La reina se va de descanso en su trono…

Well, this is it, the last entry in a movimiento here on Harriet, in which I featured every Wednesday (25 Wednesdays to be exact) books that excited me, intrigued me, renewed my faith in poetry. The honor of the send-off goes to poet Alessandra Lynch, for her second collection of poems selected by James Richardson to be part of the Lena-Miles Wever Todd Poetry Series.

I say this without the least bit of exaggeration: keep your eye on these two literary ventures because they’re going to impress you with the journeys they have embarked on and with the heights they’ll inevitably reach.

Those who have enjoyed Poets House’s old venue on Spring Street (I have yet to make it to the new location down by Battery Park—but I’ll get there!) understand the overwhelming energy that comes from being surrounded by books and books of poetry. At any bookstore (except at Open Books, of course) poetry gets a slim reception, almost as an afterthought, with little attention to range, certainly none to content. Poetry is tucked away like the ugly cousin to the more glamorous Fiction category. At Poets House, poetry haters need not enter. This is our space, our comfort zone, where verse—from the weak to the brilliant, from the esoteric to the populist—can claim a slot on the bookcase without apology or explanation. It is poetry. I’m thrilled that such sites are also thriving elsewhere, as in outside of New York City, like the Poetry Center down in Tucson, Arizona.

It’s tempting to invoke the phrase “Oedipus complex� in discussing this book by debut poet James Allen Hall; Mother (with a capital M), mythic figure, source of many glorious beginnings (and a few tragic endings), and indeed the defining lens to the worlds of the imagination and reality, is an unavoidable muse, an inescapable word uttered as an expression of wonder, a declamation of fear, and as the point of reference for things beautiful and dreadful. But Hall’s Mother moves beyond the son’s eye and takes shape as an independent body with agency and history outside male desire. She exists, with and without him:

(The “e� at the end, the UDP website explains, comes from Kafka- or K-Presse, a small German publishing house.)

First of all, isn’t this like the best name for a press? This art & publishing collective was founded in 1993 by “a couple of college kids who wanted to put together a zine, without really knowing what that is.� Fifteen years later, this humble do-it-yourself-Xeroxed-project-beginning matured into a reputable and cutting-edge enterprise that publishes poetry by undiscovered voices, lost works, translations and artist’s books. It also produces chapbooks, broadsides, a magazine and a newspaper. And each and every publication contains a “handmade element� that “calls attention to the labor and history of bookmaking.� This is indeed a refreshing approach that answers to the mass market product (and sometimes uninspired content) coming out of the large New York houses.

Here’s an unusual double-duty entry: both a special Thank You to my favorite poetry bookstore Open Books in Seattle, where I stand around and gab for hours about all-things poetic while browsing the fabulous shelves (over 9,000 titles and counting!—indeed the poetry reader’s paradise), and a special Friday Shout Out to its co-proprietor, poet J.W. Marshall—John, to you and me—whose debut book of poems, winner of the 2007 FIELD Poetry Prize, was just released. Poetry poetry everywhere, indeed.

Elder statesman, Xicanindio leader, poet of the people, giver of hope to the
oppressed and the incarcerated, Raúl Salinas passed away last night in Austin, Tejaztlán.

Arktoi Books is an exciting new imprint of Red Hen Press. The brainchild of beloved poet Eloise Klein Healey this series, which publishes both prose and poetry, highlights the very best writing by lesbian authors. Officially launching this year, the first title is by the poet Elizabeth Bradfield.

It means “Sleepy Hollow� in Old Dutch. Yes, that Sleepy Hollow, as in the place Mr. Washington Irving put on the literary map, though for the past twenty years, the Hudson Valley Writers’ Center has been working hard to build on that legacy. The vision of poet and founder Margo Stever has indeed blossomed into an extraordinary place for the arts. Only a train ride away from Grand Central in Manhattan, the center is itself the (currently under construction) Philipse Manor railroad station. One of the HVWC’s defining projects is this small press imprint that publishes the work of emerging poets. A number of the authors in this series, like Dina Ben-Lev, Rachel Loden, David Tucker and Sean Nevin, have gone on to publish full-length books. Most likely the same journey awaits the recent chapbook competition winner Stephanie Lenox.

This small but noble venture begins in 1991 in Connecticut, with hand-printed limited-edition broadsides of original works by writers established and emerging. Two years later it goes on hiatus as the press relocates and regroups, reappearing last year in New York City. This time around, the press produces attractive little chapbooks under its three imprints: Fabula Rasa (with a focus on folklore), Funny Bones (works of light verse and humor), and Body Language, a series highlighting works that engage issues of gender and sexuality. Title one of this third imprint is the poetry chapbook written by Achy Obejas.

Rick Barot is one of the most elegant, graceful poets I have come across. And I have anticipated the release of his new book after having taught The Darker Fall many times over the years since its first release in 2002. I have always admired his attention to rhythm, to the line, and to the precision of his language. Barot’s carefully chiseled stanzas give the distinct impression that he’s sculpting, or carving out of wood a marvelous artifact, not wooden at all, but startling and expressive. Perhaps this is why a number of the poems in this new collection are in dialogue with artistic media: literature, film, painting, and even performance art.

Well, I survived my ninth AWP conference. I’ll say what every New Yorker (including me) said about the conference being held in our city this year: it wasn’t fair. We didn’t get to feel as if we were leaving our duties and obligations behind since we simply skipped over from our respective Big Apple dwellings. But to even out the score, I heard many out-of-towners share this sentiment: that they didn’t feel they came to New York; they came to AWP.

My fifth month of weekly shout outs comes to a close today (only one more month before I too sign off the PF blog—how I’ll miss thee, Harriet!), so I decided to do something different: instead of reaching over to my personal poetry bookshelf or to the review copies pile, I skipped over to my local neighborhood bookstore to browse the literature stacks and I came across the following volume by a name not unfamiliar to me—I hear he’s one of the illustrious poet graduates from Queens College. My interest was further piqued by the subtitle: “Letters to the Islamic Republic.� As I leafed through the collection, the critical tone against an oppressive religious government and its constant assaults on freedom of expression emanated loud and clear. Ah, politics and poetry: my favorite artistic combination. I offer two pieces, the second an excerpt from a longer poem:

As a young gay man growing up closeted in a Mexican household, I had to find my queer role models in books. In high school I heard that Federico García Lorca was gay, and that so was Tennessee Williams, and Truman Capote, and Walt Whitman. Though their works weren’t necessarily queer—I really had to read into them sometimes—knowing that the literature was the artistry of a gay man was enough. I had yet to discover John Rechy, Francisco X. Alarcón, and Arturo Islas (my gay Chicano role models, none of them taught at my high school) but I did come across during my senior year, the verse by the Greek poet Cavafy (1863-1933).

Say what you will about this conference, it’s the one I look forward to every year. And I hope to see you there. I’m on two panels this time around, and I’ll spare you the details. I’d rather promote other happenings, like the annual Con Tinta Pachanga, one of the many off-site events made possible because the Chicano/Latino writers wanted to have a community space of their own during this reunion-at-large of writers. All are welcome.

Winner of the American Poetry Review/Honickman First Book Prize, Gregory Pardlo’s Totem, is (as its title declares) a literary version of an emblem representing, in this case, the ancestry that inspires the poet’s verse. But the ancestry in question extends beyond the homes of the poet’s childhood and moves into the intellectual and spiritual communities of his adult education and curiosity. Reflection and observation merge frequently, set in motion by the most incidental of activities that become significant suddenly.

There’s been plenty of talk and balk on Harriet regarding translations, and as a translator and teacher of literary translation, as someone who’s first language is not English, I’ve decided to finally speak up but through the introduction of one of the best translation projects I have come across to date: Pablo Medina and Mark Statman’s collaborative English version of Federico García Lorca’s conflicted love letter to our beloved New York City.

When I came across this book of poems, I was struck by its use of the surreal: “The password is still bird, folded wings unfurling against the damp sides of your mouth.� Jenny Browne crafts her language into imagery that gestures toward optical illusion, where the vehicle and the tenor can switch places without warning. Look closely and it’s exactly what it seems, and what it doesn’t seem. And in this book of curious metaphors, everything is subject to transformation: a troubled marriage, a bout of insomnia, the man who gives bad directions in downtown San Antonio.

Just returned from the party at City Lights Bookstore. You can check out the finalists for the other categories at the National Book Critics Circle blog Critical Mass, but since I’m on both the NBCC board and on Harriet, I thought I’d post the poetry finalists here.

I’m in San Francisco for the National Book Critics Circle board meeting, and the award finalists for the six categories will be announced tonight at City Lights Bookstore (I’ll post the poetry finalists as soon as the party’s over), so it seemed appropriate that I highlight a title from City Lights Press.

Additionally, the media has been inundated with snapshots and portraits (flattering and unflattering) of the potential presidential candidates, all of whom have been fielding questions and criticisms regarding certain charged topics such as the economy, the war, and, yet again, “illegal immigration.� How fitting that this book by Chicano poet Juan Felipe Herrera take its position, politically and poetically, fiercely and unapologetically, with its collection of “undocuments.�

“The eye will feed itself a myth,� writes James Hoch in this unsettling yet gorgeous second collection of poems that explores the darker stories of art, literature, and the grating newspaper headlines that stop the reader’s breath. And then there is the underbelly of the more familiar happenings, like planting a tree outside a hospital, crossing a nondescript bridge by car, and attending the high school prom:

I’ve been making extensive cross-country flights this past month, from NYC to Seattle, from NYC to San Francisco (twice), and from NYC to Ontario, California on my way to the U.S.-México border, and each time I carried a book on board to keep me grounded (pun intended) during these lengthy, gravity-defying plane rides. Well, on one occasion, I had a copy of Jenny Boully’s new book of essays under my arm and as I made my way down the aisle a woman sitting in an exit row leaned over and asked, “Is that a poetry book?�

I’m trying to get my blog momentum back, but it’s not going to be easy: I’m currently in residence at Vermont College of Fine Arts up in snowy Montpelier. Yesterday it was ten degrees below zero, this morning it felt warmer: three below. And while I was up here I finished editing my forthcoming book of stories, Men without Bliss, and reading nominated books for the National Book Critics Circle (finalists for the award will be announced next week in San Francisco!), and of course, my teaching duties: poetry workshop, poetry lecture, poetry chit-chat.

Happy New Year!

During this holiday season of merriment and celebration, as those of us who are more fortunate do our gift-giving and eating and partying, indeed feed our bodies with spiritual and social nourishment, I look to the artists for perspective. I was pleased to discover A New Hunger. The polyglot poet Laure-Anne Bosselaar closes her third full-length book of poems with the following piece, which I have formally adopted as my bedtime prayer:

As a few of us choose go on break from HARRIET (I’m off to the homeland to see my carnal, Texaco Alex), I’d like to end the year with this shout out because Montoya dedicated it “To Rigoberto De Michoacán.�

It’s “joda,� with a strong J, as in “joder,� as in“chingar,� as in “twenty years of struggle,� as in “twenty years of fighting back.� This collection, commemorating two decades worth of work by Chicano poet José Montoya, one of the writers who pioneered the use of Caló and code-switching in American poetry, was published in 1992 by Chusma House Publications. It includes a portfolio with representations of Pachucas y Pachucos, Cholas y Cholos, Chicanas y Chicanos and other images reflecting a vato’s worldview. “I chose to include ’em,� Montoya explains in his preface, “because they were done in el mismo espíritu that the poems were written in.� One of his watercolors graces the cover.

Sometimes simplicity’s the thing, though that doesn’t mean the ideas or motivations behind the poem are simple. I came across this beautiful debut on one of my visits back to Arizona State (Josh Rathkamp’s yet another graduate of that writing program—go Sun Devils!), and I was pleased to discover this distinct voice that has much to say about young relationships, first heartbreaks and early encounters with the untamable, unpredictable world of adulthood.

Last Friday I had the privilege of sitting as one of the guest judges at the final round of the All Girl Poetry Slam. Sponsored by Girlstory, a multi-cultural, multi-generational women’s writing collective (and an organization created out a residency at another important arts organization, Community Word Project), this venue is all about fostering girl power, and the December 14 event determined the poetry slam team on its way to the Brave New Voices Poetry Slam this summer in Washington D.C.

Here’s an unusual little book from my shelf. I say unusual because it’s the winner of the Bordighera Poetry Prize for a book whose author is of Italian descent. The prize includes an honorarium, publication, and the promise that the winning manuscript will be published in a bilingual edition, face to face with its Italian translation. It certainly is an honorable gesture, this effort to preserve the legacy of the Italian language, but also to recognize that Italian American literature is part of Italy’s cultural lineage.

Sarah Browning is the founder of D.C. Poets Against the War and the director of Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation & Witness. Her activist furor is a birthright, having been born into an activist family—a sensibility she is passing on to the next generation through her example as an artist, an organizer and an important citizen poet voice speaking out on the injustices being committed by our current government’s misadministration.

A celebrated scholar of Spanish and Latin American literature, Aurora de Albornoz also published eleven books of poetry during her lifetime. She’s an innovative poet who incorporated prose poems, collage, and other modernistic techniques into her verse. Her writing is situated within the poetry about the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) and “la Generación de los ’50,� one of many important periods in which the national literature flourished during Franco’s dictatorship (1939-1975). Her body of work is an important contribution to world letters because, among other achievements, it gives voice to the experience of los exiliados, or Spanish exiles—one of the prominent women poets in a group dominated by men.

Ronald Johnson (1935-1998) died at the age of 62 in his home state of Kansas (after an extended stay in San Francisco), leaving behind a notable legacy of verse that has influenced a number of young writers experimenting with language and form. Besides eight poetry books (many of them shamefully out of print) he also produced five cookbooks on American regional cooking since he maintained a second career as a chef and caterer. The Shrubberies was published posthumously in 2001 with Flood Editions, “pruned� from a 229-page, 300-poem manuscript by Johnson’s literary executor, Peter O’Leary.

Last week I attended a New York City book party in celebration of the release of Stephen Cramer’s second book of poems. It took place in the quirky Telephone Bar & Grill on 2nd Avenue, just south of St. Mark’s. Those familiar film crew trailers were parked along the avenue and East Village dwellers simply went about their evening as the business of leisure & literature proceeded unencumbered. I mention this because in Cramer’s new book there are plenty of odes & homages to those New York moments that make of this city, among many other things, a center for inspiration & creativity.

I’ve been a bit swamped at the end of the semester with a number of academic obligations that it’s been tough to keep up with this one, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. A few years ago I made up my mind that I was going to be what some so pejoratively referred to as “an academic poet.�

Javier O. Huerta’s debut, Some Clarifications y otros poemas received the Chicano/ Latino Literary Prize from the University of California at Irvine. I’m not sure it could have been a contender in any other competition (except possibly for the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize) because half the poems in this collection are in Spanish or use Spanish in key moments within the poem in ways that not even the context can illuminate the meaning for non-Spanish speakers. It’s a book without apologies in terms of audience: You have to know Spanish and be familiar with elements of the Chicano/Mexicano culture, no matter who you are, to fully appreciate the book. The following prose poem is a more accessible piece for non-Spanish speakers:

I never took a creative nonfiction writing class, yet I wrote a memoir and now teach creative nonfiction (or, more specifically, memoir writing) at Queens College and for the Vermont College of Fine Arts. It’s actually my favorite writing genre to teach because the stories I come across are rarely disappointing—people are passionate about their pasts, and they have somehow come to terms with this avenue for expression. It’s not poetry with its demand for compression, it’s not fiction with its propensity for fabrication, it is memoir—flawed memory and the interpretation of truth.

Jean Valentine’s Door in the Mountain: New and Collected Poems 1965-2003 received the National Book Award in 2004. Eight previous collections have been just as well received and widely recognized for the intensity of their spirit—a Jean Valentine poem faces the broken world without fear and not without hope. So it is with much enthusiasm that I shine the spotlight on the most recent book by one of the most beloved poets of our times:

In his introduction to this book by Bill Knott, which includes 16 collages (apart from the one gracing the cover) by poet/artist Star Black, Mark Doty writes: “Knott builds out of fragments; he erases himself. How appropriate that these poems should be accompanied by a suite of collages, in which bits and pieces both make a new whole and remain, distinctly bits and pieces. Star Black’s evocative work here draws upon the vocabulary of surrealism, but like Knott himself she turns those strange juxtapositions and eruptions of dreaming to her own uses.�

Here’s a quirky and interesting movement taking flight in the Northwest—Seattle, to be exact, one of the most literary cities I have ever lived in and continue to visit (I’ll be there for the duration of Chompipe Days—that’s Turkey Days for y’all pilgrims).

Whiting Award winner Paul Guest’s second volume of poetry is the recipient of the 4th annual Prairie Schooner Book Prize. And Notes for My Body Double is a book full of gems within gems—lines and images that make each poem glitter and sparkle, even when the sentiment pushing the language forward is sullen or dark.

Recipient of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1996, the Polish poet Wisława Szymborska quickly claimed a slot on the one shelf I reserve for my special books. I keep View with a Grain of Sand: Selected Poems (published with Harcourt Brace) right between the selected volumes of Akhmatova and Cavafy. Here you will also find Baudelaire, Célan, Tagore, García Lorca, Vallejo and Neruda. With the exception of these last three (I read them in the original Spanish, my native tongue), I read the rest in translation.

Originally published with Beacon Press in 1995 (with this book cover), Chicana writer and El Paso native Pat Mora’s fourth book of poems was reprinted this fall through the University of Arizona Press. I’m hoping that it will also reprint the follow-up volume, published in 1997, Aunt Carmen’s Book of Practical Saints, which included a handful of glorious color photographs of religious pieces from the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Just as this second project is an examination of the influence of Catholicism in the colonized Southwest, Agua Santa: Holy Water, is a look at the presence of pre and post-Columbian culture and mythology, which continues to thrive in the literary imagination of Chicana letters.

One of the books I’m reading with my MFA graduate students (holla!) at Rutgers University in Newark is the debut volume by Aracelis Girmay. I reviewed this book, glowingly, when it was first released early this summer, and rereading it with a perceptive community of readers has made me fall in love with this book all over again.

I’d like to congratulate las mujeres on this blog for taking a stance on the subject of the representation of women in poetry journals. And I’d like to invite the other men on this blog to speak up. Thus far, it’s been interesting to see how our postings intersect or run along parallel lines, but this particular subject should be important to all of us.

I’m celebrating the Days of the Dead on the border, the place that knows about the communion and collision of contrasting worlds—México/USA, Spanish/English, South/North, Vírgen de Guadalupe/Uncle Sam. This festive holiday is close to my heart and my literary imagination, but instead of quoting any of my own poems, I’d like to offer the following by fierce Chicana poet Brenda Cárdenas:

Believe it or not, it’s a coincidence that this particular book cover made my Shout Out feature on Halloween. This is cult poet Beckian Fritz Goldberg’s fifth volume of poems. Though she was on faculty at Arizona State University while I was attending their MFA program, regretfully I never studied with her, but I read everything she publishes because she’s brilliant, she’s bitchin’, she’s Beckian.

About a month ago, the National Book Critics Circle sponsored a panel on the demise of the print journal and the rise of the online journal. Actually, it was a little more complex than that, but the gist of the conversation was this: that libraries and other institutions with diminishing budgets were cutting back on (or eliminating altogether) their literary journal subscriptions, and coupled with the popularity of webzines and other forms of online sites dedicated to publishing contemporary literary works, it seems that the nails of the print journal’s coffin have been inevitably secured.

I was second-guessing including this entry/ anecdote on Elizabeth Bishop, but Alicia’s entry inspired me to go ahead and do it.

The aubade is a poem about lovers parting in sorrow at dawn, and it’s a form dating back to the Elizabethan era, though I suspect this universal act of separation must have been commemorated in song long before then. That’s the beauty of this lyrical movement, it is as shapeless and fluid as the untethered emotion it is meant to represent and poets have continued to re-interpret and re-imagine that moment into the twenty-first century. The following is a gorgeous rendition by Oliver de la Paz:

To clarify: I’ve never suffered from it. I don’t mean this as a boast. I’m simply saying that I’ve been too busy writing to not be able to write. I’m always navigating through so many different projects at once—book reviews, essays, poems, and now, blog entries—that I don’t have time to encounter that state of distress I’ve always heard about but have yet to experience. Never. But as a writing teacher, I have my students to contend with, and though in the back of my mind I’m positive that it’s lack of discipline more than anything else, I still have the responsibility to provide some solution by way of advice on how to overcome this “block.�

As the second winner of The Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize hits the bookstore shelves (future shout out, y’all) I am reminded of one of Montoya’s early champions, poet Lee Herrick, founder and editor of In the Grove, where Montoya’s first published poems appeared. Sadly, Montoya’s only book the ice worker sings was published posthumously in 1999, a year after his premature death at the age of 31. Since then, a collective effort by writers of all stripes has kept his memory and art alive. Hence the memorial poetry prize spearheaded by Letras Latinas of the Institute for Latino Studies at Notre Dame, hence the following poem in Herrick’s debut collection of poetry:

For a few years after I first moved to New York City I worked for two institutions in service to schoolchildren and to the arts: the Coalition for Hispanic Family Services After School Arts & Education Program, and for Teachers & Writers Collaborative. The first is located in Bushwick, Brooklyn, the second (with offices in Manhattan) sent me to work to various neighborhoods in Queens. But both were equally rewarding experiences as I stood in front of mostly immigrant kids of all backgrounds, ages 6 to 10, and communicated in our common language: poetry.

I just received my copy of Priscilla Sneff’s debut poetry collection O Woolly City published with Tupelo Press, the same press that graciously picked up my second collection Other Fugitives and Other Strangers. As many poets know, these two titles were two of about five left in publication limbo after the downfall of our original publisher Zoo Press.

Ah, to go back to the mornings of innocence, and to the afternoons of transgression:

’Fess up. You bought a copy.

This is my favorite Leroy V. Quintana book. Published in 1996 by Bilingual Press, it includes a flattering introduction by the late Robert Creeley, who says of Quintana: “This deeply gifted poet grasps the common terms of any life we either have or might think to have, shyly, proudly, painfully.�

Recently I judged North Carolina Poetry Society’s Brockman-Campbell Book Award and after reading and re-reading the finalist entries, I chose the one that demonstrated a maturity of craft and an honesty of emotion.

During his lifetime he produced dozens of poetry collections, novels, plays, and countless essays on everything ranging from religion to literature. He wrote over 2,000 songs, which include the national anthems of both India and Bangladesh. In 1913 he received the Nobel Prize in literature. He was the first laureate in Asia. Have you read his work?

You know, in light of the recent Poetry Society of America ruckus, in which board members Walter Mosley, Rafael Campo, Elizabeth Alexander and Mary Jo Salter resigned after comments made by the now-former board president William Louis-Dreyfus (after the contentious selection of the controversial John Hollander as this year’s recipient of the Frost medal), I had to step in and say something, namely, that expressing discontent, protesting, indeed making noise, is the only way to enact change.

I sent the following piece as a replacement (that for some reason was never posted) for a poem that was included in my Top Five love poems feature on the Poetry Foundation website last Valentine’s Day. My translation of Pablo Neruda’s Sonnet XX could not be published online because of a copyright snag. I’m happy to present the replacement love poem here, written by Kimiko Hahn:

The title of my second collection of poetry, Other Fugitives and Other Strangers, comes from a line in the final stanza of the poem “Reasons� by the late Thomas James:

I am aware of your body and its dangers.
I spread my cloak for you in leafy weather
Where other fugitives and other strangers
Will put their mouths together.

You gotta love those poetry explication exams in undergraduate English classes.

Watershed moments happen unexpectedly and they sometimes come in the most surprising of shapes. In the following poem by Scott Hightower, a youth with an entire life yet to live comes across a life already lived via a memoir, and the Ethel Waters story becomes a paradigm for hard living (is there any other kind?) that resonates throughout this young person’s adulthood:

The Autobiography of Ethel Waters

I attend at least two poetry readings a month in New York City. A few venues I check on periodically like The Bowery Poetry Club and Cornelia Street Café—both are fabulous spaces that lend themselves to the intimacy between a reader and an audience. So when the time came that I decided to curate my own series, I turned to Angelo Verga, poet and best friend of the NYC poetry scene.

Step off, poets, no one beats Anne Sexton in the art of the metaphor.

The Biblical phrase “through a glass darkly� is in reference to the human’s inability to achieve enlightenment (or see God’s grace with clarity) until the moment of death. Igmar Bergman’s 1961 film, which uses that phrase as a title, is a twisted portrait of familial alienation, mental illness and the questioning of the existence of God.

I’m still on my mission to convince readers of poetry to try their hand at reviewing a book of poetry at least once! It amazes me how when poets publish a book they hold their breaths awaiting critical responses, and then become disgruntled or depressed when no one else gets off their behinds to review a book. The culture of passivity needs to change, and there’s one good way to do it: the Internet.

I’ve written about this a number of times before in other venues, and the story hasn’t changed: when I was straining to learn English as a recent immigrant at a U.S. elementary school, a well-meaning teacher gave me a book of poems to help me “get rid� of my accent. She thought that the shame of my poor pronunciation was the cause of my shyness. I followed her instructions nonetheless and read the pages of poetry out loud each afternoon. I still remember the first one: Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s “The Charge of the Light Brigade.�

Yes, poetry can be sexy and deathly and beautiful all at once.

Some poets establish a rhythm in generating new material and subsequently publishing it. We expect to see a collection every 3 to 5 years, which is a lucky thing for their loyal readers. Others remain relatively quiet between collections, putting out a book every 10 years or more, and fans of those poets have to stalk the literary journals (or the Internet) for “sightings� of single poem offerings. And then there are those poets who simply disappear for one reason or another, who dropped a jewel of a book (or books), and then dropped out of sight. Maybe it’s a choice, maybe it isn’t. But the silence is intolerable. To come across poems piecemeal is temporarily satisfying, but to hold an entire book is a relationship commitment.

There are certain songs I cannot listen to anymore because they remind me of someone associated with the pain of loss. R.E.M.’s “Losing My Religion� reminds me of an old heartbreak in college, Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy� of a more recent heartbreak, and listening to Luther Vandross’ “Dance with My Father� is my quickest trip to tears because it speaks to the emptiness I feel after the death of my own father. Music, it seems, owes its popularity and success to the way it can be absorbed by the listener and given a personal context. We give intimate meaning to a song, responding to the sentiment of it in the same way we will mouth the lyrics—we make it about us.