The Other Pages

This will be our last article for National Poetry Month. I hope you have enjoyed the series.  I would like to extend my warmest thanks to Kashiana Singh and Nelson Howard Miller, who each contributed three thoughtful, varied articles, and also thank Kashiana for her three podcasts. Nelson helped out despite contracting Covid and being hospitalized, followed by surgery. Kashiana, despite being in the process of a cross-country move. Today’s poem is a deceptively simple piece by American poet Jane Hirshfield, a former chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and author of nine books of poetry and two more of essays. Her writing is clear and conversational, even when, like today, the subject is a difficult one for us to put into words. The title of the poem seems simple and descriptive, (https://poets.org/poem/three-foxes-edge-field-twilight) Three Foxes by the Edge of the Field at Twilight, but as we have hopefully learned, something observed in the world around us can often reflect something else. It starts out with: One ran, her nose to the ground, a rusty shadow neither hunting nor playing. One stood; sat; lay down; stood again. One never moved, except to turn her head a little as we walked. In this case, the narrator feels that the foxes’ behavior mirrors something about her own self. Perhaps her own fear, indecision, and wariness. Published when Hirshfield was forty-three, it suggests a changing viewpoint, or a turning inward - a personal transition: There is more and more I tell no one, strangers nor loves. This slips into the heart without hurry, as if it had never been. Just as her metaphor, the foxes, disappear into the woods without a trace. The important part of what the poem is telling us is not that there has been a change, but that she, the narrator (the poet) has recognized that change. She ends with, And yet, among the trees, something has changed. Something looks back from the trees, and knows me for who I am. So I guess you could call this a poem of self-knowledge, of recognition that identity changes, and that we change, sometimes without knowing why. (You can read the rest of the article text at The Other Pages on Facebook or Tumblr)

Welcome to National Poetry Month at The Other Pages. My name is Steve Spanoudis and I have been curating the series with help and contributions this year from Kashiana Singh and (Nelson) Howard Miller. I’m coming to you from Coral Springs, Florida, on the eastern edge of the Everglades. Technically, National Poetry Month is over, but we didn’t quite get to thirty, so I thought I would squeeze a few more in. Today’s poem is by Yonatan Berg, an Israeli poet I was not familiar with until I ran across an article in Lunch Ticket (https://lunchticket.org/two-poems/ - the second poem on the page) with two of his poems translated from Hebrew to English by Joanna Chen. If you go to the page, I ask you to read the translator’s notes at the bottom. They are brief, and very good. I included this poem purposely after yesterday’s, You Are Your Own State Department, by Naomi Shihab Nye, and while their families hail from different sides of the tracks, so to speak, in the Israeli / Palestinian situation, their views have very much in common. This is an important thing for Americans in particular to understand, in an era when opportunists are still pitting one half of the country against the other, creating and inflaming tensions, instead of pushing for Unity, which is the title of today’s poem. Nye, with the perspective of a longer life, talks of incremental change - small acts of kindness for those who suffer. Berg is not as concrete, in fact he is entirely mystical. Unlike Nye, he does not offer up any way to change the reality we are in physically. Instead he describes us as common souls, sharing a journey through darkness. And the recognition of that shared experience is his call for unity. I think that Joanna Chen’s translation is excellent. As a separate point, I would like to say that yesterday’s poem reminds me of my good friend Hani Silwani, originally from Jerusalem. Today’s reminds me of another good friend, one who has lived through many dark journeys, Yair Alon from Holon, Israel, whose ambulance-driving was, in part, inspiration for one of my own stories, Tethered to the Sky. Berg begins with: We travel the silk road of evening, tobacco and desire flickering between our hands. We are warm travelers, our eyes unfurled, traveling in psalms, in Rumi, in the sayings of the man from the Galilee. I would like you to note the phrase “our eyes unfurled,” suggesting they open, uncovered and uncloaked, to see and experience everything. There are religious and cultural references of all types, open and agnostic, following the metaphor of the open eyes. Later in the poem: (The full text of the article is available at The Other Pages on Facebook or Tumblr.)

Welcome to National Poetry Month at The Other Pages. My name is Steve Spanoudis and I curate the series each year with help and contributions from Kashiana Singh and (Nelson) Howard Miller. I’m coming to you from Coral Springs, Florida, on the eastern edge of the Everglades. Technically, National Poetry Month is over, but we didn’t quite get to thirty, so I thought I would squeeze a few more in. Today’s poem, You Are Your Own State Department, was written by Naomi Shihab Nye, a woman who is, in many respects, much like her poem. A common process in poetry is to describe something by talking about its pieces to give you a better picture of the whole. This poem is a first-person viewpoint, commentaries from her wanderings in life, and why she tries always (as we all should) to improve the things that we see wrong in the world. Even if it is only little things. That mirrors the idea of a thing being made of its smaller parts. And this too is a common process - that the form of a poem is chosen sometimes to mirror the thought process or the subject. First, just a few comments about the poet. Born in 1952 in Saint Louis, Missouri, to Palestinian and Swiss/German parents, she has written poetry, novels, essays, and songs, authoring or contributing to thirty books, and editing several collections. She recently served as the Young People’s Poet Laureate for the Poetry Foundation. She is known for finding novel but clear perspectives on people, things, places, and circumstances. You will hear those things very clearly in today’s poem. It starts out: Each day I miss Japanese precision. Trying to arrange things the way they would. I miss the call to prayer at Sharjah, the large collective pause. Or the shy strawberry vendor with rickety wooden cart, single small lightbulb pointed at a mound of berries. In one of China’s great cities, before dawn. Nye has commented that her poetry comes from a combination of: “local life, random characters met on the streets, [and] our own ancestry sifting down to us through small essential daily tasks.” The poem continues, Forever I miss my Arab father’s way with mint leaves floating in a cup of sugared tea—his delicate hands arranging rinsed figs on a plate. What have we here? said the wolf in the children’s story stumbling upon people doing kind, small things. Is this small monster one of us? And she talks about those people - sometimes people who are displaced or themselves living under fear or hatred of one kind or another, and those small things they contribute: (You can find the full text of this article at The Other Pages on Facebook or Tumblr)

Welcome to National Poetry Month at The Other Pages. My name is Steve Spanoudis and I curate the series each year, with help and contributions from Kashiana Singh, (Nelson) Howard Miller. I’m coming to you from Coral Springs, Florida, on the eastern edge of the Everglades. Today’s article is by Poet and Contributing Editor Kashiana Singh, and unfortunately, as she is slightly under the weather today, it’s me you’ll be listening to on the podcast, instead of her soothingly thoughtful voice. My apologies. To quote Theo Metro, “It can’t be helped.” There is a reason Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) is considered one of the twentieth century’s most influential poets. Born in Prague, he published his first book of poems, Leben und Lieber, at age 19. In 1897 he met Lou Andreas-Salomé, the talented and spirited daughter of a Russian army officer, who influenced him deeply. Rainer is best known for such collections as Duino Elegies (Duineser Elegien) and Sonnets to Orpheus (Die Sonette an Orpheus), but also the semi-autobiographical novel The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge (Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge). Then, there’s also Letters to a Young Poet (Briefe an einen jungen Dichter), published after his passing. His words are touchstones that other artists, from authors to poets to sculptors to filmmakers - often reference - words that are still relevant today. And could there be a message more relevant than love enabling humanity and love also being about setting free. Jojo Rabbit (https://youtu.be/tL4McUzXfFI), was a movie that was also a poem that touched souls with its poignancy. It was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture. The central character of the movie is a fatherless 10-year-old boy coming of age in WWII. I do think the central character of the movie is also the poem itself  “Going to the limits of your longing” (https://onbeing.org/poetry/go-to-the-limits-of-your-longing/) Go to the limits of your longing Rainer Maria Rilke God speaks to each of us as he makes us, then walks with us silently out of the night. These are the words we dimly hear: You, sent out beyond your recall, go to the limits of your longing. Embody me. Flare up like a flame and make big shadows I can move in. Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final. Don’t let yourself lose me. Nearby is the country they call life. You will know it by its seriousness. Give me your hand. (text space limited) You can find the fill text of Kashiana Singh's article on The Other Pages on Facebook or Tumblr.

Welcome to National Poetry Month at The Other Pages. My name is Steve Spanoudis and I curate the series each year, with help and contributions from Bob Blair, Kashiana Singh, and (Nelson) Howard Miller. I’m coming to you from Coral Springs, Florida, on the eastern edge of the Everglades. I mentioned a few days ago that we have not spent enough time focusing on Poet Laureates. The current U.S. Poet Laureate is Joy Harjo. Article # 16 focused on Ted Kooser. Today we’re going to focus on Rita Dove, who was U.S. Poet Laureate from 1993 to 1995. By the way. Prior to 1986, we just referred to them as Consultants in Poetry. Why? I don’t know. SInce you’ve probably all heard of Amanda Gorman by now, unless you are living in a cave in the desert, you’re also probably aware that we now have a position called National Youth Poet Laureate. Amanda Gorman was the first of those, chosen in 2017. While Poet Laureate sounds like an impressive title, it only comes with a stipend of $35,000, which only works out to a little over $16 an hour before taxes. That means that even the Poet Laureate better have a day job. Rita Dove was born in 1952 in Akron, Ohio. Her father was a chemist. She was a brilliant student, and studied in Germany on a Fulbright Scholarship. She was only forty years old when she was named Poet Laureate - the youngest in American history. In addition to authoring eleven books of poetry, she is an essayist, editor, activist, novelist, and playwright, and, paired with her husband, an avid ballroom dancer. Her awards are too many to list. There are extensive collections of her poems online at the Poetry Foundation (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/rita-dove) and at poets.org (https://poets.org/poet/rita-dove#poet__works) I will say that, in general, Dove’s poetry is very readable, in Ted Kooser’s phrasing, very accessible. More than any other Poet Laureate before her,  she saw it as her mission to expand the role, as a teacher and essentially an evangelist of the art. She made an effort to be very accessible. Today’s poem, Dusting (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/35004/dusting), has a simple premise, and an elegantly simple, well-matched metaphor. It starts out: Every day a wilderness—no shade in sight. Beulah patient among knicknacks, the solarium a rage of light, a grainstorm as her gray cloth brings dark wood to life. The speaker is watching Beaulah dusting around all of the things, and polishing the wooden furniture in a sunroom, a “solarium.” It may be bright and sunny, a “rage of light” but her gray cloth (like a gray rain cloud) produces a “grainstorm” bringing the hidden details in the dark wood to light. (You can find the full text of the article at The Other Pages on Facebook or Tumblr)

Welcome to National Poetry Month at The Other Pages. My name is Steve Spanoudis and I curate the series each year, with help and contributions from Bob Blair, Kashiana Singh, and (Nelson) Howard Miller. I’m coming to you from Coral Springs, Florida, on the eastern edge of the Everglades. I’m going to talk about two things today, Imagery and enumeration. Both are very common in poetry, as a vehicle for conveying ideas, emotions, memories, and metaphors. As a way to give emphasis, and to define, in example bits and pieces, those things that are often difficult to describe in their entirety. And let's add a third topic - repetition. Poets, like songwriters, often return to the same words or phrasing repeatedly for emphasis. Sometimes they do this with rhyme or rhythm, and sometimes by repeating the same or similar words again and again. As the basis for this discussion, I’ve chosen the poem Bedtime Reading for the Unborn Child by Libyan-American poet and translator Khaled Mattawa. He was Born in Benghazi and came to the U.S. as a teen in 1979. He studied and taught at several universities, receiving his PhD from Duke, and currently teaches at the University of Michigan. The text of the poem is online at the Poetry Foundation (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/54258/bedtime-reading-for-the-unborn-child) and Mattawa does all of these things I mentioned above, and does them beautifully. He begins by setting the scene, and the mood, and then introducing us to the title character, or maybe to his dreams for her: Long after the sun falls into the sea and twilight slips off the horizon like a velvet sheet and the air gets soaked in blackness; long after clouds hover above like boulders and stars crawl up and stud the sky; long after bodies tangle, dance, and falter and fatigue blows in and bends them and sleep unloads its dreams and kneads them and sleepers dive into the rivers inside them, a girl unlatches a window, walks shoeless into a forest, her dark hair a flag rippling in darkness. So of course your first reaction should be an appreciative Wow at the use of language, at the velvet sheet of the horizon and clouds like boulders and crawling stars and dark hair like a rippling flag. Like I said, Wow. (The full text of this article is available at The Other Pages on Facebook or Tumblr.)

Welcome to National Poetry Month at The Other Pages. My name is Steve Spanoudis and I curate the series each year, with help and contributions from Bob Blair, Kashiana Singh, and (Nelson) Howard Miller. I’m coming to you from Coral Springs, Florida, on the eastern edge of the Everglades. Today I want to focus on two poems by American poet Michael Torres (https://www.michaeltorreswriter.com/). He is a current professor in the Minnesota State University system, and a former graffiti artist, originally from Pomona California. His first collection, titled An Incomplete List of Names, was published in 2020. I’m going to read from two pieces, the first is titled “Because My Brother Knows Why They Call Them “County Blues,” but Won’t Tell Me Why,” and the second one is “My Brother Is Asking for Stamps.” The complete text for both poems is available online at the Poetry Foundation. Yesterday, I commented on Fred Marchant’s poem that bad things happen. In today’s two poems, a sibling is dealing with a brother’s incarceration in sort of a “. . . and then what happens . . . “ progression.” In the first poem the speaker feels left behind, Sadness. Loss. Struggling to understand. He tries to come up with some kind of metaphor to help him understand. He says, When my brother left, I painted our room blue to make a more manageable sky. But the room couldn’t mean anything besides an offering of endless daylight for the parade of shadows and the solitude shadows purchase by virtue of their existence. And then, he turns from color to noise, he continues, later in the poem: Ultimatums were set, sides chosen; each faction manufactured bigger and bigger speakers. Volume knobs turned to 10. Then, walls of roar. I don’t care who won. Really. Finally, he admits, I’m not a good liar. I’ve been looking for the perfect metaphor for sadness. All along. I apologize for nothing. I sit with my sadness, desperate to relieve its weight. It’s not as easy as everyone makes it seem. It isn’t easy, obviously, for anyone, but adults often hide the emotions that a child or adolescent cannot. (You can read the full article text at The Other Pages on Facebook or Tumblr.

Welcome to National Poetry Month at The Other Pages. My name is Steve Spanoudis and I curate the series each year, with help and contributions from Bob Blair, Kashiana Singh, and (Nelson) Howard Miller. I’m coming to you from Coral Springs, Florida, on the eastern edge of the Everglades. Bad things happen. They happen everywhere. Sometimes you try to disconnect from the world, but when you reconnect, they are there again, facing us, challenging us to figure out how we are going to respond. We’ve all had that experience, at one point, or at many points. You can become paranoid, or you can grow numb. Perhaps that is what Fred Marchant  (https://fredmarchant.com/) is giving us a picture of, that numbness, in his poem Here Is What the Mind Does (https://poets.org/poem/here-what-mind-does).  I had the good fortune to be able to watch and listen (thanks to Zoom) to Fred Marchant as he read several pieces as part of Amherst College’s annual Emily Dickinson reading series. He is the author of four poetry collections, and is a professor emeritus at Suffolk University.  The poem begins with: when my laptop opens to a small red car a tight street in Jenin gray-yellow dust an electric window half-open and five lean-to cards where on each a number denotes a round spent or the place where it began to travel at the speed of its idea You’ve all seen this scene, on the news, in police procedural dramas on television, in movies. This one happens to be in Jenin, a West Bank city. Note that the person narrating this is not talking about the how or the why or the who - questions that perhaps no one can answer. It is absorbed in the small details - the yellow dust, the half-open car window, the ubiquitous  numbered tent-cards. Why? Because, Marchant is telling us, that “is what the mind does” when faced with violence on such a persistent basis. (You can read the full article text at The Other Pages on Facebook or Tumblr.)

Welcome to National Poetry Month at The Other Pages. My name is Steve Spanoudis and I curate the series each year, with help and contributions from Bob Blair, Kashiana Singh, and (Nelson) Howard Miller. I’m coming to you from Coral Springs, Florida, on the eastern edge of the Everglades. Today is celebrated as Earth Day, a day to be introspective and consider the state of the world we live in, and the world we leave to our children, and our children’s children. At the risk of being a little self-serving I’m going to  take a detour into The Republic of Dreams and talk about a character from Final Orbit, my seventh novel, and one which focuses heavily on environmental themes. That character is named Kashiana, in deference to one of my co-hosts, and she is a future astronaut and poet, looking down from an orbiting space station at the earth below, and commenting, in her own voice, on what she is seeing. Only the first stanza appears in the book. The rest I added for the current theme of Wednesday Night Poetry (https://www.facebook.com/WednesdayNightPoetry) , Kai Coggin’s long-running invited guest and open mic series. If you have not had a chance to listen in, I recommend it highly. The View from Above I see tendrils of time creeping into reality, Tongues of flame erasing the living things from the landscape As a rampant red pen with searing strokes of deletion, Or cruel fluid fingers drowning homes and habitats, Removing a patina of life from the estuaries of the world, As if our mother planet no longer desired her emerald adornments. The brilliant snow capped mountains, and floating icefields Have melted away to nothing, leaving lonely patterns Of naked gray rock, and turbid gray waters, Where no life lingers. Where nothing grows. I am returning soon, to the great grayness below. And as we humans cope as best we can, With a world where wasteland replaces watershed, Where wonders disappear daily, We can only wonder why they did nothing for all those years, Letting waste and greed rule their lives, Letting opportunity slide through their fingers Like the sands of the worlds beaches, now buried Beneath the unstoppable onslaught Of the gray waters that obey no laws, Recognize no borders, and bow to no authority. This is from Final Orbit, Not All Ghosts are Human, The Autobiography of Mario Ng Available on Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08R2FW42K). Thank you for Listening. If you’re enjoying these commentaries, and the poem selections, please share them - either the text versions or the podcasts - on social media. You can find more at theotherpages.org, The Other Pages on Facebook or Tumblr, or at The Republic of Dreams (https://www.facebook.com/therepublicofdreams/)

Welcome to National Poetry Month at The Other Pages. My name is Steve Spanoudis and I curate the series each year, with help and contributions from Bob Blair, Kashiana Singh, and (Nelson) Howard Miller. I’m coming to you from Coral Springs, Florida, on the eastern edge of the Everglades. Today’s selection once again focuses on a poet I should have known about, but did not. Irish poet Voana Groarke was born in Mostrim (population 2,072) in the middle of the country. She received her degrees from Irish universities including Trinity College, Dublin, before coming to the U.S. to teach at Villanova and Wake Forest. She currently teaches at the University of Manchester in the UK. She has published six volumes of poetry, won several prizes and awards for her writing, and is also currently editor of the Poetry Ireland Review. Today’s poem is simple, and yet not so simple. It’s a character study, perhaps in the vein of Longfellow’s famous blacksmith, about an Italian stone carver, who works on headstones for the local cemetery. It is a more thoughtful portrait however, far from one-dimensional, with an interplay of thought between the perfect figures he carves, intricate but lifeless, frozen in time, and life’s simple, but transient realities. She begins with, The day is hot. So far this morning his hand has held true, not a stipple, not a glitch unwarranted. Some days his right hand contradicts what his left (his holding, placid, steadfast left) requires. He works in shade. A man of means has died and the dying must be marked in marble carved to trap not grief but its dramatized affect: a mantilla so fine it weeps its lace; a boot so certain, it folds the fact of death in every crease. As he carves exactingly detailed portraits of others in stone, he thinks about his own family, and his own life. The observed details of life are simple, but very sensory in nature: The curl of his wife’s hair, the tilt of his daughter’s chin when singing, rabbit and peaches for dinner. His mind goes back and forth, methodically, between the two worlds he inhabits: (The full article text is available at theotherpages.org, or at The Other Pages on Facebook or Tumblr.

Welcome to National Poetry Month at The Other Pages. My name is Steve Spanoudis and I curate the series each year, with help and contributions from Bob Blair, Kashiana Singh, and (Nelson) Howard Miller. I’m coming to you from Coral Springs, Florida, on the eastern edge of the Everglades. Occasional poetry consists mainly of poems written to remember or commemorate special events. Battles, coronations, state funerals, the dedication of a building. But poets write many occasional poems at a more personal level - on the birth of a child, for example. I always thought one of the masters of simple, domestic occasional pieces of light verse was Christopher Morley. There is a large collection of his works at theotherpages.org. Today’s poem, however, is very specific. The viewpoint, I think, is a grandmother, relishing the amazing skills of her granddaughter. You might simply consider it a descriptive poem, but from the Grandmother’s viewpoint, as the title words suggest, it was a memorable occasion. That title is  Amelia’s First Ski Run, and yes we’re out of season, but the sense of pride, the use of sounds, and the elegant simplicity of the short poem caught my eye and ear. First the poet: Nora Marks Dauenhauer (1927-2017) grew up as a member of the Tlinget tribe in Alaska. Her father was a fisherman, and the family lived in seasonal camps, and sometimes aboard a fishing boat. Imagine how much change she saw in those ninety years. She earned a degree in Anthropology, and became a poet, author, and scholar of her native Tlinget language. She went on to become the Alaska State Writer Laureate. By the way, current U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo is also a Nora Dauenhauer fan. You can listen to her reading How to Make Good Baked Salmon from the River on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bX2x2Rf7tI). If you listen, besides Harjo’s joy at reading the description, what comes across is Dauenhauer’s own joy in remembering traditional ways and relishing traditional foods, and her honest acknowledgement that, inevitably, living in a city apartment may require a few compromises on traditional recipes and cooking techniques. But for today, I chose a shorter poem, one that gets across that first idea, that joy and pride, without compromise. Dauenhauer was born near Juneau, and the poem’s heading indicates it was written at Eaglecrest, a nearby public ski run. Sourdough is one of the highest runs on the mountain. She starts out: Amelia, space-age girl at top of Sourdough makes her run with Eagle Grandpa Dick, Raven girl, balancing on space, gliding on air in Tlingit colors: And later: Once in a while I could even see space between her legs and skis. (You can read the full article text at The Other Pages on Facebook or Tumblr)

Is a book in which the poems feel like succulents. Lonely and speaking of survival. By Kashiana Singh Poet and writer Kazim Ali was born in the United Kingdom to Muslim parents of Indian descent.  Ali lives in Oberlin, Ohio and cofounded Nightboat Books in 2003. He teaches, writes poetry, and reads. Ali’s latest poetry collection is The Voice of Sheila Chandra (Alice James Books, 2020). He is currently a Professor of Literature at the University of California, San Diego. Besides other books, he also has a memoir of his Canadian childhood, Northern Light. Sheila Chandra is a singer who had to retire from performing due to being afflicted with burning mouth syndrome, which she has had since 2010. She was known for the richness and fluidity of her voice. She is effectively mute, and communicates in person largely through handwritten notes and very basic sign language. Sheila’s “Speaking in Tongues” series stood as Top 10 on the Billboard World Music and stayed ahead on the label in the US for several weeks. Sheila’s work "Ever So Lonely" by Monsoon is at the center of this collection, The Voice of Sheila Chandra. This particular album concentrates on the purity and emotional intensity of Chandra’s extraordinary voice and is a representation of what Sheila believes is her universal form of inspiration. She says in an interview “It’s as if an outside influence has entered me, sound is channel led through my body like a flute and there’s no sensation in my throat.” So where does Kazim Ali come in? He comes in with a brave, unique, titular work dedicated to Sheila Chandra. And much more. Kazim Ali chants – he sings – he howls “Dark earth come Sheila Dame ocean dome this poem Roam to tome tomb foam It is an incantation; it is a chant” Kazim’s work picks up many underlying threads and moves in and out through the work of Sheila Chandra as it gropes with the everlasting, never answered, universal questions about existence. (The full text of the podcast is available at The Other Pages on Facebook or Tumblr, or through theotherpages.org)

Welcome to National Poetry Month at The Other Pages. My name is Steve Spanoudis and I curate the series each year, with help and contributions from Bob Blair, Kashiana Singh, and (Nelson) Howard Miller. I’m coming to you from Coral Springs, Florida, on the eastern edge of the Everglades. Did I mention that we haven't talked about love poems much in this series? We still aren’t there, but at least we have the title this time.  Love Poem by Melissa Balmain is light verse-ish. What is light verse? Great question. There is no real definition. In general, it's an ironic, sometimes humorous treatment of a subject or a person, written more to entertain than to probe deeply into a concept. It’s often observational, and as with today’s poem, slightly skewed logic and comparisons are common. In some cases, it might be thought of as what a meme might have sounded like before the internet. First, a quick comment about the poet. Melissa Balmain is a poet, journalist, humorist and teacher. She’s the editor of a journal of light verse, titled, logically enough, Light (https://lightpoetrymagazine.com/) and teaches at the University of Rochester. Getting back to the poem, what struck me was not the poetic techniques, or novel vocabulary, or unusual insight, but the fact that light verse, and the ironic or sardonic or sarcastic tone it often takes, is a wonderful vehicle for stating the obvious. Or at least, what should be obvious. I am an Engineer by day (novelist and editor by night) so my normal inclination when anything isn't working, is to fix it. My wife gets annoyed with me sometimes, for taking something the neighbors threw out, lugging it home, and making it look like new again, or making it into something completely different, but useful. I was always a fan of Charles Dutton as garbage collector Roc Emerson, turning castaway items into a well-equipped, if miss-matched home. Melissa Balmain looks into this idea, with the view that, if we can make something look so good, why give it up? Her Love Poem starts out: The afternoon we left our first apartment, we scrubbed it down from ceiling to parquet. Who knew the place could smell like lemon muffins? It suddenly seemed nuts to move away. She takes that idea, and revisits the logic through several examples - a common technique in light verse - including fixing up a car, and tuning a piano, and then focuses her attention on human relationships: (The full article text is available on Facebook or Tumblr) Once again this is Steve Spanoudis for theotherpages.org. Thank you for Listening. If you’re enjoying these commentaries, and the poem selections, please share them - either the text versions or the podcasts - on social media. You can find more at theotherpages.org, or at The Other Pages on Facebook or Tumblr.

Welcome to National Poetry Month at The Other Pages. My name is Steve Spanoudis and I curate the series each year, with help and contributions from Bob Blair, Kashiana Singh,and (Nelson) Howard Miller. I’m coming to you from Coral Springs, Florida, on the eastern edge of the Everglades. I have emphasized that poetry, because it has the ability to fix things in memory, to make them understood and memorable and give them emotional weight, is highly effective at saying the important things that need to be said in this world. Along with the things that amuse and entertain, that describe and narrate, that create wonder and introspection, we need poems that say the important things. Earlier in this series we had poems from Ladan Osman and Maria Nazos that were in that category. Today’s poem by South African Poet Laureate Keorapetse William Kgositsile is very much in this vein, and if you remember nothing else from this year’s articles, I would like you to remember this one. First, a few comments about the poet. Keorapetse William Kgositsile (1938-2018) was born and grew up in an impoverished South African Township, witness to many of the ills not only of Apartheid, but to the long-lived consequences of European colonialism on the african continent. He became active in the African National Congress, as journalist and as an outspoken voice, but was urged,  for his own safety, to leave the country in 1961. He spent most of his twenty years of exile in the United States, where, after earning his Masters at Columbia, he became a visible presence as a spoken word performer in NewYork. He taught at multiple universities and published ten collections of poetry and two more books on writing poetry. Today’s poem, Anguish Longer than Sorrow, is about the accident of birth, or, as he describes it simply, referring to the children of families fleeing violence and starvation: Empty their young eyes deprived of a vision of any future they should have been entitled to since they did not choose to be born where and when they were So yes, if you have not figured it out yet, today’s discussion is about borders. In the U.S., discussions of the southern border have been an incendiary topic, fanned by political interests to polarize the population and garner money through fear. But the topic is global. This problem is everywhere. Listen to the poet's own reading here: (https://www.lyrikline.org/en/poems/anguish-longer-sorrow-5908) (You can read the full article text at theotherpages.org, or at The Other Pages on Facebook or Tumblr.

Welcome to National Poetry Month at The Other Pages. My name is Steve Spanoudis and I curate the series each year, with help and contributions from Bob Blair, Kashiana Singh,and (Nelson) Howard Miller. I’m coming to you from Coral Springs, Florida, on the eastern edge of the Everglades. It’s hard, in the course of one month, for us to give you, the listener, or the reader, a full spectrum overview of all that is poetry. As the curator of the series, all I can say is that I try my best to look for shortcomings, and fill them.  One is that we have probably not featured enough poems by poet laureates. Today we’ll chip away at that deficit with a poem by former U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser. (https://www.tedkooser.net/) Today’s poem is titled In the Basement of the Goodwill Store, and the full text is online at the Poetry Foundation website (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42631/in-the-basement-of-the-goodwill-store). I’m going to try and squeeze in two concepts and an anecdote. First is the idea, the conceit in this case, that things can take on a life of their own without us. A second life perhaps. For those elsewhere, or from the more monied side of the spectrum, let me explain that the Goodwill is a store that makes its money by selling people’s discards to other people for a profit. Yes, they are making money off the poor, but things can be cheaply had by those who need them, in places where more affluent stores would never consider going. Kooser, as poets commonly do, gets across this idea, and its atmospherics, by talking through the small details: In musty light, in the thin brown air of damp carpet, doll heads and rust, beneath long rows of sharp footfalls like nails in a lid, an old man stands trying on glasses, lifting each pair from the box like a glittering fish and holding it up to the light of a dirty bulb. I want to comment on how artfully Kooser chooses his descriptive words: the “thin brown air”, “damp carpet” - can you smell the mustiness? And especially the sharp footfalls - the implication, from the way it is worded, is that they might just as well be the sound of nails in his coffin lid. You can read the full article text at The Other Pages on Facebook or Tumblr.

National Poetry Month Number 15 - Michael Hamburger - The Grape and Nut Letter Welcome to National Poetry Month at The Other Pages. My name is Steve Spanoudis and I curate the series each year, with help and contributions from Bob Blair, Kashiana Singh,and (Nelson) Howard Miller.I’m coming to you from Coral Springs, Florida, on the eastern edge of the Everglades. Today's article is the third of three by Nelson Howard Miller, one of the major contributors to Poets’ Corner at https://theotherpages.org. Anything with the initials NM next to it, is thanks to him. He’s also a poet and a retired English professor. Michael Hamburger (1924 - 2007) was a German-born writer whose family moved to Britain in 1933 where he grew up and was educated.  He was a poet, critic, teacher, and translator of many German-language poets.  Between 1966 and 1978, he held positions at a number of U. S. universities, but returned to England permanently in 1978. He published over 20 volumes of poetry, employing both meter and rhyme as well as free verse; his subjects include themes of loss and the natural world, particularly man's relation to nature. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=33448 His poem "Grape and Nut Letter" is a thank-you letter to friends for allowing the speaker to pick "the last grapes / from your fallen vines" at the very end of the growing season; the grapes are just passing the point where they would be useful to humans and thus are "yours no longer"  but are still of value to "insect, bird, Rodent closer to soil Than the makers of wine . . . ." Similarly, the last of fruiting nuts are developing thicker shells which only the teeth of animals can penetrate, "no teeth but a squirrel's can crack," and which still contain "only a hint of savour." The meaning here, the speaker says, is "Cryptic," but the significance, he implies, lies in the fact that nature does not exist just for man’s benefit alone; that dying vines "Still forbear to put out thorns" indicates that they exist for the benefit of other creatures as well, a theme that appears in several of his poems. The full text of Michael Hamburger’s poem is online at The Poetry Foundation: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=33448 Thankyou for Listening. If you’re enjoying these commentaries, and the poem selections, please share them - either the text versions or the podcasts - on social media. You can find more at theotherpages.org, or at The Other Pages on Facebook or Tumblr.

Welcome to National Poetry Month at The Other Pages. My name is Steve Spanoudis and I curate the series each year, with help and contributions from Bob Blair, Kashiana Singh,and (Nelson) Howard Miller. I’m coming to you from Coral Springs, Florida, on the eastern edge of the Everglades. As a novelist, and one who subjects his characters to perils that sometimes go off the charts, I recognize they need resilience, but also they need anchors. Some thought or person or place that provides them a concept of stability when nothing else can, and their world is in utter chaos. Think about your own life. Do you know what your anchors are? Continuing this train of thought, poets often do the same thing, or at least something similar. You realize it sometimes in how they describe a person, or place, or thing, or event, and how it connected with them in their past, and how they look for something with relatable resonance in the present to hold on to. Today’s poem, El Florida Room (https://poets.org/poem/el-florida-room), by Richard Blanco, is about a very specific place, as the anchor to a life.  I’m not going to go deep into his biography - there is plenty on the Poetry Foundation website (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/richard-blanco), or you can go to his own website at https://richard-blanco.com/ . I’m just to comment on two things: one is that he is an Inaugural poet - meaning he was chosen to read at a presidential inauguration - there are only a very few of those.  Amanda Gorman is in very select company - she makes number five.  The other thing is that he is an Engineer / Writer / Poet, something I aspire to be, and yes, probably something else there aren’t a lot of. Defining terms, a Florida room, generally, is a room at the back of a house with windows that look out onto garden flowers. Ideally the windows are big and also let in lots of sun. Ideally there are flowers to be looked at, and ideally the windows are louvered, to let in fresh air. In Richard Blanco’s case, Not a study or a den, but El Florida as my mother called it, a pretty name for the room with the prettiest view of the lipstick-red hibiscus puckered up against the windows, the tepid breeze laden with the brown-sugar scent of loquats drifting in from the yard. You can read the full text of the article  at theotherpages.org, or at The Other Pages on Facebook or Tumblr.

Welcome to National Poetry Month at The Other Pages. My name is Steve Spanoudis and I curate the series each year, with help and contributions from Bob Blair, Kashiana Singh,and (Nelson) Howard Miller. I’m coming to you from Coral Springs, Florida, on the eastern edge of the Everglades. Earlier in this series I commented on Irish poet Eavan Borland’s poem referencing American poet Anne Bradstreet. Today we’re going to shift timelines and talk about Tina Cane’s poem Some Kinds of Fire. Cane is an American poet and currently serves as the Poet Laureate of Rhode Island. She grew up in New York City, and many of her poems speak to life there. Her poem Sirens - a character study / memoriam  is a good example. I was listening to her read several pieces earlier this month during the Camperdown poetry series season finale. This particular poem caught my attention for several reasons. One is that it references iconic Russian poet Anna Akhmatova. In her poem, Cane visualizes a fire scene - one of many things that happened at New York’s Chelsea Hotel - home, over the years, to an absurd number of poets, and artists, actors and dreamers of all sorts, - in which a fire creates an ambiance like a war zone: iron balconies were dropping like lace windows were popping like sobs... Despite the drama and descriptive poetic language here in the middle of the poem, what caught my eye an ear was the opening: Anna Akhmatova burned her poems A line that is a story all in itself. Akhmatova is a woman who struggled to say what she wanted - not because she had any difficulty in putting words on the page, but because, through war, and revolution, and war, and pogroms and gulags and threats, and a thousand shattered hopes and dreams, she was kept from writing what she wanted. Her books were banished, she was heavily censored at the best of times, and much of what she did manage to get published was destroyed. You can read the full text at: The Other Pages on Facebook or Tumblr. And you can learn more about Tina Cane at https://www.tinacane.ink/about.html

Writing of womanhood - Deluge, a chronicle of illness, womanhood, and faith. Kashiana Singh In her debut collection of poems - Deluge, released April 2020 by Copper Canyon Press, Leila Chatti explores what the body can do and how the female experience with the body is often canonized. She writes with inner most persuasion and focus towards the woman. Her style is gentle, her words trip over each other into the pathways of menstruation, aches and arrivals and stirred stories of possibilities. Reading Leila Chatti is like being on a pilgrimage to an ancient monument or temple, a hush settles as one reads out loud poems like Conversation whispered between lovers – lovers as in the body and it’s being, the mind and it’s awakening to womanhood, the soul in an embrace of itself. Deluge stems from a deep personal space, the lived experience. The truth of her writing is palpable and actually is elevated through the poem. Like a goddess song, she sings through her words in language that singes into our spaces. Burning not in a destructive way but in a healing way. Like an untethered placenta she often talks about, this fire is the fire of the woman’s blood, her willingness to be “give up the inconceivable heaven for a warmth, I can sense”. In her poem Nulligravida Nocturne Leila Chatti talks about the endless well – of darkness, of blood, of doubt, of shadows. I like Mary a little better when I imagine her like this, crouched and cursing a boy-God pushing on her cervix (I like remembering she had a cervix, her body ordinary and so, like mine) I am both awestruck and awakened by her approach to Mary in the book and specifically in her poem, Confession. She demystifies Mary by bringing her to life in the moment that should matter the most – birth of Jesus. Yet is not a moment described in any text. Instead of shying away from it, Leila addresses the moment of delivering a child “like a secret she never wanted to hear” Confession is reticent in such a powerful, controlled way that one can feel one’s physical self-pulled into each poem. In reading these poems, one is moved as one is moved when a deep spiritual experience takes you into the core of a hymn or a chant. She brings an invocation to Mary in her poem, “Questions directed toward the idea of Mary” in which she asks in a subtle whisper – “Do you wish for me the freedom of a vast barren plain?” Her poetry is full of empathy – in the choice of words she is empathizing with every woman who has faced a deluge in life – of emotions, of physical responses, of others wanting to judge, of contradictions. . .  (You can read the full text at The Other Pages on Facebook or Tumblr.)

Welcome to National Poetry Month at The Other Pages. My name is Steve Spanoudis and I curate the series each year, with help and contributions from Bob Blair i, Kashiana Singh and (Nelson) Howard Miller. In retrospect, love poems, as such, are not a form we have covered much in this series. Today’s poem is an unusual one. Like the earlier example from Ladan Osman, this is also a prose poem, though on a lighter subject. It might be more accurately classified as an infatuation poem. Maybe a serious infatuation poem. Not a serious poem, a seriously infatuated poem. As a slight tangent, I would comment that over the past year of pandemic, where so many have been isolated in their homes, nesting tendencies have been magnified: people have obsessed over pets, plants, and all aspects of their homes and immediate surroundings. Including food, of course, but foodie culture has been on the upswing for most of the last two decades. Cable TV has popularized what was, in the past, either a highly specialized, or highly pretentious vocabulary. And speaking of tangents, yes, today’s poet takes that vocabulary, that lexicon, in a whole new direction. One of the things I like best about doing this series, is it gives me the opportunity to learn about new poets. Or at least, new to me. I often realize, as in the case of today’s poet Yolanda Wisher, that I should have known about them already.  Born in 1976, she is a poet, educator, spoken word performer, and lead singer for the band Yolanda Wisher and the Big Fixx. She is currently the Poet Laureate of Philadelphia, and you can learn more about her, hear her singing, and listen to her performing some of her poems on her website, http://yolandawisher.com I’m not going to read today’s poem out loud for reasons that will be obvious when you hear her. It’s far better coming from her as a performance piece. I’ll just comment for the movie aficionados out there, that if  Georgia Byrd in the remake of Last Holiday could have said what she was thinking about Sean Matthews out loud, this would be the script. It’s called sonnet w / cooking lexicon, and while it has a few sonnet structural elements, but is essentially a prose poem in 14 lines. So I’m going to send you to Yolanda Wisher’s website. Go to the Gallery page and hear her sing, and then tab to the right a few times in the gallery until you see her standing on a darkened stage at BIF2018. It is well worth your time to listen. There is also a link directly to her reading in the text. http://www.yolandawisher.com/gallery/2018/10/2/yolanda-wisher-a-poet-of-people-and-place As a treat tomorrow, if all goes well, instead of me you’ll be hearing the first of this year’s pieces from Kashiana Singh. Always a voice worth listening to. I hope you’re enjoying the series. If you are, please share the link on social media. Thanks for Listening You can find more at theotherpages.org, or at The Other Pages on Facebook or Tumblr.