Colman McCarthy, on Teaching Peace

Shout out to Tim Musser for sending this lecture by Colman McCarthy, whom I heard over twenty years ago at a conference on homelessness.

New York Reading: Poems against Fracking. Yes, Fracking. No, I Haven't Mispelled Anything.

MICHAEL LEONG & PHIL METRES
Tuesday, February 1st
7-9pm
(in conjunction with the SEA Exhibit entitled FRACKING)
$5 suggested donation. Cash Bar.
EXIT ART, 475 10th Avenue (between 36th and 37th Streets), NYC

Michael Leong and Phil Metres will be reading their poems from the FRACKING exhibit along with other pieces, followed by a response from, and panel with, artist Jacques del Conte. There will be time for the audience to ask questions and get involved in the discussion. Please plan to hang out in the bar following the formal presentation.

Michael Leong is the author of two books of poetry: e.s.p. (Silenced Press, 2009) and Cutting Time with a Knife (Black Square Editions / The Brooklyn Rail, forthcoming). He's also written a translation of the Chilean poet Estela Lamat, I, the Worst of All(BlazeVOX [books], 2009), and several chapbooks and broadsides including The Great Archivist's / Cloudy Quotient (Beard of Bees Press, 2010), Midnight's Marsupium (The Knives Forks and Spoons Press, 2010), and The Lung of the Poet (Splitleaves Press, 2011). He lives in New York City and contributes to the literary blog Big Other.

Philip Metres is the author of To See the Earth (2008), Come Together: Imagine Peace (2008), Behind the Lines: War Resistance Poetry on the American Homefront since 1941 (2007), Catalogue of Comedic Novelties: Selected Poems of Lev Rubinstein (translation, 2004), and A Kindred Orphanhood: Selected Poems of Sergey Gandlevsky (translation, 2003). He has also published two chapbooks, Instants (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2006) and Primer for Non-Native Speakers (Wick Poetry Series, 2004), and has three forthcoming in 2011: abu ghraib arias, Ode to Oil, and Thirty-Five New Pages. His work has appeared in Best American Poetry, and Inclined to Speak: Contemporary Arab American Poetry and has garnered an NEA, a Watson Fellowship, two Ohio Arts Council Grants, and the Cleveland Arts Prize in 2010. He teaches literature and creative writing at John Carroll University in Cleveland, Ohio. For more information on his poetry, click here

Ugly Duckling Presse no ugly duckling...

Folks, Ugly Duckling Presse offers a couple great subscriptions for their beautiful line of books every year. Having worked with them as an author, and having purchased the subscription, I can only say that they have changed the game of poetry publishing, making it more artistic and democracy, hip-experimental and yet somehow more traditional. In sum, I love them!

http://www.uglyducklingpresse.org/subscribe/individual-subscribers/

- The Membership is a new deal, it's a sampling of titles plus 6x6 magazine, and a discount on our site for the calendar year.
It's only $50.

- The "Full Presse" Subscription is for someone with shelf-space for the more than 25 titles we'll be doing this year.
It's priced at cost: $150.

For Rosa Parks and the Nameless Many Who Fight For Human Rights on MLK Day

Here's a poem by Yael Flusberg, for Rosa Parks, on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. I'm reminded each King holiday that King was both himself a man of great courage and intelligence and moral energy AND a kind of figure for all the people who fought (and still fight) tirelessly for human rights and without regard for the consequences to their person. We always risk the erasure of others when we lionize our leaders; I want to remember the nameless many, from our "civil rights era" to now, the quiet and dignified people, the angry but motivated, the visionary orators and the foot soldiers, who stand up against oppression and injustice, wherever it is--Israel/Palestine, Tibet, or Cleveland.


WAITING OUTSIDE THE U.S. CAPITOL WHERE SHE LIES IN STATE, EVE OF ALL SOULS


The only tired I was, was tired of giving in.
-Rosa Parks

after the first three hours
the temperature dropped to visible breath.
my fall coat no longer protected and my toes
went numb so i tried to transcend time
by thumbing a rose quartz bracelet
each bead proof of my will to persist,
my mother always said standing appels*
for hours was a sentence of death
for the weak.

in the muddy field where thousands of souls made solitary
by the cold snaked around a makeshift fence,
i found a handful of warmth, a single ruby glove.


i practiced standing meditation following the ringing
in my ears to keep my mind from wondering why
i was on this line, not in my down-covered bed
when i'd see the coffin just as well in the newspaper
in the morning. each time i lifted my sole i knew
i was one step closer to the dome with 108 windows
like a rosary i could pray with my eyes.

it was dawn when i finally circulated once around
the ceremonial space then down to the crypt below
where i begged that her being where she was
would bless where she was laying - and all of us
who'll never have moments like hers on the bus
will still find something worth standing up for.



-Yael Flusberg
From The Last of My Village. Used by permission.

* In the Nazi concentration camps, inmates had to stand appels - a protracted roll call - twice a day regardless of weather or exhaustion. Some gave birth to babies buried on the spot. Many others dropped dead during the hours-long appels or were killed if they couldn't maintain an erect posture.

Yael Flusberg's nineteen-poem collection The Last of My Village reveals how a legacy of familial and cultural sorrow can be shaped-much like a poem-into the capacity to begin again. The Last of My Village won Poetica Magazine's 2010 Chapbook Contest, and is available at www.poeticamag.com. When not writing, Yael integrates creative, somatic and reflective practices into her work with social change organizations and leaders. Visit her blog at www.yaelflusberg.wordpress.com

Flusberg serves on the Board of Split This Rock. She co-ran the workshop "Yoga and Poetry in Changing Times" at Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation & Witness 2010.

Please feel free to forward Split This Rock Poem of the Week widely. We just ask you to include all of the information in this email, including this request. Thanks!


Split This Rock
http://www.splitthisrock.org/
info@splitthisrock.org

Budrus - Cleveland premiere January 21st and 23rd at CMA

Budrus - Cleveland premiere January 21st and 23rd at CMA
Film and discussion - a Palestinian community organizer's story
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Join us for the Cleveland Premiere of BUDRUS at the Cleveland Museum of Art, 11150 East Boulevard, Friday, 7:00 PM, January 21 and Sunday, 1:30 PM, January 23. Admission: $9, Seniors and students: $7

Just Vision announces the Cleveland premiere of its new film, BUDRUS. Hailed in the New York Times as "this year's must-see documentary" and featured in major international news outlets, BUDRUS tells the story of a Palestinian community organizer, Ayed Morrar, who unites members of all factions along with Israeli supporters in an unarmed movement to save his village of Budrus from destruction. Success looks improbable until his 15-year-old daughter, Iltezam, launches a women's contingent that quickly moves to the front lines.

Discussion of this important film will follow showing. Discussion facilitated by Cleveland Peace Action on January 21 - download flyer - and J-Street, Cleveland Chapter on January 23 - download flyer

Hop on the Peace Train January 15: Benefit for the Cleveland Peace Show

The Peace Show is one of the beacons of the peace movement in Cleveland; begun as a non-violent alternative to the annual Air Show, it showcases the talents and labors of people interested in a world beyond war. Please come and support this people's institution!

Hop on the Peace Train January 15
Benefit for Cleveland Peace Show at St. Paul's Community Church
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Families & Friends, Hop on the Peace Train. Join us to commemorate Martin Luther King, Jr's Birthday. Participate in a program on nonviolence and show your support of Martin Luther King's dream and the Cleveland Peace Show.

Bring the kids! Join us on Saturday, January 15, 2011 · 4:30 - 7:00 pm at St. Paul's Community Church for songs and fun - 4427 Franklin Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio 44113 (street parking).

Featuring Bob Kloos "In a world of video games and excess visual and audio stimulation, Bob Kloos gives children the opportunity to listen, laugh, become involved, and love hearing stories from a live, likeable human being." Also Sheila Svoboda, VBS, Saint Paul Episcopal, Akron And Brian Stefan and Carol Becker. Sing along with them-labor, civil rights, peace and just plain fun.

Free will donations (this is a fundraiser as well as a commemoration after all). Pizza and Mac & Cheese, plus other refreshments. For more info, call 216-932-8546. Flyer available at www.clevelandnonviolence.org

"What Kinds of Times Are These" by Adrienne Rich

Adrienne Rich, one of the courage teachers.

What Kind of Times Are These

There's a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill
and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows
near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted
who disappeared into those shadows.

I've walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don't be fooled
this isn't a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here,
our country moving closer to its own truth and dread,
its own ways of making people disappear.

I won't tell you where the place is, the dark mesh of the woods
meeting the unmarked strip of light—
ghost-ridden crossroads, leafmold paradise:
I know already who wants to buy it, sell it, make it disappear.

And I won't tell you where it is, so why do I tell you
anything? Because you still listen, because in times like these
to have you listen at all, it's necessary
to talk about trees.

“What Kind of Times Are These”. © 2002, 1995 by Adrienne Rich, from The Fact of a Doorframe: Selected Poems 1950-2001 by Adrienne Rich. Used by permission of the author and W.W. Norton, Inc.

Source: Dark Fields of the Republic: Poems 1991-1995 (W. W. Norton and Company, Inc., 1995)

The Bullet of Information & the Lag of the Soul

The compression of space/time that is the essence of modern life both excites and threatens our slow souls. New technologies of information and mobility enable our lives to be sutured closer together, but in ways that are more voyeuristic than "proved upon the pulses," to echo Keats.

Every day I get an email alert from various progressive activist engines, asking me to sign on to avert the latest apocalypse--the worldwide collapse of bee populations due to pesticides, the latest death of a nonviolent Palestinian activist Jawaher Abu Ramah from American-made tear gas, the "corrective rapes" of South African lesbian women, the ongoing tragedies in coal mines, the politically-motivated arrest of Julian Assange for sexual assault and the ongoing revelations of WikiLeaks, the shooting yesterday of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona--and I sign on, do my little clicks, another ant in the digitized colony ticking through the day, hoisting my little weight.

All of this is happening almost too quickly to digest fully. More and more, dealing with this speed of information is among the greatest challenges facing artists and intellectuals today. We hardly have time to think or feel when "the story" has changed.

I once related to a former teacher, the poet Catherine Bowman, that I had only just begun to write about something, and it was already seven years ago. Half-joking, half-serious, she said that a New Age guru once told her that our souls lag seven years behind the present moment.

That always seemed about right to me, poetically speaking, but that doesn't help us cope with the terrible news of the present. An activist fighting a battle, or a poet writing about a particular event, that's seven years old, comes to resemble an old guy still angry about being jilted by Sue Daley in high school. (Cue eye-roll.)

This dilemma is partly why I've been so intrigued by the employment of documentary methods in poetry and the arts, and of the use of Google to take the temperature of the people's Internet (cf. Flarf).

In the face of such bruising trauma and grinding daily tragedy, perhaps the challenge of the artist--not just the literal artists, but the creators and curators of the soul that we are--is not simply to chronicle and attend to the present, but to achieve a stillness. D.H. Lawrence once wrote, "One’s action ought to come out of an achieved stillness: not to be mere rushing on."

We cannot outrun these bullets. We can name the manufacturers of hate, their trigger-men, but then we are only part way. We haven't quite stayed in the lag, and stayed the confusion (cf. Frost, "momentary stay against confusion").

Achieving a stillness is no small task, and one at odds with the rush in us (we are both rush and lag). Yet if we can, we might find our way to something like joy--that state of serenity in times of tumult, and in moments of beauty, delight.

Philip Metres, 2011.

"Spring Drawing 2" by Robert Hass, darting between beauty and suffering

Robert Hass, one of the contemporary poets who rewires my brain every five years or so (when he parts with enough poems to make a collection), darts like a bird from the problem of suffering (one flower) to the gift of beauty (a different flower), and back again here.

Suppose, he writes, "before they said silver or moonlight or wet grass, each poet had to agree to be responsible for the innocence of all the suffering on earth"--a noble idea, and one that might silence some of our navel-gazing warblers. But he undercuts this ethical injunction by comparing such a proposition to grammar-school arithmetic. We know, we feel it, it's proved upon our pulses that there is so much beauty, and so much suffering in the world--we can barely find our way to the end of a sentence.

It's a danger to make suffering into poetry--"You hear pain singing in the nerves of things; it is not a song"--because so much suffering isn't ours to use. What to do with our suffering, what to do with the beauty that arrests us, that makes it possible to go on?


"Spring Drawing 2" by Robert Hass

A man says lilacs against white houses, two sparrows, one streaked, in a
thinning birch, and can't find his way to a sentence.

In order to be respectable, Thorstein Veblen said, desperate in Palo
Alto, a thing must be wasteful, i.e., "a selective adaptation of forms to
the end of conspicuous waste."

So we try to throw nothing away, as Keith, making dinner for us as his
grandmother had done in Jamaica, left nothing; the kitchen was as clean
at the end as when he started; even the shrimp shells and carrot fronds
were part of the process,

and he said, when we tried to admire him, "Listen, I should send you
into the chickenyard to look for a rusty nail to add to the soup for iron."

The first temptation of Sakyamuni was desire, but he saw that it led to
fulfillment and then to desire, so that one was easy.

Because I have pruned it badly in successive years, the climbing rose
has sent out, among the pale pink floribunda, a few wild white roses
from the rootstalk.

Suppose, before they said silver or moonlight or wet grass, each poet
had to agree to be responsible for the innocence of all the suffering on
earth,

because they learned in arithmetic, during the long school days, that if
there was anything left over,

you had to carry it. The wild rose looks weightless, the floribunda are
heavy with the richness and sadness of Europe

as they imitate the dying, petal by petal, of the people who bred them.

You hear pain singing in the nerves of things; it is not a song.

The gazelle's head turned; three jackals are eating his entrails and he
is watching.

Congratulations, Nick Demske, on Nick Demske

Nick Demske, you are everything right with the world. Congratulations on his new book, published by Fence in 2010, the eponymous Nick Demske. I first met Nick online, when he emailed me out of the blue to talk about poems, insisted on signing all his emails "nicky poo," and then blew me away with sonnets that would make John Berryman eat his own beard, and the Flarfists wonder why he wasn't invited. There's hope for poetry when Nick Demske does the demske.

One of the featured debut poets in Poets & Writers this month, I was moved by his description of how his mother's dying had everything to do with the fracture of his forms. The body, he said, was bad form for our souls. Amen to that, brother Nick.