Sherry Chandler

I missed the Bard’s birthday on April 23 and that is unfortunate because Shakespeare’s stock is very high in the current government. For example, Republican/businessman/poet Dana Gioia, who has resuscitated the National Endowment for the Arts, is big on Shakespeare as cultural prophylaxis. His major initiative as chairman has been Shakespeare in American Communities. From the NEA website:

Shakespeare in American Communities is the largest tour of Shakespeare in American history. The initiative launched in September 2003 with a nationwide tour of seven professional theater companies, including a tour to 13 military bases. A new phase, Shakespeare for a New Generation, began with the 2004-05 school year and provides professional Shakespeare performances and educational programs by 21 theater companies to high school and middle school students. Shakespeare for a New Generation will continue into the 2005-06 school year with approximately 40 additional grants to theater companies.

The official webpage seems to turn Shakespeare into an American patriot, the flag being much more prominant than the Bard. But I digress.

Laura Bush is co-chair of this initiative so perhaps it is not surprising that she should combine Shakespeare with her own second-term initiative, “Helping America’s Youth.” This three-year, $150-million initiative is a sort of “just say no” to the ghetto campaign. As BagnewsNotes explains, “According to the first lady, the program reinforces will power through lectures, role modeling and coaching.” Will power, apparently, is the ghetto youth’s “Passport to Manhood.” And that brings to that other Will power, the Bard. As Laura told Leno, according to Agence France Presse, April 27:

Laura Bush, the wife of the US president, wants to take arms against a sea of illiteracy by enticing gangland boys with the works of William Shakespeare.

Bush, a former librarian who is now a strong literacy activist, lauded taking characters such as Lady MacBeth from Stratford-on-Avon to Los Angeles barrios during an interview with US talk show host Jay Leno late Wednesday.

And as Wonkette noted, she said it without any hint of irony.

But Gioia’s redemption of the NEA defies irony. He (and I assume his ally Mrs. Bush) has been highly successful in taking the NEA out of the center of the culture wars and increasing its funding, as reflected in the 2003 report from Poets & Writers:

Gioia’s goal to establish the NEA as an arts institution serving all Americans seems to resonate with Congress, as the organization’s budget is now slowly but steadily increasing. The 2003 budget is $115.7 million (up from $115.2 million in 2002), and President Bush has requested that Congress allot $117.5 million to the organization in 2004.

To put some perspective on all these figures, the budget passed this week by the Congress gives a tax cut of over $100 billion to America’s wealthy and cuts Medicaid by $10 billion. Then, too, Ron Silliman has some doubts whether Shakespeare is as culturally neutral as the right may assume. He points out that the two American writers most directly influenced by Shakespeare are Herman Melville, especially in Moby Dick, and Charles Olson, neither of whom was exactly a member of what Silliman likes to call the “School of Quietude:”

So the idea of all these people reading, seeing, hearing Shakespeare is, I suspect, much more of a wild card than the NEA’s leaders may comprehend. Because where it won’t lead is back to is either the homogenous retro-utopia of so many a Congressman’s dream nor to the same ol’ stuff the School of Quietude has been shoveling. Inseminating Shakespeare into the American literary landscape is far more apt to generate a bunch of wild men & wyrd sisters instead.

“Fair is foul,” say the Wyrd Sisters, “and foul is fair…”

No more appropriate poet or poem with which to end this month of poets and poetry than this from George Ella Lyon, who needs no introduction from me. The poem is from Where I’m From, Where Poems Come From (Absey & Co., 1999).

Growing Light

I write this poem
out of darkness
to you
who are also in darkness
because our lives demand it.

This poem is a hand on your shoulder
a bone touch to go with you
through the hard birth of vision.
In other words, love
shapes this poem
                            is the fist that holds the chisel
                            muscle that drags marble
                            and burns with the weight
                                                        of believing a face
                                                        lives in the stone
                                                        a breathing word in the body.

I tell you
though the darkness
has been ours
words will give us
give our eyes, opened in promise
a growing light

Reprinted by permission of the author and publisher

Leatha Kendrick is not only an excellent poet but also one of the best writing teachers I have known, able almost it seems to internalize the student’s voice and put her finger on just the place that a piece goes wrong. I put this down to her great empathy and compassion, her joy.

Leatha was poetry editor of Wind magazine for several years. She has published two collections of poetry, Heart Cake (The Sow’s Ear Press, 2000) and Science in Your Own Back Yard (Larkspur, 2003). The latter is a gorgeous handset, handbound edition but the book is not more lovely than the poems. And she was co-editor, with George Ella Lyon, of Crossing Troublesome: 25 Years of the Appalachian Writers Workshop (Wind).

“Touching the Cat,” from Heart Cake, is one of my all-time favorite Leatha Kendrick poems:

Touching the Cat

Every morning, as her nose strokes my palm,
ears slide between my thumb and fingers,
her whole body rises rhythmically to fill
the cupped emptiness of my hand.
More than the plate of food
she talks out of me,
what she wants is

touch. Nights, while we sleep,
the prostitute’s head slides up
and down in just this way
in the front seat of nameless cars
parked along anonymous streets
of every city in the world. At the dead
end of pain and hunger lies this living
of the skin. She pushes against the violence
of each man’s need to feel

and be felt. Turned inside out
this craving for a boundary—
to feel our shape and, felt by hands
or mouths, to know
that we are real—
can thrust the knife through empty air
or send the bullet arcing out
to settle in the flesh.

On both sides of the touch
is fear of falling in, of losing
our edges. A husband’s hand
thrust hard between the thighs
makes his wife recoil, curl
into a question mark, self
tightly shut. Another night
the want flares up and we are gone,

fallen to the mindless deep
of flesh that hungers for
another, closer gathering in.
Our mouths like flowers blooming
into the other’s dark, we’re blotted out,
along with the limit of
our skin. An unlikely salvation,

a softening, each newborn taught me
with the whole length of her
body pressed against my belly,
mouth enclosing the nipple,
skin of cheek to curve of breast,
nothing to defend against the ecstasy
of being held all at once
all over.

I have made some additions to the posts for Charlie Hughes and David Cazden.

I have a great talent sometimes for overlooking the obvious. D’oh – to coin a phrase.

Frank X. Walker is a founding member of the Affrilachian poets. His first collection, Affrilachia, was turned into a stage production that toured widely. His second collection, Buffalo Dance (University Press of Kentucky, 2003), the Journey of York is written in the voice of the slave who accompanied the Lewis & Clark expedition. Buffalo Dance was awarded the 35th Annual Lillian Smith Book Award in 2004. The poem below is from Buffalo Dance.

God’s House

The expedition left Louisville, Kentucky on October 26, 1803

When we first left Kentucke
the trees had commenced to dressing up
the fall harvest and the garden pumpkins
was already bigger than my head.

Massa Clark didn’t ask me to go on no expedition.
He just say “pack” and pointed to the door.
So I gather up what little I got and more than I can carry of his
and head off to a sail-bearing keelboat
where his friend Massa Lewis is waiting.
That boat was so big
you could lay any ten of the sixteen men on board
or eight a me head to toe and still have enough
room for the dog.

We start out on the Ohio, swing up the Big Muddy
til we gets to the mouth of the river they call the M’soura
and set up winter camp a good canoe ride from Saint Louie.
That spring when the rains come we cross the Muddy
and commence to climbing the M’soura
and float right up thru what seem like heaven on earth;
more sky than I ever seen, rocks as pretty as trees
and game so plentiful they come right down to the river bank
and invites they selves to dinner.

Now, I ain’t what you would call
a scripture quoter, but the first time
I seen the water fall at M’soura,
felt a herd of buffalo stampede and looked down from top
a Rock Mountains, it was like church.

Where else but God’s house can a body servant
big as me, carry a rifle, hatchet and a bone handle knife
so sharp it can peel the black off a lump a coal
and the white man
still close his eyes and feel safe, at night?

Sally Adkins, Student Contest Chair for the Kentucky State Poetry Society sent this report of the Kentucky Poet Laureate induction ceremony in Louisville on April 15:

Of the 29 winners of awards in the Student contest, 16 attended the Poet Laureate event in Louisville. One more was scheduled to attend but had to remain home because of the death of her grandfather. Four winners spoke during the PL induction, three 1st place winners and one 2nd place winner. The others were invited to another room following the induction to read their winning entries as we gathered together. Some, unfortunately, had to return to school immediately and didn’t have an opportunity to do so.

The PL committee had invited over a hundred students to the occasion, and it was so crowded in the main room that it was difficult to get around and visit all of our winners. I did get to speak to almost all of them. Having read their names and entries countless times made meeting them like greeting old friends. They were so wonderful!

Will have a more complete report for the fall’s KSPS meeting in October.

BagNewsNotes has a follow-up on the nature of the events at Highview Baptist Church in Louisville this last Sunday:

When it comes to the culture war, these crusaders do a wonderful job massaging the message. In varying accounts of this program, I’ve seen it described primarily (by an all too malleable press) as a rally or a religious meeting. These terms are specifically reinforced to convey legitimacy and associations to sanctity. Except, this was not anything close to a service or a rally, it was a political infomercial.

From the news images and the news reports, you might also think it was held in a church. Technically, it was. But this edifice — the Highview Baptist mega-church in Louisville, Kentucky — is as much a broadcast facility as anything else — with walls, balcony, and ceiling filled with sophisticated lighting, sound and staging systems. In examining these houses of worship broadcast, what we are really witnessing — especially with productions like this — are studios reminiscent of churches filled with studio audiences reminiscent of parishioners.

Meanwhile, over at Have Coffee Will Write, Jeff Hess has this to say about Joe Phelps, Reba Cobb, and the Highland Baptist Church:

Forgive me as an outsider to their faith for commenting, but after reading the statements of Pastor Joe Phelps and Reba Cobb posted on the Highland Baptist Church website, I must say they, and their supporters, represent how, I’ve always understood, Christians are supposed to be.

I’m not sure how appropriate this may be, but I think the Christians who stood up this weekend to the actions of the Theocons deserve our support and thanks. I’m sending a modest check to Pastor Phelps’ congregation with a thank you note for doing the right thing.

You should take a look at Highland’s website. It provides a link to Joe Phelp’s statement , and to his editorial in the Courier Journal, “A Tale of Two Churches.” What I like most about Highland’s web page, though, is it’s slogan: “A thinking, feeling, healing community of faith.” Highview, on the other hand, aggressively flashes: “Exalting, Equipping, Evangelizing: Together we are growing strong.”

David Cazden is editor of Miller’s Pond, which begins its 2005 reading period on May 1. His collection The Joy of Cooking School is available through H H Press, and his collection Moving Picture is due out from Word Press in July.

“Melanoma” appeared in Chiron Review, which I regret to discover is going out of business with the Winter 2005 issue.

Melanoma

Every month the doctors check
each stretch of her,
down to the paper ribbons
wound between the toes–

But I see only skin
the color of mocha,
freckles of cinnamon and clove.

As auburn hair falls upon the table
she tells me how they watch
the neck, the elbows, the delta
of the back
where a cool rain pours
and I ask
can I see the scar

so she pulls a sleeve away
from the center of her arm
revealing seared streaked skin
the color of pork
left on the barbeque.

This is the opposite
of what a kiss might do,
an unravelling of flesh,
the threads tied down.

She stares at me through glasses
thick as bowls of water.
At twenty five she already talks
beyond the afternoon. And after

our awkward conversation
I return to editing her poem,
erasing a few lines,
as if my hands could change
a story not my own.

Bloggers like to talk about the strange search phrases that lead readers to their sites. Mine are usually very mundane – people searching the names of poets I’ve featured or some innocent words like “Kentucky” or “poetry” or something like that. But this morning, I had to laugh when I found that some one had been referred to my site from AOL on this search phrase:

HOT SPOTS FOR WOMEN IN PARIS KY.FOR SEX

Searcher, you have my deepest sympathies, and if I were you, I’d count on having to drive to Lexington.

George Eklund teaches at Morehead State University. He has, in fact, taught my son, which is how I learned about him. He works with Morehead’s literary magazine, Inscape, and the Morehead reading series. He’s published in many magazines and anthologies, but as far as I know, does not have a book out.

I started this 30 days of poets and poetry with an Ars Poetica – a type of poem I’ve never been able to write – and so it seemed appropriate to post this poem as a sort of bookend. It was first published in Crazyhorse Issue 65 and can also be found on Web del Sol.

Essay on Ars Poetica

Damn the art of my seeing,
how it makes the stomach suffer
in the cleave of the moon,
in the dark waters of dawn
that hold us all in every breath.
There was a cup of tea at my wrist;
where did it go?
God damn the art in the blue haze of the bare trees.
Acids repeated in my misshapen head,
in the small events of the cigarettes,
in the Caspian dream of yellow sand
and the broken fingers that bloodied the chain.
The yard lights burn in the dreams of cows
a mile off the highway.
Something twisted shapes the tree.
A fever of light throbs up the hill.
I have destroyed everything.
I have touched nothing.