Posts

Showing posts from March, 2010

GNYIPA Benefit Reading

It stands for Greater New York Independent Publishers Association. The audience was small tonight, at Cornelia Street Cafe, but the readers were all interesting in various ways. Four of the seven poets reading were queer, though GNYIPA is not a queer organization. I read "Hungry Ghosts," "For Lonely," and "Blowjob." Helen Dano came all the way from the Bronx, where she worked, to attend the reading, and bought a book. Perry Brass also bought a book, as well as Siddhath whom I met at the reading. The ratio of buyers to audience must be one of the highest ever for me. After the reading, I had a nice dinner with Helen at the oyster bar across the street.

Translating and Writing Tankas

In teaching the tanka, Kimiko drew our attention to the niceties of translating Japanese poetry into English. From Sato 1999 Symposium on translating Asian languages (see Manoa 11/2): Finally, to state the obvious, syllabic value differs from language to language. Japanese is a polysyllabic, vowel-laden tongue; English isn't. English can express, on average, twenty to twenty-five percent more than Japanese can with the same number of syllables. You can guess what happens when the 5- and 7-syllable formations are applied in translating traditional tanka and haiku: the result usually says more than the original does. Well, does all this matter? After all, Japanese and English are so different. Because the languages are different, shouldn't the assumption be that forms can't be transferred? Japanese poets may regard tanka and haiku as one-line poems, but it's highly doubtful that they have any notion of the "line" in the Western sense and, anyhow, one-line po

LA Review Reading at Nuyorican Cafe

A mostly white audience was in the house last night for the reading. They listened appreciatively and applauded politely after each reader finished. I missed the spontaneity at other readings, when the audience would murmur or snap their fingers or call out on hearing a particularly good line, and clap wildly after each poem. "We are so quiet," I turned round and said to the black lesbian writer sitting behind me. "I know what you mean," she said immediately. I particularly enjoyed Jennifer Militello's reading. Her poems were strong in imagery. I traded ETTE for her book Flinch of Song , published after ten years of sending out and coming in as finalist, never winner, for numerous contests. She submitted it to Tupelo Press alone three times, before it finally won the press contest. Now she has a second book to send out, and not sure if Tupelo will take it. I read the poem published in Los Angeles Review , "What We Call Vegetables." First time I rea

2nd Annual Rainbow Books Fair

Shared a table with Nemo and his Exot Press at the fair this year. I thought I would like the CUNY Graduate Center better than last year's location in LGBT center, but as the afternoon went on, the Concourse felt more and more sterile and the lighting harsher. Nemo described the place aptly as a filing cabinet. The LGBT hall was grungier and more homey. I sold six copies of ETTE, one to Roxanne Hoffman, one to David, one to Nemo, and a couple to friends who knew me on Facebook, and whom I met for the first time in person. At the poetry reading, I was moved by the sight of Mr. Leslie of the Leslie/Lohman Gay Art Foundation crying at the reading of Persistent Voices , an anthology of poems by writers who died of AIDS. I thought I would like my poems to provide some kind of comfort to someone grieving like him. They may not be about AIDS, but they could have an aesthetic shape that gives a recuperative effect.

Gillian Armstrong's "Charlotte Gray" (2001)

The film follows in the tradition of making a love story out of war material. The eponymous character (Cate Blanchett) signs up to be a British courier in occupied France in order to search for her downed pilot lover Peter (gorgeous Rupert Penry Jones). Working with a local resistance leader Julien (Billy Crudup), Charlotte learns that war kills and makes fools of those it spares. Aided by British treachery, the local resistance, all communists, were killed by the Germans. Julien has to decide between giving up his father Levade (Michael Gambon) and two Jewish children he has been hiding to the French collaborationist police. The cruelties of war are heart-wrenching, but not particularly new. More interesting is what the film says about love. Love with the pilot was instantaneous and physical. It was powerful enough to motivate a woman to put her life on the line by going into service. But the awful experience shared with Julien finally binds Charlotte more closely to him than romanc

Paul Stevens reviews "Equal to the Earth"

Paul Stevens, the editor of The Chimaera , wrote a warm appreciation of Equal to the Earth : It would be simplistic in the extreme to categorise Jee Leong Koh as a Gay poet, or an ethnic Chinese or Singaporean poet, or an Asian-American poet, or a poet in the English tradition, or a post-colonialist poet, or whatever. His work reflects all of these contexts and more, but also handsomely transcends them and amounts to an oeuvre greater than the sum of its contexts. . . . More .

Christopher Ricks's "True Friendship"

It is nearly impossible to summarize True Friendship: Geoffrey Hill, Anthony Hecht, and Robert Lowell Under the Sign of Eliot and Pound.  Its method is one of accretion, of numerous small verbal echoes that may not appear much on their own, but add up to a profound and persuasive thesis. In this Ricks follows, as he acknowledges, Eliot whose critical idea it is. In this also Ricks follows, I think, the poets' working method, which lives on a predecessor's words and in turn gives life to them. Auden is right when he wrote that Ricks is the kind of critic every poet dreams of having. Intellectually searching, Ricks does not propound an overarching theory of influence, in the manner of Harold Bloom. He is not after grand synthesis but quivering alertness. And so he shows that Geoffrey Hill is more generous and sympathetic in his poetry than in his prose towards Eliot. Ricks's defense of Eliot's late poetry against Hill's attack is thrilling to read. In the second of

Burt Kimmelman's "As If Free"

Traded books with Burt Kimmelman after befriending each other on Facebook. As If Free is his sixth book of poetry. The book arrived with a personalized form letter and a press release quoting reviewers. Of an earlier book, Robert Creeley writes, "This is a rare evocation of a luminous place indeed--the wonder of this world in itself." Not one of Creeley's better blurbs, I think, lardered as it is with stock phrases. Samuel Menashe says, ". . .Kimmelman strives for and often attains 'the simple / lettering stating / the facts'--his own words." He sounds non-committal, quoting Kimmelman on himself; he even qualifies what little he says in the quotation, by inserting the adverb "often." What are the poems about? A mother aging and dying in a nursing home. Small observations of nature. Reflections on the visual arts. Too many poems about people having coffee and conversation in a cafe, which is presumably where Kimmelman goes to write. His subje

A Haibun for Turning Forty

Wrote a new poem this morning, a haibun for Kimiko's workshop. It is at the end of this post. Checked my email and found a lovely fish ghazal written for me by AH. I am a Pisces. Other friends, like WL, CM and TH, had emailed me earlier their birthday wishes. Read the TLS before having a quick lunch at the local Chinese takeout. Started reading Christopher Ricks's True Friendship: Geoffrey Hill, Anthony Hecht and Robert Lowell Under the Sign of Eliot and Pound.  This beautiful book, beautiful in writing and design, is a birthday gift from HS. She loves Anthony Hecht and knows I love Eliot. Both of us admire Ricks's criticism. Mum called to wish me happy birthday. Took a nap because I was out late last night. Checked my email and read that another group of my poems, the Boland-inspired pieces, have been accepted by MS for the PN Review. That made up a little for the disappointment of not appearing on the Lambda list of finalists. Then attended KM's first solo art show at

Space on White

On Jack Tricarico and Evie Ivy's invitation, I read last night at Space on White, a relatively new arts space on White Street, in Tribeca. Nemo and Jane Ormerod also read. It was a pleasure to hear their poems. They are both writing incredibly well. Jane's husband was there, and so was Julian, Nemo's partner. Feeling alone, alone, I was consumed by self-pity near the end of the reading. I changed my mind about going to Splash and went home to read my emails.

Shakespeare Retold

I enjoyed these modern adaptations by the BBC. The plot on the back cover: Macbeth is the chef in a three-star restaurant, slicing apart his celebrity boss, Duncan. Beatrice and Benedick are rival co-anchors on a nightly newscast whose open hostility masks passion of a different kind. . . . And the eccentric aristocrat Petruchio sets out to tame the conservative MP Kate in a politically incorrect marriage of convenience. Of the three I watched, I enjoyed The Taming of the Shrew best. Shirley Henderson was an unforgettable Kate, small, nasty, winning. Rufus Sewell was convincing as a brutal, childish and cross-dressing aristocrat. In Much Ado About Nothing , Sarah Parish and Damian Lewis were charmingly antagonistic. Tom Ellis (Claude) was a dreamboat. I did not enjoy the film-noirish Macbeth at first, but then got into it. James McAvoy made it very watchable. The bloody special effects were also terrifically chilling.

Ganymede #7

Three of my poems from ETTE have been reprinted in Ganymede 7 . Editor John Stahle on the new issue: GANYMEDE #7 issue is out--at 400 pages, our biggest and best! --new, unpublished poems from British great GREGORY WOODS --short story by ALFRED CORN --CHARLES HIGHAM's 1965 visits with the last giants of classic Hollywood, from Sam Goldwyn to Marlene Dietrich --ABU NUWAS (756-814), master of classic Arabic poetry--and out gay! Poems and short story. --concluding half of the complete novel "Bergdorf Boys" --fascinating portfolios of photographers from around the world --more stories by British gay cult author DENTON WELCH --Oxford as Shakespeare: why you should care about this debate --many other discoveries and surprises! Details, purchase link, and readable sample pages: http://www.ganymedenyc.com/ Poetry by: GREGORY WOODS (Britain), Saeed Jones, Jesús Encinar (Spain), Christopher Hennessy, Brane Mozetic (Slovenia), Peter Swanborn (Netherlands), Joseph Mc

A Day on the Grand Canal

"a day on the grand canal with the emperor of china, or surface is illusion but so is depth" is a film by Philip Hass and David Hockney. Hockney explains the art of Chinese painting by examining a 72-foot long 17th century Chinese scroll by Wang Wei, depicting Emperor Kangxi's grand tour of his southern domains. In his explanation, Hockney usefully contrasts Chinese aesthetics with that of Europe, using a Canaletto painting as well as a later Chinese scroll influenced by Western perspectival theory. He also reminds the viewers that they see only what the camera is showing them, that the film too has its frame. Unlike Western paintings, Chinese paintings have a movable frame as the viewer unrolls the scroll. The viewer, in other words, is in control of which section of the scroll he wishes to see, and is not fixed in his viewing position as when he views a Western painting. Viewing a particular section of the scroll, the viewer can also decide where to look, whether to f

Steve Meador's "Throwing Percy from the Cherry Tree"

Traded books with Steve after befriending each other on Facebook. As the title of his book suggests, Throwing Percy is a collection of poems about childhood. Percy is a cat, not a boy. I wish Percy were a boy. Not that the book is not already filled with cruelty and pain--a drunken and abusive father, playground bullying, parental discord, a war veteran of a grandfather, sexual awakening--but that it would have been a little more surprising. The poems wear their honesty and simplicity like a badge of honor. They aim to tell the truth in an engaging and accessible way. It is a worthy aim, if not very ambitious. The opening of the first poem is representative of the style of the book: The Montgomery Ward in Beckley seemed the ninth or tenth Wonder of the World to someone who had only known shopping at the stark commissaries on base, and once at a cluttered Ben Franklin Five and Dime, I fluttered through its two levels, touched and played with as much as I could. (from "B

Zuihitsu: "After They Return from Field Training"

After They Return from Field Training After they return from field training, before they change out of their sweat-stiff uniforms or muddy boots, the servicemen clean their M16s. They snap their rifles apart. They pull a steel brush through the barrel several times and several times more a strip of flannel held in the eye of the cleaning rod. They dismantle the bolt carrier group, the guts of the gun, to wipe the carbon off the bolt carrier. When the soot comes off, the firing pin is pure silver. Then the firearm is reassembled, the parts clicking into place. The steel body is brushed with oil and the buttstock blackened with boot polish. The rifles are restored to their racks, a chain is run through their charging handles, the showers hiss. All this done with a fatigued swiftness still easy to recall now, so many years later, and so far away, sitting at my desk, writing. The speed and the exhaustion stays in the body, bright as the firing pin. *

Zuihitsu: Wonderful Window

Wonderful Window Jean François has a wonderful attic window. When I flop down on his bed, the ugly post-war houses disappear and ochre branches spring up to weave a basket of the sky.  *

Jennifer K. Sweeney's "How to Live on Bread and Music"

Just finished reading Jennifer K. Sweeney's How to Live on Bread and Music , this year's winner of the James Laughlin Award for a second book of poems. The poems about siblings, in the first section, are not memorable in either image or music. The long poem "The Listeners" that makes up section two stretches a tolerable idea to intolerable length. One of its parts is about back-masking, a common enough subject rendered in a prosaic idiom: The music teacher told her third graders if you played "Strawberry Fields Forever" backwards it would sing John is dead. The children imagined her hand steering the record counterclockwise like witchcraft revealing the secret warped message. After five dead lines, the witchcraft simile sticks out like a fragment of a thumb. "Revealing the secret warped message" is a bathetic and redundant conclusion to the sentence. Sweeney continues by describing "scratchy" school movies: After the credits rol

Zuihitsu: All things diminish

All things diminish All things diminish as they grow older, my friend of many years said last night. Even the expanding universe must contract. This morning, as I am boiling water to make coffee, his words come back to me, as sure as before, but smaller, because the whistling of the kettle takes up space. The steam was not so long ago a patch of snow. Love is what life boils into. *

Zuihitsu: Things that Quicken the Pulse

Things that Quicken the Pulse Hurricane warning. Running the hand through a man’s thick hair. A merino wool cardigan. A flock of flamingoes taking to the air. Coming on Matisse’s The Red Studio . The thought of an approaching quarrel. The restaurant door opens, and lets in a draught. *

Zuihitsu: Things Subtle Yet Powerful

Things Subtle Yet Powerful      A muscular back. The fragrance of shaving cream late in the day. The outline of summer lightning.      There are things subtle but not powerful, like a woman’s voice. There are things powerful but not subtle, like a man’s opinion. Then they meet and tumble, drunk, in bed, and you get Sei Shonagon.      My first lover prizes delicacy. In music he prefers the French to the Germans, the ivories of Debussy to the brass of Beethoven. In literature, he reads Kawabata, and not Kurt Vonnegut. He also has a brittle constitution. I am drawn to strength, brimming but restrained by the lip of a cup. The restraint I learned from him.      The influence of a good teacher. That of a bad one. Freshly fallen snow. *

Zuihitsu: Things Out of Place

Things Out of Place A flute in a trumpet case. A red crayon slash on white linen. A spray of heath in a plastic pail outside a deli. A cheeky boy among mourners at a wake. A beautiful man married to a woman. A Singaporean in New York. The Singaporean in Singapore. The moon in a lake. * Listened with LW to the London Philharmonic, conducted by Vladimir Jurowski, at Lincoln Center on Sunday. Shostakovich's Five Fragments (1935) were minimalist delights. The conducting was precise but not prissy. Alexander Toradze played Ravel's Piano Concerto in G major (1929-31). The second movement was extremely moving, and I teared up. As LW said, the French is just so good at handling sentimentality with intellectual wit. After the intermission the orchestra played Shostakovich's Symphony No. 4 in C minor. It was massive and manic, especially the first and last movements. Show-offish, but inventive and colorful, nevertheless. It was deeply indebted to Mahler for its woodland soun

Zuihitsu: Things that Tilt

Read on Google Books some more passages from The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon , as well as the introduction by translator Ivan Morris. We don't know much about Shonagon, we're not even sure of her name. Sei is a reference to her clan. Shonagon means Minor Counselor, a description of her position as a court lady-in-waiting, or of her relationship with the Empress, or of her qualities. The passages I read show more of the versatility of the form than the ones presented at the workshop. Here's one I particularly liked: Things that Arouse a Fond Memory of the Past    Dried hollyhock. The objects used during the Display of Dolls. To find a piece of deep violet or grape-colored material that has been pressed between the pages of a notebook.    It is a rainy day and one is feeling bored. To pass the time, one starts looking through some papers. And then one comes across the letters of a man one used to love.    Last year's paper fan. A night with a clear moon. I like the

Talking Heads and Hungry Ghosts

Attended the Scope Arts Fair with VM this afternoon. Daniel and Magdalena's Talking Heads were the hit of the Fair, and put them in a good place to be invited to the Armory Show. I can't wait to see my Talking Head, when they bring the new installation to New York once it is done. Artworks I liked and remember: tires carved out of marble; a red Sasquatch painting; a big photograph of a broken chair in a courtyard paved with flagstones; tenements and alley painted on cardboard from discarded boxes; a blouse made up of ropes of brown hair. Can't remember the names of the artists, more's the pity. After the art fair, I read at Otto's Shrunken Head, at the invitation of Obsidian and Hobo Bob. Read two poems from ETTE, and then the new poems that take Eavan Boland and Elizabeth Bishop for their departure. Greg came to hear me read, as did John Marcus. Sold a book to Alan Hyde, who learned about me from a friend who forwarded my poem to him. Traded books with Tom Savage

First Class of Workshop with Kimiko Hahn

So the first class was on Tuesday, as will be the second, third, fourth etc. But I've been trying to write one of these damn zuihitsus, and so have not blogged about the class. We read four examples from The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon , Heian period 794-1185, translated by Ivan Morris. They look like list-poems, except that each item can be as long as a paragraph or a page. In "In Spring It Is the Dawn"Sei Shonagon describes her favorite time of the day in each season. In spring it is the dawn. In summer the nights. In autumn the evenings. In winter the early mornings. Another zuihitsu is on Elegant Things, a list which includes the surprising item of duck eggs. Of all the Things that Give a Hot Feeling, the Captain in attendance at the Imperial Games is, to me, the hottest. Sei Shonagon, a young children-hating aristocrat herself, bitches about the common people, the elderly, and pregnant women in Unsuitable Things. Here is a slice of her scorn: A woman with ugly ha

Lambda's new website

Lambda launches its new website today. The email blast quite rightly boasts that the design team has built a six-figure website on a four-figure budget. The site looks as professional as other major literary websites such as those of the Academy of American Poets and the Poetry Society of America. Less content, because the site is relatively new, but poised to grow. Today the Lambda Literary Foundation announced the launch of a  new online webzine  and blog community for LGBTQ writers and readers. The newLambda Literary webzine will aggregate the best links from LGBTQ and mainstream book news websites and newspapers, feature provocative interviews, under-reported stories, and thoughtful, of-the-moment book reviews and nurture a social community that comments, critiques, links back, twitters, blogs, and interacts both online and in person. The same email blast says that the finalists for the Lambda Awards will be announced in the week of March 15, not so many days away. I wonder wha