Last week the Poetry Foundation named Eleanor Ross Taylor winner of the 2010 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize for lifetime achievement for Captive Voices: New and Selected Poems, 1960-2008. Ross Taylor's most recent collection has also been awarded the William Carlos Williams Book Award by the Poetry Society of America and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry.
One of the most distinguished voices in poetry, Ross Taylor is nonetheless lesser known compared to many of her contemporaries — who include Randall Jarrell, Adrienne Rich, Richard Howard.
Little concerned with promotion, poetry readings or other requisites assumed by poets today, she has focused on the writing, and in it,she is guided by an inner compass. It is what I admire most about her work. But it is not an easy path, for the poet or those around her, as we learn from the slyly humorous "Always Reclusive," which begins:
"I'm constructing my own briarpatch. True,
I'm still bleeding from the first canes I dug in;
thorns fight off cultivation, cut both ways;
they like barbwiring things in ...
And concludes:
"The blackberry, permitted its own way,
is an unmanageable plant." Here's a
variety called "Taylor": "Season late,
bush vigorous, hardy... free from rust"
That's it. Don't let my briarpatch rust.
I love the hard, and hardy, 'b' sounds — briarpatch, bleeding, and the surprising 'barbwiring," — smacked up against the self-deprecating humor of the unmanageable, late-blooming Taylor.
The collection is rich with narratives, monologues, dialogues, voices heard and voices silenced. Ross Taylor works in words in much the way a visual artist builds a collage, bumping voices and images up against each other, not explaining, letting the shards and sharp edges reflect off each other, trusting her readers to — literally — read between the lines.
In "Long-Dreaded Event Takes Place," she writes:
it blurs
happening as on canvas
distanced...
glazed eyes catching
small smithereens:
the nurse's ring
bone pink smooth though modified
the brief convulsive reflex
and the driver's shoes well tied
everything establishes
my absence in this scene
later somewhere
I'll paint-in gaps, fill in
the larger picture,
withholdings spilled...
Of course, that will never happen. Written after her husband Peter Taylor's death, it perfectly captures the shell-shock of grief, and one might assume the poem is about that. But Ross Taylor does not fill in the gaps. She does not 'share.' She is a master at withholding. It is her power. It makes her poems difficult, but worth the struggle.
In presenting the Lilly Award, Christian Wiman announced that 10 of Ross Taylor's poems will be featured in the May issue of Poetry, giving her work wide readership. It is worth seeking out.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Light, Moving, Carolyn Miller (poetry)
Some books leap off the bookshelf, insisting that they be read. Carolyn Miller's Light, Moving was just such a book for me. From its title to its cover art — also by the poet — to its epigraph from Issa's The Spring of My Life, it spoke to me.
When I fanned through its pages, the 35-line invocation "Considering Flynn" first caught my eye. As a lover of all felines, I was entranced. It begins:
For he is the color of a fog bank over the ocean in late afternoon.
For his eyes are lined with charcoal gray like Cleopatra's...
before revealing — and reveling in — his true gifts:
For he sometimes gulps happiness when I hold him.
For his cry is small, and he purls, which is meowing with the mouth closed.
For his ancestor Jeoffrey was beloved by a poet who went mad. ...
For he is filled with Buddha nature.
For he does both the Up- and Downward-Facing Dog and, of course, the Cat.
For he attends to all his needs.
For he purrs.
This is my kind of poet.
Of course the collection, as the title suggests, is about far more. In its four sections — The Slanted Streets, The Memory of Light, In The Garden, and The World As It Is — the poet brings close attention both to the seen and the unseen.
"In Summer," after describing morning light "in a city where trees keep their leaves," the poet leaps — and we follow — to:
...suddenly the growing crowd
of my dead were close at hand.
I write their birthdays on my calendar each year
so I can keep them still
part of this flux, this wide sea, this spill
of light, this whir of wings sounding in my ear.
The collection is shot through with light, changing and moving but always attending to life. Miller gives the concluding poem a title from a line by Rumi, and by the time we read its opening lines, they have an earned resonance.
In "How Long Should You Look at the Earth's Face?" she exhorts:
Until you have memorized it, feature for feature, so
you can remember it, like your mother's voice
in the room of your skull, speaking to you for the last time
over the phone, saying "Are you happy?" Until
you are dumb with astonishment at having been given
so much...
Light, Moving is a beautiful publication by Sixteen Rivers Press, a nonprofit poetry collective in the San Francisco Bay Area.
When I fanned through its pages, the 35-line invocation "Considering Flynn" first caught my eye. As a lover of all felines, I was entranced. It begins:
For he is the color of a fog bank over the ocean in late afternoon.
For his eyes are lined with charcoal gray like Cleopatra's...
before revealing — and reveling in — his true gifts:
For he sometimes gulps happiness when I hold him.
For his cry is small, and he purls, which is meowing with the mouth closed.
For his ancestor Jeoffrey was beloved by a poet who went mad. ...
For he is filled with Buddha nature.
For he does both the Up- and Downward-Facing Dog and, of course, the Cat.
For he attends to all his needs.
For he purrs.
This is my kind of poet.
Of course the collection, as the title suggests, is about far more. In its four sections — The Slanted Streets, The Memory of Light, In The Garden, and The World As It Is — the poet brings close attention both to the seen and the unseen.
"In Summer," after describing morning light "in a city where trees keep their leaves," the poet leaps — and we follow — to:
...suddenly the growing crowd
of my dead were close at hand.
I write their birthdays on my calendar each year
so I can keep them still
part of this flux, this wide sea, this spill
of light, this whir of wings sounding in my ear.
The collection is shot through with light, changing and moving but always attending to life. Miller gives the concluding poem a title from a line by Rumi, and by the time we read its opening lines, they have an earned resonance.
In "How Long Should You Look at the Earth's Face?" she exhorts:
Until you have memorized it, feature for feature, so
you can remember it, like your mother's voice
in the room of your skull, speaking to you for the last time
over the phone, saying "Are you happy?" Until
you are dumb with astonishment at having been given
so much...
Light, Moving is a beautiful publication by Sixteen Rivers Press, a nonprofit poetry collective in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Friday, April 9, 2010
Peeling an Orange, Peggy Heinrich (poetry/haiku)
December sunset
putting aside her journal
to peel an orange
This title haiku is representative of much the work found throughout Peggy Heinrich's collection: a vivid image expressed simply, some personal reflection, a small moment that gathers significance the longer one sits with it.
Organized seasonally with black and white photographs by John Bolivar marking the passage of time, it gives us a year in haiku. And like most years, it is not without its challenges.
sleepless at night...
some of the sheep
won't jump the fence
Dead-of-night anxieties are captured vividly in the recalcitrant sheep; this glancing suggestion of something greater below the surface typifies what makes this and other Heinrich haiku so effective.
For example, look at how green conveys multiple meanings in this haiku:
in the hammock
forgetting he-said-she-said
so many shades of green
The pettiness of fingerpointing fades in the face of so much new life; at the same time, "shades of green" also suggest shadows and envy.
Published in 2009 by The MET Press, Peeling an Orange is the work of a very gifted poet.
These are not poems that trumpet their brilliance. They are small jewels that reflect moments in time with seeming effortlessness and quiet grace. This is a collection that rewards re-reading.
putting aside her journal
to peel an orange
This title haiku is representative of much the work found throughout Peggy Heinrich's collection: a vivid image expressed simply, some personal reflection, a small moment that gathers significance the longer one sits with it.
Organized seasonally with black and white photographs by John Bolivar marking the passage of time, it gives us a year in haiku. And like most years, it is not without its challenges.
sleepless at night...
some of the sheep
won't jump the fence
Dead-of-night anxieties are captured vividly in the recalcitrant sheep; this glancing suggestion of something greater below the surface typifies what makes this and other Heinrich haiku so effective.
For example, look at how green conveys multiple meanings in this haiku:
in the hammock
forgetting he-said-she-said
so many shades of green
The pettiness of fingerpointing fades in the face of so much new life; at the same time, "shades of green" also suggest shadows and envy.
Published in 2009 by The MET Press, Peeling an Orange is the work of a very gifted poet.
These are not poems that trumpet their brilliance. They are small jewels that reflect moments in time with seeming effortlessness and quiet grace. This is a collection that rewards re-reading.
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Naming Nature, Carol Kaesuk Yoon (nonfiction)
Whether you are a scientist or a reader of science or just someone who cares deeply about the world, you will find much to like in Carol Kaesuk Yoon's book, Naming Nature: The Clash Between Instinct and Science.
I first discovered Yoon's writing when I read her essay about the movie Avatar in The New York Times. A science writer with a doctorate in ecology and evolutionary biology, she has been writing articles for NYT for years, but it was the blockbuster movie that first brought her writing to my attention. I immediately responded to her "potent joy" in the wonders of the natural world. That and her very engaging way with words.
In that essay, she mentioned she had just completed a book, Naming Nature. I sought it out, and I was not disappointed. Naming Nature journeys through the history of the science of taxonomy, scrutinizing our desire to make sense of the natural world, and argues that it is driven by the human "umwelt" (pronounced, as Yoon helpfully notes, OOM-velt). Our umwelt consists of what we perceive in the world, so it will vary from place to place. Someone who lives in the desert will have a very different umwelt from someone who lives in the mountains.
There is nothing dry about taxonomy the way Yoon tells it. Here's how she describes the cassowary, a creature that has given taxonomists and various peoples fits over the years — is it a bird or not?
Sometimes reaching six and a half feet tall, the cassowary is a claw-your-eyes-out-if-cornered bipedal bird, with a black mop of a body, a tiny head that can be shockingly bright blue, and hefty, clomping legs and feet. Think bloated, sinister-looking Big Bird with attitude...
After tracing the evolution of traditional taxonomy, its battles to define and order nature that is no longer local but global, its rise and inevitable fall when pitted against mathematical proofs and scientific observations at the level of microorganisms, Yoon concludes with a direct appeal to the non-scientists among us. She makes the case that — while there is value in science discovering what cannot be perceived with human eyes — we should not be so quick to give up our connection to the natural world:
The living world is dying, but it's not too late...Think back to a time in your life before you knew what science was, before you could tell a Coke from a Pepsi..when every beacon on your umwelt shone bright and clear and welcome. Then find an organism—any organism, small, large, gaudy, subtle, exotic, mundane...and get a sense of it, its shape, color, size, feel, smell, sound. Feel your umwelt rev up...Then find a name for it. Take your pick... This changes everything, yourself included... once you have a name ... you begin to see the shape, the natural order of living things. You will begin to notice life where it is, all around you. It's not too late.
This is a praise song for the living world.
I am not alone in my enthusiasm for Naming Nature. It was named a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize, one of the Best Books of 2009 by New Scientist, one of the Best Sci-Tech Books of 2009 by Library Journal.
This is the best kind of science writing: I learned a great deal, and I loved every minute.
I first discovered Yoon's writing when I read her essay about the movie Avatar in The New York Times. A science writer with a doctorate in ecology and evolutionary biology, she has been writing articles for NYT for years, but it was the blockbuster movie that first brought her writing to my attention. I immediately responded to her "potent joy" in the wonders of the natural world. That and her very engaging way with words.
In that essay, she mentioned she had just completed a book, Naming Nature. I sought it out, and I was not disappointed. Naming Nature journeys through the history of the science of taxonomy, scrutinizing our desire to make sense of the natural world, and argues that it is driven by the human "umwelt" (pronounced, as Yoon helpfully notes, OOM-velt). Our umwelt consists of what we perceive in the world, so it will vary from place to place. Someone who lives in the desert will have a very different umwelt from someone who lives in the mountains.
There is nothing dry about taxonomy the way Yoon tells it. Here's how she describes the cassowary, a creature that has given taxonomists and various peoples fits over the years — is it a bird or not?
Sometimes reaching six and a half feet tall, the cassowary is a claw-your-eyes-out-if-cornered bipedal bird, with a black mop of a body, a tiny head that can be shockingly bright blue, and hefty, clomping legs and feet. Think bloated, sinister-looking Big Bird with attitude...
After tracing the evolution of traditional taxonomy, its battles to define and order nature that is no longer local but global, its rise and inevitable fall when pitted against mathematical proofs and scientific observations at the level of microorganisms, Yoon concludes with a direct appeal to the non-scientists among us. She makes the case that — while there is value in science discovering what cannot be perceived with human eyes — we should not be so quick to give up our connection to the natural world:
The living world is dying, but it's not too late...Think back to a time in your life before you knew what science was, before you could tell a Coke from a Pepsi..when every beacon on your umwelt shone bright and clear and welcome. Then find an organism—any organism, small, large, gaudy, subtle, exotic, mundane...and get a sense of it, its shape, color, size, feel, smell, sound. Feel your umwelt rev up...Then find a name for it. Take your pick... This changes everything, yourself included... once you have a name ... you begin to see the shape, the natural order of living things. You will begin to notice life where it is, all around you. It's not too late.
This is a praise song for the living world.
I am not alone in my enthusiasm for Naming Nature. It was named a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize, one of the Best Books of 2009 by New Scientist, one of the Best Sci-Tech Books of 2009 by Library Journal.
This is the best kind of science writing: I learned a great deal, and I loved every minute.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
The Stream Singing Your Name, Jean LeBlanc (poetry/tanka and sijo)
Every once in awhile, I come across a book I do not want to end, that engages on many levels and invites me to re-read, to linger a bit longer. Jean LeBlanc's The Stream Singing Your Name is just such a book.
I was unfamiliar with LeBlanc's work before discovering it at the Modern English Tanka Press, but I was intrigued when I realized it contained both tanka and sijo. Sijo — pronounced shee-jo — is a classical Korean form consisting of three lines, traditionally 14-15 syllables each. LeBlanc intermingles the two forms, sometimes alternating, sometimes offering a sequence of sijo or a series of tanka, and creates a tapestry that brings out the best in each.
I find myself returning especially to her sijo. With its languid long lines, they are a beautiful foil to the emotional immediacy of the shorter-lined tanka. I have so many favorites in this collection. But on this day, I was struck by this lyrical and life-affirming sijo:
When I die, do what you have to do to make me, not of this earth,
but of these rocks, this limestone ridge. I want to feed the lichens,
anchor ferns firmly in these clefts, become my mineral self.
Whether she is writing about her students who don't distinguish between funereal and funeral, the dandelions she gives free rein every spring, her father's shoulders made strong from chopping wood or her garden in October with its
redbud leaves
and other crinkled hearts
beneath my feet
Jean LeBlanc reveals a deep regard for the world. Throughout the collection, the flow seems effortless, taking the reader from one to the next, until you arrive at the stream of the title in the final double sijo, and:
You wonder if you could just stand here, forever,
the stream singing your name around you.
I was unfamiliar with LeBlanc's work before discovering it at the Modern English Tanka Press, but I was intrigued when I realized it contained both tanka and sijo. Sijo — pronounced shee-jo — is a classical Korean form consisting of three lines, traditionally 14-15 syllables each. LeBlanc intermingles the two forms, sometimes alternating, sometimes offering a sequence of sijo or a series of tanka, and creates a tapestry that brings out the best in each.
I find myself returning especially to her sijo. With its languid long lines, they are a beautiful foil to the emotional immediacy of the shorter-lined tanka. I have so many favorites in this collection. But on this day, I was struck by this lyrical and life-affirming sijo:
When I die, do what you have to do to make me, not of this earth,
but of these rocks, this limestone ridge. I want to feed the lichens,
anchor ferns firmly in these clefts, become my mineral self.
Whether she is writing about her students who don't distinguish between funereal and funeral, the dandelions she gives free rein every spring, her father's shoulders made strong from chopping wood or her garden in October with its
redbud leaves
and other crinkled hearts
beneath my feet
Jean LeBlanc reveals a deep regard for the world. Throughout the collection, the flow seems effortless, taking the reader from one to the next, until you arrive at the stream of the title in the final double sijo, and:
You wonder if you could just stand here, forever,
the stream singing your name around you.
Friday, March 12, 2010
The Unworn Necklace, Roberta Beary (poetry/haiku)
hating him
between bites
of unripe plums
Roberta Beary's haiku often give the reader a sensory double-shot. When I read the above haiku, for example, I feel the hardness of the immature heart-shaped fruit even as my mouth puckers with the bitterness of plum and love gone sour.
For five years in the 90s, Beary lived in Tokyo, where she began her study of haiku. It was time well-spent. Although The Unworn Necklace is her first collection, many of the haiku within are award-winners.
As one whose cats heighten my own awareness of the natural world, I immediately identified with this, which won Honorable Mention in the National League of American Pen Women's International Haiku Contest 1997:
not hearing it
till the cat stirs
birdsong
And I was struck by the emotional subtlety and suggestion of something greater than we can know in this haiku, which was awarded Grand Prize in the Kusamakura International Haiku Competition in 2006:
thunder
the roses shift
into shadow
And this:
funeral home
here too
she straightens his tie
That bittersweet acknowledgement is what I respond to in so many of Beary's haiku. This is haiku that echoes in the mind and heart long after the book has been put away.
between bites
of unripe plums
Roberta Beary's haiku often give the reader a sensory double-shot. When I read the above haiku, for example, I feel the hardness of the immature heart-shaped fruit even as my mouth puckers with the bitterness of plum and love gone sour.
For five years in the 90s, Beary lived in Tokyo, where she began her study of haiku. It was time well-spent. Although The Unworn Necklace is her first collection, many of the haiku within are award-winners.
As one whose cats heighten my own awareness of the natural world, I immediately identified with this, which won Honorable Mention in the National League of American Pen Women's International Haiku Contest 1997:
not hearing it
till the cat stirs
birdsong
And I was struck by the emotional subtlety and suggestion of something greater than we can know in this haiku, which was awarded Grand Prize in the Kusamakura International Haiku Competition in 2006:
thunder
the roses shift
into shadow
And this:
funeral home
here too
she straightens his tie
That bittersweet acknowledgement is what I respond to in so many of Beary's haiku. This is haiku that echoes in the mind and heart long after the book has been put away.
Friday, March 5, 2010
Bringing Yoga to Life, Donna Farhi (nonfiction)
I am one of those people who likes the idea of yoga but rarely manages more than a session every blue moon. But the blurb on the back of Donna Farhi's Bringing Yoga to Life promised "a practical discipline for everyday living...encouraging and straightforward." And much to my amazement, it has motivated me to spend a few minutes each day on the mat.
What is different about Farhi's approach? It sounds odd, but I responded to her voice — not in some woo-hoo way, but to its clarity and frankness.
Early in the first section, "Coming Home," she writes:
… we may notice that we consistently allow the urgent to override the important... that we have a deeply ingrained habit of giving the most time, energy, and commitment to things that ultimately are not very important...
And with that she had me. Allowing the urgent to override the important is what I do best.
In the book’s third section, “Roadblocks and Distractions,” she takes on sloth, strong emotions, blind spots, assumptions, and self-worth, and makes it clear that yoga practice will reveal much more than your ability to hold a pose. If she had not already acquired credibility in the earlier chapters — through her empathy for the difficulty of practice and her honesty in exposing fallacy in shortcuts — she would have with this:
I am always a bit suspicious of people who walk around spouting angelic proclamations about how wonderful and beautiful and full of light everything is... I'm not talking about the wonderful silence that one feels around a Tibetan monk, who really is that silence. I'm talking about a flamboyant, in-your-face, exhibitionist goodness that should have warning labels on it.
And at the close of the book:
All Yoga practices lead to seeing things as they are... Instead of running away, we can sit still, breathe, and watch.
Nothing easy about it. But Farhi inspired me to begin.
What is different about Farhi's approach? It sounds odd, but I responded to her voice — not in some woo-hoo way, but to its clarity and frankness.
Early in the first section, "Coming Home," she writes:
… we may notice that we consistently allow the urgent to override the important... that we have a deeply ingrained habit of giving the most time, energy, and commitment to things that ultimately are not very important...
And with that she had me. Allowing the urgent to override the important is what I do best.
In the book’s third section, “Roadblocks and Distractions,” she takes on sloth, strong emotions, blind spots, assumptions, and self-worth, and makes it clear that yoga practice will reveal much more than your ability to hold a pose. If she had not already acquired credibility in the earlier chapters — through her empathy for the difficulty of practice and her honesty in exposing fallacy in shortcuts — she would have with this:
I am always a bit suspicious of people who walk around spouting angelic proclamations about how wonderful and beautiful and full of light everything is... I'm not talking about the wonderful silence that one feels around a Tibetan monk, who really is that silence. I'm talking about a flamboyant, in-your-face, exhibitionist goodness that should have warning labels on it.
And at the close of the book:
All Yoga practices lead to seeing things as they are... Instead of running away, we can sit still, breathe, and watch.
Nothing easy about it. But Farhi inspired me to begin.
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