Darwin Inspired by his Grandfather's Poetry

This recent New York Times article on Charles Darwin's great-great-Granddaughter British poet Ruth Padel's new book of poetry "Darwin: A Life in Poems" got me thinking about Darwin's other poet relative, his Grandfather Erasmus Darwin.

Here is a quote from an article in "The Guardian."

Darwin's long poem "The Botanic Garden" (1789) is one of the most extraordinary - some would say bizarre - works in English literature. Arching between two eras, it was a final exuberant flowering of Enlightenment experiment and optimism but also a glittering treasure trove of images and ideas for the coming Romantic generation, plundered by Shelley, Coleridge, Wordsworth. Four thousand lines of rhyming couplets humming above thickets of footnotes, with engravings by Blake, Fuseli and others, it consisted of two parts, "The Economy of Vegetation", and "The Loves of the Plants".

With wit and sly humour it mixed poetry, science and startling radical notions: a sheaf of "Additional Notes" explored everything from meteors to Wedgwood's Portland vase, from clouds and coal to shell-fish and steam-engines. Most disturbing of all to contemporaries was the poem's first hint of a new theory of biological evolution - 50 years before his grandson Charles published Origin of Species.
Portrait of Erasmus Darwin by Joseph Wright- c 1792-3 (or after)

click here for the full article

For me the Times missed a crucial element by not including the full story of the Darwin family's poetry connection. Here are a few lines from Economy of Vegetation:

"LET THERE BE LIGHT!"
Astonish'd Chaos heard the potent word: -
Through all his realms the kindly Ether runs,
And the mass starts into a million suns;
Earths round each sun with quick explosions burst,

And second planets issue from the first;
Bend, as they journey with projectile force,
In bright ellipses bend their reluctant course;
Orbs wheel in orbs, round centres centres roll,
And form, self-balanced, one revolving Whole.

Happy Poetry Month

Colbert! Penn! Pinsky! in the Meta-free-phor-all--shall-i-nail-thee-to-a-summer-s-day-

This is a great clip from April 2007.
Penn was a drinking buddy of Bukowski.
The opening clips shows Penn and Colbert as butterflies!
In the great evolution of the poetry slam this is akin
to walking upright! Why don't more Slams take this format?
Challenge to anyone organizing a performance poetry contest!

Photography by LaVerne Harrell Clark

The University of Arizona Poetry Center's next exhibition will feature photographs of poets and writers taken by the late LaVerne Harrell Clark, the Center's first director.

Here is a wonderful photograph Harrell Clark took of Joy Harjo in 1975. This was shortly after Harjo's first book "the last song," came out from: Puerto Del Sol Press, located in Las Cruces, New Mexico, was released. The exhibition is being held in honor of Clark, who died Feb. 24, 2008. Here is a story on the exhibit from UA News.

You may view more of Harrell Clark's work at Artistic Network including great photos of Creeley and Borges.

Buson Poem and Grave Stone

The spring sea rising
And falling, rising
And falling all day.
The spring sea rising
And falling, rising
And falling all day.
The spring sea rising
And falling, rising
And falling all day.
The spring sea rising
And falling, rising
And falling all day.
The spring sea rising
And falling, rising
And falling all day.
The spring sea rising
And falling, rising
And falling all day.
The spring sea rising
And falling, rising
And falling all day.

Indie Feed does Howl

Mongo from Indie Feed writes:

Dear IndieFeed Poetry Family...

It isn't frequently that I feel compelled to drop a note to every poet that has been on IndieFeed over the past few years. But today is such a day.

I just wanted to thank each and every one of you for being a part of our channel since we debuted, three years ago this week. During the past month we've had a huge number of anniversaries for us, and they all illustrate how successful the show has become:

* 3 years of podcasting
* 2 million + total downloads
* Our first month ever (January, 2009) surpassing 100,000 downloads
* 200+ poets featured

And to me, most importantly:

* 500 shows!!!!


If you haven't checked in with the show lately, this would be a good time to do so. This morning we released, through special arrangement with the estate of Allen Ginsberg, his epic poem "Howl (for Carl Solomon)". By far the longest, and arguably, the most historically important piece ever to appear on the channel.

IndieFeed

I've enclosed a press release that we've been distributing in advance of the show's airing today. If you have a blog, or any other place that might find this interesting, please feel free to use it or forward it widely. The great thing about podcasting is that once a piece is up, it remains available for download in perpetuity.

But the real reason for this e-mail is just to thank each and every one of you for being a part of what we do. I wish I could reach out and give every one of you a hug, not only for being on the show, but for keeping the flame of performance poetry alive each and every day, for all of us, and for generations yet to come.

You all mean the world to me. Keep doing what you do...

Much love,

--Mongo
Founder and Host
The IndieFeed Performance Poetry Channel
http://performancepoetry.indiefeed.com

PS You can catch some of my poems on IndieFeed as well!

THE POEM

Praise song for the day.

Each day we go about our business, walking past each other, catching each others' eyes or not, about to speak or speaking. All about us is noise. All about us is noise and bramble, thorn and din, each one of our ancestors on our tongues. Someone is stitching up a hem, darning a hole in a uniform, patching a tire, repairing the things in need of repair.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.

A farmer considers the changing sky; A teacher says, "Take out your pencils. Begin."

We encounter each other in words, words spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed; words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark the will of someone and then others who said, "I need to see what's on the other side; I know there's something better down the road."

We need to find a place where we are safe; We walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain, that many have died for this day. Sing the names of the dead who brought us here, who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges, picked the cotton and the lettuce, built brick by brick the glittering edifices they would then keep clean and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle; praise song for the day. Praise song for every hand-lettered sign; The figuring it out at kitchen tables.

Some live by "Love thy neighbor as thy self."

Others by first do no harm, or take no more than you need.

What if the mightiest word is love, love beyond marital, filial, national. Love that casts a widening pool of light. Love with no need to preempt grievance.

In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun.

On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp -- praise song for walking forward in that light.

Thanks to the New York Times and CQ Transcriptions for the text to Elizabeth Alexander's Inaugural Poem.

Let the Whining Begin! (Or in the case of Packer a Preemptive Strike)

Erica Wagner at Times on Line

The Opinionater

The New Yorker's George Packer on "Presidential Poetry,"

Packer's "Ars Poetica Redux,"

The Weekly Rader

The inaugural poet followed, a sort of filler, with a long windup, a few good phrases in the middle ("someone is trying to make music somewhere ... a teacher says, 'Take out your pencils. Begin'"), and then it trailed off into some misty thoughts about love. And then a big horn blast of a benediction. -Garrison Keillor

...help us work for that day when black will not be asked to give back, when brown can stick around, when yellow will be mellow, when the red man can get ahead, man, and when white will embrace what is right." -The Rev. Joseph E. Lowery

Poe Stamp Big Bang!

From the Post Office Website: In 2009, the U.S. Postal Service commemorates the 200th anniversary of the birth of Edgar Allan Poe, one of America’s most extraordinary poets and fiction writers. For more than a century and a half, Poe and his works have been praised by admirers around the world, including English poet laureate Alfred, Lord Tennyson, who dubbed Poe “the literary glory of America.” British author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle called him “the supreme original short story writer of all time.”

The stamp portrait of Edgar Allan Poe is by award-winning artist Michael J. Deas, whose research over the years has made him well acquainted with Poe’s appearance. In 1989, Deas published The Portraits and Daguerreotypes of Edgar Allan Poe, a comprehensive collection of images featuring authentic likenesses as well as derivative portraits.

Down at the bottom of this article on the stamp is the news that Poe may have "pioneered the idea of the Big Bang theory for the birth of the universe in his non-fiction work, "Eureka, A Prose Poem." The piece was adapted from a lecture Poe had given.

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,
And the lamplight o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the
floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted- nevermore!

Carol Adair Rest in Peace

Poet Laureate Kay Ryan's partner Carol Adair to whom she was married twice - once at San Francisco City Hall in 2004, the second time at the Marin Civic Center in 2008, on the same day Ryan learned she had been named U.S. poet laureate, died of cancer on January 3rd, 2009. They were together for 30 years. From her San Francisco Gate obituary, "She met her life partner, Kay Ryan, in 1977 while both were working in the academics department at San Quentin. Carol was a teacher by nature. Teaching was her consuming art and genius. She understood how to bring out the best in her students and in all who knew her. She loved learning as much as teaching and was constantly on the hunt for new information and deeper understanding."






The Pieces That Fall To Earth
by Kay Ryan

One could
almost wish
they wouldn't;
they are so
far apart,
so random.
One cannot
wait, cannot
abandon waiting.
The three or
four occasions
of their landing
never fade.
Should there
be more, there
will never be
enough to make
a pattern
that can equal
the commanding
way they matter.

Blagojevich the Poet

Blagojevich Poetry Jams are breaking out all over.
Even clowns are writing poems inspired by the Govs quoting of poems. Clown Cafe

And yes! Catholics are jamming on the Blago-band-wagon!

After Blagojevich ended a press conference by citing
the poem "Ulysses" by Lord Tennyson Alfred,
poets started coming out of the woodwork.
And by woodwork I mean the badger that lives on his head.
Tennyson could have used a hair helmet like that.

We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Don't forget Timothy McVeigh choose
William Henley's "Invictus,"
to be read as his last words:

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud,
Under the bludgeonings of chance,
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishment the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

Billionaire sets Poetry Test in Lonely Heart Ad

This just in from Chongqing Evening News/ China Daily:

A man claiming to be a billionaire posted a lonely heart ad in local media recently with a long love poem as the preliminary test for prospective candidates.

According to the advertisements in Chongqing municipality, the 41-year-old business owner of a famous local enterprise is looking for a woman aged between 23 and 30 with fluent English, a pretty face and nice disposition.

And she must at least be able to understand the poetry.

A man surnamed Yang, who claims to be the businessman's cousin, said the ads cost some 300,000 yuan ($43,800) and that he would select 10 candidates to meet the boss face to face.

Some 100 candidates had applied so far, Yang said.

The ad caused a stir online among netizens, who considered it a gimmick and claimed the candidates were looking for money not love.

Here is a translation of the poem:

Night Thoughts

I cannot sleep. The long, long
Night is full of bitterness.
I sit alone in my room,
Beside a smoky lamp.
I rub my heavy eyelids
And idly turn the pages
Of my book. Again and again
I trim my brush and stir the ink.
Then I place an ad on the computer net.
The hours go by. The moon comes
In the open window, pale
And bright like new money.
Like my lots and lots of money.
Money I am willing to share
if you love poetry,
at last I fall asleep and
I dream you are typing
Over the beautiful hills.
And now your photo gets mine.
And now please text me asap.
;-)

Twas the Night Before Christmas

We went to the 97th annual reading of "Twas the Night Before Christmas," at Trinity Church up in Washington Heights. Omar Minaya, New York Mets General Manager, led the holiday tradition, which ends with a glow stick procession down to Clement Moore's grave in Trinity Church Cemetery. Dozens of kids gathered close to Omar and beat him the punch on most of the rhymes, to which he joked, "The Mets are easy to manage compared to this." The highlight was the Harlem Choir's rendition of "Go Tell it on the Mountain," with their sharp gesticulation and perfect pitch.

"Twas the Night Before Christmas" gives us most of the images we associate with Santa Claus, the belly, the pipe, the rain deer, the sleigh. It is a powerful example of poetry shaping culture.

Moore was instrumental in saving New York's Greenwich Village from the grid. He wrote a 60-page pamphlet anonymously that argued against extending the orthogonal grid of streets into the village. His arguments were persuasive and the grid stopped at 6th Avenue and at 14th Street. He was a professor of classics at the General Theological Seminary in New York and wrote a most famous scholarly work one the lexicon of the Hebrew language.

Moore of course is best know for the poem "Twas the Night Before Christmas," here is link to a site that has compelling evidence that Moore may not have been the author. Henry Livingston the facts are on your side! Moore's father swore in George Washington and was a bigwig in the church, as was Moore. Some of Livingston's relatives were also church high-ups and may have backed off on pushing for claiming ownership.

Especially interesting is the "smoking gun" section.

Here's another site that highlights lit sleuth
Professor Don Foster's work on the case.


Last here is link to the New York Times photographer Bill Cunningham's piece on the culmination of the Santa image/myth.

Japanese Businessman Poetry Contest

Here is a link to an article in the Guardian about an annual Senryu contest.

This is a the winning entry submitted by a child to Toto's recent annual senryu contest:

Toilet

This is my room

My dad says

Toto is best known for its Washlet bidet toilets, and "Happy Buttocks," ad . This combination of poetry contest and business could really catch on. For me I am down for happier, cleaner, buttocks! To refresh yourself, to restore yourself, to pamper yourself.
Warm water, warm seat, warm air, pretty good way to start your day...
Not since Lew Welch's immortal line

RAID KILLS BUGS DEAD


Has there been such a strong poetry/business link. Is this the brave new world we have been hearing so much about?

Radnoti Film Fundraiser

NEITHER MEMORY NOR MAGIC- A documentary about Miklos Radnoti- Directed and Produced by Hugo Perez- Narrated by Patricia Clarkson. Sneak Preview- Benefit for Bowery Arts and Science the non-profit wing of the Bowery Poetry Club, - 9/28 8pm at the Bowery Poetry Club, 308 Bowery, New York. $10-25 sliding scale

When the Hungarian poet Miklos Radnoti was executed and buried in a mass grave in 1944 after a two-month death march, he did not know whether his poems would survive. Eighteen months later, when his body was exhumed, a notebook was found in his coat pocket that contained his final poems. Neither Memory Nor Magic tells the story of a man who believed in the life of his poems even when he knew that he himself would not survive.

Director Hugo Perez will present to discuss the project after the screening.

Here is the opening section of
Radnoti's poem "Forced March,"
translated by Emery George.

The man who, having collapsed, rises, takes steps, is insane;
he’ll move an ankle, a knee, an arrant mass of pain,
and take to the road again as if wings were to lift him high;
in vain the ditch will call him: he simply dare not stay;
and should you ask, why not?; perhaps he’ll turn and answer;
his wife is waiting back home, and a death, one beautiful, wiser

and the poems ends:

Don’t go pass me, my friend—tonight the moon is so round!
shout! and I’ll come around!


M30A Films

Miklós_Radnóti Wikipedia

Summer Institute of Social Justice and Applied Poetics

Here is the great group of young poets who are taking my applied poetics class at the Bowery Poetry Club. I brought them to the 80th Street Residence last Thursday, and they performed poetry for people living with Alzheimer's disease. You can read more about the session on Lit Kicks. I love that Levi calls it a poetry slam. One of the highlights was Bonniebel reading her original poem "Passion." We had everyone chanting the passion in call and response. She is on the far left in the photo. Below is her poem and here is a link to her great blog where you can see her design work and view a video of her performing the poem at the Nuyorican. Also attending the reading was Petra who organized the youth poetry slam nationals in Germany last year.





PASSION
when it’s in your skin
deep in your bones
bursting from your soul
it’s passion
no need for motivation, pep talks or inspiration
no need to ask why, but why not
it’s passion
running, flying, weightless with everywhere to go
higher, freer inhale complete satisfaction
filling your lungs with mounds of joy
until your body spins with delight
it’s passion
you smile
you smile
you smile
and you want to be in this moment forever
you feel you move you feel you move
you release a part of yourself for everyone to see
a radiant glow of purity beams from every part of your dancing spirit
it’s passion
you don’t stop, you won’t stop, you go
you go and pass the reds, the no’s, the can’ts
you pass the reds, the no’s, the can’ts
you don’t dream because you live your dream
you don’t live in what ifs or buts, because you do
you do what makes you fly
makes you run
makes you jump
without ever getting tired
it’s passion
passion feeds action
i said, passion feeds action

New Museum's Block Party

The Bowery Poetry Club took part in the New Museum’s “Block Party,” on Saturday, July 19th at Sara Roosevelt Park. The audience was mostly young families and we helped the kids become, “Bowery Poets,” by writing and performing poems with them. We would have each kid write an acrostic poem starting by writing their name with letters going down the page like this

A
L
I

Then each letter would start a description of the kid, or a favorite food, or animal or just a fun word. The first poem was from a one and a half year old named ALI and his mom helped a bit. It came out like this:

All consuming
Lovable
I did it!

Ali shouted out the last line. We would then perform the poem with the family chanting each line and having the family chant back in a call and response. We worked with about 40 families and it was a lot of fun. My favorite poem was not and acrostic but an sort of oral history as poem, by a woman who said she was not a poet and could never write a poem. As she started to talk and describe her life in the neighborhood, I asked her to slow down so I could write down what she was saying. Here is Mrs. Lee’s poem:

If I’m hungry
I eat.
I go to Katz’s.
I get pastrami.
I get a knish.
For 35 years I’ve lived here.
You can say 40 years, since 1967.
My landlord, 3rd landlord, he’s nice, he fixes it up for everybody.
Sion that’s his name.
There’s 5 of us.
I’m the history of Ludlow street.

Borders Open- Door Poetry

Here is a link to Episode Four of this fun series created by Anthony Tedesco and Martha Sager- Borders Open- Door Poetry. My poem "We Are Forget," is included along with work of Billy Collins, Patricia Smith, Franz Wright, Tara Hardy, Kim Addonizio and Jorie Graham. It was shot at the Bowery Poetry Club and you can see some great shots of the Walt Whitman light-brit sculpture in the background. Hope you enjoy!

Precision Poetry Drill Team does Howl

This event took place on March 26. 2008 at the Bronx Library with poets from Urban Word NYC. Check out the electronic crawl above the poets. I had the librarian program it with the opening lines from "Howl." My adaptation of Howl was also performed by another group of Urban Word poets at Lincoln Center Outdoors Festival last summer. This multi-voice scoring was first performed at the High Mayhem Festival in Santa Fe on Oct. 7th, 2006, on the 50th anniversary of what was long thought to be Ginsberg's first reading of "Howl." I have found it to be an effective way to introduce young poets to Beat Poetry. Jack Kerouac wrote in "The Dharma Bums" -- "I followed the whole gang of howling poets to the reading at Gallery Six that night, which was, among other important things the birth of the San Francisco Poetry Renaissance. Everyone was there. It was a mad night.'' Recently a recording of Ginsberg reading "Howl" at Reed College in March of 1956 has surfaced.

The pedagogy I employ in working with young poets is based on the concept of scoring classic poems to be recited as multi-voiced performance pieces. We work under the title of Precision Poetry Drill Team. By learning to perform poems such as the “The Tyger,” or "Howl," the students experience the poems first as a poet or performer. The chorus or multi-voiced recitation of the poem allows the group to quickly come up to professional performance level.

Student groups that I have worked with in addition to the performances of "Howl," have performed a festival for over 20,000 people, been featured on National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered, and have been hired by the Santa Fe Opera to write and perform an original piece on the Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca. There is a chapter in "How to Make a Living as a Poet," on the concept of the Precision Poetry Drill Team and examples of how to score poems for multi-voices.

First Lady of France's Poetry CD

"Come, let me sing into your ear," Whispering Poetry Manifesto- Before Carla Bruni married French President Nicolas Sarkozy she put out a CD of classic poems set to her music.


The opening track is Yeats'
"Those Dancing Days Are Gone"

Come, let me sing into your ear;
Those dancing days are gone,
All that silk and satin gear;
Crouch upon a stone,
Wrapping that foul body up
In as foul a rag:
I carry the sun in a golden cup.
The moon in a silver bag.

Curse as you may I sing it through;
What matter if the knave
That the most could pleasure you,
The children that he gave,
Are somewhere sleeping like a top
Under a marble flag?
I carry the sun in a golden cup.
The moon in a silver bag.

I thought it out this very day.
Noon upon the clock,
A man may put pretense away
Who leans upon a stick,
May sing, and sing until he drop,
Whether to maid or hag:
I carry the sun in a golden cup,
The moon in a silver bag.

Click here to listen to the track
"No Promises," The CD consists of 11 adaptations of poems by WB Yeats, Emily Dickinson, Dorothy Parker, Christina Rossetti, WH Auden and Walter de la Mare.

Tiny Books

I am smitten with these Tiny Books from Meritage Press. Not only do they "Feed the World," but they are HOD or Handwritten-on-Demand by MP's publisher, Eileen Tabios. Read all about it at THE BLIND CHATELAINE'S KEYS. You can see some of the books at Crg Hill's Poetry Score Card. What a delightful image of Eileen sitting on her porch in St. Helena drinking a glass of wine and printing these books by hand. The image of the book is from dbqp: visualizing poetics where you can see more of the books and read commentary on Eileen as transcriber.

Each “Tiny Book” costs $10 plus $1.00 shipping/handling in the U.S. (email us first for non-U.S. orders). To purchase the “Tiny Books” and donate to Heifer International, send a check for $11.00 per book, made out to "Meritage Press" to

Eileen Tabios
Meritage Press
256 North Fork Crystal Springs Rd.
St. Helena, CA 94574

Dada Show

Here is a clip Jackie Sheeler shot on March 21st, at the Son of a Pony- Dada Night held at Cornelia Street Cafe, the event is Hosted by Kathi Georges and that is Peter Carlaftes joining in as Jesus. The clip includes my rendition of Hugo Ball's "Karawane" and Hone Tuwhare's poem "Rain," recited on the fly to a guy who called one of the audience members cell phone during the reading. You can catch more clips from the reading on Utube