Poetry Crossfire!

Fresh Air, by Kenneth Koch

2011-09-23T13:39:00.000-07:00

Our poet pundits:

Joanna Fuhruman is the author of four collections of poetry. Her most recent book is Pageant (Alice James Books). She is a graduate of the University of Washington MFA program, and teaches creative writing at Rutgers University and in public schools and libraries through Poets House and Teachers & Writers Collaborative. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, the playwright Robert Kerr

David Shapiro's most recent book of poetry is the New and Selected Poems (1965-2006) (The Overlook Press). He's received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Zabel Prize for Experimental Poetry from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a nomination for a National Book Award.

Today's poem:

Fresh Air
by Kenneth Koch

1.
At the Poem Society a black-haired man stands up to say
“You make me sick with all your talk about restraint and mature talent!
Haven’t you ever looked out the window at a painting by Matisse,
Or did you always stay in hotels where there were too many spiders
crawling on your visages?
Did you ever glance inside a bottle of sparkling pop,
Or see a citizen split in two by the lightning?
I am afraid you have never smiled at the hibernation
Of bear cubs except that you saw in it some deep relation
To human suffering and wishes, oh what a bunch of crackpots!”
The black-haired man sits down, and the others shoot arrows at him.
A blond man stands up and says,
“He is right! Why should we be organized to defend the kingdom
Of dullness? There are so many slimy people connected with poetry,
Too, and people who know nothing about it!
I am not recommending that poets like each other and organize to fight them,
But simply that lightning should strike them.”
Then the assembled mediocrities shot arrows at the blond-haired man.
The chairman stood up on the platform, oh he was physically ugly!
He was small-limbed and –boned and thought he was quite seductive,
But he was bald with certain hideous black hairs,
And his voice had the sound of water leaving a vaseline bathtub,
And he said, “The subject for this evening’s discussion is poetry
On the subject of love between swans.” And everyone threw candy hearts
At the disgusting man, and they stuck to his bib and tucker,
And he danced up and down on the platform in terrific glee
And recited the poetry of his little friends—but the blond man stuck his head
Out of a cloud and recited poems about the east and thunder,
And the black-haired man moved through the stratosphere chanting
Poems of the relationships between terrific prehistoric charcoal whales,
And the slimy man with candy hearts sticking all over him
Wilted away like a cigarette paper on which the bumblebees have urinated,
And all the professors left the room to go back to their duty,
And all that were left in the room were five or six poets
And together they sang the new poem of the twentieth century
Which, though influenced by Mallarmé, Shelley, Byron, and Whitman,
Plus a million other poets, is still entirely original
And is so exciting that it cannot be here repeated.
You must go to the Poem Society and wait for it to happen.
Once you have heard this poem you will not love any other,
Once you have dreamed this dream you will be inconsolable,
Once you have loved this dream you will be as one dead,
Once you have visited the passages of this time’s great art!

2.
“Oh to be seventeen years old
Once again,” sang the red-haired man, “and not know that poetry
Is ruled with the sceptre of the dumb, the deaf, and the creepy!”
And the shouting persons battered his immortal body with stones
And threw his primitive comedy into the sea
From which it sang forth poems irrevocably blue.

Who are the great poets of our time, and what are their names?
Yeats of the baleful influence, Auden of the baleful influence, Eliot
of the baleful influence
(Is Eliot a great poet? no one knows), Hardy, Stevens, Williams (is
Hardy of our time?),
Hopkins (is Hopkins of our time?), Rilke (is Rilke of our time?),
Lorca (is Lorca of our time?), who is still of our time?
Mallarmé, Valéry, Apollinaire, Éluard, Reverdy, French poets are still
of our time,
Pasternak and Mayakovsky, is Jouve of our time?

Where are young poets in America, they are trembling in publishing
houses and universities,
Above all they are trembling in universities, they are bathing the
library steps with their spit,
They are gargling out innocuous (to whom?) poems about maple trees and
their children,
Sometimes they brave a subject like the Villa d’Este or a lighthouse
in Rhode Island,
Oh what worms they are! they wish to perfect their form.
Yet could not these young men, put in another profession,
Succeed admirably, say at sailing a ship? I do not doubt it, Sir, and
I wish we could try them.
(A plane flies over the ship holding a bomb but perhaps it will not
drop the bomb,
The young poets from the universities are staring anxiously at the skies,
Oh they are remembering their days on the campus when they looked up
to watch birds excrete,
They are remembering the days they spent making their elegant poems.)

Is there no voice to cry out from the wind and say what it is like to
be the wind,
To be roughed up by the trees and to bring music from the scattered houses
And the stones, and to be in such intimate relationship with the sea
That you cannot understand it? Is there no one who feels like a pair of pants?

3.
Summer in the trees! “It is time to strangle several bad poets.”
The yellow hobbyhorse rocks to and fro, and from the chimney
Drops the Strangler! The white and pink roses are slightly agitated by
the struggle,
But afterwards beside the dead “poet” they cuddle up comfortingly
against their vase. They are safer now, no one will compare them to
the sea.

Here on the railroad train, one more time, is the Strangler.
He is going to get that one there, who is on his way to a poetry reading.
Agh! Biff! A body falls to the moving floor.

In the football stadium I also see him,
He leaps through the frosty air at the maker of comparisons
Between football and life and silently, silently strangles him!

Here is the Strangler dressed in a cowboy suit
Leaping from his horse to annihilate the students of myth!

The Strangler’s ear is alert for the names of Orpheus,
Cuchulain, Gawain, and Odysseus,
And for poems addressed to Jane Austen, F. Scott Fitzgerald,
To Ezra Pound, and to personages no longer living
Even in anyone’s thoughts—O Strangler the Strangler!

He lies on his back in the waves of the Pacific Ocean.

4.
Supposing that one walks out into the air
On a fresh spring day and has the misfortune
To encounter an article on modern poetry
In New World Writing, or has the misfortune
To see some examples of some of the poetry
Written by the men with their eyes on the myth
And the Missus and the midterms, in the Hudson Review,
Or, if one is abroad, in Botteghe Oscure,
Or indeed in Encounter, what is one to do
With the rest of one’s day that lies blasted to ruins
All bluely about one, what is one to do?
O surely one cannot complain to the President,
Nor even to the deans of Columbia College,
Nor to T. S. Eliot, nor to Ezra Pound,
And supposing one writes to the Princess Caetani,
“Your poets are awful!” what good would it do?
And supposing one goes to the Hudson Review
With a package of matches and sets fire to the building?
One ends up in prison with trial subscriptions
To the Partisan, Sewanee, and Kenyon Review!

5.
Sun out! perhaps there is a reason for the lack of poetry
In these ill-contented souls, perhaps they need air!

Blue air, fresh air, come in, I welcome you, you are an art student,
Take off your cap and gown and sit down on the chair.

Together we shall paint the poets—but no, air! perhaps you should go
to them, quickly,
Give them a little inspiration, they need it, perhaps they are out of breath,
Give them a little inhuman company before they freeze the English
language to death!
(And rust their typewriters a little, be sea air! be noxious! kill
them, if you must, but stop their poetry!
I remember I saw you dancing on the surf on the Côte d’Azur,
And I stopped, taking my hat off, but you did not remember me,
Then afterwards you came to my room bearing a handful of orange flowers
And we were together all through the summer night!)

That we might go away together, it is so beautiful on the sea, there
are a few white clouds in the sky!

But no, air! you must go . . . Ah, stay!

But she has departed and . . . Ugh! what poisonous fumes and clouds!
what a suffocating atmosphere!
Cough! whose are these hideous faces I see, what is this rigor
Infecting the mind? where are the green Azores,
Fond memories of childhood, and the pleasant orange trolleys,
A girl’s face, red-white, and her breasts and calves, blue eyes, brown
eyes, green eyes, fahrenheit
Temperatures, dandelions, and trains, O blue?!
Wind, wind, what is happening? Wind! I can’t see any bird but the
gull, and I feel it should symbolize . . .
Oh, pardon me, there’s a swan, one two three swans, a great white
swan, hahaha how pretty they are! Smack!
Oh! stop! help! yes, I see—disrespect for my superiors—forgive me,
dear Zeus, nice Zeus, parabolic bird, O feathered excellence! white!
There is Achilles too, and there’s Ulysses, I’ve always wanted to see them,
And there is Helen of Troy, I suppose she is Zeus too, she’s so
terribly pretty—hello, Zeus, my you are beautiful, Bang!
One more mistake and I get thrown out of the Modern Poetry
Association, help! Why aren’t there any adjectives around?
Oh there are, there’s practically nothing else—look, here’s grey,
utter, agonized, total, phenomenal, gracile, invidious, sundered, and
fused,
Elegant, absolute, pyramidal, and . . . Scream! but what can I
describe with these words? States!
States symbolized and divided by two, complex states, magic states,
states of consciousness governed by an aroused sincerity, cockadoodle
doo!
Another bird! is it morning? Help! where am I? am I in the barnyard?
oink oink, scratch, moo! Splash!
My first lesson. “Look around you. What do you think and feel?” Uhhh .
. . “Quickly!” This Connecticut landscape would have pleased Vermeer.
Wham! A-Plus. “Congratulations!” I am promoted.
OOOhhhhh I wish I were dead, what a headache! My second lesson:
“Rewrite your first lesson line six hundred times. Try to make it into
a magnetic field.” I can do it too. But my poor line! What a
nightmare! Here comes a tremendous horse,
Trojan, I presume. No, it’s my third lesson. “Look, look! Watch him,
see what he’s doing? That’s what we want you to do. Of course it won’t
be the same as his at first, but . . .” I demur. Is there no other way
to fertilize minds?
Bang! I give in . . . Already I see my name in two or three
anthologies, a serving girl comes into the barn bringing me the
anthologies,
She is very pretty and I smile at her a little sadly, perhaps it is my
last smile! Perhaps she will hit me! But no, she smiles in return, and
she takes my hand.
My hand, my hand! what is this strange thing I feel in my hand, on my
arm, on my chest, my face—can it be . . . ? it is! AIR!
Air, air, you’ve come back! Did you have any success? “What do you
think?” I don’t know, air. You are so strong, air.
And she breaks my chains of straw, and we walk down the road, behind
us the hideous fumes!
Soon we reach the seaside, she is a young art student who places her
head on my shoulder,
I kiss her warm red lips, and here is the Strangler, reading the
Kenyon Review! Good luck to you, Strangler!
Goodbye, Helen! goodbye, fumes! goodbye, abstracted dried-up boys!
goodbye, dead trees! goodbye, skunks!
Goodbye, manure! goodbye, critical manicure! goodbye, you big fat men
standing on the east coast as well as the west giving poems the test!
farewell, Valéry’s stern dictum!
Until tomorrow, then, scum floating on the surface of poetry! goodbye
for a moment, refuse that happens to land in poetry’s boundaries!
adieu, stale eggs teaching imbeciles poetry to bolster up your egos!
adios, boring anomalies of these same stale eggs!
Ah, but the scum is deep! Come, let me help you! and soon we pass into
the clear blue water. Oh GOODBYE, castrati of poetry! farewell, stale
pale skunky pentameters (the only honest English meter, gloop gloop!)
until tomorrow, horrors! oh, farewell!

Hello, sea! good morning, sea! hello, clarity and excitement, you
great expanse of green—

O green, beneath which all of them shall drown!

Ready, set, crossfire!

Joanna Fuhrman: Sometimes I am at a reading and the overwhelming desire to leap from my seat and scream the words of “Fresh Air” at the reader and organizer comes over me, so I have come up with a solution for these situations.

Let’s say you go the academy/university/uptown reading to hear the mercurial words of poet X (visiting from the banks of outer space), and while there you are made to listen to poet Q (visiting from his or her 10th artist colony of the year) reading about the jade-like flowers at his or her summer house in Northern Italy or Southern France and how the glittering bloom reminds him or her of a book he or she read about Count Lyfstina.

Instead of jumping up, I suggest you clasp your hands together in quasi-prayer, and then look around and smile at the other poets in the audience who also have their hands clasped together.

This will be our secret!

David Shapiro: Kenneth Koch's freshness has been fresh a long time. He used to joke in class that what you wanted was a new baby, a new poem, not a l00 yr old baby and a very ancient poem. Fresh Air seems to be his “Howl”, in the sense that it is a long but lyrical diatribe against rigid, gray, academic posturing.

He extols humor throughout, but enraged humor here. Matisse is eight out the window, and so is lightning. It is a poem of boasting and bile, a fight he told me he was waging against Richard Wilbur, but Kenneth is gracious enough to live without contemporary names. The targets are there, and the sense of adolescent fervor, Rimbaldien: Oh to be seventeen years old/Once again--and this is indeed a poetry of an urbanist and visionary at once. Koch cries out the name of the masters, but again, he told me he felt lucky not to be crucified by any masters. He names his favorite surrealists, but there is a constant skeptical rage throughout, Along with his anti-Vietnamese War poem, “Pleasures of Peace”, this is one of earliest of programmatic poems.

It's a poem with a plot. Frank O’Hara once scared me at 15 by telling me that he and Kenneth were going to kill me in a "Staying on Top: game.” It was playful but ominous, The Strangler is a Beowolfian stranger who strangles the mediocre as he sees it. As a parodist, Koch was simply the best, and his little touches of Wilbur-like touches are dismayingly punctual. He goes to prison, but is given the reviews he hates the most and which he got in trouble for burning, Air itself, fresh air is his nom de guerre, his myth and his muse. He rejects the tourism of dominant aesthetics and he is quite capable of limning a dictionary of bad words: "gray utter agonized total phenomenal, gracile, invidious, sundered and fused, elegant absolute, pyramidal. Kenneth Koch ends with a bright blue banner,? a Quixote like cry to drown bad poetry with virtues of clarity and excitement. He never stopped supplying his own fresh air that will be, I think, fresh for a long time.

Ode to Melancholy, by John Keats

2011-09-13T17:54:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the Situation Room:

Brendan Lorber runs LUNGFULL! magazine, hosts Secret Laboratory an online video interview series, curates The Zinc Reading Series and does The Acculorber Weekend Weather Report (which is not about the weather). He is teaching a workshop at the St. Mark's Poetry Project called "Poetry, ruin my life: the poetics of trouble." He is the author of Gold Star, Dash, and Your Secret among others. He packs light, but isn't afraid to pack heat if he has to.

Our poem:

Ode on Melancholy
by John Keats

No, no! go not to Lethe, neither twist
Wolf's-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;
Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kiss'd
By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine;
Make not your rosary of yew-berries,
Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be
Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl
A partner in your sorrow's mysteries;
For shade to shade will come too drowsily,
And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul.

But when the melancholy fit shall fall
Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,
That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,
And hides the green hill in an April shroud;
Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose.
Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,
Or on the wealth of globèd peonies;
Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,
Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave.
And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.

She dwells with Beauty—Beauty that must die;
And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,
Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips:
Ay, in the very temple of Delight
Veil'd Melancholy has her sovran shrine,
Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue
Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine;
His soul shall taste the sadness of her might,
And be among her cloudy trophies hung.

Ready, set, crossfire!

Michael McClure Reading Poetry to Lions

2011-08-29T19:10:00.000-07:00

Today's poem-performance:

Thanks to Thurston Moore for the tip on this one. It gets real good at the 2:06 mark.

Let's meet our poet-pundits:

Ben Estes is the author of The Strings of Walnetto Arrangements, forthcoming from Flowers & Cream. He is the co-editor of The Song Cave and lives in Northampton, Mass.

Ben Kopel currently lives in the Bywater neighborhood of New Orleans, La. He teaches creative writing and English literature to high school students. He is the author of the chapbook Because We Must (Brave Men Press). His full-length collection Victory is due out from H_NGM_N Books in spring 2012.

Ready, set, crossfire!

Ben Estes: This makes my fanny beat.

Ben Kopel: 1. Personally, this makes my beat beatific.
2. Allen Ginsberg wrote about H-O-W-L-S, not R-O-A-R-S!
3. a.k.a. DANIEL 6:22 – The Motion Picture.
4. Hell, Mike, you had me at …and the vampire neon codes.

NOTE: No hurt was done during the making of this movie.

Ragged Old Flag, by Johnny Cash

2011-08-26T10:06:00.000-07:00

Today’s poem-performance:

In our last show, we witnessed the poet Jewel recite a poem proudly before us while wearing a tattered American flag across her ample bosom. Today, the late, great Man in Black does the same while flying a tattered stars n' bars inside his heart. Please remove your hats and stand silently at attention. Thank you.

Our poet pundits:

Matt Mauch is the author of Prayer Book (Lowbrow Press), He teaches writing and literature in the AFA program at Normandale Community College. He lives in Minneapolis.

Chris Martin is the author of American Music (Copper Canyon) and Becoming Weather (Coffee House Press). He lives in Iowa City.

Ready, set, crossfire!

Matt Mauch: Inside this Johnny Cash is, matroyshka-like, a smaller Johnny Cash. The smaller one is flipping the bird, which makes this Johnny within a Johnny both matroyshka-like and Metamorphosis-like.

Were this turned into a Schoolhouse Rock animated short, we might see an uptick in the "general historical knowledge" that all the scorers of the tests that test for that say is in decline.

Like Johnny, more people should say "yella" when they mean the color of dandelions and the sun, since "yellow," everybody knows, is what you say when you answer the phone.

Chris Martin: All my meat-flag life I've desired it. Each flag that carries the fly from fruit to shit. I've flagged at the very moment of ecstasy, just so my head wouldn't hit the ceiling. Scott Joplin was known as the King of Ragtime and now Elvis and Michael are dead, too. But I've heard "Bethena" played as slow as a drunken flag waves. I'll never know if it waved goodbye or hello.

A Love Poem, by Jewel

2011-08-25T06:35:00.000-07:00

Today's poem-performance:

Let's meet our pundits:

Sun Yung Shin is the author of Skirt Full of Black (Coffee House Press), which received the Asian American Literary Award for Poetry in 2008. She is the co-editor of Outsiders Within: Writing on Transracial Adoption (South End Press) and the author of bilingual Korean/English illustrated book for children Cooper’s Lesson (Children's Book Press).

Juliet Patterson is the author of The Truant Lover (Nightboat Books), which was selected by Jean Valentine as the 2004 winner of the Nightboat Poetry Prize and was a finalist for a 2007 Lambda Literary Award. She lives in Minneapolis.

Ready, set, crossfire!

Juliet Patterson: First off, while I'm generally a fan of metaphoric thinking, it's hard to think clearly about metaphor especially if it leads to equations such as you = wild horse, you = wings in the foothills of Montana and me = your hungry valley.

What kind of love are we talking about here?

Sun Yung Shin: I think I need to watch it again, I just kept thinking, "Jewel is HOT."

Sun Yung Shin: I just watched it again. I like how she pronounces her short "e"s like short "i"s as in "bend" sounds like "bind." I also like how she says "orchard" like "oh-r-chahd." I use the Def Poetry series in the classroom and I'm always surprised by my students' various reactions. I did enjoy Jewel's use of alliteration and her perfect enunciation. I liked the image of "calico children." The whole thing was lyrical, I guess I'll say that for it. Who am I to judge cowgirl poetry?

Juliet Patterson: And how about that "o" in Pooo-ems"?

Certainly, I'll allow for her perfect enunciation and Jewel's shy-sexy (is shy really sexy?) performance and this IS Def poetry afterall, where performance may indeed trump the mechanics of ANY POO-OEM, but I can't find the same sort of neutral (if not complementary) position you're taking here, Sun Yung: sorry.

I just can't get past those bulging metaphors, y'all, "my lover in the ocean of the worlds."

Please bring back the guitar and leave the American Flag to future burnings, Jasper Johns or uniforms.

Poetry Crossfire! News Bulletin

2011-08-23T06:58:00.000-07:00

Did you know that Poetry Crossfire! is on Facebook? That's right. We hope you'll like us. We'll keep you up to date with all the action on Poetry Crossfire! right inside your News Feed. And we'll post "Happy Birthday!!!! Have a great one!!! Many more!!!" on your Wall each year on your birthday.

Searching for a gift for that special someone who loves arguing about poetry on internet blogs? You'll want to stop by the Poetry Crossfire! Gift Shop, where we have a number of tasteful items for purchase, including this charming infant bodysuit for $14.95.

Anne Waldman, Uh Oh Plutonium

2011-08-21T10:02:00.000-07:00

Today's poem-performance:

Let's meet our pundits:

Brandon Downing is the author of Dark Brandon, Dark Brandon: Eternal Classics, The Shirt Weapon, and Lake Antiquity. He lives in New York. His website is brandondowning.org.

Dorothea Lasky is the author of AWE, Black Life, and the forthcoming Thurderbird, all from Wave Books. She lives in NYC and can be found online at birdinsnow.com.

Ready, set, crossfire!

Brandon Downing: "I adore how, amid asymmetrics & era robotics,
The poet still managed to pull off a scarf;
Wove it into the alertness jumpsuit rather well."

Dorothea Lasky: "What gentle wind has fallen on the wings of my beloved?"
"Oh no, it is the wings of the three strange, glowing angels. Admit them. Admit them."

From "Trilce," by Cesar Vallejo

2011-08-18T07:23:00.000-07:00

Our poet-pundits:

Bryan Thao Worra is the author of four books, most recently Barrow. He is the first Laotian American to receive a Fellowship in Literature from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Lorena Duarte is a spoken word artist and performance poet born in El Salvador, raised in Minnesota and educated at Harvard University, and currently living in South Africa. She performs regularly with Palabristas, Latin@ Wordslingers, a Minnesota based Latino poetry collective.

Today's poem:

From "Trilce"
by Cesar Vallejo, trans. by Clayton Eshleman

VIII.

Tomorrow that other day, some-
time I might bind for the saltatory power,
eternal entrance.

Tomorrow someday,
it would be the shop plated
with a pair of pericardia, paired
carnivores in rut.

Could very well take root all this.
But one tomorrow without tomorrow,
between the rings of which we become widowers,
a margin of mirror there will be
where I run through my own front
until the echo is lost
and I'm left with my front toward my back.

The crossfire:

Bryan Thao Worra: Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow in three verses today, eating moments with echo and widows. Some ink splashed on the paper hem of Truth, dancing sassily with the 25th hour whose face we can’t see.

Lorena Duarte: That I might leap, indeed, but I've no use for fancy words.
Prefer the starfish. No-front, no-back.
Just stomach, inside out and devouring.
On the sea – shitting – mouthing more useful than poet.

Tunafish Sandwich Piece, by Yoko Ono

2011-08-14T20:10:00.000-07:00

Poetry Crossfire! attempted, and failed, to secure Charlie the Tuna as a guest for this segment. We received only a curt, two-word note from the StarKist Corporation: "Sorry, Charlie." Happily, the team at Rain Taxi Review of Books was on call, and responded immediately to our urgent page.

The pundits:

Kelly Everding is the author of the chapbook Strappado for the Devil (Etherdome Press). She is the art director and business manager for Rain Taxi Review of Books.

Eric Lorberer is the editor of Rain Taxi Review of Books and the director of the Twin Cities Book Festival. He's served as a panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts and speaks at conferences and literary festivals around the country as an advocate for independent publishing and literary culture.

The poem:

Tunafish Sandwich Piece (from Grapefruits, 1970 ed.)
by Yoko Ono

Imagine one thousand suns in the
sky at the same time.
Let them shine for one hour.
Then, let them gradually melt
into the sky.
Make one tunafish sandwich and eat.

The crossfire:

Kelly Everding: I am not partial to tunafish sandwiches, but I am partial to apocalyptic scenarios. One thousand suns in a finite space obliterates self, everything, including tunafish sandwiches. Makes me hungry.

Eric Lorberer: Holy acid refluxus! This is good advice, even if it's in a poem. Word to the wise, however: you'll need a critical can opener.

The Ultimate Poem Is Abstract, by Wallace Stevens

2011-08-10T06:34:00.000-07:00

Our guests:

Heather Christle is the author of The Difficult Farm and The Trees The Trees, both published by Octopus Books. She lives in Northampton, MA.

Michelle Taransky is the author of Barn Burned, Then, which Marjorie Welish selected for the 2008 Omnidawn Poetry Prize. She lives in Philadelphia where she teaches at the University of Pennsylvania.

The poem:

The Ultimate Poem Is Abstract
by Wallace Stevens

This day writhes with what? The lecturer
On This Beautiful World Of Ours composes himself
And hems the planet rose and haws it ripe,

And red, and right. The particular question—here
The particular answer to the particular question
Is not in point—the question is in point.

If the day writhes, it is not with revelations.
One goes on asking questions. That, then, is one
Of the categories. So said, this placed space

Is changed. It is not so blue as we thought. To be blue,
there must be no questions. It is an intellect
Of windings round and dodges to and fro,

Writhings in wrong obliques and distances,
Not an intellect in which we are fleet: present
Everywhere in space at once, cloud-pole

Of communication. It would be enough
If we were ever, just once, at the middle, fixed
In This Beautiful World Of Ours and not as now,

Helplessly at the edge, enough to be
Complete, because at the middle, if only in sense,
And in that enormous sense, merely enjoy.

The crossfire:

Heather Christle: Surrounded by such reason one cannot help
but imagine that the middle is at last at hand
and that whichever edges one has seen
one also has imagined. Has had. Has held.
Having in point though disappeared one is
weatherlike. One are all clouds.

Michelle Taransky: Reading this poem this particular time, for the first time I think:
It is possible that Marjorie Perloff's chapter "Pound/Stevens: Whose Era?" is a homophone for Hugh Kenner's book "The Pound Era."
It is possible that Marjorie Perloff is "The lecturer/On This Beautiful World Of Ours."

Endless Endless Night Night, by David Huberman

2011-08-07T16:01:00.000-07:00

Today's poem:

Our guests:

Paula Cisweski's second book, Ghost Fargo, was selected by Franz Wright for the Nightboat Poetry Prize and released in 2010. She is also the author of Upon Arrival and of three chapbooks: How Birds Work, Or Else What Asked the Flame w/Mathias Svalina, and Two Museums. A Jerome Grant recipient and Pushcart nominee, her poems appear regularly in literary magazines such as A Handsome Journal; H_NGM_N; Forklift, OH; failbetter, and Poetry City, USA .

Sarah Fox was born in the year, month, and hour of the Horse. She lives in NE Minneapolis where, with John Colburn, she co-imagines the Center for Visionary Poetics (a future & futuristic collective) and hopes only & always to liberate her imagination from the snares of neoliberal imperialism. Her book Because Why was published by Coffee House Press, and recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Spout, Conduit, Tammy, ElevenEleven, Action Yes, Boo: A Journal of Terrific Things, and Rain Taxi. She contributes to the multi-author blog Montevidayo, teaches English and Creative Writing at the University of Minnesota, and serves as a doula. Her current manuscript project, Mother Substance, seeks to document the experiences of women exposed in utero to the synthetic estrogen Diethylstilbestrol (DES), and to subsequently suggest, by association, the multiple ways the bodies of women, children and all marginalized humans, as well as animals and nature, are contaminated by corporate greed and patriarchal institutions. She performs "poetry rituals" and other acts of intersubjective communion in public and private spaces whenever she can.

Ready, set, crossfire!

Paula Cisewski: At first I felt Huberman yelling at me. I was resistant. Then I focused on his hat's pin like a pendulum, and later on his pendulum fists. His pendulum fists! I know now Huberman yells through me. It's always been so. Vive le France!

Sarah Fox: My great-grandmother was a little called Pauline, but I don't know about a Little Sarah, or More Light! More Light! in this endless endless night night. Who's the host of "Poetry 88," he's like a world-is-too-much-with-him "Magnum P.I." (which Italians pronounce "manyum pie"), like he's so in-TENSE, don't you think? If I were a Jungian, I might say he's very "Tom Selleck Shadow Anima." John Colburn (below) made the claim that D's "doing all this at work," that is: dredging the web for obscure/occult-ish videos (etc) and really really this video is pretty fucking fucking amazing amazing! A little apple apple on his hat hat, a hanging dangling kinky appleness kinda "David Hubermeister" lovesexylovesexy but, "more than, to me [i.e. Manyum Manyum Pie Pie], about homosexuality or het-hero-sexuality… there is no one on the scene who writes quite like this Hollerman…I wish I could say something a little bit more interesting but…Mister David Hover-me." David Überman's RimbaudRainbow Poetry King Poetry King, "cuz in the night anything can happen and in the morning that's when you find the bodies." Don't we don't we know it know it! evoke the demon spirit!! sperm sperm night porn night porn icky icky help help help. Help! I'm in the outerwebs going on 1 month & can't google David Hooverman or Madman Sigh, or the obscurish Adam Fell, Zach Savich, & Mark Leidner. Well, I could've, but I watched this video from my car in the (serial killer serial killer) parking lot of a gas station with wireless! gas station with wireless! where I recorded Endless Endless Night Night on GarageFeces! GarageFeces! and now, I get that the video's the thing, the thing the thing the thing the thing, which I've only watched once once, because the sun sun was blazing blazing through my windows windows on little little me-me, sweating sweating sweating sweating! I spent part one of this endless endless month month at an "artist retreat" in Red Wing, MN (Vive la France, Vive la France!), where I met Tom-Tom Virgin (Virgin Virgin) from Miami Miami who's making a book book of glass glass, and Tom Virgin told a story story about a "Sincere [sincere] Poet [poet]" named Zach Zach Schomberg Schomberg. I don't know what that means, "Sincere Pope"—perhaps it turned up in our dark basement dark basement during my webless webless retreat reheat repeat—or how ZaxZax sin-sin-sin-cerity goes down in Miami Miami one thousand Miamis, maybe it's a forebear to the Lazy LAZY Compartment Poet. I experience David Huberbro as neither a "Sincere Killer" nor lazy—lazy people can't yell through Paulines, or through anyone else. Furthermore this is the first time I've ever seen A Little Called Paula YellYellYell. But Flavor Flaveman appears appears sincere sincere, if not too too (choo-choo cukoo) sincere to really really be a poet poet king king. His hat—if I recall—is like an embellished, but possibly leather (S&M! S&M!), fishing cap, very "Gilligan meets Richard Brautigan," and might belong to a descriptive category coined by my daughter when she lived in Williamsburg (you FUCKING FUCKING BROOKLYN BROOKLYN) known as "the 'Ironic Ironic Mustache.'" I don't recall David Hubiquitous having a mustache, but Magpie certainly did, didn't he? Is David Hubrismen a serial serial killer killer (Ted Bundy Ted Bundy's sea of fatal sperm sperm) (I'm in Wisconsin nownow, all ¡Vive Wisconsin! ¡Vive Le Part-tay!) or is he part of a microgenre we might classify as Crazy Banishment (demons demons demons demons) Gnosisetry? Don't hurt her Don't hurt her, Dave David Daver-man man MAN, are my finalsexy finalsexy word-words: endless endless endless endless blood blood blood blood don't dont don't don't Don't.

The Allen Ginsberg Beat Poet Figurine

2011-08-04T18:52:00.000-07:00

At issue:

Today on Poetry Crossfire! we examine the sheer existence of the "Allen Ginsberg Doll + CD Set," officially approved by the Allen Ginsburg Estate and yours today for a mere 4,500 yen. Comes with fabric cloth jacket and interchangeable accessories including glasses, a book, Uncle Sam hat (the Japanese website calls it an "Uncle Tom hat"--whoopsie daisy!), and a beaded necklace.

Our panel:

Travis Nichols is an editor at the Poetry Foundation and a columnist for the Huffington Post. He is the author of two collections of poetry: Iowa (Letter Machine Editions) and See Me Improving (Copper Canyon Press) -- and the novel Off We Go Into the Wild Blue Yonder (Coffee House Press).

Monica Fambrough is the author of a chapbook Black Beauty (Katalanche Press). Her poems have appeared in H_NGM_N, Open City, Glitterpony, jubilat, and the anthologies Poets on Painters and Poems about Horses. She lives in Chicago.

Crossfire:

Travis Nichols: This is what family, alumni, and co-workers hope for when they hear you're a poet. Toy poet, not homo deadbeat monster pacifist wheezing in your ear about bindlestiffs & sexy boys. If you're so smart, why ain't you rich, art boy?

Monica Fambrough: This is something your parents would get you from the mall for a stocking stuffer, except, hmm it costs 4500 yen. How much is that?

I actually think this is probably something Allen would be into, because it is so weird and precious. Toys have a sort of sweetness to them. Also, it is dependent on his fame, which I understand was actually important to him. And it has a self-mocking element. It would have been sort of cool if it was made in the sixties. But now there is so much remove that it feels safe and he seems safe, like Travis said, Toy Poet like Toy Poodle. I prefer the full sized poodles.

Also, this is something we have in the back of one of our closets:

Haiku, by Basho

2011-08-02T17:32:00.000-07:00

Tonight, on Poetry Crossfire!, we ask the poetry punditocracy to contemplate a haiku written during the wanderings of a mysterious Edo Period poet. If we're still reading verse written by a drifter, does that mean America has lost it's competitive edge in the global economy?

Our guests:

Joshua Beckman is the author of seven books, most recently Take It (Wave Books). He is an editor at Wave Books and lives in Seattle and New York.

Steve Healey is the author of 10 Mississippi and Earthling, both on Coffee House Press. He lives in Minneapolis.

The poem:

Haiku
by Basho

Across the road
from a field of sunflowers:
a sunflower.

Ready, set, crossfire!

Joshua Beckman: First let me preface my remarks by saying that it is exactly this sort of anti-social behavior I would expect from both a poem and a flower. I am certain my colleague here finds it all very charming but if we are to keep any social…(interrupted)

Steve Healey: Well, that may be true in your dark little vampire fuckfest, but guess what? Regular folks want more heliocentrism. Have you ever really been alone with your own sunflower seed and sucked out all the salt until it falls apart in your mouth?

The Nubian Vultures Have the Floor, by Aimé Césaire

2011-07-31T14:39:00.000-07:00

The Poetry Crossfire! North American editorial bureau has been electrified by Solar Throat Slashed, by Aimé Césaire, which Wesleyan University Press recently published in a crisp cloth-bound edition, restoring the previously expurgated text to its 1948 original presentation. This collection is every bit as sharp, ferocious, and blasphemous as its title suggests. Have you spent your life thus far believing Césaire to be a Division II surrealist? Never will a book leave you so thrilled to discover you're a fool. Poetry Crossfire! quickly realized it was going to have to call in some very special poet-pundits for this show.

Our panel:

Dara Wier is the author of 11 books of poems, most recently Selected Poems (Wave Books). She teaches in the MFA Program for Poets & Writers at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She also co-directs the University of Massachusetts' Juniper Initiative for Literary Arts and Action and is the founding editor of Factory Hollow Press.

Graham Foust is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently A Mouth in California (Flood Editions). He is currently an associate professor at St. Mary's College of California.

The poem:

The Nubian Vultures Have the Floor
by Aimé Césaire, trans. by Clayton Eshelman

Where when how from whence why yes why why why is it that the most villainous tongues have invented so few hooks on which to hang or suspend destiny its pomp and its armpits.

Arrest this innocent man. All decoys. He carries my blood on his shoulders. He carries my blood in his shoes. Peddles my blood in his nose. Death to the smugglers. The borders are closed. What horrible cocaine. Neither thumb nor screw. Let death be instantaneous. Neither known nor unknown
all
thank god my heart is drier than the harmattan, all darkness is my prey
all darkness is my due, and every burst joy.

You Nubian vultures at your hovering and pecking stations over the forest and as far as the cavern whose door is a triangle
whose guardian is a dog
whose life is a chalice
whose virgin is a spider
whose rare wake is a lake for standing upright on the descant roads of stormy nixies

The crossfire:

Dara Wier: Getting by the title took most of the morning, it is out of this world, exponentially rife with trouble, next the first line is exactly what has to happen after that title and getting past that took another few hours, this poem is so powerful, so beautifully and fiercely imagined, the exiting whose whose whose whose in a parallel world with water spirits, oh, rare wake is a lake, you gave us a seriously powerful piece of poetry, with an echoing that is killing, thank you very much.

Graham Foust:

Dara Wier:

Graham Foust: This picture reminds me of a quibble I have with this translation. If I'm not mistaken, it should be:

So Mary climb in / It's a town full of losers and I'm pullin' outta here to win.

Broetry, by Brian McGackin

2011-07-27T15:22:00.000-07:00

At issue today is a new book of poems called Broetry, by self-proclaimed "Broet Laureate" Brian McGackin.

Here's what the publisher has to say about Broetry:

"As contemporary poets sing the glories of birds, birch trees, and menstruation, regular guys are left scratching their heads. Who can speak for Everyman? Who will articulate his love for Xbox 360, for Mama Celeste’s frozen pizza, for the cinematic oeuvre of Bruce Willis?"

Our panel:

Please welcome back Poetry Crossfire! regulars Amanda Nadelberg and Chris Fischbach.

Amanda Nadelberg is the author of Isa the Truck Named Isadore, winner of the 2005 Slope Editions Book Prize, and Bright Brave Phenomena, forthcoming from Coffee House Press in 2012, as well as a chapbook, Building Castles in Spain, Getting Married, published by The Song Cave in 2009.

Chris Fishbach is publisher of Coffee House Press, based in Minneapolis.

The crossfire:

Chris Fischbach: I used to live a block away from Robert Bly when Iron John came out. I read it. I grew a beard and really started "diggin in" to this whole poetry thing. I wore hockey jerseys to work.

Amanda wasn't even born yet. Plus I'm watching Tosh.0 as I type this.

Chris Fischbach: P.S. Rise of the Planet of the Apes looks awesome. But I've had a lot of Grape Juice Plus tonight. Amanda has no idea what I'm talking about.

Amanda Nadelberg: Fish you just made me laugh in public, shame on you. I do not, not at all wanna see the Ape Movie. But my dad and I saw Harry Potter last week and I want to see that movie about Earth 2. There's a guy in this coffee shop who thinks it's his job to be funny. His job! I have to go take care of a baby.

A Little Called Pauline, by Gertrude Stein

2011-07-25T06:11:00.000-07:00

A situation room means it does not my dear, means a whole steadiness, please sit in when. A pundit is a round table, a round table has sides. iReporters show shine. It is better yet. Telestrator flashes amber, flashes amber so lately. Touch the screen and talk. Stand where there is light. State that laugh. This is use. Let's turn to our panel.

Our pundits:

G.E. Patterson is a poet, critic, and translator. He's the author of two collections of poetry: To and From (Ahsahta Press) and Tug (Graywolf Press).

Lightsey Darst is a poet, dance critic, and English instructor. Her first book is Find the Girl (Coffee House Press).

The poem:

A Little Called Pauline
by Gertrude Stein

A little called anything shows shudders.

Come and say what prints all day. A whole few watermelon. There is no pope.

No cut in pennies and little dressing and choose wide soles and little spats really little spices.

A little lace makes boils. This is not true.

Gracious of gracious and a stamp a blue green white bow a blue green lean, lean on the top.

If it is absurd then it is leadish and nearly set in where there is a tight head.

A peaceful life to arise her, noon and moon and moon. A letter a cold sleeve a blanket a shaving house and nearly the best and regular window.

Nearer in fairy sea, nearer and farther, show white has lime in sight, show a stitch of ten. Count, count more so that thicker and thicker is leaning.

I hope she has her cow. Bidding a wedding, widening received treading, little leading mention nothing.

Cough out cough out in the leather and really feather it is not for.

Please could, please could, jam it not plus more sit in when.

The crossfire:

Lightsey Darst: I like to think she's watching someone move and trying to get down what's happening. I move like there is no pope all the time.

I like how a new word wanders in here like a stranger at a party. Leather, leather is unexpected. Feather naturally comes with it, though. Then there is plus.

Weather forecast, hint from Heloise—except that Heloise is hallucinating. But not hallucinating. The actual Heloise is hallucinating; this is true.

You can learn so much about corners from this poem. I wonder if she was ever tempted to call the book Tender Corners.

You really have to wear a hat with this poem.

It's obvious why this is not "A Little Called Sarah."

G.E. Patterson: Frightful little.

Not all boys are Paulists—or girls.
Act like it’s a choice it’s not.

Make more caring. Often.
Inside.

Gracious.
Golden.
Rule.

Petite. Desire’s hunger.

For young David and his Papa.
Last seen on a corner.
Loved.

Apple.

Window, by Adélia Prado

2011-07-21T06:20:00.000-07:00

Is the only edition of Adélia Prado's poetry in print, and in English, really The Alphabet in the Park, which must be 20 years old by now? Can this be true? We here at Poetry Crossfire! hope we're wrong about that. Meanwhile, let's turn to our panel.

Our guests:

Adam Fell is the author of I Am Not a Pioneer (H_NGM_N Books). He currently teaches at Edgewood College in Madison, WI, where he is co-curator of the Monsters of Poetry Reading Series.

Matt Hart is the author of three books of poetry, including the recently released Light-Headed (BlazeVOX). He is the editor and co-founder of Forklift, Ohio: A Journal of Poetry, Cooking, and Light Industrial Safety. He teaches writing and aesthetics at the Art Academy of Cincinnati.

The poem:

Window
by Adélia Prado

A pretty word, window.
Window: the wingbeat of the yellow butterfly.
Two carelessly painted wooden shutters open out,
clumsy blue window.
I jump in and out of you, ride you like a horse,
my foot dragging the ground.
Window on the open world, from where I saw
Anita, expecting, get married, Pedro Cisterna’s
mother urinating in the rain, from where I saw
my love arrive on a bicycle and say to my father:
I have only the best intentions regarding your daughter.
O wooden-latched window, child’s play for thieves,
peephole on my soul,
I look into my heart.

Crossfire:

Adam Fell: What if your peephole heart looks out into a hallway? What if in this hallway two prom kids forever unzip each other for the first time? What if there is forever laughter? What if instead of laughter there is forever shattering? What if instead of shattering there is incandescing into song? I can feel it coming in the air tonight, hold on.

Matt Hart: I've been waiting for this moment all my life -- "the colors fade from red to green" -- what if I never wrote any of this? What if this is really just thinking through the glass to the sky and the birds, and beyond that, thinking through the birds and the sky to clouds and Black Flag's The Process of Weeding Out, the obliterated angles (not angels), grass growing in my pockets... One time I pissed off (both senses) a roof.

Two Death Poems, by Mumon Gensen

2011-07-18T16:37:00.000-07:00

In today's episode of Poetry Crossfire!, our poet-pundits are asked to grapple with the perplexing poetry of a 14th century Japanese Zen monk. At stake: one of mankind's most vexing end-of-life issues. Not medicine, pain management, or hospice -- but metaphor.

Bob Hicok is the author of six books of poetry, most recently Words for Empty and Words for Full (University of Pittsburgh Press). He is associate professor of creative writing at Virginia Tech.

William D. Waltz is the author of Zoo Music (Slope Editions), chosen by Dean Young as the winner of the 2004 Slope Editions Book Prize. He is also the editor of Conduit, "The Only Magazine That Risks Annihilation." He lives in St. Paul.

The poems:

Two death poems, by Mumon Gensen (d. 1390)

These two poems are reported to have been recited, one after another, in the moments before Mumon Gensen's death.

Life is an ever-rolling wheel
And every day is the right one.
He who recites poems at his death
Adds frost to the snow.

***

Life is like a cloud of mist
Emerging from a mountain cave
And death
A floating moon
In its celestial course.
If you think too much
About the meaning they may have
You'll be bound forever
like an ass to a stake.

Ready, set, crossfire!

Bob Hicok: I wrote two responses. And didn't count the titles. Or the spaces. Off to swim. Or to be more accurate regarding my abilities: not drown.

Thurman Munson's death responds to Mumon Gensen's death

Life is squatting
in dirt and catching
a ball happily
with your crotch. Death
is a monarch
hovering over
queen anne's lace
in a field
where a stadium
once cheered
eternally. The god
damned pitcher
still shaking you off.

The mummy reads Mumon Gensen

Life is knowing your brain
will be swished
around and pulled out
your nose. Death
is walking
without dialogue
through movies,
except a groan
suggesting hemorrhoids.
I am bandages,
I am wound, I am
a cloud of mist
in the mind
of a poem.

William D. Waltz: When I began reading Japanese death poems, my friends were concerned, much like they would be if I started rooting for the Yankees. I liked Thurman Munson, despite his Yankee uniform, because he was from Ohio. Another Ohioan who moved to New York was Hart Crane and he drowned, which is weird because his father invented the little candy shaped like a life preserver.

Bob Hicok: While I knew of your antipathy to the Yankees, I didn't know about Hart Crane's pop. Pop Crane. do you remember Pops from Speed Racer? I wish Speed would have committed suicide, and Spritle too. I think Hart Crane would have liked Racer X. I think he should have jumped off The Brooklyn Bridge. "But we have seen the moon in lonely alleys make a grail of laughter of an empty ash can." I would give my pineal gland to have written that. In a box. With a bow. If I knew what the pineal gland does, I might revise that offer. It does it well, so far as I know, whatever I don't know it does. Hart Crane's bones are cairned by the ode of the sea. Your love of Ohio is commendable and touching. A state that makes you say O coming and going, as if it has a mind for exultation and orgasm. Put that on your state flag. Or, "Of all the people who've drowned here, Hart Crane was none of them." But in Latin.

William D. Waltz: Ah, I do remember Pops and agree with you regarding the demise of Speed and Spritle. I'd throw Chim-Chim in there too. I found Speed and his checkered flag supremely annoying and often wondered if other kids actually liked Speed and if I was the only one who rooted against him. My love of Ohio perplexes some. One splendid thing about Ohio is that the state flag is really a pennant and is thus unique among the state flag brotherhood. Another is the Great Serpent Mound, which depicts a snake swallowing an egg and was built three thousand years ago. I don't know what a pineal gland does either, but I think you're on to something with exultation and orgasm.

Generally Speaking: Author Photos as Cover Art

2011-07-15T06:49:00.000-07:00

A blow-dried bouffant. An Eartha Kitt stare. A shirt unbuttoned halfway to Acapulco. Thirty years ago, it wasn't entirely unusual to pick up a slim volume of contemporary verse and find a towering author portrait gazing majestically from the cover. Today, that treatment is reserved almost exclusively for collecteds. Do contemporary poets deserve more than a thumbnail snapshot on the back cover -- like a neglected child staring desperately out a station wagon's tailgate window at a world that's already drifted past? Did poetry lose something the day it declared the look-at-me cover unfashionable?

Our guests:

John Colburn is a co-editor and publisher at Spout Press, a publishing collective; a member of the improvised music group Astronaut Cooper's Parade (a collective); and co-founder of the Center for Visionary Poetics, based in Minneapolis and well on its way to becoming a collective. Through his work as a teacher he is trying to turn your children into feral Marxists. And he just took this goddamn picture right now.

Ed Bok Lee is the author of Real Karaoke People (New Rivers Press, PEN Open Book Award) and Whorled (Coffee House Press, forthcoming September 2011). He lives in Minneapolis.

Ready, set, crossfire!

John Colburn: First off, I just want to say that it's ok for poets to be sexy and I find John Ashbery almost unbearably sexy on this cover (Get up I feel like being a poet!) and I find absolutely NOTHING wrong with putting authors' photos (dead or alive) on the covers of their books a la Richard Brautigan or even Hannah Weiner. Remember Prince's Lovesexy cover (fig 1. below). Mmm-hmm. Now imagine the Ed Bok Lee version. Oh yeah. Because this whole headshot marketing Poets & Writers celebrity academic bullshit culture movement is NOT revolutionary, so we might as well play with it a little. Why do poets become brands? Sure we can construct a glamorous other on the book cover, just as one is constructed on the page and maybe it's tacky, yes, all the more reason to embrace it and be more honest about the ego's involvement in this poetry that's trying to be "important" but screw that, I want a poetry that creates no economic debt for anyone involved, that exploits no hierarchy and creates no dominance, a poetry that can live anywhere and is against wages (slavery) and there's probably a word limit to this soundbite but FUCK WORD LIMITS no one can keep me down all power to the people the 'free market' is not my father figure.

Ed Bok Lee: I’ve never found a book of poems (or outfit from the ‘70s) at Savers or Goodwill that I didn’t love. . . just for surviving the fires of style.

Because isn't that also one of poetry's objectives: to get everyone to share everyone else’s face and dreams and body oils simultaneously for all of time?

So, it's more a kind of sacrifice. Yeah, my vote: all poets should show as much skin on every page and cover and billboard and myelin sheath as they can!

Footnotes:

fig. 1. Prince, Lovesexy cover (1988)

The Great Loneliness, by Mary Ruefle

2011-07-14T04:59:00.000-07:00

It's Zach v. Zach on Poetry Crossfire! today. A Zach Attack. A Zach Down. A spice rack of Zachs inside blister packs. Why so many Zax? Simple: if you're going to ponder something as ineffable and inexorable as The Great Loneliness, you're going to need more than one.

The pundits:

Zach Savich is the author of Full Catastrophe Living, which won the Iowa Poetry Prize; Annulments, which won the Colorado Prize; and The Firestorm, from Cleveland State University Press.

Zachary Schomburg is the author of The Man Suit and Scary, No Scary, both from Black Ocean. He edits Octopus Magazine and Octopus Books and lives in Portland, OR.

The poem:

The Great Loneliness
by Mary Ruefle

By March the hay bales were ripped open
exposed in the open fields
like bloated gray mice
who died in December.
I came upon them at dusk
and their attar lifted my spine
until I felt like turning over an old leaf.
So I walked on, a walking pitchfork.
From every maple hung a bucket or two
collecting blood to be distributed across America
so people could rise from their breakfast
healthy, hoping to make a go of it again.
Now this is a riddled explanation
but I am a historian of pagan means
and must walk five miles a day
to cover the period I will call
The Great Loneliness
and the name will stick so successfully
that for years afterwards children will complain
at meals and on sunny days and in the autumn and at Easter
that their parents are unnecessarily mute
and their parents will look harshly down
upon the plates and beach towels and leaves and bunnies
and say you don't know what you are talking about
you never lived through The Great Loneliness
and if you had you would never speak.
And the children will turn away
and consider the words, or lack of them,
and how one possible explanation
might be that inside our bodies
skeletons grow at an increasingly secretive rate,
though they never mention it,
even amongst themselves.

The crossfire:

Zach Savich: Once, in a blizzard, Basho ate his own tongue to show the pleasure of eating anything off a knife. It couldn't matter. The ribcage is large enough for bunnies. Loneliness — it's just them mating.

Zachary Schomburg: Like a dead leaf, I lay down my body, The Great Loneliness, across America, spread for killing the grass — all these children, not mine, sucking blood, their own, from my billion teats. To have lived through that, everyone's shared secret.

Louisiana Perch, by Ron Padgett

2011-07-12T05:14:00.000-07:00

Today on Poetry Crossfire! we ask some of the tougher questions America is struggling to answer: Why don't veggie burgers make for good lyric poetry? If a waiter or waitress inspires a poem, is one obligated to tip more than 15 percent? And will someone, for God's sake, please pass the ketchup? Let's turn to our pundits.

Our guests:

Matthew Zapruder is the author of three books of poetry, most recently Come On All You Ghosts, from Copper Canyon.

Matthea Harvey is the author of three books of poems. Her most recent book is Of Lamb (McSweeney's), created in collaboration with the artist Amy Jean Porter.

The poem:

Louisiana Perch
by Ron Padgett

Certain words disappear from a language:
their meanings become attenuated,
grow antique, insanely remote or small,
vanish.

Or become something else:

transport. Mack
the truck driver falls for a waitress
where the water flows.

The great words are those without meaning:
from a their or

Or the for a the
The those

The rest are fragile, transitory
like the waitress, a

beautiful slender young girl!
I love her! Want to
marry her! Have hamburgers!
Have hamburgers! Have hamburgers!

Ready, set, crossfire!

Matthew Zapruder: I regard almost every decision made in this poem from the title on down with almost complete bewilderment yet each time I read it find the end of the poem almost as enjoyable as actually eating a hamburger. Which is saying a lot.

Matthea Harvey: Pensive lyric to sound poem to ode! What a shimmy! I love a poem that swirls together love and hamburgers. This makes me want to take a photograph of a miniature trucker juggling hearts and hamburgers. And does anyone else hear an “or perch?” at the end?

Yoga, by Miroslav Holub

2011-07-11T05:24:00.000-07:00

Welcome back to Poetry Crossfire!, where on today's show a pair of Northampton poets twist themselves into new asanas over the poetry of a Czech immunologist. Namaste!

Our guests:

Emily Pettit is the author of two chapbooks How (Octopus Books) and What Happened to Limbo (Pilot Books). Her first full-length book, Goat in the Snow, is forthcoming from Birds LLC. She lives in Northampton, MA where she is publisher of jubilat.

Mark Leidner is the author of several chapbooks including The Night Of 1000 Murders and a book of aphorisms, The Angel in the Dream of Our Hangover. He lives in Western Massachusetts.

The poem:

Yoga

by Miroslav Holub

All poetry is about
five hundred degrees centigrade.

Poems, though, differ in combustibility.
Those soaked in spirits
catch fire first.

What would they be without their disease.
The disease is their health.

They burn, straw dummies,
they don't read Nietzsche,
what doesn't kill you
tempers you.

They smolder.
They sizzle.
And yet only a bad yogi
burns his feet
on hot coals.

Ready, set, crossfire!

Emily Pettit: Holub said this and he also said,

in A Boy’s Head –

There is much promise
in the circumstance
that so many people have heads.

- Heads like poems
are capable of combustion.

It is hot in our heads.

Mark Leidner: This poem seems to be saying something like "Poetry is a powerful fire..." and "Play with the fire..." and "You won't get burned if you're good enough..."

As if by saying “morning” on January 8th, by Michael Palmer

2011-07-08T18:53:00.000-07:00

In this episode of Poetry Crossfire!, we put two pundits on the hot seat and ask them to stare into the great sphinx of San Francisco. Nobody blinks. Including the sphinx.

The guests:

Brad Liening is the author of Ghosts and Doppelgangers, from Lowbrow Press. He’s poetry editor of InDigest Magazine and runs Hell Yes! Press. He lives in Minneapolis.

MC Hyland is the author of Neveragainland, from Lowbrow Press. She runs DoubleCross Press and the Pocket Lab reading series and lives in Minneapolis.

The poem:

As if by saying “morning” on January 8th

by Michael Palmer

As if by saying “morning” on January 8th

the light would be set forward
along the megalophonous shore

Was there anything else you wanted to know
about the body where I belong
how the torso is cut off from a waving arm

by the yellow space in the background
and how the head has been put on wrong
or not wrong. Each looked into the water

and was frightened by a different thing

of his or her own making
One was frightened by stripes

and the other by a turtle
even though I knew it wouldn’t bite
but would take me for a ride

It was the time when the phone always rings
to dissolve the mediating scene
in which a phone always rings

to help us with our counting
I say hello to the lateral darkness

who answers guardedly

in painted fragments. The drop of a hat
If the shoe fits. A thin bird flaps
before it sits. Who answers noiselessly

Hans Memling is watching from my matchbox
where the serpent lives

This is his nest

Ready, set, crossfire!

Brad Liening: That's funny, I go out drinking with that serpent all the time and he's never mentioned any of this. And I'm pretty sure that giving rides to poets but not biting them is a turtle's idea of hell.

M.C. Hyland: Unlike the turtle, I bite every poet I see -- tenderly.

Morning, by Bei Dao

2011-07-08T09:44:00.000-07:00

Our guests:

Ben Mirov is the author of Vortexts, Ghost Machine and a chapbook, I Is to Vorticism. He writes for HTMLGIANT lives in Oakland.

Mike Young is the author of Look! Look! Feathers, a book of stories, and We Are All Good If They Try Hard Enough, a book of poems. He co-edits NOÖ Journal, runs Magic Helicopter Press, and writes for HTMLGIANT. He lives in Northampton, MA.

The poem:

Morning
by Bei Dao

those fish entrails as if lights
blink again

waking, there's salt in my mouth
just like the first taste of joy

I go out for a walk
houses learning to listen

a few trees turn around
and someone's become a hero

you must use hand gestures to greet
birds and the hunters of birds.

Ready, set, crossfire!

Ben Mirov: I didn't know what I was doing. I put on a hat made of tape that appeared. I woke up and put on the coffee. I read something called TYPING WILD SPEECH. I sat down at my computer and didn't even cry.

Mike Young: One myth is that music was born when the noise musician bought a badminton set. O skull-fuck some first world boredom. Consider the innovative squid. On the chessboard he turns into chessboard. No, I do remember your name, honest.

Raspberry Sweater, by Frank O'Hara

2011-07-07T08:56:00.000-07:00

Our guests:

Amanda Nadelberg is the author of Isa the Truck Named Isadore, winner of the 2005 Slope Editions Book Prize, and Bright Brave Phenomena, forthcoming from Coffee House Press in 2012, as well as a chapbook, Building Castles in Spain, Getting Married, published by The Song Cave in 2009.

Chris Fishbach is publisher of Coffee House Press, based in Minneapolis.

The poem:

Raspberry Sweater
by Frank O'Hara

to George Montgomery

It is next to my flesh,
that's why. I do what I want.
And in the pale New Hampshire
twilight a black bug sits in the blue,
strumming its legs together. Mournful
glass, and daises closing. Hay
swells in the nostrils. We shall go
to the motorcycle races in Laconia
and come back all calm and warm.

Ready, set, crossfire!

Chris Fishbach: I seriously almost bought a raspberry sweater today at the Brooks Brothers Summer Closeout.

Amanda Nadelberg: I wish you did because we we don't live on Woulda Coulda Shoulda Street.

The children are fighting over the Wii and what constitutes dessert.

People from New Hampshire are pale.