Poetry After 9/11

Poetry After 9/11

Poetry After 9/11: An Anthology of New York Poets*
Edited by Dennis Loy Johnson and Valerie Merians

As with all poetry, this collection is not something to rush through. Especially with this collection, there is an intensity, even with the more lighthearted pieces.

Alicia Ostriker writes in the introduction, "Not many of the voices in this book are solemn. Now do they repeat. Like an explosion, the poems fly out in all directions from an ignited core.... This book is a portrait of the New York temperament, a tangle of cynicism, pride, humor, compassion, and of course confusion. Plus the capacity to absorb hurt and rebound."

One of the more lighthearted pieces was Paul Violoi's "House of Xerxes," which describes a scene that it a cross between the Olympic Parade of Nations and the best of Paris is Burning. Here's the first stanza:

Here come those splendid Persians!
We were expecting fireworks
And here they are!
Short bow, long arrows,
Colorful long-sleeve shirts
Under iron breastplates -
Nice fish-scale pattern on those breastplates.
Just the right beach touch, very decky.
Quivers dangling under wicker-worky sheilds,
A casual touch, that.
And those floppy felt caps
Make it very wearable, very sporty.
Huge amounts of gold,
A killer-look feel
But it still says A Day at the Shore.

There are, of course, poems that deal more directly with the attack, such as Ostriker's "The Window, at the Moment of Flame":

and all this while I have been playing with toys
a toy superhighway a toy automobile a house of blocks

and all this while far off in other lands
thousands and thousands, millions and million

you know - you see the pictures
women carrying bony infants

men sobbing over graves
building sculpted by explosion -

earth wasted bare and rotten
and all this while I have been shopping, I have

been let us say free
and do they hate me for it

do they hate me

***

My favorite line in the whole collection, and maybe one of my favorite lines, period, came from Charlie Smith's poem "Religious Art"

I press hard with my feet
against the earth and
call this fighting back

Every day.


*This book was sent to me by the publisher, Melville House

A Poetry Challenge

Nikky Finney

In 2011 I read a single volume of poetry. That's not really all that surprising, as poetry is not typically one of my go-to genres. I would like to read more of it, though. So I'm signing up for the 2012 Fearless Poetry Exploration Challenge hosted by Serena over at Savvy Verse & Wit.

Here's what you have to do (your choice):

a. Read and review up to 2 books of poetry throughout 2012 and leave the full link to each review in Mr. Linky.

b. Participate in at least 3 Virtual Poetry Circles throughout the year.

c. Sign up to feature poetry on your blog for April’s National Poetry Month as part of Savvy Verse & Wit’s Blog Tour.

d. Or some combination of the above.

At the very least, I'm aiming to read and review two books of poetry. I've got them picked out, now I just need to go buy them: Nikky Finney's NBA award winning Head Off and Split and If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho, translated by Anne Carson.

Do you have a favorite poet? Any suggestions for what I should read? Tell me in the comments!

Feeling Woefully Under-read

The past two years I've wanted to attend the Brooklyn Book Festival, but life got in the way. This September, it's going to happen. I recently checked the list of authors and participants. Know how many authors I've read?

Five.*

That seems to be an incredibly paltry number. In preparation for the September event, I will read, um, more. How many more? I'd like to at least double my number. I've got a month and a half, so that is definitely doable.

Some possibilities:

Half-Lit Houses, Tina Chang, who apparently is Brooklyn's poet laureate. I didn't know that such a post existed! Her New York Times profile makes her seem irresistible, and I love the title of her first collection.

A Tiger in the Kitchen, Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan. I like food. I (often) like memoirs. I'm not crazy about the cover (and yes, I often judge a book that way) but her blog is beautiful, so I'm willing to give it a try.

Vaclav & Lena, Haley Tanner. I like Brooklyn. I'm a bit trepidatious about this one, as the Times review says that it's overly dramatic in places. I usually like reserved writing. 

I think I'll print the list of authors and stick it in my wallet to have handy next time I'm wandering the library or bookstore.

Oooooh! After printing the list, I realized that my good friend's brother, David Ezra Stein, is on it! He's a children's book writer and illustrator. I wasn't paying too much attention to that section, as I don't typically read children's books. Maybe it's cheating, but I'm going to make sure to read one of his books (Interrupting Chicken, maybe?) to count towards my five to be read.


*For the record: Johnathan Safran Foer, Chuck Klosterman, Nicole Krauss, Joyce Carol Oates, Téa Obreht.

Travelling to a far off island

Available at Amazon

My Urohs
Emelihter King

As I've mentioned, I'm currently trying to complete a couple of reading challenges. To say that getting books from Oceania is a challenge in itself would be a severe understatement. I was happy to find this poetry collection published by Kahuaomānoa Press. According to the "about the author" blurb, Emelihter King was born on Guam, and has spent much of her life back and forth between her native Pohnpei, Hawai'i and Guam. 

The title comes from the traditional Pohnpeian skirt. In a footnote to one poem King states that she is likens the uroh to Pohnpeian culture as a whole. I confess I know pretty close to zilch about Pohnpeian culture, so I was eager to dig into this when it finally arrived from Amazon.

King is at her best when describing slices of life in tantalizing detail. One of my favorites in the volume is "Kool-Aid."

Kool-Aid

doesn't taste good here in Honolulu
I wanna eat it sweating in the heat,
sitting on a rock,
under a guava tree
with my red-fingered friends
dip, dip our green mango
lick, lick our fingerstongues turning dark red


Gorgeous. I want to be sitting there eating Kool-Aid with her.

My biggest complaint is the gender essentialism in a couple of places. In "Ngih Kohl O" (The Gold Tooth), King talks about young Micronesian men who have gone and taken government jobs, and now come by,
"speaking English while strutting around
with that white man's attitude...
when was the last time you
planted something in the ground
and felt like a real man?"

I understand this is a reaction to colonization - and this is a collection that speaks powerfully to the colonial experience. King is fiercely proud of her culture, and rightly so. But just like colonization is a harmful process, so is reinforcing the idea that "men" and "women" are to act in fixed ways and no one should deviate from them.