When it comes to class acts in the poetry world, only a handful come close to Henry Denander's Kamini Press. I've waxed on and on about the press previously, with review of two previous publications. Pictured above, and excerpted below, is another fine volume from Mr Denander: John Bennett's Battle Scars.
Battle Scars is something of an anomaly: it feels as though Bennett has invented a new form, an astute amalgam of the the short poem and the aphorism. Though the work is in natural language, or perhaps because it is, the pacing is precise. There is no mistaking Bennett's opinion on a particular subject; he is straightforward, plain-spoken, cynical, perceptive, and sarcastic. All of which add up to one thing.
He is battle scarred.
In one little book, Bennett has solved the age-old conundrum of experience versus learning. In Battle Scars, you may learn, at what seems as close to first hand as you can get, from someone else's hard won experience.
Need an example?
Lacking
We will
not do
what we
need to
do to
save ourselves.
We do not
have it
in us.
How's that for an empirical statement on the human experience? New agers need not apply here. Self-helpers, keep on walking.
Even zen-sters seem to be nodding appreciatively, or maybe that's just a no. Hmn.
The Herd
The herd
remains happy
until
slaughter time.
Ouch. Is this guy over the edge? No, wait, here you go:
Reading Tea Leaves
The less
you know about
what's going on
the better
you can
see what's
coming.
Ok, so maybe what's coming ain't so hot, but here's a bit of survival technique. Suddenly, all three poems come into stark relief; what they have in common is a point of convergence from which we can learn quite a lot.
What might that be? The thread running through all three pieces is not fatalism or misanthropy or even old school Darwinism. What we have here is a heightened, unsentimental perception of the human psyche, with all its warts, foibles, and limitations.
What is is.
Is "Reading Tea Leaves" the answer - it would seem that the very title isn't holding out any unadulterated hope. But seeing patterns seems to be a help, be they in tea leaves or herds or a certain something lacking.
There are 30 of these little bon mots here, ready to pop in your metaphoric gullet, tasty as all get out, but there's a caution. Chew well; chew very well, indeed, if digestion is your intent. Reflux can be a nasty condition.
It leaves scars.
Hospitality
I tell
people I'm
not one
of them &
they laugh
& say
have a
beer
John Bennett
---------------------
Lilliput Review #141 was originally published in January 2005. Today's featured poem comes from that issue. For 6 more poems from the same issue, check out these two posts. Enjoy.
train
toward home
fog
on both sides
of the bridge
Pamela Miller Ness
night mist--
the horse remembers
the bridge's hole
"Modest Proposal Chapbook" #21 is just out. It is a selection of the work of Japanese poet Yosano Akiko, entitled On the Scented Breeze, translated by Dennis Maloney and Hide Oshiro. For those unfamiliar with this marvelous poet, here is info from Dennis:
Yosano Akiko (1878-1942) is admired as the greatest woman poet and tanka poet of modern Japan. Akiko infused her poems with an erotic and imaginative passion at a time when traditional poetry had grown lifeless and conventional.
In addition to Midaregami or Tangled Hair, from which this selection of poems is taken, Akiko published over 75 books including over 20 of original poetry, as well as novels, essays, fairy tales, children’s stories, an autobiography, and translations. She was a leader and strong supporter of the women’s rights movement in Japan.
Yosano Akiko transformed tanka poetry, instilling life in what had become a relatively stilted, tired form. Many well known translators have rendered her work, including Kenneth Rexroth, Sanford Goldstein, and Sam Hamill. On the Scented Breeze is a modest selection of 29 of some of her most moving, powerful tanka, translated in a clear precise lyrical manner that heightens this power. Here is a selection of 5 poems from this excellent collection:
Did we part yesterday or a thousand years ago? Even now I feel Your hand on my shoulder.
Goodbye my love For a night at Fuzan spring I was your wife. Now until the end of the world I demand that you forget me.
Spring so short, In what can we Find immortality? I let his hands fondle My vigorous breasts.
Poet, sing of this night Alive with lights and The wine served. Our beauty pales next to the peony.
God of fate, echo of my life. This last world of mine Please listen to The notes of my koto Played with an ax.
As with all "Modest Proposal Chapbooks," On a Scented Breeze is a $3.00, including shipping. If you'd like a copy, details to send along payment may be found here.
As inevitably happens from week to week, I think of something to share and, in the press of getting other things done, forget some detail or other. One thing I really wanted to post last week relates to the recent anniversary of the birth of Robert Service (January 16th). Though I’m not much for narrative poetry, the uniqueness and power of the work of Service is something it would be foolish to ignore. As with all great poets, Service had an insight and overwhelming empathy with the human condition; yes, empathy, because, I believe he wasn’t particularly happy about it but he knew it to the core, not unlike Bukowski, the subject of last weeks musings.
In any case, what rescues Service from morose oblivion is humor; an overriding, abundant, dark, deep sense of humor. So, for his birthday, here is a real treat: a dramatic reading by another student of the human condition, radio monologist and raconteur of many an obscure topic, Jean Shepherd. Admittedly someone who is little known outside the New York metropolitan area (aside from the adaptation of his work in the holiday perennial A Christmas Story), Shep was something of a rite of passage for the young in the late 50’s and early 60’s, one of the last threads to old school radio. He had a soft spot for poetry in general (he once did a whole show reading haiku translations of the masters, deadpan, with “Oriental” music wafting in the background, to somewhat limited success) and Service in particular and, on odd nights when in a certain mood, he would break out the Service and regale the WOR airwaves with tales of the Yukon. So, in celebration of Service’s birthday and in concert with the recent cold snap that has much of the country longing for a little heat not unlike ol' Sam McGee, here is The Cremation of Sam McGee. For more Shepherd, unexcerpted from his natural environment, see the archive of shows Mass Backwards, by Max Schmidt of WBAI, which has a permanent link at the bottom of the sidebar on this page.
I’ve received news that Gary Hotham’s Missed Appointment has been reviewed in the British magazine Presence. Here is a copy of that review by Matthew Paul:
Missed Appointment, Gary Hotham
22pp, $4 inc. postage ($3 within USA).
Cheques payable to Don Wentworth, from:
Lilliput Review, 282 Main Street, Pittsburgh, PA15201, USA
Gary Hotham has been writing haiku for four decades and his economical style is one of the most distinctive within the homogeneity that comprises much of the English-language haiku published today.
In a brief introduction, Hotham approvingly quotes the belief of Billy Collins, the American 'mainstream' and haiku poet, that haiku contains "a very deep strain of existential gratitude" and that "[a]lmost every haiku says the same thing: 'It's amazing to be alive here.'" This 'Modest Proposal Chapbook' of just 15 haiku exemplifies Hotham's ability to be absolutely in tune with what it means, at any given time, to exist. Quite simply, and in plain language adorned only by mundane adjectives, Hotham writes about things that most haiku poets would overlook:
no where else
but the next flower---
afternoon butterflies
over the parade---
a window no one
looks out of
Whether other writers would ignore such subject matter deliberately or merely by not paying enough attention to the world around them is open to debate. Hotham certainly attunes himself and his readers to moments which, rather than being vitally significant, could be considered trivial, perhaps to the point of banality; but, for my money, the humble and persistently downbeat nature of these poems is admirable in a small dose such as Missed Appointment provides. In longer collections of Hotham's work, though, I'd need a dollop or two of verbosity to offset and lighten the minimalism.
Whatever the merits of his style, one fact about Hotham surely cannot be disputed: that he writes excellent, poignant senryu, two of which I'll end with:
farewell party---
the sweetness of the cake
hard to swallow
Dad's funeral---
the same knot
in my tie
Review byMatthew Paul
This week, the following poems are from LR #141, from January 2007. If anyone is following along, you might notice I’ve skipped #140. #140 is a broadside by Alan Catlin in honor of Cid Corman, entitled “For Cid.” It is a 7 poem collection of short, delicate work which would not be served well by excerpting, though many of the poems stand well alone.
Roethke wrote:
It will come again.
Be still. Wait
How to embrace the stillness.
How to wait with grace.
Pamela Miller Ness
pollen-heavy
a bee easily clears
the headstone
LeRoy Gorman
What is there
before or after
experience?
Everything waits in the dark
for you to say,
Come in.
David Lindley
My heart is torn
since I’ve seen you.
Like the watermark in OsakaBay
I measure my life
waiting to meet you again.
Princess Motoyoshi
translated by Dennis Maloney & Hide Oshiro
Finally, let me recommend this morning’s poem on The Writer’s Almanac: “How to Kill” by Keith Douglas, who died in the Normandy invasion. It puts a human face and sensibility on the deaths that continue today as war rages on.
Look for awhile at the China Cat Sunflower
proud-walking jingle in the midnight sun
Copper-dome Bodhi drip a silver kimono
like a crazy-quilt stargown
through a dream night wind
Krazy Kat peeking through a lace bandana
like a one-eyed Cheshire
like a diamond-eye Jack
A leaf of all colors plays
a golden string fiddle
to a double-e waterfall over my back
Comic book colors on a violin river
crying Leonardo words
from out a silk trombone
I rang a silent bell
beneath a shower of pearls
in the eagle wing palace
of the Queen Chinee
[Editor's note: Usually, the Sunday Service is good old fashioned, light weight rock n' roll fun. Inadvertently, today's posting unearthed a serious topic, serious beyond the usual "literary" serious, and what results below was something of a struggle. It is neither meant to offend nor to preach - more than likely, it's come up short in its intent. Just sayin'.]
You can find more information than you could ever want, on this song or any other in their repertoire, at the Grateful Annotated Lyrics site, one of the most amazing sites dedicated to the works of a particular rock group or personality. Among the many things pointed out there is the somewhat oblique inspiration of the work of Edith Sitwell on "China Cat Sunflower." The song makes it on this list because of the obvious reference to Lewis Carroll (the one-eyed Cheshire) but for the Sitwell, one must dig a bit deeper.
According to the Dead lyric site, Robert Hunter, the Dead's lyricist, mentions Sitwell's influence on the lyrics, with a special mention of the following poem, "Polka":
Polka Dame Edith Sitwell
'Tra la la la la la la la
La
La!
See me dance the polka,'
Said Mr. Wagg like a bear,
With my top hat
And my whiskers that--
(Tra la la la) trap the Fair.
Where the waves eem chiming haycocks
I dance the polka; there
Stand Venus' children in their gay frocks--
Maroon and marine--and stare
To see me fire my pistol
Through the distances blue as my coat;
Like Wellington, Byron, the Marquis of Bristol,
Buzbied great trees float.
While the wheezing hurdy-gurdy
Of the marine wind blows me
To the tune of Annie Rooney, sturdy,
Over the sheafs of sea;
And bright as a seedsman's packet
With zinnias, candytufts chill,
Is Mrs. Marigold's jacket
As she gapes at the inn door still,
Where at dawn in the box of the sailor,
Blue as the decks of the sea,
Nelson awoke, crowed like the cocks,
Then back to dust sank he.
And Robinson Crusoe
Rues so
The bright and foxy beer--
But he finds fresh isles in a Negress' smiles--
The poxy doxy dear,
As they watch me dance the polka,'
Said Mr. Wagg like a bear,
'In my top hat and my whiskers that--
Tra la la la, trap the Fair.
Tra la la la la--
Tra la la la la--
Tra la la la la la la la
La
La
La!'
In addition to the oblique references, it would seem that pacing and style were perhaps more influential than the actual lyrics themselves.
Another quote which Hunter mentions is from the Dame Edith Sitwell poem "Trio for Two Cats and a Trombone," which has a little more direct connection:
Hunter quotes Sitwell directly with "palace of the Queen Chinee," so I attempted to run down the term "Chinee," which gives off a vague sense of the derogatory, though I'm not sure about it in the context of either the poem or song. Still, it should be noted; even if not meant offensively, ignorance, on anyone's part, is no legitimate defense.
A couple of databases of racial slurs listed the term as offensive, a couple of others did not; it evidently originated as a back formed singular for Chinese in the plural sense, but probably found bigoted popularity in the inability of Chinese people to speak English well, thereby mimicking their pronunciation of English in a derogatory way. Another source defined the term as a Chinese person living in England.
[More on the Sitwell, after a bit of investigation. "Trio for Cats and a Trombone" was part of a larger musical piece called Façade, which was something of a scandal when initially performed. You can find a great deal of background on it here.
Evidently, after being variously condemned on its initial performance
(with Sitwell reciting the poems, through a megaphone protruding from a
curtain, to musical accompaniment), it became quite popular, going
through a number of reworkings and even being the basis for a ballet. Interestingly, Wikipedia, which goes into a great deal of detail, does not mention her use of ethnic terms.]
"Furthermore, either because she was satirizing the upper crust's casual
racism or because she shared it, Sitwell's verse does have some mildly
racist lines that are somewhat disturbing today. "
I thought about excluding the song because of all this, but it seemed more honest to face up to it and recognize it for what it is and put it out there to consider. Obviously, the Sitwell piece achieved fame in its own way. Certainly, "China Cat Sunflower" has long been one of the Dead's most popular tunes. I leave it to you to make what you will of Hunter's quote of Sitwell. From the Dead site, it appears to be pure homage. Perhaps, too, something is to be gleaned about late 60s America, around the time the Dead song was composed.
Here is the whole piece, Façade, which runs some 32 minutes in length:
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