What Do the Chinese Think of Michael Jackson? (Translations Welcome)

It's official. My most commented-on post is a YouTube clip from the film Three Kings (1998), in which an Iraqi soldier discourses on the torments of race in American culture--"What is the Problem with Michael Jackson?"--while torturing an American soldier by pouring oil down his throat. The problem is, EVERY SINGLE COMMENT IS WRITTEN IN CHINESE. Is there anyone who knows Chinese who would care to translate some of these comments? I'd love to know what they're saying

Poet Kazim Ali at John Carroll University: A Reading

Last night, I had the honor introducing poet Kazim Ali as part of John Carroll University's Visiting Writers Series. This is what I said:

Tonight we have a writer who transcends genre. Kazim Ali is the author of two celebrated books of mystical and enigmatic poetry, two novels, a memoir, and a forthcoming book of essays on poetry and art.... In short, he’s a dynamo, a phenom, a magnet for the envy of fellow writers (myself included)--for his dazzling abilities to span worlds with mere words, to bring words where nothing had been before.

To read and to hear Kazim Ali’s poetry is to enter into a space where the sacred meets the everyday. Using the rhetoric and forms of speech to the higher powers, prayers to God, Ali dips into various religious and mystical traditions-—most recognizably from his ancestral Islam of his family, and from Hinduism, and from yogic practices.

Though I sometimes sour on the rhetoric of mysticism, where I occasionally feel disconnected from the pungencies and vitalities of this world, Ali’s poems have a sensuousness and self-questioning that makes them feel real, makes them feel both ancient and modern. In a world where people often roll their eyes at religious earnestness, Ali risks in his poems to reach toward the ineffable--that which great poetry marks by its limits--toward our final end.

All week long, I’ve been mulling over his line, from "The Far Mosque," "a person is only metaphor for the place he wants to go." I have about five readings for this line, but the simplest is: we, in our physical selves, in this life, are most ourselves, are the souls we are meant to be, when we moving toward a destiny that we do not know, but to which we constantly lean. If this little line has you thinking, then you’re not alone. He’s the kind of poet whose lines resonate not as easy answers, but as questions to keep unfolding. To move into.

Kazim gave a wonderful reading, and gave the following advice to writers, roughly:

1) read voraciously (even outside your genre) especially what's being written now.
2) the body is a gift to us to experience the world, and get in touch with your breathing and pay attention to how your body feels in the world.
3) the world is a proving ground for compassion.

He also referred to Rumi as "like Ayatollah Khomeni, only warmer and fuzzier," and read his marvelous recent poem, "Dear Shams." I love Kazim's way of being in the world through words, where he cultivates both ecstasis and compassion. We'd all be a bit better off in such gardening.

On Sumud (Steadfastness)

Found on Palestine Telegraph:

Palestine, September 23, 2009, (Pal Telegraph) - Associate professor and former Dean of Arts at Bethlehem University, Dr Adnan Musallam teaches in its Department of Humanities. He obtained his Ph.D. at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in the contemporary history of the Arab world and the Middle East.

He has conducted research and published widely on the contemporary history of the Middle East, Palestine and Bethlehem. Among other things he teaches oral history. He is member of the advisory board of AEI-Open Windows.
See also his website, at http://admusallam.bethlehem.edu/

It is inevitable that when you talk about sumud you talk against the backdrop of the Arab-Israeli conflict, how 750,000 Palestinians were dispersed, how despite all the difficulties, the Separation Wall, the permits, the settlements, the high rate of unemployment, especially in Gaza, and so on, that the Palestinians have been able to stay steadfast on their land. Despite what others tell about you, and what they are doing to you, you are here to stay. You are part of the land, and you do not want anybody to move you.

Part of steadfastness is that you face this phenomenon, which is throwing you out of your house, trying to negate your presence, disconnect you from your roots, to put you in nowhere. Against this, sumud is trying to prove that you exist, on your land and everywhere; that you are worthy as a human being. You remember that in the 1970s the Israelis, like prime minister Golda Meir, said that there was no such thing as Palestinians... The Palestinians have proved that they are in place. The Palestinian cause is still there, it is all the time in the world headlines.

Palestinians refuse that their destiny becomes like what sadly happened to the Indians in North America, who were put in ghettoes. Sumud is that you stay in history. Palestinians don't want to be denied the right to self-determination, to have their own state with East-Jerusalem as its capital. They want to be like other peoples. Without steadfastness our demise would be pretty clear. Steadfastness relates to the essence of the Palestinian case and is indeed the soul of the Palestinian people.

Despite its centrality in the Palestinian struggle, sumud is also problematic for Palestinians. If you go and look into reality, you see Palestinians in every place, in New Zealand, Australia, the Philippines, Indonesia, and so on, scattered all over the world. They left because of the 1948 refugee problem, the 1967 refugee problem, and because of the lack of job opportunities. Many have chosen to leave the land, to go and search for a better life. People are fed up; they want to live a life like a normal human being.

Let's not be idealistic. Many Palestinian Christians and Moslems are leaving the land, finding steadfastness not to be worthwhile at this stage. It's tiring for them, for their children, they find elsewhere more opportunities. When we say that this is not happening, we hide our heads in the sand. The ongoing departure from the land is not good for the steadfastness of those who remain. It is a big loss for the people in the West Bank and Gaza. The land is emptied gradually. Although everybody says that numerically we are stronger than the Israelis, I believe that the more we leave, the more we loose in steadfastness.

Emigration is not just a Christian phenomenon. This is a stereotype. It is true that emigration started in the 19th century among the Christians from the Bethlehem area, but now it is really all over the place. Last summer, I had two history classes, I asked the students to do an oral history project, and we concentrated on the phenomenon of emigration. It's obvious: both Moslems and Christians emigrate. All have relatives all over the world. Emigration occurs in all Palestinian strata, all regions, among those working on the lands, town dwellers, in the refugee camps. You cannot even say that the middle class or the urban society is leaving more than others. You can only say one thing: that the rich leave more than the poor. The people with a lot of money have left the country. They take the money and invest it in a factory in Latin America, for example.

The peasantry and sumud

Even the peasants, who have a special contribution to give to steadfastness, are leaving.

Let's take a historical perspective on the last issue. The problem is that since the early time of the British period the peasants have been leaving their lands, from the 1920s on, because of the high taxes. The state policy was to create hard circumstances so as to uproot the Palestinian people, and make room for the Jewish homeland. So many Palestinian peasants left to work for the railroads, or work for British workshops. To be a laborer in Haifa was more profitable than to stay as a farmer. They didn't leave the country, but left agriculture.

That was a big loss for Palestinian agriculture. On the other hand, the Zionists brought more and more people and tied them to the land; it was a kind of Zionist steadfastness. On our side, throughout the mandate period and after, people have been leaving the land. Nobody guided them, supported them to stay on the land. Even now, we don't know how many peasants are staying on the land, whether they are keeping sumud, or whether they work in the city or in Israel during the day and at the end of the day go back to their land. I don't know how much of that commuting contributes to steadfastness. I don't know whether Israel's Wall and checkpoint policy to keep people outside of work in Israel contributes to steadfastness here in the West Bank, I am curious about that. The people who have been prevented of working in Israel - do they now work on the land? I hope so. I don't have the exact figures.

Of course I don't blame the people, it is not because they love to work as laborers but because they need to. As a human being I can understand that in the end people need something to live on. Who am I to tell them not to go? Am I supporting them to stay on the land, with jobs so that they can stay? There are so many things that work against steadfastness. The Palestinian Authority is so limited financially; it is dependent on financial contributions from other countries.
During the British mandate time sumud was there with the Palestinians as a collective consciousness, not as a concept, slogan or label. "I am ready to face dire consequences but I don't want to leave," that mentality was certainly there. When examining steadfastness historically, I would start doing research on sumud by focusing on the people in their relation to the land and the leadership. In the 1930s we had the big six-month strike of 1936; a revolt broke out in 1937-9, and then in 1938 all Palestinian leadership was in exile. Shortly often the Nakbeh took place, people were scattered allover the place, without a leader.

That is in fact part of the Nakbeh. The only signs of hope came from such leaders as ‘Ab Al-Qader Al-Husseini and cadres like the more secular jihad organization at the time. Husseini's martyrdom in April 1948 was really a big blow to the Palestinians. I do believe that the April 1948 battle at the Qastel [near Latrun to the west of Jerusalem] was a turning point. The Nakbeh started there. On April 9 you had the big massacre of Deit Yassin. And at the 11th the villagers fled because they were afraid that there would be more massacres like Deir Yassin. You need to have a leader who tells you: "Stay, I am coming to fight for you." The leaders should support you, they should make sure that you don't leave the land, don't emigrate.

That call to stay was more effective in 1967. Soon after the Israeli victory, the Israelis started with their loudspeakers to call the people to leave. Some got afraid of that, including the refugees of 1948, who fled for a second time and went to Jordan. But the rest of the people, no. They asked their leaders to go to the incoming Israeli forces and tell them: "Here we are. Don't do anything with us." The word sumud may not have been used, but it was there. And people remained in their homes, and they worked, and made a living. You fight for your life and you love this land, and you want to stay here. Nobody needs to tell you about sumud because you do it on your own. Sumud has been there all along but nobody examined it. Maybe some leaders started to use it as a slogan, in the 1960s, 70s and the 80s, but for the people it was a real thing.

Despite all the difficulties, despite all the contradictions, they showed that they were here.


A human concept

What does it mean? Sumud doesn't mean that you go and sleep. Just staying here, not speaking out nor doing anything is not sumud. Yesterday I heard about a small town south of Bethlehem, called Maesara. Like in Bil'in, they display steadfastness. They have marches, they prove that they are here. Sumud is about showing and telling others that you exist, so that nobody can deny your existence. Sumud is voice, communication.

Sumud is a broad, active, human concept. It is not allowing to let you being dehumanized. Let me give you an example. Part of showing your presence is keeping your ability to laugh. Laughing is a defensive mechanism. You are laughing, chatting, joking, so that you can continue to be like a human being. When you become totally pessimistic you are really saying, I am ready to die, I don't want to live anymore. You dehumanize yourself. Humor is essential to be able to stand up and stay steadfast. It's part of saying: I am here and nobody can deny my presence here.
Sumud is worth to be given courses about at Palestinian universities. You can come across sumud in Palestinian poetry, essays, the literature of resistance. It's a multidisciplinary subject. Take poetry. Mahmoud Darwish exemplifies the poetry of steadfastness. His small village was completely wiped out, but he didn't give up, he went to a neighboring town there and he practiced his poetry of resistance, also in exile. His poetry is definitely about Palestinian identity.

Sumud can be applied to architecture. Look at these beautiful homes all around the place, it shows that people are not hopeless. I looked at the terrains in Bethlehem ten years ago, when there were wide open fields around and now, when there is no space left for homes. Building a home, especially a traditional home, in traditional architecture, is an assertion. If people were so desperate, they would ask themselves, why should I build a home?
Religion is related to sumud. The religious community gives you needed spiritual support, so that you don't become hopeless. Again, sumud should be viewed as a broad, human subject. Part of steadfastness is that Palestinian people are people who believe in interfaith dialogue. You shouldn't be close-minded. You want to live in this land, but in a good atmosphere, where people are dialoguing with each other, as in a normal society. Steadfastness does not mean that you close your mind and just stay on the ground.

Also in another sense steadfastness shouldn't be narrowly defined. It includes all Palestinians, those living inside and those living outside. Sumud should be a comprehensive and inclusive concept. It is possible from outside Palestine to contribute greatly to the steadfastness of the Palestinian people. For instance, when you fight for the recognition of the Palestinians as a people like other human beings. This, too, has to be examined, the steadfastness agenda for Palestinians outside. Sumud is worth to be researched.


This is the second part in a series of interviews with Palestinians about the concept of sumud or steadfastness made by Dr Toine van Teeffelen, who is anthropologist and development director of the Arab Educational Institute (AEI-Open Windows) in Bethlehem. The series contributes to the Spirit of Sumud cultural tourism program at AEI-Open Windows ((www.spiritofsumud.ps).

The first interview, with Dr Walid Mustafa, can be read in the Palestine Telegraph, the on-line newspaper:
http://www.paltelegraph.com/opinions/editorials/1931-sumud-series-1--we-do-not-have-another-homeland

Help Protect Big Insurance

Protect Insurance Companies PSA from Will Ferrell

Michael Leong's e.s.p. (Silenced Press, 2009)

Michael Leong's debut collection, e.s.p, just published by Silenced Press, on the heels of his translation of Estela Lamat's I, The Worst of All, aptly demonstrates what he calls in one poem's title, "Notes Toward A Ludic Inarticulacy"--balanced between the anarchic impulses of the ludic, and the hierarchial ones of articulateness, Leong tries on poetic strategies the way a good actor tries on character.

Echoing the ludic experimentalists like Lev Rubinstein, Charles Bernstein, Bob Perelman, and Christian Bok, Leong darts and weaves through serial litanies, riffs on foreign idioms and cliches, pangrams, magnetic poetry, acrostics, anagrams, concrete poetry, ekphrastics, alliteration, and so on. He has a lot of fun with the array of new forms (often, themselves, older forms but taken at a conceptualist's promixity), which luxuriate in the sound of words, as Stevens once famously wrote, which could hold off the pressure of reality, in "The Noble Rider and the Sound of Words."

What if poetry--and all art--is a kind of escape? If so, what kind of escape does it provide? Is it like Achilles' shield--that first ekphrastic poem--which both represents the world and keeps it from killing us?

The ludic is, of course, never "just fun and games." It is fun and games as a way of being. (How's that for making even the ludic sound unfun?). I'm reminded of my buddy M--- G--, who, just a day after we'd heard of the tragic death of a classmate, began to tell jokes where the punchline was this student's name. It was pretty ballsy, but it was a strategy for surviving. He was clearly thinking about her--as were we--and his mind went to the ludic.

I'm particularly drawn to the poems that create the vertiginous effect that such jokes gave--where the ludic is wrestling with the "pressure of reality" a la Stevens. Where the fun is the vertigo of facing the abyss, as in Leong's "Pensando en la inmortalidad del cangrejo," where the thinking literalizes the metaphor and dizzies us into the real. Read the poem here. Here's the end:

Within the oceanic O
of my omphalos,
the crab is dreaming
a fathomless dream about
the bottom of the sea,
where the kelp sways lazily,
and the coral feeds
at its leisure,
and, from time to time,
bursts of bubbles
unexpectedly rise
to the surface,
which, from here,
give only the slightest impression
that the water is boiling.

Leong has given us a promising collection, where the possibility that the seas are boiling, seems both funny and ominous.

Jim Carroll, "The Baskbetball Diaries," Violence, and Poetry

Think of Empire as a Video Game

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Alison Weir on Israel-Palestine Coming to Cleveland

Alison Weir on Israel-Palestine
09/21/09 6:00PM - 7:30PM

Alison Weir will present at Peace House, Monday, September 21
University Circle - 10916 Magnolia, Cleveland
6 pm - 7:30pm
Sponsored by Middle East Peace Forum and Free Gaza Coalition


Alison Weir is the founder of If Americans Knew, an organization
providing information on topics of importance that are substantially
misreported or unreported in the US media, with a primary focus on
Israel-Palestine. In particular, If Americans Knew analyzes media
coverage of this issue, and has conducted a number of statistical
studies.

Alternate Focus, which produces videos for Public Access television
stations, has produced an excellent 30-minute video about these
studies.

Alison Weir on "how I got here":

Like most Americans, I originally knew little about Israel-Palestine.
In fall 2000 I was the editor of a small weekly newspaper in
Sausalito, California. When the current Palestinian uprising began at
the end of September, I became curious about this issue and began to
follow the news reports closely. When I did that, I quickly noticed
that, journalistically, the reports were highly Israeli-centric. Since
I wanted full information I began to look for additional reports on
the Internet.

After several months of following the situation closely -- daily
learning of civilians and young people being ruthlessly killed and
injured -- and seeing that very little of this was being reported by
NPR, the San Francisco Chronicle, etc. it began to seem to me that
this was perhaps the most covered-up story I had ever seen. I finally
decided to go over the see the situation for myself. I quit my job and
traveled to the West Bank and Gaza as a freelance reporter.

Attention Span 2009: Poetry That Stayed With Me

I am indebted to Steve Evans for asking me to contribute to his phenomenal blog, Third Factory, for my 2009 picks for poetry (Attention Span series). Visit his blog and learn up on all the good things that he's been doing, thinking, and recording. Here's where this appears: My Attention Span 2009. There are a host of other poets, critics, and others who have their own lists.

Attention Span 2009 – Philip Metres

At the end of a long summer of reading, listening, and watching, I found myself wondering whether I actually like poetry; I felt as if I luxuriated in the mythic capaciousness of novels like One Hundred Years of Solitude or Don Quixote, the vivid strangeness of films like “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,” the documentary power of “When the Levees Broke,” the magical low comedy and strange frames within frames of Arabian Nights, the surreal collage soundscapes of Guided by Voices, the martial punk radicalism of the Minutemen, the sultry ache of Cat Power.

Perhaps the “90% Rule” is in effect, even for poetry—that 90% of anything is bound to be forgettable. Perhaps, too, I find myself dissatisfied with the boundaries we have placed upon our art, its odd professionalisms and its professional oddnesses. But it’s probably also true that the 10% are worth living for. Here are a few books that I’m glad to have read, and have been compelled to re-read, review (excerpted here and there herein), and reiterate.

Mark Nowak | Coal Mountain Elementary | Coffee House | 2009

Whitman’s notion, in his Preface to the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass, that “poems distilled from other poems will likely pass away,” feels salient to Nowak’s vital anti-poetic stance. Coal Mountain Elementary draws upon and extends resources, voices, and narratives of the Sago mining disaster (and ongoing disasters in Chinese mines) that are—in the hothouse of contemporary poetry—richly unusual, and feel more akin to the projects of the field recordings of the WPA in the 1930s, the interviews of Studs Terkel, the history of Eric Foner and Howard Zinn, etc. It’s also not afraid to learn us something. Coal Mountain Elementary, even in its title, foregrounds strongly the pedagogical/didactic—the “elementary” refers to the project as a primer on the experience of coal miners and their families, at the same time that it interrogates the use and manipulation of education and mass media journalism—in particular, through the sampling of the exercises generated by the U.S. coal industry and the Xinhua wire stories (a numbing catalogue of Chinese mining accidents). Historian Howard Zinn calls the book “a stunning educational tool.” A beautiful book, with haunting photographs to boot.

Jules Boykoff and Kaia Sand | Landscapes of Dissent: Guerrilla Poetry & Public Space | Palm Press | 2008

Landscapes of Dissent provides a forceful reminder of the critical need to reclaim public space as a site of political action, symbolic exchange, and collective being. In the words of geographer Don Mitchell, “public spaces are decisive, for it is here the desires and needs of individuals can be seen, and therefore recognized, resisted, or… wiped out.” (7). Drawing upon the theories and practices of poets engaged in articulating and building a poetics in and of public space, Landscapes of Dissent offers itself both as a microsurvey of guerrilla poetry in the avant-garde tradition, and a how-to manual for future deployments of such locational verse. Accompanied by photos documenting guerrilla poetics in action, the book makes participating in such homespun actions seem more than possible — it makes them seem inviting and necessary.

Peter Cole | Things on Which I’ve Stumbled | New Directions | 2008

The cover image of poet, translator and publisher Peter Cole’s third volume of verse, Things On Which I’ve Stumbled, a woodcut by Joel Shapiro entitled “5748,” anticipates the central poetic concerns of this erudite, politically charged, and often dazzling collection. “5748,” of course, refers to the Jewish calendar year (September 1987-1988) which commemorated the fortieth anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel, as well as the advent of the First Palestinian Intifada—the popular uprising against military occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The woodcut itself, in its concatenation of blocky rectangles, evokes (at least to these eyes) both a broken swastika and a person mid-stumble. Such is the bifocality of Cole’s project—it is at once a dilatory celebration of the rich mystical and sensual traditions of Jewish life—which has survived despite a history of oppression and marginalization—and an unsparing look at the politics of Israel/Palestine. In this way, Cole’s work offers us nothing less than a poetics of coexistence, in a time when a future of coexistence seems more distant than ever, and never more necessary.

Susan Schultz | Dementia Blog | 2009

Susan Schultz’s moving Dementia Blog, a book of poetic prose chronicling the personal crisis of her mother’s rapid descent into dementia and increasing need for full-time care, is a remarkable and exemplary chapter in that struggle. But simultaneously, it is a reminder of why we still need an avant-garde practice, and how avant-garde procedures can be as homely and unheimlich as the process of grieving a mother’s decline, set against the backdrop of a nation’s decline.

The 1970s: NPF Conference | authors various | Orono | 2008

Hands down, the best poetry conferences are in Orono, Maine. 2008 merely continued the streak of greatness. Intellectually and artistically stimulating to the point of circuit-overload, but without the smarmy self-promotional aspect of some other well-known literary conferences.

Armand Schwerner | The Tablets | NPF | 1999

A winning, at times hilarious pastiche of scholarly translation of ancient and indigenous texts (fabricated, of course, by Schwerner himself). “The Waste Land” if Eliot had a bawdy sense of humor. Every time “pig” is mentioned, the translator notes it can also mean “god.”

Kazim Ali | “Orange Alert” | U Michigan Press | forthcoming, 2010

Though I sometimes sour on the rhetoric of mysticism, though I sometimes find the rhetoric of political engagement obvious or stultifying, though I roll my eyes at the bathos of identity investigation, Ali’s ability in these essays to bob and weave through these ways of being and writing in the world so effectively quite simply blew my circuits. It helped me not only understand Ali’s poetry in a new way, but also all the work that surrounds his work, and to have a greater feeling for his final reach, that reach toward the ineffable—that which great poetry marks by its limits.

Rachel Loden | Dick of the Dead | Ahsahta | 2009

Rachel Loden’s new collection, Dick of the Dead (Ahsahta, 2009), vibrates with the same parodic music that so energizes her previous collections; I consider her among the pantheon of contemporary poets working the vein of parody (along with Kent Johnson, the flarf collective, conceptualism, etc.), though hers is closest to Johnson’s in its acid take on our imperial politics and our complicity as citizen-poets. I love the music of her poetry, their sheer joie de vivre, their secret rhymes, their snarl and snap.

Kent Johnson | Homage to the Last Avant-Garde | Shearsman 2008

Kent Johnson’s Homage to the Last Avant-Garde, a full-length poetry collection that gathers work from previous chapbooks such as the excoriating Lyric Poetry After Auschwitz, extends Johnson’s ongoing parodic provocation of (and through) poetry. Organized in packets of “submissions” to various journals with experimental reputations, beginning with the experimental Evergreen Review (where Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” first appeared in the 1950s) to The World, the book is a subversive talkback to various generations of the avant-garde, and moves in ways that feel both admiring and admonitory. It’s that ambivalence toward the self-appointed avant-garde–and the ways it seems to fall short of its admirable aims to narrow the gap between art and life, to engage in art as social change, to innovate in ways that make revolution possible–that drives Johnson’s project.

Fady Joudah | The Earth in the Attic | Yale | 2008

Joudah’s The Earth in the Attic is the sort of book that shows its textures and layers after re-reading—I’m tempted to say (so I will) the way in which a seemingly wild landscape comes to reveal evidence of human habitation only after careful attention. Joudah, who expertly translated the inimitable Mahmoud Darwish in The Butterfly’s Burden, composes a narrative poetry that defies the linearity of dull narration; instead, his is a braided technique, full of returns, fragments, and veerings-off before inevitable conclusions. This is a kind of story-telling that seems most suited to poetry—where image, texture, and intimation infuse the forms rather than get locked into the inevitabilities of character and plot.

Sharon Mesmer | Annoying Diabetic Bitch | Combo / Zasterle | 2007

There’s something to be said for a book that makes a teacher feel like hurling before having to teach it. Annoying Diabetic Bitch is by turns offensive and hilarious, and instigated some interesting conversation about the definitions and limits of poetry. For a workshop full of undergraduate poets charmed by the dry urbanity of Billy Collins and confused by everything else, Mesmer’s flarf was a necessarily messy hurricane. I’m not even sure I “like” this book, but I like that it exists.

Son Volt's "Jet Pilot"/How Was it We Elected Bush Again?