Sunday, February 28, 2010
National Book Awards at Concordia College
Thursday, March 25-26, 2010
Tadeusz DÄ…browski translated from the Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones
The other part of truth
Grandma runs a shop selling religious souvenirs and
yesterday, for nothing at all, she gave me a Saint
Francis, fully aware that I have a little Jesus and
a Blessed Sister Faustina from the very same set.
This morning there was a Saint George, but he’s gone now,
he should be here soon after Sunday again
(and not just him...)—says Grandma to
people, and people often listen to her and respect her.
Around Friday heaven arrives; they no longer supply
hell (it stays on the shelf too long), but I’ve got
hell at home, as well as heaven and the saints. And, when
I get bored or sad, opposite I set outheaven and hell. In heaven I place the ones
from Grandma. In hell a little pig, a sapper, and a diver.
Grandma runs a shop selling religious souvenirs and
yesterday, for nothing at all, she gave me a Saint
Francis, fully aware that I have a little Jesus and
a Blessed Sister Faustina from the very same set.
This morning there was a Saint George, but he’s gone now,
he should be here soon after Sunday again
(and not just him...)—says Grandma to
people, and people often listen to her and respect her.
Around Friday heaven arrives; they no longer supply
hell (it stays on the shelf too long), but I’ve got
hell at home, as well as heaven and the saints. And, when
I get bored or sad, opposite I set outheaven and hell. In heaven I place the ones
from Grandma. In hell a little pig, a sapper, and a diver.
Friday, February 12, 2010
Interview with Tom Obrzut
Where did you grow up? Was poetry and writing part of that mix?
I grew up in New Jersey: first in Nutley (outside Newark) and then in East Brunswick, near Rutgers University. I’ve lived in Florida, New York City, and Oregon as an adult. Mostly, though, I’ve also lived in New Jersey as an adult. After college at Rutgers University. I lived for ten years in New Brunswick/Highland Park and now for the last ten years in Maplewood. I work in New York City.
My poetry exposure as a child was the usual mix. I was not particularly drawn to poetry. I recall a teacher once telling me that poetry is a “special talent,” she didn’t feel I had that talent and suggested I try writing fiction.
I was very interested in writing in high school (primarily narrative) and then journaled and wrote poetry as a college student. I became more interested in poetry while at college at Rutgers University. I was drawn to the performance venues in New Brunswick where I was exposed to poets performing in bars and such places, the environments drew poets, musicians, artists and other creative types who gathered together and read work in “open reading” style along with features.
Who are your poetic influences, favorite poets, writers, artwork, other things that inform your work?
My work is informed by two directions: the experiments of such traditions as the Surrealists and the New York School (2nd generation) and narrative. My favorite poets include Bernadette Mayer, Frank O’Hara, Walt Whtiman, Emily Dickinson, and Vladimir Mayakovsky. Besides surrealism I am a student of the writing and works (both fictional and poetic) that document the plight of the homeless, the dispossessed, and the poor: from the work of James Agee (Let Us Now Praise Famous Men) to Jacob Riis (How the Other Half Lives) to Luc Sante (Low Life). I have gotten inspiration from Carl Sandburg and William Carlos Williams. Much of my muse has been inspiration drawn from the Beats—Ginsberg, Kerouac, Corso.
My biggest influence is the work I do every day: helping mentally ill, formerly street homeless people in my job at an SRO on Henry Street, Manhattan. I have captured some of this on henrystreetpoems.blogspot.com; I have included more experimental works on tomobz.blogspot.com.
When did you 'become' a poet when did poet become part of your everyday life?
Poetry became a part of my every day life in about 1984 or so when I first ran across the work of the New Brunswick, New Jersey art scene. Since that time, I have continued to be in contact with a group of poets including people from the poetry readings at the Barron Arts Center, the work of Big Hammer Press/Vendetta Books (Dave Roskos); Joe Weil; Beth Borrus, etc. I consider myself a committed member to the Poetry Project at St. Marks and I organize for the yearly Bowery Poetry Club New Year’s Day reading and for Arbella magazine (20 years and counting).
How do you form a poem? Is poetry an organic or synthetic process for you?
Poetry is both organic and synthetic for me. I believe in the idea of “first thought, best thought.” Initially this idea was popularized by Allen Ginsberg (the quote may be from Chogyam Trungpa). I think it is important to set aside a time for writing and I do not wait to be hit by inspiration. I also believe in experiment so I have attempted to use a variety of styles including highly stylized approaches—sonnets, villanelle—to free verse.
Where do you write? Is there any special method to your writing?
Lately I write on the train as I have an hour and a half commute. It very much helps me to have that time and I am thankful for it. Sometimes I will spend a break at work writing or write at home or while my wife drives and I am a passenger in our car.
How long have you been the editor of Arbella Magazine and when do you think we will see another issue?
I have been an editor of Arbella magazine since its inception in 1986. I have averaged one magazine every two years or so in that time. I hope to keep that up. I am expecting to post an Arbella website along with the other two blogspot sites that I have, I hope to have that up within the next couple of months.
Tell me a little bit about your "poem a day" website.
Seven years ago I started a series of poems that I wrote daily for a year. I called this series “Total Poetry” from an idea I had read in a book about Naropa University Poetics—the work of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, Boulder, Colorado. My take on that idea was to write a poem each day (working day) for a year, on the train, when I was coming home from my job as a program director at a shelter for mentally ill, homeless people in Midtown Manhattan. There were between 2 and 300 poems by the end. I have taken that same idea and decided to try it again at my new job: an apartment building that houses formerly homeless, mentally ill people on the Lower East Side, Manhattan.
I currently have some 50 or so poems, but have only published 9 (as of today). I hope they’ll be more up soon. Here is a poem from that project:
HENRY STREET #9
110909, 5:47 PM, MONDAY, CAR 7216, LOWER LEVEL; MIDTOWN DIRECT TO DOVER, 1ST STOP MAPLEWOOD
Martin decided he wanted a beer
So he had one (maybe more)
He likes it clean when he’s drunk
So he wakes up the other guys on the hall
Doesn’t matter if it’s two am, four am
Doesn’t matter
Because Martin likes it clean
He’ll get them up
Get them up and working
They don’t do it other times
Even though it bothers Martin
He gets riled
Things can get out of control
Good thing for police
And Emergency Medical Services
Good thing for handcuffs
But Martin wasn’t drinking this weekend
He says the security guy is out to get him
They both like order
But in different ways
Martin said the guard lied
Martin was tight
Not drunk tight
Angry
3 am and he couldn’t get in
Where was security?
That’s what Martin wanted to know
Martin said he can’t wait to get his own place
He’s only here to get an apartment
He doesn’t need case managers
Security guards, all that other crap
Doesn’t need it
Just a place
And some keys he won’t forget in his room.
Poems for February: Black History Month
In his Martin Luther King Day speech, President Obama turned to James Russell Lowell's poem, "The Present Crisis," formerly recited by King himself, in order to remember the civil rights activist's legacy: "Truth forever on the scaffold / Wrong forever on the throne..." Gear up for Black History Month by browsing black heritage resources on Poets.org, including featured poets, poems, books, and more.
On the web at: www.poets.org/blackhistory
I Have Feelers
When my airways are inflamed I write myself a letter
I’m pleased to know even the rocks aren’t immortal
I take a step back I open my pockets
I am completely rational like a 19th century ghost
I make a potato stamp to be remembered by
If the children laugh I have a dream
Mention openness and trust to a coyote
You see the sunrise behind a moose
I don’t doubt the water has its own ideas
It is a model of attachment and resurrection
Nobody wants to be rain falling in November
“I have always said that I have absolutely no talent, but a tremendous amount of discipline.”—Joshua Ferris
Congratulations to NBA YPL Author: Katherine Paterson
Katherine Paterson, a two-time National Book Award Winner, has been appointed the secondNational Ambassador for Young People'sLiterature. The two-year position was created to raise national awareness on the importance of young people's literature as it relates to lifelong literacy, education, and the development and betterment of the lives of young people.Paterson, who has written more than thirty books, has selected "Read for Your Life,” as the theme of her platform. The Library of Congress’s Center for the Book and the Children's Book Council are the sponsors of the National Ambassador for Young People's Literature. The first person to hold the title was John Scieszka, who was appointed in 2008.
A list of Paterson's National Book Awards Books:
- The Master Puppeteer in 1977 - Winner
- The Great Gilly Hopkins in 1979 - Winner
- The Great Gilly Hopkins in 1980- Finalist (paperback)
- Jacob Have I Loved in 1982 - Finalist (paperback)
- The Master Puppeteer in Finalist (paperback)
Dear Dainty Delicious Darling: Poets' Love Letters
"I never knew before, what such a love as you have made me feel was; I did not believe in it; my Fancy was afraid of it, lest it should burn me up," wrote John Keats to Fanny Brawne in one of his many letters to her, considered by some to be among the most beautiful love letters ever written. Get in the mood for Valentine's Day weekend by exploring the love letters of poets, including Lewis Carroll, Emily Dickinson, Paul Laurence Dunbar, James Joyce, D. H. Lawrence, Charles Olson, Alexander Pope, Walt Whitman, W. B. Yeats, and others.
On the web at: www.poets.org/loveletters
Before she would inspire millions, one woman would inspire her.
Performances Begin February 12th
William Gibson’s Tony Award® winning play THE MIRACLE WORKER will celebrate its 50th Anniversary of opening on Broadway with its first revival.
THE MIRACLE WORKER will star Academy Award® nominee Abigail Breslin (Little Miss Sunshine) and Tony Award® nominee Alison Pill (The Lieutenant of Inishmore) as Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan, iconic roles made famous by Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke in the Tony Award® winning play and landmark feature film adaptation.
The cast also features Golden Globe® and Emmy Award® nominee Matthew Modine (And the Band Played On, Short Cuts), Jennifer Morrison (the Fox series House M.D., the film Star Trek), both making their Broadway debuts, and Tony Award® winner Elizabeth Franz (Death of a Salesman).
Flannery O'Connor's Barn
It was a large two-story barn, cool and dark inside. The boy pointed up the ladder that led into the loft and said, "It's too bad we can't go up there."
"Why can't we?" she asked.
"Yer leg," he said reverently.
The girl gave him a contemptuous look and putting both hands on the ladder, she climbed it while he stood below, apparently awestruck. She pulled herself expertly through the opening and then looked down on him and said, "Well, come on if you're coming," and he began to climb the ladder, awkwardly bringing the suitcase with him.
"We won't need the Bible," she observed.
"You never can tell," he said, panting. After he had got into the loft, he was a few seconds catching his breath. She had sat down in a pile of straw. A wide sheath of sunlight, filled with dust particles, slanted over her. She lay back against a bale, her face turned away, looking out the front opening of the barn where hay was thrown from a wagon into the loft. The two pink-speckled hillsides lay back against a dark ridge of woods. The sky was cloudless and cold blue.
—"Good Country People," 1955
Open Monday, Tuesday, and Saturday; free admission; www.andalusiafarm.org
Looking for words of wisdom about writing a book? These professionals have some encouragement to help you on your way.
No human experience is unique, but each of us has a way of putting language together that is ours alone.
- Make a list of five things you did today, in the order you did them.
- Quickly write down three colors.
- Write down a dream. If you can't remember one, make it up.
- Take 15 minutes to write an early childhood memory, using language a child would use.
- Write a forbidden thought, to someone who would understand.
- Write a forbidden thought, to someone who would not.
- Make a list of five of your favorite "transitional objects." Choose one and describe it in detail.
- Write down three questions you'd ask as if they were the last questions you could ever ask.
- Write down an aphorism (e.g. "A stitch in time saves nine").
- Write down three slant rhymes, pairs of words that share one or two consonants rather than vowels (moon/mine and long/thing are slant rhymes).
- Write three things people have said to you in the past 48 hours. Quote them as closely as you can.
- Write the last extreme pain you had, emotional or physical. If the pain were an animal, what animal would it be? Describe the animal.
- Use one of the questions as the first line, each of the colors more than once, the slant rhymes, and the aphorism with a word or two changed.
- Try using any part of, or all of, the material in any way you want—a line from your dream might work well on its own or your description of the animal might better describe your great uncle.
- Let the poem be between 20 and 30 lines; let each line be 10 or more syllables long. Think of the poem as a dream or a psalm you are inventing, and don't force it. Write in your own speech, allowing its music and sense to speak through you.
The 22nd Annual Indie & Small Press Book Fair
Where:
The General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen Library at 20 West 44th Street, between 5th and 6th Avenues in Midtown Manhattan
When:
Saturday, March 6th, and Sunday, March 7th
10-5 both days!
Please email us at contact@nycip.org, or call us at 212-764-7021 for more details.
Conversations from the Cullman Center
Picturing Dorothea Lange: A Conversation with Linda Gordon and Ian Frazier
Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, South Court Auditorium
Fully accessible to wheelchairs
February 25, 2010 7:00 PM EST
FREE with advance registration.
To register, please email csw@nypl.org with your name(s).
Seating is limited: no more than three names per email address, please.
Linda Gordon, a former Cullman Center Fellow and author of the acclaimed new biography Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits, talks about the celebrated documentary photographer's unparalleled work and intriguing life with writer Ian Frazier, a current Cullman Center Fellow and regular contributor to The New Yorker.
Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, South Court Auditorium
Fully accessible to wheelchairs
February 25, 2010 7:00 PM EST
FREE with advance registration.
To register, please email csw@nypl.org with your name(s).
Seating is limited: no more than three names per email address, please.
Linda Gordon, a former Cullman Center Fellow and author of the acclaimed new biography Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits, talks about the celebrated documentary photographer's unparalleled work and intriguing life with writer Ian Frazier, a current Cullman Center Fellow and regular contributor to The New Yorker.