Bagpipe Music

Today is so-called "black friday" -- perhaps no more fitting time on so many levels can be found for this week's poem. It is both a kind of warped satirical nursery rhyme for adults and a treatise of social criticism. MacNeice's "Bagpipe Music" dates from 1937.



Bagpipes, like some politicians, are full of hot air. And so this re-make of MacNeice's "Bagpipe Music" appropriately refers to Ronnie, presumably Ronald Reagan. The song was part of their album The Janngling Man (1990).




Find out more:

Text of MacNeice's "Bagpipe Music" at Poetry By Heart
http://www.poetrybyheart.org.uk/poems/bagpipe-music

With the Poetry Foundation
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/louis-macneice

French translations of some of MacNeice's poems at Esprits Nomades
http://www.espritsnomades.com/sitelitterature/macneice/macneice.html

Angelou with the Angels

Letting her go is going to be hard for many people, and certainly reading I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings was enlightening for the twenty-something year old that I once was. Angelou was a relatively early literary acquaintance that I only visited occasionally, but each time drew something that spurred reflexion and learning. Her pithy statements published by the Guardian  in memoriam (May 29, 2014) are no exception, with these quotes standing out:

"Never make someone a priority when all you are to them is an option."
"Try to be a rainbow in someone's cloud."
"You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them."

It seems fitting to draw up a collection of some of the better tributes here.

Lyn Innes, "Maya Angelou obituary," Guardian (May 28, 2014).
"Maya Angelou - obituary," Telegraph (May 28, 2014).
Lynn Neary, "Maya Angelou, Poet, Activist and Singular Storyteller, Dies at 86," NPR (May 28, 2014).
Lev Grossman, "Maya Angelou: A Hymn to Human Endurance," Time (May 28, 2014).
Emma Brown, "Maya Angelou, writer and poet, dies at 86," Washington Post (May 28, 2014).

Heroic couplets of Nixon and Mao at the Met in February

The opera Nixon in China (1987, music by John Adams, libretto by Alice Goodman) will be performed at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, February 1 to 19, 2011. This will be concurrent to performances at the Canadian Opera Company, February 5 to 26.

The opera covers Nixon's visit of five days (February 21-25, 1972) in three acts, with the key players: Henry Kissinger, Richard Nixon, Pat Nixon, Mao Tse-Tung and his wife Chian Ch'ing, and Premier Chou En-Lai. The opening scene features the landing of the "Spirit of '76" jet, and the arrival of the Nixons. Before the plane lands, the chorus sings the opening couplets:

Soldiers of heaven hold the sky

The morning breaks and shadow fly

Follow the orders of the poor

Your master is the laborer

Who rules the world with truth and grace

Deal with him justly, face to face

Pay a fair price for all you buy

Pay to replace what you destroy

Divide the landlord's property

Take nothing from the tenantry

Do not mistreat the captive foe

Respect women, it is their due

Replace doors when you leave a house

Roll up straw matting after use...

Writing about her Libretto for the opera in 1987, Alice Goodman explained: "It would be an heroic opera—that would be the character of the work—and an opera of character—that had become inevitable—and the heroic quality of the work as a whole would be determined by the eloquence of each character in his or her own argument" (Goodman, "Towards Nixon in China").

According to Peter Sellars, "What opera can do to history is deepen it and move into its more subtle, nuanced, and mysterious corners" (see Met website). The following two videos are from the original 1987 performance in Houston, Texas.

Nixon in China was performed at the Chicago Opera Theatre in 2006:

Links & additional information:

Anthony Tommasini, "President and Opera, on Unexpected Stages," review of Nixon in China at the MET, New York Times (February 3, 2011).

"Reading Nixon in China," Nixon in China blog, with links to musical samples on Blip.fm (Vancouver Opera, 2010).

Matthew Gurewitsch, "Still Resonating from the Great Wall," New York Times (January 30, 2011).

"History in the Making" Metropolitan Opera website (2011).

Florence Fabricant, "Nixon in China, the Dinner, Is Recreated," New York Times (January 25, 2011).

Jason Farago, "Nixon in China in New York," n+1 (February 17, 2011).

Alex Ross, "Reverberations: A Month of Music and Politics," New Yorker (March 14, 2011).

May 20, 2011, Mathieu Duplay will speak about "L'imperceptible dans Nixon in China de John Adams et Alice Goodman," (Seminaire "Littérature et Métaphysique," ENS, Paris, 18h30).

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The Avant-Garde in Le Mans

The International Conference, "Poets and Publishers: Circulating Avant-Garde Poetry (1945-2010)" will be held at Université du Maine (Le Mans) October 14-15. The following program was recently made public:

International Conference Poets and Publishers: Circulating Avant-Garde Poetry (1945-2010)
Location : Université du Maine (Le Mans) : Bibliothèque universitaire Vercors, salle Pierre Belon.

Organizer : Hélène Aji (Université Paris Ouest Nanterre) With the support of Labo 3L.AM (EA 4335), Université du Maine (Le Mans) and Universidad de La Laguna, Le Mans-Métropole, Conseil général de la Sarthe, Institut des Amériques (Pôle Ouest)

Thursday, October 14 :
13h-14h : Registration and buffet lunch.
14h : Opening of the conference.
14h30 15h30 : Opening lecture : Jacques Darras (Université de Picardie JulesVerne) : « Pouvoir éditorial, position poétique ».
16h 18h : Workshop I : Shaping the avant-garde.
Chair : Hélène Lecossois (Université du Maine)
Céline Mansanti (Université de Picardie-Jules Verne) : « La diffusion de la poésie d¹avant-garde de langue anglaise : presses à petit tirage et petites revues ».
Stewart Smith (University of Strathclyde) : « Little magazines and the avant-garde in 1960s Scotland ».
Peggy Pacini (Université de Cergy-Pontoise) : « City Lights and the Emergence of Beat Poetry: Redefining Poetic and Cultural Boundaries ».
Barbara Montefalcone (Université de Caen, ERIBIA) : « Black Mountain Review,
Jargon Press et Granary Books : Petite édition et collaboration artistique aux Etats-Unis ».
18h30 : Cocktail at the University Library.

19h : Poetry Reading in French and in English : Jacques Darras and Jerome Rothenberg.

Friday, October 15 :
9h30 11h : Workshop II : Creating communities.
Chair : Benaouda Lebdaï (Université du Maine)
Micah Robbins (Southern Methodist University) : « Shifting the Focus: The Loujon Press and Literary New Orleans ».
Aldon L. Nielsen (The Pennsylvania State University, USA) : « Kid Creole and His Beau-Coconauts: Lloyd Addison's Astro-Black Infinities».
Lily Robert-Foley (Université Paris VIII) : « Xexoxial Endarchy: Visual Poetry and Intentional Community in the Midwestern United States ».
11h30 12h30 : Workshop III : Publicizing experimentation (1).
Chair : Brigitte Félix (Université du Maine)
Dulce Mª Rodríguez González (Universidad de La Laguna) : « Linking Atlantic Shores: Circulating American Poetry in Some Spanish Publications ».
Christian Vogels (Université de Nantes) : « Mécénats et comptes d¹auteur : les siamois antipodiques de la poésie contemporaine ».

12h30-14h : Lunch at the University Restaurant.
14h 15h30 : Workshop III : Publicizing experimentation (2).
Chair : Brigitte Félix (Université du Maine)
Drew Mc Dowell (University of Calgary, Canada) : « Circulatory Flux: Disseminating the Avant-Garde ».
Jennifer K. Dick (Université de Mulhouse) : « Visible Invisibilities : Radical Poets who Publish ».
Marina Morbiducci (Università « La Sapienza », Rome, Italy) : «'Editorial Peaceful Penetration': experimental poetry in small presses ».
16h-18h : Workshop IV : Working out new poetics.
Chair : Anne-Laure Fortin-Tournès (Université du Maine)
Matilde Martín (Universidad de La Laguna) : « Exchanging Poetical Views through Small Presses: Three American Examples ».
Noura Wedell (Ecole normale supérieure de Lyon) : « Pour de nouvelles éducations sentimentales ».
Clément Oudart (Université de Paris VI UPMC) : « Typewriting as War Machine: Robert Duncan between self- and anti-publishing ».
Manuel Brito (Universidad de La Laguna) : « The Explicit Agenda of American Poetic Avant-Garde : Publishing and Transnationalizing ».
20h : Banquet dinner in town.

Saturday, October 16 :

9h30 11h : Workshop V : From local to global stakes.
Chair : Éliane Elmaleh (Université du Maine)
Mostofa Tarequl Ahsan (University of Rajshahi, Bangladesh) : « Poets and Publishers' Accountability in Circulating Poetic Vision in Bangladesh ».
Efe Duyan : « The Emerging of 'Poet-Editor' in Turkish Literature and the Growth of Marginal Publishing Houses ».
Prakash Kona (The English and Foreign Languages University, Tarnaka, Hyderabad, India): «Globalization and the Avant-garde Poet, a Revaluation
of Sorts ».
11h30 12h30 : Conclusion.

Jacques Darras, né en 1939 dans le Ponthieu près de la Manche, compose depuis 1988 un long poème en plusieurs chants, La Maye, du nom d¹une petite rivière côtière du nord de la France. Il vient de publier le Chant VII de ce poème, « La Maye réfléchit » (Le Cri, Bruxelles, mars 2009). Il a créé à Amiens en 1978 la revue in¹hui (70 numéros. Il a co-fondé le mensuel national de poésie « Aujourd'hui Poème » (88 numéros). Il est professeur émérite de l¹Université de Picardie où il a enseigné la poésie anglo-américaine. Il a traduit Walt Whitman, Malcolm Lowry, Ezra Pound, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Carlos Williams, Ted Hughes, ainsi que de nombreux poètes britanniques et américains contemporains. Il est traduit en espagnol, en néerlandais, en italien, en arabe, en chinois, en anglais. Il se produit en lectures, soit seul soit en compagnie du comédien Jacques Bonnaffé (spectacle « Jacques to Jacques », en tournée depuis sa création au Théâtre de la Bastille au printemps 2004). Il a reçu le Prix Apollinaire en 2004 et le Grand Prix de Poésie de l¹Académie Française pour l¹ensemble de son œuvre en 2006.

Jerome Rothenberg is an internationally known poet with over eighty books of poetry and several assemblages of traditional and avant-garde poetry such as Technicians of the Sacred, Shaking the Pumpkin, Revolution of the Word, and Poems for the Millennium (in three volumes). A Book of Witness, his twelfth book of poems from New Directions, appeared in 2003, and a thirteenth book, Triptych, appeared in 2007. His second collection of literary essays, Poetics & Polemics 1980-2005, appeared at the end of 2008, and new books of poems in 2009 and 2010 include Gematria Complete, Concealments & Caprichos, and Retrievals: Uncollected & New Poems 1955-2010. Translations into French include Poèmes pour le jeu du silence (Bourgois, 1978), Après le jeu du silence (CIPM, Marseille 1991), Delights/Délices & Other Gematria (Editions Ottezec, 1998), Indiens d'Amérique du Nord (Textuel: L'oeil du Poete, 1998), Les variations Lorca (Belin, 2000), Un Nirvana cruel (Editions Phi, 2002), Livre de témoignage (Charles Moreau Editions, 2002), 4 poèmes d'un livre des recels (Cahiers de la Seine, 2003) and most recently Les Techniciens du Sacré (Editions Jose Corti, 2008).

Links

Jerome Rothenberg, Poems and Poetics (September 24, 2010).

CFP on Fabula.org (February 2010).

A Selected Peter Porter

Peter Porter's death in April has left a gap in the London and British poetry scene. Anthony Thwaite, who first met him in 1957, has described Porter as "One of the finest poets of our time." Porter was born in 1929 in Australia, and was unable to attend University for financial reasons. He came to London in 1951, and first worked at odd jobs. When hired by an advertising agency he came into contact with William Trevor, Gavin Ewart, Edwin Brock and Peter Redgrove. Shortly thereafter, he began to associate with poets in The Group. His first poems were published in 1957, and his first collection of poems in 1961. He left advertising in 1968, and worked freelance as poetry critic for the Observer, while also contributing to the New Statesman and the Times Literary Supplement. He was awarded the Queen's gold medal for poetry in 2002, and the C. Lit. from the Royal Society of Literature in 2006. His collections include:

Once Bitten, Twice Bitten (1961)

Poems Ancient and Modern (1963)

The Last of England (1970)

Preaching to the Converted (1972)

Living in a Calm Country (1978)

The Cost of Seriousness (1978)

Collected Poems 1961-1983 (1983)

Fast Forward (1984)

The Automatic Oracle (1987)

Mars (1988)

Possible Worlds (1989)

The Chair of Babel (1992)

Millennial Fables (1994)

Dragons in their Pleasant Palaces (1997)

Both Ends Against the Middle (1999)

Collected Poems 1961-1999 (1999)

Max is Missing (2001)

Saving from the Wreck (2001)

Afterburner (2004)

Better than God (2009)

The Rest on the Flight, Selected Poems (2010)

Sean O'Brien has chosen poems from nineteen books to compose The Rest on the Flight (2010).

The Poetry Archive (www.poetryarchive.org) features Porter reading his work.

Links

A Celebration of Peter Porter, Sean O'Brien, Don Paterson, and Fiona Sampson with Anthony Thwaite at the Royal Society of Literature, with on-line recording (December 13, 2010).

Boyd Tonkin, "The Rest on the Flight: Selected Poems, By Peter Porter," Independent (July 16, 2010).

Anthony Thwaite, "Peter Porter: Poet celebrated as among the finest of the second half of the 20th century," Independent (April 24, 2010).

Robert Potts, "Peter Porter obituary," Guardian (April 23, 2010).

"Peter Porter," Telegraph (April 23, 2010).

Peter Porter, "Two Poems," Jacket 16 (March 2002): "Rimbaud's Ostrich," "Rimbaud at Charleville"

Susan Howe to read at the Centre Pompidou in Paris

Thursday October 29, at 7:30 p.m., Susan Howe will give a reading at the Centre Georges Pompidou.

Friday October 30, beginning at 9:30 a.m., a series of talks about Howe's work ending with a reading from Howe, will be given at University Paris VII, Institut Charles V, room A 50, 10, rue Charles V, 75004 Paris. Organized by Abigail Lang and Antoine Cazé.

Hélène Aji (Université du Maine), “I [will not] Gather the Limbs of Osiris”: Susan Howe’s Mystical History.
Isabelle Alfandary (Université Lyon II), “Reading Emily Dickinson: My Emily Dickinson by Susan Howe”.
Will Montgomery (Royal Holloway), “Susan Howe’s Later Lyric”.
Antoine Cazé (Université Paris-Diderot), “Susan Howe: TransParencies”.
Christine Savinel (Université Paris III), “Of Lateness and Lapses in Susan Howe’s Souls of the Labadie Tract”.
Redell Olsen (Royal Holloway), “Book parks: scripted enclosures and Susan Howe’s spatial poetics”.
Susan Howe (The American Academy in Berlin), “Poems and Documents".

Saturday, October 31: Susan Howe speaks about Emily Dickinson at the Petit Palais.

"Autour d’Emily Dickinson avec Susan Howe et Dominique Fourcade

En partenariat avec Double Change, avec Abigail Lang.Susan Howe, l’un des plus importants poètes américains aujourd’hui, chercheuse passionnée, évoquera « son » Emily Dickinson. L’essai lyrique qu’elle a consacré à Dickinson en 1985, My Emily Dickinson, éd. A New Directions Book 2007, renouvelle la critique de ce poète majeur du 19ème siècle. Pour cette rencontre au Petit Palais, Susan Howe est allée à Amherst étudier les derniers fragments de Dickinson qui juxtaposent écriture, signes graphiques, marques acoustiques. Une sélection de ces fragments sera projetée. Susan Howe a demandé, pour la circonstance, à Dominique Fourcade d’en donner une traduction et d’improviser avec elle un commentaire. de 15 à 17h" (www.paris.fr/portail/Culture)

Links:

Susan Howe, portrait (www.poets.org).

Susan Howe page (epc.buffalo.edu)

Susan Howe, My Emily Dickinson (1985), excerpts (www.writing.upenn.edu).

Recordings of Susan Howe from Line Break (www.writing.upenn.edu).

Double Change (www.doublechange.org).

Get your Ginsberg here

Bill Morgan's books, The Letters of Allen Ginsberg and The Selected Letters of Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder are reviewed in this week's Sunday Book Review:  James Campbell, "Howls," New York Times (January 9, 2009).

Nissim Ezekiel & poetry with an Indian accent

Nissim Ezekiel (1924-2004) took his early influences from literary modernists Eliot, Yeats, and Pound, and studied in London.  His first collection of poetry, Time to Change was published in 1952. Visiting professor at Leeds (1964) and Chicago (1967), he spent most of his teaching career in Mumbai (Bombay).  Later he became known as a poet of Indian independence.  He began to write poems with an Indian accent after 1965.

Read his obituary in The Guardian (March 9, 2004)

Richard Eberhart in 1980

In a 1980 interview with Don Swaim on Book Beat, the CBS Radio show, available on Wired for Books, Richard Eberhart (1904-2005) described how the poetry of the well-made poem, coming from the New Criticism, and the control of the poetry scene by the academy (he mentioned the Kenyon Review, Allen Tate, etc.) was dethroned in 1956.

Ginsberg’s “Howl” changed the poetry landscape when it was published in 1956. “The well-made poem went out of fashion…” The young poets wrote in long loose lines, and wrote about anything under the sun. “William Carlos Williams taught us all, from my generation down, that there is no subject in the world that cannot be poetical.”

He said he wished the intellectual approach and the popular approach to art could meet. He would like the serious poem of America to be able to reach the populace. Shakespeare’s poetry was understood both by the princes and the groundlings… Eberhart said he felt surprised that as “a boy from Southern Minnesota” he should come to be known as an establishment poet.

Mentioning his contacts and friendships with older poets, Williams, Frost, and Stevens, Eberhart refused to mention the names of younger poets he admired.

Without having met Czeslaw Milosz, Eberhart said he had read his work for some 25 years, and enjoyed the modesty of his comments after winning the Nobel Prize, that he regretted being in the limelight and wasn't sure he wanted to have to put up with fame...  

The interview ends with Eberhart reading “Sagacity”.

Ian Hamilton on Robert Lowell (1982 interview)

In a 1982 interview, timed for the release of his Robert Lowell, A Biography(1982 USA, 1983 UK), Ian Hamilton spoke about the "mini American invasion" of British poetry during the 1960s by Lowell, Berryman, and Plath. Hamilton ranked Lowell as the "best equipped poet of his generation." Lowell's poem "For the Union Dead" was part public, part private, he said.

Listen to the interview with Don Swaim on Wired for Books.

See Marjorie Perloff's comments on "Florence" from Ohio University.

Carol Rumens: "I recognise the intense emotional appeal of warehouses and railway bridges..."

In "Poem of the week" for the Guardian (June 9, 2008), Carol Rumens comments on "The Running Changes" by Roy Fisher, asking "What is the beauty of un-beautiful places, and how does a poet writing about them . . . manage to make them memorable?"

Read other columns by Carol Rumens in the Guardian.