 |
|
|
|
IN THIS ISSUE
|
|
This
Month's Special
|
|
|
Dana Gioia once asked, "Can Poetry Matter?" If you were at the LA Time Festival of Books on the UCLA campus at the end of April (National Poetry Month, don't you know) you would sing a resounding yes. Panels with poets like bell hooks, Galway Kinnell, Thomas Lux (well, he actually didn't get there until his reading due to plane complications), and Carolyn Kiser were full and the poetry tent, by the second day of readings, was close to reaching capacity (about 200 seats and plenty of lawn).
I always like the poetry tent, with its location behind Powell Library, because it is far from the madding crowd (as Thomas Gray once said). You can hop over to Kirkwood Coffee House, with its medieval stained-glass windows, and grab a coffee or muffin or chilled frappe something-or-other, and you can get to the bathrooms nearby unmolested by the huge crowd you encounter in the main square. You can also sit quietly or even lie in the grass while mere feet away Pulitzer Prize-winning poets serenade you with their words. I love LA.
Editor Carlye Archibeque & Galway Kinnell
 |
The readers at the tent were a roll-call of royalty and up-and-coming royalty. The first day saw David St. John, Diane de Prima and Mark Doty, to name a very few (each poet was given 30 minutes). Sunday was no different, with Carol Muske-Dukes, Phillip Levine and Charles Webb joining another impressive roster of poets. After each reading, the poets could be found at a table in an adjacent tent set up by Small World Books, where you could get your books signed and chat for a couple of minutes after waiting in line (and there was always a line).
The panels were also amazing. Richard Howard, on a panel with Chinese dissident poet Bei Ling and Dana Gioia, was asked about the idea of writing poetry without having read the works of other poets (and I don't mean Jack Kerouac). Howard huffed a bit (as a good academic should) and said,"I'm not interested in poems that emerge from what some might call 'originality'. Good poems come from what came before. I am more of a reader than a writer." To which I say a hearty, "go girlfriend!"
 |
Poetry Tent
Progrom coordinator,(?),
Thomas Lux, Cecilia Wolloch
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
Meanwhile, across town, Carolyn Kiser was practicing her brand of inspiration. She was on a panel run by young up-and-coming poet Molly Bendall. They were joined by Nick Flynn and Native American poet Joy Harjo. Let me just say here that if you haven't picked up Flynn's book SOME ETHER you are missing out on one of the best books of contemporary poetry published last year.
 |
The White Goddess, Carolyn Kiser
Bendall, it seems, had hoped to have Robert Bly join this panel, but he was busy. (At the mention of Bly's name, Kiser launched into a tirade about the poet-cum-drum beater. "He's not the misogynist he used to be, " she quipped. "His therapist's second wife made him see the light." His therapist has been married before? Who knew?)
Bendall had chosen to lead the panel on a discussion of whether or not the terms 'masculine' and 'feminine' remain viable terms in poetry. Kiser, being from a generation with different ideas of men and women and all the resulting implications for a woman growing up in the sixties, objected, saying that these terms weren't really used any more. But Bendall insisted that people she knew at school still used them. Kiser responded with some references to the horrible people Molly knew, and the horrible school she went to. From this point on, it was entertaining to see the small jabs that the girls made at one another over the course of the discussion. But primarily, it was fun to watch Flynn, the only man on the panel, sitting between them, ducking a little each time a comment flew past him. When the poets chose to return to topic (following every other jab), they decided that "masculine" and "feminine" were actually about intuition vs. rigid structuring. Good job.
It's impossible to speak of the whole festival without a book deal, so I will end by inviting you to see and hear it for yourself next year. Come early, park and shuttle...and wear comfortable shoes.
 |
Thomas Lux with
former student and LA
poet Jeffrey McDaniel