Tag: American Poetry

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: NORMA LILIANA VALDEZ

Posted on by asitoughttobemagazine

INCISION
by Norma Liliana Valdez

Norma Liliana Valdez arrived to California from Mexico in her mother’s pregnant belly. She was born and raised in the Bay Area. Her poetry seeks to disentangle the tradition of women’s oppression and pain through the personal intersection of the psyche with the page. She is an alumna of the Voices of our Nations Arts Foundation (VONA) writing workshop for writers of color and the Writing Program at UC Berkeley Extension. She holds a Master’s degree in Counseling from San Francisco State University and works with first-generation, underrepresented students as a community college counselor. She is currently working on her first poetry manuscript, Coyolxauhqui.

Editor’s Note: Ms. Valdez is a poet to watch out for. Through her manipulation of language- in its meaning, its sound, and its visual expression on the page- she is adept at using emotional turmoil to create poetic experiences that transform her readers. She is one of my personal favorite poets, and I await her first book of poetry with baited breath.

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: JUDITH NEWTON

Posted on by asitoughttobemagazine

PRESS TWICE FOR YES
by Judith Newton

Do you know me? Are you too warm? Shall I help you die?

“There’s none can die in the arms of those who are wishing them sore to stay on earth.”


In the end when you lay almost in a coma,
your belly concave as the flanks of living skeletons
in newsreels long ago,
your pointed hips worn through almost
in purple bed sores
as if your skin had turned to rotting clothes.
Your eyes showed strips of white
like blinds drawn down in a house where I once lived,
and I saw your mind withdraw,
as in a dream when I returned
and found the roof of my old room had fallen in.

And yet your hands were warm, and they were large hands still,
with long square fingers, hands to lay my life in–
now they lay in mine,
as if they were the life in you that still remained.
I held on to them, held on to you
straining not to hear the strangled rasping of your breath,
trying not to see how I was like that man
who kept his dying child from rest by “wishing” it,
by willing it to stay
and pulling it still closer to his breast.

Judith Newton lives in Kensington, CA. She is the author of several books of nonfiction and is completing a memoir: The Joys of Cooking: A Love Story. She is a food columnist for the iPinion Syndicate, and is completing a book of poetry entitled Poetry for the Immune Deficient.

Editor’s Note: Today’s poem is from the poetry-series-in-progress entitled Poetry for the Immune Deficient. The author created the series for everyone who has suffered loss and for everyone who lacks the immunity necessary to combat what life has to offer. The occasion for these poems was the death from AIDS of the poet’s ex-husband and best friend Dick Newton in 1986. The poems are about loss— how we choose to encounter it and how it comes to us in ways that we are not prepared for. They are also about the complexities of relationships and about poetry as a form of healing. The intention behind these poems seems fitting for September 11th, a day of healing in America.

Want to read more by and about Judith Newton?
iPinion

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: ANNE SEXTON

Posted on by asitoughttobemagazine




THE TRUTH THE DEAD KNOW
by Anne Sexton

For my Mother, born March 1902, died March 1959
and my Father, born February 1900, died June 1959

Gone, I say and walk from church,
refusing the stiff procession to the grave,
letting the dead ride alone in the hearse.
It is June. I am tired of being brave.

We drive to the Cape. I cultivate
myself where the sun gutters from the sky,
where the sea swings in like an iron gate
and we touch. In another country people die.

My darling, the wind falls in like stones
from the whitehearted water and when we touch
we enter touch entirely. No one’s alone.
Men kill for this, or for as much.

And what of the dead? They lie without shoes
in the stone boats. They are more like stone
than the sea would be if it stopped. They refuse
to be blessed, throat, eye and knucklebone.

Anne Sexton (1928 – 1974) was an influential American poet, known for her highly personal, confessional verse. She won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1967. Themes of her poetry include her suicidal tendencies, long battle against depression, and various intimate details from her own private life, including her relationship with her husband and children. (Annotated biography of Anne Sexton courtesy of Wikipedia.org.)

Editor’s Note: Today’s post is dedicated to the poet Norma Liliana Valdez, who recently shared an audio recording of Sexton reading today’s selection. Keep an eye out for the work of Ms. Valdez who, like Sexton, has the ability to transform emotional turmoil into a poetic experience that transforms her readers.

For me, this piece slices as close to the bone as a poem can. That inevitable human experience of losing my parents is my greatest fear.

Despite the inherently personal nature of the poem and of Sexton’s experience, a distance can be felt in her choice of words and images. In another country people die, not in this, her own country. The dead lie in boats, not here with her. And Sexton’s discussion within the poem is directed to her darling, to someone among the living with whom she is sharing an experience of touch, of connection, of living and of not being alone. It feels as though in order to even comprehend the overwhelming experience of losing her parents Sexton has to distance herself from that experience and throw herself into connection with another living being, with the notion that “no one’s alone.”

Want to read more by and about Anne Sexton?
Audio recording of Sexton reading “The Truth the Dead Know”
Modern American Poetry
Poets.org

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: EMILY DICKINSON

Posted on by asitoughttobemagazine




THE DANDELION’S PALLID TUBE
by Emily Dickinson

The Dandelion’s pallid tube
Astonishes the Grass,
And Winter instantly becomes
An infinite Alas —

The tube uplifts a signal Bud
And then a shouting Flower, —
The Proclamation of the Suns
That sepulture is o’er.

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) is one of America’s most beloved poets. Most of her work was published after her death, and since then she has become an icon for American poetry.

Editor’s Note: Today’s post is dedicated to Deborah D., a dear friend, faithful reader, and lover of poetry. Deborah was thoughtful enough to let me know (since I am currently living in New York) that the New York Botanical Garden is hosting an exhibit titled “Emily Dickinson’s Garden: The Poetry of Flowers.” The exhibit was inspired by Dickinson’s life as an avid gardener. Known to be a recluse in her Amherst, Mass home, she was known in her lifetime as more of a gardener than a poet, though she always carried the latest poem she was working on in the pocket of her gardening dress and incorporated flowers and nature into her poems. Dickinson referred to herself as a dandelion. Read about the NYBG Emily Dickinson exhibit here.

Want to read more by and about Emily Dickinson?
Poets.org
The Literature Network
NPR on the NYBG Exhibit

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: CHARLES BERNSTEIN

Posted on by asitoughttobemagazine




ALL THE WHISKEY IN HEAVEN
by Charles Bernstein

Not for all the whiskey in heaven
Not for all the flies in Vermont
Not for all the tears in the basement
Not for a million trips to Mars

Not if you paid me in diamonds
Not if you paid me in pearls
Not if you gave me your pinky ring
Not if you gave me your curls

Not for all the fire in hell
Not for all the blue in the sky
Not for an empire of my own
Not even for peace of mind

No, never, I’ll never stop loving you
Not till my heart beats its last
And even then in my words and my songs
I will love you all over again

From All the Whiskey in Heaven by Charles Bernstein. Copyright © 2010 by Charles Bernstein.

Charles Bernstein is an American poet, essayist, writer, and editor who has authored over 40 books. His works, accomplishments, and accolades are too numerous to note here. For a thorough look at Charles Bernstein check out the Electronic Poetry Center.

Editor’s Note: Today’s post is dedicated to Nathan W.

Recently a dear friend and faithful reader of this series took me for my inaugural visit to Green Apple Books in the Richmond District of San Francisco. Holed up in the poetry section I came across a copy of All the Whiskey in Heaven, a book named for a poem of the same name. Nathan W. had chosen this poem for me about two years ago when it appeared in The Nation, and it has been a part of the map of my heart ever since.

Today’s poem will always remind me that no matter how fleeting, no matter how much lost or gained, it is a blessing to be loved.

Want to read more by and about Charles Bernstein?
Poets.org
The Poetry Foundation
Electronic Poetry Center

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: CARL R. MARTIN

Posted on by asitoughttobemagazine




LATE TO THE PARTY
by Carl R. Martin

I like the country except sometimes at night
when the old red-brick church stands a black hulk
near softly fluttering leaves by the wood
and the Pentecostal shadow bears down on his horse
pursuing you on spurred flanks of the road
and steps over graves, praying with his ten league hooves,
never whistling and rustling like the air or the owl.

You think up something crazy and unreal
and speak it to yourself, “It’s like dueling tractors these caterpillar heads
that piss in the grave.” But the spirit’s still knocking, still biding
its time on thought over faces, and love’s limping cocoon,
whose translucent wings stand empty by the nightstand.

Carl R. Martin has been published in numerous literary magazines including Combo, Rhizome, Monatshefte, Pembroke Magazine, New American Writing, Denver Quarterly, and The American Poetry Review. He has won grants from the North Carolina Arts Council and the Wesleyan Writers Conference and he is a MacDowell Fellow. His first book of poetry Go Your Stations, Girl was published in limited and trade editions by the world renowned fine press printer Arion Press in San Francisco, now located in the Presidio and presided over by master printer and designer Andrew Hoyem. His second book of poetry Genii Over Salzburg was published by Dalkey Archive Press which publishes the Review of Contemporary Fiction as well as a distinguished list of classic modern innovative voices. His latest book of poetry is titled Rogue Hemlocks. (Annotated biography of Carl R. Martin courtesy of Here Comes Everybody, with edits.)

Editor’s Note: Recently I was thoughtfully loaned a book of poetry by creator and former Managing Editor of As It Ought To Be, Matt Gonzalez. I was captivated by the book before I even reached the first poem. I suggest you pick up a copy of Carl R. Martin’s first book, Go Your Stations, Girl. The fascinating story of how Martin came to be a published poet is in-and-of-itself worth the read, even before you have the pleasure of his simple, elegant, and instantly classic poetry.


Want to read more by and about Carl R. Martin?
Here Comes Everybody
Cold Front Mag
Bookslut

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: JACK SPICER

Posted on by asitoughttobemagazine




SECOND LETTER TO FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA
by Jack Spicer

Dear Lorca,

When I translate one of your poems and I come across words I do not understand, I always guess at their meanings. I am inevitably right. A really perfect poem (no one yet has written one) could be perfectly translated by a person who did not know one word of the language it was written in. A really perfect poem has an infinitely small vocabulary.

It is very difficult. We want to transfer the immediate object, the immediate emotion to the poem – and yet the immediate always has hundreds of its own words clinging to it, short-lived and tenacious as barnacles. And it is wrong to scrape them off and substitute others. A poet is a time mechanic not an embalmer. The words around the immediate shrivel and decay like flesh around the body. No mummy-sheet of tradition can be used to stop the process. Objects, words must be led across time not preserved against it.

I yell “Shit” down a cliff at the ocean. Even in my lifetime the immediacy of that word will fad. It will be dead as “Alas.” But if I put the real cliff and the real ocean into the poem, the word “Shit” will ride along with them, travel the time-machine until cliffs and oceans disappear.

Most of my friends like words too well. They set them under the blinding light of the poem and try to extract every possible connotation from each of them, every temporary pun, every direct or indirect connection – as if a word could become an object by mere addition of consequences. Others pick up words from the streets, from their bars, from their offices and display them proudly in their poems as if they were shouting, “See what I have collected from the American language. Look at my butterflies, my stamps, my old shoes!” What does one do with all this crap?

Words are what sticks to the real. We use them to push the real, to drag the real into the poem. They are what we hold on with, nothing else. They are as valuable in themselves as rope with nothing to be tied to.

I repeat – the perfect poem has an infinitely small vocabulary.

Love,
Jack

Copyright © 1975 by The Estate of Jack Spicer.

Jack Spicer (1925-1965) has been twice before featured on As It Ought To Be. For his bio and other samples of his work, click here and here.

Editor’s Note: This is the third time Jack Spicer has been featured here on As It Ought To Be. Today is the third, and also my thirtieth birthday. Jack Spicer is among my favorite poets, and After Lorca among my favorite of his works.

With After Lorca, Spicer invented a fresh and innovative art form. The book (originally a chapbook, printed and distributed locally in the San Francisco Bay Area, as was Spicer’s way) notes that it is published “With an introduction by Federico Garcia Lorca.” Of course, Lorca had been dead some twenty-one years by the time Spicer published this book.

The above letter lies somewhere between the boundaries of poetry and prose, somewhere between the world of the living and the dead, somewhere between poetry and creative nonfiction. And within the letter itself is a sort of manifesto of Spicer’s. His thoughts on language, on art, even critique of the writing of his compatriots – a not altogether un-Spicerian thing to do. Under the guise of a letter to Lorca, Spicer is able to share with his audience an insight into his mind and his craft while simultaneously doing something with language and art that had not been done before.

Today’s post specifically struck a chord with me in relation to my own evolving craft. I specifically want to dedicate today’s post to As It Ought To Be Editor Okla Elliot. Okla has been kind enough to help me revise my poems for submission to graduate school. Throughout this infuriating process he has reminded me over and over to put concrete objects into my poems and that they suffer from too many abstract ideas and images. I think Okla would agree with this statement, if only in relation to my work, “Most of my friends like words too well. They set them under the blinding light of the poem and try to extract every possible connotation from each of them, every temporary pun, every direct or indirect connection – as if a word could become an object by mere addition of consequences.”


Want to read more by and about Jack Spicer?
EPC / Buffalo Author Home Page
Poets.org
Poetry Foundation


SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: MARIE HOWE

Posted on by asitoughttobemagazine




WHAT THE LIVING DO
by Marie Howe

Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days, some utensil probably fell down there.
And the Drano won’t work but smells dangerous, and the crusty dishes have piled up

waiting for the plumber I still haven’t called. This is the everyday we spoke of.
It’s winter again: the sky’s a deep, headstrong blue, and the sunlight pours through

the open living-room windows because the heat’s on too high in here and I can’t turn it off.
For weeks now, driving, or dropping a bag of groceries in the street, the bag breaking,

I’ve been thinking: This is what the living do. And yesterday, hurrying along those
wobbly bricks in the Cambridge sidewalk, spilling my coffee down my wrist and sleeve,

I thought it again, and again later, when buying a hairbrush: This is it.
Parking. Slamming the car door shut in the cold. What you called that yearning.

What you finally gave up. We want the spring to come and the winter to pass. We want
whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss–we want more and more and then more of it.

But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the window glass,
say, the window of the corner video store, and I’m gripped by a cherishing so deep

for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I’m speechless:
I am living. I remember you.


Marie Howe is a noted American poet. Her first book, The Good Thief, was selected by Margaret Atwood as the winner of the 1987 Open Competition of the National Poetry Series. In 1998, she published her best-known book of poems, What the Living Do. The title poem in that collection (featured here today) is a haunting lament for her brother with the plain-spoken last line: “I am living, I remember you.” Howe’s brother John died of an AIDS-related illness in 1989. “John’s living and dying changed my aesthetic entirely,” she has said. In 1995, Howe co-edited, with Michael Klein, a collection of essays, letters, and stories entitled In the Company of My Solitude: American Writing from the AIDS Pandemic. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Poetry, Agni, Ploughshares, and Harvard Review. Her honors include National Endowment for the Arts and Guggenheim fellowships. (Annotated biography of Marie Howe courtesy of Wikipedia.org, with edits.)

Editor’s Note: This poem was by request. If you have a request of your own please feel free to post it as a comment.

A special thanks to my mother for, yet again, turning me onto a poem that I instantly revered.

I read this poem first out of context, without the knowledge that it was about her brother’s death, and I loved it in its own right. I love the concept of these day-to-day things that we do as humans- that life is made up of errands and waiting for the weather we prefer. And I love the image of the poet catching a glimpse of her reflection and being in love with it- I have yet to meet the mirror I can pass without delving into a bit of narcissism.

Then we are given a gift. We are given the context and background from which the poem stems. We get to know that this poem is about her brother, that he has passed away from AIDS-related illness, that the poem is addressed to him and held up against the backdrop of their relationship and his death. And then I re-read the poem and suddenly it has a new life, a new light. Suddenly we know why it is important that the sink is clogged, that grocery bags break, that one notices how much time in life is spent waiting for better seasons and wanting more love. It is important because the narrator of the poem is alive, and she is painfully aware of what it means to be alive in the face of the memory of one who is not.

And what does it mean to be living? For Howe, in this poem, it means that after she takes note of the external world, then of the desires within all of us, she looks at herself and loves herself, loves that she is living, and knows how precious a gift that is when she remembers her loved one who is not.

Want to read more by and about Marie Howe?
MarieHowe.com
Poetry Foundation
Poets.org

FRIDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: Kenneth Fearing

Posted on by asitoughttobemagazine

X Minus X

by Kenneth Fearing


Even when your friend, the radio, is still; even when her dream, the magazine, is finished; even when his life, the ticker, is silent; even when their destiny, the boulevard, is bare;
And after that paradise, the dance-hall, is closed; after that theater, the clinic, is dark,

Still there will be your desire, and hers, and his hopes and theirs,
Your laughter, their laughter,
Your curse and his curse, her reward and their reward, their dismay and his dismay and her dismay and yours—

Even when your enemy, the collector, is dead; even when your counsellor, the salesman, is sleeping; even when your sweetheart, the movie queen, has spoken; even when your friend, the magnate, is gone.


Kenneth Fearing(1902-1961) was an American poet, novelist, speechwriter, editor, and journalist. One literary critic named him “the chief poet of the American Depression.” He helped found the Partisan Review and took an active interest in leftist politics while also churning out pulp fiction that sometimes bordered on the pornographic under the pseudonym Kirk Wolff. His poetry uses contemporary vernacular to probe the grotesque in the urban landscape.

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: JIMMY SANTIAGO BACA

Posted on by asitoughttobemagazine



THEY ONLY CAME TO SEE THE ZOO

by Jimmy Santiago Baca


Our muscles warped and scarr’d
Wrap around our skeletons
Like hot winds
That sweep the desert floor
In search of shade,
Sleeping each night
In the hollow of petrified
Skulls.
And from our mouths
Words of love would come
If we let them,
Like molten stones shrieking
From the belly of a volcano
But standing at these bars
We watched you leave
And only wondered…
You looked up at us with passion
As we stood at the bars.
A vacuum swelled at our hands
Went pale, our fingers cold
The gray pity of our lot
Made you turn away
But our spirits met that moment
Faraway in the land of Justice
And we whispered with our eyes,
”Come closer”
But you did not.
It’s been so long now
Since you left.
Did you tell them?
Hell is not a dream
And that you’ve been there?
Did you tell them


Jimmy Santiago Baca was born in Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1952 where he lived in a two-room shack with his alcoholic father, his mother, and his brother and sister. When he was two years old, Baca’s parents abandoned him and he and his siblings moved into their grandparent’s shack. Baca eventually moved into an orphanage and later, a detention center. Finally—when Baca was only 15 years old—he graduated to living on the streets. When Baca was 21, he was sentenced to five to ten years in a maximum-security prison in Arizona for dealing drugs. In prison, Baca taught himself how to read and write and developed a passion for writing poetry. Baca, who corresponded with several established poets while he was in prison, first published his poetry while he was still incarcerated. After he was released, he publishing his first major collection of poetry, Immigrants in Our Own Land, which is based on his prison experience. Since then Baca has released several other books of poetry, a collection of essays and stories, screenplays, and a memoir. Additionally, Baca conducts writing workshops at numerous schools and correctional facilities across the county. In 2003, Baca received his PhD in Literature from New Mexico University. (Annotated biography of Jimmy Santiago Baca courtesy of Youngstown State University.)

Editor’s Note: This post was by request, and it was requested that this poem be dedicated to all prisoners everywhere. If you have a request of your own please feel free to post it as a comment.

I love the idea of poetry as a means of redemption and as a means of finding your voice. I hope this post inspires people to find their own voices and their own freedom through poetry and art. “And from our mouths words of love would come, if we let them.”

Want to read more by and about Jimmy Santiago Baca?
Official Website
Poets.org
Youngstown State University