Kate Gale Leaves Gnawed Bones for Peggy Shumaker

Last Thursday we walked over to the Arts Building at UAA to hear poetry.  Kate Gale, who created and runs, as I understood it, Red Hen Press, read red hot poetry.  Her poems are in your face and challenge the listener on themes not usually rendered so directly in poetry or elsewhere.   (I found the Red Hen website to be visually interesting - the icon of the hen is white, though the words are red - and incredibly slow to open.)

She read in one about luring someone out of the prison of his high rise office, to fly out the window to freedom.  It was a powerful poem.  She did preface it by explaining that she wrote it when she was trying to convince her husband to leave his secure job with a good salary.  Just leave it and join her in pursuing poetry and making the Red Hen Press work.  In a poetry reading you can get such context from the poet that you normally wouldn't get in a book of poetry.  But without the preface, a reader has more freedom to interpret the poem more personally.

It wasn't like one imagines a poetry reading.  Rather it felt as though she was exposing her heart with just the thinnest veil of words between herself and the audience.

Then Peggy Shumaker came to the podium.  We'd all been given copies of her book Gnawed Bones at the beginning of the reading and she told us now, that they were only on loan so we could read along.  She asked audience members to pick a poem for her to read.  Someone would call out a title, then she'd ask what page, and read.  By the third of fourth poem people were calling out page numbers, which is a lot less poetic, but it moved things along faster.  I liked the idea of this - involving the audience more - but somehow it was less intimate. It was like the audience members were fetching a ball and then dropping it at her feet waiting to be petted.

And each time, Peggy would go to the page, see the poem, and smile as she recognized it.  Then she read it.

I'd read one of the poems in the book before things started.  It was about visiting a sick relative in the hospital.  Since a good friend is sick in the hospital, it particularly hit home.  But I didn't ask her to read it.

Shumaker's reading was much more like I used to imagine poetry readings.  I don't have her poems in front of me so it's hard to say exactly what it was about them, but the poems and the delivery sounded very much like 'poetry' in the sense of something distinct from real life.  She read everything in a voice and rhythm that one associates with teachers reading poetry.   

It was unfortunate that Shumaker didn't proceed Gale.  I think that would have worked much better.  As it was, it really felt that after Gale, all that was left for Shumaker, was gnawed bones.

But don't take my word for it.  You can listen to podcasts of Thursday evening and many of the other presentations this week. Note:  the link goes directly to the podcast for Gale and Shumaker.  For the others look for July 2010 podcasts.   There is one more reading Tuesday night July 20, 2010. 

like a finger in a world without hands

W.S. Mervin will be the new poet laureate of the United States. 

With millions mailing doomed resumes, with oil gushing into the Gulf
What is a poet laureate and who cares?

A poet whispers words at the world
Blowing truth kisses at passersby

Despite wars and borders to attend to
Someone in Washington remembered
To appoint a new poet

 


From the end of The River of Bees:

He was old he is not real nothing is real
Nor the noise of death drawing water

We are the echo of the future

On the door it says what to do to survive
But we were not born to survive
Only to live

From the end of  When You Go Away

I remember that I am falling
That I am the reason
And that my words are the garment of what I shall never be
Like the tucked sleeve of a one-armed boy

A poet's life is words.  What is he saying here?  Good poetry is NOT sweetness and light.  It requires some work.  And the ability to face truths.



And here's a whole poem

Beggars And Kings by W. S. Merwin

In the evening
all the hours that weren't used
are emptied out
and the beggars are waiting to gather them up
to open them
to find the sun in each one
and teach it its beggar's name
and sing to it It is well
through the night

but each of us
has his own kingdom of pains
and has not yet found them all
and is sailing in search of them day and night
infallible undisputed unresting
filled with a dumb use
and its time
like a finger in a world without hands 

 

Here's a spoon to savor some of more of Mervin's word jams


 

If Thoreau Had a Blog - "will not any endeavor to cure the brain-rot"

A Juneau friend has lent me a book of poetry edited by Robert Bly.  I've never been particularly attracted to Bly, but there are a lot of poems by different poets in this book.  The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart is subtitled "Poems for Men."  Except this piece by Thoreau is prose.

And I can't find, in the book, where this piece is from.  There's a copyright section at the end, but I guess this is old enough that the rights were public.  Fortunately, today, unlike 1992 when the book was published, I can easily find the source through Google.  It's little, but cumulative, issues like this, that I think have soured me on Bly.   In any case, Google tells me this is from the conclusion of Walden Pond.  So you can read what I left out, plus the rest of Waldon Pond at the link if you choose.

I fear chiefly lest my expression may not be extravagant enough, may not wander far enough beyond the narrow limits of my daily experience, so as to be adequate to the truth of which I have been convinced. Extra vagance! it depends on how you are yarded. . .

I desire to speak somewhere without bounds; like a man in a waking moment, to men in their waking moments; for I am convinced that I cannot exaggerate enough even to lay the foundation of a true expression. Who that has heard a strain of music feared then lest he should speak extravagantly any more forever?

Why level downward to our dullest perception always, and praise that as common sense? The commonest sense is the sense of men asleep, which they express by snoring. Sometimes we are inclined to class those who are once-and-a-half-witted with the half-witted, because we appreciate only a third part of their wit. Some would find fault with the morning red, if they ever got up early enough. "They pretend," as I hear, "that the verses of Kabir have four different senses; illusion, spirit, intellect, and the exoteric doctrine of the Vedas"; but in this part of the world it is considered a ground for complaint if a man's writings admit of more than one interpretation. While England endeavors to cure the potato-rot, will not any endeavor to cure the brain-rot, which prevails so much more widely and fatally?

Would this Thoreau's blog have any readers today?  How would he have written this today?  Would he think, perhaps that today we have taken his call for extravagance a bit too far?  Or not far enough?   I'm sure he would still be railing against the limits of common sense and brain-rot. 

From Boloji:  

Six hundred years ago Kabir was born in India in 1398 AD. He lived for 120 years and is said to have relinquished his body in 1518. This period is also said to be the beginning of Bhakti Movement in India.

A weaver by profession, Kabir ranks among the world's greatest poets. Back home in India, he is perhaps the most quoted author. The Holy Guru Granth Sahib contains over 500 verses by Kabir. The Sikh community in particular and others who follow the Holy Granth, hold Kabir in the same reverence as the other ten Gurus.

Kabir openly criticized all sects and gave a new direction to the Indian philosophy. This is due to his straight forward approach that has a universal appeal. It is for this reason that Kabir is held in high esteem all over the world. To call Kabir a universal Guru is not an over exaggeration. To me personally, the very name Kabir means Guru's Grace. 

And from Sacred-Texts:

The Vedas

There are four Vedas, the Rig Veda, Sama Veda, Yajur Veda and Atharva Veda. The Vedas are the primary texts of Hinduism. They also had a vast influence on Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism. Traditionally the text of the Vedas was coeval with the universe. Scholars have determined that the Rig Veda, the oldest of the four Vedas, was composed about 1500 B.C., and codified about 600 B.C. It is unknown when it was finally committed to writing, but this probably was at some point after 300 B.C.
The Vedas contain hymns, incantations, and rituals from ancient India. Along with the Book of the Dead, the Enuma Elish, the I Ching, and the Avesta, they are among the most ancient religious texts still in existence. Besides their spiritual value, they also give a unique view of everyday life in India four thousand years ago. The Vedas are also the most ancient extensive texts in an Indo-European language, and as such are invaluable in the study of comparative linguistics.

Wednesday Night's Readings - Rogow Gets Racy

Zack Rogow's book, The Number Before Infinity, recounts a love affair, through poetry. Along with the erotic poems to his lover (I used racy in the title because of the alliteration, but erotic seems more apt) the narrator also tells of the impact on his marriage. In the video, Rogow reads one very sexy poem to the lover and one about the daughter's displeasure with the father breaking up the family.

This is not a big book, but one that I think most couples would benefit from reading aloud to each other. It raises issues - passionate love, passionate love of someone outside the marriage, the impacts on the family - that couples shoud talk about, but I suspect don't, until it's too late. And since he's such a good poet, he captures in a few, well chosen words, what academics can't say in long volumes.



The UAA Readings go on tonight (Thursday) in the UAA Pub. David Grimes is doing a concert. There've been around 60 folks each night. A good chunk are people taking the workshops, but also strays like us. Dark Friday night, then back in Rasmuson Hall 101 at 8pm Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. The detailed schedule with bios is here. For all the other posts on the Summer Reading Series.

For an interesting Saturday night double header - go to the UAA Readings at 8pm and then to Out North for the final episode of Midnight Soapscum.