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APR IL 2016

FEATURING

Ben Lerner

Ocean Vuong

Linda Hogan


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April 2016

FOUNDED IN 1912 BY HARRIET MONROE

volume ccviii • number 1


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CONTENTS

April 2016

S P L I T T H I S R O C K

sarah browning 3 Introduction

ocean vuong 4 Toy Boat A Little Closer to the Edge

dawn lundy martin 7 Our Wandering

jennifer bartlett 10 From “The Hindrances ofa Householder”

jan beatty 12 Stricken Asylum

reginald dwayne betts 14 When I Think of Tamir Rice While Driving

regie cabico 16 Daylight Saving Time Flies Like an Instagram of a Weasel Riding aWoodpecker & You Feel EverythingWill Be Alright

dominique christina 20 Chain Gang

martha collins 25 Leaving Behind

linda hogan 38 When the Body Lost in the Milky Way

craig santos perez 42 Halloween in the Anthropocene, 2015

aracelis girmay 44 to the sea From “The Black Maria”luam /asa-luam


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ON NATIONAL POE TRY MON TH

academy of american 51 Jen Benka, Edward Hirsch,

poets Olivia Morgan, Ali Liebegott,Amanda Johnston, SamanthaGiles, P. Scott Cunningham,

Je≠ Shotts, Tyler Meier,Andrew White, Richard Blanco,Brenda Shaughnessy

T H E V I E W F R O M H E R E

mariame kaba 61 Imagining Freedom

meredith walker 65 Smart Girls Read Poetry

omar kholeif 68 To Speak with Many Tonguesat Once

tilleke schwarz 73 Poetry Is Everywhere

C O M M E N T

ben lerner 81 From “The Hatred of Poetry”

michael robbins 92 Make the Machine Sing

contributors 97


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SPLIT THIS ROCK


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The poets in this portfolio will be featured at the fifth Split This Rock Poetry

Festival, a biennial national gathering in Washington DC, taking place in April.

To learn more about the festival and all of Split This Rock’s programs, please visit

SplitThisRock.org.


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3SARAH BROWNING

sarah browning

Introduction

In the two years since the last Split This Rock issue of Poetry, climatechange has accelerated at an unprecedented rate. Police have con-tinued to murder black and brown people with impunity. Violenceagainst transgender people is unabated. Radical inequality has wors-ened, so that now sixty-two people own as much wealth as half the

world. Public figures in the United States baldly echo their fascistforebears, urging us to refuse those fleeing wars of our own making,while calling for the branding of our sisters and brothers based ontheir religious beliefs.

Split This Rock is a national organization based in WashingtonDC that cultivates, teaches, and celebrates poetry that bears witnessto injustice and provokes social change. We’ve been encouraged andemboldened by the activists demanding change: in the streets, the

universities, the halls of power, and the literary world. Our programsintegrate poetry into movements for social justice and support poetsof all ages who write this work, such as those we present here.

You’ll find in these pages poets crying out in horror and mourning,as Reginald Dwayne Betts asks how to raise Black boys, given “allthe colors of humanity / that we erase in this American dance arounddeath” and Dominique Christina considers the historic chain gang,

“The tender meat of palms / Pulped like plums.”

You’ll read of webs of exploitation and injustice that bind us to-gether, that feed our American hunger with the labor and su≠ering ofothers, as in Craig Santos Perez’s “Halloween in the Anthropocene,2015.” Martha Collins’s long poem, “Leaving Behind,” is an elegyand reminder that historic tragedies are echoed in all our losses, asthe heart breaks, day after day.

But you’ll also read of resistance and even celebration: “A humandoes throw o≠ bonds if she can,” writes Linda Hogan. And AracelisGirmay recommits us to the subversive act of giving life: “the beautyof it against these odds / ... /& so to tenderness I add my action.”

Every poem here, then, is a struggle for redemption, a voice oflove against the howls of fear and hate. May you find comfort andchallenge, both.


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4 POETRY

ocean vuong

Toy Boat

For Tamir Rice

yellow plasticblack sea

eye-shaped shardon a darkened map

no shores nowto arrive — ordepartno wind butthis waiting which

moves you

as if the secondscould be entered& never left

toy boat — oarlesseach wave

a green lampoutlasted

toy boattoy leaf droppedfrom a toy treewaiting


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5OCEAN VUONG

waitingas if the sp-arrowsthinning above youare not

already piercedby their own names


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6 POETRY

A Little Closer to the Edge

Young enough to believe nothingwill change them, they step, hand-in-hand,

into the bomb crater. The night fullof black teeth. His faux Rolex, weeks

from shattering against her cheek, now dimslike a miniature moon behind her hair.

In this version the snake is headless — stilledlike a cord unraveled from the lovers’ ankles.

He lifts her white cotton skirt, revealing

another hour. His hand. His hands. The syllables

inside them. O father, O foreshadow, pressinto her — as the field shreds itself

with cricket cries. Show me how ruin makes a homeout of hip bones. O mother,

O minutehand, teach mehow to hold a man the way thirst

holds water. Let every river envyour mouths. Let every kiss hit the body

like a season. Where apples thunderthe earth with red hooves. & I am your son.


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7DAWN LU NDY MARTIN

dawn lundy martin

Our Wandering

If they would only just beat or shoot me, but they wanted soul substance, to

harbor that like that, so I could never move from this place. So they reach

crackled hands inside and hold it open for raking ...

We in a shit

rustle, the wayin ramble and camaraderie,brown hand of whose mothermakes its smooth noise

over my mouth?

The burden of saying some thing, a head-

nodding, and I want to be in-side of your knowing. Who

laid their headon the disappeared’s pillow?

One minute a person licks your ear,the next, you cannot see your own white breath.

We gotta headon over to the party way

out in Bushwick because we’re lost,

and our flesh is on fire. There’sa man walking behind us. And growing.

This is what I tell him:

I am not a boy in anyone’s body.

I am not a black in a black body.I will not kowtow inside your opposites.


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8 POETRY

How the world blisters you.How hunger left you statued.

•

One falls past the lip of some black unknown, where time, they say, ends.

We got us a sugar- mouth, a bit feeding,walk in circles in circular roomsbuilt so precisely for our shapes, hold the figure that is the body that is,of course, me.

I stroke the feather that feeds me,that lines my cage floor with minor luxuries,

I say “mama” in its wanting sugary mouth.

What is the di≠erence between ash and coal,between dark and darkened, between love

and addiction on Dekalb at 2 am, and I falldrunk from a ruinous taxi, already ruinedfrom before before, the absent weight screamsinto your breath, you are no good, no good ...

The space between I and It. Lolling.

The Ibibio man was not born in his cowboy hat.Even his throat must ache like tired teeth.

•


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9DAWN LU NDY MARTIN

Look what I am holding! Not desire, but infinite multiplicity, the mouth

of existence.

To sing the blue song of longing, its webbed feet along jungle floor.What of our mechanical arm, our o≠-melody? Purpose in the gath-

ering, I know, dear self. It rains and we think, God, or we thinkUniverse. I say, portent across the wind. When wind is wrought,whole song fallen from its lip, some black unknown, where they say,time ends. What speech into hard God breath just as night park isgodless? What of a silver cube in the mouth? This is our wandering.


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10 POETRY

jennifer bartlett

From “The Hindrances of a Householder”

Jennifer had a tendency to stop inthe street and listen to the neighbors’

problems. She was consoling to them. Jennifer would look for people in trouble

and o≠er help, even thoughher body was relatively weak, and

she could not carry groceriesfor the old people, really.

When the young mothers had issues

they would come to Jennifer because they

knew that Jennifer also had had issuesas a young mother and would listen to them.

Now Jennifer had middle mother issues.


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11 JENNIFER BART LETT

Everything can be illuminated by wateror most things.

The two women in the black of mourningknelt by the river in exact tandem, and

they spoke softly.The film, like life itself, had minimal

plot and extraordinary beauty.The film, like life itself, was

slow and maniacal. And when

we walked the village afterwards

in search of just the right martiniI thought of the same steps I had

taken years earlier in preparationfor mourning, and I was not unhappy.


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12 POETRY

jan beatty

Stricken

We’re sitting in Uncle Sam’s Subs, splittinga cheesesteak, when Shelley says:

I think I should buy a gun.

I look up at her pu≠y face, and she’s staring,her hands shaking. On medication for

schizophrenia, she’s serious.I say, Tell me why you need a gun.Her voice getting louder: You know why.

No, no I don’t, I say. In case I need it. I might need it to shoot somebody.

I give her a hard look —You don’t need a gun. No one is after you.

She stares back: You might be after me.

I don’t know what to say — I never know what to say.I know it’s not her speaking, but it’s my friend,far away in some other stricken mind.What’s it like to know you’re right/you’re in danger —and the world says no?Every woman I know has lived that.I say: I would never hurt you. I’m not a threat to you.

She laughs, says, Well, you might be.The laughing scares me.I want out of this place,this sub shop, to walk away,knowing she can’t walk out of her mind, leavethe illness behind. The long minutes,the long, long minutes. She says, What do you think?

I think we should eat our sandwiches, then

take a walk, I say.What about the gun?

Let’s talk about it later, I say,not knowing a thing.Not knowing a goddamn thing.


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13 JAN BEATTY

Asylum

After Roselia Foundling Asylum and Maternity Hospital,

corner of Cli≠ and Manilla

This is the house I was born in.Look at it. Asylum.

Narrate it:Notice the sloping cornice, look at the curved windows, etc.

This is the house I was born in.The cast-iron balconies / not wide enough for bodies.

Look at the photos:

3 stories, 8 front windows and a wide door.

Dark red brick / inlaid with brown stone.Women’s bodies / expelling / banishing /

Leaving the babies there.Look at the photos, include the photos.


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14 POETRY

reginald dwayne betts

When I Think of Tamir Rice While Driving

in the backseat of my car are my own sons,still not yet Tamir’s age, already having heardme warn them against playing with toy pistols,though my rhetoric is always about what I don’tlike, not what I fear, because sometimes

I think of Tamir Rice & shed tears, the weepingall another insignificance, all another way to avoidsaying what should be said: the Second Amendmentis a ruthless one, the pomp & constitutional circumstancethat says my arms should be heavy with the weightof a pistol when forced to confront death likethis: a child, a hidden toy gun, an o∞cer that firesbefore his heart beats twice. My two young sons play

in the backseat while the video of Tamir dyingplays in my head, & for everything I do know, the thingI don’t say is that this should not be the brick and mortarof poetry, the moment when a black father driveshis black sons to school & the thing in the air is the deathof a black boy that the father cannot mention,because to mention the death is to invite discussionof taboo: if you touch my sons the crimson

that touches the concrete must belong, at some point,to you, the police o∞cer who justifies the echoof the fired pistol; taboo: the thing that says that justiceis a killer’s body mangled and disrupted by bulletsbecause his mind would not accept the narrativeof your child’s dignity, of his right to life, of his humanity,and the crystalline brilliance you saw when your boys first breathed;the narrative must invite more than the children bleedingon crisp fall days; & this is why I hate it all, the people around me,the black people who march, the white people who cheer,the other brown people, Latinos & Asians & all the colors of humanitythat we erase in this American dance around death, as weare not permitted to articulate the reasons we might yearnto see a man die; there is so much that has to disappear


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16 POETRY

regie cabico

Daylight Saving Time Flies Like an Instagram of a Weasel Ridinga Woodpecker & You Feel Everything Will Be Alright

The giant Slinkyof Spring approaches& I have nothingto sport after spending

a fortune on hoodedsweaters that makeme look like I’m searchingfor the Holy Grail.

Struggling withgranola & soy milk,dental bills accumulate

like snow & the potatoesI forgot have rotted.I’m broke & broke& broke & broke& broke, a bowlingball spiraling downa middle-agedstaircase of doubt.

The night I crazilyfled for the gentrifiedgrids of 14th Street.A pinball, I landedin Playbill. I leftBrooklyn tossingtelevisions & futonslike bombsin the bowelsof hipster bohemia.In the piano karaokebar, I met Kevin,a Peter Pan


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17REGIE CABICO

Tennessee manwho spun quips & witlike pixie dust about me.A puckish chariotfueled by moxie,

this lean tambourineof charms leanedover me, a hot flamingoin the midnight light& admitted hisonce-upon-a-timefetish for Laotianmen in his youth.

I wanted him to fallfor me as if he stumbledinto the insideof an Orientalmansion shakingthe tchotchkesin my heart, steeping mycrush into sweet green tea.

Kevin would be my modelof elegance, unabashedconfidence, a dragonfierceness. He said,There’s more to RainbowPride than RuPaul& Stonewall kickball& I finally feltI belonged in DC. November, Kevin’s jaw ached. He showedup at The Black Foxmumbling jumble


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19REGIE CABICO

Maybe I’m in lovewith you like thatbaby weasel ridingthe flying woodpecker’sback. It’s an Avatar

magical, sci-fi,unexpected flashof bliss when really,the woodpecker isfighting for his life.The weasel doesn’tknow what it’s gottenitself into but a thrill

that will nevercome again,something betterthan a featheredBaby Jane din-din.

Tomorrow, you’llwant to go to Rehoboth& kite surf at the beachhouse of the guy wholusts after you. The priest’ssermon makes no sense:Forest Fires in the Bay,Water Well Maidens& “Let It Go” from Frozen.It’s not that I hate whitepeople or that we’re soul mates.It’s that you’re beginningto wash o≠ me like ashesin holy water.


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20 POETRY

dominique christina

Chain Gang

This song is not a language,Not a thing to be remembered,The field-holler tradition of Teeth and kneesCursing wind,

A concert hall of bloody handsSpilling the earth,Strangling dirt,Sledgehammer cursesOf men busted open.

On Parchman FarmYou could hear it coming

Up through the trees,The hammering pulpit of Crooning men and sweat,The tender meat of palmsPulped like plums.

Them men gulped down theDawn dew air,

Let it catch in their throats,Broke the sunrise up andSang hymns like hexes:

Be my woman gal, I’ll beeee your maaaaaaan .. .

And the killing fields of MississippiFizzled down to juke joints andThe hothouse music of illegal clubsWith thick women they loved outright andPlayed cards with andGave bourbon to when their handsDidn’t hold sorrow likePickaxes and the railroad was


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21DOMINIQUE CHRISTINA

Just a railroad,A way to ride north if you couldGet your money right.

Redbone gals with rosewater sweat,

When they lifted their kneesSunflower County was a heavenThey believed in.

Stick to the promise, gal, that you maaaaaade meeeeee ...

Steady now,They turned back the clock on

Their hard, hard hands,Let the memory of fresh linen andLadies’ slips like gossamerWings, a parade of plump thighs,The juju thrust of furious bonesSpread like greaseAcross starched-white sheets,Midwife them out of ol’ Parchman Farm

And back to the cockfights and gambling,Back when they had ambition,Back when they had a sweet womanTo hold, her fat wristsSoft as butter,Limp as rain.

When she walk, she reel and rock beeeeeehind

Ain’t that enough to make a convict smiiiiiiiiile.

Mississippi’s where the cock crowed,A hoodwink if ever there was one,But see how a man can make a


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22 POETRY

Steeple outta his hands,

See how he can break awayFrom his hurt and be GodIf he wants to,

How he can keep his mindWrapped in yesterday,Drown out memoryLike rain drummingDown like hornetsYeahhhhhh.

Them Parchman men,

Ants in single file,Draft dodgersDigging trenchesPounding concreteLaying tracksPretending it’s ChristmasSo they can keep their handsAway from the colic of axe handles,

The sputtering earthSnarling under their feet.Warden says every manGotta pay his way on Parchman FarmSame as the outside.

Yessuh. They remember what it was like to be a man,To know that didn’t mean put a gun in your handOr go lookin’ for somebody to take down, naw.They sang ’til the hurt was just anExperiment in forgetfulness and theyWere back in clean clothes makin’ plans and


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23DOMINIQUE CHRISTINA

Tryin’ to get a little moneyTo buy tobacco andA pint with a little left overTo get somethin’ sweetFor the women who were wet

Underneath them, crooningA tumorless midnight.

The moans of wild womenAre specific:A whisper of hell danced pinkBy the rosewater sweat and mewling,Questions they ask when

Their clothes are o≠.

When you gon’ take me to the movies? We goin’ Saturday, baby

When you gon’ get you a steady job? Workin’ on it everyday, baby

Why you love me anyway, man? Ain’t a man alive who could help it

The dance, you know, the dance of being a free manThat never shows its fullness to you ’tilIt’s stripped down and gobbled upBy railroad tracks and guards in high towersWith rifles watching your back,Bend to question markUnder a sun that won’t mind its business,

When the only part of your living life leftIs in the things you rememberAbout a woman who hungPantyhose o≠ her porch toDry and made you peach cobbler


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24 POETRY

In the middle of the nightIf you asked nice andDanced with you to songsWritten on the back of aWatermelon truck by folk who

Knew something about longing,And those are the songs you give her nowWhile you bust the earth open.

Cuz your heart is a burial plotSo stony.

Can’t ask nothin’ of a grave.

Everybody knows that.

So you dig andPound andSnatch andHaul andScrape andLift and

Tote andHammer.

Lay it down, man! Pick it up again, man!

You’re knuckles andDreams deferred in a placeWhere every stone,Every goddamn stoneIs important!

I go free, lawd, I goooooooo free ...


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25MARTHA COLLINS

martha collins

Leaving Behind

November 2015

1

Open up for close

out soul-clothes every-thing has to go closing

down time call them allsaints souls my own gone

ones: Andy Marcia Mary AliceMary Anne cloud of all carried out

2

outside my window: locust, clothof gold on the ground: its yellow

tabs linden hearts sweetgum stars

like cut-outs from the same ...

paper-napkin ghosts in a tree nearthe house where a year ago my friend —

rust-colored chrysanthemums rust-colored door

3

door to door the angel no the Lordpassed or did not pass —


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26 POETRY

the angel opened the prisondoor doors to pass through, outor in: our millions, more than any —

in the other story the Lord

said: to put a di≠erence between

4

between one and anothera gun: at one end it’s a good

gun because at the other’s a cellphone pill bottle toy gun nothing a

Trayvon Tamir Dontre MichaelLaquan Eric Rekia John: call

them out and the others, black and many

5

many thousand gone no

more auction block slaves gone

up north where I am goingagain, coppery oak leaves holdingon, overlaid with gold, then just rustabove the skeletal gray ...

chains gone, or gone before, more —


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27MARTHA COLLINS

6

more new neighbors residingon these avenues: thousands in whitemarble: whitman harvey harris bliss —

past yellowing birch and weeping beechat the intersection of Larch and Oakwhitney spencer jewell: a startle

of Japanese maple spreading red

7

red shadow on palemoon: earth curtain

drawn slowly acrossquarter half almost

across: weeks ago, weeksof my small life, child-

sized life so little left

8

left them theremother fatherleft leaving their living

their death-days:his Labor, her June


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28 POETRY

yellow circles of leaves beneath —

something left behind

9

behind all that isis not God: still, smallsilence of not beyondbeneath before but

no where name

blue sky gray cloud that is not there

10

There was a road, long,gray, with dotted line —

wanted to writeold, I thought years agoyoung, and here it is: road

running out, gold gonenow, cut here cut to old


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29MARTHA COLLINS

11

old vets: in 2012 the lastfrom the First, the Great, the warto end all wars, its Armistice honored

the cause of world peace but there was

the Second, not even a million left and nowit’s all Veterans, suicides, homeless, paradesrained on today, our post-traumatic war

12

wars now, ten to watch: Syria/ISISUkraine S. Sudan Nigeria Congo Afghanistan

while the faithful debate: turn the other oruniformed Christ with gun, as in the First —

while boys spill toy soldiers, khaki and green

with tanks and guns, from a plastic tub —

while leaves dry to khaki on our ground

13

ground covered with oak leaves, crispand tan, and others under, crushedinto brown, soon to be earth —

but sun still lighting the threadleaf Japanese maples apricot plum


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30 POETRY

sun still paling my pink-tinged skinblood showing through my thinned

14

thinned to spindly twigs with danglesof pods the once-gold locust —

thinner the ice and higher the seasand hotter the planet and what will be doneat the Paris talks to slow it Paris

where last night terrorists killed and Beirut —

to stop the killing the dying earth to turn

15

turn on red stop

light to go light

touch blood lovelight wrote mind-

field for mine- it’sa gold mine rising

into light field to go


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31MARTHA COLLINS

16

go with me, my love, my oneinto that night where one will go

before the other but still our nightboat our bed our lovers’ tonguessongs in the night nor the moon

by night our little light night-

night my love by and by

17

by order of no exit except

the angel troubled the pool but

stubble before the wind just

two apples left on this tree —

cloud from clūd, rock, but

the stars we see are not stars but

light but cloud over light

18

lights out wars on lastdays end times reckoning left


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32 POETRY

behind but which us them not onestone upon another nation against

mirror terror Jesus Isa no one knows buthurry it up faster let climate also be

a sign beginning of sorrows

19

sorrow sorrow my friend’s last bed

just five months after they said he ...

behind the rust-colored door

brown brown all leaves on the ground

requiem aeternam we sang together

year years all tumbled down

et lux perpetua light

20

light of sun on sweetgum leavesglisten of amber and green or

sudden light of gunfire, bombs:Nigeria now: two girls, oneeleven, strapped into suicidevests, and Mali, the world


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33MARTHA COLLINS

lit with the light of darkness

21

darkness He called ... or darknesswe make, denying the fallen among,the recent threatened tortured escaped:

send them back send them to camps

make them register carry IDs

close down their mosques let only

Christians passing by on the other

22

other, the once-red Japanesemaple, bare now, gray but

see its great muscled limbsstretch out low, then curve up

as if to embrace, climb on a limband see in the cleft a small cluster,

as if arranged, of curling red

23

red heart pulse of —

red the fountain filled


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34 POETRY

with Jesus’s blood, in anothercountry filled with martyrs’ —

red the last apple on the tree Icould reach if I leaned —

red that looks blue until it’s shed

24

shed skin feathers leaves water-shed dividing line deciding

time earth-age namedanthro- for us, our own doing ourundoing losing dying unless —

the most fit the worstfit for earth in all its ages

25

age mine day mine pastmy appointed night

mine full moon mourningmoon in a clear sky old

light: wanted to make an openingout from closing down but

enough to leave behind


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35MARTHA COLLINS

26

behind them a mighty ocean

around them beasts and wilde men

after them us, closing our shoresahead of us, rising oceans

forgive us this day ourimmigrant past that isn’t even —

first which shall be last

27

last chance ditch e≠ort gasp:

gone-before last and could-be last:how much can one elegy hold?

could this be it? a friend wrote, her lastwords — last lost it for all our earth?

but last night that moon, all the way home

— from Old English follow: to last beyond last

28

last night I woke and found my body-held living-for-now a piece of all —


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36 POETRY

over the graves the beautifulskeletal: chalice and vase, tangleand dance, the white bonesof the birch, its vertical script —

over my bones, this living that is my

29

my life my living my being my loving

my friend my friends my one my love

the huge white moon, missing almost nothing

my love in my arms, in my bed again

the advent candle for earth for hope

this almost last this work these leavings

my blessings my many my thanks for these

30

these days and nights, these lineshave changed (you must change)my life my loving (my one) and

now this leaving behind this opening


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37MARTHA COLLINS

out (the spaces between the darklines of the great unleaved) to where

the night is as clear as the day


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38 POETRY

linda hogan

When the Body

When the body wishes to speak, she willreach into the night and pull back the rapture of this growing rootwhich has little faith in the other planets of the universe, knowingonly one, by the bulbs of the feet, their branching of toes. But the

feet

have walked with the bones of their ancestors over long trailsleaving behind the roots of forests. They walk on the ghostsof all that has gone before them, not just plant, but animal, human,the bones of even the ones who left their horses to drink at thespring running through earth’s mortal body which has much to tellabout what happened that day.

When the body wishes to speak from the hands, it tells

of how it pulled children back from death and remembered everydetail,

washing the children’s bodies, legs, bellies, the delicate lips of thegirl,

the vulnerable testicles of the son,the future of my people who brought themselves out of the riverin a spring freeze. That is only part of the story of handsthat touched the future.

This all started so simply, just a body with so much to say,one with the hum of her own life in a quiet room,one of the root growing, finding a way through stone,one not remembering nights with men and gunsnor the ragged clothing and broken bones of my body.

I must go back to the hands, the thumb that makes us human,but then don’t other creatures use tools and lift what they need,intelligent all, like the crows here, one making a cast of earth clayfor the broken wing of the other, remaininguntil it healed, then broke the clay and flew away together.

I would do that one day,


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39LINDA HOGAN

but a human can make no claimsbetter than any other, especially without wings, only handsthat don’t know these lessons.

Still, think of the willows

made into a fence that began to root and leaf,then tore o≠ the wires as they grew.A human does throw o≠ bonds if she can, if she tries, if it’s possible,the body so finely a miracle of its own, created of the elementsand anything that lived on earth where everything that wasstill is.


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40 POETRY

Lost in the Milky Way

Some of us are like trees that grow with a spiral grainas if prepared for the path of the spirit’s journeyto the world of all souls.

It is not an easy path.

A dog stands at the opening constellationpast the great helping hand.

The dog wants to know,did you ever harm an animal, hurt any creature,did you take a life you didn’t eat?

This is the first on your map. There is another

my people made of the great beyondthat lies farther away than this galaxy.

It is a world that can’t be imagined by ordinary means.After this first one,the next could be a map of forever.

It could be a cartography

shining only at some times of the yearlike a great web of finery

some spider pulled from herselfto help you recall your true followingyour first white breath in the cold.

The next door opens and Old Womancounts your scars. She is interested in how you have beenhurt and not in anything akin to sin.

From between stars are the words we now refuse;loneliness, longing, whatever su≠eringmight follow your life into the sky.


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41LINDA HOGAN

Once those are gone, the life you hadagainst your own will, the hope, even the prayerstake you one more bend around the river of sky.


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craig santos perez

Halloween in the Anthropocene, 2015

Darkness spills across the sky like an oil plume.The moon reflects bleached coral. Tonight, let uspraise the sacrificed. Praise the souls of black

boys, enslaved by supply chains, who carry

bags of cacao under West African heat. “Trickor treat, smell my feet, give me something good

to eat,” sings a girl dressed as a Disney princess.Let us praise the souls of brown girls who sewour clothes as fire unthreads sweatshops into

smoke and ash. “Trick or treat, smell my feet, give me

something good,” whisper kids disguised as ninjas.Tonight, let us praise the souls of Asian children

who manufacture toys and tech until gravity sharpenstheir bodies enough to cut through suicide nets.

“Trick or treat, smell my feet, give me,” shout boys

camouflaged as soldiers. Let us praise the souls

of veterans who salute with their guns becauseonly triggers will pull God into their ruined

temples. “Trick or treat, smell my feet,” chant kidsmasquerading as cowboys and Indians. Tonight,let us praise the souls of native youth, whose eyes

are open-pit uranium mines, veins are poisonedrivers, hearts are tar sands tailings ponds. “Trickor treat,” says a boy dressed as the sun. Let us

praise El Niño, his growing pains, praise his mother,Ocean, who is dying in a warming bath among deadfish and refugee children. Let us praise our mothers


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43CRAIG SANTOS PEREZ

of asthma, mothers of cancer clusters, mothers ofmiscarriage — pray for us — because our costumeswon’t hide the true cost of our greed. Praise our

mothers of lost habitats, mothers of fallout, mothers

of extinction — pray for us — because even tomorrowwill be haunted — leave them, leave us, leave —


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44 POETRY

aracelis girmay

to the sea

You who cannot hear or cannot knowthe terrible intricacies of our species, our minds,the extent to which we have donewhat we have done, & yet the depth to whichwe have loved

what we haveloved —

the hillsideat dawn, dark eyesoutlined with the darksentences of kohl,the fūl we shared

beneath the lime tree at the general’s houseafter visiting Goitom in prison for trying to leavethe country (the first time),the apricot color of camels racingon the floor of the worldas the fires blazed in celebration of Independence.

How dare I move into the dark space of your body

carrying my dreams, without an invitation, my dreamswandering in ellipses, pet goats or chickensdevouring your yard & shirts.

Sea, my oblivious afterworld,grant us entry, please, when we knock,but do not keep us there, deliverour flowers & himbasha bread.Though we can’t imagine, now, whatour dead might need,& above all can’t imagine it is over& that they are, in fact, askless, areneedless, in fact, still hold somewherethe smell of co≠ee smoking


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45ARACELIS GIRMAY

in the house, please,the memory of joyfluttering like a curtain in an open windowsomewhere inside the brain’s secret lusterwhere a woman, hands red with henna,

beats the carpet clean with the stick of a broom& the children, in the distance, choose stonesfor the competition of stones, & the summerwears a crown of beles in her green hair & the tigadelti’swhite teeth & the beautiful bones of Massawa,the gaping eyes & mouths of its archesworn clean by the sea, your breath & your salt.

Please, you,

being water too,find a way into the air & thenthe river & the springso that your waters can wash the elders,with the medicine of the dreaming of their children,cold & clean.


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46 POETRY

From “The Black Maria”

The body, bearing something ordinary as light Opensas in a room somewhere the friend opens in poppy, in flame, burns

& bears the child — out.

When I did it was the hours & hours of breaking. The bucking of

it all, the push & head

not moving, not an inch until,when he flew from me, it was the night who came

flying through me with all its hair,the immense terror of his face & noise.

I heard the stranger & my brain, without looking, voweda love-him vow. His struggling, merely, to be

split me down, with the axe, to two. How true,the thinness of our hovering between the realms of Here, Not Here.

The fight, first, to open, then to breathe,& then to close. Each of us entering the world

& entering the world like this.Soft. Unlikely. Then —

the idiosyncratic minds & verbs.Beloveds, making your ways

to & away from us, always, across the centuries,inside the vastness of the galaxy, how improbable it is that this

iteration

of you or you or me might come to be at all — Body of fear,Body of laughing — & even last a second. This fact should make us

fall all


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47ARACELIS GIRMAY

to our knees with awe,the beauty of it against these odds,

the stacks & stacks of near misses& slimmest chances that birthed one ancestor into the next & next.

Profound, unspeakable cruelty who counters this, who does not see.

& so to tenderness I add my action.


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ON NATIONAL POETRY MO NTH


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51ACADEMY OF AMERICAN POETS

academy of american poets

This April marks the twentieth anniversary of National PoetryMonth, a celebration founded by the Academy of American Poetswith input from other nonprofit poetry organizations and publishers.The original aim remains today: to create a time-bound occasion inwhich we might work together to spotlight poets and poetry. Many

publishers take advantage of the month to release their poetry titles;many libraries and schools celebrate the art form with special eventsthat inspire young people to engage with poetry, some for the firsttime. More and more, National Poetry Month has become an eventto inspire the next generation of readers, with thousands of gradeschool and high school students participating in Poem in Your PocketDay (April 21 this year) and other educational projects. The hope hasalways been that this increased visibility for poetry might spark an

interest in readers that would carry forward into the rest of the yearand even last a lifetime.

Of course the month also inspires critics to question whether amonth-long observance of an art form is a kind of boosterism. Whilethe month is a platform, poetry is not a product. There’s no pack-aging the poetic imagination and the wilds of poetry communitiesacross the globe that celebrate the art form regularly. National PoetryMonth is what we make it. It is a concentrated time to explore the

ways in which poets’ work changes language and lives. This year, theAcademy of American Poets asked poets, leaders of poetry organiza-tions, and publishers to respond to the question: What should poetsand poetry readers be thinking about or doing for the next thirtydays? Their responses are below.

— Jen Benka, Executive Director, Academy of American Poets

•

I once suggested that a friend and I compile and read some of ourfavorite short poems. It would be an event for National PoetryMonth. He is a great proponent of reading poems aloud, so he wouldstand up and recite them from the podium. Meanwhile, I would


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52 POETRY

sit on a chair hidden in the corner and read them silently to myself.I was kidding about the event, but half-serious about the idea. Much

can be said for performing poems aloud, using our bodies as theirinstruments, but an equal amount can be said for keeping them toourselves. Reading is contact. What we read can be shockingly per-sonal because it so deeply activates our inner lives, the daydreamingcapacity of the mind. Reading poetry has helped deliver me to my-self. It has given me a language for experience — not just my ownexperience but also the experience of others. I wouldn’t recognizemyself without being able to read and reread poetry. That’s why I’m

sure it can be so determining. Reading is both private and social. ForNational Poetry Month, I recommend this sustaining way of beingalone with others.

— Edward Hirsch

•

When I was appointed to the President’s Committee on the Arts and

the Humanities in 2009, I felt the weight of opportunity and ex-pectation. How could we live up to the promise of Barack Obama’shistoric campaign? How could we contribute to realizing the hopefor change that inspired millions of Americans?

I turned to poetry.Poetry is a careful medium, a practice of observation and thought-

ful articulation, and a centuries-old conversation. But it is also aspace of exploration, of bringing the inside out. We cannot change

our country or ourselves without the courage to speak honestly aboutwho we are and who we hope to be. We need to put our uniqueknowledge into words and insist that it be seen.

In 2011, the President’s Committee created a program to elevateand invest in our country’s most promising teen poets. To date,twenty of these National Student Poets have been pinned by FirstLady Michelle Obama at the White House. They each spend ayear bringing their poetry to communities across the country, en-couraging and inspiring others to bring out the poetry of their owncommunities, and of themselves.

Michelle Obama tells these poets that they are brave to “sharesomething so personal and so precious.” I would tell them that kindof bravery is both the hardest and most powerful way to change theworld. National Poetry Month is a time to combat a fearful, chaotic,


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and angry world with the courage to raise your voice, to pour yourhope into poetry.

— Olivia Morgan, member of the President’s Committee on the Arts and the

Humanities, founder of the National Student Poets Program

•

This morning, a friend said, “Be in the life you’re in.” Why is it sodi∞cult to live by these words?

Over my lifetime, I’ve used poets and poetry as a way to groundmyself. When depressed or lost or crazed or in love, I’ve written apoem or read a poem or corresponded with a fellow poet. It’s com-monly said that after great personal or national tragedy people turnto poetry. Poetry sales rose after 9/11. It is reassuring to know thatpoetry somehow answers the unanswerable. Over the last few years,several people in my peer group have died unexpectedly. Some ofthem were writers. I was put not just in the position of turning to

poetry for solace in these instances, but to their poetry.My friend, the poet Justin Chin, died unexpectedly in December.

I drove to San Francisco, where he was spending his final days in acoma. People came in and out of his hospital room to bid him fare-well. Many were poets. Some I hadn’t seen in twenty years. We’d allshared the same San Francisco literary community. And now we’dgathered to say goodbye to one of our own. It gave me such peaceto see Justin surrounded by writers. His mother had flown eighteen

hours from Singapore and never left his side. Justin’s brother wasthere too. All the poets kept telling Justin’s family, “Justin is a greatwriter. An important writer.” His mom, sharing Justin’s wit, said,

“Unless he’s writing about you.” We laughed. Later, I tried to write apoem about Justin. The poem never went anywhere. But I still standby the first line, “Poets are everything.”

— Ali Liebegott

•

As we celebrate National Poetry Month, let us widen our gaze to seeclearly the people and lives blurred in the margins of rhetoric. Let usask ourselves how we are using our power and privilege in language


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to empower our communities, lift the voices of others, and speak forthose who have been silenced. Over the past year, I have watched

poets and allies rally in the word to speak out against police brutalitythrough the Black Poets Speak Out campaign. I’ve seen poems raisedat demonstrations in the name of justice. I’ve watched a man attendan open mic searching for the best words to share with his son whenchildren were killed by those sworn to protect them. He was given James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, June Jordan, and more. The poets readhim the words of Ross Gay, Evie Shockley, Danez Smith, and others.In this way, I have turned to my own writing, searching for the best

words in darkness and light. I’ve asked myself: Who and what are mypoems in service to? Let our poems be in service to the people. Leteach word work relentlessly to call forth the best of our humanity.

— Amanda Johnston, Cofounder, Black Poets Speak Out

•

There is a familiar argument that gets reorchestrated every year toproclaim that poetry is dead. The argument cleaves to the idea thatpoetry has outlived its usefulness as an archaic, inaccessible art formand assumes that poetry is only something done in service to the dis-tant past, perhaps in the presence of a Grecian urn.

Yet, if you look around, you will see a vast and diverse ecosystemof poetry and poets all around you, teeming with life and vitality.You will see poetry not only as a thriving community and conversa-

tion, but the extraordinary poets who are continuing to serve as vitaltranslators of the most intractable problems of being alive in our cur-rent moment of beauty and collapse.

For National Poetry Month, try to spend the month engaging inthe extraordinary work of living poets. Read a book (or 30!) by acontemporary poet. Go see a reading (or 30!) in your community.Take a poetry workshop, write a few poems yourself, and contributeyour own bit of DNA to the evolving ecosystem of living poetry.Look around and be amazed.

— Samantha Giles, Executive Director, Small Press Tra∞c

•


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This past fall, for the culminating reading of a poetry class at a Miamielementary school, we tried to order pizza from a major commercial

chain. They told us that they didn’t deliver to that particular neigh-borhood, despite it being technically inside their delivery zone.Their refusal was blatantly discriminatory (the neighborhood has “abad reputation”), and we were frustrated. We wanted pizza and werewilling to pay for it; why wouldn’t they just bring it to us? I relatethis story because sometimes I think the poetry world, for all of itsgood intentions, behaves like that pizza shop. We make decisionsabout who does and doesn’t receive poetry, about where poetry

should exist, and about who should be writing it. Much of poetryadvocacy would be better defined as poet advocacy and comes pack-aged with unspoken rules about who is and who isn’t a poet. It says: ifand when poetry receives more attention (insert: money, fame, etc.),here is who should benefit. This advocacy becomes a frail mouth-piece for a fringe sector of society. If we want poetry to have a morecentral place in our culture, we have to let go of our personal invest-ment in its growth. We have to admit that we don’t fully understand

how poetry exists in the lives of people who don’t have MFAs, whodon’t take workshops, who have no idea what AWP stands for, andwe have to admit that those people have far more to teach to us thanwe have to teach to them. Poetry isn’t pizza. It doesn’t need to bedelivered. It’s already in our communities, and by listening to thosecommunities, we might learn that poetry’s power is far greater thanwe had ever envisioned.

— P. Scott Cunningham, Director, O, Miami Poetry Festival

•

Poetry asks us to pledge to one another, I see you. Poetry has been forcenturies our great social media. You are its great theme.

I should have made my way straight to you long ago. — Walt Whitman

My life has been one of too much care, which ruins a person. I haveturned through many pages. To summarize: we are invisible to eachother. Let’s look into the first person’s claim of being first. Let’s lookpast the first person to see the second person.


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Then you, hey you —— Claudia Rankine

But let us pledge that it’s not enough to see you, in the poem, in theworld. Let’s also set the poem humming so that the world may hum.Let me be you in the poem, and let me look up from the poem andstill be you. Let me look up from many pages. Let me be you and youand you, and even you.

Let’s be simultaneous —

— Christopher Gilbert

April to-do list: 1. If prose is called for, write a poem. 2. Write to someone, not to no one. 3. You will do.

A challenge for you, You-ness. / Add yours.

— Thomas Sayers Ellis

— Je≠ Shotts, Executive Editor, Graywolf Press

•

Early in the year, Natalie Diaz pointed me to a New York Timesopinion piece by Pagan Kennedy: “How to Cultivate the Art of

Serendipity.” Kennedy explores whether we can create condi-tions for serendipity and profiles the research of Dr. Sanda Erdelez.Dr. Erdelez’s work reveals distinct groups: “non-encounterers,”

“occasional encounterers,” and “super-encounterers.” Imagine thespectrum: non-encounterers focus too much for serendipity; super-encounterers find connections everywhere, always. The researchshows the frequency of serendipity is not exclusively the domain ofluck. How then do we move around in the spectrum of encountering,increasing our capacity to see and feel connections? “You becomea super-encounterer, according to Dr. Erdelez, in part because youbelieve that you are one.”

Cultivate serendipity. Use poetry to do it. In showing us another’sexperience of the world, poetry has a lot to serendipitously teach usabout ourselves. Czesław Miłosz famously said that language is the


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only homeland. I have always felt this to mean that how we talk aboutthings that matter is who we are. Poetry is a record of our best uses of

language. Try it for a month — it might become a life.

— Tyler Meier, Executive Director, University of Arizona Poetry Center

•

Let’s be reckless. As humans and as artists, it is our natural instinctto take the risk of questioning what we know, what we like, and why.

Similarly, the art of writing poetry does not progress without theconstant questioning of poetry by poets. We are in a new age. Anage when many of us are wild with our forms, our styles, our per-formances, and our ideas. So let’s be reckless. Write without form.Write without punctuation, without capitalization, without theletter e. Write with form, in extreme iambic hexameter, in a strictShakespearean sonnet, in Victorian language. Put your poetry ina new place. Do what you’re uncomfortable with, but most of all,

write without regard to the possible consequences. Poetry allowsrecklessness; it allows us to question certainties without caring aboutwhat’s to come.

— Andrew White, Houston Youth Poet Laureate

•

As a Presidential Inaugural Poet I’ve been blessed with the opportu-nity to share my love of poetry at such unlikely venues as the FederalReserve, the Mayo Clinic, Silicon Valley, the USDA, engineeringfirms and conferences, law firms, and advocacy groups of all kinds. Inevery instance, I witness audiences taken by a newfound connectionto poetry. I hear comments such as: “I never knew poetry could belike this”; “That’s not what they taught me in high school”; “This ismy first time at a poetry reading — and I’m hooked.” For many, it’sthe first time they’ve been exposed to contemporary poetry and en-gaged with a living poet. Their sudden delight and appetite for poet-ry has made me question why poetry isn’t a larger part of our culturallives; why poetry isn’t as connected to our popular conversations asfilm, music, and novels; and why poetry isn’t more entrenched inour history, rooted in our folklore, and established in our national


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58 POETRY

identity as it is in other countries. Where is the disconnect? I thinkthe bottom line is education. The way poetry is generally deemed

to be taught (especially in K through 12 grades) falls short of explor-ing its full potential for students as well as teachers. As such, thisNational Poetry Month, I urge poets and lovers of poetry to engageteachers of all disciplines, encourage them to discover the relevanceand power of poetry, and the importance of enabling young peopleto encounter poetry in schools. That’s what I’ve committed to asEducation Ambassador for the Academy of American Poets, whicho≠ers a plethora of resources for educators, including lesson plans, a

monthly newsletter for teachers, and the “Teach This Poem” emailseries with activities to help teachers quickly and easily bring poetryinto the classroom. Involving ourselves in education is important notsimply for the sake of poetry, but to ensure that the world-changingpower of poetry continues to enrich lives, not just in April, but everymonth of the year for generations to come.

— Richard Blanco

•

You open April’s front window wide — it’s bursting with flowers andthe best words jostling to be seen and heard. These are the poemsof April. It’s not so much a “national” month as it is a month of in-ner life pushed forward, flattened against the page, the glass, themirror, the front window. We see you! It is poetry — soul on paper,

never-to-die. But then, as you must, you open April’s basement door,where the rotted poems, so stinking and so much more plentiful, arepushing up through the floorboards, shoving the flowers to the frontwindow saying, “Go go my beauty! Take your chance, and don’tthink of us. We won’t make it to May.”

— Brenda Shaughnessy


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THE VIEW FROM HERE

“The View from Here” is an occasional feature in which people from various fields

comment on their experience of poetry. This is the fourteenth installment of the series.


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61MARIAME KABA

mariame kaba

Imagining Freedom

I am not a poet. Nikky Finney, Audre Lorde, Gwendolyn Brooks,and Pat Parker are. I started writing poetry when I was eleven yearsold. My poems were melodramatic diatribes about poverty, home-lessness, and war. I was a strange kid who grew into a weird adultwho is not a poet but reads, loves, and still occasionally writes poems

in her journal.I am an organizer: a prison abolitionist who wants to see black

people, my people, free. To achieve this goal, we need imagination.Poetry helps me to imagine freedom.

It is possible ...It is possible at least sometimes ...It is possible especially now

To ride a horseInside a prison cellAnd run away…

— From The Prison Cell by Mahmoud Darwish

Over the past year and a half, more people across the US have beencirculating images of black death in part because of the current fo-cus on police violence and impunity. These images, however, are

traumatic and to some degree mind- and soul-numbing. How dowe mourn? How can we grieve? I think poetry opens a door. Poetryhelps us to resist.

Last summer, I stood on a soapbox, a real one, and used poetry tocall out the cops while grieving in public.

The previous Friday, Dominique “Damo” Franklin, Jr. had beenlaid to rest after having been tased to death by police. I hoped toattend his funeral but in the end I was unable due to a previous com-mitment. It was just as well. I hate funerals, especially when the per-son being buried is in his early twenties.

i sawthree little black boyslying in a graveyard


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i couldn’t tellif they were playing

or practicing.— Rehearsal by Baba Lukata

On an overcast Saturday afternoon, on a concrete island at the in-tersection of Ashland, Milwaukee, and Division, I joined a coupledozen people (mostly young) who were reading and performingpoetry in opposition to state violence. The organizers of the gather-ing were from the Revolutionary Poets Brigade of Chicago and they

invited me to say a few words. I said yes, hoping to find an outlet toexpress my grief.

I was preceded by Damo’s good friend, artist and activist EthanViets-VanLear, who shared an original poem:

And the police of the block that got a vendetta on every Blackboy child;

The perpetrators of this fabricated peace we’ve apparently

disturbed!I was born in the gutterhandcu≠ed on the curb.I was born in a dungeon,medicated and shackled,smothered so I couldn’t speak.

I was transfixed by Ethan’s words and gutted by his pain. His poem

was part eulogy, part primal scream. I hoped that his spoken wordswere a catharsis on the long journey toward healing. Maybe poetrycan be a balm. When one reads Dennis Brutus, for example, it is im-possible not to believe in the healing power of art:

Somehow we surviveand tenderness, frustrated, does not wither.

— From Somehow We Survive

It was my turn. In memory of Damo and other victims of state vio-lence, I read two poems by Langston Hughes and Ai, holding on totheir words like a raft in choppy waters.

Three kicks between the legs


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63MARIAME KABA

That kill the kidsI’d make tomorrow.

— From Third Degree by Langston Hughes

At some point, we will meetat the tip of the bullet,the blade, or the whipas it draws blood,but only one of us will change,only one of us will slip

past the captain and crew of this shipand the other submit to the chainsof a nationthat delivered rhetoricin exchange for its promises.

— From Endangered Species by Ai

As I read, I pictured Damo being tased (twice) by Chicago police and

hitting his head so hard that he was brain dead when he arrived atthe hospital. Unable to adequately convey my horror, I borrowed thepoet’s tongue and took comfort in losing myself in another’s words.

The gathering was titled “‘No Knock’ an Artistic Speak-OutAgainst ‘the American Police State.’” The title was of course inspiredby Gil Scott-Heron’s poem “No Knock.”

No Knocked on my brother, Fred Hampton,

bullet holes all over the place!No knocked on my brother, Michael Harrisand jammed a shotgun against his skull!

It is as it ever was. No knocked on Damo who is now six feet under-ground.

Passersby stopped to listen as various people read poems aboutGuantanamo, police violence, prisons, surveillance, and more. Lordeis right:

Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can bethought. The farthest external horizons of our hopes and fearsare cobbled by our poems, carved from the rock experiences ofour daily lives.


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There is magic in hearing voices speaking out for justice over thedin of a bustling city. Gathering as a collective to recite poetry can’t

end state violence but it can lift our spirits so that we might live anoth-er day to fight for more justice. Now more than ever we need wordsto help us think through that which cannot be thought. Poetry canhelp lift the ceiling from our brains so that we can imagine liberation.


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65MEREDITH WALKER

meredith walker

Smart Girls Read Poetry

What is the impact of poetry in our creative, professional, and per-sonal lives? For me, all three of those are intertwined, and have beensince I created Smart Girls with Amy Poehler. Smart Girls is an orga-nization dedicated to helping young people cultivate their authenticselves. We emphasize intelligence and imagination over “fitting in.”

We celebrate curiosity over gossip. We are a place where people canbe their weird and wonderful selves.

Smart Girls has grown into a real community. One of the maingoals of that community is to let people, especially young girls, knowthat they are not alone. Poetry is a part of that picture. I turn to po-etry to know that I am not alone in my own feelings — feelings thatI don’t know how to articulate. Poetry reminds me to be generouswith acknowledgment, to advocate for others, and to stay the course.

The earliest memory I have of poets and poetry is Shel Silverstein.At the time I wasn’t even aware that it was poetry. I just liked thesound and feeling of his words. I’m probably not alone when I saya lot of that feeling was lost when I encountered poetry at school.There it was mostly learning about iambic pentameter and onomato-poeia. Looking back on it, I didn’t really connect with or understandmost of the poetry I read in school. I connected with Doonesburyand Judy Blume instead. I wish I had encountered Edna St. Vincent

Millay. That would have been pretty incredible.The first time a poem resonated with me in a way that made it

stick was when I was told to read “The Guest House” by Rumi, theSufi poet. This poem helped me stop and think about the uninvitedaspects of my life. By welcoming them, they became less frightening.I still read “The Guest House” when I find myself hiding in the fa-miliar. This poem probably helped inspire our motto at Smart Girls:

“get your hair wet!”There is a kind of teaching without lecturing in Rumi’s poetry that

inspires me. In my frequently competitive and sometimes negativeworld, his optimism gives me a sense of hope. It has been said thathis poetry “celebrates union” — bringing together, ending isolation.I know that we all need that.


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67MEREDITH WALKER

to-human encounters deserve more respect than that. The origins ofour lives are a mystery, but I’m pretty sure it’s safe to say that those

origins weren’t from a benevolent energy cultivating cubicle farms.When the measurements I use for success aren’t adding up to whatsociety uses to measure success, I turn to Mary Oliver.

As you left their voices behind,the stars began to burnthrough the sheets of clouds,and there was a new voice,

which you slowlyrecognized as your own.

— From The Journey

This poem expresses what it feels like to discover your vocation. Forme, that was discovering that I wanted to move forward with creat-ing Smart Girls. But the poem is also about dumping your addictions,or dumping what is not working for you. “The Journey” a∞rms my

theory that unconventional choices work out more often than not.I live with a wonderful and kind-hearted man with whom I’ve madea family — of our adopted dogs. I put all my e≠ort into starting anonline community to help girls know themselves better. It isn’t al-ways a blast, but this is my life, and almost every Mary Oliver poemsheds light on it.

There is something positive about people of all kinds findingsomething of themselves and their world in poetry, even if others

consider the poetry less than brilliant. It’s like music. I would rathergo to somebody’s home and listen to something that’s not my favor-ite than go someplace where no music is played at all. What feeds mylife may not feed yours. Where you find understanding and mean-ing, I may not. What matters is bringing ourselves to a poem andbeing open about what we find within the words. Poetry becomesthat honest, beautiful, scary, confrontational, wonderful door for ourimagination.


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omar kholeif

To Speak with Many Tongues at Once

I have always been an immigrant, wherever it is I have lived inthe world. I left Egypt, where I was born, at three months of age.I lived in the West as an Arab infant whose family had imposed ex-ile. When I returned home as a teenager, I was a stranger to my ownextended family who sco≠ed and giggled at my polyglot Arabic ac-

cent. Now that I am living in the United States again, I realize thatI have been code-switching my whole life: not only speaking, butalso writing in a foreign language, a tongue and vernacular that isnot my own, constantly attempting to assimilate. Being a millennialdiasporic Arab, I have watched the world devour the image of mypeople and their collective identities on many stages. I’ve been privyto everyone from presidents to school kids spewing bigoted rhetoric,seeing the Arabic-speaking world conflated with the violence of re-

ligious extremism, a condition created and spoon-fed to the publicby political commentators who have perhaps withdrawn themselvesfrom their own complicity in making history.

I’ve always longed to find a native polyglot like me, someone whocould discuss the mutilation of the Arab image in the Western con-sciousness, with whom I could talk about Putin and Paris, Netanyahuand Nagasaki, Tehran and Tel Aviv. But increasingly, the freedomof expression is stripped and buried in the Arab world — the criti-

cal young Egyptian author Ahmed Naji, for example, was this yearsentenced to prison for writing novels that speak of sex and hashish.Egypt, the largest of Arab countries, is becoming akin to the violentlyoppressive and homophobic Cuba that Reinaldo Arenas protested.With the November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris, the image of theMuslim as well as the Arab became hollowed of any poetry: an apoca-lypse engulfing image and text.

As we seek resurrection and resuscitation from these ashes, there isone figure that I keep returning to, one who eloquently captures theessence of this collective trauma, and that is the poet, essayist, andpainter Etel Adnan. She was born in Beirut to a Syrian father and aGreek mother from Smyrna in 1925. Adnan grew up in a householdwhere multiple languages were exchanged: Greek, Arabic, Turkish,and French, to name the ones that I am certain of. However, in her


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The yellow sun’s procession from the mosque to the vacant Place.Mute taxis.

................................................................................The much awaited enemy has not come. He ate his yellow sun

and vomited.............................................................................A green sun on the Meadow of Tears sun in my pocket

wretched pocket sun.

The sun in these words is an embittered and pulsing device that

evokes, absorbs, and contains the trauma of Beirut after the LebaneseCivil War. The specificity of this context, however, can be used as anallegory for the collective trauma that has ensnared the nations of theArab world since the collapse of the Pan Arab ideal in 1967. Yet with-in Adnan’s words are coping mechanisms, ways out of the alienationinduced by diasporic Arab status. This is often most clearly evoked byher renderings of landscapes — in poetry, accompanied by her thickbroad brushstroke paintings. In Journey to Mount Tamalpais, Adnan

retreats from the burden of the past, seeking solace in the hills beforeher: “open wide the earth, shake trees from their roots,” she sub-mits, as she makes her way through numerous returns and crossings.

In Journey to Mount Tamalpais, we begin to sense a kind of liber-ated renewal taking place. Adnan is emancipating herself from theburden of being placeless (or indeed, of many nonplaces), claimingart as the site of her escape and shelter. By the time we reach forth to2012, a new form of critical resolve is conjured in her treatise on love,

which was first printed as a notebook for the renowned art eventDocumenta 13, The Cost for Love We Are Not Willing to Pay.

Love begins ... becomes a desire to repeat the experience. Itbecomes an itinerary. A voyage. The imagination takes overthat reality and starts building fantasies, dreams, projects ... Itcreates it own necessity, and in some people encompasses thewhole of life....

How can one bear such an intensity?...But what is love? And what are we giving up when we relin-

quish it? Love is not to be described, it is to be lived. We may deny it,but we know it when it takes hold of us. When something inourselves submits the self to itself.


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71OMAR KHOLEIF

Submitting the self to itself, to acknowledge one’s own polyphonywithin the world as a conditioned code-switcher is the ultimate re-

solve of these poetics. Etel Adnan dances through language, speakingnot only of many tongues but also of many places. Through her writ-ing, the condition of exile becomes one of possible resistance.


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Playground, 2008, by Tilleke Schwarz, with detail.


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73TILLEKE SCHWARZ

tilleke schwarz

Poetry Is Everywhere

I make hand-embroidered work that contains images, texts, and tra-ditional items such as sampler designs. My work typically has whatsome might call a poetic character, a result of the content, lively com-position, and sensitive use of color. I love poetry and relate to it, notby quoting lines in my work, but through the inspiration that is of-

fered by the free spirit of poets. A great example of such a poet isKira Wuck. Here is one of her poems, which I have translated myself:

Finnish girls seldom say helloThey are not shy nor arrogantOne only needs a chisel to come closerThey order their own beerTravel all over the world

While their men are waiting at homeWhen angry they send you a rotten salmon.

— From Finnish Girls

I am very impressed by this young Dutch poet. In 2011, she wonthe Dutch Poetry Slam Championship. Wuck is half Finnish andhalf Indonesian. The poems have a remote kind of humor with un-usual but precise language. I relate to the free and creative way she

combines images, like a chisel, beer, and a rotten salmon. I combineitems in a similar way in my own work. I have not used this beautifultext in my work yet, but I often use repetition of a traditional image.I now have started to add a carrot in each work as a kind of runninggag. I was very happy when Nigel Cheney machine-stitched plenty ofcarrots for me when he heard I had run out of carrots.

In art school we practiced a kind of calligraphy while copyinga section of “Lament for the Death of Ignacio Sánchez Mejías” byFrederico García Lorca. (We needed to practice calligraphy and ourteacher thought it would be best to use a good poem instead of a stu-pid text. A great idea!) The repetition of “A las cinco de la tarde” (Atfive in the afternoon) had a huge impact on me. The rhythm of thesecond (repeating) line reminds me of the ringing of church bells. Itis one of the few lines of poetry I remember after all these years.


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75TILLEKE SCHWARZ

I rarely include lines of poetry in my work, but a few times I wasinvited to do so. For instance, when I was participating in a group

exhibition that celebrated the two hundredth birthday of Alfred LordTennyson, the curator sent several lines for inspiration. In general Ihate to use other people’s themes for my work but the lines of po-etry spoke to me and I rather appreciated them, so I included “Asthe thistle shakes / When three gray linnets wrangle for the seed” and

“I am a part of all that I have met” in my work Playground.I always like to include text in my work, mostly out of its original

context, whether it is poetry or not. I like to think that it becomes a

kind of poetry (if not already) as new meanings appear and the oddi-ties of our modern society surface, which seems to be the main themein my work. For instance, last summer I had a layover in Detroit. Theairport is modern and pleasant, and not only people but also dogs arewelcome. There were specially designated “pet relief areas,” whichsounds a lot more inviting than the blunt toilet or WC for humanbeings. Pet relief can be understood variously as a device to get ridof one’s dog or as a kind of liberation. This poetry leaked through to

the design of the facility itself, including the tiny dog bidets. I prob-ably will use some of this inspiration in my work. As the visual artistSusan Hiller has said in her work, which mainly consists of huge texts,

“There is no distinction between ‘reading’ images and reading text.”Security is an extremely important issue in our modern world. It

makes us behave stranger than ever and dominates our way of living.I love signs that say “secret access code” for a simple locker at thetrain station or “suspicious circumstances” for an area one is not al-

lowed to enter. This sounds so mysterious but does not give any cluesto what is going on. Last year I received a parcel from the US withthe notice that it “does not contain any unauthorized explosives, de-structive devices, or hazardous materials.” The US seems to requirethe sender to add this kind of information to a package. To me it isabsolutely unusual to inform the addressee about what is not in thepackage.

When on holiday in Iceland I was intrigued by the content of theirnational phone book. The first pages contained instructions for thegeneral public regarding natural disasters. Attention was paid to vol-canic eruptions (“Always wear a helmet in the vicinity of eruptions”),lightning and thunderstorms, earthquakes, and avalanches. Exciting!The text would even improve when shortened (“take the short-est way out by moving perpendicular to the wind”). It o≠ered me


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Losing our memory, 1998, by Tilleke Schwarz, with detail.


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77TILLEKE SCHWARZ

something to think about: Why the general public? Why natural di-sasters? My favorite line is: “Stay where the wind blows and do not

go into low (!) areas.” First of all, it sounds romantic. Then I realizedthat I am also living in a low area (below sea level) and that area is alsocalled the “low countries” (the Netherlands and Belgium). So maybeI am risking my life over here.

Sometimes quotes knock on my door and insist to be part of mywork. “On ne mange pas tulipes” (one does not eat tulips) is an origi-nal quote from the French chef Paul Bocuse when a Dutch televisionhost interviewed him about what kinds of Dutch ingredients he uses

in his world-famous cuisine. His first answer was Gouda cheese, butthe interviewer insisted on hearing a bit more. Bocuse’s answer wasa little arrogant and humorous, but probably more dramatic than herealized. Tulip bulbs were a common dish near the end of WWIIwhen there was a great shortage of food in Holland. My mother-in-law told me she even liked them as they taste like onions. Needless tosay, she is not a very fussy eater.

I was born in 1946 but WWII had quite an influence on my life.

I am Jewish and my parents survived the war by being hidden byvery courageous farmers in the north of Holland. My eldest sisterwas protected by a minister and his wife. Most of my relatives, how-ever, were murdered. My parents hardly spoke about those times orthe loss of their numerous relatives. We hardly dared to ask; even inour childhood we somehow sensed that it was too painful and toodi∞cult to cope with.

The famous Dutch visual artist, writer, and poet Armando was

raised in the town of Amersfoort near a “transition camp” for pris-oners who were to be sent to concentration camps in Germany. Thesu≠ering of the victims and the cruelty of the Nazi camp guards, sonear to his home, influenced him for the rest of his life and becamethe main theme in his work. He blames “guilty landscapes and guiltytrees” and wonders why they did not do anything when the dramatook place.

Yes, the trees are still there, actually. But thatnoise, where does that noise come from.That did not used to be there.

— From Notes on the Enemy

I like the way he makes very short poems, often consisting of just a


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few lines with subtle references to the past. I try to deal with this pastin a similar way. I have known them all has many references to WWII

and my family. Tally marks recall the many murdered people. I useddi≠erent colors from reddish to gray to black to indicate that their fireis still slightly burning. In 1999 I included the Star of David and thewords “millenium proof” in my work Losing our memory.

Leo Vroman was a very interesting and sensitive Dutch poet. LikeArmando, he is multitalented as a Dutch-American hematologist, aprolific poet (mainly in Dutch), and an illustrator.

If I know better as a poetMy heart I do not know you very wellAnd uncertain if you know me well;You are maybe used to meOr mainly attached to me.

— From If I know better as a poet

I am not certain about the meaning behind the quoted lines. But I as-

sume they are part of a love song for his wife, Tineke. Their mutualhistory is a moving love story. I have never expressed my love onlinen, except for maybe the love for my main muse: my cats. Almostall my works contain some cats.


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COMMENT


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81BEN LERNER

ben lerner

From “The Hatred of Poetry”

We were taught at an early age that we are all poets simply by virtue ofbeing human. Our ability to write poems is therefore in some sensethe measure of our humanity. At least that’s what we were taught inTopeka: we all have feelings inside us (where are they located, ex-actly?); poetry is the purest expression (the way an orange expresses

juice?) of this inner domain. Since language is the stu≠ of the social,and poetry the expression in language of our irreducible individual-ity, our personhood is tied up with our poethood. “You’re a poet andyou don’t even know it,” Mr. X used to tell us in second grade; hewould utter this irritating little refrain whenever we said somethingthat happened to rhyme. I think the jokey cliché betrays a real beliefabout the universality of poetry: some kids take piano lessons, somekids study tap dance, but we don’t say every kid is a pianist or dancer.

You’re a poet, however, whether or not you know it, because to bepart of a linguistic community — to be hailed as a “you” at all — is tobe endowed with poetic capacity.

If you are an adult foolish enough to tell another adult that youare (still!) a poet, they will often describe for you their falling awayfrom poetry: I wrote it in high school; I dabbled in college. Almost neverdo they write it now. They will tell you they have a niece or nephewwho writes poetry. These familiar encounters — my most recent was

at the dentist, my mouth propped open while Dr. X almost gaggedme with a mirror, as if searching for my innermost feelings — havea tone that’s di∞cult to describe. There is embarrassment for thepoet — couldn’t you get a real job and put your childish ways behindyou? — but there is also embarrassment on the part of the non-poetbecause having to acknowledge one’s total alienation from poetrychafes against the early association of poem and self. The ghost ofthat romantic conjunction makes the falling away from poetry afalling away from the pure potentiality of being human into thevicissitudes of being an actual person in a concrete historical situa-tion, your hands in my mouth. I had the sensation that Dr. X, as heknocked the little mirror against my molars, was contemptuous ofthe idea that genuine poetry could issue from such an opening. AndDr. X was right: there is no genuine poetry; there is only, after all,


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and at best, a place for it.The awkward and even tense exchange between a poet and non-

poet — they often happen on an airplane or in a doctor’s o∞ce orsome other contemporary no-place — is a little interpersonal breachthat reveals how inextricable “poetry” is from our imagination of so-cial life. Whatever we think of particular poems, “poetry” is a wordfor the meeting place of the private and the public, the internal andthe external; my capacity to express myself poetically and to com-prehend such expressions is a fundamental qualification for socialrecognition. If I have no interest in poetry or if I feel repelled by

actual poems, either I am failing the social or the social is failing me.I don’t mean that Dr. X or whoever thinks in these terms, or thatthese assumptions about poetry are present for everyone or in thesame degree, or that this is the only or best way of thinking aboutpoetry, but I am convinced that the embarrassment or suspicion oranger that is often palpable in such meetings derives from this senseof poetry’s tremendous social stakes (combined with a sense of itstremendous social marginalization). And it’s these stakes which

make actual poems an o≠ense: if my seatmate in a holding patternover Denver calls on me to sing, demands a poem from me that willunite coach and first class in one community, I can’t do it. Maybe thisis because I don’t know how to sing or because the passengers don’tknow how to listen, but it might also be because “poetry” denotes animpossible demand. This is one underlying reason why poetry is sooften met with contempt rather than mere indi≠erence and why it isperiodically denounced as opposed to simply dismissed: most of us

carry at least a weak sense of a correlation between poetry and humanpossibility that cannot be realized by poems. The poet by his veryclaim to be a maker of poems is therefore both an embarrassment andaccusation.

And when you are foolish enough to identify yourself as a poetyour interlocutors will often ask: A published poet? And when youtell them that you are, indeed, a published poet, they seem at leastvaguely impressed. Why is that? It’s not like they or anybody theyknow reads poetry journals. And yet there is something deeply right,I think, about this knee-jerk appeal to publicity. It’s as if to say:Everybody can write a poem, but has your poetry, the distillationof your innermost being, been found authentic and intelligible byothers? Can it circulate among persons, make of its readership, how-ever small, a People in that sense? This accounts for the otherwise


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ba±ingly persistent association of poetry and fame — ba±ing sinceno poets are famous among the general population. To demand proof

of fame is to demand proof that your song is at once utterly specificto you and exemplary for others.

(At the turn of the millennium, when I was the editor of a tinypoetry and art magazine, I would receive a steady stream of submis-sions — our address was online — from people who had clearly neverread our publication but whose cover letters expressed a remarkabledesperation to have their poems printed anywhere. Some of these let-ters — tens of them — explained that the poet in question was su≠ering

from a terminal condition and wanted, needed, to see his or her po-ems published before he or she died. I have three letters here thatcontain the sentence “I don’t know how long I have.” I also receivedmultiple letters from prisoners who felt poetry publication was theirbest available method for asserting they were human beings, notmerely criminals. I’m not mocking these poets; I’m o≠ering them asexamples of the strength of the implicit connection between poetryand the social recognition of the poet’s humanity. It’s an association

so strong that the writers in question observe no contradiction inthe fact that they are attempting to secure and preserve their person-hood in a magazine that no one they know will see. It is as thoughthe actual poem and publication do not matter; what matters is thatthe poet will know and can report to others that she

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