October 31, 2004

In The Mail This Week - Continued

(and on the radio) I went out early this morning to get half-and-half for my coffee and immediately noticed those dulcet BBC tones and a long description of a cricket test, about which I know nothing except that they are always in their 6th day and the score is always something like 453 to 345.  I was wondering why The BBC was playing at 6:30 in the morning when I pulled up and noticed that the Safeway wasn't open yet.  Doh.  I missed the time change again.

When Safeway finally opened, I bought donuts, ripe pears and a copy of Weekly World News that my teen-aged son and I usually read over Sunday Breakfast.  Here's some of the articles that made the Men In Black consider tabloids the best thing for Real News:

Marilyn Monroe has been found in Cleveland, living with 34 cats and a retired plumber.  Jay Leno's chin is actually fake (see photo).  Doctors performed the first successful butt transplant (Gabe Gudding will be happy to hear that).  A fat woman has been smuggling illegal aliens into the country under her muu-muu.  Korea's best-selling cookbook will be released in the US, including many dog recipes, such as Moo-Goo Bow Wow.  The principality of Tonzanique chooses its leader based upon the size of their genitals.  A sexy psychic from South Carolina has clients rub her breasts for love, money and luck.  How a date eats a hotdog reveals how good she is in bed.  Iraqi rap bands are booming.  A ruthless band of gay pirates are commandeering luxury yachts and forcing the crew and passengers to undergo makeovers.  A 3-year-old boy floated away with birthday balloons.  A pair of rednecks have held the Easter Bunny for ransom.

I also received my monthly Poetry magazine, this one cornflower blue with a picture of a baby in a bathtub.  I know that many of my blogmates  (excluding Victoria) dislike Poetry, but there must be something in the issue worth reviewing.  That is, I refuse to throw the baby out with the bathwater. 

The cover on this month's Poetry lists Billy Collins, Paisley Rekdal, and Kay Ryan among the 15 poets in the issue.  Hmm.  I wonder who made the decision to include Collins, Rekdal and Ryan and leave Hicok, Goldbarth, Wagoner and Plumly off the front page?  A few notes:

Kay Ryan contributes 7 short poems of a style I associate with her:  epigrammatic poems with short lines and occasional rhyme.  A couple of them were witty and diverting.  From Houdini:  "Each escape / involved some art, / some hokum, and / at least a brief / incomprehensible / exchange between / the man and metal". 

Brian Barker, Dog Gospel:  A somewhat macabre tale of a dog abandoned and then beaten by a boy, a poem that needed to kill its Triggering Town and tighten up in a few places.  A few spots of tired language ("I see a farmer wandering his parched fields").  Some nice language in places ("... when night comes the cricketsong / dulcifies nothing, the dog's body / is just a body, is not paltry, is not glorified").

Billy Collins, The Long Day and Boyhood:  Pretty standard BC fare.  The best of what Collins used to do now seems to be what Hicok does.

Paisley Rekdal, Dear Lucana, Dear Lard:  I was fully prepared not to like this poem, as I wasn't taken with Rekdal's A Crash of Rhinos (which I always thought was a strange choice for the Contemporary Poetry Series). The poem, however, is a complete delight, a riotous romp of malapropisms: ("one sad groat glazing, a needle puling threads, / so what, so sue me.  These days what else to do but leer / at any boy with just the right hairline:  Hey!  I say, / That's one tasty piece of nature.  Tart Darkling,").

Bob Hicok, Full Flight:  Hicok, at times, goes on a little long for me.  In this poem, a vignette of a flight aboard a small plane, Hicok keeps his diction sharp and his irony subdued ("I'm in a plane that will not be flown into a building").  It is a political poem without the blather ("on my lap these pictures from Iraq, naked bodies, / stacked into pyramid of ha-ha and the articles").  A generous and thoughtful poem, and one of the best I've read about 9/11 and the aftermath (". . . but the men are musical / in their jargon, both likely born in New Delhi / and probably Americans now, which is what the flesh / of this country has been, a grafted pulse, an inventory / of the world, and just as the idea of embrace / moves chemically into my blood, and I'm warmed / as if I've just taken a drink, a voice announces / we've begun our descent, and then I sense the falling").

Bruce F. Murphy, Memory of Summer:  I include this poem in the list because it is, perhaps, typical of what avid Poetry readers expect and disdaining Poetry critics dislike.  It starts with a good couple of lines: "The wind comes empty-handed / out of the north " and then wanders around philosophically with bucolic underpinnings ("Aloft the trees' clattering / puts me in mind of boys") and heavy-handed maundering ("he kills:  something escapes / the intimacy of ones' desire to live, / the other's to torture and to kill.  /Something in winning always lost,").

Greg Glazner, Royally So, He Said, And Heinous Not To:  A very un-Poetry-like work, with its Lucie-Brock-Broido-ish title and unabashed clatter:  "You're not a shoehorn over-jonesing for the shoe, / or oozing like a spikenard, overeager / as an Easter weasel in the egg yard".  A weird and diverting combination of sass, scat and villanelle.

Rachel Wetzsteon, On Leaving The Bachelorette Brunch:  Starts out fine and then "I crave, I long for transforming love / as surely as leaves need water and mouths seek bread."  Oh, goodness.

Albert Goldbarth, The Aura:  The same intelligent, discursive Goldbarth, but a little too clinical and lacking the requisite energy and usual clever segues. (" ... And sadness, / too, is what we do -- if "we" is homo sapiens and "do" / is make kinetic some potential in our spooled-up lengths / of neural combination.")

David Wagoner, For An Old Woman At The Gate:  Another poem from which I didn't expect much, and was surprised when I was charmed.  A little story of an old woman at airport security:  ("And ask you to spread your arms, expecting you to fly /  All by yourself ..."). 

Joanie Mackowski, The House Gift:  Phrasing without any fat, filled with observation and mild startlement:  "Egg-white house, old / ache in the rafters / small as a button but / yearning for zero:  / a sparrow parts the chimney / and veers for my face."

In the Comment section, Donald Hall writes about his two decades with Jane Kenyon, something about which he writes a lot, and is always painful for me to read. David Barber reviews Collected Poems by Donald Justice with sympathy and respect. 

Peter Campion reviews books by Alice Jones (two thumbs up), Joseph Harrison (one thumb up), P. K. Page (one thumb up), Stephen Dunn (no thumbs, really), Rae Armantrout (not enough surprise), Thylias Moss (better read as a novel), Jeff Clark ("If you wrote a computer program that translated French Surrealist poetry based on the neural feedback of a squid, you might end up with lines like these"), A. F. Moritz ("a poor editor of his own work"), Mark Wunderlich ("There's an entire phalanx of American poets Wunderlich's age who write this way ... you would be reading it in the New England Review, or maybe, if a number followed the title, in Fence."), and John Ash ("Ash could be the best English poet of his generation).

Posted by jbahr at 08:19 AM | Comments (2)

October 30, 2004

Voice

I have always felt uncomfortable with the notion of voice -- or perhaps the idea that a poet only has one of them.  That is, I would prefer to believe that my language changes to fit my message, and that I am not above learning a few tricks, old dog that I may be.  So, for years, I have been writing poems in the style of.  This exercise involves immersing myself in a poet's work, noting the formal elements, the kinds of devices, the usual topics, the spatial distribution.   These little journeys have been taken with Mary Jo Bang, Brenda Hillman, Jorie Graham.  All the usual suspects.

Take for example, a little piece from Four Red Wheelbarrows, after Ashbery:

The Rhone flows from the Alps to its mouth, the latter a shout
of cabaret girls, the former -- well, the former, the precedent, a babble
of ice for a thousand barges, the way they write piano songs standing up,
the whole world on the back of a turtle, but without the wheels and chased
through streets filled with thrown tomatoes which never get the rain
they deserve anyway - that's God on a month-end budget again, use it
or lose it, down it comes but who'd have guessed the feathers? The strut
of the old ladies with their wrinkled skin? The squawking?

Now, everybody does bad Ashbery, so I don't expect to be indicted any time soon.  One can learn something, perhaps, by putting oneself in the poetic frame of Saint John, or, for that matter, Gerald Stern or Billy Collins.  There are some curiosities about these parodying ploys, though.  On many occasions, I've submitted pieces After this poet or that, only to have them rejected.  I even had an editor of a good mid-list literary journal tell me that he detested the title and "get rid of the After."  Curiously enough, this poem was a take-off on Matthea Harvey's award-winning, BAP-included, Sad Little Breathing Machine (from the book of the same title, reviewed by Jordan Davis here). 

Curious, because I'd been intrigued by SLBM ever since it won the Publishing OnLine award a couple of years ago.  In an interview shortly after the award, Ms. Harvey was describing the @ symbol that occurs below the title, which signified the "engine" she had used to morph the poem.  She said she wrote "with an engine -- a device I created to stymie my tendency toward the narrative."  Ms. Harvey's prior work, Pity the Bathtub Its Forced Embrace of the Human Form, had been substantially more narrative, and contained poems written so that each line was linked to the last by a sort of syntactic momentum, as in:

Pity the bathtub its forced embrace of the whims of
One man loves but is not loved in return by the object
Of his affection there is little to tell of his profession
There is more for it is because he works with glass

and so on.  Shortly thereafter, Ms. Harvey built her little engine.  Aha, I thought.  I'm not the only one concerned about my poetic wheels and the muck they appear to be stuck in.  Junie actually spoke with Ms. Harvey at the New Orleans AWP, but I never got a chance to chat her up about the comment.

Which brings me to my current conundrum.  Hanging out with my blogging peers (particularly the younger, hipper ones) has shifted my focus toward the elliptical.  I have tried recently to write, well, more telegraphically.  You know, the way Bush Senior used to speak ("... can't fix the budget.  Wouldn't do that. ") .  There's more to it, of course.  There's the need to slowly slide out on a limb, to create lines that are shadows of intent, to speak as if you're only semi-conscious.  Like most things, it's a hell of a lot harder than it looks.  At least for a former lyrical narrativist.  I end up with stuff like:

I am fatuous, and so, a bag of bones.
Like the lemur, only sleepier, only
lonely. I dote on notions: airborne
ash or sedimentary compression. Smiling,
sharing, as I do, three-fourths
of a pumpkin’s DNA.

Is this stuff easier to write than the pastoral epiphanies of Mary Oliver?  The dour plainspeak of Ms. Glück?  The grounded light-yet-dark, funny-yet-serious wanderings of Bob Hicok?  Is it harder than knocking out a decent ghazal?  Should I even be trying?  Is it honest?

I don't know.  I've been reading GC Waldrep closely this week.  It could be my imagination, but even he seems to be veering toward the "left" in his new work,  vis a vis the poems in Goldbeater's Skin — if by "left" we mean the work in more experimental journals.  (I also keep expecting for Tony Tost to start slipping into Bush-Speak).  Most everybody else, though, seems to be just doing what they do. And frankly, it seems to be paying off.

What do you mean?, I bet you're thinking.  Well, I've noticed something odd about my lit-mag acceptances.  I send out a packet with, say, 5 poems.  Within six to nine months, 4 of them are accepted somewhere.  But, each poem in a different journal, and usually journals of roughly equal stature.  That happens to me a lot, so I began looking at my packets and found that I was unconsciously grouping poems that were, well, different from one another.  Perhaps slightly different formatting or look or (gasp) voice.  Is there a downside to this wandering all over the poetic map?  Do literary journal editors crinkle up their nose when you intentionally change voice?  Is there any hope for a whole manuscript filled with this cacophony of expression. 

I suppose I'll find out.

Posted by jbahr at 09:54 AM | Comments (1)

October 28, 2004

Election News

Kerry 260, Bush 254 : That's the latest electoral vote prediction from Votemaster, an aggregation of the latest polls.

An article in the Washington Post today, discussing why the polls may be inaccurate.

Up to 58,000 absentee ballots mailed by Democrat-leaning Broward County appear to have gone missing temporarily. The county blames the post office and the post office blames the county.

Over 60 individuals have donated over $1 million to partisan political groups.

Posted by jbahr at 06:52 AM | Comments (0)

October 27, 2004

In The Mail This Week

Smithsonian:  Lies! Slander! Trickery!  The article focuses on the election.  The incumbent is one of a father-son team, both of whom became President.  The incumbent's administration has sponsored a law which will be overturned as in violation of the Bill of Rights.  They loathe France and make a point of the challenger's visit there.  Many believe that the incumbent's party wishes to vastly increase the power of the Federal government.  The electoral vote is a tie and the decision must be made by the House of Representatives.  "Warnings are circulated of the drastic consequences if Republicans were denied the Presidency."  After weeks of arguments, back-room deals, and no little chicanery, a new President emerges.

This is the story of the election of 1800.  The incumbent is John Adams and the challenger is Thomas Jefferson.  Interesting article, with many points that were detailed in a similar article in The Atlantic some months back.

An interesting article on "America's First Immigrants" discusses increasingly respected theories that the first humans in the New World migrated from Asia or Europe, not across the Bering Sea isthmus.  A piece on on Oliver Stone's upcoming "Alexander The Great".  Another fascinating article on the art of pyrotechnics ("Art That Goes Boom") and a retrospective on the Tet Offensive.

Time:  Time features 5 articles on the election including "The Morning After" (the challenges of governing a divided country), "What Could Go Wrong This Time?" (basically, everything from voting machinery to lawsuits), and "Where They Stand" (each candidate's position on Iraq, Terrorism, Nuclear Proliferation, Taxes, Jobs, Education, Health Care, Social Security, and the Environment).  An article on Pentagon Contracting Specialist Bunnatine Greenhouse, who has blown the whistle on improprieties she witnessed during Halliburton negotiations.  An inevitable article on the Red Sox ("Is The Curse Reversed?").  An recent study shows that people who get their medical advice from the Internet actually get worse.  Review of Tommy Lee's memoir, in which he details intravaneous drug use, rampant sex with groupies, and his commitment to the environment. 

Wired:  Today, NPR was interviewing Kathleen Hanna of Le Tigre, one of the 16 musical groups who contributed to a CD included with this month's Wired.  The CD is expressly permitted to be non-commercially shared and commercially sampled.  Accompanying articles include a discussion of the ethics and law of music sharing/sampling, an interview with the Beastie Boys, and Brazil's bristling against intellectual property restrictions in software and music media.  A terrific article on Johan Ottensoser ("you can't hack fridges like you used to"), an engineer who specializes in making appliances Kosher (for example, he retrofits ovens so that they will retain heat through the Sabbath).  Some amazing photos of digital beauties, such as:



 

Posted by jbahr at 04:27 PM | Comments (0)

October 25, 2004

More On Book Contests

I have been intending for weeks to get back to the topic of Book Contests.  Every time I think I'm ready, though, I see another post by Victoria Chang that gets me thinking (and procrastinating).  Victoria has been incredibly generous with her time, detailing many aspects of book contests.  She also speaks from a considerably higher vantage point than I, having actually won one of those darned things.  In one of her earlier posts, she listed her favorite contests, which included most of the Big Guns and some of more modest competitions. 

I was busy reviewing Winning Writers to see what additional book contests I would recommend and came up with a few (e.g., The Lena-Miles Wever Todd Poetry Series and The Anhinga Prize for Poetry) that I would be proud to win, and a few more that I would be happy to win if I were of an appropriate gender or ethnicity (e.g., The Cave Canem Poetry Prize).  You couldn't go wrong with Victoria's list, of course.  A much larger (and less selective) list is provided by Zoo Press (which I think shows a lot of class).

One reason I had to get back to the topic of book contests was to post an editorial correction.  I heard from G. C. Waldrep, who graciously emended my memory regarding his book contest experience.  Though G.C. did enter a number of contests, he won the Colorado Prize for Poetry after one of his early manuscript submissions and withdrew from all the other contests shortly thereafter.  The entire time from completion of manuscript to competition winning was 5 months.  He asked me if I now hated him, and I admitted that I did, actually (just kidding, G.C. is probably one of the few people who are impossible to be upset with).

In recent posts regarding book contests, Victoria made some good points about ways, means, and goals.   Why are we entering these things in the first place?  Self-publishing is certainly an option -- relatively inexpensive in these days of Print On Demand, and capable of high quality.  Another option is sheer persistence and contest-agnosticism.  By which I mean just blasting your manuscript to one of the hundred-plus competitions, many of which are sponsored by small presses.  Oh, you want some degree of prestige?  Now, we get into dangerous territory.

I found out a few things by spending 2 years developing a difficulty ranking for literary magazines:  1) everybody has a quality, prestige or difficulty ranking in their heads, but nobody wants to talk about it.  2) Everyone agrees on the top 5 or 10 journals, but disagreements begin immediately after that.  3)  Literary magazines are basically incomparable because of large differences in aesthetic preference.  I think the same three points hold for book contests.  In spades.

One thing that separates book competitions from lit-mag submission is the nearly ubiquitous use of guest judges.  It's as if every literary publication employed the Ploughshares model of always using a guest editor.  This makes, in general, an attempt to fit your manuscript to a competition a lot dicier proposition than the average poetry submission.  Sure, you will be able to tell pretty immediately whether your manuscript is appropriate for the Slope Editions Annual Book Prize or the New Criterion Poetry Prize, but what about the vast middle ground?  Looking, for example, at the last six winners of the Walt Whitman Award, we have:

As a member of the American Academy of Poets, I have received and read all of these fine works except Resin, which hasn't shipped yet.  I am almost certainly not alone in finding a wide variety of style and voice among these works -- from Standard PostPostModern Elliptical to Lyrical Narrative. 

Another topic that get batted around on various poetry fora (Foetry being the most notorious) is whether some book contests are essentially unwinnable without the right connections.  Or the right MFA (the prestigious Iowa Writer's Workshop taking the most heat).  Or the right former professor (no, I'm not naming names).  These same notions (or conspiracy theories, if you wish) are bandied about with regard to literary journal choices, of course, but the fear and loathing seems to more deeply rooted when the topic of book contests arises. 

My attitude is that you just take your best shot.  I do think that Internal Coherence (I've stopped using Unity of Style, since various poets and editors take that to mean theme-based work) is important, because your manuscript has to Stand For Something.  And that Something had better create an epiphany in the judge at hand.  Over which you have no control, and often no pre-knowledge.  It reminds me of something my pal Whimsy once said:

Poetry submission is like ice-skating in a competition on a rink with which you're only vaguely familiar. You never know who the other competitors are until it's too late, and you find out your scores four months after the event. The actual judging criteria are never disclosed.
 

Posted by jbahr at 02:31 PM | Comments (0)

Prescience From The Right

I followed a link from Votemaster to Republican Switchers, the latter a site featuring prominent Republicans that have expressed a preference for Kerry.  One of the switchers is Doug Bandow, of the conservative Cato Institute.  Here's some things he says regarding the War in Iraq:

For instance, that Saddam Hussein is an evil man who has brutalized his own people. Certainly true. But the world is full of brutal regimes that have murdered their own people . . .Slightly more plausible, at least, is the argument that creating a democratic system in Iraq would provide a useful model for the rest of the Mideast. But that presupposes democracy can be easily planted, and that it can survive once the U.S. departs. . . .Moreover, while Americans might see America's war on Iraq as a war for democracy, most Arabs would likely see it as a war for Washington. . . .Saddam's complicity in September 11 would present a good argument for devastating retaliation for an act of war, but there's no evidence that he was involved. All that exists is a disputed meeting, which might not have occurred, in the Czech Republic between hijacker Mohammed Atta and an Iraqi official. . . .Of course, the world would be a better place without Saddam's dictatorship. But there are a lot of regimes that should, and eventually will, end up in history's dustbin. That's not a good reason to initiate war against a state which poses no direct, ongoing threat. . . . Especially since war often creates unpredictable consequences. Without domestic opposition military forces to do America's dirty work, Washington will have to bear most of the burden.  . . If Iraq's forces don't quickly crumble, the U.S. might find itself involved in urban conflict that will be costly in human and political terms. . . . War is a serious business. Making war on a country which does not threaten the U.S. is particularly serious.  . . . There's certainly no hurry to go to war. Nothing is different today from September 10, 2001, or any time since Iraq was ousted from Kuwait. . . .There are times when Washington has no choice but to fight. Iraq is not such a place and now is not such a time.

Old hat, right?  Same old rhetoric we've heard from the Democrats.  And that last line sounds like it was ripped off the Kerry website intact.

True.  But, this is an article by Bandow written in August of 2002.

Posted by jbahr at 12:13 PM | Comments (0)

October 24, 2004

Nyuk Nyuk Nyuk


Unless you want these clowns running your country, go out and vote on November 2d! Earlier if you can.

Posted by jbahr at 01:17 PM | Comments (0)

October 23, 2004

Pounded Chicken

This is one of my favorite recipes when one of my sons drops by and I don't have a lot of time for fancy fixings. It has the elegance of veal scaloppine (i.e., Wiener Schnitzel) without the guilt.

Two chicken breasts, preferably free-range or equivalent
Enough flour to shake in a large Zip-Lock (tm) bag
One teaspoon of black pepper
One-quarter teaspoon of paprika (optional)
4 Big T of olive oil (virgin not necessary)
3 Big T of dry white wine
2 Big T of lemon juice
2 Big T of butter (optional)
1 Big T of either capers or green peppercorns, as you wish
2 Big T of either chopped cilantro or parsley

Separate the breasts, if they aren't already, and place on a large cutting board. Using the mace-like criss-crossed end of a "meat hammer" (I like the OXO Good Grips Meat Tenderizer at $10), pound the breast until they are about 3/8'ths inches thick. The lacerations and indentations that result tenderize the breasts and result in faster cooking.

Throw both breasts in the Zip-Lock (tm) bag along with the flour, pepper and (optionally) paprika. Omitting the paprika will give you a nice golden finish, adding it will brown up the breasts and provide a little pizzazz.

Heat the olive oil in a heavy skillet. If you have more than two people to serve, you can cook the breasts in batches and transfer them when done to a plate in a warm oven. Cook on medium-high heat for about 4 minutes on each side, a little longer if the breasts are thicker.

When all the breast cooking is finished, turn the heat down to medium and deglaze the pan with the white wine. Scrape up the brown bits and add the lemon juice, cilantro/parsley and capers/peppercorns. If you like a richer sauce, also add the butter. If you have sautéed the breasts beforehand, you can prepare the sauce by reheating the pan on medium heat. Multiply the quantities of wine, lemon juice, and green stuff by how many breasts you have. If the sauce seems a little thick, add more wine or butter.

Drizzle the sauce evenly over each breast on individual plates. Serve with a green salad. My boys and I like to accompany this with a big scoop of sticky Japanese-style rice.

Posted by jbahr at 08:49 AM | Comments (1)

In The Mail This Week - Continued

I promised to discuss the latest issue of New American Writing, the annual literary production of editors Paul Hoover and Maxine Chernoff.  New American Writing has been around since 1986 and has racked up numerous accomplishments (Best American Poetry selections, Pushcarts) and yet most of my poet buddies don't even know it exists.  Perhaps this is due to its relative youth, compared to the Kenyon Review or Ploughshares.  Perhaps, it's due to the somewhat narrower range of aesthetic.

NAW leans toward the fresh, the edgy, the elliptical.  Recent past contributors include old hands like Brenda Hillman, Cal Bedient, James Tate and Clayton Eshleman.  Some issues have one or two luminaries of more conventional aesthetic (e.g., Robert Hass, Richard Howard, Jorie Graham), but for the most part Hoover and Chernoff avoid the practice of stuffing their issues with the Same Old Big Cigars.  Each of three issues I've read yearly have included new talent that I later noticed in larger venues, APR bios and AWP readings.

In the past four years, NAW has featured poetry by Mary Jo Bang, Linh Dinh, Arielle Greenberg, Christine Hume, Noelle Kocot, Mong-Lan, Timothy Liu, Ethan Paquin and Karen Volkman  -- just to name a few bright lights.  Quite a few of our fellow po-bloggers have also showed up:  Joshua Corey, Jordan Davis, Noah Eli Gordon, Gabe Gudding, John Latta, and Kasey Mohammad.

Most NAW issues contain a special section dedicated to a single topic, conceit or trajectory.  This year's volume ended with an article by Hoàng Hung, entitled The Modernization of Vietnamese Poetry:  A History from a Vietnamese Poet's Perspective, and was preceded by a number of translations of Vietnamese poets.  The rest of the issue ranged from the inebriating prose poetry of James Tate to the disjunctive spatial chaos of Albert Flynn Desilver (the latter of whom was a classmate this summer at the Napa Valley Writers' Conference).  Here's a small selection of the work that Junie and I liked:

Mark McMorris, Dear Michael (2):  Junie and I heard Mark read this poem at an AWP Reading that included Mary Jo, Oni Buchanan and Timothy Liu.  McMorris uses key words (deaf, leaning, spear, sound) to tie together lines describing the wound -- the wound that makes a poem, the wound that documents language, the wound that never creaks or closes.  This is a wonderful poem, full of sound and deep with meaning:  Say that book is a door.  I say the soldier / and the local, the word and the weed, the light / and the kiss make a mayhem and a meeting.

Gabriel Gudding, Minnesota: Gudding reserves his trademark humor for other poems in this quiet piece describing his family's lake home:  And without your brief umbrella / when I was wild / I was young, and the lakes I had been to / and the lake I had been in / were petrol blue in the evening.

G.C. Waldrep, What Is an Anthem and Who Is Charles Ives:  Waldrep's intelligence and crisp diction run through both of these pieces.  I particularly enjoyed the almost subliminal use of device and sonics:  I left the money on the table.  Each penny separate and together, this is copper, this is how copper behaves and most elegant in high noon burnish.  Waldrep converts interrogatives into declaratives in a controlled pitch that nudges you along toward his philosophy:  Should we entertain.  Can we verify the holograph. 

Donna Stonecipher, The Postcard-Collector's Address:  Stonecipher segments her poem into postcard-sized couplets:  I know the world / only through // form:  Mosaic / of views.  It is said // melancholics / gravitate.  A small gem of a poem.

Christopher Janke, Psalm of the Presbyter:  I liked this poem, and really couldn't tell you why -- perhaps the combination of whimsy and concision:  the longest angel on this worksheet / only extends an inch beyond // the bottom of the page.  After that, / there is an urge for grapes and // sexual union. 

There are many other fine pieces in this issue.  Go take a look at a better bookstore, or order it up from Amazon.

Posted by jbahr at 08:38 AM | Comments (0)

October 20, 2004

In The Mail This Week

Harpers' editor, Lewis Lapham, pens a persuasive editorial in favor of abolishing the Electoral College, noting that California, Texas and New York are basically ignored (because of their electoral certainty for one candidate or the other), while states like Michigan get 30 campaign visits. Harper's Index notes that you're 50% more likely to get hit by lightning than be a victim of terrorism. There's an excellent article on why neither pro-life nor pro-choice advocates should be happy with the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act, and a photo spread of Republicans (most of them in suits, many of them holding a wineglass). The Briefings section details why Florida is poised again to be a ballot-box nightmare. Gene Lyons reviews the Left Behind series, the far-right End Times answer to Harlequin Romance novels.

In Time:  A researcher claims to have found a gene that predisposes one to spirituality;  an excellent in-depth article on Ayatollah Sistani, possibly the most influential man in Iraq;  the DOD, Brazilian and the city of Munich are ditching Microsoft in favor of Linux; the effect of wedge issues (stem-cell research, gay marriage, abortion) on voting patterns; KFC is prospering in China with 1,100 outlets offering Sechuan and Peking-duck-flavored chicken; Aztecs predated the piercing craze, often mutilating their tongues, ears, legs and penises;  more evidence that many dinosaurs were feathered; the Dalai Lama answers ten questions with patience and grace.

This month's AWP Writer's Chronicle includes an interview with Richard Shelton, noted fictioneer, essayist and poet;  Richard Terrill explores the little-discussed comparisons between poetry and non-fiction, noting the rise of "lyric essays";  Barbara Brooks discusses women and fiction in "Who Could be Interested in this Crap?" -- one of the few major articles whose title is (not surprisingly) missing from the front cover;  Antioch University announces a Post-MFA Certificate in the Teaching of Creative Writing (and you thought you had suffered enough in your graduate program?);  Southern Illinois University Press has a nice picture of Victoria Chang in the announcement of her prize-winning Circle;  Heather McHugh will be judging the Honickman prize, which is, perhaps, good news for whimsical poets; Sarah Maclay (who looks remarkably like a young Sharon Olds) discusses "not naming" in poetry and how circuitousness can preserve the "shock of transport";  Charles Harper Webb discusses competing values in contemporary poetry, an article that deserves its own paragraph, to wit:

In Apples and Orangutans, Webb enumerates 62 properties of verse that one or the other of us, as poets, hope to find in the work we read.  These characteristics include natural style, flash and flair, accessibility, mystery, seriousness, sincerity, figurative language, moral uplift, performability, craft, closure, propriety, nihilism, realism and ugliness, just to name a few.  Many of these characteristics are mutually exclusive goals, of course, valued by one or the other of dozens of competing schools/styles/movements in contemporary poetry.  Webb opines that the wild diversity in modern poetry is the direct result of the lack of any Darwinian process for competing aesthetics:  nobody buys poetry books, so everyone is free to preach to their own particular choir.  From the look on his face in the photo, Webb appears to have his tongue firmly embedded in his cheek.

My buddy Frank sent me the Deutche Grammaphon CD of  Il Sogno, Elvis Costello's orchestral work based upon A Midsummer Night's Dream.

I also received an intriguing new issue of New American Writing, which deserves its own entry for discussion.

Posted by jbahr at 12:23 PM | Comments (0)

October 19, 2004

Santa Fe

Apologies for the short absence ... Junie and I drove to Santa Fe with friends for a couple of days of gallery visits, great meals and light shopping. Here's a few striking works we saw in three of the dozens of art galleries in SF (the first one rather Ashberian):

Posted by jbahr at 08:04 AM | Comments (2)

Dead Heat Again

Votemaster's current best estimate of electoral college votes is 257 for Kerry, 247 for Bush. Florida and Iowa are now polling dead even, with Nevada and Wisconsin now tipping into the Kerry camp. Statistically, there are a dozen states (and 130+ electoral votes) where a lead by either candidate still doesn't exceeed the margin of error.

Various polls of approval rating and voter intention show Bush in the 47-48% range. The theory goes that an incumbent never receives much more than his/her predicted vote percentage (it's effectively an upper limit), whereas a challenger almost always does (it's effectively a lower limit). This should be making the Bush camp nervous.

Posted by jbahr at 06:40 AM | Comments (0)

October 11, 2004

Poetry Book Contests - Part Two

A rather amazing number of poets on the "blogroll" to the right are winners of book contests, including:

Stephen Burt, Popular Music, Colorado Prize for Poetry
Victoria Chang, Circle, Crab Orchard Award Series in Poetry
Joshua Corey, Selah, Barrow Street Book Prize
Catherine Daly, Locket, Tupelo Press Competition
Noah Eli Gordon, The Area of Sound Called the Subtone, Sawtooth Poetry Prize
Gabe Gudding, A Defense of Poetry, Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize
Paul Guest, The Resurrection of the Body and the Ruin of the World, New Issues Poetry Prize
David Hernandez, A House Waiting for Music, Tupelo Press Competition
Janet Holmes, The Physicist at the Mall, Anhinga Prize for Poetry
Sabrina Orah Mark, The Babies, Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize Winner
Aaron McCollough, Welkin, Sawtooth Poetry Prize
Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Miracle Fruit, Tupelo Press Competition
Oliver de la Paz, Names Above Houses, Crab Orchard Award Series in Poetry
Lucia Perillo, Dangerous Life, Morse Poetry Prize
Lance Phillips, Corpus Socius: Poems, Sawtooth Poetry Prize
Lee Ann Roripaugh, Beyond Heart Mountain, National Poetry Series
Lee Ann Roripaugh, Year of the Snake, Crab Orchard Award Series in Poetry
Spencer Short, Tremolo, National Poetry Series
Heidi Lynn Staples, Guess Can Gallop, New Issues Poetry Prize
Tony Tost, Invisible Bride, Walt Whitman Award

Please email me if I've left someone off ...
 

 

Posted by jbahr at 04:28 PM | Comments (4)

Poetry Book Contests - Part One

In the past two years, there has been more written about literary book contests than I've seen written in the prior five years.  As I have composed, submitted, re-arranged, submitted, re-titled and re-submitted my own manuscript repeatedly in the past year, I have more than a little interest in discussions about book contests.

Some commentary has focused on fairness and favoritism.  The most notorious of this commentary can be had at www.foetry.com, where dozens of disgruntled (and mostly anonymous) contributors express their opinions (and supply anecdotes) regarding various book contests.  A recent editorial in the Missouri Review criticized one publisher for dropping a fiction contest after collecting reading fees.  An article by the noted critic Stephen Burt reviewed the Foetry site, calling it a cross between the Drudge Report and Consumer Reports. 

Burt quotes Joan Houlihan, who observes correctly "In the past decade, the publishing landscape has been dominated by contests."  In an earlier time, the way to get a book published was to "throw a manuscript over the transom" of your favorite publisher (or two or twenty).  At a recent conference, Billy Collins told the story about his first manuscript's journey to small press after small press.  Thus was it once, but most publishers of poetry now employ book contests, particularly first and second-book contests, to obtain manuscripts for consideration.

Many poets rely on Poet's Market, Poets and Writers, the APR and other journals to find out about contests.  There are a few other organized sources, including my short list of first-book competitions, Zoo Press's comprehensive list, and Victoria Chang's list that she recommended in a recent weblog entry discussing her experience with book contests.  The most comprehensive source for contests is Winning Writers, a poetry contest information service run by Adam Cohen and Jendi Reiter, that contains details on over 650 contests.  Note:  thanks, Jendi and Adam, for letting me crib from WW for this weblog entry.

So who runs the poetry contests?  And what are your chances? And which are worth entering?   We've made a stab at the first question.  Let's tackle the second one.  The most prestigious poetry contests typically receive from 1,000 to 1,500 manuscripts -- contests which include the Walt Whitman Award and APR's Honickman First Book Prize.  Many other contests of merit receive from 750 to 1,000 manuscripts, including the Brittingham and Pollak Poetry Prizes, the Paris Review Prize in Poetry, and the Bakeless Literary Prize for poetry.  Virtually all of the top 50 contests receive at least 500 competing manuscripts. 

That doesn't mean, of course, that there are tens of thousands of manuscripts out there.  Every serious early to mid-career poet with a manuscript is competing in a number of contests.  Beth Ann Fennelly in her article "The Winnowing of Wildness: Style and First Book Contests" (AWP Writer's Chronicle) relates how she slugged it out for 4 years, submitting dozens of times, to dozens of contests,  before winning the Kenyon Review Prize in Poetry.  Victoria hit up to 25 contests a year for the 3 years, before winning the Crab Orchard Award.  GC Waldrep submitted manuscripts for a couple of years before winning the Colorado Prize for Poetry.  Ditto, Louise Mathias for Lark Apprentice, winner of the New Issues Press award.  Everyone I've spoken with or read about has taken two to five years to win a first-book contest, and many of the contestants have been finalists multiple times (I haven't heard Tony Tost discuss his ordeal in winning the Whitman).

So what are the odds that your manuscript is going to win?  If you submit to 20 contests every year, you're probably competing against 3,000-to-5,000 other distinct manuscripts.  Let's assume that you're a damned fine poet, and, after accounting for manuscripts-that-aren't-really-ready-for-prime-time and the slush pile, the real competition boils down to 100 other manuscripts, in any given competition.  A naive probability of your winning is 1 minus the probability of losing each of the 20 contests you enter, or

 1 - 0.9920 = 18.2%

That doesn't sound too bad, does it?  Of course, I've made some simplifying assumptions (independence of trials, no manuscript wins more than one contest).  But, is it accurate to pretend that quality doesn't matter, after the manuscript pile has been winnowed down to the last 100?  Is it worth spending $500 a year, year after year, because you're bound to hit the jackpot eventually? 

I don't know.  I tend to think that there's more chance in contest-winning than one would imagine, though.  First, there's the matter of contest judges.  Surely, your chance of winning differs depending upon whether the judge is Thomas Lux, Jorie Graham, Louise Glück, Molly Peacock, or Heather McHugh.  Nobody writes with such universal brilliance that judges of widely varying aesthetics are going to end up choosing the same manuscript. 

So, perhaps you begin with matching your style to the perceived style of the judge.  That works for some contests, but many contests don't announce the judge until the contest is closed, and some (e.g., The Contemporary Poetry Series) never announce who the judge was. One strategy may be to wait to enter contests until you've built up a formidable set of credits for poems in the manuscript.  While I suspect that's a good idea, it's not foolproof.  Every contest winner I've spoken with says that they've (reluctantly) pulled poems with the best credits from their manuscript to achieve unity of style. 

The need for unity of style is the one aspect of manuscripts that almost every contest winner has cited.  Beth Ann Fennelly decries this tendency in poetry book contest judging, noting that eclectic manuscripts are often ignored, resulting a "winnowing of the wildness". 

~~~

What do you think?  I'll be writing a second installment in the future and I'd appreciate your thoughts

Posted by jbahr at 08:36 AM | Comments (10)

October 09, 2004

The Second Presidential Debate

The instant polls from ABC put Kerry ahead 44% to Bush's 41% with 13% calling it a tie. CNN's instant poll numbers were 47%/45%/8% for Kerry.  A number of pundits gave the first half of the debate to Kerry and the second half to Bush.

Personally, I'd call it a draw. I think Kerry did slightly better on message, and Bush did better with affect. In case you didn't see the debate, it was a town hall meeting of uncommitted Missourians who provided questions, from which the moderator chose a selection to be asked of Bush and Kerry. The format was better suited to the President's tent-preacher walk-around style. Kerry often seemed to me like a giant Christmas nutcracker come alive.

National Security: Early questions dealt with the Iraq War and homeland security. Kerry did well, but had little new to say in the way of message. Bush stayed characteristically steadfast to His War. Both candidates tried to spin the latest report on the lack of WMDs to their favor, Kerry somewhat more convincingly. At one strange moment, Bush violated debate protocol by responding out of turn, talking over moderator Charles Gibson's question, to attack Kerry's statement that the US went it alone in Iraq. In retrospect, it almost seemed like a planned faux pas intended to show passion and conviction, while telegraphing that a strong President can and will do what he must -- including breaking the rules of the debate.

Health Care:  Bush tried rather artfully (for Bush) to link Kerry's Medicare plan to HillaryCare by insinuating repeatedly that it would end up as Another Big Government Program of Waste and Inefficiency.  Kerry did a barely adequate job of defending running mate Edwards as one of those ambulance chasers who drive up medical costs with needless lawsuits (Kerry actually said "I'm a lawyer, too.")  Kerry relied on enumerating how many people remained uncovered, but the numbers just seemed to float there unlistened-to in this debate (that seemed more about passion than oratory).

Taxes:  Bush repeated his mantra that cutting taxes is A Good Thing.  Kerry kept targeting the over $200K-a-year crowd for tax rollbacks, citing these increases as the revenues that would pay for new programs.  Bush parried that "900,000 small-business owners" would suffer, to which Kerry (correctly) replied that half of those owners were dabblers like Bush who once received $84 from a timber company.  Bush seemed inappropriately glib in his response:  "I own a timber company?  That's news to me. . . . Need some wood?"  Bush repeatedly stated that Kerry would raise taxes.  Kerry looked into the camera and promised not to raise taxes on those making $200K or less.

Jobs:  Kerry pressed his advantage again by pointing out the large private-sector job loss that happened on Bush's watch.  Bush blunted some of the argument by noting that the stock market dove 6 months before he took office, and that the recession (that he implied he had inherited) was the mildest in recent history.

Stem-Cell Research:  Kerry dragged poor Michael J. Fox metaphorically onto the stage, and was obviously conflicted on how to reconcile his Catholicism with the issue.   Bush appealed to his base by noting that no new embryo's had been "killed" because of his decision to freeze the research stock to current cell lines.

Miscellany:  Bush noted that the respected, non-partisan National Journal assessed Kerry as the most liberal Senator, which Kerry never effectively addressed. One questioner asked Bush to cite 3 mistakes he had made in office.  Bush made light of the question by saying that he'd made a couple of appointments that he regretted but didn't want to embarrass the appointees.  Another questioner asked Bush about upcoming Supreme Court appointees and got a vague, predictable answer:  strict constructionists.  Kerry continued to waffle (what else can he do?) on things he's against, but voted for -- the Iraq War, the Patriot Act (which he intimated was improperly interpreted by ideologues like Ashcroft), and the No Child Left Behind Act (which he said was improperly funded).

Both candidates had what I thought were weak moments.  Kerry flailed around in response to the stem-cell question.  Bush was utterly unconvincing in claiming that his prohibition of Canadian drug imports was intended to keep unsafe drugs from reaching us -- drugs that could be brewed up in some Third World Country and masquerade as the real thing.  Kerry noted that these were the same drugs, made by the same Big Pharma firms, that were available in the US.

A number of extremely dubious contentions by both sides continue to be ignored:  The Administration has not caught or killed three-fourths of  Al Quaeda leadership.  Kerry's plans exceed the probable revenue to fund them by hundreds of billions of dollars.  Neither candidate is going to get out of this war easily or cheaply.

The final debate will be held next Wednesday and will address domestic issues.   The format will be identical to the first debate.

What was your take?

Posted by jbahr at 03:40 AM | Comments (3)

October 08, 2004

Kerry Leads

In what appears to be a startling turn-around, Votemaster puts Kerry now ahead in electoral votes, 280 to 239. This new result aggregates the results from 25 new polls.

There are, of course, a dozen states for which the polls are still well within the margin of error. Still, this is the strongest showing for Kerry that I've seen.

Don't get cocky. We all need to show up at the polls.

Posted by jbahr at 12:29 PM | Comments (1)

October 07, 2004

Technology Shorts

The John Kerry website is hosted by a Linux system, the George Bush site by Microsoft.  Figures.
 ~~~
For a really funny Internet experience, have the Snoop Dog shizzolate your favorite website.  I ran this page through the Shizzolator and got:

Personally, I thought Edwards did well in da beginning, but tha dude's boyish grin wuz wearing a little thin by da end of da debate, know what I'm sayin'? Conversely, Cheney came off as a bomb diggity deal less aggressive than I had expected n' shit. By which I mean, tha dude didn't actually chew Edwards' leg off, know what I'm sayin'?
~~~
The latest in MP3 jewelry.
~~~
Discovery of proto-feathers on one of T. Rex's ancestors leads researchers to wonder if T. Rex was feathered as well.  The ancestor, named Tyrannosauroid Dilong paradoxus means "surprising emperor dragon."  Jackie Chan has been signed for the Lost World sequel.
~~~
Scientists are exploring how adipose tissue (that's fat to the rest of us) can be an abundant source of stem cells.  

Posted by jbahr at 06:15 PM | Comments (1)

October 06, 2004

The Vice-Presidential Debates

In, short, I'd call it a draw.

Quickie polls by ABC News put Cheney ahead 43% to 35%, and by Fox News put Edwards ahead 41% to 29%. CBS found that uncommitted voters favored Edwards by 41% to 29%. One interesting conclusion would be that each party's base was underwhelmed by its candidate's performance.

Personally, I thought Edwards did well in the beginning, but his boyish grin was wearing a little thin by the end of the debate. Conversely, Cheney came off as a great deal less aggressive than I had expected. By which I mean, he didn't actually chew Edwards' leg off.

Both men appeared to have their talking points in order, though Cheney seemed a bit more genuine in his delivery. Edwards gave me the impression of a firehose just waiting to be turned on every chance he got to speak. When he got his chance, he was articulate and organized. Edwards was expected to say the H word (Halliburton) and Cheney was expected to insinuate that Edwards had too little experience, but neither attack seemed to acquire any traction. Edwards clearly had a lot of "material" ready for his gig, and was pretty smooth in finding tenuous threads from the question to his prepared attacks.

I couldn't get over the impression that Edwards was consistently answering the last question, not the current one. Good for him, if he got away with it, I suppose. It was pretty comical when he invoked the name "Kerry" twice in a question that prohibited it, to his own boyish chagrin.

Another impression I had was that Cheney appeared genuinely grandfatherly -- Just Not Evil Enough for the way the left paints him. His dignified reluctance to discuss his gay daughter could be interpreted as Not Wanting To Go There, but I was left with the impression that it left Edwards looking tawdry for bringing it up.

Edwards hammered Cheney on the War and Terror themes: outsourcing the capture of OBL, the administrations blunder of focusing on Iraq instead of Terror. Cheney defended the Administration with Stock Answers From The Book, and didn't seem all that enthused in doing so. Edwards was blessed by a last-minute admission by Paul Bremer that there aren't enough troops in Iraq, which he tried to capitalize on. Cheney got in a nice shot about not having ever met Edwards in person, even though Cheney is in the Senate every Tuesday. Predictably, the Democrats have come up with two photos of Edwards and Cheney shaking hands in the recent past, but I don't get the feeling anybody really cares about the charge or the defense anyway.

My 17-year-old son, raised in a liberal household, going to a liberal charter school in liberal Boulder, was impressed by how much he ended up respecting Cheney -- a man he's heard regularly demonized for 4 years. He also said it would be interesting to see a debate between the two candidates with gravitas (Kerry and Cheney) and the two good ol' boys (Edwards and Bush).

I think that this debate did a good, if not perfect, job at contrasting the differences between the men and their party's platforms. What say you?

Posted by jbahr at 06:17 AM | Comments (3)

October 05, 2004

In The Mail This Week

Time highlights:  Sumner Redstone, Viacom CEO,  reports that, although he's a lifelong Democrat, he's voting for Bush because "a Republican Administration is better for media companies."  This change in position has nothing to do with Viacom's CBS embarrassment with Dan Rather, I'm sure.  A sidebar article and map demonstrate that Nader is just not going away and is on the ballot in 37 states.   Another reports that Rumsfeld is dragging his feet on the overhaul of the intelligence community, as it would redirect large amounts of budget and power from the DOD.  A major piece details 5 goals that should be achieved before leaving Iraq:  Get Offensive, Train Iraqis, Improve Intelligence, Kick-start Reconstruction, Hold Real Elections.  Gael García Bernal is the new It Boy.  The cover article, with dozens of heart-breaking photos, is about the Tragedy of Sudan.

The editors of Cook's Illustrated are fanatics.  In The Last Word on Roast Turkey they note the dozens of birds that were oven-roasted/grill-roasted/high-roasted with and without brining, air drying, basting and trussing to bring us the best recipe.  As for the actual turkey, local fresh and Kosher  turkeys did best (duh), but Butterballs aren't bad after brining.  There's a great recipe for Balsamic Braised Chicken with a sidebar article noting that supermarket Balsamic vinegar (Whole Foods) was better than the $25 a bottle imported stuff.

The Atlantic Monthly is a big issue -- almost 180 pages -- and is chock-full of good stuff.  Chuck Todd opines "What will happen to the losing party after the election".  His conclusion is that the Democrats will beat their breasts, perhaps swing a little left, and look to Hillary and Edwards.  If the Republicans lose, Todd predicts the expulsion of the NeoCons and a return to moderate Republicanism by means of Mitt Romney and Arnold Schwarzenegger -- or the ascendancy of personalities like Rudy Giuliani, John McCain or Tom DeLay (Tom Delay?  is Todd delusional?).  There's an outstanding piece on Faisal al-Kasim, a British-educated Ph.D. in English literature who hosts a talk show on al-Jazeera -- a show banned by many Arab governments -- that has an audience of up to 45 million, and in which he regularly questions standard Arabic street rhetoric.  Benjamin Wittes in Supreme Irony suggests that we have less to worry about than we think about the Supreme Court's direction, irrespective of which party gets in to appoint new Justices.  Jonathan Rauch has the answer to raising national test scores for high-schoolers:  assign more homework.  The centerpiece of this issue is the long article Welcome to the Green Zone by William Langewiesche.   The Green Zone, of course, is the highly secure "Little America embedded in the heart of Baghdad" that is composed of the villas, palaces and monuments from which the Baath Party ruled.  It impossible to summarize this excellent article, except to say that the irony is palpable.  In another courageous, groundbreaking article, Karl Rove in a Corner, Joshua Green explodes the myth that Rove is a vicious, sadistic, moral-less Machiavelli.  Nah, just kidding.  Green documents, step by step, how Rove has helped win elections through duplicity, rumor campaigns, push-polling, and personal attacks.  Green even found this old photo of Rove planning for the takeover of the Texas House of Representatives by blaming the Jews:

 

There is more amazingly banal poetry in this issue. Here's an excerpt from Mary Karr's Sinners Welcome:

I opened up my shirt to show this man
the flaming heart he lit in me, and I was scooped up
like a lamb and carried to the dim warm,
I who should have been kneeling
was knelt to by one whose face
should be emblazoned on every coin and diadem.

Posted by jbahr at 08:18 AM | Comments (0)

October 04, 2004

Goldbarth

I don't know why I don't run into Albert Goldbarth more (metaphorically speaking). I don't hear people mentioning him anymore than Andrew Hudgins or Gerald Stern, for example. He certainly reads hip enough, like Ashbery with a heart.

I was reading aloud to Junie from Goldbarth's National Book Critics award-winning Saving Lives. The man is a wonderment. His poems are jam-packed with anecdote, science, scholarship. Many of the poems lead off with an epigraph from one zany bit of history or another: the reputed glass buttocks of Caspar Barleus; a couple of lines from a Lew Archer mystery; the 6th century encyclopedia of Saint Isidore. These epigraphs often lower us into a wandering narrative of wit, erudition, and profundity.

One of the reasons that I hold Goldbarth in such high regard is his faithful use of scientific references within his work. You're not going to find Goldbarth invoking the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principal to justify that he lost his lover or his reading glasses. Junie gave me Goldbarth's Arts & Sciences last year (thanks, sweetie) that introduced me to AG. It is a body of work that makes my own attempts at "scientific poetry" feel completely inadequate. AG manages to weave outstanding musicality and phrasing amongst the damndest collections of metaphors. His short pieces are just perfect in message length. His long pieces show truly amazing control over his trajectory.

To give you an idea of AG's range, here's a few plot summaries:


Into The Lives of Other People: A 14-year old whore becomes an ad agency manager as AG considers The Elephant Man, reading illegal copies of Ulysses, a woman arrested for smuggling snakes in her bra.

Poem Spoken by a Plaque at Scenic View: This poem IS actually narrated by a plaque. It begins with the epigraph "We often discover strange-looking structures on insect", and then wanders into the poem to describe insect parts that look like melted accordions and leopard-spotted fire hydrants. The plaque eventually announces that "this poem is about you", followed by an onslaught of wonderful imagery and the plaque's thoughts about "the whole damned pantheon of feeling".

The Geese: This long, extraordinary poem begins with an epigraph from Jason and the Argonauts. The first section details Houdini's tour of Russia in 1903, and the subsequent sections meander through his ancestor's lives as Jews there. Death. Sex. Mail-order girdles. A guitar the size of a red blood cell. Back to Houdini. Then "But the point is, this was never about / the geese to begin with."

Goliath and the Barbarians: This isn't about the old Steve Reeves movie, though he is mentioned. It is perhaps about this:

Even the atom is a tension
between its heart and its orbits.
It begs to be split.
Just look at the diagrams.

Along the way we consider guilt and innocence, Kenneth Kock and Louise Glück, and "the gray farina in between."

Rembrandt/Panties: This poem begins:

A couple is having a vitriolic lulu
of an argument at the corner of Fitch and Applegate,
a hackles-raiser, chainsaws-of-adrenalin,
all-out squallabaloo. I can't hear a word.

What follows is a vivid description of the fight and making up, and how it reminds AG of Rembrandt's last self-portrait ("laughing -- that's right / laughing, from that sunken-in / puff-pastry of a face. By now he's broke"). In the end, he finds a pair of black panties on the beach, a story of ecstacy, or perhaps grief.


Other poems deal with The Hardy Boys, Barnum's circus and the Power of Weirdness, Death and Invisibility. I almost ran out of yellow marker tagging the memorable lines, which, trust me, doesn't happen with very many poetry books. If you get a chance, pull a copy off the shelf at Borders or The Ruminator and give it a read. I'd be interested in comments and opinions.

Posted by jbahr at 08:13 AM | Comments (2)

October 03, 2004

The Senate Races

Votemaster reports an unexpected sudden shift in the likelihood that the Democrats could retake the Senate.

Posted by jbahr at 09:32 AM | Comments (2)

October 02, 2004

The First Debate Redux

In my early days as a prof, my department chairman took me aside and said:

Jeffery, if you're ever caught out in a classroom, say: "I stand corrected." It admits the error, but leaves the lingering impression that you weren't really wrong in the first place.

I have been duly thrashed by my buddies, via comments below and email, for my assertion that Bush won the first debate on points. Virtually all of the mainstream media, and most of the right-of-center media agrees that Kerry "won" the first debate.

So, why did I think differently? Most of my family are Republicans, and my father actually sends me right-of-center tracts occasionally, hoping to bring me back into the fold. I enjoy listening to right-wing radio jocks (e.g., Rush, Reagan) and the truly scary right-wingers on the American Freedom Network. This kind of activity makes me feel a little like a Resistance fighter behind enemy lines.

Those to the right of center want to hear certainty. I think Kerry's best line of the night was "I made a mistake in how I talked about the war. The president made a mistake in invading Iraq. Which is worse?" It puts a long-standing problem to bed, and gives Rove no handle to grab and spin. I would have liked a little more of that kind of simple logic.

I'm still very wary of any stand by Kerry that stresses plans, committees or collaboration. I don't think that the Republican Noise Machine is done spinning this debate. In the first Gore-Bush debate, Gallup gave the debate to Gore by a 46% to 41% margin. It wasn't until days later, after a lot of media intervention, that the consensus shifted.

The good news is that I expect future debates on domestic policy should be in Kerry's favor, as should the town-hall setting. I don't think that abortion or prayer-in-school is going to skewer Kerry, but he's vulnerable on his proposed tax-cut rollbacks. I'm wary. I can't really understand how the Vast Red Middle continues to support Bush after the devastation wrought by Big Business on jobs and agriculture there -- but they do.

In any event, I stand corrected. Let's all hope that the second and third debates go as well as the first. I'll be voting early for Kerry next week, which is possible in Colorado. Heck, I may vote a couple of times if they don't catch me.

Posted by jbahr at 06:39 AM | Comments (4)

October 01, 2004

The Last of BAP

David Shapiro, A Burning Interior:  An oddly compelling piece that borders on qualification as a Modern Poetic Sequence.  This 11-part poem starts off a little rocky in flat, declarative language ("of a copy of nothing / or more precisely a series / of xerox sketches of / burning interior-exteriors") that is redeemed by occasional brilliant bursts of metaphor ("to die quickly in color in the tub") that I found often over-explained ("like Marat ...").   There are strange syntactic inversions ("below the star-several harps"), unnecessary couplings ("Two poems, folded, twisted together"), and short sections of prosy-ness ("My friend, however early / you called, you had come / too late, again.").  There are also many areas of fine writing ("the doubled books / And the body's words", "Where the clayey groom / hears the bride's voice / like a stronger world").  In places, I found the repetition within and between sections annoying (the architect, the lightbulb).  Shapiro states that it took him many years to shape this poem about architecture.  A fine poem, but is it possible that one can work too long on a piece?

Ron Silliman, Compliance Engineering:  If you're like me, you find it hard to separate Silliman-the-Poet from Silliman-the-Prodigious-Weblogger.  This poem is from VOG, which Silliman says stands for "Voice-Over Guy".  There is the sense of background omniscience in this poem ("When this you recall, take care / not to stumble ...") and subconscious recognition ("One draws in the kitchen / just for rubber bands").  There is the relentless use of juxtaposed imagery to create gestalt, pop imagery, and plain old silliness ("Waldo's evil Other:  Odlaw").  It is LangPo-friendly, but more elliptical than confounding.  I found it diverting, but I had trouble at times following the thread of connections. 

Bruce Smith, Song of the Ransom of the Dark:  Smith intersperses two poems to create what he calls a third thing.  The odd lines are written with a surfeit of prosody, the even in plain-speak.  The odd lines detail the watching of a movie, or all movies, or any movie ("A neural, feral fix on the beautiful movie face"), the even lines describe the adoption of third-world child ("I went to Vietnam to adopt a kid").  Nice job.  Needs a new title, but I was sold.

Brian Kim Stefans, They're Putting a New Door In:  In this rambling, dreamlike piece, Stefans describes a scene from his life in which a new door is installed in his apartment, which he likens to the dawn of a New Dark Age.  I have a high tolerance for ambiguity, which this poem exceeded ("The French: an impatience with secular explanations. / Writing.  Boiling potatoes. / Everybody's pride is hurt.")  At one point Stefans intrudes ("This is only the third poem I've written in 2001") and at other points, he explains the ordinary ("People are like ciphers.  They say this, they say that.").  I guess I'm not sure why this was in BAP, or for that matter, the Boston Review.

Gerald Stern, Dog That I Am:  Classic Stern, which you either care for or you don't ("I sing for the similarity and I moan for / the face, dog that I am, whippet that I was, / her face of exhaustion, lines in her forehead, her hair / uncombed ...").  Long lines, and Stern's trademark run-on sentences.

Virgil Suárez, La Florida. A lush description of Suárez's home state ("Lugubrious days pass with the amplitude of manatees").  After seeing Virgil in dozens of journals over the years, it's nice to see him finally represented in BAP.

Arthur Sze, Acanthus: Sze manages to be contemplative without seeming overly earnest, reflective without seeming gratuitously serious.  Sze writes this piece entirely in the second person to good effect ("You note carved acanthus leaves, then / eighteen women in singular postures"). 

James Tate, Bounden Duty:  A humorous poem-as-anecdote about keeping the President's secret.  It never rose above a well-written joke for me.

Edwin Torres, The Theorist Has No Samba!:  A poem-as-rant that ultimately was too hip for me ("...Take spontaneousness out / of the ether and smack it into the throes of the wild / screaming bastard maggot that IS poetry!").

(more silliness from Rodrigo Toscano and Paul Violi, a bit of lyrical narrative from David Wagoner ...)

Charles Wright, In Praise of Han Shan:  41 words in  lines ("Cold Mountain and Cold Mountain became the same thing in the mind").  Decent last poem for the series, I suppose.

Posted by jbahr at 11:34 AM | Comments (0)

The First Debate

The Gallup Poll is in, giving Kerry the edge in the first of three Presidential Debates. Personally, I disagree. If this were a boxing match, I'd give Bush a 6-to-5 decision on points. Nobody got close to a knockout.

The night's topics were Iraq, the War on Terror, and homeland security. This was the best venue that Kerry's going to get to differentiate himself on those issues. The Gallup folks say that "by a narrow margin Bush came out better on believability, likeability and toughness."

I think that Kerry has to take the gloves off. There was too much nuance, too many veiled references that only pundits and regular newsreaders were going to get. In short, Kerry was too senatorial. What did he miss?

NeoCons:  No word.  How hard would it have been to say:  "Mr. President, your administration is filled with people who have been planning the invasion of Iraq since before you were elected."

Afghanistan: Kerry pointed out the dramatic rise in opium production. He didn't, however, mention that the current government only controls the capital, and that the same warlords are running things now that have been running them for decades.

The Domino Theory:   Bush and the NeoCons just flat-out believe that exporting democracy in Iraq will lead to a ripple effect.  No refutation by Kerry, in spite of mountains of evidence to the contrary.

OBL's Best Recruiter:  He might have said:  "Mr. President, the British ambassador to Italy called you the best recruiting sergeant” for al-Qaida." 

The Halliburton Connection:  He didn't bring out the hammer on a very damaging connection to the Administration.

General Mismanagement of the Iraqi Peace:  To rebuild Iraq, we have relied upon large multinationals who have brought in people and materials from the outside, creating an army of embittered and unemployed Iraqi.

The Flip-Flop:  Kerry has to get a better line, something like:  "Yeah, I voted for it once.  Then, I figured I'd been lied to, so I changed my mind.  Sue me."

The Coalition:  He didn't say the Coalition is a joke. 

Russia:  He didn't say that Russia is fast becoming a dictatorship.  He didn't say we shouldn't encourage regimes, such as Russia and China, who use the War on Terror as an excuse for gutting democratic principles.

And so on.  Kerry isn't going to sell himself to the 40% of America that are Bushies.  He's not going to alienate himself from the 40% that are Democrats.  Why not take a chance?  This is a country that loves Indy Jones and Dirty Harry.  That is what Bush is playing to: "And, as well, we're pursuing a strategy of freedom around the world, because I understand free nations will reject terror. Free nations will answer the hopes and aspirations of their people. Free nations will help us achieve the peace we all want."  Can't you just hear that out of the mouth of John Wayne as he puts the gun back into his holster and walks into the sunset?

The entire debate is available in audio and transcript form at (of all places) Fox.

Posted by jbahr at 08:12 AM | Comments (4)