On Poetry In Times Like These

You’ll find countless articles and memes and inspirational posts telling you that it is times like these that need poetry more than anything.

And it is times like these where I need poetry more than anything. To find myself lost in language, swimming in the sounds and nuances of words, patterns, orders and all.

To make a line or two that sings, so that there is more song in the air.

And yet. It is times like these that make me silent.

It is spring in the northern hemisphere and I have no doubt there are flowers blooming near Kiev, in spite of everything. Perhaps to spite everything, to show the world that spring has come again.

And yet who am I to write poetry about the flowers in Ukraine?

And yet, are the flowers in my yard, reaching for the sky any less worthy of poetry?

The weight of the outside bears down on the pen, the weight of the news, of the struggles from January to the present cannot be sung away. They must be sung about, sung to. Lifted up high to the light.

I’ve said before, that it is not “write what you know” it is “speak for yourself” and myself is wanting to get lost in a spring garden.

It is a post about guilt? How could it not be. How dare I lament my poetic silence when there are real issues, real problems, real poets facing them, out there.

How dare I want to write about the fireflies instead of the flares falling, instead of the darkness of an El Salvadorian cell, instead of love and identity endangered even if it hasn’t yet been found. Especially if it has not yet been found.

How dare I be safe at a time like this, safe enough to lament not being able to write poetry without guilt.

How dare I write a self serving blog post about it.

Sigh.

Times like these make poets, they forge poetry in fire, blood, in the flowers that grow from the ruins left in the wake of time.

But who am I to pretend to be one of them.

Also, trans rights are human rights. Fuck terfs.

Now or “Now”, What’s in a When?

In Japanese Haiku, Yasuda talks about the seasonal word coming from the Renga, he talks that the hokka needed to be referencing now—the season they were in.

That linked the poets’ experience as they made linked verses—they shared “now” as a frame of reference.

“Now” is always an interesting thing for poets as we will often write about now later. Using the present as inspiration, but adding time to reflect.

But there is a certain romantic ideal involved with this season observation—that the poem has more weight that one that was written later, after reflection.

That “spontaneous overflow” all over again.

Words have power—sure, but does the generation of those words also have power? Would a poem be the same, composed about war, but not in war? About love, not in or out of love? If the Irish shoreline weaves into a poem, does the distance between it and where I am sitting change the verses?

Or do we simply search for the true names of gods that only have one name: the final product?

Year of Books, 2018

I saw several posts about how many books had been read in 2018, and I started to put my list together… only to realize it was very, very short. It was only after I moved a stack of books that I had read a lot this year, just not novels. Most of my reading was poetry (or about poetry).

Novels

I can say this, though I only read five novels this year, they are all fantastic, and I recommend them all.

Mere wife – Maria Dahvana Headley
Dread nation – Justina Ireland
Lost Time (Tales of the Lost Book 1) – C.A. Higgins
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms – N.K. Jemisin
The Last Firefly of Summer – Robert Ford

Poetry

I’ll start off and say if you aren’t reading Tracy K. Smith, you are missing out. Life on Mars is fantastic. I got The Body’s Question for my birthday from a great friend.

This list also made me realize I bought quite a few poetry books haven’t read them yet…

Poetry

The Body’s Question – Tracy K Smith
Difficult Fruit – Lauren K. Alleyne
Don’t Call Us Dead: Poems – Danez Smith
WHEREAS: Poems – Layli Long Soldier
Nectar – Upile Chisala
New Poets of Native Nations – Heid E. Erdrich
Bastards of the Reagan Era – Reginald Dwayne Betts

Japanese Poetry

I started this obsession with The Japanese Haiku Its Essential Nature and History by Kenneth Yasuda. From there, I picked up the Kokinshu, which is one of the first Imperial anthologies of Japanese Poetry. Things may have spiraled out from there…

Yes, I got everything I could that Ueda had written. He had a collection of Basho poems that had translations and commentary which I read last year. Ueda’s Modern Japanese Tanka inspired me to try and write some myself. Far Beyond the Field is haiku by Japanese Women, and Light Verse from the Floating World is full of senryu, a form similar to haiku in shape, but different in tone and purpose.

Modern Japanese Tanka – Makoto Ueda
Far Beyond the Field – Makoto Ueda
Modern Japanese Haiku: An Anthology – Makoto Ueda
Light Verse from the Floating World – Makoto Ueda
Kokinshu – Rodd and Henkenius (translators)
Traditional Japanese Poetry: An Anthology – Steven D. Carter
The Penguin Book of Japanese Verse: From the Earliest Times to the Present
1000 Poems from the Manyoshu
From the Country of Eight Islands: An Anthology of Japanese Poetry -Hiroaki Sato
Women Poets of Japan – Ikuko Atsumi
A Girl with Tangled Hair by Akiko Yosano – Jane Reichhold (Translator)
Pepper-pod: A Haiku Sampler – Yasuda, Kenneth
Poet to Poet: Contemporary Women Poets from Japan – Rina Kikuchi
Modern Senryu in English (English and Japanese Edition) – Shuho Ohno
Akane Immigrant Poet: English & Japanese Edition: The Tanka of Mitsuko Kasuga, a Japanese Immigrant in Mexico – Aiko Chikaba

African Poetry

The Amazonian algorithms offered up Fuchsia by Mahtem Shiferraw as something I may like, and after reading the whole preview, I had to agree. Turns out it is part of a seres of African Poetry published by University of Nebraska press, which means there will be even more joining my collection.

The Penguin Book of Modern African Poetry: Fifth Edition (Penguin Classics)
Fuchsia (African Poetry Book) – Mahtem Shiferraw
The Kitchen-Dweller’s Testimony (African Poetry Book) – Ladan Osman
The January Children (African Poetry Book) – Safia Elhillo

Poetic Non-Fiction

I didn’t finish most of these books, because most of these books are huge. An Introduction to Japanese Court Poetry is referenced over and over again in other texts as the primer on this subject.

The second Waka Anthology was my Christmas gift, and I’ve only made it a little way in. It is a college text book on the subject, and the good news is there are going to be several more volumes to follow

An Introduction to Japanese Court Poetry – Earl Miner.
Japanese Poetic Diaries – Earl Miner
A Waka Anthology – Volume One: The Gem-Glistening Cup – Edwin A. Cranston
A Waka Anthology – Volume Two: Grasses of Remembrance – Edwin A. Cranston

LampLight Submissions

I would be remiss to not call out LampLight submissions as a very large part of my readings. We got about 2,000 submissions this year. There were more great stories than I could publish, and such a wide variety of styles, subjects and points of view.

Here’s to reading more of the ‘to be read pile’ in 2019!