Tag poetry

News

jeromegagnonblog

Stories We Tell Ourselves

I don’t know anyone who isn’t concerned about the environment these days. The impact of air pollution and climate change can be seen around the globe. As sea levels rise, currents are expected to shift dramatically. From what I understand, there are approximately 1,000 species becoming extinct every day. In her book, Staying with the Trouble(Duke University Press, 2016), theorist Dr. Donna J. Haraway suggests that “staying with the trouble” brought on by climatic and environmental crises can encourage new ways of thinking and new means to sustain us in the future. At the same time, there needs to be a change in the stories we tell ourselves.      

“Everything is held together with stories, that’s all that’s holding us together, stories and compassion,” essayist and fiction writer Barry Lopez once said. Many of these stories influence our actions. The anthropocentric story that humans are the apex of nature, for instance, underlies the idea that we’re entitled to treat the world as an exploitable resource. Yet there are other stories that support sustainability and the interdependence of life. Some of them are ancient, coming from indigenous cultures. Some are new and science-based. We know that organisms in an ecological system depend on each other for their survival, for instance, reinforcing the importance of conservation and species preservation.     

Dr. Suzanne Simard’s recent book, Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest (Knopf Doubleday), reports on her lifelong research with trees in the rainforests of British Columbia, demonstrating that forests are “social, cooperative creatures connected through underground networks by which trees communicate their vitality and vulnerabilities…” Not only are they capable of recognizing other trees around them, they “can remember the past and have agency about the future,” according the publisher’s notes. Simard’s work offers compelling evidence of the interdependence of these noble organisms. More than that, it presents scientific inquiry in a humanistic light, showing that “it is about understanding who we are and our place in the world, and how old growth trees “nurture the forest in the profound ways that families and human societies do, and how these inseparable bonds enable all our survival.” Finding the Mother Tree offers a compassionate model as a way forward, one based on a benevolent relationship with the earth, rather than a commodity to be exploited. As poet Wendell Berry has put it, “The environment is in you. It’s passing through you. You’re breathing it — you and every other creature.” 

Eco News

In February, 2021, a snowy owl was spotted in New York City’s Central Park for the first time in over 130 years. Within days it moved on, possibly disturbed by the crowds that came to admire it, or maybe just wanting to return to the Arctic where the majority of the white raptors with black markings make their home

Plans for a controversial oil pipeline project, slated for construction in Memphis, Tennessee, were cancelled in July during the midst of protests and ongoing lawsuits. The proposed 49-mile long pipeline would have carried thousands of gallons of crude oil daily over a protected zone that supplies drinking water to residents of Southwest Memphis, home to several predominately black communities. Led by Memphis Community Against the Pipeline (MCAP) and Protect Our Acquafier, locals rallied to protest the plan they believe would have put neighborhoods such as Boxwood and surrounding homes and businesses at risk, while the Southern Environmental Law Center opposed litigation against long-time residents whose homes stood in the path of the project. The plan, which drew fire nationally, was condemned by former Vice-President Al Gore and others

In Galveston, Texas, volunteers rescued over 2000 green sea turtles that were “cold-stunned” in late February of this year by unseasonably freezing temperatures. Approximately 200 threatened sea turtles from Matagorda Bay and Padre Island were also rescued and taken to the Galveston Laboratory Sea Turtle Hospital for treatment.   

Contests

The 2021 Porad Award, sponsored by Poetry Northwest, is now open. Submit up to five haiku (www.haikunorthwest.org) by September 20th. Named for Francine Porad, the late founder of Haiku Northwest and a former president of the Haiku Society of America, the contest is free this year and will be judged by Susan Antolin, editor of Acorn and author of The Years that Went Missing. Results will be announced on October 30th… The Miller Williams Poetry Prize: submit a full-length collection by September 30th… The Patricia Dobbler Poetry Award: submit two poems up to 75 lines each (for women over forty who haven’t published a full-length book) by 

Putting a Full-length Collection Together: Part 2

jeromegagnonblog

Looking at a variety of poetry collections can be useful when it comes time to assemble your own. Many are thematic like Stag’s Leap, by Sharon Olds, which focuses on the years before and after the poet’s divorce following a thirty-year marriage. Others tell a story, such as Ann Carson’s Autobiography of Red and Illya Kominsky’s Deaf Republic. Less common today are those that concentrate on formal poetic forms, such as Dana Gioia’s 99 Poems: New and Selected. There are countless ways a collection can coalesce, and a strong vision combined with other factors can help to make it shine.

The poetry of Frank O’Hara has a distinctive voice that’s conversational in tone. One of the things that makes his Lunch Poems so effective is that it combines voice with theme. These pieces were written when O’Hara was on lunch break from his job at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan and have a spur-of-the-moment quality that evokes the pace of city life. Like the poems themselves, the collection comes across as spontaneous with a lively mix of topics and emotional content.  

A distinguishing facet of Lucille Clifton’s poetry is its visual appeal. Reviewer Peggy Rosenthal wrote of Clifton’s work that, “The first thing that strikes us about Lucille Clifton’s poetry is what is missing: capitalization, punctuation, long and plentiful lines. We see a poetry so pared down that its spaces take on substance, becoming a shaping presence as much as the words themselves.” Visual appeal is closely related to voice, and when these two qualities are combined with strong themes, as they are in Clifton’s Blessing of the Boats, New & Selected Poems, 1988-2000 (winner of the National Book Award), the result can be unforgettable.        

Lyric ordering is another way to enhance cohesion. With this approach, each poem is linked to the previous one in some way, for instance, by imagery or repeated words or phrases. An alternative approach is to place “hinge” poems at the close of each section and the beginning of the next one to guide the reader from one section to the next.

Editing

The conventional wisdom is to begin the editing process after you’ve finished your first draft. But editing a poetry collection is different from editing the draft of a novel, say. I find it to be an ongoing process from start to finish, of writing, revising, and editing. Whatever your method is, when you get to the point that the manuscript feels complete, it’s advisable to let it sit for several days, or even weeks. Then, you’ll be able to give it a final edit with fresh eyes. At that point, it may seem that you’re looking at someone else’s work, a huge advantage because you won’t be blinded by attachment it. 

A final edit can reveal some surprising oversights. It might be a wordy poem that could be tightened up or one that needs to be reformatted, or tweaked. It might be a repeated misspelling or that fact that you used a certain word too many times. (This is where spellcheck and the search function come in handy.) Even if you’ve never been a particularly good judge of your own work, you may find that your editorial eye has become hawk-like, zooming in on a misplaced modifier or a less than effective image. You may also get a sense for what ails the manuscript. Poet and editor April Osserman, who served as Executive Director for Alice James Books, points out that one of the hardest tasks for a poet who’s assembling a collection is to let go of those pieces that aren’t “book strong” or those that “don’t fit the major or minor themes of the book.”  Save those for another project, she recommends in her article, “Thinking Like an Editor: How to Order Your Poetry Manuscript,” March/April 2011 (www.https:pw.org).  

It’s advisable to look closely at your first and last poems, too. Does the first poem set the right tone? Is it one of your stronger poems? Does the last poem in that section foreshadow the next section? If not, is the transition effective as is? Re-examine key poems and those around them; do they expand on your vision or “talk” to each other? Then read through them sequentially. If there’s a narrative line, does it carry the reader in an engaging way from point A to point B?  Does the last poem in the collection reiterate your vision while adding something new?  Last, if you haven’t been doing this all along, you’ll want to read the poems out loud to yourself. How do they sound? What do you notice about reading them out loud versus reading them silently? What would you change?

Selecting a Title

It’s not absolutely necessary to have a working title, but it can help as a kind of stabilizing force around which the poems revolve. As the project moves along, you may come up with alternative titles, some better, some worse, and the right one may not appear until the last moment. You may hear it from a trusted reader or editor who points out that a little noticed phrase in one of your poems might be the one. Or you might compose a new poem that introduces it. One way or another it will show up.

Some questions to ask when deciding on a title:

  • does it reflect your vision?
  • is it memorable?
  • is it original?
  • does it invite the reader in?
  • does it resonate with the style or voice of the poems? 
  • is it intriguing, or even mysterious?

Sometimes a prospective title just needs a twist, a little something extra to make it stand out. Try switching out a lackluster word or adding a verb to give it action. Rearrange the word order, adding other words to the mix if necessary and see what comes up. Consider making a list of your favorite titles, whether or not they’re poetry collections. Here are a few of my favorites: On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, Catalogue of Unabashed Gratitude, Bright Dead Things, Heaven Is All Goodbyes, Everyday Mojo Songs of Earth, Petals of the Moon. Some titles emphasize verbs or verb forms, such as Trainspotting, Sleeping It Off in Rapid City, and If We Had a Lemon We’d Throw It and Call That the Sun. At thirteen words, this last one definitely gets my attention.

Putting a Full-length Collection Together: Part 1

jeromegagnonblog

Getting Started

There are a lot of articles out there about how to put a full-length collection of poems together and some of them are of the “ten easy steps” variety. But the truth is, it’s more complicated than that. The process calls on intuition, trial and error, and a good deal of rewriting and editing. A full-length collection can take three years or more of reworking and polishing before it’s ready to be published. Teaming with an experienced editor may speed up the process, but the time it takes to turn a manuscript into a book is valuable, even precious, to a poet’s growth. Why rush it?

Like writing a poem, assembling a collection of poetry is a non-linear process that invites deep immersion. Through close observation you begin to recognize the shape and purpose of the work. You note its weak points and its strengths. You go over it multiple times with various lenses, looking for connections and commonalities. You sink into the mystery of it, not looking for answers necessarily, but alert to questions.

In her article, “How Do You Pick and Arrange the Poems for a Poetry Collection?” poet and blogger Christina M. Ward, author of the collection “organic,” stresses the importance of cohesiveness (www.https:medium.com): “When I say plan a theme, I don’t mean that each poem needs to be about one topic, but the book as a whole needs to have a definable “purpose” or “theme” or “feel,” she says, suggesting that poets think of this as the “vision” of the book. It helps if a book is about something but not every collection needs a specific theme to be cohesive.

Selecting, Sectioning, and Sequencing

Once you’ve identified your vision for the book, you’re ready to begin selecting the poems that are most aligned with that vision. In assembling my second collection, I began by separating poems into two stacks, those that worked or had the potential to work, and those that clearly didn’t. At that point I had about thirty-five poems and knew I needed more. Searching what I laughingly call “my files” — a couple of drawers full of loose papers and others in manila folders — I found a few more possibilities, bringing the total to fifty-one, just enough for a full-length collection. I wasn’t exactly off and running, but there was a glimmer of a hope that I might find a book in there someplace. 

One way to jump-start your collection is to divide the manuscript into sections. This will let you zone in on specific areas and can make it feel more manageable. It also offers visual breaks, along with an opportunity to add section titles and related inscriptions that can help to transition the reader from one thematic focus, or mood, to the next. But like everything else in the process, these details are apt to change. For me, those changes are a sign that I’m beginning to hone in on the finer details. At some point, sections and inscriptions may appear superfluous or even interrupt the flow — if so, it’s okay to let them go. They will have served their purpose like scaffolding on a building site. 

One of the most challenging tasks in putting a collection together is sequencing. Phoebe Stuckes, a former Foyle Young Poet and author of Platinum Blonde (www.https:poetryarchive.org), compares the process to stand-up comedy, in which you “tell your second best joke at the start of your stand-up set and your best joke at the end.”  She suggests printing out your manuscript so you can physically try out various sequences until you find the right one. I’d compare this stage to putting an album of songs together; you want some ballads and some up tempo numbers, some highs and lows, some short numbers and some longer ones. These variations will add texture and interest. Avoiding repetition is key. If you have two poems that are both on the same topic and use much the same vocabulary, you’ll need to rework one or drop it. Feel free to experiment. Playing with different formats such as prose poems and concrete poems can reap unexpected benefits, not only in the way the poems look on the page, but in how they “mean,” and can open the work up in unexpected directions. If you decide later that an experimental poem doesn’t make the grade, you can always pull it.   

Having an accurate table of contents early on is an advantage if you decide to submit the manuscript on the spur of the moment or if you want to share it with a trusted reader for their input. Yes, it’s going to change a lot over the course of the project, but the benefit is that you can scan it from time to time to get a sense of how the “narrative line” is evolving (more on this later). It’s also a good place to enter any notes about what you think might be missing. Do you want a title poem? If so, where do you think it ought to go? Scanning the table of contents will help you decide. Granted, it can be tedious to update page numbers as you shift sections or shuffle poems around, but I’ve found that it’s worth it. This is the uninspiring part of the work, the busy work you might call it, that nevertheless helps to bring a sense of structure to the chaos. (Next time: Looking at structural models and selecting a title.) 

News

jeromegagnonblog

Books Noted

The Art and Craft of Poetry

In case anybody hasn’t heard, April was National Poetry Month, but any time is a good time to enjoy poetry in its various forms. Here are a few recent offerings:

Three Simple Lines: A Writers Pilgrimage into the Heart and Homeland of Haiku, by Natalie Goldberg (New World Library, 176 pages). Natalie Goldberg’s latest offering on the art and practice of writing takes her to Japan where she explores the origins of haiku among the country’s ancient temples and hidden gardens. Classic haiku by masters such as Basho, Buson, Issa, and Chiyo-ni appear in a narrative “as irresistible as a mountain stream…” says author Henry Shukman, “…and come alive in ways that still the mind, expand time, and open the heart.” As insightful as Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones and Writing the Landscape of Your Mind, this book reminds us of what it means to be open to growth, and how the practice of writing — and haiku, in particular —lends itself to mindfulness.

How to Write a Form Poem, by Tanya Runyon (T.S. Poetry Press). Even poets who primarily write free verse are likely to find this this “how to” book useful. It contains instructions and prompts for writing ten traditional forms, such as sonnets, sestinas, villanelles, haiku, and pantoums. Included are dozens of examples from Runyon and other poets, among them Elizabeth Bishop, Natasha Trethewey, Frank O’Hara, Matsuo Basho, and Wallace Stevens. An author and teacher, Runyon has also written How to Read a Poem and How to Write a Poem, both of which are geared for use in classrooms. 

Accidental Gardens, by Rob Carney (Stormbird Press). This is Carney’s take on the contemplative Japanese form of haibun. First used by Basho in the 17th century, the term refers to a hybrid genre that combines haiku with prose — typically, observations such as travel logs, and sketches of people, activities, or landscapes. Basho’s Okku no Hosomichi (Narrow Road to the Interior) is probably the most well-known example of the form. Comprised of four sections — 42 haibun in all — each of the short ruminations in Accidental Gardens ends with a brief poem or compelling image. Focusing on the natural world and our reckless disregard for the environment, the collection reads as “a journey through the absurdity, tragedy, and black comedy of late-stage capitalist and consumerist America,” writes author Nick Hunt. A professor of English at Utah Valley University, Carney has published seven other poetry collections.  

News

jeromegagnonblog

A Man of Many Hats: Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1919-2021)

Poet, painter, publisher, and bookstore owner Lawrence Ferlinghetti died at his home in San Francisco on February 22rd, aged 101, with family by his side. One of the main figures of the “Beat Generation,” the co-founder of City Lights Bookstore in the city’s North Beach neighborhood was an award-winning poet who also published many of his peers, including Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Gregory Corso, Diane Di Prima, Michael McClure, Lenore Kandel, and Bob Kaufman, among others. But he’s also recognized for his historic commitment to freedom of expression. After launching Ginsberg’s expletive-peppered poem, “Howl” in a book of the same title in the late 1950s, he was arrested by the S.F.P.D. on obscenity charges, making the book an instant cause celebre’. The resulting trial acquitted Ferlinghetti of all charges, with the judge declaring that the work had “redeeming social importance,” a decision that facilitated the distribution of other controversial titles.

For a lot of us who came of age in the 1960s and 70s, Ferlinghetti was a cultural icon, and City Lights was more than just a book store — it was a sanctuary, a place where you could find classic literature in paperback at affordable prices, shelves full of obscure literary magazines, and tabloids of various political stripes. I remember my first visit there was on a trip with some of my high school friends — this must have been in 1963 or 64. The poet Michael Palmer was standing outside the entrance on Columbus Avenue, dressed and made-up convincingly as Charlie Chaplin’s “little tramp”, tipping his bowler hat and greeting one and all. He explained the connection for me — Chaplin’s film, City Lights, was the inspiration for the name of the store. Those were the days when you could hang out in the basement at one of the little round tables, thumbing through the latest edition of the Pocket Poet’s Series (Ginsberg’s Howl was the fourth in that series), when you could get a steaming bowl of minestrone soup with parmesan cheese on top and a slice of sourdough bread for a dollar at Mike’s Pool Hall across the street. Mike’s is long gone, but City Lights is still hanging in there, even during these challenging times, thanks to a GoFund Me campaign last year that raised $400,000 in just four days.

Ferlinghetti was a familiar sight around North Beach in those early years, sporting one of his many hats and riding his bike around the neighborhood. He didn’t regard himself as a “Beat” poet, but as one of “the last of the bohemians,” cultivating an appreciation for jazz and the visual arts, as well as letters. (He wrote his M.A. thesis on the painter, Turner, and recorded many of his first poems to jazz accompaniment.) The author of more than 30 books, including the bestselling volumes, Pictures of the Gone World, A Coney Island of the Mind, and, most recently, a novel, Little Boy, he served as the city’s first Poet Laureate in 1998. Among his many awards are the Robert Frost Memorial Medal from the Poetry Society of America and the Author’s Guild Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2001, the quirky building that houses City Lights Bookstore was granted landmark status and in 2019, on the occasion of his 100th birthday, March 24th was declared Lawrence Ferlinghetti Day by the City of San Francisco.

Writing in the Paris Review, John Freeman described his work as Whitmanesque, with a “long, prosey line, but his I is softer, stranger, and less verbose…” as it steps “…across the pages with sudden, perfectly timed enjambments…” Some of his other influences were Thomas Merton, T.S. Eliot, and William Carlos Williams. Yet, in the end, the voice and the vision were unmistakably his own. An unapologetic lover of life and its many pleasures, he celebrated the joys and beauty of the world in his life and art, but he also took a stand against the dangers of nuclear proliferation, the moral turpitude of the Vietnam and Iraq Wars, and many other issues of the day. 

I’m sure there will be countless heart-felt tributes to him in the weeks ahead, and more studies, too, that recognize his extraordinary contribution. Poet Tess Taylor, for CNN, has written a tribute that reads as part poem, part prayer (“Lawrence Ferlinghetti was the Hive and the Honey,” 2/24/21). It’s full of sweet reminiscence and gratitude for what he gave to the community he lived in for over sixty years, but I’ll quote just the last three lines here: “Hail and farewell, Lawrence Ferlinghetti. May you rest under the good oaks. May you find someplace wonderful to sit in your hat, and may you speak long and well with the bards in the beyond.” Long-time employee Elaine Katzenberger, who now serves as director of book store, said that “I feel very grateful that I got to see him during the virus, and I’m glad that he lasted this long. I wish he was still here.” Reverend Mark Stanger, an Episcopalian priest and teacher at the Cathedral School for Boys, said that, “His words were a great friend to me.”

On Tuesday evening, February 23rd, an impromptu vigil took place in Jack Kerouac Alley between Vesuvio’s Cafe and the store. Poets Jack Hirschman, Deborah Drozd, Scott Bird and several dozen other mourners gathered to read from his poetry and to share memories and toasts. Inside, “a shrine was placed in the upstairs poetry room,” according to Sam Whiting and Nora Mishanec, writing in the S. F. Chronicle. “His trademark black bowler, frayed at the brim, sat next to some vintage photos and a basket of free postcards with his poem, ‘The Golden Gate,’ on the front.” Ferlinghetti is survived by a son, Lorenzo, a daughter, Julie, and three grandchildren. No public memorial has been scheduled due to the pandemic.      

Tongo Eisen-Martin Appointed Poet Laureate of San Francisco

“Poetry is really the opportunity to see what your mind has to communicate or how it wants to communicate when not tasked with some kind of social reproduction or some kind of survival…it’s just you and your thoughts,” Tongo Eisen-Martin said recently after his appointment as the eighth Poet Laureate of San Francisco. Raised in the city’s Bernal Heights neighborhood, he was nominated by a nine-member panel and appointed by Mayor Breed during Black History Month in February. Asked by KRON what his vision is for the role, he said: “It’s a pretty simple equation, it’s just workshops with people, providing open mikes, providing publications…the aim is to move poetry more into the trenches of the city where it belongs.” An educator and Columbia graduate, Eisen-Martin has taught in prisons and youth homeless shelters, “even youth group psych wards, everywhere our conditions are most wretched,” he told PBS New Hour last year. He’s also the founder of Black Freighter Press and the author of Heaven Is All Goodbyes, which received the 2018 American Book Award and the California Book Award for Poetry (Pocket Poet’s Series, City Lights Publishers).

News

jeromegagnonblog

Amanda Gorman Shines as the Sixth, and Youngest, U.S. Inaugural Poet 

During the inaugural ceremony in Washington D.C. last month, twenty-two year old Amanda Gorman delivered her poem “The Hill We Climb” just days after the deadly insurrection there. Describing herself as “a skinny black girl, descended from slaves, and raised by a single mother,” her poem aspires to “envision a way in which our country can still come together and still heal,” she said in an article by Alexandra Alter in the New York Times. Gorman, a recent Harvard graduate, was raised in Los Angeles where she sang in the youth choir and recited her poetry at St. Brigid Catholic Church in South Central L.A. “Í think a lot of times in cultures we think of the ways we can cleanse ourselves with water. I think of the ways we can cleanse ourselves with words, meaning that the poem was an opportunity to kind of resanctify, repurify, and reclaim, not just the Capitol Building, but American democracy and what it stands for,” she told Trevor Noah of the Daily Show. Inspiring and polished, Gorman’s performance was just about as good as it gets, at any age.

The focus on healing is shared by Richard Blanco, an openly gay Latino, who read his poem “One Today” at President Barack Obama’s second inaugural in 2013. Speaking to NBC’s Sandra Tulley, he suggested that “Poetry uses language to make us feel and think in new ways. That’s how it can help heal us — by asking questions we aren’t asking of ourselves and others, and by changing the conversation, the rhetoric, the discourse, so that we can see beyond the abstract language of sociopolitical jargon and arrive at greater truths,” said Blanco, who aims to “build bridges of empathy” with his poetry.

Maya Angelou was already a best-selling author with her candid memoir, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” when she served as inaugural poet at the swearing in of President Bill Clinton in 1993.  Her recitation of “On the Pulse of Morning,” with its themes of inclusion and responsibility, was stirringly theatrical, calling on her training as an actor and speaker, and echoing the oral tradition of African Americans such as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Frederick Douglas. At least one critic has suggested that Angelou’s greatness is attributable to that poem, but her enduring message may be in her life as much as in those words, in her role as a black woman writer, teacher, activist, and humanitarian.

The tradition of the inaugural poem is relatively recent in U.S. history. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy was the first of four presidents to select a poet to compose and read an original poem for the inauguration. His choice of Robert Frost resulted in one of the most memorable images from that time. Standing at the podium, sunlight reflecting off his untamed white hair and the snow on the ground, Frost recited his poem, “The Gift Outright” — completely from memory. But that wasn’t the poem he’d planned on delivering. Glare from the snow prevented him from reading his original text, “Dedication, For John Kennedy His Inauguration,” composed for the occasion. Both works can be found in “The Poetry of Robert Frost” (Holt, Rhinehart, & Winston, 1969). More recently, Miller Williams and Elizabeth Alexander have also served with distinction as inaugural poets for the second terms of Clinton and Obama. For more on this, see “Inaugural Poems in History,” www.poets.org.

News

jeromegagnonblog

Karumi

The quality of karumi, or lightness, can be found in Basho’s haiku as early as 1667. He was twenty-three years old when he wrote the following:*

cherry blossoms

in the breeze — breaking out

in laughter 

Haruo Shirane, Chair of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University, has described karumi as “a focus on everyday subject matter, on the use of ordinary language, and on a relaxed rhythmical, seemingly artless expression.” Here the traditional topic of cherry blossoms takes on an unusually welcome aspect. Rather than contrasting the beauty of the flowers with sadness at their brevity, for instance, Basho depicts the exuberance of the moment. Is it the blossoms that have broken out in laughter or the poet? Or both? In this case, ambiguity adds to the impact of the lines.

Much haiku is celebratory in nature. An exclamatory haiku such as the one above is a good example of this. Another approach, common to the Basho school of haiku, presents two juxtaposed images, offering up a view that embraces them both. Below, a view of the garden, written near the end of Basho’s life, evokes a minimalist yet wholistic response: 

morning dew —

muddy melons

on the ground

Here there’s no trace of poetic conceit, just the pristine scene as Basho found it. In that sense, karumi may be considered not only in its literal sense as “not heavy or dark” but as possessed of a light artistic touch, allowing the reader to bring to the scene what he or she will. Even on his deathbed, Basho found an unexpected lightness:

flies everywhere —

how lucky they are to meet up

with a sick man

In the 20th century, Nakagawa Soen was a lifelong practitioner of haiku. As a literature student at Tokyo Imperial University, he wrote his thesis on Basho and later became a Zen monk and teacher. This haiku, written in 1946, presents two images pointing to the connection of ordinary things:

small plums

and dewdrops —

alive together

Although penetrating, there’s nothing heavy about these lines. Instead there’s a clarity and freshness, and a sense of happiness at the simple pleasures. We, too, are alive together with the plums and the dewdrops. How wonderful! These are the primary characteristics of karumi.

*all versions by jg

Writing Prompt

This haiku prompt is aligned with the Basho school, using juxtaposed images. The purpose isn’t to create great haiku necessarily, but to gain flexibility in different ways of observing. Try juxtaposing an image of:

  • something large with something small
  • something animate with something inanimate
  • an experience of one sense perception with one of a different sense perception
  • nature with an emotion
  • something old with something new
  • something appealing with something unappealing

Then, play around with the lines, mixing and matching them to see what possibilities come up.

Poems, for Now

Last month I was invited to join with other poets for a Zoom reading sponsored by the River Heron Review out of Bucks County, PA. Hosted by co-founders Judith Lagana and Robbin Farr, it showcased work addressing the socio-political climate that appeared in the online venue Poems for Now. The reading provided a chance to see and hear poets from around the country and offered a refreshing change from the jingoistic language so prevalent today. Kudos to all those who participated and thanks to Judith and Robbin for making it all come together. www.riverheronreview.com

How to Haiku

Thanks to editor Bruce Ross for including the haiku, “sheltering in place” in the Fall/Winter edition of Autumn Moon Haiku Journal, out of Maine (www.autumnmoonhaiku.com). The author of How to Haiku, a Writer’s Guide to Haiku and Related Forms, Ross seeks selections that “express feeling connected to nature” and that “produce a haiku moment…”

Joy Harjo Reads

As part of the Poetry Society of America’s “Reading Through the Decades” series, U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo reads How to make good baked salmon from the river, by Nora Marks Dauenhauer: https://poetrysociety.org/features/reading-through-the-decades/joy-harjo-reads-nora-marks-dauenhauer.

“On Grief in the Holidays…”

Tracy K. Smith, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, speaks to Kat Chow on how she processes grief during the holidays and her rituals for the new year (NPR, 12/2/20). https://www.npr.org.

New Year Wishes

Here we are in December, wrapping up a rough year as the pandemic continues to take its toll. The light at the end of the tunnel, of course, is that there’s a vaccine on the horizon. It may not be a cure-all but it promises to save thousands of lives around the world. I’m grateful for that, and for the many gestures of generosity and courage I see and hear about every day. May this season bring hope and not just more hype, and may it be a time of light and healing as we move forward into the new year.            

News

jeromegagnonblog

A Rare Voice

Diane di Prima (1934-2020)

Poet, memoirist, and activist Diane di Prima, who was born in Brooklyn and launched her writing career in New York City’s Greenwich Village, died October 25th in San Francisco where she had lived and worked for over fifty years. She was 86. The author of This Bird Flies Backward (her first book) and Memoirs of a Beatnik, she penned over 40 books of poetry and prose, including the best-selling Recollections of My Life as a Woman: The New York Years. One of the few women writers associated with the Beat Movement, she co-founded the New York Poets Theater and the newsletter The Floating Bear with playwright LeRoi Jones (Amira Baraka), was befriended by Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, and published by Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s City Lights imprint. Although suffering from Parkinson’s and arthritis in her later years, she managed to write up until a few weeks before her death by using a cell phone or dictating her work, her long-time partner, Sheppard Powell, told the L.A. Times (10/28/20).    

I remember the first time I heard her read from her poetry. It was in the early 1970s at a small publishing venue, Panjandrum Press, a few blocks from where I was living in San Francisco. I loved her presentation — confident, clear, and soft spoken. After hearing her read, I felt that we, the audience, had been gifted in the way that we’re gifted by the elemental sounds of a running stream or wind in the trees. There was nothing pretentious about her or her work, nothing felt forced or unnatural. I wouldn’t see her again until the early 80s, this time at the San Francisco Zen Center where she was teaching a one day workshop. Here, the class was down on the floor, practicing automatic writing and, as I remember, cutting up poems to rearrange them in unexpected ways. Later, in the 90s I heard her read once again, at City Lights Bookstore in North Beach. The room was packed and we were lucky to get seats. The occasion was the publication of her collection, Pieces of a Song (City Lights, 1990). Ferlinghetti was there, his blue eyes happily taking it all in, the crowd, the energy. Each poem was just right, belying the work that went into them, and they rolled off her tongue as if she was uttering them extemporaneously. I saw her a few more times after that, greeting people at a bookstore in San Rafael where a series of Tibetan Buddhist teachers was appearing. “You’re just an old hippie, aren’t you?” she asked me once, and I laugh thinking of that, now. How easy it was for her to break through the walls and find common ground, which is exactly what her poetry does. 

She took poetry out of the halls of academe and into the streets, the coffee houses, and the bookstores. Yet her work is informed by a wide range of knowledge and interests, including metaphysics, Sanskrit, and Buddhist philosophy (she was a practicing Buddhist), as well as her early study of Keats and Pound (she sought out Pound as a mentor while he was confined to St. Elizabeth’s Hospital). In 2009, as Poet Laureate of San Francisco, she read from her poem, “First Draft,” which still resonates today:

my vow is:

to remind us all

to celebrate

there is no time

too desperate

no season

that is not

A Season of Song

The New York Times has described Diane di Prima as “…a rare female voice in a male world…” while NPR has referred to her as “one of the most prominent voices of the Beat Generation.” She taught in the poetics programs at the Naropa Institute, the California College of Arts and Crafts, and the New College of California. Among her honors are the National Poetry Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award and an honorary doctorate from St. Lawrence University. Her most recent book, The Poetry Deal, was published by City Lights Foundation in 2014. In his review of that book in Poetry Flash, Brue Isaacson wrote that, “In principle and poetry, di Prima is all about people — loved ones, family, social observations of simple interactions that show larger truths.” Besides her husband, Sheppard Powell, she is survived by five children, four grandchildren, three great grandchildren, and two brothers, according to the L.A. Times.   

News

jeromegagnonblog

On the Road with Basho

Few poets personify the archetype of the wanderer so much as the 17th century Japanese writer Matsuo Basho (1644-1694). He developed a hybrid form, haibun, to reflect both his inner and outer journeys, alternating prose passages with three brief lines that came to be known as haiku. His travels were a way for him to keep his work fresh while also giving him a freedom he wouldn’t otherwise have had as a civil servant, scholar, or monk. In 1687, he started a solo journey that’s reflected in his travelogue, Notes for My Knapsack (Oi no kabumi). Here he describes riding his horse during a storm and stopping beside rice fields*:

winter rice fields,

my horse and I — shadows

in the rain  

Rather than rely on literary allusions to cherished sites, Basho wanted to visit them in person, and this practice gives his work veracity and a sense of immediacy as in this haiku, dated 1688 and composed while on a stay at the temple of Zenko-ji, located below Mount Obasute:

dissolving all thoughts

of the four sects — moonlight

over Mount Obasute

(The reference to sects refers to the various schools of Buddhism.)

In 1689, he embarked on a five months long journey with his friend and student, Sora, and this trip is portrayed in his most well-known work, The Narrow Road to the North (Oku no hosomichi). Moved by the turn out of his pupils to see the pair off in their little boat, he composed these memorable lines: 

grasses are fading,

birds are chattering — and tears

blur the eyes of fishes

Early on, they paused at a grotto at Back View Falls (Urami-no-taki), where they sat in meditation behind the waterfall, still considered a sacred pilgrimage site today:

hearing water fall

from the inside out — entering

summer’s temple

In his final years he visited Ueno, Nara, Kyoto, Edo, and Osaka, among other places, meeting with students, and continuing to cultivate the notion of lightness, or karumi. In Osaka, he became ill and died there in the fall of 1694. These are among his last lines, reflecting his dedication to haiku, renga, and life on the road: 

on the vast way —

not tilling the same small plot

year after year

worn and ill —

this traveling heart lingers

in autumn fields

*all haiku versions by jg

New Poems and Haiku

Thanks to the editors of the River Heron Review’s Poems, for Now, for selecting an ekphrastic poem inspired by the early Chinese painting, Eighteen Songs of a Nomad Flute: The Story of Lady Wenji. The painted scroll (artist unknown) and poems by Lui Shang still resonate today with themes of war and its consequences.Thanks also to the editors of the upcoming Buddhist Haiku Anthology: The Awakened One, to the editors of Cattails, a journal from the United Haiku and Tanka Society, and to Wales Haiku Journal. 

The Fires

As I write this, over a million acres have burned on the west coast, several people have died, and thousands have evacuated. The scope of the devastation is almost incomprehensible. My prayers go out to the victims of this tragedy and their families, and to all those men and women who are working to save property and lives — firefighters, healthcare workers, law enforcement, and so many others — our prayers and gratitude for your service.

The fires aren’t limited to California, Oregon, and Washington. Conditions stemming from global warming have contributed to “climate fires” in other states such as Colorado, Idaho, and Alaska. There are currently 97 large fires “that have burned 4.7 million acres across several states,” according to the National Interagency Fire Center. In Oregon, which has been particularly hard hit, the Mayor of Ashland, John Stromberg, has set up a website for contributions to help the recovery process. It can be found at ashland.or.us/ashlandresponse.

News

jeromegagnonblog

Writers Walking

I’ve always enjoyed walking, maybe never so much as in my student days when I took to the streets and stairways of San Francisco, and I was always happy when others joined me. On one of my favorite walks we’d start at Grace Cathedral, not far from where I lived, heading up to Ina Coolbrith Park on Russian Hill, and then descending via Macondray Lane to North Beach for a much needed breather and cappuccinos. On another walk, I’d climb one or another of the narrow stairways above Mill Valley, following an old fire road for a surprising view of the bay in the distance. Now, during the renewed shutdown, walking turns out to be a good way to social distance and keep active.

There’s just something about it that’s relaxing and invigorating at the same time. More than that, it can be inspirational, as attested by several writers over the years. Of the 19th century romantic poets, William Wordsworth swore by his “rambles” through the Lake District in northern England, extended walks that resulted in the “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” in poems such as Tintern Abbey. His sister, Dorothy Wordsworth, wrote of her sibling that “starlight walks and winter winds are his delight.”

Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson were both inveterate walkers. “Me thinks that the moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow,” Thoreau observed, while Emerson advised that, “Few people know how to take a walk. The qualifications are endurance, plain clothes, old shoes, an eye for nature, good humor, vast curiosity, good speech, good silence, and nothing too much.”

In the 20th century, Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway, and Richard Wright all walked as a way to relax and promote creativity.  Novelist Jack Kerouac’s semi-autobiographical novel, The Dharma Bums, described a hiking trip he took with poet Gary Snyder in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in the early 1950s. Known today as much for his environmentalism as his poetry, Snyder has written that, “Walking is the great adventure, the first meditation, a practice of heartiness and soul primary to humankind. Walking is the exact balance between spirit and humility” (The Practice of the Wild, Counterpoint Press).

For myself, I generally prefer walking in tamer environs, say on a sidewalk at the edge of a park where I don’t have to worry too much about falling off a cliff or encountering a dangerous critter, as poet Mary Oliver once did on a Florida sojourn. (She came uncomfortably close to an alligator.) Then, my mind is naturally free from nagging thoughts and I start to pay attention to the world around me. Sometimes these walks prompt a poem or a haiku, sometimes not. In either case, I feel better for it.

Why is walking such a balm? A study in the British Journal of Sports Medicine found that, “those who adhered to a walking program showed significant improvements in blood pressure, slowing of resting heart rate, reduction of body fat and body weight, reduced cholesterol, improved depression scores with better quality of life and increased measure of endurance.” If that’s not enough, a recent study from Stanford University found that “walking boosts creative output by 60 percent…” Research suggests that, because walking utilizes both the left and right sides of the body, it enhances communication between the two hemispheres of the brain. That can translate to feeling more relaxed, more in tune with body and mind, and more open to inspiration.  Contemporary essayist Rebecca Solnit puts it this way: “Walking, ideally, is a state in which the mind, the body, and the world are aligned, as though they were three characters finally in conversation together, three notes suddenly making a chord” (Wanderlust: a History of Walking, Granta Publications.)

If you’re planning an outing, you may want to check out these guides: Walking San Francisco, by Tom Downs, Wilderness Press; Stairway Walks in San Francisco, by Adah Bakalinsky, Wilderness Press; Walking San Francisco’s 49-Mile Scenic Drive, by Kristine Poggioli and Carolyn Eidson, Craven Street Books. If you’re feeling more adventurous, consider Moon 101 Great Hikes of the San Francisco Bay Area, by Ann Marie Brown, Moon Travel, or 100 Hikes in the San Francisco Bay Area, by Mark Soars, Mountaineers Books.

Ruth Weiss

“Original,” “innovative,” and “a trailblazer” are all words that have been used to describe poet Ruth Weiss, sometimes referred to as the mother of the Beats. “I don’t quite like the term Beat, bohemian would be more appropriate for me,” she once said. One of the few women poets performing on the San Francisco scene in the 1950s, Weiss died July 31 at her home in Mendocino County, California. She was 92 years old. She was the first to read her work with live jazz accompaniment and created “a whole new performance art,” according to Jerry Cimino, founder of the Beat Museum in North Beach. It was a move that was soon adopted by others, including poet and publisher, Lawrence Ferlinghetti. As a child, Weiss fled Nazi Germany with her family, emigrating to the United States where they settled in Chicago. The author of twenty books and a contributor to numerous anthologies, including A Different Beat: Writings by Women of the Beat Generation (1997), she also appeared in several films, including  Luminous Procuress (1971), directed by Steven Arnold. An award-winning documentary, ruth weiss, the beat goddess, directed by Melody C. Miller was released last year and, just recently, Weiss was awarded the 2020 Maverick Spirit Award from the Cinequest Film Festival.

Poetry in the Schools 

Poet and critic Kadish Morris tells how “poetry saved me” and why denying it to students is a mistake, particularly for speakers of English as a second or other language. (August 9, 2020, www.theguardian.com.)