LARRY'S POETRY FORUM

On the road, as always --

Last week I was in Columbus, Ohio, to read poetry at Larry's Poetry Forum, which takes its name from the bar in which it has been held for lo these many years. The Forum, for some time now organized by David Baratier (shown here under the sign of the camel), has been going on for decades and shows no sign of flagging. There, across the street from Ohio State University, each week a visiting poet performs, followed by an open mic.

One of the people I had the good fortune to meet that evening was Michael Hummel, proprietor of "Used Kids Records," which certainly takes the award for most striking name for a collector's emporium. Michael, shown here in a particularly mischievous moment at the mic, is himself a musician, with a musician's sense of timing and a wonderful sense of humor.

Also taking to the mic that evening was Stephen Mainard, a teacher in the area with whom I had a great conversation about poets and the work of wording.

David Baratier met me for dinner before the reading and we had a chance to renew our acquaintance. We had only met once previously, in the course of my only visit ever to the Associated Writing Programs conference, at which David usually has a table for his Pavement Saw Press. I've always admired the work of that press, and of the poets it publishes, and so running into David that first time had been like coming across a small oasis in the dry stretches of the AWP. [And why is it, do you think, that local papers never run those stories about the AWP that they so love to publish about the MLA -- Clearly not for lack of similarly inviting titles in the program.)

At any rate, for one cold night in March, I had the pleasure of poetry and drinks with the poets of Columbus. Next time you're in the area, find your way over to Larry's and ask for David. And while you're at it, stop by USED KIDS RECORDS at 1980 N. High Street, "upstairs" as Michael's card insists.

LEROY JENKINS

On Friday we lost another great artist, Leroy Jenkins. I first heard him in the glory days of the Revolutionary Ensemble, the improvisatory jazz trio featuirng Jenkins on violin, Sirone on bass and Jerome Cooper on drums. The idea of two string players and a drummer was striking enough, something that wasn't seen much in jazz at mid-century, but this wasn't any Stephane Grappelli jazz (though that would have been worth lending an ear); this was full on free jazz of an uncompromising order. I first heard the group on their A&M LP, THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC, with its eye-catching cover and ear-catching performances. The group wasn't able to stay on the road for long, but they made a lasting impression and the individual members went on to make major statements in other contexts. Among my favorite Jenkins outings were his LIFELONG AMBITIONS release, a 1981 performance with Oliver Lake, and a stunning solo violin concert at Ann Arbor in 1977. That one was broadcast over NPR, with an introduction by poet A.B. Spellman, on the unforgettable JAZZ ALIVE series.

Just two years ago, the Revolutionary Ensemble was reunited and released the appropriately titled AND NOW. They still played with the fervor and inventiveness of decades earlier, and the sound of a violin-fronted innovative jazz unit was still as unusual as it had been on first hearing. Jenkins was a wonder to hear and a frequent collaborator with artists in other fields. He was a poet of the strings and will be missed wherever music gathers.

THE DANISH POET

THE DANISH POET, shown left, just won an OSCAR a few minutes ago -- The Danish poet Piet Hein, in between writing his "grooks" and describing the "super ellipse," gave the world the Soma Cube, shown right.

coincidence? perhaps --

yours,

Nielsen

I. the Scooter Libby Jury

"What, me lie?"

The Libby defense has followed a course that must seem curious even to the most jaded of court house spectators.

On the one hand, the defense argues that Libby was so preoccupied with the cares of his position, what with fighting terrorism before breakfast and all, that he simply forgot that he had told numerous people that Valerie Plame was a CIA operative in the weeks prior to his conversation with Tim Russert. So, he was not lying when he testified under oath that he had heard this news for the first time from Russert. He had simply forgotten that he had heard and repeated this information before, and then forgot as well that Russert and he had never discussed Plame.

Now that would be shaky on its own, but it's the other half of the defense that has me scratching my head. As each of the prosecution witnesses appeared to testify that Libby had indeed shared this information with them in the weeks prior to his phone call to Russert, the defense attorneys suggested that the witnesses themselves had faulty memories.

The argument, then, appears to be that Libby was not lying, because he had simply forgotten saying the things that he didn't say, because the people he said them to are misremembering conversations that didn't happen, despite the fact that the defense is that they did happen but Scooter couldn't recall them.

He's called "Scooter" for a reason.

Decades ago, Gil Scott Heron had a piece titled, "We Beg Your Pardon, America."

It may soon be time to resurrect that recording.

SOUL SURVIVOR

That was one cold Friday night in State College, but I bundled up and skidded down to the recently rennovated State Theater to see sombody I'd been waiting forty years to watch perform live, Betty LaVette. Back in the day, which is to say back in my day, I walked around the streets of D.C. humming the chorus to "Right in the Middle of Falling in Love."

It was a great song, one of many she released in a career than began with her first studio release at the age of sixteen. But, as happens all too frequently in the music industry, the broader recognition her talents deserved just wouldn't seem to come.

Despite a string of soulful records easily the match of much better-known artists, LaVette's career never quite brought her the successes that seemed to come so easily to many who had much less to offer. But Betty LaVette never stopped working, turning out one house after the other with her burning soul work outs. Records like her cover of Joe Simon's "Your Turn to Cry" would grab hold of your heart and wouldn't let go till you gave yourself over wholly to the music. Her work on John Prine's "Souvenirs," at a time when his own record company was still praying he'd be the next Dylan, found the heart of the song, brought out the R & B framework hiding within that folkie material.

But the industry was never entirely behind this remarkable talent. Just when she should have been reaching her peak, her label dropped the album whose release she had eagerly awaited.

This "child of the seventies," as one of her CDs is now titled, never gave up, and neither did her audience. There were modest highlights, like her killer performances in the stage show Bubbling Brown Sugar. Then, three years ago, things finally began to break Betty's way. One of her CDs won the W.C. Handy award, the world of music journalism began to pay attention (everybody loves a comeback story, even me), and she landed a recording contract again.

And has been touring like a Dylan or a B.B. King ever since. Which is how I came to find myself in front of her at last, in the second row, just four feet away from her, as she did her set at the State Theater. The crowd was small that night, but wildly appreciative. (One car load of folks had driven all the way from Philadelphia for this show.) Betty and her band responded with a show that must rank among their best. There have been few moments in my recent years of concert-going that can compare to hearing Betty LaVette singing "As Close as I'll Get to Heaven" at the climax of her show, or what we all thought was the climax -- till she did an incredibly gutsy thing. Betty LaVette closes her shows now by letting the whole band leave the satge and standing there alone to sing "I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got" with a voice that lifts you out of your seat, out of your day, out of the everyday and makes a Baptist out of you. Even the atheists in the crowd were happy with that, just as all of us who had stumbled through the frozen February streets to get there were none-the-less happy to feel that chill reaching down our spines as we listened.

and here we see Betty LaVette and bassist Patrick Prouty in the lobby of the theater afterwards. One of the great things about small theaters and shows like this is that you can talk with the artists following the show.

Betty's back on the road, at the top of her talents, and with all her music back in print. Do yourself a favor and send your browser over to one of those on-line stores you visit and get some of Ms. LaVette's soul-stirring works. You can thank me later.

BURLY MAN

AN EXHALATION OF AMERICA


By now, several of my friends in poetry land have taken note of the blog-worthy occurrence of Charles Bernstein in Robert Pinsky's weekly "POET'S CHOICE" column in the WASHINGTON POST BOOK WORLD. Now, this truly is a memorable event, but there's one element that seems to have gone unremarked.

Pinsky writes of Charles Bernstein, "he means everything he says."

How do you suppose he knows that?

REPUBLICAN GRAMMATOLOGY continued

"ISRAEL MAY HAVE MISUSED CLUSTER BOMBS, U.S. SAYS"

duh . . . do ya think?

This is a headline in today's New York Times, reporting on official revelations that Israel may have used American supplied cluster bombs in civilian areas, in violation of the agreements under which Israel received the supplies in the first place. You may recall that, during the war on Lebanon last year, the Isaraeli Ambassador to the UN denied that IDF forces were using cluster bombs in Lebanon the same week that his government put in a request to the US for replacement supplies of the weapons. While the war was in progress, and while the ambassador was issuing his denials, international journalists on the ground in Lebanon reported seeing the American made munitions in civilian areas. After the war, a multitude of the dangerous unexploded weapons were found on the ground, and photographed.

but it's the grammar that catches my eye this morning --


In response to a question from a journalist, a spokesperson for the U.S. State Department replied:

"There may likely could have been some violation."

TOO SAD

JAMES BROWN'S BODY LIES NOT

MOULDERING IN THE GRAVE

FROM THE ARCHIVES

Amina Baraka, Amiri Baraka and A.L. Nielsen

ALICE COLTRANE

ALICE COLTRANE

AUGUST 27, 1937 - JANUARY 12, 2007

ONE DAY I ASKED OF THE LORD ABOUT COMING HOME AT THE END OF MY LIFE. THE LORD SAID TO ME, "TURIYA, YOU WILL NOT HAVE TO COME HOME, YOU WILL BE HOME."

--ALICE COLTRANE, 1972

TWO POEMS

{as previously indicated, I have no photo of myself at the MLA "off site" reading -- So, here in lieu of photographic self-representation, are the two minutes worth of poetry I read in Philadelphia}

Hula Hoops


1

A dance that must be done
Describes two
Interlocked ellipses
Got to maintain
Uphold the hoop
It’s
The tips
Trembling
Whammo

2

Two describe a
Whirling möbius
The dancer bent double
Or else an armature
Amateur engine
Idling

3

Three leave
One limb free
Awkward still
Skips
The ground a
Beat




4

Or more’s
Solitary
Each a pit
Stacked
A dervish’s
Wobbly cell
Who is that
Condemned child
Inside those
Plastic haloes

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Untitled

Immortality
Seems so
Slight
A project


You’d think
We’d think

Something better


Of ourselves

OF REPUBLICAN GRAMMATOLOGY

It's been more than two decades now since I first began to notice a particularly odd politicization of syntax going on among Republican politicians. Thanks to the advent of television cameras in the U.S. Senate, I was witness to Robert Dole's many speeches, in the course of which he could be heard repeatedly speaking of the "Democrat Party." At first I thought he had simply misread his text, but then I heard him making use of this painfully truncated adjectival form in other contexts. Perhaps the most memorable came when Dole, someone who had campaigned as a wounded hero of the second World War, spoke of the "Democrat Wars" we had been in, starting with the one that he had fought in himself.

While I might at first have been tempted to chalk this up to Dole's poor grasp of standard English, I soon began to hear this same usage spreading throughout the Republican Party. By the millennium, it had gotten to the point that no conservative spokesperson appearing on television appeared capable of uttering the phrase "Democratic Party" or indeed of ever using the adjectival form of "Democrat" to modify any phrase at all. In his press conference following the 2006 elections, marked, after all, by Democratic victories, President Bush couldn't seem to get the syllable "ic" past his lips. He spoke of "Democrat leaders," "Democrat votes" and, as always, of the "Democrat Party."

By now, not only English teachers but journalists had begun to take notice. The WASHINGTON POST ran an editorial by Ruth Marcus that traced this grammatically incorrect locution, now so prevalent among those who would denounce political correctness, as far back as the Harding administration. Senator Joseph McCarthy, to bring things back to the Senate, was especially fond of this construction, using it, as the Columbia guide to Standard American Usage observes, to deny the Democratic Party any suggestion that it might actually "be democratic."

But what caught my attention in the wake of the election and of Marcus's editorial was a letter in response from one Robert Brantley. Brantley wrote to the POST to explain that Bush's use of such phrases as "Democrat Party" was not ungrammatical at all, but was, rather, a sign of the excellent education that George W. Bush had received during his years at Yale University.

Now, the Yale department of English has been accused of any number of horrors in recent times, but this is the first time I've ever seen them held responsible for President Bush's tenuous grasp of English syntax.

Brantley, setting the WASHINGTON POST stylists straight, explained that "it is incorrect to add an 'ic' which results in a word -- 'democratic' -- that has generic applicability to ideals that predate the Democrat Party by millennia."

I've been teaching English for a good while, but even I don't have all the prescriptive rules of grammar at my fingertips -- and so I maintain a fine little library of usage manuals, on and off line, that I consult when in doubt. Some of these manuals even include contributions from professors of English at Yale, and yet nowhere in the literature I have surveyed have I been able to locate any such rule as the one cited with such assurance by Robert Brantley in the President's defense.

On the other hand, surely any good student at Yale during the year's of George W. Bush's attendance would have learned in U.S. History courses that our Jeffersonian party, the oldest continuously existing national political party in America, began to call itself the "Democratic Republicans" back in the eighteenth century, well before the advent of the Republic Party we know and love today. And surely Robert Brantley would not want us to believe that our highly literate founding fathers were guilty of egregious violations of good usage.

Baraka/Spooky Remix

[photo/text remix contributed by Howard RambsyII]

SHOOT THE PIANO PLAYER,or MLA GROUP READING 2006 PART II

Brent Cunningham and Patrick Durgin consult on the rules for a double sestina

Kathy Lou Schultz

Lamont Steptoe

Laura Moriarty

Leevi Lehto

Linda Russo

Linh Dinh

Loren Goodman

Matthew Cooperman

Michael Tod Egerton

Nat Anderson

Nick Monfort

Norma Cole

Patrick Durgin

Rachel Blau DuPlessis

Ron Silliman

Susan Schultz

Timothy Yu

Tom Orange

Tracie Morris

Tyrone Williams
















Carla Harryman

Barrett Watten

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Then, some four minutes into the six minutes of Walter Lew's allotted two minutes:

(not depicted: coats and smashed contents thereof beneath piano -- gracious benediction delivered by Yunte Huang)
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The Heroic Remnant, or, Tieless in Gaza