins—I go back to him all the time.  The language, the imagery stun me. Many women poets, like Adrienne Rich, Carolyn Forché, May Sarton, Linda Gregerson, Rita Dove, Lucille Clifton, Elizabeth Bishop, Wislawa Szymborska—I could go on.  But I also like “dead white males,” which isn’t the popular choice these days. I remember the controversy over Robert Bly’s Iron John: a Book about Men, yet it’s proved to be one of his most enduring works, an international best seller and a start to the Mythopoetic men’s movement in the U.S.  There’s a danger in deciding that one’s ethnicity or gender has made one biased, thereby missing out on great language and thought, whether I agree with it all or not.  Today, we have new writers—Ocean Vuong, Sherman Alexie, Amber Tamblyn, Kei Miller, Morgan Parker. I’m trying to understand the appeal of Rupi Kaur, the “Instapoet,” but I admit to struggling with her work.  

Q. You’ve written poetry in the past and now you’re working on an historical novel.  Do you find that any of the skills for writing poetry apply to fiction, or are they very different?

A. Great question.  I use my poetry skills (if “skills” is the right word) in everything I write.  Poetic language is key anywhere—the ability to come up with the right words, the right image, the best phrase to convey a feeling or a thought in a way that resonates with readers and makes what you write memorable.  Writing is an endless struggle (why do we do this, again?), but, somehow, a struggle that’s worthwhile to me. In my current novel, I’m still not at the point of going through my work to struggle with the final language and phrasing, but, when I do (soon), it will be one of the more pleasurable parts of novel writing.  I should add that poetry has also helped in all my writing. During my academic career, I wrote many articles and book chapters, all of which were improved by my poetry practice. In fact, I start all my writing days with poetry, unless I have a pressing deadline.

Q. In an interview, I think Ocean Vuong said that his new novel (On Earth, We’re Briefly Gorgeous) was written, in part, as a letter to his mother.  How do you go about finding the right form (or forms) for a novel, or does it find you?

A. Forms are organic, I think, particularly in poetry, but also in other writing forms.  

front_cover_140503

Even academic writing, with its introduction, method, results, and discussion/conclusion sections enables organic form within the structure.  My novel is historical fiction and I’ve discovered that it’s like a jigsaw puzzle in some ways. I’ve written a full draft (more than once) and I still find myself cutting up the summary of each chapter and moving the pieces around on my table to decide the best order for the story.  I may have a linear approach in my first draft (what happens? what happens next? etc.), but I won’t end up with that.

Q. Are you continuing to write poetry even as you work on a prose project?  If so, do you have any advice for writers on how to balance these two disciplines?

A. I do write poetry—all the time.  As mentioned above, I start with poetry when I sit down to write.  It might be ten minutes or two hours, depending on how the work develops. Then I turn to my novel.  I have no advice for writers on balancing multiple disciplines, other than to suggest that each writer must find his/her/eir path through the process.  When I also wrote academic articles and book chapters, I interspersed those with poetry, too. I’m sure that some writers practice one or the other at any

given time, rather than engaging with more than one at the same time, but starting with poetry gets me in my writing frame.  I’ve also noticed that when I’m “on a roll” with poetry, everything else is “on a roll,” too. The converse is also true.

Q. A sense of Time with a capital “T” seems to be all important in novels.  Even if they’re written conventionally in the past tense, they’re generally supposed to represent the present — or, in the case of historical novels, the “distant” present.  Where is your narrator located in terms of time? Have you encountered any challenges and/or benefits in exploring the notion of time in fiction? 

A. My novel is written in close third, past tense.  I’ve tried other points of view and other tenses, but have decided on this approach.  The idea of “representing the present” is really the idea of engaging the reader so that he/she/ey feels “present” with the main character.  I say character (singular) because I’m working in close third and the story unfolds from her point of view. I’ve never tried omniscient point of view, although the greats in the past used it all the time (Dickens, Thackeray, Trollope).  As for the notion of time in fiction, I’ve never explored this directly, but Alan Lightman has. I particularly love Einstein’s Dream, which I re-read periodically, but any of his books are fabulous.  He engages with physics principles, such as time. After all, who better?  As a physicist and a writer, he’s worked at Harvard and MIT, where he’s currently professor of the practice of the humanities.  

Q. Some writers advise that, once you have an outline, you should write straight through your first draft and not stop for anything, no editing or rewriting at all.  How do you feel about this, and what’s your approach?  

A. Ah, the pantser vs. plotter theme.  The pantser, e.g., Ellen Sussman, goes for what happens?  what happens next? and next? and next? (no outline). After that, she spends a year or two revising. The plotter, e.g., John Grisham, goes for plot everything out before he writes a single word.  After that, he writes. I like a combination. I start with a form of the pantser method, where I write scenes about what comes to me but, not too far into what happens, I make a rough outline. After that, I move back and forth. If I wake up with an idea that excites me, I write the scene while it’s “hot,” whether it’s next in line or not.  Otherwise, I follow and develop my outline and my scenes together.

In the end, what’s important about any method is that your reader makes “discoveries” along with you; otherwise, the reader won’t be engaged.  The action may be too predictable. Of course, some readers like predictability (e.g., romance novels), but, I want surprises. The pantser method leads me to discoveries that surprise me and those are key for my novel because the reader will be surprised, too.  I’m also endlessly amazed at how my characters tell me what to do. They go off on tangents I don’t expect — surprises. And that’s the joy of the written word, isn’t it? To be surprised, expanded, given an emotional journey as well as intellectual stimulation. Reading and writing and the book itself — what a great trio.  What a wonderful world.

 

aline_black_sweater_2017Find Aline Soules online at http://allinesoules.com,@aline elisabeth, https://www.facebook/com/alinesoulesauthor, and https://www.linkedin.com/in/alinesoules/. 

For Aline’s Q & A with me, Writing Contemplative Poetry, please visit her blog or the Interview section on this site (see main menu).  

 

(Note: I’ll be on hiatus from the blog through August, resuming in mid-September.  I hope you’ll join me then.)

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A Celebration of Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Poets Shauna Hannibal, Fernando Marti, and Zack Rogow will read from their new books, as well as from the poetry of Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who recently turned 100.  “New Poetry and 100 Years of Ferlinghetti” will take place on April 15 at 7pm at Folio Books, 3957 24th Street in San Francisco.  Birthday cake will be served.

American Haiku Archives

According to their website, the American Haiku Archives in Sacramento, California, houses the “largest collection of haiku and related poetry books and papers outside of Japan.”  Founded in 1996, it’s the official archive of the Haiku Society of America.  Current AHA exhibits include a special tribute to Kiyoko and Kiyoshi Tokutomi.  Located in the California State Library Historical Room in Sacramento, CA, the exhibit is open to the public.  To learn more about the archives and their current exhibits, visit www.americanhaikuarchives.org.

Submissions

Reed Magazine, California’s oldest literary journal, will be accepting submissions for their annual contest from June 1 to November 1.  Prizes and publication are offered for fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and art.  www.reedmagazine.org…..Jericho Brown will judge this year’s poetry contest for the Crab Creek Review.  Submit up to 4 poems.  Winner receives $500 plus publication. www.crabcreekreview.org/contests.html ….. Beech Street Review, a quarterly online poetry journal, is accepting poetry submissions through the month of April.  Submit 3-5 poems.  www.beechstreetreview.com

W. S. Merwin

It’s hard to believe W. S. Merwin is gone.  It almost seemed as if his incomparable poems with their unexpected twists and turns would go on forever.  The former U.S. Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner died March 15thon Maui.  He was 91. In their citation for his 2005 collection, Migration, New & Selected Poems, the National Book Award judges wrote: “The poems in Migration speak from a life-long belief in the power of words to awaken our drowsy souls and see the world with passionate interconnection.”  A conservationist, Merwin and his late wife, Paula Schwartz, restored a former pineapple farm near Haiku, Maui, planting approximately 2700 trees.

Gabriel Okara

Nigerian poet and novelist Gabriel Okara died on March 25th in Nigeria.  He was 98.  His poem, “The Call of the River Nell,” won the Silver Cup for Poetry at the 1953 Nigerian Festival of the Arts and was published in Black Orpheus, the first English language journal of African literature.  Brenda Marie Osbey, editor of his Collected Poems, has written that, “It is with the publication of Gabriel Okara’s first poem that Nigerian literature in English and modern African poetry in this language can be said truly to have begun.”  He also wrote an experimental novel, The Voice (1964), the award-winning collection, The Fisherman’s Invocation (1978), and The Dreamer, His Vision (2005).

 

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After The Book Shop closed its doors for good, former manager Renee’ Rettig raised $70,000 through Indiegogo to open a new store across the street.  Dubbed Books on B, the independently owned store in Hayward, California, is a light-filled space that’s a testament to Rettig’s dedication and the generosity of booklovers.  You can read more at www.sfgate.com.

Pleased to hear that my new poem, “Pilgrimage,” was selected by editor Mark S. Burrows for the journal, ARTS.  Along with Jon M. Sweeney, Burrows is co-translator of “Meister Eckhart’s Book of the Heart, Meditations for a Restless Soul” (Hampton Roads, 2017).  These are short, sometimes ecstatic meditations that speak directly to the heart.

Photographer Fred Lyon’s visual essay, “San Francisco Noir” (Princeton Architectural Press) was released earlier this month and it’s a joy to take in.  But just as evocative as the after dark images of The City, lit by neon and shrouded in fog, are Lyon’s photos of San Francisco by day — an old man playing a harmonica on the sidewalk, rickety backstairs, and wash hanging out to dry.        

Reading Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s, “San Francisco Poems” (City Lights Foundation), I came across “They Were Putting Up a Statue (of St. Francis),” which originally appeared in “Coney Island of the Mind.”  It was recorded on Fantasy records back in the day and can now be heard on You Tube.  Still rocks.

Poet Aline Soules (Meditation on Woman) writes about her recent visit to Seamus Heaney’s Home Place, a small museum in Ulster devoted to the Irish poet’s life and work, and provides links to podcasts and videos.  If you haven’t heard Heaney’s poems, pour yourself a cup of tea (or something stronger) and settle in.  https://alinesoules.com