National Poetry Month: David Trinidad

"Window Seat"

(David Trinidad)

How much closer are we to the moon?

Tonight it's a mere crescent in

an altogether black sky somewhere

over Kansas, or so the voice of our

captain assures us. I've already

forgotten how many thousands of feet

he said we're flying at. I've also

forgotten how many cocktails the iden-

tical blonde stewardesses have brought

me. I feel, well, like a crossword

puzzle: 5 down, an alcoholic beverage

served on airplanes in tiny bottles,

begins with S-C-O. Back in New York

City, the boys are undoubtedly flirt-

ing with the boys at the Boy Bar. 

How I wish I were still there, wide-

eyed anmd excited, in that flurry of

good-looks. Up here, in the section

where smoking's permitted, I'm fin=

gering an empty matchbook and a few leftover

subway tokens. They're as

useless now as the valium I took

on the bus to the airport. Most of my

fellow passengers, however, have nodded 

off. Others rented headsets, muf-

fling the purity of the soundless film

on the small screen, a romantic comedy

I observe with little interest until

sudden turbulence signals a familiar

"plink" and FASTEN SEATBELT lights up

overhead. My eyelids are leaden. I'm

too tired to obey. What time is it

on the coast this flight is speeding

toward, enabling me to regain the 

three hours I willfully abandoned

last week? But what would I have done

with them then, except sleep  and dream? 

"Window Seat" by David Trinidad originally appeared in the final issue of Jack Skelley's Barney: The Modern Stone Age Magazine (March 1984).

National Poetry Month: Stephen Kuusisto

"Letter to Borges from Buenos Aires"

(Stephen Kuusisto)

Things seen

Through the eyes of girls--

Morning walks

Past intricate, modernist shopping,

A touch of Milan in the old city--

Glass flutes, gold medallions,

Baskets filled with carved birds.

Borges, tellthem what you see:

Wingless angels, brows unselfish,

Books blown open

From which numbers rise and walk

Like circus cats.

Today's girl describes carpets and last year's wine,

You clutch her arm afraid to walk.

Such stark houses, iron grilles,

Perforated clocks--

All things

Confessing station

To the blind.

Is this why you stayed home,

Behind a window, water in a glass,

Leaves and shutters "imperative," "irrevocable"?

"Letter to Borges from Buenos Aires" by Stephen Kuusisto appears in Letters to Borges, his new collection of poems published by Copper Canyon Press. His first book of poems, Only Bread Only Light, was published in 2000. Currently he is a professor at Syracuse University and speaks widely on the topics of disability, diversity, education, and literature. Kuusisto is the author of Eavesdropping: A Memoir of Blindness and Listening. At five years old, he underwent multiple eye surgeries to correct his crossed eyes; with 20/200 vision in his "better" eye, he is legally blind. “I see like a person who looks through a kaleidoscope," Kuusisto writes in his 1998 memoir Planet of the Blind, "my impressions of the world at once beautiful and largely useless.”

Martin Luther King, Jr.: "the bleakness of corroding despair"

My dear fellow clergymen,

... You may well ask, "Why direct action? Why sit-ins, marches, etc.? Isn't negotiation a better path?" You are exactly right in your call for negotiation. Indeed, this is the purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue.

My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without legal and nonviolent pressure. History is the long and tragic story of the fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and give up their unjust posture; but as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups are more immoral than individuals.

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly I have never yet engaged in a direct action movement that was "well timed," according to the timetable of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with a piercing familiarity. This "wait" has almost always meant "never." It has been a tranquilizing Thalidomide, relieving the emotional stress for a moment, only to give birth to an ill-formed infant of frustration.

We must come to see with the distinguished jurist of yesterday that "justice too long delayed is justice denied." We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward the goal of political independence, and we still creep at horse and buggy pace toward the gaining of a cup of coffee at a lunch counter.

I guess it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say wait. But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick, brutalize, and even kill your black brothers and sisters with impunity; when you see the vast majority of your 20 million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see the tears welling up in her little eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see the depressing clouds of inferiority begin to form in her little mental sky, and see her begin to distort her little personality by unconsciously developing a bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking in agonizing pathos: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?" when you take a cross country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" men and "colored" when your first name becomes "nigger" and your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and when your wife and mother are never given the respected title of "Mrs." when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tip-toe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness"—then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into an abyss of injustice where they experience the bleakness of corroding despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. ...

Martin Luther King was assassinated April 4, 1968. The "Letter From The Birmingham City Jail" was a response to a published statement by eight fellow clergymen from Alabama (Bishop C. C. J. Carpenter, Bishop Joseph A. Durick, Rabbi Hilton L. Grafman, Bishop Paul Hardin, Bishop Holan B. Harmon, the Reverend George M. Murray. the Reverend Edward V. Ramage and the Reverend Earl Stallings) and handwritten by Martin Luther King on April 16, 1963. It was then slipped out of the jail, turned over to his assistants on the outside, typed, copied, and widely disseminated to various organizations and individuals as an "open letter" in order to generate public support for Dr. King and his civil rights activities.

National Poetry Month: Tonight in Athens, Ralph La Charity & Ben Gulyas

Tonight The Globe in Athens, GA will feature a double bill of Ohio poets. Ben Gulyas, a returning featured reader from Cleveland, OH, will be at the monthly Word of Mouth gathering of poets, word-mongers and other creative folk. 

Joining in tonight from the banks of the far Ohio is Ralph La Charity, a Cincinnati lexiluminary by himself worth an evening's listen and a previously featured reader.  Here's are poems recently posted on the Word of Mouth website. 

The open-mic reading at The Globe begins at 8:00 pm. Grab a cocktail from the bar downstairs and celebrate National Poetry Month in Athens!

"Friendly Fire"

(Ralph La Charity)

Call the hearth at home friendly fire

Call the cold hours' starlight friendly fire

& while friendly fire's everywhere & forever

this fire reaps & preys

this fire lights both ways

Call the pain of birth friendly fire

Call the cries of babes friendly fire

& while friendly fire's everywhere & forever

this fire gives & takes away

this fire leaps & falls both ways

Call the threaded looms friendly fire

Call our darkened room friendly fire

& while friendly fire's everywhere & forever

this fire flays & it slays

this fire weaves both ways

Call lakes when they shine friendly fire

Call waves when they break friendly fire

& while friendly fire's everywhere & forever

this fire aches & it craves

this fire bathes both ways

Call grasses when they sway friendly fire

Call fireflies in their dance friendly fire

& while friendly fire's everywhere & forever

this fire burns where it braves

this fire churns both ways

Call the morning star friendly fire

Call the setting sun friendly fire

& while friendly fire's everywhere & forever

this fire eats the days

this fire bites both ways

Call the comet's tail friendly fire

Call the new moon's silver friendly fire

& while friendly fire's everywhere & forever

this fire sleeps within the blaze

this fire wakes both ways

"Neruda and Lorca poem"
(Ben Gulyas)

their blood warm with wound,
staining promise with promise of more blood to come,
not of violence, but of language,
blood of blooms, blood of moon, blood of breath
willing forth, chiseling sound
like a stone carving of fire ...
it was a stone carving of Lorca ...
a stone carving of a rose ...
Neruda pouring wine ... stone stone stone ...
their bodies faded,
a phantom glow, half dreamed,
a night bloom
grown out of dirt and salt,
a night bloom
burning, burning, burning

National Poetry Month: Petronius (27 AD - 66 AD)

I had just gone to bed
And begun to enjoy the first
Stillness of the night,
And sleep was slowly
Overcoming my eyes,
When savage Love
Jerked me up by the hair,
And threw me about,
And commanded me to stay up all night.
He said, “You are my slave,
The lover of a thousand girls.
Have you become so tough that you can lie here,
All alone and lonely?”
I jumped up barefoot and half dressed,
And ran off in all directions,
And got nowhere by any of them.
First I ran, and then I lingered,
And at last I was ashamed
To be wandering the empty streets.
The voices of men,
The roar of traffic,
The songs of birds,
Even the barking of dogs,
Everything was still.
And me alone,
Afraid of my bed and sleep,
Ruled by a mighty lust.

A poem by Petronius freely translated by Kenneth Rexroth and published in his Poems from the Greek Anthology (1962) in which he also included "a soupçon" of Roman writers. Petronius (27 AD - 66 AD) is generally believed to be the author of the Satyricon written during the reign of Nero. 

In describing the poet, Tacitus writes that Petronius "spent his days in sleep, his nights in attending to his official duties or in amusement, that by his dissolute life he had become as famous as other men by a life of energy, and that he was regarded as no ordinary profligate, but as an accomplished voluptuary."

Petronius' high position soon made him the object of envy for those around him. Having attracted much jealousy, he was accused of treason. He was arrested at Cumae in 65 AD but did not wait for a sentence. Instead he chose to take his own life. Tacitus records Petronius' elegant form of suicide:

"Yet he did not fling away life with precipitate haste, but having made an incision in his veins and then, according to his humour, bound them up, he again opened them, while he conversed with his friends, not in a serious strain or on topics that might win for him the glory of courage. And he listened to them as they repeated, not thoughts on the immortality of the soul or on the theories of philosophers, but light poetry and playful verses. 

To some of his slaves he gave liberal presents, a flogging to others. He dined, indulged himself in sleep, that death, though forced on him, might have a natural appearance. Even in his will he did not, as did many in their last moments, flatter Nero or Tigellinus or any other of the men in power. On the contrary, he described fully the prince's shameful excesses, with the names of his male and female companions and their novelties in debauchery, and sent the account under seal to Nero. Then he broke his signet-ring, that it might not be subsequently available for imperiling others."

April is National Poetry Month

Inaugurated by the Academy of American Poets in 1996, National Poetry Month is now held every April, when schools, publishers, libraries, booksellers, and poets throughout the United States band together to celebrate poetry and its vital place in American culture. Thousands of organizations participate through readings, festivals, book displays, workshops, and other events. 

In conjunction with National Poetry Month, Bellemeade Books will feature a month of poetry posts.

National Poetry Month is a month-long, national celebration of poetry established by the Academy of American Poets. The concept is to widen the attention of individuals and the media—to the art of poetry, to living poets, to our complex poetic heritage, and to poetry books and journals of wide aesthetic range and concern. We hope to increase the visibility and availability of poetry in popular culture while acknowledging and celebrating poetry’s ability to sustain itself in the many places where it is practiced and appreciated.

This April the month-long event will feature the enriching role that letter writing has played in the lives of poets.  In coordination with poets, booksellers, librarians, and teachers, the Academy chose a month when poetry could be celebrated with the highest level of participation. Inspired by the successful celebrations of Black History Month (February) and Women's History Month (March), and on the advice of teachers and librarians, April seemed the best time within the year to turn attention toward the art of poetry—in an ultimate effort to encourage poetry readership year-round.

One of the highlights is National Poem in Your Pocket Day, which will be Thursday, April 18. The idea is simple: select a poem you enjoy during National Poetry Month, then carry it with you to share with co-workers, family, and friends. You can also share your poem selection on Twitter by using the hashtag #pocketpoem.

Poems from pockets will be unfolded throughout the day with events in parks, libraries, schools, workplaces, and bookstores. Create your own Poem in Your Pocket Day event or send plans, projects, and suggestions for Poem in Your Pocket Day by emailing npm@poets.org. 

"Crowded by Beauty," a new biography about poet Philip Whalen

Gary Snyder and Philip Whalen

Here is an excerpt from Crowded by Beauty: A Biography of Poet and Zen Teacher Philip Whalen, by David Schneider, forthcoming from University of California Press. 

Whalen, along with Gary Snyder, was integral in the San Francisco group of poets who read at the Six Gallery in 1955. They were introduced by Kenneth Rexroth, a San Francisco poet of an older generation, who was a kind of literary father-figure for the younger poets and had helped to establish their burgeoning community through personal introductions at his weekly poetry readings. That night, Snyder read "A Berry Feast", and Whalen,"Plus Ca Change."

This excerpt describes Whalen's experience living as Snyder's roommate in 1952. Whalen eventually followed Snyder to become a Forest Service lookout, although as Schneider notes, Whalen "was much given, even then, to the sedentary life."

...Philip might never have found work in the mountains: sitting in that same Telegraph Hill apartment in the hot summer of 1952, Whalen read one of Gary’s regular letters, this one from a Forest Service lookout on Crater Mountain in the North Cascades of Washington State. Provoked by it, and by working (“bad anytime, but especially nasty in summer in the city”), Whalen wrote back to declare, “By God, next summer, I’m going to have a mountain of my own!”

This he did; then got another mountain the following year, and spent a third summer as a forest lookout the year after that, making this by far his steadiest, most satisfying job until many years later, when he became a “professional” man of the cloth—that is, a Zen priest. Whalen would never have read in the historic Six Gallery reading had not Snyder put Philip’s name and poems literally in front of Allen Ginsberg’s face. Philip certainly would have floundered longer with unemployment and flirted more dangerously with outright homelessness had Gary not taken care of him whenever the two were in the same town at the same time.

They roomed together in San Francisco off and on from 1952 to 1954 in a flat on Montgomery Street, above the city’s North Beach district, to which they descended together nearly nightly for beer at Vesuvio and other drinking establishments. Thus Philip and Gary came to know the writers, players, merchants, philosophers, painters, filmmakers, musicians, and scholars circling around the Bay Area in the gestation phase of the San Francisco Renaissance.

During this same period, Snyder and Whalen began going together to the American Academy of Asian Studies (now the California Institute of Integral Studies), where they heard and met Alan Watts, and later also D. T. Suzuki. From among the audiences there, they got to know Claude (Ananda) Dahlenberg, who cofounded the East-West House and later became an ordained Zen priest under Shunryu Suzuki Roshi. And from connections there, they began attending the regular Friday evening literary gatherings held at his home by the poet Kenneth Rexroth.

Snyder, Whalen and Lew Welch

Other Friday evenings found Whalen and Snyder in Berkeley for the study group with Rev. Kanmo Imamura and Jane Imamura at the Berkeley Buddhist Temple. Together the Imamuras were descended from the most important old families of Jodo Shinshu Buddhism, yet they welcomed the young men, going so far in the subsequent years as to turn their little church publication—theBerkeley Bussei—over to the artist Will Petersen for a time. Snyder, Whalen, Ginsberg, and Kerouac all published early poems in its pages. The benevolent Imamura family gave both Snyder and Whalen their first contact with people actually practicing Buddhism instead of purely discussing its philosophies and traditions.
Whalen might have made his way out to the Academy or over to the study group without Snyder’s impetus, but Philip was much given, even then, to the sedentary life. As long as he could, he spent hours each day reading, writing, drawing, playing music, doodling, staring into space—wondering from time to time where and how he could find a job that wouldn’t drive him crazy. He ventured out when he needed to—for cigarettes or food or for fresh air—but he had nothing like the get-up-and-go Gary had. It is, in fact, difficult to think of anyone with the drive and sense of adventure the young Snyder had.

These qualities propelled him up mountains, up trees, down the hole of tankers, out into deserts, back into libraries, into universities, into monasteries, across the country, out of the country, across oceans; they armored him against the many outer and inner obstacles an un-moneyed young man might encounter in such travels; they sustained him as he went where he needed to go, saw what he wanted to see, studied what, and with whom, he needed to study, worked as he had to, and cut loose when he could. ...

Photos: (top) Gary Snyder and Philip Whalen sit outside a temple above the village of Shimoyama in Japan(Brancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley). (bottom) Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen, and Lew Welch before a poerty reading at Longshoreman's Hall (Photograph by Jim Hatch).