In the Spotlight: Naomi Shihab Nye

One of my very favorite poets, Naomi Shihab Nye, is teaching here as a visiting writer in just a couple weeks and--it would be an understatement to say--I'm excited. I'm scurrying around trying to find poems to share with the workshop (it's been months since I wrote, eek! what do you show to someone you adore?) and can't help but think of her remarkable spirit.

The author of poetry, young adult fiction and children's anthologies, Nye lends her voice to the warm, peaceful and genuinely heartfelt: she is a true humanitarian. In an interview a couple years back, she spoke of poetry's meaning: "I think for many of us 'the fuel that feeds us' is language in the sense that language can carry us to understanding and connect us to things that matter in our lives. For those of us who trust poetry and the power of linkage that poetry gives us, it's a way of sitting quietly with words and letting them lead us somewhere." The poem Nye's referring to is called, "Hidden,"

If you place a fern
under a stone
the next day it will be
nearly invisible
as if the stone has
swallowed it.

If you tuck the name of a loved one
under your tongue too long
without speaking it
it becomes blood
sigh
the little sucked-in breath of air
hiding everywhere
beneath your words.

No one sees
the fuel that feeds you.

If you were to take one book of poetry of the library this year, I would highly recommend her collection Words Under the Words. Her poems about love and family make me believe in times like these.

Home Is Where the Art Is: Tony Fitzpatrick

Looking at the latest copy of Poetry, I found myself completely enamored with the cover art by New Orleans artist Tony Fitzpatrick. The events of Hurricane Katrina are something I care deeply about--watching the documentaries, reading various writers experiences, taking in the photographs. I don't have any direct ties to the community--no family or friends, never traveled there--but, years after the levees broke, I still feel this great empathy for the people of the region. In an interview with the Times-Picayune Fitzpatrick was quoted as saying: “We love in poetry but, unfortunately, we live in prose. Sometimes the two are not congruent. What we remember of love is usually a fiction. What we aspire to is haiku: short, sweet, perfect.” Aren't these collages doing just what poetry should? The music of the words, the energy of the images, the vital remembrance.

{Click images to enlarge and see all the wonderful detail.}

A Pause for Poetry

There are some times when nothing satisfies more than a love poem. Here are two sides of the coin, the being together and apart, both by Matthew Rohrer, a wonderful young poet living in Brooklyn:


Credo

I believe there is something else

entirely going on but no single
person can ever know it,
so we fall in love.

It could also be true that what we use
everyday to open cans was something
much nobler, that we'll never recognize.

I believe the woman sleeping beside me
doesn't care about what's going on
outside, and her body is warm
with trust
which is a great beginning.



Poem

You called, you're on the train, on Sunday,
I have just taken a shower and await
you. Clouds are slipping in off the ocean,
but the room is gently lit by the green
shirt you gave me. I have been practicing
a new way to say hello and it is fantastic.
You were so sad: goodbye. I was so sad.
All the shops were closed but the sky
was high and blue. I tried to walk it off
but I must have walked in the wrong direction.


I can't help but think the short poem form here is a little bit like a lucid, lyrical polaroid (maybe with a little stitching...!). For more, read on on poets.org.

Pretty Primer: Joie de Vivre

Sugared almond. Honeysuckle. Egyptian jasmine. Lychee flower. I know a poet who once worked for a French perfume company. Doing what? Writing fragrance descriptions. Talk about a dream job! Recently, I've gotten hooked on reading about the lushest of the lush scents. Some detail the most evocative, lyrical moments. What are your favorites? How would you write your own perfume poem?

UPDATE: Cup of Jo reminded me how much I've been wanting to check out this perfumery (or anti-perfumery). Has anyone enjoyed CB's scents?

(Top left image from here--a little Marc Jacobs for a Saturday night.)

Colorography: Warm Apple Yellow

Today, in the poetry workshop I'm teaching, one of my students had the most wonderful description of a color: warm apple yellow. She was trying to portray the Nebraska sun setting behind farm fence posts (can you see it?) but, to test the description, I was thinking of all the possible ways to describe this color. I was thinking, is it like mustard? Or is it lighter? Like cream? Maybe even softer? There was simply no other way to describe the color--this apple was a perfectly unique specific shade. Poetry at its best.

Have you heard any brilliant descriptions of color lately?

More of the 101 list soon--it's been such a busy, busy week!

(Braised apples with saffron and cider from Martha Stewart.  Other yellowy sources: screenprint by Camilla Engman, The Yellow House by Van Gogh, No. 13 by Mark Rothko, illustration by Maira Kalman.)

Update: Check out Anne's amazing 'mustard' post on City Sage--looove that color, all bright and earthy!

Busy Bee

I'm going to try to stop and smell the flowers today and get in a post or two but...I'm busy, busy, busy. Doing what? Commenting on a tall stack of childrens' writing for the class I teach. It's a huge pleasure--every metaphor and description is so vivid. Cars become walnuts. Time melts like butter. The rain holds hands. Grandma's irises have the perfume of belonging. If your spirit ever needs uplifting, I recommend reading or writing with a child. Honestly, it is one of the best (and sometimes funniest) things there is.

(Image from Cookie's Summer Memory Photo Contest--fun! My vote is in!)

Gratitudes: The Gift of Poetry

Over the past couple years, I've spent some time working for Ted Kooser and seeking out poems for his weekly newspaper column, American Life in Poetry. Here in Nebraska, Ted is a celebrity: the first Midwestern poet ever to be honored with the title of U.S. Poet Laureate. He's also just a sweet, funny, caring, down-to-earth guy. S and I were so honored when he accepted our wedding invitation and showed up for our party--dressed to a tee with a finely patterned bowtie, no less! His gift to us? An anthology of love poems, of course.

A couple of weeks ago the ALP column had this most wonderful poem by Veronica Patterson (for more on what a senryu is click here) and I can't help but share:


Marry Me
a senryu sequence

when I come late to bed
I move your leg flung over my side
that warm gate

nights you're not here
I inch toward the middle
of this boat, balancing

when I turn over in sleep
you turn, I turn, you turn,
I turn, you

some nights you tug the edge
of my pillow under your cheek,
look in my dream

pulling the white sheet
over your bare shoulder
I marry you again


How perfect would this be for a ceremony--whether your wedding day or a vow renewal? We've only been married for a couple months now and already I got misty!

For weddings I also recommend checking out Ted's book of Valentines. For over a decade, he's been writing these sweet love poems and sending them out on a postcard to all his favorite people. Let me tell you, it's quite the feeling to find one of those in your mailbox!

(Photo by Allison Garrett.)

In the Spotlight: Kay Ryan

I don't often write about poetry on this blog. It is what occupies me in so much of my life and I like to reserve this space for other thoughts and inspirations. Today, though, I can't resist.

The Library of Congress has just announced the new United States Poet Laureate and it's wonderful news: Kay Ryan. Ryan is only the fourth woman officially named to this prestigious national literary position. Her poems have been described as "tiny, ingenious devices that inevitably conceal some hidden wonder." Salon's critic warns: don't think these pieces are merely decorative. (This, coincidentally, is how I think about good design--at its best it, too, is not simply decorative but deeply poetic. Good design also has a deeply eloquent language. A topic for another day...I digress!)

One of my favorites is called "Patience"--something I could use more of, always:

Patience is
wider than one
once envisioned,
with ribbons
of rivers
and distant
ranges and
tasks undertaken
and finished
with modest
relish by
natives in their
native dress.
Who would
have guessed
it possible
that waiting
is sustainable—
a place with
its own harvests.
Or that in
time's fullness
the diamonds
of patience
couldn't be
distinguished
from the genuine
in brilliance
or hardness.

This last sentence is so profound, so enigmatic. It makes me think that, just months ago, I received one of the greatest gifts of my life--a beautifully small and perfect diamond ring. This tiny thing is my most precious possession. I wonder about the "diamonds of patience" that cannot be distinguished from it. What a powerful meditation. The perfect thing to contemplate a month into marriage.

Hope for Poetry?

A sad day for poetry in the public sphere: New York City MTA has canceled the Poetry in Motion program after 15 years. Check out the NY Times article here.

Great Books: Summer Reading

School's out and I'm so ready to sit under one of these and read all afternoon. Some new books I'm looking forward to diving into:

Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri--the newest short story collection from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author

Living Room: Teaching Public Writing in a Privatized World by Nancy Welch--I'm intrigued by Welch's work on writing as social action

Astrid & Veronika by Linda Olsson--Olsson's debut novel and my bittersweet love story for the summer

One Drop by Bliss Broyard--Broyard speaks with great clarity on Henry Louis Gates PBS special, African American Lives 2, about her father's secret, passing as a white man, and her book, part memoir and part biography, aims to inquire into the difficult questions

Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie--the transcendental historical novel by Nigerian writer Adichie

Sea Change by Jorie Graham--as the NY Times Book Review says, "Graham’s poetry is among the most sensuously embodied and imaginative writing we have."


(Umbrella photo from the whimsical, eco-friendly At West End.)

Poetry in the Garden

I've been thinking recently about integrating a new pathway into our garden. The possibilities seem unlimited--curving, perpendicular lines, wood planks, slate, gravel. Thinking about our engagement photos (we're taking them next week!), we walked through our local park tonight and I remembered how much I love warm evening light across walking trails. Something has me reminded of the end of John Ashbery's remarkable poem "Meaningful Love":

I got rid of the book of fairy tales,
pawned my old car, bought a ticket to the funhouse,
found myself back here at six o'clock,
pondering "possible side effects."

There was no harm in loving then,
no certain good either. But love was loving servants
or bosses. No straight road issuing from it.
Leaves around the door are penciled losses.
Twenty years to fix it.
Asters bloom one way or another.

(Images found here and here.)

Gratitudes: Week in Review

Just when you think things can't get any better...they do. I've been having to make so many lists lately I figured I might make one in the spirit of this very fine week.

I'm thankful for:

1) Communities of love, as bell hooks describes them, and the budding love stories of others (especially those I love very much).
2) The patch of white daffodils in my backyard.
3) Mail, including the big shipping box of sparkling wine that arrived on my doorstep this afternoon.
4) The fact that I was able to walk our dog three times in a single day.
5) Short & sweet conversations with my officemates.
6) Crisp, new travel itineraries.
7) Young poets and literary friendships.
8) Paintings and cool museum boardrooms.
9) Witticisms.
10) The promise of summer teaching.
11) Diana Krall. Tift Merritt. Kate Wolf. Anita O'Day. Ray Charles.
12) Putting my sandals back on for good, for a good, good while.
13) Having enough. Not too much, just exactly enough of what I need.
14) Finding new causes and new causes for hope.

(Picture found here and for sale!)

Great Book: What Becomes You

Teaching this evening, I had a student walk out on my class because she couldn't handle reading or discussing this book. For just this reason, and many more wonderful others, I recommend this memoir to you. Read it, share it, and, for goodness sake, talk about it.

In the Spotlight: Marianne Boruch

One of our latest columns from American Life in Poetry was a piece by my former teacher, Marianne Boruch. What an evocative and almost elusive poem. It was a delight to work on the introduction.

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

The American poet Elizabeth Bishop often wrote of how places—both familiar and foreign—looked, how they seemed. Here Marianne Boruch of Indiana begins her poem in this way, too, in a space familiar to us all but made new—made strange—by close observation.

Hospital

It seems so—
I don't know. It seems
as if the end of the world
has never happened in here.
No smoke, no
dizzy flaring except
those candles you can light
in the chapel for a quarter.
They last maybe an hour
before burning out.
And in this room
where we wait, I see
them pass, the surgical folk—
nurses, doctors, the guy who hangs up
the blood drop—ready for lunch,
their scrubs still starched into wrinkles,
a cheerful green or pale blue,
and the end of a joke, something
about a man who thought he could be—
what? I lose it
in their brief laughter.

Nebraska Poets on Sheldon Painters: Contest Closed

The Sheldon poetry contest is officially closed! With over 250 entries, we're looking forward to a very exciting reading and reception on April 25th. Stay tuned for more details!

(Above painting is Jacob Lawrence's "Paper Boats," egg tempera on hardboard, 1949.)

Nebraska Poets on Sheldon Painters: On NET Radio

The final weeks for entering the Nebraska Poets on Sheldon Paintings Contest are here! And we found ourselves on NET Radio this weekend. The piece featured William Kloefkorn, Grace Bauer, Mary Birky, all talking about the project. Here's hoping for a successful submission period!

(Above painting is from the Sheldon Memorial Gallery collection: Georgia O'Keeffe, "New York, Night," oil on canvas, 1929. I've heard she painted her own car into the piece, the little yellow number at the street corner just above bottom left....)

Nebraska Poets on Sheldon Painters: Moving Forward

The official press release is about to go out: Nebraska Poets on Sheldon Paintings Contest. The museum has received a generous grant from the Nebraska Arts Council and we're moving rapidly forward with the publicity. Needless to say, I'm thrilled about the opportunity to solicit work from poets of all ages living in our fair state and our judges are excellent: Hilda Raz, Susan Aizenberg, Grace Bauer, Mary K. Stillwell. The contest is running in conjunction with the upcoming exhibition "Poets on Painters". If it's coming to a museum near you I highly recommend it. Collaboration, community, interarts--it inspires one to imagine what other kinds of partnerships are possible. (Above painting is from the Sheldon Memorial Gallery collection: Fairfield Porter, "Long Island Landscape with Red Building," oil on canvas, about 1962. Porter, too, was a friend of poets, specifically James Schuyler and the NY School.)

Great Book: Boy with Flowers

My good friend Ely Shipley's book of poems, Boy with Flowers, is coming out from Barrow Street and I am--this almost covers it--overjoyed about his good news! I can't wait to teach it.

Just When You Think You Know Someone...

Ted Kooser's poetry in comic form is surprising and wonderful. You can find the whole comic on the Poetry Foundation website. I just love those blue morning glories--they're some of our last hangers-on here! And the original poem? It goes a little something like this:

The Giant Slide

Beside the highway, the Giant Slide

with its rusty undulations lifts

out of the weeds. It hasn’t been used

for a generation. The ticket booth

tilts to that side where the nickels shifted

over the years. A chain link fence keeps out

the children and drunks. Blue morning glories

climb halfway up the stairs, bright clusters

of laughter. Call it a passing fancy,

this slide that nobody slides down now.

Those screams have all gone east

on a wind that will never stop blowing

down from the Rockies and over the plains,

where things catch on for a little while,

bright leaves in a fence, and then are gone.

Sweet Find: L-O-V-E Broadside

Check out the Virginia Arts of the Book Center's newest abcedarian broadside from Jeanette Marie Sayers. My favorite stanzas:

B.
Love is one person
in two bodies.

C.
Not quite a ring—
more like a Cracker Jack prize
or meeting the parents.

I.
All brain, feet,
and business—
no time to be a poet
or lover.

P.
Formerly B,
now a poet.

Z.
N, with feigned left feet,
half dancing, half falling
towards bed.