Silliman's Blog and Poetic Specialization

In my most recent post on the Irascible Poet I miss spoke- i said that Ron Silliman lives in the non-poetry world- and he corrected me that he lives in the non academic world.

This prompted me to think about the reason that we all read Ron's blog. Ron Silliman and his blog is a phenomenon in poetry. He mentioned a post once here on the Irascible poet and within five hours I had 4000 visits so of course Ron's work has influence.

But why?

There are two reasons I think that Silliman's Blog does well. Ron's blog is in many ways an echo of older ways of doing poetry.

Most of our poets and poetries today are created in academia. This creates in many poets a hot house effect. There is little real risk involved in the work it is written to satisfy an academic discussion rather than an artistic one. Few poets make their living writing poetry. This makes for a narrow discussion in the poetic marketplace.

In the past however poets and poetry were in dialogue with art and artists in general. All one has to do is remember that at the Cedar bar in New York in the 1950's Pollock and Creeley were sitting at the same tables. Frank O' Hara was an art critic, there were many others. This sense that poets were part of a larger artistic movement was important and is lost as most poets specialize to fit into the world as it exists today. We dont see many collaborations anymore film and visual art are not in dialogue with poetry as was the case in the past.

On Silliman's blog this type of dialogue continues. It is interesting because on most blogs you get bits and pieces. Poets put up their own poetry or their own readings but on Ron's blog we get film and art reviews. We get commentary about a very large range of subjects, including Baseball which is appreciated. There are of course criticisms of this blog. Ron tends to favor certain types of poets and his asthetic is not always the most interesting but at least there is the kind of cross pollination that is lacking in other venues.

I think the reason for the success of the Blog is that it is not specialized. I exist as Ron does in two worlds- one poetic and one in business (the publishing events business in my case)- this changes the way one views both worlds since they are so different. But in some ways not being an academic frees one to partake in other artforms and to absorb more of the world without the need to exist in academia for one's bread. This freedom lets Ron be more critical and more open that would normally be possible. I find that this lack of control on his part makes the blog work. I also think that the lack of poet speak makes a difference.

I was told once that the difference between Olson, Duncan, and O'Hara and today's poets is that they were public intellectuals. This, I think is the issue at hand. Most poets today are specialists they do one thing well and they understand how to function in a specific environment. That was not true about Olson or Duncan or O'Hara and it is not true about Silliman's Blog.

My questions about Language Poetry and Flarf and other movements are basically focused on the idea of the public intellectual and this dialogue. I wonder if these movements are simply an easy retreat into the academic bosom as not to be challenged by larger forces? Perhaps that is the critique? Do we retreat into our own epistemological system or do we engage with the world as poets?

Is what we are doing small or is it big? Do we exist among other artists? Or do we exist within the academy?

The Magisterium of Poetry

Saturday night talking with poet friends about a conference they just attended in Orono, Maine about the poetry of the 1970's I began to think about the magisterium of poetry. There is in poetry a group of poets who define meaning because they have time to do so. The tell us what to believe and in many ways they function like the Magisterium in Rome.

I have felt for a long time that poetry has been moving away from art and toward a kind of conciliar structure. This of course has always been true in art and poetry but it seems poetry in many ways has become that in spades. Poetry is a rarified world that is not open to market forces or to popular forces. In the past poetry and writing in general was a marginal exercise. Poets were either bon vivants or prophetic figures and they looked for an audience- not just an audience of friends and colleagues.

I remember once in an 19th and 20th century philosophy class I asked this question "Professor after all this Philosophy and all these great thinkers the Germans supported Hitler wasn't all this for naught?" The ideas did not matter that came out of the philosopher's mouths but they had absolutely no effect on the society. All the great philosophy had no impact because power mattered and ideas were crushed.

I often feel this way about poetry.

It is true that in America poetry does not have a strong prophetic history. But I cannot help but ask the question what has Language Poetry or Flarf brought to the essential dialogues? In talking to these friends one thing that comes out is the sense that Langpo with its Marxist roots is a closed system- kind of like a birdcage that the canaries know. My question is does this system do anything more than it pretends to do?

I have always been attracted to poets who want to do big things. Poets who define culture and who walk on a big stage. There are many poets whose work creates a world that is larger than the parameters of the Buffalo list or Barrett Watten's living room. Many of these poets are what would be termed Avant Garde- at least at their times but they are concerned with something more. It is not fashionable to talk about big things but if poetry does not strive for this what are we doing wasting our time?

I realize that in some way I am a heretic.

There is a poetic magisterium which defines-- but perhaps poetry in the American idiom needs to think about a bigger stage? The Flarfists have done some interesting things- but I don't see any of them going to jail for their poetic challenge. The Language Poets are allot like Conservatives- they are harkening back I almost feel like the current langpo progenitors would be really comfortable hanging out with the late William F Buckley.

I think about poets of my generation- Jennifer Moxley, Chris Glomski, Garin Cycholl, Lisa Jarnot, Catherine Daly and others and I get the sense that they are truly post modern in the sense that they conglomerate Langpo with older forms and deep reading to make something new. But I also wonder if something new is possible? Is prophetic possible?

Maybe the sing songy poetry of Charles Bernstein's Girly Man is all we have left? My New York Times keeps shrinking- Chicago might be a NO newspaper town- and books are to be digitized. So maybe poetry is a farce? But then I think about great poetic prophets like Celan, Robert Duncan or Osip Mandelstahm and I am satiated a little bit.

Most conferences are attended by people who dont work for a living in the non-poetry world. Ron Silliman mused about these conferences and cannot attend them since he like many of us lives in the non-poetry world. I think in the end that we can do allot of navel gazing but that poetry should be prophetic- the way St Francis was prophetic- and all too often this is snickered about; but if poetry does not have a prophetic role then what role does it have?

No one reads poetry for entertainment.

Iowa is what a University is to Me

Please Consider donating to the Iowa Red Cross. Eastern Iowa has been devastated particularly Cedar Rapids and Iowa City.

http://grantwood-redcross.org/menus/index.html?main-menu.htm&2

Like most Chicagoans when I arrived in Iowa City in the fall of 1985 I though I knew everything. I did not and I learned that Iowans are a different breed, rural, liberal, open minded and loyal. If any group of people can overcome these flood waters they are Iowa Hawkeyes. Watching the University of Iowa, my Alma mater being engulfed in floodwater's I was overcome by a deep sadness.

For me the University of Iowa will always immediately lead me back to the fall of 1985 when I first arrived there as a freshman. That fall of 1985 so many things that have become central to my life entered my understanding. I first fell in love with Thomas Merton, I learned about him from Professor David Klemm's classes. Merton in the Seven Storey Mountain talks about autumn on a college campus where all the classes look great and all is possible. That was certainly true for me. In my freshman year David Hamilton gave me a love for Ezra Pound, Lane Davis taught me to love politics. A simple art appreciation class taught me to love Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock.

I was very blessed to be a freshman in Iowa City.

Many of my friends went to Ivy league schools and I got into a few of them myself but when I visited Iowa with my parents I fell for the place. There was something about the whole thing- it looked like a University. There was a spirit to the place and this filled everything. In the end I enjoyed every moment at Iowa. The crisp air and the football weekends and the art and the poetry readings all made my life fuller that it might have been otherwise.

I was living in Bolivia in 1995. While walking down the Paseo in Cochabamba on a cold June day in my old Iowa Champion sweatshirt an old man come running out of a cafe. He came up to me and in perfectly inflected Iowa English he said, 'Go Hawks'. Martin, a local Iowa graduate, and I became friends he was a 1937 graduate and he played on the Basketball team. Martin worked as a medical doctor in Bolivia and he never returned to the campus after he moved back to Bolivia. His first question to me was "is the Pentacrest still the same?"

So watching the waters rise made me think about where I have been in the 19 years since I graduated. Taking with me what I learned in that place and remaining always loyal and indebted to the University of Iowa. I also remember all the fun including some great football which is as much a part of Iowa City as the Writers Workshop or the Pentacrest. Iowa for me was what a University should be. Safe and challenging, open and tough, and mind expanding.

I have already sent my donation to her recovery....

Returning After Retreat

Spending a week with the Monks of Christ in the Desert was a great experience for me as a poet and a person. There is something about silence and simplicity that makes one go to the roots of what is going on inside.

The monks of this very international group live a life that is very old. While they are Benedictines (5th Century) they are also tied to the Egyptian Desert Fathers of the 3rd Century and back to a time when men and women took asceticism very seriously.

Today what is revered is 'success' but to these monks and to others what is revered is practice and being in communion.
It was a pleasure to partake in their live's and to understand how far we live from these ideals. I often think about the great ascetics, John the Baptist, Buddha, Gandhi, Jesus, the Yogiis and Zen masters and wonder what motivates them? And do I possibly have any of their strength?

So as I begin my day at work I think of the Wisdom of the Desert.

If Barack Obama is Al Smith- Then is John Mc Cain Herbert Hoover?

In the New Republic, John Judis argues that Barack Obama is more like Al Smith than John F Kennedy and that he will lose the presidency. This begs the question if Obama is like Al Smith than is John McCain Herbert Hoover?

Most Americans forget that until John Kennedy's election Catholics were reviled in this country. In fact according to a Gallup Poll Taken in 1955 45% of Americans said they would never vote for a Catholic. In the same poll only 22% said they would never vote for a Jew. In fact today almost 30% of Americans have a negative view of Catholics.

Anti-Catholic Bigotry is in the words of Arthur Schlesinger America's oldest hatred. and Al Smith who was a successful governor of New York and a great leader was nominated in 1928 to be the Democratic Nominee a Catholic and the son of immigrants.

Smith Faced train stations surrounded with Burning Crosses, he suffered from editorials that excoriated not only his Catholicism but the fact that his four grandparents, one Italian, One Irish, One German and One English were all Immigrants and Catholics. Ministers preached against him and he lost the presidency to Hoover.

While Hoover never uttered a bigoted word his supporters did. He was supported by bigots of the first order and he never challenged them.

Is John Mc Cain going to be that man this year?

Is he going to allow the grandchildren of the Klansman, the Reverend Hagee's of the world to use the kind of racist rants and quiet bigotry to destroy Obama so that he can be president?

Republicans have been winking at these people for 40 years and making Abraham Lincoln turn over in his grave.

This is the question.

The Republicans have become masters at the silent ascent. Ronald Reagan began his 1980 campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi. Why would you start a campaign in the place where the three civil rights workers were killed in 1962?

Silent ascent.

Republicans have also used other hot button words to separate Urban Catholics from others by using language like "changing neighborhoods" and Busing to win elections where their goal is to simply gain power.

Silent Ascent.

When Republicans talk about "socialized medicine" or other issues what they are say is you are not like "them". Is John McCain going to be like Hoover? Is he going to allow the bigots and bloggers to convince America that Obama is crazy black muslim from Chicago?

This is the only way that Mc Cain can win this year and I am sure he wants to win by any means necessary so get ready to relive 1928 all over again.

Unless America has grown tired of silent ascents?

Christ in the Desert Day 2

Christ in the Desert Day 2

Well I have survived since three o'clock on Sunday without speaking. I have gotten allot of writing done and I have talked to myself.

I was always attracted as a younger man by the romance of religious life. There was something romantic about people like St Francis or St Francis Xavier or the Jesuit Reductions or Thomas Merton. Something about being so separate and prophetic. It was a romantic notion then as now.

My personal interest in religious life wavered in the face of my own weakness and all of the unfortunate baggage that has been created by scandal and human weakness. But having said that there is still something great about it all.

Being here with the monks I cannot help but think of what monks have given to humanity. Forget about the saints for the moment and think about this fact monks were the ones during the entire period from the fall of Rome until the birth of printing that saved the written word. In the year 600 only 3000 people in Western Europe could read or write according to historian Warren Treadgold of those 1/2 were Monks and Nuns. We owe monks quite allot. The Arabs learned about Western knowledge from Greek and Syrian monks so we all owe monks many of the books we currently read and for our history.

So my stay here is uneventful. The deep quiet is so disturbing. It is a good change though removing oneself from life and stopping. Too much of our lives is spent on chatter and noise and quiet and contemplation are needed. Having said that I will barely make it to Friday.... Peace

Ray

Retreat Christ in the Desert Day 1

Christ in the Desert-Abiquiu, New Mexico

Day One

June 2, 2008

When I decided to take a retreat after working long and hard on the event I manage I chose Christ in the Desert by chance. Sure my mom had been here once but I would have much preferred to go to Gethsemani Abbey in Kentucky or Mepkin in South Carolina but they were full. So I chose this place.

I have to say to this point that my choice was good one. Christ in the Desert is a Black Benedictine Abbey. That is they are the OSB order as opposed to the Cistercians or Trappists which are also Benedictines but are a later reform. This Abbey is trying to live the rule of St Benedict and in our after post modern world that is a struggle.

This morning I arose at 330 AM (I normally get up at 4 AM so this is no big deal) and I walked in pitch darkness from the guest house to the abbey. The stars here are un blemished by lights and seem larger- I guess being at 6300 feet will do that to you. The weather has all the seasons in one day, 40 at night 95 during the day.

The monks here chant the whole office- this morning was from 400 AM until 830- quite allot of praying but I guess I need it. My life in Chicago is good but it is devoid of contemplation and quiet. There is something always ‘on’ ipod, work, Sox Game, Phone. Here there are no cell phone signals and you area cut off in a fabulous valley of red rocks and an adobe monastery.

I actually wrote this morning for three hours. I have not done that for a long time. Poetry tends to come in bursts for me and rarely in long stretches. It was nice to do that work and not think about other work.

I kind of view these monks like I view my poet friends who lead charmed lives (Simone Muench, Robert Archembeau, Joshua Clover, Peter Gizzi, Jennifer Moxley, are good examples) they sacrificed money and prestige to become poets and teachers and now they have time and perspective to be poets. Those of us who did not make that choice are of course green with envy which is of course deadly sin. They are in some ways like the monks here. These monks gave up the active life but they now live in community focused on what they love the most… I think all artists are in fact the descendants of Monks and their quest for quiet, devotion and focus.

So lets see what happens here.

Can I really make it for 5 days in silence…. Stay tuned

Nixonland and Obamanation

http://www.amazon.com/Nixonland-Rise-President-Fracturing-America/dp/0743243021

When Barack Obama gave his speech in Philadelphia on race he acknowledged something that only a Chicago based politician could have- that not all Working Class Whites are Racists and that they have often been used as whipping boys by Liberals and African American activists for their legitimate fears.

The fact that Obama admitted this and understands that the dialogue between "white ethnics" and African Americans is broken is as good a reason as any to elect him president. Because he can see both sides means maybe we can move beyond George Wallace and Stokely Carmichael.

My life (I was born in 1967) was punctuated by three events. These events hit me early in life but to this day they are viscerally part of me. The first was the 1967 Newark, NJ riots. My mother is from Belleville, NJ and when she was growing up it was a leafy suburb of Italians five miles from the nice middle class city of Newark. That is where they settled when they moved from Italy and I remember as a child the clean and safe two and three family houses and their patriotic and interesting occupants. It was an area in decline in the early 1970's but it was obvious it had been a nice place once.

My grandfather (also Ray) was a knife grinder or Moleta. He started out on a Brooklyn street sharpening knives and he built the American Grinding Company into a large business- when he died in 1980 he left a comfortable retirement for my grandmother and thousands came to his funeral. He spoke Italian, German, Yiddish, Hungarian and some Chinese and he knew every restaurant and butcher shop in Essex and Bergen counties he was a figure.

One of my earliest memories, I think I was four or five was going to visit a butcher shop that he did the knives for and asking him why every other building on the street, Springfield Avenue, was either burned, boarded up or an empty lot? He told me because "they" rioted a few years before an all the businesses were burned. For a five year old this was a strange idea? Why would people burn down the businesses of my Grandfather's friends?

Later in life we moved to Chicago. We had a family friend who lived in Chicago, in the Austin neighborhood. This lady was a nice Italian lady who knew my grandparents. But over a few months we stopped visiting her home and she moved away- losing the house she lived in for 30 years. According the my parents her neighborhood "changed" and "they" had changed it. This profound sense of loss and the resentment felt by people like my family is why for many years Democrats lost votes in our communities. It does not make it right but it is important to not discount its impact.

Finally when I was 8 in 1975 I sat in the living room with my Air Force Veteran father and watched as helicopters lifted off the rooftop of the American Embassy in Sai gon. My father had many friends who served in Viet Nam and who died there. This was the first time I ever saw horror on my father's face. The Vietman veterans I knew were all "ethnic" and they served out of honor and duty and our nation treated them like refuse when they returned. This too fueled resentment of "them".

In Nixonland, a book by Rick Perlstein the political attitudes of my "people" are chronicled. The real result of the 1960's, for all the good that was wrought was a fissure where people like my relatives- (my Grandfather was a delegate for Adlai Stevenson in 1956)- and my parents became Republicans. In 1980 the last year of my Grandfather's life his last political contribution was to Ronald Reagan.

An era of political paralysis- that currently damages our country still because of the profound fissure that the events that I felt as a small child millions of people who should be voting Democratic voted for Reagan and Bush and Bush. People who should be voting their interests voted against them because of "them" and our nation slowly shifted from the united nation of justice to the swing group-pressure group nation we live in today.

In Perlstein's book he masterfully tells us how the real and legitimate fears of people like my parents and grandparents were used by cynical politicians to win votes and divide America. The images of police dogs and marchers that morally convicted White America were replaced with "kill Whitey". "Whitey" moved away, voted Republican, and made sure that much of the progressivity of the 1960's was rolled back or destroyed. Good people whose gut would have supported progressive politics voted reactionary because they felt that Liberals sided with the rioters and not them.

This was Nixonland.

Nixonland however is ending. The America that I grew up in where fear of "them" can be used to divide people is coming to its end. Michelle Obama and I are not that far apart in age and I bet if Michelle's Dad and my Grandfather Ray has sat down for a shot and a beer they would have gotten along. But because politicians turned Michelle's father into "them" that never happened. This is not to say that racism is not a real problem- this is not to say that the rioters were not criminals- but what we need to ask is what did our republic benefit from these divisions? I cannot believe that every Black family that moved into Austin (chicago) or Newark, NJ was a problem? Yet the neighborhood in Newark where Philip Roth wrote his greatest works is today devoid of Jews because "they" moved in.

Nixonland is ending- and perhaps Obamanation is coming- is because Barack Obama understands this tension and he understands that we are all in this together. Unlike the Nixonland mentality he knows that we need to build something in unity because his very existence comes from this reality. So now we wait for the election. Will memories of riots, changing neighborhoods and resentments cause America to miss its chance to elect the person who could end the cycle?

The Republicans will continue to play these cards. As George Wallace said in 1963 "no one will ever out-ni***r me again. " But I hope that there are more people who were born to families like mine who is remember another slogan-

Yes We Can.

Reading Origen in Las Vegas

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origen

I have always been fascinated by the early Church. Easily the most interesting area for me is the birth of Monasticism in Egypt. The romantic stories of the Abbas in Egypt- Antony, Pachomius, Pambo and the great mothers like Mary of the Desert.

The Desert Fathers and Mothers are totally anathema to our current world which is based on things. When the Fathers said go to your cell and you will find what you are looking for he was challenging us to look to the gifts already recieved not to what dwells outside us. When the Desert Fathers looked as simplicity as the only way a Christian should live they were creating a paradigm that exists to this day- do you think God's will is served by Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Dorothy Day or Desmond Tutu? Or by Creflo Dollar, Pope Julius or EWTN.

The monastics of Egypt- the first Christian monks. The Monks of Egypt and Syria were influenced profoundly by many forces- the Jewish Therapeautae, the Persian Manichees whose faith is a fusion the Zoroastrian and Christian via their prophet Mani and a profound passage from St Luke. The monks of the Desert and their monastaries were radically "other" they chose to leave the world as they saw it for something better. So much of today's "christians" are not prophetic- no they are weak and vacillating. They are concerned with 'self help' instead of depth and in the end their religion is a parody.

St Luke 12 22 New Jerusalem Bible

Then he said to his disciples, 'That is why I am telling you not to worry about your life and what you are to eat, nor about your body and how you are to clothe it.23 For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing.24 Think of the ravens. They do not sow or reap; they have no storehouses and no barns; yet God feeds them. And how much more you are worth than the birds!25 Can any of you, however much you worry, add a single cubit to your span of life?26 If a very small thing is beyond your powers, why worry about the rest?27 Think how the flowers grow; they never have to spin or weave; yet, I assure you, not even Solomon in all his royal robes was clothed like one of them.28 Now if that is how God clothes a flower which is growing wild today and is thrown into the furnace tomorrow, how much more will he look after you, who have so little faith!29 But you must not set your hearts on things to eat and things to drink; nor must you worry.30 It is the gentiles of this world who set their hearts on all these things. Your Father well knows you need them.31 No; set your hearts on his kingdom, and these other things will be given you as well.32 'There is no need to be afraid, little flock, for it has pleased your Father to give you the kingdom. On almsgiving 33 'Sell your possessions and give to those in need. Get yourselves purses that do not wear out, treasure that will not fail you, in heaven where no thief can reach it and no moth destroy it.34 For wherever your treasure is, that is where your heart will be too.

I have always been enamoured of asceticism. But unlike Francis of Assisi who was also moved to change by this passage from Luke I am unable to be more than enamoured. The truth is that Asceticism is not easy in our world and so the irony that I am sitting poolside in Las Vegas after producing a trade show for dental industry suppliers is profound. The fact that I am reading Origen the great proto-monk of Egypt illustrates how profoundly twisted things are . I am here in the land of excess, a place modeled not on asceticism but on hedonism, and the irony continues.

I often wonder if all the hourding into barns and alike means anything? So you have money and comfort but the simple monks life would not destroy the planet.

I wonder if a lack of trial and hardship means one is lucky or one is weak because we do not face trials?

I think of the great renouncers- Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, Origen, Paul, St Francis, and the lives they led and wonder why we continue to value what can be stolen from us. Wherever your treasure is that is where your heart is as well....

Exhaustion

Exhaustion is when you cannot stand anymore and your brain hurts. I have been working on the trade show I direct now for 8 days without rest and it makes me think about real workers- people like my grandparents who did this everyday.

Maybe we are too weak?

Language for A New Century-Asian Poetry

http://www.amazon.com/Language-New-Century-Contemporary-Poetry/dp/0393332381

I am a sucker for anthologies. Many times they give us a good idea of what is going on in a place. There are some great anthologies- Poems for the Millennium, In the American Tree, Nothing the Sun Could not Explain are all masterpieces.

Last week when I was shopping at Seminary Co-op here in Chicago I found Language for a New Century; Edited by Tina Chang, Nathalie Handal and Ravi Shankar which is billed as contemporary poetry from Asia. Having just finished doing my own anthology of Chicago poetry (The City Visible: Chicago Poetry for the New Century) I know how hard this is to do.

There have been some anthologies that markedly fail in their project Legitimate Dangers edited Cate Marvin comes to mind as a work that was basically an anthology of friends rather than a real collection. Language for the New Century does not make this mistake. The work is so broad that it seems that every poet who has anything to do with Asia is included. The book is so dense as to take a long time to read and I am still working through it.

There are some really great poets in this book. Nikmet Hazmet, Sarah Gambito, Prageeta Sharma, Ha Jin and Bei Dao among them. The fact is however that the weight of the size of Asia makes this book seem unsatisfying in its scope having said that how does one encapsulate Asia in 695 pages?

The book is in reality a triumph and gives many Asian voices a chance in the American market and does what Norton does well and that is create a college textbook- and that is what this is. The poetry and the sections that were created make it accessible and the editorial choices are very fine- this is a book to buy.

One of the problems with After-Postmodern Racial politics is that there are no boundaries. When does someone stop being "asian" and become just American or British? It is hard to argue that some of these poets are really "asian" in fact 102 of the over 240 poets are in fact immigrants or natives of the USA, Australia and the UK and if their goal was to create an anthology of all poets with any Asian blood- where are the Latin American Asian poets?

Poetic identity politics is a really dangerous road. This might have been the result of the fact that all three editors are Anglo-American academics the inclusion of a poet editor from the Middle East or East Asia might have mitigated this problem. There are poets in this book who it is hard to argue they are Asian- Yehuda Amichai comes to mind is he really a Middle Eastern Poet? Is Ashkenazi Israeli culture Asian? You see why this is problematic.

Would Peter Gizzi or Jennifer Scappettone be included in a contemporary Italian anthology? Of course not- but people whose connections to Asia are just as distant are included here and I think that it is a weakness of this book. I think that the anthologists should have limited themselves to poets living in Asia or ones whose primary formation was in Asian culture not Immigrant Culture. Many of the poets included who are of Asian origin are really part of their immigrant cultures- not Asian culture directly and this is the only weakness of this book.

I think that this book is an essential addition to our libraries. I would urge people to sit with the work and I laud the anthologists for getting a tough job completed. In the end however contemporary poetic identity politics gets in the way of a book that might have been seminal instead it is only important.

Poetry and Diversity in Chicago

I attended a Symposium a couple of weeks ago at the University of Chicago's Library organized by the David Pavilich, Librarian of poetry and other things, on Poetry in Chicago.

The Event was a celebration of the acquisition of the papers of two Chicago institutions- Flood Editions and Michael Anania. The event was very tweedy-controlled and was set up as a celebration of the acquisition.

I did not stay for the portion by Anania which I understand was excellent- so I am not going to comment on that part but I was there for the Flood Editions portion and I have to say that it caused me to pause and ask a question- is poetry always condemned to be viewed as dilettantism in the USA?

There has always been a conflict in American poetry between the struggling gritty poet; Sandburg, Whitman, Brooks, Williams who lives in the 'world' and the poet dilettante, Pound, Dickinson, Lowell who live in rarefied air and whose engagement with poetry is separate from the grittiness.

During the section of the symposium on Flood Editions I kept asking myself what about Flood is particularly Chicago- apart from the fact that Michael O'Leary one of the editors lives here? Flood tends to publish very interesting poets who are experimental without regard for region and Flood tends to produce books that are really well crafted.

I think that the well crafted part is what makes Flood so Chicago. If you drive around Chicago the thing you notice is the solidity of the buildings. Brick, Stone and Cement. Chicago is not Dallas where the buildings all look like Paper Mac he- it is a solid place and that is what Flood does so well. Their books are well designed and solid. Their editorial choices are solid as well.

But having said all of this there was a waft of tweedy Hyde Park in the symposium.

One attendee asked a very salient question about diversity. This was not addressed and the room needed to have the discussion. I think that the thing that hurts poetry in the United States is lack of class diversity. There is not a lot of difference between a poet who is upper class and happens to be a woman or African American and someone who is of European origin. Yes they are victims of racism/sexism but their position of privilege is still intact. There is less at stake for an upper class poet...

This is what makes Poets like Ed Roberson , Nate Mackey or Mark Nowak so important because they are serious well educated poets whose work is in dialogue with bigger things. I kind of look at Mackey and Roberson are to Poetry as Michelle Obama is the Lawyers they came from normal origins and while they are exceptional- they have not forgotten where they arose.

I hope in the future that Class differences can be discussed in the Chicago Poetry Symposium and that local Chicago poets like Mark Tardi, Kimberly Lojek, Carlos Campian, Francisco Aragon, Ed Roberson and others who come from different class backgrounds and experiences are allowed to dialogue about what diversity really means- and to ask probing questions about the lack of class diversity in poetry.

Having said all this Pavilich needs to be praised for organizing the event- even if it was a little self-congratulatory for the the U of C- the reality is that the the University of Chicago does not really engage with Chicago or its poets and perhaps Pavilich can change this fact. Up to this point there is no place at the U of C that compares to say the University of Pennsylvania's Kelly Writer's house where the local literary community and the Ivy League can meet on common ground maybe this symposium will lead to that?

Catholic Poets-Catholic Popes

The Pope is visiting the USA this week. We will hear the musings of the chattering class about pedophilia and oppression and those comments and critiques are well deserved. As a Catholic I am ashamed of what happened just as I am ashamed of other things that are done in my name since I ascent to be a member of the Church.

Having said that one of the differences between Catholicism and other groups is that we have a distinct Culture that informs our history as a people. The thing that no megachurch or evangelical group can ever replace is the fact that Catholic Culture gave birth to so much of what makes up our current world. Our community is based in many things and these are not new.

One area of Catholic Culture that is not known- even by Catholics is our poetry. In the USA we Catholics are proud of our fiction writers, Flannery O'Connor, Walker Percy, and Jack Kerouac and many others but it is in poetry where Catholic culture has given so much to the world.

The origin poetry in Italian and Spanish are profoundly Catholic. The first poetry written in the Italian language was written by Francis of Assisi and Dante. This poetry sits as the origin of that language and it can be argued that the Divine Comedy is the greatest poem ever written apart from the Illiad and the Odyssey.

In Spanish the poetry of John of Cross continues to influence Spanish poetry to this day. It was John of Cross who served as the essential bridge between Moorish Spanish poetry and the poetry of the Americas. There is no poet writing in Spanish who has not been influenced by John.

There are many contemporary poets who are identified as Catholic. Gerard Manley Hopkins who many see as the progenitor of Modernism. Czeslaw Milosz who made poetry of the Slavic world and the Iron Curtain real for the 20th Century. Thomas Merton and William Everson whose work brought the journey to American audiences and Gabriella Mistral the Nobel Lauriate who brought personal inner poetry to the world. It could also be argued that Cesar Vallejo, Pablo Neruda and Ottavio Paz could be classified as Catholic culturally- the Church and its culture fill their work.

Why is this important? Because in most cases religion in the United States is more like a drive through restaurant than a feast. We fill up on Bible and emotion and then go back to the grind that is our lives. But Catholics and others whose religion have a culture have so much more to draw from. As Mozart said "to leave the Church would mean that I could not recieve the Eucharist in the great Cathedrals and that thought is intolerable". That is also how I feel about our poets and writers. Many concervatives want to boil down the Faith to practices and devotions but Catholicism is more than that it is a Culture a Culture that most of my brethern do not even know exists.

To be separated from these poets- well the thought is intolerable. But many will say why? Why be a member of this Church that does so many bad things (which is does). Mostly because life is not a drive through window- it is work and to leave would be easy.

I think that too many poets today are based not in a history or culture but in their own narcissism and that has made their work too personal and too stale. It is in the contradictions that we are made new again. So I remain angry but obedient-

So as the Pope visits us- I will choose the poets.

Violence is our Currency

Violence is our currency. We as a species thrive on violence and while we laud prophets of non-violence and peace we also revile them as well.

I keep thinking about this China Olympics thing and the amount of money these protests are causing major sponsors. The Tibetian cause has been dubbed a "wine and cheese" protest but I think it is something bigger.

China has become the enabler of violence in our world, while the USA is the actor of violence. Not all violence is military. The destruction of industries and the loss of jobs in many parts of the world to China's near slave labor conditions is a insidious as any military war. We have chosen to prefer violence to non-violence in the way we buy and in the way we live.

Our societies have always loved and reviled non-violent prophets. Martin Luther King was murdered as was Gandhi. Thomas Merton and Dorothy Day in my own tradition are ignored or attacked because they refused to agree that violence of war or economic injustice were acceptable and of course Jesus was Crucified.

When I see uniformed Chinese policemen fighting with protestors in the US or Europe I have to ask the question? Why can't we say the truth about injustice and violence? The reason is because we do not have the moral authority to do so- we are complicit in violence. Violence makes our lives easier- violence is our currency.

World Poetry versus American Poetry

It has been said that Americans are the most isolated people in the world because they dwell thousands of miles away from everyone else separated by oceans. I think this is BS since Brazilians, Argentines and Indians dwell as far away as Americans do and they are not isolated.

I think that in our poetics in the USA our problem is American Exceptional ism. World Poetry is in dialogue with the globe American poetry is not.

A good example of this is that there is a profound dialogue between Brazilian poets that I know and some American literary stars like Charles Bernstein but this need to encounter the world has not trickled down to poets at lower rungs.

A recent Myopic Reading here in Chicago featured poets Mark Tardi and Daniel Borzutsky who have done great translation work.
Aufgabe and Circumferance Magazines do a great job but I think
thousands of Americans get MFA's each year and only a small
minority read world literature. We spend too much time facebooking and blogging and not enough time reading.

I had a great conversation last month with Kristen Dykstra a professor at Illinois State who manages Mandorla. Prof. Dykstra has foregone her poetry to do this important work of bringing Latin American poetry to the USA. But the problem is much deeper. MFA programs are predicated on specialization. They are like MBA's for writers they remove broad knowledge in favor of craft. These programs normally do not encourage deep reading and they feed a culture of specialization that is unreal- I wonder how many budding poets quit to get real jobs? Wasting the money they spent on the MFA.

As a business person I have always been attracted to European business people because they are so diverse. I have known global business leaders who are sculptors, painters and poets. This is a real rarity in the USA. But diversity of thought is also a real rarity among American poets.
I can think of only a few younger poets who are interested in these things; John Tipton, William Allegrezza, Johannes Gorensson, Mark Tardi, Jen Hofer, Jen Scappettone, Kristin Dykstra while there are so many working on their own work which in many cases will be read by only a few people within our poetic world.

I think the challenge is to expand that poetic world to more. America's influence is weaker in a global world and we need to embrace that the world has allot to offer. Deep reading is what is needed and less poetic politicking. In the end the game players will win but at least I have made my argument for reading more, writing better and maybe talking less about ourselves.

"the thrill of the grass"

There is something about opening day. I came to baseball like most young people via my dad. He was a Yankee fan- but my mother was a Dodger fan and so growing up in Chicago being a Cubs fan was out of the question and so I fell in love with the White Sox.

For me it was the 1977 White Sox, the South Side Hitmen, Harry Caray, Wayne Nordhagen, Oscar Gamble and Bill Veeck that I fell in love with and that love has remained a constant for 30 years.

I always took opening day for granted.

In 1994 I was living in Bolivia and 1994 looked like OUR year. We had a great team and I was sure this was it. I would go to a bar in Cochabamba with only other White Sox fan in South America- a U of C Professor I met who was studying the Guarani people of the Chaco and watch an occasional ESPN game. Then they went on strike. 1994 gone, 1995 gone.

I remained in South America until 1998 and my interest waned. Then in the spring of 1998 I moved back to the USA and I remembered 'the thrill of the grass' . This quote from WP Kinsella's novel Shoeless Joe which is better known as Field of Dreams from the mouth of Shoeless Joe Jackson was deep in me and it remains so.

Spring, Easter and Opening day. The sense that all is possible. The rhythm of the day with a game on everynight and the history. Like Catholicism if you are a Baseball fan you are part of a huge communion of saints. These saints belong to us- Ruth, Appling, Musial, Banks, Robinson they are all ours.

It is only because of the thrill of the grass that a person who I respect and admire like Mark Tardi could be infected with that most despicable of diseases, Cubfandom. Yet you have to admire Cubs fans- they are such dorks yet they love their team and their dump of a ballpark.

It was 12 months of sheer pleasure when I could say, I am watching the "world champions" and while it would be the worst year of my life I hope someday they get to say that about the baby bears, or maybe I don't. Maybe I enjoy their pain... The fact that they finally have dedicated a statue to Ernie Banks is a testament to where their priorities lay...

Some of the people I admire most in the world understand the Thrill of Grass. Most educated people understand Baseball. I can understand a distain for other sports but when someone tells me that they find Baseball boring or long I immediately get turned off like seeing a pretty woman with rotten teeth. There is something about the pace. The pure joy of Game five of the 2005 World Series, a 1-0 Shutout where the winning run was scored by Willie Harris off a chopper over the head of the second baseman.. pure joy.

So we begin opening day, against the Damn Indians. I look forward to my first trip to 35th and Shields to the first time this year- the first double play and the first hot dog- and the hope that this is the year again.

For my Cub fan friends... happy 1ooth anniversary of your last World Series Title.... as I smile..

Fitna: Freedom and Expression

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=7d9_1206624103

There is much controversy about the film that is linked above. It is easy to demagogue an entire culture but I think that it is important to ask some questions. I write this post as a practicing Catholic. Someone who has to accept all the evil that my particular branch of Christianity imposed on people in slavery and colonialism.

There is no moral superiority for the Bible or Christianity over the Koran. There are verses in both the Tanakh and New Testaments as vile as the verses in the Koran in the film above. The difference is that in the Christian world we do not on the whole try to impose our religious beliefs on others.

We have in fact made a decision that religious practice and law are separate. This was not an easy transition. My Church opposed this, the Mormons and Christian Fundamentalists tried to form theocracies. In the end Freedom of Choice won these arguments and authoritarian religion lost.

Having said that many liberals and progressives are uncomfortable standing up for what our Western tradition believes there is this false sense that all expressions are the same they are not. There is a difference between the ideal of a good society in the Christian West and the Muslim world. Until we admit and understand this we will continue to not understand the challenge before us.

That challenge is not going to be met with bombs or wars. In many ways it is a challenge that needs to be fought with ideas. For 200 years Catholics and Protestants fought wars of religion. Then the French and American Revolutions happened we then fought between Traditional notions of the state and the current enlightenment model, then we fought between Liberals, Fascists and Communists.

All of these fights were ones of ideas primarily. It was liberal ideas that defeated Hitler and Communism and the Counter Reformation and Calvin's theocracy and Slavery in the USA and the British in India. Ideas that All people are Created Equal and that they have a right to decide for themselves what they want to believe.

This is why I post this film on my Blog. Not because I agree with it- but because I disagree with threats and murder for people expressing ideas. People have a right to criticize whatever they want including the Bible the Koran, Jesus or Muhammad and that is what makes us free.

The Intertia of the Poetry Scene making Decisions

I have had many conversations about the prominance of poet scenesters- poets whose primary claim to fame is that they are good at managing the poetry scene rather than creating great work. There have been many scenesters in literature whose work was well crafted d'Annunzio and Oscar Wilde come to mind.

There are current poets who are fine at the craft and also good at managing the scene and promoting themselves. Simone Muench, Tracy Grinnell, Jen Hofer, Juliana Spahr and Joshua Clover come to mind. They are all fine poets and you cannot fault them for leveraging who they are and their fine writing. They are playing the game but they are doing the work and this is a fine balance. They are our rock stars but they do the work and so who can fault them for doing the politics?

In contrast to this there is an entire world of Scenester poets. Poet's whose work is mediocre or worse but who are lauded because they are good at the scene. The other night at Danny's Reading Series in Chicago we heard from one of those who benefits from a scene pass- Matthea Harvey.

I kept thinking who published this stuff?

Then I realized Ms Harvey is tied into the whole Iowa scene and she has the right breeding and support- and then it all became clear why the work was published. There are others here in Chicago whose work is dreadful but who fit into a scene and have good breeding but whose poetry in unreadable- but they are part of the scene and so they get play and we all scratch our head's in disbelief.

The phenomenon of the poetry community supporting a scenester whose work is weak is rife in American poetry. There are many poets who are on their third or fourth book and no one has said-" why is this work good?" Where are our critics?

Poetry Communities are essential to our artform and their are poets in our community in Chicago whose work I hate -but the work has merit- it is like preferring De Kooning to Pollock. Both are good but different.

But a community is not a critical structure and that is what we are lacking. The problem is that so many poets work gets by- without critique --. If you went to the right school (Iowa, Brown, Bard, you get the picture) you can plan on getting your work published and not being critiqued even if the work is weak.

Critics who are also poets are afraid to be critical of other poets because we don't want to lose a future opportunity- and the artform does not grow because of the lack of competition. I have been to hundreds of readings- where all the listeners roll their eyes, like on Wednesday at Danny's when Ms Harvey finished at the weakness of the poetry-- but no one says anything because of fear of it coming back to haunt them in the future.

Triduum

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_Triduum

I have always loved Holy Week. When I was a small child we would spend it with the Commie Priests of D'Andreas in Lemont, IL. The magesty of the Three Days. The wholeness of the washing of the feet, the horror of the Passion and the relief of the first Alleluja.

I have written about this before but the most moving Holy Thursday for me was in 1995

when I was a volunteer in the Men's Prison of San Sebastian in Cochabamba, Bolivia. On that day Fr Benoit the pastor of the jail invited the inmates, many of whom hated each other to wash each other's feet- it was a moment of grace.

Last year Traudi and I were in Istanbul and we went to Mass in a mostly Muslim city with Mass in Italian. There is something that grounds me in Holy Week. I can do without Christmas but Easter is something again. Easter means rebirth and spring and the fact that God who became human chose to banish fear. So often religious people forget that Jesus banished fear. We wollow in fear and this is many times our greatest sin. Fear has lead to so many evils.

"But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they and some others came to the tomb, bringing the spices which they had prepared.

24:2They found the stone rolled away from the tomb.

"Why do you seek the living among the dead?

24:6 He isn't here, but is risen.

Gospel of Luke

Why China's Oppression Matters.

I worked for many years with China in previous jobs. I became friends with a man who was a porter in our Hong Kong office I will call him mister Shen. Mr Shen was a lovely man who introduced me to the joys of noodle soup and Chinese tailors- I liked him very much.

We became friends because of the fact that we are both Catholics. He invited me to a Rosary in the city of Shenzen where he lived with his wife and daughter.

After a few years I stopped working in China and I called a friend to see how Mr Shen was doing and I was told he had been taken into "Custody". He was arrested for having an unauthorized Rosary in his apartment and for being loyal to the Pope.

China is the fastest growing Power in the world. It is consuming resources the way the US did in the 19th century. We should applaud the new Chinese economy and we should embrace the emergence of China- but we need to reject their system of governance because that system is evil.

The Chinese government is oppressing and destroying the culture of Tibet and those people are rioting against this oppression. Thousands of Chinese are in prison for things as simple as writing poetry or attending Rosaries. Millions of Chinese are worked to death producing export products and they have no right to redress or organized labor.

To pretend that China is just another dictatorship is folly. China is the largest owner of American treasury bills. China is supporting oppressive regimes around the world. Yet the world is going to Beijing for the Olympics is this the story we want told? That the world played sports while this nation continues to oppress its own people and supporting regimes that oppress.

In the end we need to ask ourselves do our values matter? Or is it all about the money?? I say boycott the Beijing Games until Tibet is free and people are free to pray the Rosary in their living room without molestation.