Book Review: Blue on Blue Ground

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Aaron Smith's Blue on Blue Ground was published a few years ago, but I just read it for the first time in the past few weeks, and over on Goodreads I joined a great new group started by Sarah Sloat, in which the members review a certain number of books in a year. So this review isn't very timely, but my enthusiasm for this book is such that I thought I'd post it here...

I think Anne Sexton and Frank O’Hara had a child and his name is Aaron Smith, and his Blue on Blue Ground is perhaps the bravest collection of poems since Sharon Olds gave us sacraments such as Satan Says and The Gold Cell. Aaron Smith’s courage is on par with that of revolutionary writers like Sexton, O’Hara, Langston Hughes, and Gwendolyn Brooks. It is unapologetically confessional, and both defiantly confrontational and defiantly vulnerable. His emotional honesty and authenticity are disarming and refreshing, especially in today’s poetic culture of guarded wit, artful dodging, and pretense, where emotional searching and self reference are often deemed pathetic and passe. He reminds us of some of the highest callings of poetry, and of the power of art to do what no other noble pursuit can do nearly as well. This book succeeds in the highest aims of art: like science that adheres to its principles, it seeks the truth, without regard to what one might like the truth to be; like the best of law and politics it compels us toward the “better angels of our nature;” like uncorrupted journalism it tells what isn’t being told, despite efforts of powers-that-be to keep it hidden, despite our own wishes to look away; like responsible education it challenges us to question, reconsider, and grow; like medicine not adulterated by motives of profit, its purpose is healing, even if that means doing some painful vivisection first.

Chosen by Denise Duhamel for the Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize, this book contains gems such as “The Signs of Choking” (to be a bruise spit out/ from the mouth of last night’s/ undressed stranger), “Story” (How quickly I am made strange), the “Dr. Engels” poems (swollen and exaggerated/ like the heads of the baby mice/ Roger squashed in the garage), and “Then,” from which the following is an excerpt:

Of course, there was a tragedy, the way

the beautiful are given back

to the stories that made them, quick

and perfect like a flash of his hair in the wind. And it’s stupid,

predictable - the car, the drunk star athlete

dead, leaving

his exhausted mother

to wander the house at night

calling his name

Far greater than the sum of its considerably impressive parts, however, is its power as a collection. It is not only startlingly honest, it also reminds us of two buried anthropological artifacts: that meaningful honesty is not a rigid and easily drawn code concerned with the arrangement of clean facts, and that the liberations such honesty brings, although ultimately dazzling, are sometimes as heavy as its burdens.

The first two poems of Smith’s I ever read, long before I read his book, left me thinking I would not like his work much. I’m usually drawn to more colorful language: a lot of simile, lines dense with bold and inventive imagery, where associations are drawn between the concrete that would otherwise seem unimaginable. Larissa Szporluk’s work comes to mind. That’s not to say my tastes don’t range far from that example, but for reasons that also include factors I haven’t yet identified, I just wasn’t enthusiastic about my first sampling of Smith’s work. The moral of this story is never rule out a poet after one reading, especially when that reading includes only a few poems. I’m more excited about this collection than I have been about anything I’ve read in maybe as long as two or three years, and I’m someone who is thrilled almost daily by something I read.

Blue on Blue Ground makes me want to buy Aaron Smith dinner and spend all night talking with him; it makes me want to be “made strange” to myself; it makes me want to find the bullies of his schooldays and give them bloody noses; it makes me want to get my “hairbrush microphone” and dance around and sing to Blondie and The Bangles; it makes me want to trade my frequent acts of cowardice for treks into my personal wildernesses. This book makes me want to be a better writer. This book, and I say this without the embarrassment it challenges us to defy, makes me want to be a better person. Fulfilling one of art’s most important functions, this book makes me want.

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anti doctors and poetry

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Actually, I'm no such thing -- poetry of course is like manna from heaven, and I'm quite fond of most doctors, especially after the past few years in which a few of their finest took on my medical Goliaths and gave this David the stone to bring at least one of the giants to their deaths, and the others to their knees. But the fifth issue of Anti-, the excellent literary journal, includes a poem of mine with the ironic title, "The Good Doctor," and my little "anti thesis." If you're not yet familiar with Anti-, the editor has all the poets provide statements of what they're against in poetry, and besides the consistently fine poetry, it is the magazine's best feature. And if you haven't read Issue 5 yet, definitely check it out: it includes a lot of great work, including poems by two of my favorite poets, Lisa Lewis and Nick Courtright.

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Of bees, deer, and people

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I've been so busy with other things the past few months that I almost forgot about my blog. That would be no tragedy. Much stranger and more surprising is how I could have forgotten, in the past few years, about two poems that had been among my favorites for several years: "A Story About the Body," by Robert Hass, and "Traveling Through the Dark," by William Stafford. How great it was when about a month ago, just out of the blue when I was washing my hair, the two poems re-entered my consciousness. It was like remembering those pink-frosted cookies in the shapes of animals from childhood, or just how fun it is to run through sprinklers in the summertime. But cookies and sprinklers are just pure fun. What's amazing is how artists can make such sad and disturbing things simultaneously so wonderful and lovely.

Robert Hass, A Story About the Body

The young composer, working that summer at an artist's colony, had watched her for a week. She was Japanese, a painter, almost sixty, and he thought he was in love with her. He loved her work, and her work was like the way she moved her body, used her hands, looked at him directly when she made amused and considered answers to his questions. One night, walking back from a concert, they came to her door and she turned to him and said, "I think you would like to have me. I would like that too, but I must tell you that I have had a double mastectomy," and when he didn't understand, "I've lost both my breasts." The radiance that he had carried around in his belly and chest cavity -- like music -- withered very quickly, and he made himself look at her when he said, "I'm sorry. I don't think I could." He walked back to his own cabin through the pines, and in the morning he found a small blue bowl on the porch outside his door. It looked to be full of rose petals, but he found when he picked it up that the rose petals were on top; the rest of the bowl -- she must have swept them from the corners of her studio -- was full of dead bees.

William Stafford, Traveling Through the Dark

Traveling through the dark I found a deer
dead on the edge of the Wilson River road.
It is usually best to roll them into the canyon:
that road is narrow; to swerve might make more dead.

By glow of the tail-light I stumbled back of the car
and stood by the heap, a doe, a recent killing;
she had stiffened already, almost cold.
I dragged her off; she was large in the belly.

My fingers touching her side brought me the reason--
her side was warm; her fawn lay there waiting,
alive, still, never to be born.
Beside that mountain road I hesitated.

The car aimed ahead its lowered parking lights;
under the hood purred the steady engine.
I stood in the glare of the warm exhaust turning red;
around our group I could hear the wilderness listen.

I thought hard for us all--my only swerving--,
then pushed her over the edge into the river.

Pushcart and Best of the Web Nominations

Congratulations to the following poets whose poems I nominated for the Pushcart Prize, as well as the 2010 Best of the Web anthology published by Dzanc Books:

Amy King, "All Moons Are a Scrumptious White Silver"

Karyna McGlynn, "Square in the gut of lovemaking lessons"

Natasha K. Moni, "Letter to a Lover Whose Name Spells Dark Bird"

The above work appears in the sixth issue of Siren, along with several other deserving poems (and great art, not eligible for either honor), a few of which made this decision difficult. Bravos all around.

excerpts from the nominated poems:

That took her voice in half. She dipped it in a pan

of dead lilacs and licked the inner thigh seams.

I turned around on rotary machines.

The best of us plunge cultural defectors that crow

a weaker side for the salt of tides ripping our childhoods out.

- Amy King

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A cubic inch of Texas tumbled to the bed

My eyes were still swollen from dusting

Just then, I pinched the blue

bonnet cat-claw of what could be my future, entire

- Karyna McGlynn

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...our limbs liquid

our eyes opening like lilies. Meet me and we will

forget our bodies were ever anything but

a little salt, water

waiting to be stirred.

- Natasha K. Moni

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we move

To Merce Cunningham, one of the 20th century's greatest dancers and choreographers, this simple fact was cause for celebration, reflection, and his life's work. He died on Sunday at the age of ninety, still dancing into his 70's and still active in the dance world until his death, choreographing work that will long outlive him. His enduring legacy will mostly be defined by his insistence that movement, in and of itself, is enough to justify the art of dance. This was a revolutionary idea when he entered the dance world in 1939, when conventional wisdom held that dance needed to follow and depict a narrative. (Just as today few in our culture, perhaps poets alone, it sometimes seems, and perhaps not even all poets, understand that poetry can be experienced primarily through sound, and even if there is no clear, easily deciphered, or linear narrative or "meaning," a good poem always offers something to savor: the sound of words.) Cunningham's was a sensual world and to enter it was to be elevated into a closer relationship with one's own body and senses.

His impact also includes his frequent collaborations with artists of other genres, including musicians, visual artists, poets, and architects. Again, this was a new idea when Cunningham was discovered by the modern dance pioneer, Martha Graham in the 1940's. Still today such collaborations are rare. Below is a video of his work with the artist with whom he created dozens of collaborations, the musician John Cage, who was also his life partner for five decades until Cage's death in 1992. Their work together included the innovative practice of Cage composing music and Cunningham choreographing dance independently of each other and then performing the two simultaneously on stage.  

  

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(Also see Merce Cunningham Dance Company and Mr. Cunningham's essay, "Space, Time, and Dance.")

between starshine and clay

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For Women's History Month:
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untitled by Lucille Clifton
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won't you celebrate with me
what i have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.
born in babylon
both nonwhite and woman
what did i see to be except myself?
i made it up
here on this bridge between
starshine and clay,
my one hand holding tight
my other hand; come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.
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Also see Clifton's poems, "blessing the boats," "a dream of foxes," "poem in praise of menstruation," and essays about Clifton's representation of "the female experience," here.
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(Some time in March I hope to post a women's poetry reader. Any suggestions?--Let me know.)

rebel fronts

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For Black History Month:
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America
by Claude McKay

Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,
And sinks into my throat her tiger's tooth,
Stealing my breath of life, I will confess
I love this cultured hell that tests my youth!
Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,
Giving me strength erect against her hate.
Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.
Yet as a rebel fronts a king in state,
I stand within her walls with not a shred
Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer.
Darkly I gaze into the days ahead,
And see her might and granite wonders there,
Beneath the touch of Time's unerring hand,
Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.

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see also "Africa," "The Lynching," and "The City's Love."
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very cool cows

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I have a new friend who is very cool, and this very cool friend has a very cool website/blog. Actually, two very cool websites/blogs. You can check out the first site, which the drawing above is from, here at somecows. The second one is a suitable surprise, and its link can be found on "somecows," whose name, by the way, reminds me of a great Bob Hicok poem ("great Bob Hicok poem" -- how redundant) called "My new neighbor." An excerpt:


The cow had a metal tag in its ear,
orange with the black numeral 42.
... 42 has large brown eyes and lives in a field
beside a small Presbytarian church.
I guess this makes 42 a God fearing cow
and all cows have large brown eyes if 73 and 12
are a fair sampling. They pretty much do
what 42 does seven days a week, which is eat
and which suggests they are atheists after all.
... It is comforting to talk
to large animals, whether they listen or not.
I said, it is comforting to talk to large animals
whether they listen or not.


(from This Clumsy Living)
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I think I'll take this opportunity to say eat butternut squash, not cows.

Or at least less cows, more butternut squash.
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ten favorite quotes about poetry: # 2,1.

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Someone emailed me recently, simply writing, "so what are your top two favorite poetry quotes?" Last year, responding to a tag in a meme, I posted a little series of my ten favorite, but apparently never did numbers one and two. So here goes:

(To read the others, click on the following: #8-10, #5-7, #3-4.)


2.) Artists love what is raw and degraded as much as what is seemingly fine. They are awed by creation and cannot let a single aspect of sensuous experience go unadmired.

- James Agee


1.) There's this little old Jewish guy with a bald head sitting at a piano and he's being interviewed. And I suddenly realize I'm looking at Igor Stravinski, the great Russian-American composer. The interviewer is saying to him, "So Mr. Stravinski, what is the greatest moment for you? Is it when you finally write the symphony?"
And he says..."No, No, No..."
He sounds like a New York cab driver.
"Is it when you've heard it played the first time by a symphony?" And he says...."No, no, no..."
"What about opening night when they premier it and herald it as being one of the greatest works of the 20th century?"
And he says...."No, no no..."
"So what IS the greatest moment for you?"
He was sitting at the piano with music on the thing there and he says: "I'm sitting here at the piano and for three, four hours I'm trying to find a note. I can't find the note and I'm going 'bum, bum'....'bum,bum'....'bum, bum' for three hours. Finally after three hours I find the note. That's the moment. There is nothing like it. That's everything"
So I started crying because I realized, I had just done The Graduate with Mike Nichols who had helped and had the patience for Anne Bancroftand Katherine Ross and myself and everyone else and the NEED to find that note above all else. It was to find the note day to day. That's what kept me going, you know like even the years before that film when I was lucky to be doing a play in front of ten people -- that moment when you find the note.

- Dustin Hoffman

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The meme, I think, started on Nick Bruno's blog, They Shoot Poets - Don't They, and asked to “Give us at least 10 quotations pertaining to poetry - from 10 different writers &/or poets which best coincide with your philosophy vis a vis ars poetica. They can be posthumous or otherwise. The order is not important - unless it is to you.”
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raindrops on roses & whiskers on kittens

Tonight was the perfect night to take a walk: after days of temperatures down in the single digits (farenheit) with the wind chill, tonight was 55 degrees. And raining just enough for a mist. I love walking in rain, and below 50 degrees or so, light misty rain is the best. And it looked so film noir outside too. Unfortunately, I couldn't take a walk because I've had a cold that had started to go away before I then went out on Saturday night and it came back with a vengeance. sigh.

But I had a great night nonetheless. I finally figured out a Beethoven peice on the piano that had been being very uncooperative with my hands for months until tonight. I love muscle memory.

And I got some good news after I finally submitted a few poems the other night, after a fairly long dry spell, not of writing, but of sending my work out for publication. I've always had some strange reluctance about submitting, that I think has something to do with that fear, that I've heard some other poets (and writers, artists, etc.) express as well, that every time I write something that I consider of some value, it will be the last half-decent thing I'll ever write. That seems to lead to some strange hoarding behavior that I don't seem to have with anything else. 'As if I won't have anything left to submit, so I better save my better work for some nebulous someday. But a few days ago I finally overcame that bad habit and submitted to elimae, a journal I've respected for quite a while: its content is consistently fresh, innovative, and genuinely eclectic. I've also always liked its clean look that seems to reflect a professionalism that it has maintained for a long time -- at a time when literary magazines come and go so often and so quickly, elimae has been around since the nineties, a long time for an online publication. Only a couple of days after I submitted my work, the editor emailed me back with an acceptance. I'm quite pleased -- so much so that I immediately put together another submission for another magazine. I'm determined to turn this into a good habit of not letting my work sit in my drawer or hard drive and age for years as if its wine, before doing my best to get it out there. The work accepted for elimae, which is quite new actually, will appear in the journal's next issue which is due out in only a week or two. (If you would ever like to nag me with questions of whether I've been keeping up with what Anne Sexton called the business of words, please feel free.)

And of course I still got to open my windows and enjoy some unseasonably warm sweater-weather, and hear the rain.
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of the day

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POEM: "Primp," by Olivia Cronk, in the most recent issue of elimae. Ohhh this poem. The poet also has a really wonderful, really smart chapbook, titled Gazooly, that one can read or download, for free, at Beard of Bees.

STAT: On average, the best paid doctors are neurosurgeons. The top-earning 1% of these highest paid physicians make an average of $2.7 million per year. The top 1% of hedgefund managers make, on average, $877 million per year. (From CNBC's "Untold Wealth.")
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PERSON: Bill Nye, the once and always "Science Guy," has a new show on the Discovery Planet Green channel called Stuff Happens. Watch the show and/or check out the website to hear Nye explain the toxic effects of PDCB naptholene, which is the active agent in mothballs and what to use instead (lavender or cedar); how to save $ and avoid waste & toxins by making dust spray from lemons and olive oil; what common products contain formaldehyde and how today it takes one half the amount of formaldehyde to embalm bodies than it did 25 years ago because these days our bodies have so much of it already when we're alive (eww). At the show's website (or Planet Green's site home), also check out the green menu links, and especially the blue "Go Green" menu link, for some fun green-ideas and eco-friendly tips. These pages are really helpful for the holidays and have gift-giving ideas, recipes, and a lot of other relevant holiday info.

FIND: Jasper Bernes' superbly named blog, "Little Red's Resolution Trust Organization." Besides having one of the best-ever titles around, the poet's blog gives me new hope that poets, yes, are indeed often a highly evolved lifeform. High intelligence, high art, and high socio-political awareness, without the high drama that seems to infect so many poblogs and group-poblogs.

QUOTE: 'What someone in power doesn't want people to know - that's news. All the rest is just advertising. ~Dan Rather
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yes sir

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there's a very cool new literary journal to check out

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blogging smarties

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READ THESE POSTS.

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The last special George Carlin did for HBO was called It's Bad for Ya. The following posts, I'm convinced, are Good for Ya.

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Life Above Ground , by Tim Keane

13 Facts About Bob Hicok, by Steven Schroeder: Not only one of the best things I've read about my favorite living poet, but hilarious too.

Sam Rasnake's series of posts, Music to Live By, as well as a photo and a certain quote from Pulp Fiction (okay, yeah, yeah, the quote's original source is the Bible, but it's so much more fun in this context. And I'm thinking maybe just maybe, disaoppointed with some of the writers who claimed to be speaking for God and penning GOD's literature, She created Quentin Tarantino.)

Civil Rights, Who Gets Them and How Often, by Amy King, who hands down has the best and dare-I-say most relevant and important blog in any sphere

Daniel Nester's Just on the Morning News: "Takin' Care of Jesus" with a link to Amy King's take on the subject, as well. Daniel Nester's project is good ol' political fun, and so is Amy's descriptive article.

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Michi Gabriel's just plain funny Sunday Morning Visitor.

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And if you haven't seen Nick Courtright's Tier 3 definitely check it out. It's a higher species than the blog.

Read a politically relevant take on Monopoly on Tim Keane's blog

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Also seen on the poetry blogosphere:

Michi Gabriel's little gem, "I may be the biggest female fool in the world, but at least i'm not a man"


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free speech

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My friend and innovative-artist-extraordinaire Peter Schwartz has a chapbook of his work, both visual art and poetry (published by Barnwood Press) , up online, free for all to see and love.

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empress, by peter schwartz

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If you haven't read Amy King's Kiss Me with the Mouth of Your Country yet, ohhhh you really must. It is also free (!) online, and besides having what has to be one of the best titles ever, has an achingly beautiful cover photograph. Here's what I said about the chapbook somewhere else: This is so good it broke my heart into a thousand little peices and I was hit so hard by some of these poems that I dropped some of those little peices along the way and am still trying to find them. Oh, that Amy King.

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And bravo to Dusie Press for publishing, along with Amy's Kiss Me, all of the following chapbooks that you can read online or download at no charge. Among these authors are a few contributors to Siren and other riteous babes.

a bodyfeel lexicon. (queen/bozek) dimestore operetta say. (bowen) developing poetic ideas. (chirot) time space repetition. (armentrout) vie et pli. (giovenale) afar buzzing stars. (scappettone)ekphrastic celebrity I (daly) props of henwifery. (sprague) digress into residency. (berridge) laced with forethought. (murphy) postcard of the. (tate) I posit no. (fieled)erratogenic paraparasitic postpoem. (goodland) erotic false consciousness. (ward) first swifts come. (schaeppi)will be waxing. (art) (carignan) flamenco pierced her. (tabios)a citizen I. (snyder) engirth, discorrupt, linger. (workman) correspondence, obscure, reveal. (fletcher)enhanced ego-interference patterning. (orange) fairly clear the. (boyer) telephone as intermediary. (hunter)vista of verdancy. (stengel) pale blue twilight. (phipps) (an historical site) magi.little decisions thrumming. (boykoff) writing records eden. (farr) production of hormones. (marcacci)our crops far-flung. (sand) going not gone. (hofer) informed by light. (compton) my embroidery she. (abulhassan)ruby large enow. (gardner) composition as process. (hayes) like you tiger-shock. (smith) distance presence print. (pusateri) certain fields escape. (muench/allegrezza) fragile engines flashing. (detorie)the great desire. (nakayasu) behold a glimmering. (quimba) splendid drifts of. (kunz)salt, line, obedience. (cox/cox-farr) eyes glass hands. (lamoureux)template, some vicissitude. (mauro) little red song-book. (newman) imagistic kinetic dizzy. (stamatakis) a need for. (behm-steinberg) gaga futurism pales. (cooper) a lavish spectacle. (deming)him, wings adjacent. (heide) hands half face. (king) presently be said. (stempleman) known as "we". (nelligan)underground I go. (graham) adorn honour bright. (mangold) paced awning graces. (klinger) courting in earnest. (spahr) grew inside we. (madison) a running plotline. (janssen)

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hahaha

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I'm so stealing this from Tim Keane's blog. (It's a good post; check it out here.) But he's a good egg, so I'm hoping he doesn't mind. Besides, as writers of course we know what great writers are doing while merely good writers are borrowing.

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this stuff we love

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I was just wondering, is there anything more honest than writing a poem and letting someone read it? Anything more naked?

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I really like this post on Mary Biddinger's blog.

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I added three poems to my list of One-hundred of the greatest American poems:

Bob Hicok, Happy Anniversary (from This Clumsy Living)
Jenny Boully, Kafka's Garden
Walt Whitman, Drum Taps

happy national poetry month

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and a belated happy women's history month




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Anne Sexton, "Her Kind"

the last day of black history month: etheridge knight

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Etheridge Knight, "The Idea of Ancestry"
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that for which i'm thankful, a-z

Photo above by Bobby Diba

A: Art. Anyone who can find me a copy of Sinead O'Connor's original version of "This is a Rebel Song."

B: Baryshnikov. That my Blog is working again. Babies of all sorts of species.

C: Children. The movie Crash. Cherry Slurpees. Charlie Rose. Cleaning products.

D: Dance. Daisies.

E: Elephants (the real kind, not the "GOP" kind) . The next Editor who accepts some of my work. Evolution.

F: Frost.

G: Louise Glück's chapbook-length poem, October. Gorillas.

H: Honeysuckle. Half Nelson.

I: Irony. Ice. Especially the polar-ice-cap kind.

J: Jezebel, one of my cats.

K: Kevin, Claire, and Caroline, as sweet as they are adorable, as redemptive as they are sweet.

L: Lucille Clifton's work.

M: Matt Hart, Tim Keane, and Mark Cunningham, who kept me company during the past few weeks while I put together Siren's new issue (which will be out any minute now). Metaphor.

N: Neko Case's Blacklisted. "No."

O: Oceans.


P: Photography. 'Like the heartbreaking, beautiful photo at the top of this post, by Bobby Diba. Postal mail. Perri. Poetry, poetry, poetry, poetry. My sweetsouled Po-blog-com, especially Michi, Nic, and Jehanne. My Pittsburgh Steelers.

Q: Queen Riley.

R: Rubyfruit Lulu (one of my two cats). Raising Sand by Robert Plant and Alison Krauss.

S: Stephanie, who shares life boats with me. Stephanie who waited tables with me, went to college with me, went from Pennsylvania to Montana, and all the states in between, with me, and all the way back with me, and somewhere in the Dakotas taught me how to pee outside. Stephanie, who, after I moved and moved again and we lost touch with each other, googled me and emailed me, life boat in tact. Sinead O'Connor's She who dwells in the secret place of the most high shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.


T: Trees. This Clumsy Living, by Bob Hicok.

V: Van Morrison.

W: Warmth. Wilco.

X: xoxo

Y: "Yes."

Z: Zevon, not here long enough, but here more than most.

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TO BE CONTINUED

my one-town reading tour 10/26