An Embarrassment of Riches

12 by 12 in 2012 - Poets, that is - by Alison If you're like me you're always meaning to read more poetry. And not just because of that vague, niggling sense that poetry is good for you, but because the experience of reading a poem is immersive. I find that reading and then re-reading a good poem puts me in a meditative state as I try, on my first read, to skate along the surface, and then on subsequent reads, to find a deeper meaning. I'm not that practiced at it, and I sometimes wish that I had knowledgeable friends with whom to discuss poetry, a poetry club, if you will.

With that idea in mind, we're launching a Facebook program this year. It's called 12 by 12 in 2012. Each month we'll post a poem online and Special Collections Librarian, Jim Carmin, will hang out with the poet and you, entertaining your questions and having a lively discussion. Our first event will take place on Monday, January 23rd from 2-3pm with Matthew Dickman. We wanted to give you a head start on Matthew's poem, and so we are posting it here. Enjoy, and please join us on Monday to chat with Matthew and Jim, if you have a chance. (Please note that you will have to 'like' Multnomah County Library's Facebook page to participate in the chat.)

BOUGAINVILLEA

I like the inner lives of the silverware; the fork,

the spoon, the knife. I appreciate

how they each have a different reference toward

god, how the fork is Muslim,

the spoon, like a stone, is Buddhist, how the knife

is Roman Catholic—

always worried, always having

a hard time forgiving people, the knife kneeling

down in Ireland and Africa. In San Francisco

my lamp has become a temple.

Every time I turn it on the light moves out across

the room like a meditation,

like a bell or a robe

the way it covers everything and doesn’t want to

kill. Light is the husband

and everything it touches is its bride, the floor,

the wall, my body,

the bronze installation in Hayes Valley

its bride. The lamp chants

and my clothes, my hat thrown in the corner of the room

chants back: nothing, nothing. In my next life

I’ll have no fingers, no toes. In my next life I’ll be

a bougainvillea. A Buddhist monk

will wake up early on Sunday morning and not be a fork

and not be a knife, he will look down at the girl

sleeping in his bed like a body of water,

he will think about how

he lifted her up like a spoon to his mouth all night, and walk

into the courtyard and pick up the shears

and cut a little part of me, and lie me down next to her mouth

which is breathing heavily and changing all the dark in the room to light.

Haiku Throwdown - Poetic Patrons Prevail - by Alison A couple of weeks ago we held a contest. The challenge was to write a haiku review of a book or film. Our winner was Michelle Overby, who got the most votes with this little tribute to Henry James' The Turn of the Screw:

Just then I felt a
presence in the room that had
not been there before.

We were impressed. In fact, there were so many fine entries, we thought we'd share a few more.

Spine not even cracked
Bossypants back at Belmont
Forgive me, Tina

- Lucy Chisler on Bossy Pants

Ishmael and Queequeg
Went whaling on The Pequod
Not knowing Ahab
- Jeff Palmer on Moby Dick

Southern injustice /
Black man and a chifarobe /
Kids and Boo prevail.

- Lisa Shaw on To Kill a Mockingbird

Four men, sworn scholars
fore-swear their books in favor
of four femmes fatales.

- Kate Karman on Love's Labours Lost by Shakespeare

 
Victories hard won
So much struggle, sacrifice
They are my heroes

Latina Anderson on A People's History of the United States 

That movie about
the Disney ride: Too much length
and not enough Depp

Greg Weber on any Pirates of the Caribbean movies
 
Guy named Sam-I-am
Does not like green eggs and ham
Until he tries them

- Juliet Morefield on Green Eggs and Ham

and finally...

Flip flip flip
pages turn effortlessly
in long summer days
- Jed Mitchell

Hope the rest of your summer days are spent in languorously turning pages.

A Voice Like Egypt - by Markrid

Here's a rare treat for music lovers, armchair travelers, and those who value the cultural background of current events: the 68-minute DVD documentary "Umm Kulthum: a voice like Egypt", narrated in English by Omar Sharif.

Umm Kulthum was an immensely influential Egyptian classical singer. For decades she performed to sold-out houses across the Arabic-speaking world, reviving and expanding the tradition of sung poetry. She was a patriot and a nationalist -"Music must represent our Eastern spirit", she said -  but she was an artist above all. Learn by ear, play by heart, she instructed her musicians; and like "a preacher inspired by her congregation", as novelist Naguib Mahfouz described her, her hours-long concerts would bring her audiences to a state approaching ecstasy. She has no counterpart in the West. She swayed kings and presidents; when she died in 1975, four million people came out for her funeral; and even now, every day at five o'clock Cairo radio plays a song by Umm Kuthum. This short, well-edited film is a fine portrait of a great singer, but it also provides a remarkably compact, insightful look at the evolution of modern Egypt.

It's Never too Late (or too Early) to do your Holiday Reading - by Ruby

Yes, I know it's the middle of February, but I just can't wait till December to tell you about the U. K.'s poet-laureate, Carol Ann Duffy's Christmas poem, Mrs. Scrooge.  Duffy and her illustrator Beth Adams serve us a mashup of Dickens' classic story with a contemporary twist: Mrs.S., in modern dress, is a practicing environmentalist of the 21st century. But she's still a bit of a Scrooge - with a green stripe.    

She hated waste, consumerism, Mrs. Scrooge, foraged                                                                                 in the London parks for chestnuts, mushrooms,                                                                           blackberries,                                                                                                                                             ate leftovers, recycled, mended, passed on, purchased                                                                 secondhand,                                                                                                                                         turned the heating down and put on layers, walked
everywhere
drank tap-water, used public libraries, possessed a wind-
up radio,
switched off lights, lit candles (darkness is cheap and
Mrs. Scrooge
liked it) and would not spend one penny on a plastic bag.

The story opens with Mr. S. (who was beloved) described as "doornail-dead" and Mrs. S. living all alone in a building scheduled for imminent demolition. She's begun to lose heart about her belief in the possibility for great change. As night falls, she, as Ebenezer before her, visits the Christmases past, present and future and experiences a similar renewal of hope. Duffy's language is light and crisp, the narration reminiscent of Alan Bennett. Don't miss it, even if you decide to read it in summer. I had a great experience once reading A Christmas Carol in the middle of July! Oh, and by the way, in this story the word humbug refers to the lovely striped candy.

"Observing with Passion" - by Helen In 1964, I started keeping a notebook of phrases, poems, and parts of books that I like. Needless to say, I have filled notebooks and still have little pieces of paper sticking out of books and tucked away in drawers. Years ago, I copied a poem by Mary Oliver called When Death Comes. I was particularly struck by this verse,

When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

I like the idea of being "married to amazement".

When Winter Hours: A Book of Prose and Prose Poems by Oliver came across my desk, I had to read it.

One of the first things to strike me about her writing is how she sees, observes, notices -- and the quality of her sight. As I read further, I was on high alert to watch for more signs of seeing and sight. She says of other writers and thinkers, "Thus the great ones have taught me... -- to observe with passion, to think with patience, to live always care-ingly."

Describing her own methods, she says, "I walk and I notice.  I am sensual in order to be spiritual. I look into everything without cutting into anything."

Another pleasure of this book is the essays on Poe, Robert Frost and Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Mary Oliver is a close observer and reader. In her meditation on Poe, she states,"In this universe we are given two gifts: the ability to love, and the ability to ask questions. Which are, at the same time, the fires that warm us and the fires that scorch us. This is Poe's real story. As it is ours. And this is why we honor him, why we are fascinated far past the simple narratives. He writes about our own inescapable destiny."

One of the reasons that Mary Oliver is attracted to the poet, Robert Frost is that, "There is everywhere in Frost a sense that a man has time to look at things, to think and to feel." She writes a whole essay on Frost's two different messages, "everything is all right, say the metre and the rhyme, everything is not all right, say the words."  She feels that Frost writes of play and pleasure, wonder, reason and hope, "But the great height is not there. The sharp spilling of the soul into the whistling air- the pure spine-involved and organ-attached bliss - is not there."

Her own prose is often poetic, "The storm comes on an incoming tide; it therefore grows in power for the six hours of flashing tumble and shove toward us…. Indeed, what such fetch and wind in the rising tide do to the water of the surface is beautiful and dreadful. It shines, for the clouds are thin and racing by, and the light alters from gray to steel to a terrible flashing, a shirred, swarming surface."

Who can resist such stirring sentences!

Read it Yourself Poetry - by Helen and Alison Does anyone read poetry anymore? If I find a piece of poetry under my nose, I'm likely to read it. If I'm sitting on the bus, I will read it. If there's a poem in the newspaper, I'll read it. If it's stuck up on someone's cubicle wall, I will definitely read it. But I don't keep up with the latest in the poetry world.
I think part of the problem is that many poems are really meant to be read aloud, rather than being left to bounce around in the confines of our skulls. Hip hop artists and poets who perform in poetry slams have it right - to really appreciate the cadence, to savor the words, you have to hear it aloud. So in honor of National Poetry Month, here is our modest rendition of  "Book Lice" from Paul Fleischman's Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices. Do try this at home, or borrow the audio book and let someone read to you. (Listen to the podcast here. For more podcasts from the library visit http://multcolib.libsyn.com/)