Category: poetry reading

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Not a year for fiction?

I cannot pretend to guess why the Pulitzer Prize committee, in its great wisdom, decided not to award a prize in fiction this year. I had personally been hoping they might crown my friend Edith Pearlman’s magical year: her excellent “Binocular Vision” won the National Book Critics Circle Award and was a finalist for the National Book Award. My sister-in-law Susan, one of the most astute and adventurous readers I know, is urging me to read Denis Johnson’s “Train Dreams.” I had thought this year’s crop seemed pretty bountiful. No? Well, what do I know?

This morning Ann Patchett has a smart column in the New York Times making the excellent point that prizes, like it or not, help to sell books and selling books is what keeps the publishers and the bookstores in business. Patchett says it is fiction that gives us a way to imagine another life. It gives us a chance to be empathetic. And, she says, “staying within the world of a novel gives us the ability to be quiet and alone, two skills that are disappearing faster than polar icecaps.”

Ah, quiet. Ah, alone. Alone with a good book–what could be better?

Remember the book that first opened that magic door for you, the one that showed you a world where another life happened and you, at least for the length of the story, were part of it? Doesn’t that still happen? Doesn’t a good story well told still have the power to grab us from our screens and plunge us deep into the page? What was your prize-winner this year?

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A new haggadah

I bought the New American Haggadah today. I had time this afternoon for only a quick look through it, as my dining room is currently Haggadah Central, with two haggadot that I’ve compiled lying in various stages of readiness for the holiday ahead. One, for a celebration with my extended family, is a version I wrote in the late 1990s; the other, written just last year, is for the seder Dr. D. and I have with friends and our families. Each has its own specific tone for its intended group. They are the result of a year of study of a variety of haggadot, old and new, consultation with my rabbis and cantor, and much editing and writing, not to mention photocopying, pasting, and shaking out of old matzah crumbs.

So I was interested to see this new haggadah, which is the work of respected writers who are also committed Jews: Jonathan Safran Foer, who was the editor; and Nathan Englander, the translator; with commentary by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein; Jeffrey Goldberg; Nathaniel Deutsch; and Lemony Snicket (who knew?). There is some lovely language; two of the plagues are rendered as “a maelstrom of beasts” and “a clotted darkness.”

The book was designed by an Israeli artist, Oded Ezer. The authors apparently all come out of very traditional upbringings and much serious scholarship is in evidence. One of my favorite aspects Mia Sara Bruch’s timeline that tracks the observance of Passover from around 1250 BCE to the entry in 2007 noting the publication of the first haggadah for Jewish Buddhists. Some will, I predict, find the artwork hauntingly beautiful; others will wonder if the pages have arrived with wine blotches already on them, and, indeed, the book’s introduction refers to those very spills of Concord grape. Strangely, the design of the pages, with commentary and timeline, requires you to read in three directions, though, happily, not simultaneously. The Hebrew is offered without transliteration, which will make it inaccessible to some families, but which carries an optimistic message about the persistence of the language, not to mention the Seriousness of the Project.

The biggest surprise for me as a Reform Jew was its masculine references to God. Really? In 2012? Was Rebecca Newberger Goldstein in the kitchen when that decision was made? For me it a chance to celebrate my own experience of a holiday in which my grandmother and other female relatives always sat around the table as full participants.

Haggadot have proliferated astonishingly in the past decades. Where once it was Maxwell House or nothing (cue Obama’s in-joke to Jeffrey Goldberg) there is now a version for every conceivable gathering. Each carries a history, clues to the time in which it was written and the thinking of those who wrote it. Every one I read brings me new understanding of the holiday that has always been my favorite. The New American Haggadah is no exception. I won’t be using it at my table, but I will be reading it and learning from it.

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Going with the (poem) flow

Have you heard of Poem Flow? Have you seen it? What do you think? If you haven’t seen it–it’s a daily poem delivered onscreen. It was developed as an iPhone app, but you can also see it on the Internet.

I heard about it a few months ago when the poem of the days was “Dover Beach” by Matthew Arnold. It was astounding to see the poem spreading itself out onto the screen like the sea with its full tide under the fair moon.

It was also fun to see that it had been viewed last by someone in Santa Cruz, California.

I love the thought of a poem offering itself word by word on iPhones everywhere. I love the graceful font and I often love the way the words deposit themselves slowly, deliberately, in a way that sometimes lets you hear the poem whispered in your ear.

And sometimes not so much. Sometimes it feels annoying, like interference, as if someone is getting between the poem and me. Sometimes the words flow out in a way that feels precious and calls attention to the “flowing” more than to the words. And whose reading is it, anyway?

Still, I can’t help thinking that, for all the inherent flaws and the missteps, the idea of poems flowing out into the world is pretty good.

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Art Appreciation

I did a reading yesterday at the Concord Free Library. As invariably happens, I found myself feeling grateful for the turnout of people who came to hear poetry. To really hear it, in the most profound sense. To open themselves to the experience and take in the sound and sense of someone else’s words.

It was a fresh reminder of our human hunger for art at all levels, which runs so sadly counter to all the knee-jerk budget slashing that throws arts programs overboard first in any school budget cutbacks.

I was thinking of that on Saturday night when my friends Erica and Don and I watched a fascinating documentary film called “Herb and Dorothy.” It’s about Herb and Dorothy Vogel, who, on modest civil service incomes, amassed an art collection now housed at the National Art Gallery in Washington, with overflow pieces being parceled out throughout the 50 states. It is a story of people who simply loved art and who took the time to pay attention, to look carefully, and also to talk with artists about their work.

Although the experience begins in pleasure, it’s a hugely generous thing to open oneself fully to art. To try to understand what was behind the creation of a work involves the kind of deep connection between people that lets us bring the best of ourselves to each other. I often find it useful and fun–especially when confronted, say, with a painting or with music that feels challenging–to try to imagine what its creator might have felt in the process. What was he or she thinking about? Trying to do? Wanting us to notice?

I was in London recently and, on walking into the British Museum, was drawn to an exhibit of one of the museum’s oldest items, a pair of reindeer, apparently swimming. It was carved into the tip of a mammoth tusk, possibly 13,000 years ago. Why? There is no way to know. We may guess that it was some kind of totem. Or it might have been carved in tribute to the animals that provided sustenance. But there is also the possibility that the carver created it solely as an expression of the world around him or her. Art! Our earliest evidence of its centrality in our lives.

Maybe it’s art that, at the deepest level, makes us human. And, whether or not we recognize it, our willingness to experience art, as much as our ability to make it, is our most basic human connection.

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Hearing Jack McCarthy

Jack McCarthy is back in town and last night I went to hear him. He lives out in Washington State now, so a local reading is a big deal for his friends and fans. This one was what a Jack McCarthy reading always is these days: a full house with the crowd enthusiastic to the point of worshipful and Jack, a little thinner but at the top of his game.

He’s a slam poet, but his poetry often has classical references. The poems often amble around in a deceptively chatty way before taking aim straight for the heart. I often find myself wanting to quote a line or idea of his, but the poems are so rambling that the set-up gets long when I try it. When Jack does it, you hang on every word.

He asked me to give him a word as a starting point–I was honored–and, just as I was about to say something like “street” I heard, in horror, the word “evanescent” coming out of my mouth. Not such a Jack McCarthy word, evanescent. But he went with it graciously and came up with a vaguely related poem that talked about watching television.

Jack’s reading was at the Cantab Lounge in Central Square, Cambridge. I hadn’t been there in a long time, but it’s the place I’ve considered my poetry home. I spent many a Wednesday night there, downstairs where they have poetry on Wednesdays–a two-hour open mic and then a feature and a slam, all while the ceiling is shaking from the music being played upstairs and the floor shivers periodically from the Red Line going by.

It’s the place where I first read my poetry in public and the place where I had my feature. It’s where I learned, by listening, how to read, and it’s the reason I always have a tender spot in my heart for the open mic. I know as well as anyone that an open is always unpredictable I’ve sat through my share of readers I was grateful were only going to be on for three minutes. And I’ve been there when reader after reader came up with such beautifully crafted and effectively delivered poems that I felt lucky to be in the room.

There’s wildly encouraging “first timer” applause at the Cantab, and often wildly encouraging applause and shouts and whistles after the poem, too. The Cantab, since its beginnings as a poetry venue, has been known for the quality of both the poetry and the audience enthusiasm. I was glad to see that those basics haven’t changed. It’s still the place where I learned to love reading. And it’s the place where I met Jack McCarthy.

Have you been there?