Blackbird Fall 2009, Volume 8, Number 2--Literary Review

The most recent issue of the online literary magazine Blackbird, Fall 2009, Volume 8, Number 2, contains an assortment of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, including reviews of poems appearing within the issue. The featured poet of this issue is Katie Ford, the recipient of the 2009 Levis Reading Prize. Five of her poems are featured in this month’s issue. “Linnets” by Larry Levis, the poet and former Virginia Commonwealth University Professor for whom the prize is named, is also a featured poem in the most recent Blackbird. Blackbird is organized online in such a way that it can be read chronologically, in the order that the editors suggest it to be read, much like an actual periodical.
As a poetry student this term, I focused on the poetry contained in this issue of Blackbird. Admittedly, I found some of the poems unfocused and ineffective. Among them was Peter Jay Shippy’s “Self-Portrait & Other Calculation.” Shippy’s poem is basically a litany of describing everything that he is not, full of cheap rhymes (“explosives”/”plosives”) and ineffective and extraneous repetitions (“The instant replay may prove to be not inconclusive”). “Self-Portrait & Other Calculations” ends rather indecisively (“We all feel comfortable with ourselves/ I’m not—check”), leaving the reader scratching their head about what exactly Shippy’s self-portrait says about himself.
Luckily, however, a few bad apples do not spoil the bunch in this case, as the November 2009 Blackbird features gems from likes of Sherman Alexie, Jake Adam York, as well as featured poet Katie Ford. My favorite from Alexie is “Powwow Ghazal,” in which Alexie provides a portrait of a Native American powwow. I always enjoy reading about Native American culture, particularly in the form of Alexie’s short stories, but I had never before encountered his poetry. Vivid and rhythmic, “Powwow Ghazal” modestly pays homage to his culture, divulging deference to his culture rituals, in which “During powwow, even God wants to sing and dance/ So God makes thunder, lightning, and rain with drums.” The final line reiterates the importance of drums in his culture, as he asserts, “I sometimes think that every Indian is made with drums.”
Jake Adam York’s “And Ever” is a heartfelt elegy for Medgar Evers a civil rights activist who was murdered some forty years ago. York’s poem opens with vivid imagery of a morning:
You rise
To watch the leaves
Breathe life into their edges
and burn,
drawing day from the night
to wake the birds.
It continues to depict the murder of Evers, the lynching of another African-American, and the emotion that is felt as a result of this. Although vivid and evocative, it seems as though York’s poem would be more effective if it were a bit shorter, as some of the sections appear to be somewhat redundant.
Katie Ford’s “Easter Evening,” which begins with a physical description of “cold April,” moves to the abstract (“the clear glass a starved sheet of mind/ with something finally written on it/ by that anonymous finger”), to the emotional. Amidst a failing relationship, Ford yearns to find theistic confirmation, but fails to do so:
This is what we ask the dead god to rise into.

But it isn’t the right request, and he grows quieter
Than the silence he already kept,
As when a man decides to leave a woman, decides this is
The only thing that can be done to save both.
In this way we are told it is over.
Thus, Ford effectively inverts the connotations of Easter, a day that is traditionally met with family and celebration, with heartbreak and despair. Ford’s ability to conjure such unfavorable emotions is most likely the reason why she is selected as the winner of the 2009 Levis Reading Prize.
Overall, I would say that the Blackbird Online Journal of Literature and the Arts is well organized and well compiled. Of course, as mentioned earlier, there are poems in the collection that are expendable, but this is to be expected of any literary magazine. In addition to the ones mentioned, other effective pieces include Lisa Fay Coutley’s “Why to Buy a Parrot,” Kevin Cantwell’s “The Apple Pipe,” and Danielle Hanson’s “Near Sleep in a Smoky Room.” I would recommend this issue to any literary enthusiast.

A Justified Volume Title

As a reader, it is natural to come across the title poem in a collection and surmise an added significance, or a greater role within the volume. There is certainly no exception in Kay Ryan’s Niagara River, in which its namesake, “Niagara River,” also the first poem of the collection, sets the tone for the volume as a whole. Replete with sharp ironies, Ryan’s signature economical style, and an undeniable ecological overtone, “Niagara River” effectively sets the reader up for what is to follow in Ryan’s collection.

The first time I read Kay Ryan’s “Niagara River,” I couldn’t help but assume an ecological value to it:

As it moves along,

we notice—as

calmly as though

dining room paintings

were being replaced—

the changing scenes

along the shore.

On some level, the movement down the rapidly flowing river and the “changing scenes/along the shore” seem to allude to a changing or deteriorating environment. All the while, the first person “we” —a rarity in Ryan’s poetry, which will be addressed later—seem to be oblivious to the changes going on, and continue with their business. In “Green Hills,” Ryan utilizes the collective “we” once again, indicating a fault on the part of that “we” in failing to recognize the respect with which “Green Hills” deserve. In personifying the hills with “green/ breast,” “green shoulder,” and “the languor of their/ rolling over,” Ryan places a high value on land, which “we” continue to ignore.

The “we” found in both “Niagara Falls” and “Green Hills” is an irregularity in Ryan’s poetry. Typically, Ryan is able to come off as very personal in her poems without the use of personal pronouns. This is never more visible than in “Lighthouse Keeping,” In this poem, Ryan succinctly characterizes the poet-reader relationship:

Seas pleat

Winds keen

Fogs deepen

Ship lean no

Doubt, and

The lighthouse

Keeper keeps

A light for

Those left out.

It is intimate

And remote both

For the keeper

And those afloat.

The relationship between the poet and reader is indeed much like that of the lighthouse keeper and sailor, at once intimate and remote. The poet conveys personal feeling and expression, in turn eliciting emotion and expression from the reader, yet at a distance. In interviews, Ryan has admitted reluctance in using the “hot and sticky” ‘I.’ This poem not only follows her trend of avoiding ‘I,’ but, in an unusual metaphor, also explains the reason for this.

Kay Ryan’s poetry of course is no stranger to unusual metaphors. In “Niagara River” Ryan likens the scenery of the river to a dining room, as she and her friends “position/ our table and chairs/upon it, eat and/have conversation.” The paradox of casual conversation while traveling down the river is an interesting one, and calls to mind those who are both unwilling to adapt to the changes around them and oblivious of the future:

. We

Do know, we do

Know this is the

Niagara River, but

It is hard to remember

What that means.

Of course, one cannot proceed down the Niagara River without eventually encountering the Niagara Falls, a formidable danger to be sure. Ryan is able to conjure the image of this massive and powerful waterfall without mentioning the falls themselves.

Ryan’s “The Best of It,” exhibits the same type of clever word play. In just thirteen lines, each line being no more than four words each, Ryan is able manipulate the space imagined in the mind of the reader, going from an acre of land to a single bean. “However carved up/ or pared down we get/ we keep on making/ the best of it,” Ryan writes in this poem. This line conveys the optimistic attitude of the speaker, who appears to be under financial duress. It also speaks volumes for Ryan’s frugality as a poet: in spite of her brevity, meaning and emotion is not lost in her poetry, and no word is undervalued.

The Abrasive Tony Hoagland

To the casual reader of What Narcissism Means to Me, ultra talk poet Tony Hoagland comes off as offensive and alienating, with much of his poems containing racist and homophobic epithets. Undoubtedly, Hoagland does not shy away from being himself in his poetry, which in turn welcomes potential criticism. “I am prone to certain misperceptions,” Hoagland admits in “Patience.” Hoagland distrusts the notion of being “liked/by every person on the goddamn face of the earth.” He is prepared for the critics, as he divulges in “Reasons to Survive November,” “I hate those people back/from the core of my donkey soul.” The donkey image is an important one to consider when studying Hoagland, as his poetry reflects a personality of little compromise. “The Change,” “Dear John,” and “Rap Music,” all convey prejudice with regard to African-American culture and homosexuals, but within each is a message of honest self-deprecation, or a statement of an evolving society.

When watching a participant in a sporting event, a fan will typically root for the participant with whom they can most identify. In “The Change,” Hoagland grudgingly depicts an African-American woman handily defeating a white European woman in tennis. He claims to support the white woman over his fellow countryman, as the white woman with “her pale eyes and thin lips,” is of his “tribe.” Further he likens the African-American’s volleying to “driving the Emancipation Proclamation/ down Abraham Lincoln’s throat,” an archaic analogy to be sure. “Everything was changing,” writes Hoagland, seemingly much to his chagrin. Perhaps the tone Hoagland writes with in “The Change” is an adopted one, reflecting the attitude a predominately Caucasian tennis-watching community, one that has oddly not adapted to the abolishment of slavery.

This would be an encouraging perspective of “The Change” were it not for another culturally insensitive poem later in the volume. In “Rap Music,” Hoagland divulges an abhorrence for rap music, which he likens to “Twenty-six men” who are “trapped in a submarine/…pounding on the walls with a metal pipe,/shouting what they’ll do when they get out.” Having a dislike for rap music is one thing, but Hoagland takes it a step further, effectively pouring salt on a healing wound between White and Black America:

I don’t know what’s going on inside that portable torture chamber

But I have a bad suspicion

There’s a lot of dead white people in there

On a street lit by burning police cars

Where a black man is striking the head of a white one

Again and again with a brick,

Then lifting the skull to drink blood from the hole—

This excerpt is admittedly dramatized, but the violence with which he characterizes black people cannot be ignored. Thus, what begins as a playful, if a bit excessive criticism of rap music becomes a poem of racial dissidence, in which Hoagland admits, “Black for me is a country/more foreign than China.” Hoagland flips the white-victimizing-black analogy on its head, inciting resentment from the black community.

But Hoagland does not stop with the black community. In “Dear John,” Hoagland admits to telling an off-color joke to an unreceptive audience:

I never would have told John that faggot joke

If I had known that he was gay

As the poem opens, Hoagland continues to demonstrate his inclination of insensitivity of people unlike himself, but attempts redemption through self-deprecation:

There’s something democratic

About being the occasional asshole—

You make a mistake, you apologize

And everyone else breathes easier

Hoagland’s suggestion that his perversion is done for the sake of self-sacrifice is an intriguing one, but hardly makes up for his offensiveness. Telling a “faggot joke” in mixed company is evidence of poor judgment, just as imagining black against white violence in a poem ranting about rap music is out of line and overboard. But that is just what makes Hoagland’s poetry effective: he portrays contemporary issues in a caustic manner, eliciting the emotions of the readers in a way that makes them respond to his works in real terms.

Performance Poetry Read (12/27)

Patricia Smith and Performance Poetry (12/27) – UPDATED 1/6

Patricia Smith has been one of the more intriguing poets I’ve read during this “term.” As a Slam performance poet, Smith’s poetry conveys more emotion than any other poet I’ve encountered. I enjoyed listening to a recording of Allen Ginsberg’s “America” earlier on, but unlike Ginsberg, viewing a video performance of Patricia Smith’s “Building Nicole’s Mama” transcended the written work not only of this poem, but also of the entire collection Teahouse of the Almighty.

When I began studying Smith, I decided to read the collection prior to viewing a live performance of “Building Nicole’s Mama,” in order to establish an unbiased comparison of her written work to her performance art. Smith’s written words alone evocatively illustrate the hardships of children living in the inner city:

And 9-year-od Tiko Jefferson,

Barely big enough to life the gun, fired a bullet

Into his own throat after Mama bended his back

With a lead pipe. Tamika cried into a sofa pillow

Of their cluttered one-room apartment,

Donya’s cousin gone in a drive-by. Dark window,

Click, click, gone, says, Donya, her tiny finger

A barrel, the thumb a hammer.

As striking as Smith’s words may be in this excerpt from “Building Nicole’s Mama,” it is not until a reading of this poem is viewed can one truly understand the emotion behind her words. Smith speaks in such a manner that she relays not only the devastation she feels as these stories are told to her, but communicates the misery suffered by the students as a result of this violence. From my point of view, her performance of “Building Nicole’s Mama” is so effective that as I could not help but hear Smith’s voice as I reread Teahouse of the Almighty. Partly for this reason, I would imagine, Smith has won multiple National Slam competitions.

An advantage for performance poets is the ability to clearly communicate the tone of their poetry. In Smith’s case, a shift in tone takes place in her performance of “Building Nicole’s Mama” that is not necessarily intelligible merely from reading the poem. As the poem opens, Smith speaks with an air of sardonicism:

I am astonished at their mouthful names—

Lakinishia, Fumilayo, Chevallani, Delayo—

Their ragged rebellions and lip-glossed pouts,

And all those pants drooped as drapery.

When performed, Smith speaks the names of the students with a sneer. “Lip-glossed pouts” is stated with a contempt that cannot be interpreted merely from seeing the words on a page. By the end of the poem, however, Smith has nothing but sympathy for these children, now aware of their plight:

So poets,

As we pick up our pens,

As we flirt and sin and rejoice behind microphones—

Remember Nicole.

She knows that we are here now,

And she is an empty vessel waiting to be filled.

Admittedly, this shift in tone is visible from reading the poetry. In watching Smith perform the poem, however, one observes the poet move quite dramatically from scorn to almost to the point of tears.

A possible pitfall of performance poetry is the very aspect that makes it effective; in listening to or watching a live performance of a particular poem, the poet is able to establish an exact tone, clarifying meaning when much may have been left open to interpretation. To many poetry students, such as myself, the open-endedness is what makes poetry reading entertaining, and in some cases, palatable. For the poet, of course, this is a clear advantage, as their words are less likely to be misconstrued.

Pain: Past, Present, and Future in Adrienne Rich’s “Merced” (12/22)

Adrienne Rich’s “Merced” deals with, in Rich’s eyes, a failing “world that masculinity made/ unfit for women or men.” While the subject matter is nothing new for Rich, a radical feminist, the glimpse into the future elevates her message to a whole new level; Rich’s Orwellian prophecy places an irrevocable conviction on society—she offers not a warning but a legitimate sentencing of the future. Broken down into three stanzas, the timeline of “Merced” is inverted, with the first stanza dealing with the future, the second with the past, and the final stanza taking place in the present. In each of these stanzas, Rich puts a strong emphasis on feeling, conveying that a collective desire to transcend feeling, or more specifically, pain, will be society’s ultimate downfall.

The future Rich conveys in the first stanza of “Merced” is one of “hopeless incontinence” and homogeneity, though the absence of pain, as the following quotation demonstrates:

Identical rations

Death in order, by gas,

hypodermics daily

to neutralize despair

So I imagine my world

in my seventieth year alive

According to Rich, “a purposeless exchange/ of consciousness for the absence/ of pain” will bring her and society to the prison camp she so vividly depicts. The key word from this is “neutralize”: by vying to alleviate the world of despair, Rich feels that a purgatory-on-earth would be created, wrought with blandness, and sameness. And all for the absence of pain.

Pain is the very aspect of the river Merced that Rich takes solace in, as the following demonstrates: “merely to step in pure water/or stare into clear air/ is to feel a spasm of pain.” Other images of pain in this poem include burning “feet in the sand” and “body ached/ from the righteous cold.” Pain to Rich is a good thing, a reinforcing indication that she still has the ability to feel. In contrast to the previous stanza in which pain and despair are “neutralized,” the presence of pain in the second stanza affirms that the opposite of pain: pleasure. The solace that Rich finds in the river suggests an air of romanticism in this poem, however fleeting the nature imagery may be.

When the poem shifts from a nature to an urban scene in the third stanza, the poem does not shy away from the motif of feeling. Rich divulges that she is overwhelmed by emotion in the first lines of the stanza (“For weeks now a rage/ has possessed my body”) as if so sure of the future she previously details. Rich mentions the unfortunate fates of Viet Nam War protestors—Norman Mailer, and the Buddhists of Saigon—as well as a “black teacher last week/ who put himself to death/ to waken guilt in hearts/ too numb to get the message”. Rich feels as though she is one of few affected by these occurrences, whereas most others are impervious. In reflecting upon this, Rich fears something more powerful at work, mechanically removing humanity’s ability to feel, that is, taking away what is to be human.