poetry and more

February 6, 2008

The close examination of words in a poem and the close examination of the feeding habits of brown pelicans is quite similar work

Filed under: Interviews — by octavianblaga @ 9:13 am
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An interview with Elizabeth Bradfield, poet and naturalist, author of INTEPRETIVE WORK.

You have in your hands your first collection of poetry: INTERPRETIVE WORK, which appeared in January 2008. How does it feel?

Seeing the book is both thrilling and terrifying.  I’ve been working on the collection for many years, putting poems in, pulling poems out, trying to find a combination and arrangement that would feel like more than the sum of its parts.  Now that the book is headed out into the world I just hope that the conversation I tried to make between the poems — about nature, work, and society — comes through.  I hope “Interpretive Work” finds people who feel challenged and energized by the poems.

What kind of poetry do you write? In which “group” of American poets you consider yourself to belong?

That’s a difficult question because, like a lot of writers, I hesitate to ally myself with any particular movement/group.  Maybe it’s easier to start with what I’m clearly not.   I’m not an associative poet, someone whose poems rely primarily on sound and image rather than narrative for their energy and emotional impact.  I’m also not a “new formalist,” someone whose work engages with traditional poetic forms such as the sonnet, triolet, pantoum, or villanelle.  It’s fair to say I’m most interested in poems that have a strong narrative element but, at the same time, sometimes hold story in suspension because of a desire to linger in sound or image.  The poet Linda Bierds has described herself as a “lyric narrative” poet, and I think that fits for me, too.  There are elements of confessionalism, nature poetry, and the poetry of work in “Interpretive Work,” but it’s my hope to blur the boundaries between those subject categories, so I don’t know if I can wholly ally myself with any of them.  I definitely feel that my poems are in conversation with nature poetry, but in the way that a rebellious activist might be in conversation with a government official.

Well, you are also a naturalist. What comes first: birds and marine life or poetry? I guess they mix together somehow, I could say reading your poetry…

They do mix together for me–my time in the field as a naturalist, the demands of attention in that work and the physicality of it, prepare the ground for my writing life.  However, it’s surprising how little of my work comes directly from my work as a naturalist.  There’s a series of poems in “Interpretive Work” that talk about how working as an naturalist, making a job from nature, shifts one’s relationship to it. I am truly interested in what we see or experience when we turn out attention to the natural world and what that reveals about our human selves. 

There’s so much at stake right now in the world.  Climate change demands that we re-examine our place and actions as a species. It also demands, I think, that we look good and hard at the lives and habitats and needs of other species.  It’s valuable and important to learn as much as we can about animals and plants.  Seeing them thrive or struggle and understanding their particularities is critical to understanding the vast reach of climate change.  In a way, the close examination of words in a poem and the close examination of the feeding habits of brown pelicans is quite similar work.  It’s grounded in the particular but reaches out toward bigger questions and implications.

 

You are also a damn good web designer. There is poetry now everywhere on the web, from specialized sites to blogs. But, sincerely: is it the same reading a printed poem, and on the screen? If you really really like a poem, do you read it again and again on the screen, or you printed out? Or you memorize it? What is the best “shape” to fit poetry? I don’t ask you to generalize, I’d like to know your feeling about it. And one more thing here: do you write directly on the computer, or your poems “are raising” usually on a piece of paper?

I love holding a book of poems in my hands, sitting down with it in a comfy chair or — better yet — outside.  The feel of the pages, the sound of them turning, the ability to flip forward and back and to mark up the margins — reading work online can’t even come close to that pleasure for me.  Time at the computer is “clocked time.” It’s task-oriented.  When I sit down at a computer, I approach the desk with a working mind, not an exploratory mind.  I can’t draft poems on a computer.

When I write, my first drafts are written in longhand in notebooks.  Revision takes place for me at the computer.  I appreciate the freedom word processing gives me to play with line breaks, stanzas, and other elements in a poem, but the quiet space of a notebook on the lap is the beginning of poetry for me, not the bright screen and efficient keyboard.

That said, I do seek out poems online.  I regularly check sites like Poetry Daily and Verse Daily to see what’s out there in the world.  If I read a poem I love, I share it via email.  If I read a poem I truly love, I write it down (by hand!) on an index card and try to memorize it.

You started a very interesting project, called BROADSIDED. Please tell our readers what is it, why is, it and where is it going.

Broadsided is a virtual, grass-roots, contemporary incarnation of the traditional broadside.  It is also an attempt to move poetry from books and bookstores and out onto the streets and into daily life.  There have been, in America, a lot of discussions about the value of poetry in contemporary society — is it an ivory-tower form?  is it only read by other poets? — projects like Robert Pinsky’s Favorite Poems Project sought to find answers to those questions.  I wanted to participate in the debate and to bring poetry out of the shadows.

I’ve always been interested in public art, from street performers to sculpture.  I thought that if I could do something for poetry that could become as familiar as the indie music show flyers stuck up on telephone poles, it would be a good project.  Hence, Broadsided.

On our website, www.broadsidedpress.org, we post an original literary/artistic collaboration each month.  The writing is selected from email submissions.  The art is produced by a team of artists.  When we’ve chosen a poem or story to publish, we email the artists the piece, and whoever is inspired to create a visual response “dibses” it, or claims it.  I merge the two into a pdf that is downloadable and letter-sized for easy printing from any home computer.

The best part about Broadsided, though, are the Vectors.  These are people out in the world who like the project and who have said that, each month, they’ll print a couple copies of Broadsided and put them in a public place where they live.  They’re the ones putting Broadsided out in the world, really.  It’s my hope to have thousands of Vectors around the world, to have thousands of communities being presented with thought-provoking and beautiful broadsides each month.

 

I must inform our readers that this is not the only project you are involved in. In know that the composer Monica Houghton put your poem “Whalefall” to music, creating a score for soprano and piano. The premier performance was performed September 23, 2007. It must have been quite something for you, as the author the verses.

I can’t say how honored I am that Monica was inspired to make music from my poem.  Monica and I met while I was working as a naturalist in Southeast Alaska.  We had wonderful conversations about art and inspiration.  That she was taken enough with one of my poems to respond to it in music is just overwhelming to me.  It’s a lovely, lovely piece of music–I could never have imagined what she would create, but it’s haunting and genuine and gorgeous.

One of my projects for the future is videopoetry. I mean poetry videoclips (with action, drama), not poets reading their poems in a short film. The concept is new in Romania, but in the US, it is not. It seems to me that you are interested in projects promoting poetry thru unconventional means. So, what do you think about videopoetry?

I’ve never heard of it, but I’m intrigued!  Is it like music videos?  Is it coming from spoken word culture?  It sounds like something I’d love to witness.  At the same time, it sounds a little overwhelming!  With printed poems, there’s a quietness to the experience that allows the poem’s strength to be in the reader’s internal response.  Making a video of a poem externalizes all that and, in a way, removes the power of the reading/listening experience.  I would say that I’m interested in videopoetry as a hook for reading poems, but it wouldn’t be the way I’d want to always experience poetry.

You are now a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. It is a fellowship for poetry. We don’t really have things like that in Romania. What is a fellowship for poetry, how does it work, and what do you personally expect from this fellowship?

There are five poets and five fiction writers who, each year, are awarded a Wallace Stegner Fellowship.  It’s a two-year fellowship, and we are all given a stipend to live on.  We meet once a week to discuss our work.  There’s no degree at the end, no obligation beyond those meetings — really, it’s a gift of time for emerging writers.  Free of the need to earn a living, we can dive into our own work, challenge each other, read, write, and hopefully grow as writers. Personally, I hope that I leave this fellowship surprised by the work I’ve done.  I have ideas for projects I want to work on, but I hope something completely unexpected turns up.  The fellowship gives me the freedom to follow up on those kinds of unplanned gifts.

There is also in the US an institution we don’t have in Romania:  Poet Laureate. Almost every state have it in the US, and there is also a National Poet Laureat. I’m trying to lobby the institution in Romania, my desire is to import it somehow. We must say that the Poet Laureate institution is different in the US (and Canada) from the institution which emerged it, the British one.   But I better ask you: what is a Poet Laureate and what does he or she do?

I wish you all the luck I can!  The job description of Poet Laureate in the United States has changed with each writer who has held it.  I think that’s a strength.  Each poet in the position has thought about poetry in the United States and taken on projects or activities that work to make more visible poetry’s place in our daily thought and lives; each laureateship has been as unique as the writer appointed to the position.  In a way, the importance of the position is just as much the fact that it exists at all as what is done with it.  Every time a new laureate is appointed, poetry is in the news, and the work and life of the poet is written about.  It exposes poetry to a wide audience, introduces Americans to this strange creature: the living, writing poet.

 

The current Poet Laureate appointed by The Library of Congress is Charles Simic. Simic is born in former Yugoslavia. Serbia gave birth to quite a few wonderful poets in the past century. My last question would be: is the poetry from the Eastern Europe known in the US? Well, I know the answer is no, but I mean, between poets… And why isn’t? It is only a matter of language, and translation, or it is a “marketing” issue? Should be done anything about that, and what?

There are some names that cross the Atlantic to the United States from Europe–Wislawa Szymborska, Czesław Milosz, Zbigniew Herbert, Adam Zagajewski–obviously Polish poetry has a pretty good representation.  But of course there are many more poets writing in Eastern Europe whose work is not widely known, or translated, in the United States.  Why not?  It’s so hard to say.  It might, as you suggest, be a problem with getting it translated, although it seems to me that I’ve seen a real increase lately in grants and presses dedicated to translation, so that might change.  It might be marketing. 

I think one of the best ways poets become known in the US, though, is through word of mouth more than any high-budget campaign.  It’s perhaps a primitive means of sharing information, but blogs and chats between writers are incredibly important in introducing new work.  There is so much poetry being published in the United States that there are poets here who are as unknown as poets writing abroad, or nearly so.  This doesn’t really answer your question, I know.  I think eyes here are open for non-English work.  Maybe Simic will bring some new writers to attention.  We’re all enriched when we can read literature from other languages and cultures.  Tell me who you would recommend as a poet from Romania that should be read by the world–I’d love to know who you think is writing moving and important poems in your country. 

 

January 21, 2008

THE DEATHGIVER SHALL COME

Filed under: The Deathgiver shall come — by octavianblaga @ 6:58 am
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Life has gone by,

the feet grow roots

 

 

at The Crystal

adult care home,

Phoenix, where

I volunteered

in the summer of 2004

for three months,

taking care of

six elders with serious

problems of health

and unmeasured

emotional

issues.

Jim: memoir of a mirror

Filed under: The Deathgiver shall come — by octavianblaga @ 6:57 am
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Jim, 78, looking for something, stops, does not remember what he wanted.

Nailed he stands in front of the mirror, big battlemented mirror, wasted

by images: it could fit a sunset over Sedona — the town where he haunted

all life, whose streets he easily draws in his impaired memory. Painted

 

bunting of Sedona’s red rock filling the mirror, and the memory maybe.

But not many other things left. Trying to reach his eyes in the herby

mirror, Jim lifts the head: that’s a real adventure. His memory is a booby

hatch, still Mr. Parkinson plays the role of a reluctant hero or of a zombie,

 

as he climbed on Jim’s back years ago and wouldn’t change position.

Two minutes later, Jim finally reaches his own eyes. With some caution,

Jim smiles to himself: happy to see a familiar face? There is a tension.

Whose eyes are these, he might have asked. A name had come from ocean

 

of names. Nailed he stands there, eye in eye, lingering upon those tremendous blue eyes. Tears would come out, if available. Did the old guy feel the anxious

second? Time had no meaning anymore, the meaning ends in the judas

hole through which you could spy Death, and have an illustrating preface

 

of what shall come. Still, Jim couldn’t even tell day from night, the lights on

all the time and the curtains covering the windows or perhaps, jittery python,

the helplessness: the loneliness, the illness, the sadness… How far is Tucson?

Jim notices the picture in a corner of the mirror — with his daughter thereon.

 

At the crest of the sight, some words Jim hears, spoken by a little lady,

jumping from the embalmed memory, her daughter when a kid: - Howdy!

Why did you leave the mirror when you moved? You made it prettier, Daddy.

Jim’s eyes divorce its look and close. That had been all — eye candy.

Scott: groaning wood stump with eyes

Filed under: The Deathgiver shall come — by octavianblaga @ 6:56 am
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That is a very freaky rare illness, Bob says. None of those long cells

will contract any longer, no motion, they don’t respond to any bells,

but imagine: he — Bob stages a lavish display — is aware! A wood

stump with eyes and groans: Scott, 44, The Rigid Man. Bob talks: he could

not move a muscle, but he — remember previous display? — knows

all what happens around. So here he dwells!

The shake mix — smells of roses — runs out the mouth, the jaws got stuck,

as they would be rocks in the ocean. That is hereditary — Bob is a hammock.

It doesn’t necessary imply the sons will inherit that, but it is only one out

of two children escaping that, keeps going Bob, starting to work out

the lower and the upper jaw, forcing them to join together, and they

eventually do, two broken pistons causing havoc.

There is one family here in Phoenix, one in France, and one in China — chat

goes further — as known by now, having that. There is of course no cure for that, Bob enunciates. The eyes have tears and they close. A flower has opened

the door, like wadding a bullet in a gun. Shut up! The girl has a diamond

instead of voice and let fall the flower on her father’s chest. And you are…

She’s probably fourteen and blossoms thereat.

Her eyes are like a journey in the pitch dark. She is a wayfaring rose, we reach hands. Fingers or rods of roses? The thorns must have left wounds on each

long cell. Shut up, Bob, leave now. A poet, you are? One of those! A poet rips

his soul for not having… What words are coming from her pulpy lips?

A cloud replenishes the sky. The tempest speaks near the adult care home.

Answer me this, she yells, preparing to impeach.

A poem is nothing but a giant of sand. Is there a God? Why would her parents

have a child? Abortion’s permitted, euthanasia’s declined! Are there warrants?

Everything’s meaningless. Enough: the mother in the rear, married widow,

sobs. Scott groans and groans and groans. A hoot breaks the window.

The helplessness, the loneliness, the sadness, the fear embrace the room:

fluid shivers or brittle tears come in torrents.

SEASONS IN LOVE

Filed under: Seasons in love — by octavianblaga @ 6:53 am
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I treasure the most about seasons the in-between moments, when two seasons blend in love, and you can’t tell the winter came, the fall has gone, having both right there groping, clotting. The same with human love feelings and love acts, the fifth season of beings.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It doesn’t last, I know. It comes and goes, like leaves, like flowers. What follows is

the big anonymous certitude of our own vanity and emptiness. And its incertitudes:

the helplessness,

the loneliness,

the illness,

the sadness,

the anxiousness,

the fear,

et cætera.

Intro: stepping on nails and stars

Filed under: Seasons in love — by octavianblaga @ 6:51 am
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They were all gone. The light was calm.

The timepiece bashed with hate.

‘T was too early. Or so late?

 

Nails bleeding in the palm.

 

 

Few stars had jostled with a nudge

to hear their shadows spread on mould.

It was so hush. So cold.

 

Nails ready to adjudge

 

 

a sorrow, a sigh. Thorns whisking by.

The bells of rustling rumors ring.

Tears felt to the ground and spring.

 

 

Nails all alone detach from sky,

and stars shall sing:

Deep Creek Lake: the lost language of leaves

Filed under: Seasons in love — by octavianblaga @ 6:50 am
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            Listen: how quiet’s Deep Creek!

The leaves do only dare to speak!

I swear that even Death’s asleep!

 

The stars felt in the lake: a heap

of lights on Deep Creek icy cheek.

The fear travelled at a creep.

 

From memory I could not sweep

this moment that I’d like to keep,

when all the leaves do dare to speak.

 

 


Not many desires, but one:

open my eyes and see you come

and shoot you with a quaker gun.

 

My soul is ready then to leaven.

I’d swear that I arrived in heaven

on Lake Shore Drive, 2007.

 

                                The dead body of fear pecked by a raven.

Middlebury: dandelions dancing with crickets

Filed under: Seasons in love — by octavianblaga @ 6:46 am
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There are mornings I don’t want,

the fuzzy mornings of Vermont,

 

those hated mornings without light,

as you are getting out of sight.

 

There are those mornings without you,

of astonishing loss of interior sinew,

 

those mornings lasting a century,

for weed arises just in botany.

 

 

The carriage of winds lost a wheel. Nipping off the burgeoning buds,

the hailstorm. White faces of crickets, dandelions dancing, wings and seeds,

a romance under thunder. On the verge of fear, a quandary, a blunder.

 

 


Come to me twisting, I call on you,

even if you ain’t left and never do.

Don’t let no morning for me to whirl

around and around without you,

                                                                      girl.

 

                            Come here, only I am the man

                            whose eyes are flowers when

                            looking at you, now and then,

                                over and over

                                                            again.


 

 

Remembrance of you expands on the sky, covering the sun

with a righteous light. What pierces my heart like a wrought sharper iron,

for what word, what deed, what pattern?

 

January 7, 2008

THE DEATH UNDER A PILLOW

Filed under: The Death under a Pillow — by octavianblaga @ 11:33 am
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There is a story in every poetry.

My cousin Heamus, 28, was diagnosed with leukaemia, final stage,

on September, 2005. The last five months of life he spent

on a hospital bed, putting up with the idea of dying;

during that time, he wrote me a letter monthly,

expressing thoughts about his own Death,

which occured on January, 2006, while

he was writing one more letter.

He never finished it.

He just started to be a man;

but what a man! I believe he never

knew turpitude or anger. He was a giver

and a lover. Moonstruck, as well. I just couldn’t

enter his hospital room. I stepped back from the door

so many times. I devoured his letters. As I was reading them

again and again, they were converting into lines. Which I wrote

down. It felt like I was living myself with the Death under my pillow.

There is a poetry in every story.

September: no known names

Filed under: The Death under a Pillow — by octavianblaga @ 11:32 am
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Dare to imagine: blood, flesh, bones,

so many needles in the stones

of whispers. The tiles bemoans,

the wheelchair lispers. To that attune

the screaking, yellow, heavy moon,

sleeping over a grim pontoon,

the dark and putrid, sapless water,

this doctor here, ready to slaughter

my corpse and leave shortly after…


I wish I were a song to fly,

to leave away without goodbye

and never ever come nearby!

For me to die, is there an aim?

I’d call on somebody, to blame!

I can’t remember any name…


Dare to imagine: Death’s the same.

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