The Olympics Of Poetry

Westminster from the London Eye by Kathleen Conklin

We all have been watching with great interest and appreciation the 2012 Olympic Games.

Perhaps you’re feeling a bit obsessed and in need of a change of pace… as in a little exercise for the mind.  Try tuning in to NPR.

NPR has revived the ancient tradition of the Olympics of Poetry.  At the Greek Olympics, poetry was very much part of the games.  Poets were hired to write odes praising the athletic champions and even competed in official poetry contests. The Poetry Event at the Olympic Games was revived from 1912-1948 (London), but eliminated after that because of the volume of entries and the difficulties of translations.  However, this year NPR has presented an Olympic Poetry Event. NPR has invited poets to compose original works which were read on their “Morning Edition” broadcast (August 6-10) and published on their website at npr.org.

Check out the NPR website and read some of the “official” entries as well as others.  My favorite so far is James Miranda’s “Olympians”. 

Let the voting begin.

Meanwhile, I have begun thinking about the nature and value of competing for poetry awards...perhaps some thoughts for my next blog.

Speaking the Unspeakable

We have a new poet laureate named by the Library of Congress on June 6th. Natasha Tretheway is a young (46) writing professor from Emory University in Atlanta Georgia. She has written three volumes of poetry including “Native Guard” which won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize. Her fourth volume “Thrall” will be published in September 2012, the
month she will begin her tenure as our poet laureate. She will live in Washington and work directly in the Library’s poetry room from January through May 2013.

She is a versatile poet, using both traditional forms (sonnets and villanelles) and free verse to express many historical and cultural themes. As the daughter of a mixed-race marriage, that experience is an important thread found in her writing.

The catalyst for expressing herself in poetry seems to be a horrific event she experienced when only nineteen years old. Her mother was murdered by her estranged second husband. Natasha says, “I turned to poetry to make sense of what happened.” Her book “Native Guard” contains several elegies to her mother.

The poet in her own words…
“I started writing poems as a response to that great loss much the way people responded for example after 9/11. People who never had written poems or turned much to poetry turned to it at that moment because it seems like the only thing that can speak the unspeakable.”

The Merry Month Of May

Claire and Sofie

The merry month of May is on its way out. We had some authentically “MayDays”…warm and sunny, fading into cool evenings. Some other days, we were clobbered with heat and humidity. They dragged me down. I didn’t feel like dancing around the May Pole. May 2012 had lost its authenticity…its quality of Mayness. As you may have guessed, my thoughts have turned to the subject of being authentic, since I’ve used it three times in this first paragraph.

For me, an authentic poem is one that is written from the heart. Poems are stories about feelings. We have to search out that open, honest place inside of us that holds our truths. We must uncover them, let them rise to the surface and then express them. Write from the heart. It is difficult and scary. Sometimes we succeed, sometimes we come close, sometimes we fail miserably, but what a wonderful challenge. We take the chance that it may spill over into our actions, our onversations, our relationships. It is definitely worth the risk.

My attempt---

Reflection

I work hard
to wipe clean the slate
of memories
to be more present
to be here now
to know the now.

Sleep denies this desire
memories drop by
to hold me back
stick to my waking face
steam the mirror
clouding my clarity
always here
as part of me.

The Voices of Women

The Voices of Women             

There is an astounding article in the “New York Times Magazine” of April 29, 2012 reporting on “Why Afghan Women Risk Death To Write Poetry”, written by Eliza Griswold.

Women from the outlying provinces in Afghanistan phone in their poems to Radio Azadi (Radio Liberty).  Mirmar Baheer, a woman’s literary society, based in Kabul, airs these poems on Saturday afternoons, when the group broadcasts from The Ministry of Women’s Affairs. This group meets openly in Kabul, but in the rural provinces, it functions mostly in secret.

Afghan women voice their thoughts and feelings in two line poems called landai, a traditional Pashto folk poetry form. Landai  has long been a vehicle of rebellion for Afghan women, many of whom are not  allowed to leave their houses. 

These poems have become a simple, defiant cry against the oppression of women.

Landai,  literally means a short, poisonous snake and these poems are meant to be taken seriously. Their themes of love, grief, war, exile and independence are serious ones.

The women question God’s will, protest the politics of their country and express their deepest longings in these poems. The act of sharing them takes great courage. The women are ridiculed and beaten and even sometimes risk death as poet-martyrs.

The poems have become the voice of the collective---of the woman’s movement inside Afghanistan. These women want to be heard. They are a powerful inspiration to all women.

Maybe it is time for American women, and I include the women in America’s religious orders, to begin writing landai. There is nothing like a poisonous snake to get a man’s attention.

“My pains grow as my life dwindles,

I will die with a heart full of hope.”

Author ---unknown

Spring Back

Life is tough.  A Zen text (Sengstau) teaches “The great way is not difficult for those who have no preferences.”  It takes a long time to get to that place, if ever.  Meanwhile, we need all the help we can get.  Whatever gets you through (with a few exceptions, of course).

I believe that poetry can help.  It can distract, entertain, give us solace, make us feel less alone, clarify, and yes, even make us laugh. In College, my friends and I thought up the idea of opening a bar with two entrances.  If you were feeling down, you could go in the entrance marked “Il Penseroso” and weep into your beer.  If feeling cheerful, you could choose the entrance marked “L’Allegro” and be rowdy and boisterous. (Thank you John Milton).  The opposite action was also an option.

For a good cry, read John Milton or Ruth Stone.  To connect with nature, search for a Gerard Manley Hopkins poem or one by Mary Oliver.  Laugh with Edward Lear or Phyllis McGinley. When feeling down and a bit flattened out by the “slings and arrows”,

search out a poem by Jane Hirshfield or David Whyte for a spiritual uplift.  Life is tough.  But you can spring back. Try reading a poem.

LEAPING INTO FEBRUARY

February is not a popular month in many places, bringing miserable weather with it. I well remember the snowy, cold days of February, growing up in Buffalo, New York.


I also remember loving February because it brought two holidays from school (Lincoln’s and Washington’s birthdays were celebrated separately in those long ago times) and one other very special day---my birthday.

Smack in the middle of the month was a day that brought poetry front and center---Valentine’s Day. The cards cost pennies and the poetry was trite, but it was a thrill being told you were as sweet as sugar in rhyme. Poetry can be a vehicle for expressing our deepest emotions and love longs to be expressed in a poetic form. The great poets have done it well. Take some time this month to read their love poems---you know who they are.

Or try writing a love poem to a dear one (forget Hallmark)---it’s not too late. We have one extra day this February. Take the leap!

Late Blooming

The January ice and cold has finally arrived and I am already imagining early spring buds pushing their way up through the hardened mud. These would be called early bloomers…which then led to my thinking about the opposite. Isn’t the mind a wonderful thing?

While visiting family, I noticed an obituary for Ruth Stone in the “Orange County Register”, November 25, 2011. The well awarded but not so well known poet had died at the age of ninety-six. Then, an article about her, written by Philip Levine, the current poet laureate, appeared in the “New York Times” magazine on Christmas Day.

Ruth was nurtured in poetry as a child by her mother and her aunt, but she didn’t publish her first book until 1959 at age 44 and her second in 1971 at age 56. Her difficult personal life had prevented her from publishing, but not from writing. She published her third book in 1986.

No stranger to turbulence and grief, her poems address the dark themes of betrayal, rage, suicide (her second husband, the poet Walter Stone), loneliness and despair. Just the themes we want to wrestle with in January. But her poems are “loaded with pugnacity, sass and humor.” Take that!

Her life stabilized in the nineties when she became an English Professor at SUNY Binghamton. She continued to publish and began to receive numerous awards in the literary world. A career that essentially began in mid-life blossomed and thrived late in life. Most of her published work came out after she turned 70. She wrote about aging and death ---confronting, lamenting and kidding them.

Philip Levine considers her “one of the truly significant poets of my era.” A late bloomer to be celebrated. I’ll drink to that.