Lit4us is coming soon

My company, iphemera corporation, just launched a new website:  www.lit4.us .  Lit4us will allow you to share poetry, short stories and other short literature with your friends.  Lit4us will also allow you to find pieces that you like and let you build chapbooks and zines.  Lit4us will include a Facebook(C) application to make it easier to share with your friends.  Lit4us will launch with a private beta in approximately two months.  For more information or to get an invitation to the Lit4us beta go to: www.lit4.us .

iphemera and Lit4us are trademarks of iphemera corporation.

Land’s End

Lazy lapping waves

            Languorous wet kisses.

 

Lights of shore

            Glimmering glittering sinuous

Parallel lines

            Converging on me.

 

Circle

            Within circle

                        Within circle

The water

            The rocks

                        The skeleton gazebo.

 

At the end

            Of a causeway breakwater.

At the end

            Of human reach.

 

The way here

            Full of pale glow

Reflecting light of shore

Orion brilliant

            Overhead

                        Ahead.

Leading me out

            Leading me on.

 

The way home

            Path of shadow

Betwixt

            Shimmering seas.

The Great(ness) Game

Perhaps you have read David Orr’s recent essay in the New York Times Review of Books.  It is called “The Great(ness) Game“.  He asks the question:  “What will we do when Ashbery and his generation are gone? Because for the first time since the early 19th century, American poetry may be about to run out of greatness.”

I found the whole article silly. David Orr did prove that you could write a shallow, ill-informed article while sounding convincingly erudite.  As for the great poets he lists Emily Dickinson.  Well how many people read a single poem of hers before she died?  Then how would some elite arbiter of culture writing in 1880 have ever considered this recluse whose poems were never in style in her life, a great poet?  He quotes William Carlos Williams, but ignores that Williams would despise the type of poetry that Orr calls great. 

Another of Orr’s gems:  “It would be a mistake to call today’s poetry world a transparent democracy (that whirring you hear is the sound of logs still busily being rolled), but it’s more democratic than it used to be — and far more middle class. It’s more of a guild now than a country club. ”  We obviously, Orr has never ventured to a Spoken Word event in a major city or considered that Rap could be poetry. Surely, there are alot of middle-class folks who are active readers or writers of poetry, but he might have a very different perspective if he ever stepped out of his comfort zone.

Finally Orr seems to have left inspiration out of the equation.  His “Great Poets” seem a crew of composers swinging consciously for a home run. 

Well at least one thing I liked about this article, it inspired me to write.  So here is my contribution to The Great(ness) Game.

 

The flow of words

            Ephemera

Transcendence

            For posterity poses not

 

Demos’ art

            Founded by illiterates

Saved by outcasts

            Staffed by misfits

Grab a discarded envelope

            Borrow, steal a pen

You are as well equipped

            As an MFA

As elite

            As an editor of Poetry Magazine

 

Look not

            In the Rearview

Only The Reaper

            Lies behind

Poetry, the eyes on fire

            The heavy pedal foot

Greatness

            The wreck left behind.

Grey Heron

Here is another Heron poem by my eight year old daughter, Abby.  You may recognized that it is referenced in my earlier poem Three Herons:

Grey Heron

 

Standing still on two feet

Waves washing over them

Grey

 

Baltimore Poetry & Spoken Word Calendar

Well I am blogging less and calendaring more.  I am now coordinating the Event Calendar and Newsletter for Poetry in Baltimore.  I am hoping to convince some other brave souls to work with me on this endeavor.  It is amazing how many events occur in Baltimore.  I am already over 65 events for February alone.  So go check it out.  You can send me new events or changes to daviddrager@poetryinbaltimore.com. Use the same email if you are interested in working with me on this exciting project. 

So now you have no excluse, come out to a reading or an open mic.  Try a new venue.  You will be glad you did.

The calendar:  http://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=dwdrager%40comcast.net&ctz=America

Inaugural Poems

A few days ago I put together a collection of links to inaugural poems.  I posted this on the PoetryInBaltimore.  But my post is hidden in a reply, so I will post them here as well.  In general, poems written to mark an event by an official poet leave me cold.  No matter how good the poet the insipiration can be lacking in made for order poetry.

Prior inauguration poems

Elizabeth Alexanders poem

Below are a number of poems written by established poets both academic and slam about or for Obama’s inauguration:

AP collection of inauguration poems

NPR’s collection of inaurguration poems

My favorites of these is Baltimore’s own Gayle Danley’s poem “Why Barak is ours”  and “The land was never ours” by Julia Alvarez.  (Her poem is the second under the AP collection.)

Third Friday PreVerse – January 16th

Another benefit for Hearts Place Shelter.  Lots of folks reading, there were 9 featured poets and about the same number of open mic poets.  There was a good turn-out as well.  The poet of the night, in my opinion, was Mary C. Reilly.  Not only did she do several nice pieces, but Alan Barysh did one of her pieces and a tribute poem to her as well.  I liked an open mic poem that used the Chicago Loop as the setting of a break-up.  Suzanne X. did a poem on poetry that I liked.  A bunch of poems on the sexual abuse of young women. 

I did the first poem of the night.  (Open mic poets go first.)  I did my poem, Christina’s World, to honor Andrew Wyeth, who had died the night before.  That morning before I heard about Wyeth, I decide I wanted to practice Christina’s World even though I was not planning to read it that night.

Barack Obama in Baltimore

I made it to Obama’s “Whistlestop” today.  Here is a poem I wrote.  It is still raw, but tomorrow never waits.

Baltimore Whistlestop,

January 17^th, 2009

 

Crowds stream from Light Rail & buses

            Golf cart lane down Baltimore Street.

Coldest day of year

            Strange light of mid-winter late afternoon.

 

Barricades everywhere

            Buses blocking roads

Police of every agency & uniform

            Clumps of unarmed soldiers

The big line

            The metal detectors

Secret service on roofs

            Scoping the crowd

 

Then the plaza

            Where did the homeless go?

Standing in the middle of Fayette Street

            Amidst the crowd

All races, all classes

Integration

Only seen at Artscape

Or maybe a ball game

 

Then the moment

            No one had foreseen

With a thousand cameras & phones

            Held over heads

A black man taking the legacy

            1776, Fort McHenry

On streets

            Where black folks were chattel.

 

A recreation of Lincoln’s

            Inaugural train

Except without the disguises

            And the sneaking

 

First blood of the Civil War

            Spilled blocks away

As rioters

            Attacked northern volunteers

Rioters still honored

            In our state’s anthem

“Avenge the patriotic gore

            That flecked the streets of Baltimore”

 

The next day rail bridges burned

            On our mayors command

Telegraph lines to DC

            Torn down

Then occupation

            Federal Hill cannon turned

So many things have turned

            And turned again

 

Are we truly

            A people

Of common hopes

            Of common dreams?

 

Eleven minutes from the crowds roar

            To “God bless America”

Then the magic ended

            And music resumed

 

Marching back

            Watching family portraits taken

I spoke with a fifty-something black couple

Who on a normal day I would never meet

They missed the speech

            “How long?”

“Only 10 minutes”

            “We were expecting more”

I play them the speech

            Recorded on my phone

 

You can tell the poet

            Everyone snapping pictures

And this fool

            Recording words and dreams

Everyone will say “you should have seen it”

I will say “you should have heard it”

 

Borders Open-Door Poetry

One topic that I plan to blog about is poetry and poetry resources on the web.  I plan to have one or two posts per week on this topic. 

Today I would like to point out Borders Open-Door Poetry.  This is a video magazine that consists mainly of well-known poets reading and reciting their work.  There is about an equal mix of Slam Champions poets and Pulitzer Prize/Poet Laureate poets.  There is also a pretty good racial/ethnic mix of poets. 

So now you have something good to do instead of doing laundry and paying the bills.

http://www.bordersmedia.com/odp/

VERBATIMondays January 5th

The features on Monday were Green Tea and Archie the Messenger.   Green Tea was an instant hit with the crowd.  And I felt the same way.  She sang a-capella with a percussionist.  Green Tea combines strong jazz / blues influence with her own lyrics and songs. 

Archie the Messenger returned to Baltimore for this week.  His performance poems/ spoken word pieces were so well known that a number in the audience kept up with him reciting his pieces.  He has a powerful presence and incredible timing.  But I will need to see him again to know how I feel about his poems.  Keeping track of the performance, the words, the sense of what was straight vs. irony left me feeling that I was only scratching the surface of his work.

Another highlight of the night was the host, Rebecca Dupas, who did four pieces including a new piece that I liked.  There were a number of strong performances at the open mic, but not nearly as strong as last month.  I don’t like the come on strong sexually-explicit pick-up poems disguised as love poems.  Perhaps this is a cultural issue, but the women listening did not seem impressed either, especially when it went over the top. 

I did Letter from the Future  at the open mic.  I think it touched some people.  I would not be surprised if it turned a few people off.  It will be interesting to see what the response to this poem is as I read it to different audiences.  There certainly is alot of room to either touch alot of raw nerves or inspire people.    I was hoping to do a new Spoken/Chanted piece “Never Forget”, but I did not have time.  This piece may answer the question that is on the minds of alot a folks at VERBATIMondays and The Art of Conversation, “what is this wierd white guy doing here?”.  I will post it after I have a chance to perform it.