Tuesday, January 24, 2006
Some odds and ends
In the first post I put on this blog, I said I would use it to try and write about poetry and related things. Here are a few of the related things.
This last fall, Pulse of the Twin Cities (a weekly paper in Minneapolis) published a highly interesting article on the Bush family oil business, and in particular shedding light on the Bushes' business dealings with the Nazi goverment of Germany during the 1930's and 1940's. The same issue of the paper included a short related sidebar item, a brief amusing recollection of Prescott Bush (George W.'s grandfather) by a man who once worked at an elite club where P. Bush was a member; it's here.
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A while back I found an informative article by Jonathan Cohen about Waldeen, a dancer, writer and scholar of the early 20th century, and one of the first translators of Pablo Neruda's poetry into English. (She was one of the translators of the landmark Neruda selection Let the Rail-Splitter Awake, published by International Publishers in the 1950's.)
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I enjoyed a short article by William Duffy in Robert Bly's website, a few anecdotes from 1957 and 1958 when Bly and Duffy were first publishing the groundbreaking poetry magazine The Fifties (subsequently The Sixties, The Seventies, and most recently The Thousands). The author of the article is the same William Duffy named in the title of James Wright's famous poem "Lying in a Hammock on William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota."
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Poet Jack Beeching first came to my attention years ago when Thomas McGrath mentioned him from time to time. They were long-time friends and colleagues, and had strong political sympathies. A good biographical article about Jack Beeching is in one the online issues of Jacket. Jacket is one of my favorite poetry magazines in general these days; the Jacket main page is here.
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The online poetry magazine Pemmican some time back published an essay of mine, "On Political Poetry." A while after that, Pemmican published an essay by Eric Racher in response to my article. Following that, at the suggestion of Pemmican editor Bob Edwards, I wrote a response to Eric Racher's response, which Pemmican has also published.
If you care to check out the online debate (or sorts), my original essay is here; Eric Racher's response is here; and my response to Racher is here.
Some poems of mine are also available in Pemmican, in the current Poems section, here, and in the Archive section, here.
There's much excellent poetry and other writing in Pemmican. I encourage you to spend some time there. A couple of print poetry magazines I particularly like these days are Blue Collar Review and Main Street Rag. I encourage you to check them out too.
This last fall, Pulse of the Twin Cities (a weekly paper in Minneapolis) published a highly interesting article on the Bush family oil business, and in particular shedding light on the Bushes' business dealings with the Nazi goverment of Germany during the 1930's and 1940's. The same issue of the paper included a short related sidebar item, a brief amusing recollection of Prescott Bush (George W.'s grandfather) by a man who once worked at an elite club where P. Bush was a member; it's here.
* * * *
A while back I found an informative article by Jonathan Cohen about Waldeen, a dancer, writer and scholar of the early 20th century, and one of the first translators of Pablo Neruda's poetry into English. (She was one of the translators of the landmark Neruda selection Let the Rail-Splitter Awake, published by International Publishers in the 1950's.)
* * * *
I enjoyed a short article by William Duffy in Robert Bly's website, a few anecdotes from 1957 and 1958 when Bly and Duffy were first publishing the groundbreaking poetry magazine The Fifties (subsequently The Sixties, The Seventies, and most recently The Thousands). The author of the article is the same William Duffy named in the title of James Wright's famous poem "Lying in a Hammock on William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota."
* * * *
Poet Jack Beeching first came to my attention years ago when Thomas McGrath mentioned him from time to time. They were long-time friends and colleagues, and had strong political sympathies. A good biographical article about Jack Beeching is in one the online issues of Jacket. Jacket is one of my favorite poetry magazines in general these days; the Jacket main page is here.
* * * *
The online poetry magazine Pemmican some time back published an essay of mine, "On Political Poetry." A while after that, Pemmican published an essay by Eric Racher in response to my article. Following that, at the suggestion of Pemmican editor Bob Edwards, I wrote a response to Eric Racher's response, which Pemmican has also published.
If you care to check out the online debate (or sorts), my original essay is here; Eric Racher's response is here; and my response to Racher is here.
Some poems of mine are also available in Pemmican, in the current Poems section, here, and in the Archive section, here.
There's much excellent poetry and other writing in Pemmican. I encourage you to spend some time there. A couple of print poetry magazines I particularly like these days are Blue Collar Review and Main Street Rag. I encourage you to check them out too.
Thursday, January 12, 2006
Burning ground
When I first found the poems of Anuradha Mahapatra around ten years ago, I was amazed. They were unlike anything I had read before. Mahapatra, a poet of contemporary India, grew up in working class family in a small village in Bengal and later moved to Kalkata (Calcutta), studied Bengali literature at Calcutta University, and in the years since has worked at various editorial jobs, done freelance writing, has worked for the Uprooted Toilers' Rights Association, and has taught the children of pavement dwellers. She also has published several collections of poems since the early 1980's.
The excerpts quoted here, and the biographical information, are taken from Another Spring, Darkness, a selection of Mahapatra's poems translated into English by Carolyne Wright with Paramita Banerjee and Jyotirmoy Datta (Calyx Books, 1996).
Anuradha Mahapatra's poems speak with an openness and a relentless concentration on telling the truth of her experience, an intensity that seems to ignite flames. From the poem "Primeval":
Another Spring, Darkness includes an introduction with biographical information about Mahapatra and broad historical background, and endnotes that I found invaluable in shedding light on the frequent offhand references in the poems to cultural, religious and historical details of India.
Whether writing about moonlight, or song, or a wedding ceremony, or the lives of workers who tend to the cremation of bodies, or a women forced by poverty into prostitution when their husbands die, Anuradha Mahapatra communicates an abundant humanity that will not be extinguished.
From the poem "Tambura":
The excerpts quoted here, and the biographical information, are taken from Another Spring, Darkness, a selection of Mahapatra's poems translated into English by Carolyne Wright with Paramita Banerjee and Jyotirmoy Datta (Calyx Books, 1996).
Anuradha Mahapatra's poems speak with an openness and a relentless concentration on telling the truth of her experience, an intensity that seems to ignite flames. From the poem "Primeval":
In the cold throat rises the ferry boatman's song;Mahapatra's poems flow with sensual detail, drawing the reader in to physical experience; she reminds me of the 20th century Japanese poet Yosano Akiko in this respect. These lines from Mahapatra's poem "Mother of the Bud":
two flowers the color of lovers
rise glistening beside the lion gate;
two raw untempered drops of fire
dripping on the cold grass
and over the moonful lion gate break waves
of long-beloved Madhukan the temple singer's hymns of praise.
The moon breaks over the lion gate,
the moon breaks over the stone shape,
and the cold moon like a luna-hooded shape
swallows the horizon and the ferry boatman's song!
The monsoon's drowning crystal bowl of a moon risesThe poetry of India is huge and as vastly varied as the life and culture of India itself. The gathered energies of multiple traditions -- literary, cultural, philosophical, religious, political -- work through Mahapatra's poems. In the poem "Girl Before Her Marriage," according to an endnote in the Another Spring, Darkness, the "bath of blood" is an ironic reference to the practice of a woman on the day before her wedding bathing in colored -- usually red -- water, in which her husband-to-be has also bathed, which is felt to be symbolic of the mingling of their bodies and fate.
from the underworld river,
moonlight's milky tides float in the full breasts.
Folding her knees, her hands unclean from mourning
trembling in moonlight, the mother of the bud
opens the shivering flower.
Under the karam-tree, the girl about to be marriedThe literature of India is multiple literatures in many languages, extending back centuries and, in some cases, millennia. The Oxford Anthology of Modern Indian Poetry edited by A. K. Ramanujan and Vinay Dharwadker (Oxford University Press, 1990) provides at least an introductory glimpse at the tapestry. Other compiliations and translations by Ramanujan are worth seeking out as well. Andrew Schelling has edited and translated two anthologies of poetry of classical India, Dropping the Bow (Broken Moon Press, 1991) and The Cane Groves of Narmada River (City Lights Books, 1998); his translations are quite readable, and both anthologies include highly useful bibliographies of classical poetry of India in English translation.
sits alone after her bath of blood.
Within her breast and outstretched arms: vegetation, sea, cave-art,
the swaha-mantra chanted at the ceremony's end.
Not art but suicide, a profound offering as if to a cobra.
Someone brings water in spellbound hands, the Meghamallar raga
plays on all the strings of the body.
Even though the sky's so near
an auspicious planet dies.
The girl is drawn to the evil hour's
lonely seasonal dark storm.
Another Spring, Darkness includes an introduction with biographical information about Mahapatra and broad historical background, and endnotes that I found invaluable in shedding light on the frequent offhand references in the poems to cultural, religious and historical details of India.
Whether writing about moonlight, or song, or a wedding ceremony, or the lives of workers who tend to the cremation of bodies, or a women forced by poverty into prostitution when their husbands die, Anuradha Mahapatra communicates an abundant humanity that will not be extinguished.
From the poem "Tambura":
[...]Behind the deep yellow flowersWhen I first read Another Spring, Darkness ten years ago, I commented to a number of friends that it was one of the best books of poems I'd read in years; and it still is. The poetry of Anuradha Mahapatra is essential in understanding the psyche and the living body of the modern world.
you can still hear Malati Ghoshal's song, even more like
sloping yellow flowers. If fallen bloody hair
descends from the sky today
and comes to a halt on the breasts, there's no salvation
for this flower without a sun, nor
for these jackals in a trance, the trees,
the tambura of the woman's heart.
