Misunderstandings

I woke up this morning a little bit before 5am and I was lying in bed thinking and thinking. So I got up and wrote a little bit and then blogged a bit. As I was looking for the post that referenced my resolution, I came across Auden's poem "More Loving One."

It was a poem I'd first heard the stanzas of "If equal affection cannot be, / Let the more loving one be me" during high school on a show that I watched at the time. I wrote it down and searched for the complete poem. What I realized was that the meaning of the entire poem had been obscured from me by those few lines. Being a person who always feels things deeply I was resigned to accepting the fate of that second stanza.

I was reading it this morning and I kind of chuckled to myself as the rest of the poem revealed itself. Seeing it in its entirety. The end of the poem is like a small epiphany, Auden says "Were all stars to disappear or die, / I should learn to look at an empty sky / And feel its total dark sublime, / Though this might take me a little time." Which means that yeah while he discusses the inequality of feeling as having weight, that he'd rather love more than less, he also realizes that if the object of his strong affection were to leave or disappear that he'd learn to live with it and appreciate the sky (or life rather)for what it was without it eventually. That everything would be just as awe inspiring without the things that we believe make them so important.

Revelations are beautiful that way, whether referring to the revelation at the end of the poem or realizing that you'd never really understood it until now.

Exactly

Erica Funkhouser, "Day Work"

Alone. I love to be alone. Against
the numberless infinities. Or for
the re-creation of the little chores
that roof my world: embellished emptiness.

A round peg in a square hole will find
its four corners—within, without—and fill
them with its private tyrannies. Be still
and see if solitude will make you kind.

Contained. I love to be contained. The air,
a pair of trees that rise in unison,
the shade that lends my day abundant edge:
inventions, all. The other world's a cage.
The body scatters and is never done.
Small teeth and claws await us everywhere.

From Earthly, Funkhouser's fifth collection of poems. via Beatrice)

A Poem Of Friendship: Nikki Giovanni

We are not lovers
because of the love
we make
but the love
we have

We are not friends
because of the laughs
we spend
but the tears
we save

I don't want to be near you
for the thoughts we share
but the words we never have
to speak

I will never miss you
because of what we do
but what we are together.

(Happy Valentines Day Everyone Everywhere-
over and out
M)

Nuyorican Poetry Slam Finals

The Nuyorican Poetry Cafe is always a good time and a requisite for anyone living in New York City. Its the place where a lot of the best and the brightest of the city have started their careers and its been a dream of mine forever to read on their stage (it will happen eventually).

I'd love to offer a detailed account of which poets performed and the nature of the poems as well as my opinion on each of them, but I was much to busy enjoying myself, and listening to the message and the words, to focus on pulling out my notebook on the smaller than small tables and trying to scribble while they were introduced.

The guest poet was Amanda Diva of MTV2, Def Poetry and Sirius Radio Fame. I'm hoping that my homeboy jumps on putting his vids of her from the show somewhere online, giving me the opportunity to link in and show instead of tell. (Usually I would take this opportunity to give my opinion on her weakness and strengths, but I'm still tired after a long night. I will say she was dope, in spite of whatever qualities might have eluded her).

She also encouraged everyone to check out her blog.

One of my other favorite poems of the night came from Chad Anderson. Find it on his myspace page titled splitsville (yes us girls were all suckers for his brand of breaking up).

I didn't catch the last name of Adam from Bushwick, the guy I was personally rooting for but if I figure it out I'll amend this post with links to his stuff as well.

Abundance

By Louise Glück via the latest issue of the Paris Review.

A cool wind blows on summer evenings, stirring the wheat.
The wheat bends, the leaves of the peach trees
rustle in the night ahead.

In the dark, a boy’s crossing the field:
for the first time, he’s touched a girl
so he walks home a man, with a man’s hungers.

Slowly the fruit ripens—
baskets and baskets from a single tree
so some rots every year
and for a few weeks there’s too much:
before and after, nothing.

Between the rows of wheat
you can see the mice, flashing and scurrying
across the earth, though the wheat towers above them,
churning as the summer wind blows.

The moon is full. A strange sound
comes from the field—maybe the wind.

But for the mice it’s a night like any summer night.
Fruit and grain: a time of abundance.
Nobody dies, nobody goes hungry.

No sound except the roar of the wheat.

The Eve

On the eve of things I have not known,
A quarter past the first of confusion.
I draw things beautifully in the sand
and wait for them to come to fruition.

(I wake this morning with words on the tip of my tongues and creeping stealthy out of my closed eyelids. Some days I conduct a little chase and am lucky if I get a few back. I think its imitation, but I'm sure someone is very flattered.)

The More Loving One (an old favorite)

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.

    -- W. H. Auden

Poetry: What I Like and Don't Like

I worry that with all the new content especially during the holidays, there are plenty of posts that will get lost in the mix. That being said I can't particularly help myself, so bare with me, read and enjoy as much as you can, hopefully you'll catch up once its over. I'd seen this poem on Beatrice back in November, wanted to repost it but didn't want to steal too much of their content even though I have only a few readers and it wouldn't matter much to anyone but me.

Anyway, I came across this poem on their site and was instantly inspired to find out more about the writer, Phlip Shlutz, and the Writers Studio in New York City, which he founded and where I would like to take classes sometime during the new year. There was a blurb about his poetry and his fiction writing that I found inspiring in the original post and this poem in particular I relate to most of all.

From Failure:

I like to say hello and goodbye.
I like to hug but not shake hands.
I prefer to wave or nod. I enjoy
the company of strangers pushed
together in elevators of subways.
I like talking to cabdrivers
but not receptionists. I like
not knowing what to say.
I like talking to people I know
but care nothing about. I like
inviting anyone anywhere.
I like hearing my opinions
tumble out of my mouth
like toddlers tied together
while crossing the street
trusting they won't be squashed
by fate. I like greeting-card clichés
but not dressing up or down.
I like being appropriate
but not all the time.
I could continue with more examples
but I'd rather give too few
than too many. The thought
of no one listening anymore—
I like that least of all.

One of My New Favorite Poems

Steve Cramer's "Curses" perfectly captures everything I recall about childhood curiosity. The times spent with my brother, testing the sounds of curse words as they left our mouths. Every other word was an explicative. Its always admirable when someone captures the common human experience in a way that's not boring or cliched, its the job of the writer and what makes you want to pick up a book and keep reading.

From his book Tongue & Groove:
Gleamed from gutter mouths, we knew their muscle before
meanings, the monosyllables raised to hallowed refrains
on our tongues. We glorified it, the older world of vice
& impiety. So just as we both wanted to be the fugitive
in cops & robbers, my best friend & I hid downstairs
& scrawled out a barrage of vulgarities—the heavy hitters,
of course, but then the half-dozen declensions of ass,
the lumped phrases of defecation,
the whole shameful lexicon
of anatomy. Then, those white
sheets defiled (microcosm
of our own soiled tabula rasa),
we crumpled them &—like shoving a bottled note to
the sea's blind tug—threw them to the ditch at wood's edge.
It was the same fertile gully where I'd picked, years before,
palmfuls of fruit &—the words monk's hood, nightshade
still a decade off—swallowed them. I hardly even remember
being sped to the ER to have my stomach pumped. Of course
our ink-spangled pages
never went anywhere,
though I wish I could hold
one now, dim record
of childhood's vast
testing ground—the
necessary absurdity & litter
of it all. Instead, those lost
notes were draped with stray
leaves, coiled with briars
which could never quite
keep from reach those
sweet-looking berries
we were told not to touch
but had to. And did.

Via Beatrice

Rilke Week

It's Rainer Marie Rilke Week at Chekov's Mistress. Which is great because I love Rilk. Letters to a Young Poet moved me as a young writer and still to this day I can read it each time like its the first. There are so many times in my life when the passages have been able to explain various stages of my journey though life and my journey as a writer.

This poem was posted in her comments section.

THE PANTHER

His vision from the passing of the bars
is grown so weary that it holds nor more.
To him it seems there are a thousand bars
and behind a thousand bars no world.

The padding gait of flexibly strong strides,
that in the very smallest circle turns,
is like a dance of strength around a center
in which stupefied a great will stands.

Only sometimes the curtain of the pupil
soundlessly parts –. Then an image enters,
goes through the tensioned stillness of the limbs –
and in the heart ceases to be.

I almost posted this to m.i.n.e. but I like it more here.

The Mystery, The Darkness, The Song and Me.

Last night I fell asleep listening to Langston Hughes "Weary Blues" and woke up and played it again this morning. It was a gift that I received years back when I was younger played it, got it but didn't get it, listened again a few years on and was finally able to connect. There is something to be said about the complexity of the music and the way it lyrically matches the complexity of the poetry.

Langston Hughes voice, so languid and smooth, it reminds me of a storm in full force where the rain falls so steadily and hard that it becomes a peaceful relaxing sound. A voice to dream to.

There is something quite positively refreshing especially given the current climate of spoken word about the lack of theatrics in his reading. Its simple, its direct and it speaks volumes about the political climate of the era.

It’s the type of album that everyone should hear at least once: for the poetry, for the music, for the history.

The Weary Blues- Langston Hughes (1923)

1 Droning a drowsy syncopated tune,
2 Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon,
3 I heard a Negro play.
4 Down on Lenox Avenue the other night
5 By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light
6 He did a lazy sway ....
7 He did a lazy sway ....
8 To the tune o' those Weary Blues.
9 With his ebony hands on each ivory key
10 He made that poor piano moan with melody.
11 O Blues!
12 Swaying to and fro on his rickety stool
13 He played that sad raggy tune like a musical fool.
14 Sweet Blues!
15 Coming from a black man's soul.
16 O Blues!
17 In a deep song voice with a melancholy tone
18 I heard that Negro sing, that old piano moan--
19 "Ain't got nobody in all this world,
20 Ain't got nobody but ma self.
21 I's gwine to quit ma frownin'
22 And put ma troubles on the shelf."
23 Thump, thump, thump, went his foot on the floor.
24 He played a few chords then he sang some more--
25 "I got the Weary Blues
26 And I can't be satisfied.
27 Got the Weary Blues
28 And can't be satisfied--
29 I ain't happy no mo'
30 And I wish that I had died."
31 And far into the night he crooned that tune.
32 The stars went out and so did the moon.
33 The singer stopped playing and went to bed
34 While the Weary Blues echoed through his head.
35 He slept like a rock or a man that's dead.

One of My Absolute Favorite Poems.

If you’ve never heard of June Jordan and you’re either a writer, a woman or a person of color, then you should be slapped. Hard. In the face.

No, wait. I don’t mean that, its just my passion talking.

In all seriousness, when I first read “A Poem About My Rights” by June Jordan, it was only an excerpt in one of my identity politics classes but it inspired me to dig, dig, dig till I found it. Here is the excerpt that I first read and I hope you feel so inspired to hunt down the rest:

Even tonight and I need to take a walk and clear
my head about this poem
about why I can’t
go out without changing my clothes my shoes
my body
posture my gender identity my age
my status as a woman alone in the
evening/
alone on the streets/alone not being the point/
the point being
that I can’t do what I want
to do with my own body because I am the
wrong
sex the wrong age the wrong skin and
suppose it was not here in the
city but down on the beach/
or far into the woods and I wanted to go
there
by myself thinking about God/or thinking
about children or thinking about the
world/all of it
disclosed by the stars and the silence:
I could not go and
I could not think and I could not
stay there
alone
as I need to
be
alone because I can't do what I want to do with my own
body and
who
in the hell set things up
like this
and in France they say if the guy
penetrates
but does not ejaculate then he did not rape me
and if after
stabbing him after screams if
after begging the bastard and if even after
smashing
a hammer to his head if even after that if he
and his buddies
fuck me after that
then I consented and there was
no rape because finally
you understand finally
they fucked me over because I was wrong I was
wrong
again to be me being me where I was/wrong
to be who I am

Okay don’t hunt, find it here.

I forgot to give Jill a chance

A few years ago, I went to check out Jill Scott reading from her poetry book “The Moments, The Minutes, The Hours,” and got a signed copy of the book. When you see Jill Scott in an intimate setting she’s so warm that you nearly want to give her a hug, she commands your attention in such a way that you can barely look away and she’s exactly the same person she appears to be in her song. A lot of times when I’ve met celebrities, I realize they aren’t their persona and its always a little shocking…not that there is anything seriously wrong with having a public face and a private face. Its just that its not easy I think for most people, including myself at times, to tell the difference.

Anyway, listening to her read the poems had such an impact. The inflections of her voice moved me, the way her presence fills each line. It was completely amazing. When I went up to get the book signed, I quite literally went weak in the knees, smiled like a retard and could barely form a word. Though I’m not above being star struck it was quite the extreme reaction.

On the ride home that evening I opened the book and started reading the poems. Didn’t feel them at all, even a little bit. I waited a week or two, tried again. Nothing. Unimpressed.

Now I’ve given someone the signed copy of the book (it was an intended grad-school graduation present in 2005 that I forgot to take to the actual ceremony) and they’ve been aggressively trying to get me to admit that it is a dynamic work of poetry.

I wasn’t really having it. But today she sent me a few poems by IM. I read them. They were pretty great.

Looking back on my first analysis of the book I think that her presence was so domineering that it overshadowed the words. I use the word domineering, despite its negative connotation because I believe that it distracted from the quality of the words. Jill could read a recipe, the national enquirer, a grocery list and people would probably still listen in amazement. Reading them a second time they lost what seemed to be their most dynamic quality the Jill-ness. But I think seeing them again; they do have a right on their own terms. Separated from Jill, the words can stand alone and still be recognized as good.

One poem, then go buy the book:

he says
he says that i'm beautiful
but it's deeper than brothers
honkin horns
blowin kisses
buyin drinks
he says my beauty can be
seen even better with his eyes closed
and
every now and then
he
swears he can touch my beauty but he says
he's not worthy and he's glad i
can't see that
he says he likes my style
feminine with a little rugged
just enough lady mixed with ghetto chic and urban funk
he says i'm
powerful with poetry
they way i use ordinary words and make them sing
he
hums my songs
he says he knows me
favorite number -4
favorite color
- black
favorite juice - peach
favorite style - free
he says he
loves the way i make love
with my whole self
imploring, no, demanding he
do the same
he says that i constantly make myself new and better
he
loves that quality
and do i think that maybe one day possibly
i could
spend my life with him
he says he loves me
i say i'm just lucky and and
i'm glad
he can't see that

-jill scott

Celebrating Ginsberg

"The only thing that can save the world is the reclaiming of the awareness of the world. That's what poetry does." --Allen Ginsberg

Though I missed the annual Howl Festival (which was abruptly cancelled before the fiftieth anniversary last year) due to a weekend filled with too debauchery keeping in with the spirit of the poem. I did however get a chance to have a reading with a friend, who'd never heard the poem before. There are certain things that are great on their own but better ingested with someone who has never experienced them, such as the New York skyline from the bridge or Miles Davis' "Kind of Blue." It was a great to not only read it but also to hear it again, while making me nostalgic for my younger years filled with late night poetry readings.

To hear some of Ginsberg reading his work go here (they have a recording of Sunflower Sutra that I have loved for a long time).

Link is broken, go here instead.