Today was the announcement of our nation’s newest poet laureate, Donald Hall, 77, who has quite a polished New England pedigree. Born in New Haven, CT, schooled at Phillips Exeter, BA from Harvard, Litt.D from Bates and throw in a B.Litt from Oxford while you’re at it. The NY Times describes him as “outspoken” and continues:
Mr. Hall, a poet in the distinctive American tradition of Robert Frost, has also been a harsh critic of the religious right’s influence on government arts policy. And as a member of the advisory council of the National Endowment for the Arts during the administration of George H. W. Bush, he referred to those he thought were interfering with arts grants as “bullies and art bashers.”
It would be interesting to see a person from the perch as the nation’s Poet Laureate deliver some noble jabs of prose into the ribs of this administration.
The Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress serves as the nation’s official lightning rod for the poetic impulse of Americans. During his or her term, the Poet Laureate seeks to raise the national consciousness to a greater appreciation of the reading and writing of poetry.
States the LoC and judging by this poet’s past actions, Hall very well may just raise the national consciousness, through poetry, over matters domestic and abroad and I think that would be an incredibly powerful statement.
I’m not familiar with this poet’s work, nor am I very familiar with the great poetic works of our country’s and our world’s past, it just never really was my bag. But poetry has undoubtedly touched me in a very deep way at various points in my short life.
Poetry can be used as a very personal exercise in putting emotion to paper when screaming, crying or beating the shit out of something just won’t do [hey, sorta like blogging]. Reading poetry is always a challenge. So subjective. So personal. A word can mean twenty different things to twenty different people said twenty different ways. Sometimes you’re left confused and not even the poet can explain it to you.
The power of the word, spoken and in print, is something I’ve revered since a little kid and have never been able to get a hold of in terms of “poetry” and likely never will. But that won’t stop me from enjoying something that just knocks me to my ass with some incredible pugnacious string of words. One such poem is Amiri Baraka’s Somebody Blew Up America. Baraka was the New Jersey poet laureate in 2002, but later forced out of the position over the controversy this poem caused. It starts:
(All thinking people oppose terrorism both domestic & international… But one should not be used To cover the other)
Any pieces of poetry or prose which touched you significantly or kept you going in this fight against the crazies out there?
well since today is also flag day (i hate holidays with no chocolate) here is one of my favorite quotes from one of americas former poet laureates, wendell berry, a gentleman farmer from kentucky;
“Denounce the government, Embrace the flag.”
Writing poetry saved my life during a relationship meltdown. It was by no means good poetry, but putting it on paper reassured me that I was alive and my own person.
Something I haven’t done lately (but need to start doing again, and would highly recommend) is going to open-mike poetry readings. No, you don’t typically hear Poet Laureate material. But you may get theatre, hip-hop, and the confessional all shaken and stirred together, and that’s intoxicating.
I hope Mr. Hall makes good use of his pulpit. And Amiri Baraka has joined my personal pantheon of heroes.
In 1966, there was an organization that did poetry readings called The American Writers Against the Vietnam War. One of its members was Donald Hall.
Baraka’s more like it! I can’t help but think of Hall as yet another petrified corpse of the Academy. A decent man & all that, but dayuuum . . . to each their own.
I’ve been returning frequently to the Vietnam era poems of Robert Duncan (see here too) — especially Bending the Bow (New Directions, 1968) and Ground Work: Before the War (New Directions, 1984) — & Denise Levertov. George Oppen’s as well Of Being Numerous New Directions 1968).
A contemporary man I greatly admire & have learned much from is poet/translator/essayist Ammiel Alcalay, whose work deserves a much wider audience.
I highly recommend his essay Republics of Poetry
After Jews and Arabs: Remaking Levantine Culture (University of Minnesota Press, 1993); The Cairo Notebooks (Singing Horse Press, 1993); Keys to the Garden: New Israeli Writing (City Lights, 1996); Sarajevo Blues by Semezdin Mehmedinovic, translated from Bosnian (City Lights, 1998); Memories of Our Future: Selected Essays, 1982-1999 (City Lights, 1999); From the Warring Factions (Beyond Baroque, 2002); Nine Alexandrias by Semezdin Mehmedinovic, translated from Bosnian (City Lights, 2003); Politics and Imagination (forthcoming); Outcast, a novel by Shimon Ballas, translated from Hebrew (City Lights Press).
See also interview and towards a foreign likeness bent: translation
From the right-wing Campus Watch’s hit piece on him, Poetry, terror and political narcissism:
It goes on & only gets worse.
So many other great voices out there. Don’t forget to stop by Small Press Distribution where the living stuff can be found, & send ’em some love.
It does seem that the Poet Laureate appointment usually plays much the same role as a “lifetime achievement” Oscar.
Thanks for the heads-up on Alcalay! I think I’ll go acquire myself some new reading material.
So who picks him? I was surprised to hear he was a Bush critic, as I had assumed it was an executive appointment.
-Alan
The Librarian of Congress does. How much of a group decision this is, I have no idea. The press release from LoC here.
Gassing the woodchucks didn’t turn out right.
The knockout bomb from the Feed and Grain Exchange
was featured as merciful, quick at the bone
and the case we had against them was airtight,
both exits shoehorned shut with puddingstone,
but they had a sub-sub-basement out of range.
Next morning they turned up again, no worse
for the cyanide than we for our cigarettes
and state-store Scotch, all of us up to scratch.
They brought down the marigolds as a matter of course
and then took over the vegetable patch
nipping the broccoli shoots, beheading the carrots.
The food from our mouths, I said, righteously thrilling
to the feel of the .22, the bullets’ neat noses.
I, a lapsed pacifist fallen from grace
puffed with Darwinian pieties for killing,
now drew a bead on the little woodchuck’s face.
He died down in the everbearing roses.
Ten minutes later I dropped the mother. She
flipflopped in the air and fell, her needle teeth
still hooked in a leaf of early Swiss chard.
Another baby next. O one-two-three
the murderer inside me rose up hard,
the hawkeye killer came on stage forthwith.
There’s one chuck left. Old wily fellow, he keeps
me cocked and ready day after day after day.
All night I hunt his humped-up form. I dream
I sight along the barrel in my sleep.
If only they’d all consented to die unseen
gassed underground the quiet Nazi way.
— Maxine Kumin