Sherry Chandler

Patterns

From Helen Vendler, Poems, Poets, Poetry: An Introduction and Anthology (Bedford Books of St. Martin’s Press, 1997):

Since the base of all organic lilfe is repetition (repeated motion in growth and form), and since human life, by its heartbeat and breathing, is innately rhythmic, we can suppose that there is a biological basis for our recognition of, and apparently instinctive pleasure in, repetition. Besides our almost unconscious biological patterns of breathing and sleeping, we enjoy simple repetitive patterned body motions — rocking a baby, swimming, riding a bicycle. Babies learn by patterned repetition, and the pleasure of learning and recognizing the new and old patterns is probably the source of our deepest pleasure in art. Most of the true and wise things said in artworks have also been said (in less-patterned and unrhythmic ways) in philosophy and letters and newspaper editorials and conversation, where they also may strike us as true and wise, but not as art. In distinguishing literary artworks from other verbal pieces of truth or wisdom, we tend to be moved by the more intense patterning of the artwork. [pp. 67-68]

The other day in her blog post Throttling Free Verse, Mary Alexandra Agner asked a question I’ve been asking myself for some time:

Free verse is hard. How do you write a poem without using any of the items in your arsenal of poetic devices? (And why do you want to? What kind of constraint is absolutely no constraint at all?)

I mean, I get the lyric urge, and there are plenty of pieces I’ve written where the rhythm or repeating element is stuck in my head and doesn’t make it to the reader. (But I was trying to get them across.)

But why remove those entirely? I mean, why try to write without them?

Well, why try these things and still call them poems?

I understand all the reasons for the free verse revolution, and reading Sarah Piatt, good as she is, makes me realize why it was needed, especially here in the U.S. But as Mark Lilla said about the Reagan revolution, I think the free verse revolution is now a spent force.

But where to go? Toward L A N G U A G E? Toward meter? I like meter myself, at least to have some rough drumbeat counting cadence to my line.

Mark Russell Brown

Evil Iago, Who Is Seen Eavesdropping at the Left

After Othello Relating His Adventures
by Alexandre Cabanel

He’s in dark wine, a shade
of lurk, and skulks
behind the marble stairs.

But the jealousy,
you’d think Iago would dress
in the green

that paints a forest, stippled
with pine cones
and layered in moss, a green deeper

than the underbrush.
Othello glows in gold. His sword
foreskinned in a blue sheath.

Desdemona, moon white,
aching to rise
from Brabantio’s lap, is tethered

by her father’s noble mass—
all merely players
in a French Romantic’s universe

bruised dark wine
in the lower left-hand corner.

~Mark Russell Brown, used by permission of the author

Mark Russell Brown grew up in Hardinsburg, Kentucky but lives and writes now in Louisville. He is another of the poets with whose voice and friendship I have been gifted by the Green River Writers. Mark has an MFA from Spaulding University; he writes a regular column, “Beyond the Words,” in the Green River Writers newsletter. He blogs and posts his poetry at Cuddle Ugly and on Facebook.

The painting on which Mark’s ekphrastic poem is based hangs in the Speed Museum in Louisville.

Eric Sutherland

sacred relations

I make my way
a joyous escape
to the jagged cliff-crowned
doorway to the mountains
here water shapes every surface
with a wavy swirling motion

like fingerprints left
by a great ancient ocean
each rock face bears
these marine tattoos

here, I am no longer
trapped on the treadmill
but another wild animal
able to explore freely

I am fondled by an under story
of a million fern and trillium
as I follow a single narrow path
through wildflower woods

I am kissed by incessant ticks and thirsty mosquitoes
I am dazzled by five-lined skinks and cave salamanders
I am drawn to dainty dancing dragonflies and painted box terrapins
I am awed by a slew of slithering serpents
and a boundless blue sky surfed by red-tailed hawks

I am cleansed in cool springs thick
with tiny frogs and cautious crayfish
I am baptized in thin creeks that seep
slow from a thousand sandstone crevices in the earth

I am drenched with the sweat of rain, rivers and lakes
and worn with the work of reclaiming
I am happy with guide book and good memory naming
all my sacred relations that inhabit this holy land

— Eric Sutherland, originally published in ArtScene and online at Public Republic, used by permission of the author

Like Katerina Stoykova-Klemer, Eric Sutherland is a poetic force in Kentucky. A performance poet, Eric has initiated several reading series in Lexington. Most recently and most successfully, he is the founder of the Holler Poet Series (MySpace and Facebook) that reads monthly at Al’s Bar on the corner of Sixth and Limestone Streets. You can read more about the Holler Poets and watch several videos of Holler events here at LexGo.com

Holler Poets, which will soon have Holler # 24, has also produced a series of distinguished posters designed by John P. Lackey. Take a look at them here at HomeGrownPress.

Eric is an activist poet. Evelyn Knight, former director of the University of Kentucky’s Appalachian Center, has dubbed him (and the reference to knighthood is appropriate here) Kentucky’s poet laureate of sustainability.

Eric’s first book of poetry, incommunicado, was published in 2007 by blacoetry press.

A different kind of birdsong?

From Heraclitean Fire, who says:

The set-up in the video isn’t exactly the same as the one in the gallery, but it gives you the idea: a flock of zebra finches in a room with electric guitars and up-turned cymbals, who ‘play’ the instruments by hopping around and perching on them. They are free-flying in the gallery, and you can walk on paths between the instruments.

It’s an immediately appealing idea and quite memorable, so it will probably be something of a hit, at least by the standards of contemporary art installations. To be honest, though, I thought it was less striking in reality than it was in neatly-edited little close-ups on YouTube. It was more like being in a slightly odd aviary than in some kind of extraordinary art-place. People did seem to be enjoying it, though. I slightly wonder how much of that was just the pleasure of being in among all these very tame little birds, but perhaps I’m just projecting my own reactions.

I’ll have to admit to zebra finch envy. They are lovely little birds. But like Harry, I wonder if they wouldn’t be happier left alone. And can they hear all that racket?

27 February 2010 – 23 May 2010
The Curve, Barbican, London

New Year’s Eve Stuff

The key to literary success? Be a man — or write like one by Julianna Baggott in the Washington Post.

But when I invented the pen name N.E. Bode for “The Anybodies,” a trilogy for younger readers, I had to choose to be a man or a woman. The old indoctrination kicked in. I picked man. The trilogy did well, shortlisted in a People magazine summer pick, alongside Bill Clinton and David Sedaris. I was finally one of the boys.

Via WILLA

Amy King has already visited this subject in Why Weren’t Any Women Invited To Publishers Weekly’s Weenie Roast?. She has a link to WILLA’s counter list. It’s a WIKI, so you can add your own favorites.

Also in Salon.

I’ve discovered a couple of blogs by Kentucky writers — or at least by writers in Kentucky. One is Emma Bolden’s A Century of Nerve. Emma is a Visiting Assistant Professor of English at my alma mater, Georgetown College. She is also poetry editor of the Georgetown Review.

The other is the Brannon Book Blog, a site set up by Jimmy Brannon as a forum devoted to promotion of book authors from Bourbon, Nicholas, and Harrison Counties and neighboring areas of north central Kentucky. I have a vested interest in pointing you toward this blog, being as how I’m one of the authors featured. Jimmy is a man of many parts whose memoir of his son, I Love You, My Goose, is due out in 2010. Patrick Brannon died of cancer at 13 after a heroic struggle.

Jimmy, as befits the editor of the local paper (The Bourbon County Citizen), also has a news blog, and while I don’t often agree with his politics, I did find points of agreement in this item: Government leaders looking to reduce budgets should take a close look at the costs of incarceration of prisoners:

Unfortunately one of the biggest obstacles to reform is the problem of the labeling of an idea as ‘liberal’ which basically in today’s parlance means that which is opposed by all conservatives, or a ‘conservative’ idea which means one which is opposed by all liberals.

Normally such things as prison reform, rehabilitation, and any form of early release from incarceration is thought to be a part of a ‘liberal’ agenda. But from my perspective it is the conservatives that should be leading the fight to reduce the cost of imprisonment to the taxpayers.

Yesterday, Fresh Air aired parts its 1986 interview with South African Activist Poet Dennis Brutus, who died on December 26.

As a young man, Brutus helped to found the South African Sports Association to protest against segregation in athletics. He was arrested for attending a sports meeting in 1963. While on bail, he fled the country to try to persuade the Olympic executive committee to suspend South Africa from the Games until apartheid ceased.

By the end of the year, Brutus was captured and jailed with Nelson Mandela on Robben Island. Though the South African government had banned the printing of his work, Brutus’s poetry made its way outside the border, starting with his first collection, Sirens, Knuckles, and Boots.

In 1964, South Africa was expelled from the Olympic Games and Brutus was forced to leave the country shortly after. He emigrated to the US in 1971 and became a professor, teaching literature and African studies at Northwestern University and the University of Pittsburgh.

The stories he told of his imprisonment and his treatment at the hands of white authority made my flesh creep. His story also gives a deeper meaning to the incident portrayed in the new Clint Eastwood/Morgan Freeman film Invictus.

And for your enjoyment, an item sent to me by my favorite visual artist, Donna Rhae Marder: An optical illusion the size of a town

Christmas at Keeneland

Preparations are under way here at our house for the Christmas at Keeneland Arts Fair over in Lexington next Saturday and Sunday.

Eighty-one artists will be there offering crafts from baskets to wood.

A great place to do your Christmas shopping.

The unfinished turned ornament shown here is made with tree of heaven (bowl) and ash (finial). The carved spoon below is cherry.

Look for TR at booth # 21. Visit his web page to see more of his work.

Look also for Toni Menk at booth #3. Toni is not only a great designer of glass beadwork but also a fine poet and a fellow member of the Green River Writers.

If you miss Christmas at Keeneland, TR will also have several pieces in the Third Annual Gallery & Gifts Holiday Market at the Scott County Arts & Cultural Center. The Gallery is located in the old jailer’s house, 117 North Water Street, Georgetown, Kentucky. The show opens on November 1 and will run through December 19. Gallery hours are 12 N to 4 pm, Tuesday through Saturdays, Sundays 1 to 4 pm.

And you can always purchase his work at the Kentucky Artisan Center or Appalachian Fireside Gallery.

Festival Del Dia De Los Muertos

A reminder to local folk that today the Living Arts and Science Center (362 North Martin Luther King Boulevard, Lexington) holds their Festival Del Dia De Los Muertos from 5 – 9 pm. They will have hands-on craft activities for the young folk, with traditional music, dance, and food for the whole family. The celebration will culminate in a candlelight parade to the Old Episcopal Burying Ground at the corner of Third Street and Elm Tree Lane for a viewing of an installation of altars.

You can also take a look at the Recordamos exhibit of calaveras that will hang in the Gloria Singletary Gallery until November 14. Above you see a photo of the mixed media piece my son, Tom C. Williams, and I contributed to the show. I wrote the poem, he did the drawing.

Thirteen other local and regional artists have made contributions and the students of Sayre School have contributed an impressive collection of suitcase altars in mixed media.

Christine Kuhn has assembled a huge altar of found objects, including a motorcycle that was drawing much attention from the boys when we dropped by last week.

Other notable pieces take the idea of recordamos into the political. Robert Morgan’s assemblage “The Perfect Host,” a skeleton made of all manner of found objects — keys, plastic tags, and other things less easily recognizable — commemorates those who have died of AIDS, and a digital mixed-media wall hanging by Bruce Frank of Georgetown called “No Plants, No Planet.”

I have found the staff at the Living Arts and Science Center wonderfully friendly and helpful and you’ll find some lovely notecards and other items suitable for Christmas giving in their giftshop.

The Day of the Dead Festival is supported, in part, by: The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation Donor Advised Fund of the Bluegrass Community Foundation.

I read this poem at the link: Relics