Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
(text)
Fat moon, you were everyone’s secret, our shared chancre.
It was Lent. Your white flesh grew monstrous as a cod.
On the other side of the world, the ocean had forced itself on the land with devastating effect. Now here you were on the news, getting in our face.
I succumbed to the hype, went out & listened for coyotes. But all I heard was the anguished lowing of a cow.
Cream and magenta on asphalt, the blooms that ripened
early on the dogwood now loosened by sudden rain—
Do you know why the couple touch hands in the Van Eyck
painting? Their decorum holds the house pillars up,
plumps the cushions, velvets the drapes for commerce,
theirs and the world’s. See how the mirror repeats
and reflects them back to each other, though crowned
by a rondel of suffering. In her green robe with its
multitude of gathers, she casts a faint shadow on the bed.
And the fruit on the window sill might be peach,
might be pear, might be apple– something with glimmering
skin, like the lover and the scar he wore like a badge
to the side of his throat. Fickle nature, cold and grainy
as the day that spills its seed above the fields, indiscriminate,
so things grow despite themselves. And there was the one
who said never, but turned from you to rinse his hands.
Who else loves his own decorum as I do? The names
of trees are lovely in latinate. I can’t recite those,
can only name their changing colors: flush
and canary, stripped and rose; or moan like the voice
of a cello in the leaves, imitating human speech.
—Luisa A. Igloria
03 21 2011
In response to today’s Morning Porch entry.
Poetry Daily: “Engagement,” by Adam Sol
I admire how the title and the last line take this political poem to a higher plane.
The explosion will exceed the necessity of the occasion.
The exchange of fire will be unbalanced.
The response will be disproportionate.
The reporter is factually incorrect, theoretically misinformed, morally reprehensible.
LancasterOnline.com: “Where have all the bats gone?”
An update on white-nose syndrome in Pennsylvania (and throughout the east). It seems that while colony-living bats in North America are all going to become endangered if not extinct, the more solitary bats will probably be fine.
The Christian Science Monitor: “Reports: Lax oversight, ‘greed’ preceded Japan nuclear crisis”
No real surprise here, but sad nonetheless.
I am: A Twitter Poem by Pär Thörn
Not a set text, but a constantly updating scroll of new Twitter posts beginning with the words “I am” — rather mesmerizing to watch. Here’s a sample I just collected before it disappeared back into the ether:
i am truly blessed
I am nothing to be played with
I am excited to start.
I am so glad he will get voted
i am on i post something den dipset
I am crazy.
NewScientist: “Biology’s ‘dark matter’ hints at fourth domain of life”
The facts are that there is lots of genetic diversity, and unquestionably most of it is unknown to us. It’s legitimate to consider that there’s genuinely new stuff out there.
The Australian: “Japan syndrome shows why we need WikiLeaks”
Unfortunately, all this information, including the original cables, was released only this week, through The Daily Telegraph and The Guardian newspapers in Britain. If publicised earlier it might have increased public pressure on the Japanese government to do more to ensure the safety of reactors.
But without WikiLeaks most of it probably never would have seen the light of day. One of the justifications governments use for not releasing information is to avoid “unnecessary” fears.
Allen B. Downey: “The Tyranny of the Extroverts”
An old essay that an Identi.ca contact just linked to on his status.net microblog. (Side note for all you Twitter fanboys and girls: This is what you can do on a federated microblogging system, subscribe to someone on one service while using another service. Pretty nifty, eh?) It links to another, similar piece from the Atlantic, but this one’s more quotable, e.g.:
If “interpersonal skills” really means skills, then I can’t object, but I’m afraid that in the wrong hands it means something more like “interpersonal style”, and in particular it means the style of extroverts. I have the same concern about “communication skills.” People have different styles; if my style isn’t the same as yours, does that mean I lack skills?
As for teamwork, well, I’m sure there are some problems that are best solved with collaborative, active learning, but I am equally sure that there are problems you can’t solve with your mouth open.
America.gov: “Japan Proves Truly ‘A Friend Indeed’ After Hurricane Katrina
Now it’s our turn.
Poetry Daily: Two Poems by Elaine Equi
There is a right way to write didactic poems, and Equi shows how.
Work to abolish
the most abject poverty of all—that of knowing
only one world.
This will be a minor housekeeping note for everyone but my fellow self-hosted WordPress (WordPress.org) geeks: If you’re one of the small handful of people who’s subscribed to the Smorgasblog feed, I’m afraid that one will no longer work and you’ll have to plug this ugly-ass URL into your reader instead: http://www.vianegativa.us/feed/?post_type=smorgasblog — my apologies for the inconvenience. (If a lot of people were subscribed, I’d figure out how to create a redirect in the .htaccess file, but I’d rather not screw around with that if I don’t have to.)
By the way, I’d be happy to create an email digest (daily? weekly?) for the Smorgasblog in Feedblitz if anyone would find that useful. Let me know.
Another change you might have noticed is that the Smorgasblog no longer appears in the outer sidebar for single posts. I did that to clear room in the inner sidebar for a list of posts in a series, which displays when one is visiting a post in that series — a useful navigational aid, I thought.
Another new addition to the inner sidebar, down at the bottom, is a directory to almost all authors on the site. (Almost all, because in the case of guest posts co-written by two or more people, I had to choose just one as the official author. At present, WordPress doesn’t provide a way to assign more than one author to a post — a serious bug, in my opinion.) Each name in the list is linked to an archive of that author’s posts. Also, if you want to subscribe to the posts from just one author, just tack “/feed/” to the end of the URL: http://www.vianegativa.us/author/luisa/feed/ for just Luisa’s posts, for example.
Note, also, that the number of posts after my name is 830 posts shorter than it was yesterday. That’s because I killed off the previous incarnation of Smorgasblog, in which it was a specialized category of regular posts, and brought it back to life as a new content type with a wholly separate identity, akin to the non-chronological pages on the site. Unlike pages, though, smorgasblog posts remain chronological: there’s an archive, as before, now included in the top navigation bar, and if you click on the permalink for any post in it, you’ll find you can go from one Smorgasblog post to another using the “previous” and “next” links.
I think it’s useful to have a completely separate archive, but the other reason for the change was to clean up the regular archives, as well. While I believe strongly in linking to fellow bloggers from the front page of the site, I also like having readable archives, which to me means minimizing clutter. I think the reason a lot of long-time bloggers also use Tumblr, for example, is because they don’t want to overwhelm regular readers with short link posts, and that’s always been my thinking with Smorgasblog, too. That’s why I’ve kept it out of the main site feed as well.
Now here’s the part that only fellow WordPress fanatics will care about. I do highly recommend the Sideblog plugin I’ve been using for the last couple of years to do Smorgasblog as a category. There’s also Alkivia SidePosts, and it’s not bad, either. Sideblog provides a “recent posts” widget that excludes sideblog posts, so that’s cool. I used Simply Exclude to keep Smorgasblog posts out of the monthly archives, and for a while it worked great, but recently I had to uncheck that option or lose Smorgasblog’s own archive page as well.
It was that that led me to take the leap and register a new custom post type in functions.php. I used the Convert Post Types plugin to move all the posts into the just-created “smorgasblog” post type. Then I spent way too much time trying to figure out how to create a new archive page before realizing that all the online tutorials I was looking at had been written for WordPress 3.0, and 3.1 had completely redone things, rendering the previous work-arounds unnecessary. Now all you have to do is copy your single.php and archive.php pages, tweak them as necessary (in my case, to eliminate post titles and comment links, and add the text about each quote being the copyrighted work of its author), and call them archive-{post-type-name}.php and single-{post-type-name}.php. I’d be happy to share the code I used with anyone who’s interested. I’m using the Query Posts plugin to put Smorgasblog in a sidebar widget (which is also another option if you’re doing a sideblog with a dedicated category).
Unfortunately, all this work means I’m really far behind in actually reading blogs and finding things to quote and link to! (And yes, there will also be a weekly link roundup for non-blog items, insh’allah, either tonight or tomorrow morning.)
Always a story
beneath the cold and quiet—
Always a nest being refurbished
under the springhouse eaves—
Always the smell of mud at the edges,
the window finally come unstuck—
Always a gnarl in the fabric
where the fibers knotted—
Always a smooth new trail
tracked around the village of scars
—Luisa A. Igloria
03 20 2011
In response to today’s Morning Porch entry.
Perhaps you’ve read about how foreigners (gaijin) get treated in Japan: with a mix of deference, admiration, condescension, and occasional outright hostility, depending on the circumstance. During the year I lived there, I experienced all four, and I must admit that at times my drunken, loutish behavior warranted far more hostility than I actually encountered. I sometimes resented the stereotyping of gaijin in general and Americans in particular, but I also liked the way it let me coast on my imperfect language skills, since everybody tended to ask the same questions and make the same observations at first meeting, and it didn’t take long to figure out what kinds of responses would satisfy them. And such was my desire to be liked, it never once occurred to me to try to rock the boat a little by taking exception to some of the standard, polite generalizations about our two countries. (“Yes, America might look more spacious [hiroi] than Japan, but are spaciousness and narrowness [semai] really a function of physical geography alone, do you think?”)
Only country people and children ever broke the mold much, and I didn’t have too much interaction with either. One exception: a week-long stint as language tutor and counselor at a summer-camp type thing for primary school students in the Japan Alps. Until then, my main experience with that age group had been the endless hellos shouted at me across the street by exuberant kids on outings with their teachers. That always made me feel like the most popular beast at the zoo: thanks for the attention, but please go away.
When I met the summer-camp kids and their teachers at the bullet train platform, they were initially more respectful, no doubt having been told in advance to behave. But after about five minutes, their high spirits prevailed and they began horsing around and jumping all over me, boys and girls alike. The beast was out of its cage, and it wasn’t too scary! This was going to be O.K., I thought. I can play fun-loving American for a week. I remember teaching them how to make a piercing whistle with a blade of grass and how to make music by turning one’s mouth and cheeks into drums. We sang songs, told stories, rode ski lifts — the usual summer camp stuff.
One thing that’s kind of hard to express is how odd it did feel to see other foreigners in Japan. After a while I kind of understood the strong reactions to gaijin, I thought, because I began to feel them myself. When a Western face appeared suddenly in a Japanese crowd, after hours or days of seeing nothing but Japanese, it could be shocking, even a little embarrassing — not because of the obvious physical differences, but because of their unguardedness, the naked emotions stamped on their features as plain as day. And the primary thing I saw on Western faces — you’d see it in any face so unguarded, I suppose — was self-absorption.
As I said, I wanted to be liked. It wasn’t a fully conscious thing, but I must’ve worked hard to develop the kind of face that wouldn’t produce an auto-xenophobic reaction when I looked in the mirror. At the very end of my stay, when I met my parents at the Osaka airport for a brief joint vacation, my mother walked right by me twice without recognizing me. I finally mustered the courage to say hello.
*
Japan Alps, 1986
In the thick of it—
primary school kids on furlough
storming my back, pulling
at my arms & whirling
me around—
a pair of brown eyes in
a grave ten year-old face
makes me lose my balance,
land under a laughing pile.
Like someone bent against a gale
toppled by a sudden calm.
Her face full
of my outlandishness
finds me again every time
I catch sight of a mirror—
you know that look.
Like the glance we give
a stranger when umbrellas
come down, the rain
just past & already
a clearing wind.
From Spoil: Selected Older Poems, one of ten poems there about my time in Japan.
*
This post was written for the >Language >Place blog carnival (deadline: March 20), this time at Parmanu.
“…When you lose something,
it’s so you can learn how to search.”
—Dean Young
No sign of the spoon— and the fork and the knife
on a string— that he lost as a child
No sign of the furry brown bear— with the real
glass eyes— that I took to bed at night
No sign of the phoebes— they came to dip
for water— that were here yesterday
No sign of the robin— it rang and rang— that embroidered
its banner with song then fell strangely silent
No sign of the little stone buddha— and his necklace
of rosy children— that cracked on the pavement
when it fell from my pocket
No sign— but blue scales on the kitchen floor—
of the fish that jumped from the bowl by the open
window, startled by the barking of the dog next door
No sign of the moon— though I know it’s about to poke
over the horizon— big like a woman with child
No sign of the cordillera— though I glimpsed mountain-
and-valley pleats tattooed under the poet’s collar
No sign of the fog and its blue signature— I cannot see
my own breath— curled beneath noon’s yellow shawl
—Luisa A. Igloria
03 19 2011
In response to today’s Morning Porch entry.
In case you missed the announcement earlier in the week, Moving Poems is sponsoring a videopoem contest.
In order to showcase and celebrate diverse approaches to making videopoems and poetry-films, I thought it would be fun to have a contest where everyone would use the same poem in its entirety, either in the soundtrack or as text (or both). Please join us! Post the results to YouTube or Vimeo and either email me the link (bontasaurus[at]yahoo[dot]com) or put it in a comment below, no later than April 15. I’ll post the winners to the main site.
Stop by and check out the poem we’re using —“Fable,” by Howie Good — read the rest of the guidelines, and explore a new page of helpful links for videopoetry makers, including sources for free and Creative Commons-licensed film and video, spoken word, sounds and music. So even if you don’t own a video camera, you can still made videopoems (though they do have to be actual films/videos, not successions of still images with a soundtrack).
The good news is there’s no entry fee. The bad news is there’s no prize. But Also, Howie has volunteered to help judge the contest and give copies of his chapbooks to the winners. (See comments.) It’s probably worth noting that his scholarly books include include several studies of film and culture. I’ve revised the last paragraph of the announcement accordingly. It now reads:
You can enter as many times as you like. From all the entries, we’ll select an indeterminate number of finalists to feature on the main site. Howie has offered to give copies of his books Rumble Strip, Anomalies, and Disaster Mode to his top three favorites, with the first place winner getting all three, second place the first two, and third place getting the last. If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, I’d love to hear them.
Do consider taking part. The deadline is April 15.
Matsushima is a group of islands in Miyagi Prefecture, Japan. There are some 260 tiny islands (shima) covered in pines (matsu) — hence the name — and is ranked as one of the Three Views of Japan. Matsushima was very seriously damaged by the Tsunami following the Sendai earthquake in March 2011, with more than 600 people killed.
—Wikipedia, “Matsushima”
hundreds of tiny islands, each
with its own pine tree
like a flag planted by Mother Earth
—Jason Crane, “Matsushima”
* * *
matushima no
iso ni murewiru
ashitadu no
ono ga samazama
mieshi chiyo kana
A thousand years
in the eye of each
& every crane
flocking on the rocky shore
of Matsushima.
—Kiyowara no Motosuke (908-990)
tachi kaeri
mata mo kite min
matsushima ya
ojima no tomaya
nami ni arasu na
Returning
once more to gaze
on Matsushima,
the waves at Ojima lashing
my rush-walled hut.
—Fujiwara no Shunzei (1114-1204)
shimajima ya
chiji ni kudakete
natsu no umi
Islands upon islands—
thousands of shards smashed
by the summer sea.
asayosa o
taga matsushima zo
katagokoro
Morning & evening
like someone at Matsushima—
unrequited love.
—Matsuo Bashô (1644-1694)
The town was protected by a stunningly beautiful maze of coves and islands, topped with bonsai-shaped Japanese pines, which kept the worst of the tsunami at bay.
The water rose three metres and the town was relatively lightly affected, as the local emergency services chief told a group of stranded tourists earlier this week.
But everything is relative. Tetsuo lived, against the odds, but said some of his neighbours died. He is now staying at a friend’s house.
* * *
matsushima ya
tsuru ni mi o kare
hototogisu
Matsushima.
Borrow the body of a crane,
oh cuckoo.
—Kawai Sora (1649-1710)
matsushima ya
hito kobushi-zutsu
aki no kure
Autumn dusk—
each island like a fist
at Matsushima.
matsushima ya
kosumi wa kurete
naku hibari
As the light fades
on an islet at Matsushima,
a skylark’s song.
—Kobayashi Issa (1763-1828)
matsushima ya
aa matsushima ya
matsushima ya
Matsushima,
ah, Matushima!
Matsushima.
—Anon. (attr. to Bashô)
My parents owned an inexpensive set of china
showing a world glazed in blue and white: a few
three-tiered pagodas, thumbnails of gardens
planted to peach or willow trees. Villagers
crossed footbridges presumably to the next
town beyond the rim of the dinner plate,
and fishermen dipped their nets in placid
water. A woman sat at an upstairs window
reading a book, or doing sums, or writing
in a journal. A man cooled his bare feet in
the shallows, not doing anything much.
It was always dawn or dusk, and small birds
flew toward a miniature sun above the trees.
They could not have gone too far
from the periphery, nor pierced the convex
glass of the dome that rested on the plate—
so then what is that smudge on the sill,
what has become of the woman who once
sat there with her inks and scrolls?
—Luisa A. Igloria
03 17 2011
In response to today’s Morning Porch entry.