Tag: American Poetry

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: ANI DIFRANCO

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FUEL

by Ani Difranco


They were digging a new foundation in Manhattan
And they discovered a slave cemetery there
May their souls rest easy
Now that lynching is frowned upon
And we’ve moved on to the electric chair
And I wonder who’s gonna be president, tweedle dum or tweedle dummer?
And who’s gonna have the big blockbuster box office this summer?
How about we put up a wall between houses and the highway
And you can go your way, and I can go my may

Except all the radios agree with all the tvs
And all the magazines agree with all the radios
And I keep hearing that same damn song everywhere I go
Maybe I should put a bucket over my head
And a marshmallow in each ear
And stumble around for
Another dumb-numb waiting for another hit song to appear

People used to make records
As in a record of an event
The event of people playing music in a room
Now everything is cross-marketing
Its about sunglasses and shoes
Or guns and drugs
You choose
We got it rehashed
We got it half-assed
We’re digging up all the graves
And we’re spitting on the past
And you can choose between the colors
Of the lipstick on the whores
Cause we know the difference between
The font of 20% more
And the font of teriyaki
You tell me
How does it… make you feel?

You tell me
What’s … real?
And they say that alcoholics are always alcoholics
Even when they’re as dry as my lips for years
Even when they’re stranded on a small desert island
With no place within 2,000 miles to buy beer
And I wonder
Is he different?
Is he different?
Has he changed? what’s he about?..
Or is he just a liar with nothing to lie about?

Am I headed for the same brick wall
Is there anything I can do about
Anything at all?
Except go back to that corner in Manhattan
And dig deeper, dig deeper this time
Down beneath the impossible pain of our history
Beneath unknown bones
Beneath the bedrock of the mystery
Beneath the sewage systems and the PATH train
Beneath the cobblestones and the water mains
Beneath the traffic of friendships and street deals
Beneath the screeching of kamikaze cab wheels
Beneath everything I can think of to think about
Beneath it all, beneath all get out
Beneath the good and the kind and the stupid and the cruel
There’s a fire just waiting for fuel

There’s a fire just waiting for fuel
There’s a fire just waiting for fuel
There’s a fire just waiting for fuel
There’s a fire just waiting for fuel
There’s a fire just waiting for fuel
There’s a fire just waiting for fuel
There’s a fire just waiting for fuel
There’s a fire just waiting for fuel
There’s a fire just waiting for fuel
There’s a fire just waiting for fuel
There’s a fire just waiting for fuel
There’s a fire just waiting for fuel
There’s a fire just waiting for fuel


You can listen to “Fuel” by clicking on the “Play song from Lala.com” link here.


Ani Difranco is an American singer, guitarist, and songwriter. She has released over twenty albums, is a Grammy Award winner, and is a feminist icon.

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

Today’s post continues our conversation about music and poetry, and whether songs are, in fact, poetry. The consensus from our earlier discussion seems to be a resounding yes, and I agree.

For me, some songwriters are really getting at the heart of poetry with their lyrics. Ani Difranco is at the top of this list for me. My personal favorite Ani Difranco lyric is from “32 Flavors” and reads “and god help you if you are an ugly girl / course too pretty is also your doom / cause everyone harbors a secret hatred / for the prettiest girl in the room / and god help you if you are a phoenix / and you dare to rise up from the ash / a thousand eyes will smolder with jealousy / while you are just flying past.” I simply cannot see that as anything other than poetry.

I think today’s piece is extremely exemplary of how a song can be poetry. If you listen to the recorded version you will see that Difranco essentially speaks the entire song. This is almost more of an example of spoken word poetry with accompanying music than it is a song, and yet, it is featured as a song on the artist’s album “Little Plastic Castle.” Beyond that, the song covers topics such as politics and the state of the world today – topics traditionally covered in poetry.

Want to read more by and about Ani Difranco?
Ani Difranco lyrics from a devoted fan
MySpace
Wikipedia

FRIDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: Amy Fleury

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At Twenty-Eight

by Amy Fleury


It seems I get by on more luck than sense,
not the kind brought on by knuckle to wood,
breath on dice, or pennies found in the mud.
I shimmy and slip by on pure fool chance.
At turns charmed and cursed, a girl knows romance
as coffee, red wine, and books; solitude
she counts as daylight virtue and muted
evenings, the inventory of absence.
But this is no sorry spinster story,
just the way days string together a life.
Sometimes I eat soup right out of the pan.
Sometimes I don’t care if I will marry.
I dance in my kitchen on Friday nights,
singing like only a lucky girl can.


Amy Fleury’s upbringing in rural Kansas shaped her unadorned poetic style and her appreciation for the outdoors. Her first book of poetry, Beautiful Trouble, received the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award. She is currently the poet-in-residence at her alma mater, McNeese State University.


SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: MAC OLIVER

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A pen-and-ink drawing of Wallace Stevens by Mac Oliver.


ANOTHER DEATH TO BRAVE

by Mac Oliver


And soon enough, foreseeably, you’ve lost
Another one you love, another death
To brave, more ashes thrust into your face,
More thoughts about the walks, forgotten nights,
More dust to walk upon, to think of ghosts
Of the departed, real as a dream
From which you had no wish to wake, in which
They breathe & blink again. I’m vexed at his
Brown study now, as Ransom wrote, a poem
Present in a half a dozen books,
Anthologies, he gave as Christmas gifts.
He left a stack of ancient magazines,
A trunk he tagged for me before he died,
A simple note attached to it, unseen
At first, left hidden in the flat, that said
“These items are for Ham, to be preserved.”
He made his living room, entire place,
Hospitable to poetry, to keep
A kind of purity at heart, in mind.
The rest, as Hazlitt quotes from As You Like It,
Is mere oblivion, a dead letter.


Mac Oliver is a bit of a mystery. As I can piece together, he earned his degree from Tulane in 1994 and went on to study poetry in the Doctoral program at the University of Minnesota. His first book of poems, Ham & Mercury, was printed privately, and another book of poetry, Savior of the Netherlands, is available in full online for free. Oliver is also a pen-and-ink artist, and, at least in 2008, a resident of Santa Barbara, California.

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

This happens to be my favorite request thus far on the Saturday Poetry Series, which is why I jumped at the opportunity to post it straight away. It was requested that I post any poem by this poet “because he is beautiful and I love him but I’ll never be able to tell him.” Now, the hopeless romantic in me was instantly won over. Unrequited love, a mystery love story, and a poet who is himself a mystery. How could I possibly resist?

What I can glean from the limited information about Mac Oliver on the web is that Oliver is a poet influenced by the poets of yore. He seems to like to explore poetry in form and uses antiquated language to create poems that are vignettes and that function like flash fiction. He also was strongly influenced by his uncle, to whom his book Savior of the Netherlands is dedicated, and who makes a number of appearances throughout Oliver’s work. I believe, from the context of the book, that “Another Death to Brave” may be about his uncle as well. Oliver was also strongly influenced by T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, Wallace Stevens, and Ezra Pound, which I think is evident in his use of form and choice of language.

Want to read more by and about Mac Oliver?
Savior of the Netherlands
Pen Drawings by Mac Oliver at Elsie’s
Maverick Magazine

FRIDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: John Surowiecki

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What I Know About Epistemology

by John Surowiecki


As the light goes, go.
Be the rustling in the grass, the fall from
convention’s good graces: learn, or someone
will have you filing files or writing writs,
demonstrating cutlery or selling knowledge

door to door; someone might even drop
your lovely life into a factory and have you
derusting rings on the coolant-spouting
turntable of a vertical lathe.
It’s best for everyone that what you know

is generally thought of as general knowledge.
You can find it in pool rooms and roadside bars,
in meadows as inviting as beds, in bedrooms
where it whispers like a ribbon untying;
you can even find it in schools. But be careful:

it’s dangerous, inescapable and exact
down to every atom of everything there is,
to every name each thing goes by and every
law each thing obeys. And the best part is,
you always know more than you know.


John Surowiecki works as a freelance writer from his home in Connecticut. His work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. Author of six chapbooks and three books of poetry, his most recent work is Barney and Gienka (CustomWords, 2010).


[Image: White Noise/White Light, Athens, by Höweler + Yoon/MY Studio].

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: H.D.

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Selection from HELEN IN EGYPT

by H.D.


Did her eyes slant in the old way?
was she Greek or Egyptian?
had some Phoenician sailor wrought her?

was she oak-wood or cedar?
had she been cut from an awkward block
of ship-wood at the ship-builders,

and afterwards riveted there,
or had the prow itself been shaped
to her mermaid body,

curved to her mermaid hair?
was there a dash of paint
in the beginning, in the garment-fold,

did the blue afterwards wear away?
did they re-touch her arms, her shoulders?
did anyone touch her ever?

Had she other zealot and lover,
or did he alone worship her?
did she wear a girdle of sea-weed

or a painted crown? how often
did her high breasts meet the spray,
how often dive down?

© 1961 by Norman Homes Pearson.

H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) (1886 – 1961) was born in Bethlehem Pennsylvania and was a friend and contemporary of Marianne Moore, Ezra Pound, and William Carlos Williams. She was a leader of the Imagist movement in poetry, though her work was neglected during her lifetime due to its feminist principles that were ahead of their time. H.D. had a deep interest in classical Greek literature, and her poetry often borrowed from Greek mythology and classical poets, as this particular excerpt exemplifies. In her personal life H.D. had a fluid sexuality, being married twice and engaging in a number of lesbian relationships. She was unapologetic about her sexuality, and thus became an icon for both the gay rights and feminist movements during the 1970s and 1980s.

Editor’s Note: H.D. has always been a fascinating figure to me. She held her own in a boys club comprised of heavyweights like Pound and William Carlos Williams. I have been told that her abbreviated name was used in order to keep readers from knowing that she was a female, in order to expand her potential readership in a time when her ideas might have been more easily accepted coming from a man. Or perhaps it was an homage to her sexual ambiguity? H.D.’s poems were certainly ahead of their time and have managed to remain timeless so that while she may have been underrated during her lifetime, she thrives as a celebrated poet today.

Want to read more by and about H.D.?
Poets.org
Shot Through With Brightness: The Poems of H.D.
Imagists.org

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: DORIANNE LAUX

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DUST

by Dorianne Laux


Someone spoke to me last night,
told me the truth. Just a few words,
but I recognized it.
I knew I should make myself get up,
write it down, but it was late,
and I was exhausted from working
all day in the garden, moving rocks.
Now, I remember only the flavor–
not like food, sweet or sharp.
More like a fine powder, like dust.
And I wasn’t elated or frightened,
but simply rapt, aware.
That’s how it is sometimes–
God comes to your window,
all bright light and black wings,
and you’re just too tired to open it.

Dorianne Laux began writing poetry in earnest when she moved to Berkeley, California. Among her awards are a Pushcart Prize, a Fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. With a number of books to her credit, Laux is currently a professor of creative writing at the University of Oregon.

Editor’s Note: Dorianne Laux has been featured on As It Ought To Be before, but a good poet should be celebrated, and often. Some poems simply ring true to you in both their language and their message. I find this phenomenon occurring with acute regularity when I read through a book of Dorianne Laux’s poetry. I couldn’t get twenty pages into What We Carry without being strongly torn between two poems to feature on today’s series. The poem that competed with “Dust” is “Aphasia.” Read it here.

Want to read more by and about Dorianne Laux?
Poets.org
Web Del Sol
How a Poem Happens

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: WALT WHITMAN

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SELECTION FROM THE PREFACE OF “LEAVES OF GRASS”

by Walt Whitman


This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.

Walt Whitman (1819-1892) was an American poet, essayist, journalist, and humanist. He was a part of the transition between Transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse. His work was very controversial in its time, particularly his poetry collection Leaves of Grass, which was described as obscene for its overt sexuality. (Annotated biography of Walt Whitman courtesy of Wikipedia.org.)

Editor’s Note: I was sent this excerpt from Leaves of Grass by two different people this past week, which to me was a sign that it needed to be shared with you. Walt Whitman is that rare example of a poet who is well known by name today. Recently Andrew Sullivan featured this same excerpt in The Atlantic. As previously featured in this series, Levis has made Walt Whitman the voice of their Freedom campaign. In his own time Whitman was controversial. Today his words are less so in comparison to what is the norm in the modern world. And still, Whitman is known, quoted, referenced, revered, and loved. My own introduction to Whitman was through the poets I am closest to. Ginsberg, Lorca, Spicer – to the poets who came after him, Whitman was a hero and mentor. Because of Whitman, not only was Whitman’s own timeless poetry written, but great poetry was written by those who followed.

Want to read more by and about Walt Whitman?
The Walt Whitman Archive
Poets.org
WaltWhitman.org