In the Meantime...Lana Del Rey "Hunger Games"

Haven't online much, but February has been a hectic and busy month. Will be blogging at full blast (hopefully) in March. In the meantime, Lana Del Rey's "Hunger Games"...

Wislawa Szymborska Has Died

As a fiction writer, I have always been afraid of poetry. Poetry was and is murky territory of seemingly unfinished sentences, symbolic metaphor, concentrated emotion and thought: I didn't "get it."

One of the first poets to steal my heart was Wislawa Szymborska, who died Wednesday of lung cancer at the age of 88. I read it at work, and I thought my heart dropped in disbelief.

To confess: I found a book of hers by accident because the name was interesting. Wislawa Szymborska? Actually:  VEES-mah-vah shim-BOR-ska. I remember stumbling upon it, but not buying it, yet coming to it time and again at the bookstore (no one ever bought it like no one reads poetry), I read the poems, eventually reading the book and coming back to my favorite ones.

I couldn't understand why exactly I liked the poem. I have no idea what makes a poem "good."

But thing about Szymborska was that her language was simple, yet was not condescending--in fact far from it. Her works looked at existential questions with a firm grasp of humanism. Far from being melancholy or worse incomprehendable, it was accessible, playful, yet expanded the mind in its celebration of humanity.

Her poems were quirky and belied its own seriousness and her love of human nature, however complex that concept could be (and this she recognized).

In one poem, in which the narrator speaks to a secluded Yeti creature, she writes ("Notes from a Nonexistent Himalayan Expedition"):

Yeti, down there we've got Wednesday,
bread and alphabets.
Two times two is four.
Roses are red there,
and violets are blue.

It's nearly childish, simplistic, yet it was a celebration of the humaness, the world we created: though it can be bad at times, we are good people capable of forgiveness, hope, and art. As the poem continues:

Yeti, crime is not all
we're up to down there.
Yeti, not every sentence there
means death.

We've inherited hope —
the gift of forgetting.
You'll see how we give
birth among the ruins.

Yeti, we've got Shakespeare there.
Yeti, we play solitaire
and violin. At nightfall,
we turn lights on, Yeti.

The celebration of life was not always totally optimistic and cool. In "Consolation" she explored the importance of beauty (even imagined) in a world that is often cruel:

Scanning in his mind so many times and places,
he’d had enough of dying species,
the triumphs of the strong over the weak,
the endless struggles to survive,
all doomed sooner or later.
He’d earned the right to happy endings,
at least in fiction
with its diminutions.

Yet, in her work, however humanity behaves, whatever befalls us, it was clear that she was in love with and focused on "Here," where human nature is a thing of beauty:

I don’t know about other places,
but here on Earth there’s quite a lot of everything.
Here chairs are made and sadness,
scissors, violins, tenderness, transistors,
water dams, jokes, teacups.

Maybe somewhere else there is more of everything,
only for some reason there are no paintings there,
cathode-ray tubes, dumplings, tissues for tears.
There are plenty of places here with surroundings.
Some you can particularly get to like,
name them your own way
and protect them from evil.

Maybe somewhere else there are similar places,
But no one considers them beautiful.

Maybe like nowhere else, or in few other places,
here you have your own body trunk,
and with it the tools needed,
to add your children to those of others.
Besides that your hands, legs, and the amazed head.

Ignorance here is hard at work,
constantly measuring, comparing, counting,
drawing conclusions and finding square roots.

I know, I know what you’re thinking.
Nothing is permanent here,
for since ever forever in the power of the elements.
But notice—the elements get easily tired
and sometimes they have to take a long rest
before the next time.

And I know what else you’re thinking.
Wars, wars, wars.
But even between them there happen to be breaks.
Attention—people are evil.
At ease—people are good.
At attention we produce wastelands.
At ease by the sweat of our brows we build houses
and quickly live in them.

Life on earth turns out quite cheap.
For dreams for instance you don’t pay a penny.
For illusions—only when they’re lost.
For owning a body—only with the body.

And as if this was not enough,
you spin without a ticket in the carousel of the planets,
and along with it, dodging the fare, in the blizzard of galaxies,
through eras so astounding,
that nothing here on Earth can even twitch on time.

For take a good look:
the table stands where it stood,
on the table the paper, exactly as placed,
through the window ajar just a waft of the air,
and in the walls no terrifying cracks,
through which you could be blown out to nowhere.

This is why I love poetry.

PS I eventually did buy that book.

AWP Has Sold Out

Not that it matters to me personally. Ain't going. Have never went to a conference as an attendee. Would love to go, but high expenses, etc.

From their website:

AWP is pleased to announce that the number of registered attendees for the 2012 AWP Annual Conference & Bookfair in Chicago has already reached over 9,300 participants!  We are stunned and jubilant for this all-time record high for attendance. 

At this time, we are announcing that AWP will not hold on-site registration in Chicago.  Because of the enormous amount of interest in attending this year’s conference in Chicago, we have decided to close all further attendee registration to ensure a safe and enjoyable experience for those who have already registered.

Last-Chance Registration Sale Online!

AWP will hold a “Last-Chance Registration Sale” starting on Thursday, January 26th, 2012 at noon EST.  Registrations will be sold first-come, first-serve for the first 200 registrants.  No registrations will be accepted thereafter. 

To take advantage of this offer, you must register through our AWP StoreFront system online at: http://store.awpwriter.org/c-15-conference-bookfair-registration.aspx 

No registrations will be accepted by fax or by postal mail.  No telephone orders please.

AWP is one of the biggest writing events, with panels and lectures on reading and writing, giving any MFAer (the target of the conference) who has the money or time to brush elbows with famous writers. Alexander Chee says you don't even really need to register, just hang out at the bars:

If you are going (and have paid for the most part), check out these queerful events:

"Indigenous Editing/Publishing: Journals, Anthologies, and Presses" Panel

https://www.facebook.com/events/235625133178522

Thursday, March 1, 2012

3pm-4:15pm

Panelists:

Ahimsa Timoteo Bodhrán, ku'ualoha ho'omanawanui, Lorenzo Herrera y Lozano, Janet McAdams, & Brandy Nālani McDougall

Indigenous publishing plays a vital role in sovereignty and decolonization movements. Queer and womanist editors of Indigenous Pacific, Native North American, and Indigenous Latin American descent will discuss the production and maintenance of Native journals, anthologies, and presses. Collaboratively producing Native texts, the panel will discuss how they negotiate economic, logistical, and institutional challenges, while keeping center issues of culture, politics, aesthetics, and diversity.

Representing over a decade of international Indigenous editorial experience, the panelists are founding leaders of presses and publications in the Pacific, Europe, and the Américas. Independent and university-affiliated editors and publishers working under various deadlines and economic constraints and across multiple languages and time zones, they have produced over thirty Native books and journal issues and published hundreds of Indigenous authors from around the world.

"Ancestors: A Queer Writers of Color Reading"

sponsored by the Lambda Literary Foundation

https://www.facebook.com/events/168568046576890

Thursday, March 1, 2012

7pm-10pm

OluSeyi OluToyin Adebanjo, Nancy Agabian, Ryka Aoki, Tamiko Beyer, Ahimsa Timoteo Bodhrán, Ching-In Chen, Matthew R. K. Haynes-Kekahuna, Lorenzo Herrera y Lozano, David Keali'i, Emil Keliane, Janet McAdams, Deborah A. Miranda, Claudia Narváez-Meza, vaimoana litia makakaufaki niumeitolu, Emma Pérez, Jai Arun Ravine, Charles Rice-González, Trish Salah, James Thomas Stevens, D. Antwan Stewart, Max Wolf Valerio, & Jennifer Lisa Vest.

"Ancestors: A Queer Writers of Color Reading" is a literary reading featuring same-gender-loving, multiple-gender-loving, and transgender poets, non/fiction writers, filmmakers, and performance artists of Indigenous Pacific, Native North American, Arab/Middle Eastern, Asian, Latina/o, and African descent.

"Queer Poets of Color on Craft: The Art of Decolonization" Panel

https://www.facebook.com/events/328290033877703

Saturday, March 3, 2012

9am-10:15am

Panelists:

Ahimsa Timoteo Bodhrán, Samiya Bashir, Deborah A. Miranda, Ching-In Chen, & Tamiko Beyer

There is power in craft. Poets use craft to create possibility, ways of seeing, hearing, and moving the world, re-envisioning it. Queer poets of color use multiple techniques to shape language on the page and stage, the way words flicker across glowing screens and beat against the drums of our ears. From the generation and arrangement of text, to shifts in narrativity and delivery, and the use of multiple registers and media, this panel explores the decolonial power of skillful wor(l)d-weaving.

Too often writers of color are reduced to narrative. There needs to be greater focus on our artistry and poetic craft's ability to imagine a past, reconceptualize a present, and shape a future. Bringing together poets of African, Arab, Asian, Latina/o, and Native North American descent, this panel delves into intrapoetics and interpoetics, the transfiguring of individual poems and traditions, and interplay between them--queerly decolonizing both texts and communities, and the world they inhabit.

If I were going, these would be what I would go to.