It’s National Poetry Month – Are You Celebrating?

Did you know that National Poetry Month is the largest literary celebration in the world? Or that the Academy of American Poets was inspired by the successful celebrations of Black History Month (February) and Women’s History Month (March), and the first National Poetry Month was in April of 1996, making it only 21 years old this year?

 

Good news is that even if you weren't aware, we still have 10 days left in April to celebrate. But don't stop celebrating poetry just because April ends. Share our favorites, read something new, ask others for their recommendations, and find new favorites. Expand your poetry horizons! There’s a big world of poetry out there beyond Shakespeare, Keats, Dickinson, Frost, Angelou, and Poe. Yes, these are great poets, but so are some of the ones yet to be discovered.

 

Want some ideas? Check out Poets.org. You can sign up for poem-a-day and check out all kinds of poetry and poets on their site. They also have a list of 30 ways to celebrate National Poetry Month.

 

Be sure to participate next week Thursday, April 20, 2017 in Poem in Your Pocket Day! You can find all the details here!

 

So, read, write, share, and most importantly ENJOY this year's National Poetry Month!

All Hail National Library Week!

Darn that American Library Association and their need to make the focus of National Library Week as broad and all-encompassing as ever! This year’s theme for National Library Week (April 13-19) is: Lives change @ your library [sic]. Well, sure they do—libraries are the cornerstone of education and community.

We at Langsdale would like to join in celebrating patrons and their library experiences at this special time in April, but in order to make it meaningful, we’ve narrowed our focus to make this occasion something a little more manageable thematically. That’s why this Thursday, from 8-9 p.m., we’re hosting the Library Basement Reading Series: We Heal with Words. (Healing is life-changing, right?). Seven MFA students will share their original fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Join us and Kendral Dickerson, Sharea Harris, Amanda May, Jessica Welch, Nick Richard, Michelle Junot, Lisa Vanwormer, and emcee Ron Williams.

National Poetry Month and the Snot-Nosed Kid

National poetry month is really kind of a sad affair. Fiction doesn’t get a month. Film doesn’t either. And TV—are you kidding. They get that section of the year that lasts (and I’m approximating) the entirety of every year, year after year. But poetry: that squirmy child alone in the back of the lunch room timidly opening the lunch box his mother modified with foam-rubber because, come on, he’s fragile and the corners might bruise his knees as he walks to school. Alone at the table, he organizes the box’s contents—a bag of carrots, sandwich, sippy cup—in some esoteric but exacting way that, despite his outward appearance of shunning attention, secretly begs for it. He endures in a constant state of conflict over the meaning of what attention he gets. Is uncomfortable. The other children scowl at him. They regard him with angry curiosity between their spoonfuls of chocolate Snack Pack. They dismiss him almost as quickly as they consider him. They say, “Oh, really? So, we still make creatures like that. Strange world.”

“It’s a shame,” the principal thinks, “such a smart, sensitive young man, with so much to say but no one to listen. A cruel world.” He shakes his head at the thought. He stews in its heavy cloud. Considers implications and solutions. Maybe a light. He sits a little taller, his eyes widening. His what-a-sad-sad-word thought grows and darkens. He realizes the profundity of its truth, realizes the extent of the injustice in the world, realizes, as the light comes on brighter, that he alone possesses the power and empathy to change the course of events if not in the history of mankind at least for this snot-nosed hypersensitive boy. He immediately flips the switch for the intercom and gives his baritone announcement:

“Now hear this. For too long the snot-nosed boy with the padded lunch box has been ignored. This will stop...

"...for one month.

Such Gainful Employment: A Poem by CarlaJean Valluzzi

In honor of National Library and Student Employee Appreciation Week, enjoy a poem written by CarlaJean Valluzzi, Student Assistant, Circulation Department.

Such Gainful Employment
By CarlaJean Valluzzi

I push the cart | weave a path through the stacks | forgetting it there in front of me.
Maybe it’s the air from some other age |caught between | each thin skin of page,
preserved | : | proteose colloids, condensed tannins, pastes of wheat and rice;
it just feels right | tastes sweet to be so fortunate | to spend my days, voluminous
amongst my favorite strangers | some of whom I’ve laid my eyes upon | near spiritual occasions.
I read the names as I pass, the call numbers | long for the sun to stay | high a little bit longer
as though to conjure | such lives as they have | out of nothing but my own mind . . .
That’s where you can find me | on a Monday, or a Friday | wheeling, shelving; listening quietly.

Dusty Books and Podcasts

Poetry Center, Chicago

It isn't the easiest thing to talk about books on the radio or on a podcast or, for that matter, in the classroom, and make them interesting. I'm sure you've seen, at one point or another, some version of this tried and true cliche from Hollywood: a protagonist in a deep and rarely visited part of an old library who finds a book that has long been neglected, high up on some mahogany shelf. For one reason or another the character is drawn to it. He pulls it from the shelf, blows off its thick layer of sienna dust and opens it to find an adventure of some sort, something magical or a riddle to be solved, which will probably drive the rest of the movie. Well, making a podcast about books has to feel at times something like that. The host has to figure a way, improbable as it may be, to get the dust off that book, old or new, and bring the thing to life.

Most fail at this (there are a lot of really bad podcasts about books), but some actually do succeed, and are really quite good: Here's a list of a few of my favorites:

• In more ways than one, The Poetry Foundation has revitalized the ancient art of poetry. Because of a substantial grant of $200 million dollars given them in 2003 by Ruth Lilly, the Foundation was not only able to redesign their magazine (Poetry), to build the Poetry Center in downtown Chicago, to award substantial prizes to both up and coming poets and those of considerable reputation, but was also able to redesign their website. As part of the redesign they created an award-winning poetry app, a blog that stresses the vitality and importance of  poetry as a form, and a podcast that discusses new work by poets published in their journal. On that same page, you can also find recordings of classic lectures, poets reading their work, poets discussing the works that have inspired them over the years ... I could go on, but I think you get the point. Highly suggested.
• KCRW is Southern California's NPR affiliate. On it's airways for many years now is the stalwart of literary discussion, Bookworm. Now, you can get their entire catalog of past broadcast online and for free. The show focuses on interviews with writers, primarily of fiction, discussing their newly released books. Browsing the shows archives is a veritable who's who of literary fiction.
• Indy Lit is a broad and ill-defined category for which I have deep reservations. But as I am not trying to debate the merits or lack thereof of a category, instead wishing only to suggest interesting things to listen to, I'll refrain for now. Bookfight, a podcast done from the basement of its host's home, does skew toward the category of Indy Lit, so despite my reservations, I'll slap that label on. It is produced by two editors of the literary magazine Barrelhouse, Tom McAllister and Mike Ingram, and if you care to know what the kids these days are doing with words, here is a great place to start. [Full disclosure: I know both the hosts, so my opinion may be a tad biased.]

Zombie Poetry That Looks Just Like Healthy Poetry (and Could Very Well Be Healthy and Not Undead)

Fair Warning: This post has little to do with Dead Poet's Society. And only slightly more to do with a defense of poetry or a defense of that particular poem read at the inauguration.

I'm not sure if any of those topics are pertinent anyway. Especially since this post is so late—a rabbit-with-a-pocket-watch-running-around-his-rabbit-hole late—and the inauguration long past. Though timing may not matter. I can’t imagine too many people are sitting around counting the drips from the faucet echoing down the hall just waiting for a new defense of poetry (or, contrariwise, a eulogy for poetry) to spring up on their facebook news feed. But nonetheless it’s still kind of late, this post.

You might have missed it (I almost did) but in The Washington Post last week Alexandra Petri wrote an editorial called “Is Poetry Dead?” In her article she reacts to the inaugural poet Richard Blanco’s poem read before the nation last Monday. Leaving aside Petri’s criticism of the poem itself (which, I also thought was pretty bad, as most on-demand poems are), I’ll jump straight to her headlining question, Is poetry dead? 

Who cares.

I’m not arguing that nobody should care about poetry. I’m only arguing that no one should care about the Is-Poetry-Dead argument/question. It's a ridiculous question. If we give it any credence then we also must need to engage in many similar arguments about all kinds of other things: Is backgammon dead? Is bocce ball dead? Are talent shows dead? Who cares.

News in the World of Books and Libraries

• The National Book Awards for fiction, poetry and nonfiction were announced last night (despite the National Book Foundation's headquarters suffering significant structural damage due to Sandy) at an event aimed to give the publishing world a new pizazz and relevance. 

The winners:
FICTION: Louise Erdrich, The Round House (Harper, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers)
POETRY: David Ferry, Bewilderment: New Poems and Translations (University of Chicago Press)

NONFICTION: Katherine Boo, Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity (Random House)

• Occupy Wall Street founds a library (read about it in this great article).
• Two giants of publishing are set to merge: Random House with Penguin.

Ghost-Companions and National Poetry Month

So April is almost over, which means that National Poetry Month is also on the wane. This holiday (of sorts) is celebrated primarily with readings and book fairs and maybe a brief appearance or two by a soft spoken poet on PBS’ The News Hour with Jim Leher. Some poets and literati might lament the fact that the national standing of the man (or woman) of letters is not what it used to be. Since Shakespeare, the prominence of poets in English and American pop culture has flat-lined. There is of course the rare anomaly here and there – a blip or two by Robert Frost in the 50’s, maybe a blip now and again when Maya Angelou steps into the spotlight – but for the most part, April is the only month that the general public is treated to an oh so rare dose of poesy. And, in my opinion, it's all for the better. 

There is no reason to hold the poet up to the same personal scrutiny and ephemeral, gushing accolades as we do a rock star or politician. Most poets have become poets because they enjoy the simple quiet of a small room. And they enjoy poetry for the strange transformation that a few, well-chosen words can have on the very walls of said room. Never have I heard a poet complain that they themselves are not getting enough attention, only, some may lament, that their work has suffered that fate. 

And here we can insert National Poetry Month back into the conversation. For this month we are reminded that there are men and women striving, in their own solitude, to warp and wrap and change our language so that it may emerge more profound, more transcendent, more meaningful than when it was so humbly placed into so meek and frail a form as poetry. Joseph Brodsky once said that “poetry is not the best words in the best order, but for language it is the highest form of existence.” And it attains that high form, at least in part, because of (though some would say ‘in spite of’) its frail and meek form. Poems are small and delicate things that can be carried around in the memory or folded up and stuck easily in the pocket. 

Which brings us back around to one of the last events of National Poetry Month: this Thursday, April 26^th is Poetry in your Pocket Day.  The idea behind this nationwide event is to encourage people to walk around with a poem close to them, for them to read it, think about it, talk about it... let the poem inform your day. Hearing this idea on NPR reminded me of a similar project that the poet and essayist Andrei Codrescu* gave to his poetry students at Louisiana State University. He assigned each student a Ghost-Companion, who, as he explained it in his book The Poetry Lesson, is “a poet, dead or alive . . . whose last name begins with the same letter as yours. This is a poet that you will study all semester, read deeply, understand well, google till you’re satisfied, and call on when you feel some difficulty. Any difficulty. Your Ghost-Companion will be a great and generous soul, who will come to your aid not just for your assignments, but also in other situations that neither you nor I can now imagine." 

To ask me to pick a favorite poet out of the many I have read over the years is an anxiety inducing experience, one similar to trying to rationalize the difference between a small and large infinity. My mind seizes and comes up with scarcely a sound, let alone a name. So, in order to pick a poet for this Thursday I have elected Codrescu’s method and picked Charles Simic as my Pocket Poet, as we both share a last initial. Here is one of his many small gems:

Watermelons

Green Buddhas
On the fruit stand.
We eat the smile
And spit out the teeth.

Let me know about your Ghost-Companion, and post your poem for Poetry in Your Pocket Day below.


By Adam Shutz


*A poet who, by the way, got his start at Johns Hopkins and was a columnist for the Baltimore Sun as well as NPR. He has also been featured in UB's literary magazine, Welter.