THE BEST WORDS IN THEIR BEST ORDER

The Saddest Thing About National Poetry Month

Is that it's only 30 days long. Sigh. Since this is the last day of April, and therefore the last day of National Poetry Month 2007, it's sadly time to change the ringtone on your cell phone, return to downloading podcasts of This American Life to listen to on the way to work, and figure out what you're going to do every morning without FSG's roster of poets to ease you into the day.

But no, this blog will not go gentle into that good night! OK, yes, www.fsgpoetry.com will stop being a blog in the traditional sense, where groups of words are posted a few times a day. But please, keep us in your RSS feeds, or sign up for email updates (which will be the same thing that appears on the blog, only in convenient letter form), because once you teach a girl to blog, it's hard to convince her to stop entirely. I'll continue to post original content at least once a month, and I can only assume it will continue to be amazing.

And last, but certainly not least, I really appreciate everyone who read the blog all month, and commented, and listened to our audio or downloaded our screensavers. As a thank you, I've saved one of the best recordings for last. Here's C. K. Williams reading Robert Lowell's poem 'For the Union Dead' or as Williams describes it in his introduction: "one of the greatest poems by one of the great poets of the last century." Enjoy!

"'I'm Not A Nice Person,' He Chanted"

C. K. Williams won the Pulitzer in 2000 for his collection, Repair, and the National Book Award in 2003 for his collection The Singing. The interview below, with The Newshour on PBS, was conducted in 2003, right after Williams received the NBA, and I think it set up this recording of Williams reading 'The Singing' rather nicely:

JEFFREY BROWN: And what starts a poem for you? What concerns do you have that make you sit down and start to write?

C. K. WILLIAMS: That varies wildly. It can be some little scene that I see in the street. It can be a little piece of language that comes to me. The most interesting thing about a poem is that it doesn't exist until it has its music. Every poem has a music. And until it has that, it's not a poem. It's just information or data that's floating around in your head or on your desk.

JB: And what does "a music" mean?

CW: Well, it's the way the poem identifies itself musically in language. Poems have a different music from ordinary language and every poem has a different kind of music of necessity, and that's, in a way, the hardest thing about writing poetry is waiting for that music, and sometimes you never know if it's going to come. Sometimes you have a poem that you really want to write and it never happens. The music never comes and then the poem never happens.

JB: But sometimes it comes and you know it when you hear it?

CW: Yes, when you hear it. Sometimes you hear it before you know it. Sometimes you hear a music and you don't know what the poem is going to be about. You only have that little piece of music, and you think... then you look around the world and you say, "what is this music going to be useful for in dealing with the world?"

On that note, here is C. K. Williams reading 'The Singing':

"The Golden Hair Of Daylight Along Her Shoulders"

It's almost becoming route for me to say, when posting these poems from James Wright, that there's a fantastic last line--but I really think this one, from 'The Journey' may take the cake:

"...The secret / Of this journey is to let the wind / Blow its dust all over your body, / To let it go on blowing, to step lightly, lightly / All the way through your ruins, and not to lose / Any sleep over the dead, who surely / Will bury their own, don't worry."

Wow.

Here's the whole of Wright's poem 'The Journey,' read by Charles Wright back in 1996. (We'll have more of Charles Wright reading his own poems later today.)

"Their Sons Grow Suicidally Beautiful"

As I said before, if you were investing in poets, I'd heartily recommend James Wright.

The second of our three poets this month to buy Wright stock, as it were, is August Kleinzahler, who breaks the fourth wall slightly in his intro by mentioning that he's pleased to be reading Wright's 'Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio' in the fall. (Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!)

But hey--in New York City, at least, it's cold enough to be autumn. And I'm certain Kalamazoo, MI, where I'm headed for the weekend, is going to be at least as cold. So we'll call it square, and everyone can enjoy the poem in the perfect temperature, if not the perfect month.

"I Salute That Various Field"

And, the finish off this Friday, one more poem, this one read by Lawrence Joseph (who we also heard from yesterday). It's a James Schuyler poem titled 'Salute,' and I hope I don't offend anyone here by saying that I always think of Schuyler as a real poets' poet. By which I mean NOT that he's a writer who can only be appreciated by other writers--there's a simple narrative happening in this poem, the story of the difference between what we plan to accomplish and what we actually get accomplished--but more that his work can be appreciated on several different levels.

And those levels are exactly what Joseph describes in his introduction below. The poem is short, only fifteen lines, but that's because Schuyler has managed to boil down the language so incredibly that each word seems to do the work of fifty. I think it's best to listen to Joseph read this poem more than once for maximum impact. Download it and play it on your iPod when you're running late for a meeting. Or, even better, when you're out gloriously wasting a spring day.

"I Am The Snouted Creature"

Finally! The moment we've all been waiting for (and by 'we,' I of course mean 'me'): August Kleinzahler reading Thom Gunn's 'Moly.'

You'll be able to find text for this one again over at Counterbalance, who is making me blush with all the nice things she has to say about the blog, and who is not such a slump in the poetry-enjoying department herself.

Those unfamiliar with Gunn might want to check out these two posts from earlier in the month. The recordings I have are of Gunn reading at FSG's 50th Anniversary celebration in 1996, a few years before he passed away, and my biggest disappointment (in ALL of poetry month) is that I couldn't include on this blog a fourth poem he read that night, which contained some rather delightful--to put it mildly--off-color language and adult situations.

Regardless, I can't think of a better way to get a sense what kind of a person Gunn was than to listen to (or download) this introduction by Kleinzahler. I think we all hope someone will say such nice things about us after our leaving. And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that FSG has just re-released Gunn's collection The Man with the Night Sweats with a new introduction by Kleinzahler. (You can buy it online.)

"Whole Day Gone To Hell"

Much digital ink has been spilled on this blog on the subject of how awesome August Kleinzahler is, so I'm very happy to put up the first of his readings, a poem called 'Green Sees Things In Waves.'

Now, as you probably know, one of the main ideas behind this poetry month blog and all the audio I've been posting is that, as James McMichael said, "poetry is an aural medium," one that benefits from a good listen. But poetry is also something of a visual art--there's a beauty to the way it is laid on the page (more on this later today) and something soothing about reading a poem in your favoite book, even if you've read it a thousand times before.

And because of that, I'm teaming up today with Callie's poetry month initative over at her blog, Counterbalance. She's been posting favorite poems all month, some her own and some suggested by readers. I was happy to suggest this one, and for the text of this poem, I hope you'll visit her site here.

As Kleinzahler explains in his introduction to 'Green Sees Things in Waves,' the subject of this poem comes from his time spent working with homeless veterans, and I delight a bit in the idea of how stunned these guys must have been when, instead of getting a tightly laced poetry teacher in a suit and tie, they got a teacher who looked like he knew his way around the parts of San Francisco they'd been hanging out in and didn't even mind some swearing in their poetry.

(This poem is from a book of the same name, which you can buy online.)

"I Know Of No Defense Against Those Addicted To Death"

I find it very interesting that Lawrence Joseph chose to introduce his poem 'Unyieldingly Present' by paraphrasing a quote from Wallace Stevens and describing his work as "a poem that presses back against the violence from without."

Not just because of the quote, which quite accurately sums up the poem, but because both Joseph and Stevens are poets as well as being lawyers--Stevens practiced insurance law in Connecticut and Joseph now teaches law in New York City. Another cool fact about Lawrence Joseph is the screenplay being based on his novel, Lawyerland, and, slightly less cool to anyone who didn't grow up in the midwest, he and I are both from the Detroit area.

Here's Joseph reading 'Unyieldingly Present' from his latest book, Into It, which you can buy online.

"It's Been Almost Sultry Here In The Haight. Eat Your Heart Out."

Some more insider gossip, this from Associate Publicist Audrey Harris, who got to actually spend time with August Kleinzahler (who will read for us TOMORROW) in his stomping grounds of San Francisco:

"August Kleinzahler, in addition to being a poet, is the author of Cutty One Rock: Low Characters and Strange Places, Gently Explained, a series of autobiographical essays. A huge fan of these pieces, particularly 'The Bus,' a bitingly funny and self-deprecating narrative of a bus ride along a seedy stretch of San Diego highway, I was thrilled when I was assigned to work with August last year. Through our ensuing correspondence, we learned that he lives roughly three blocks from my parents' house in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco. What's more, he moved there from New York in 1981, the year I was born. During a visit home last summer I arranged to meet August on a Saturday morning at the Reverie café in Cole Valley, haunt of local writers and bloggers.

I recognized August the moment he walked in the door, not just from his author photo, but from an air of scrappy, bemused outsiderhood unmistakable from his writing. In oversized Gucci sunglasses and a large dark trenchcoat, he looked like he could have walked straight off the set of a hardboiled 1940's detective film. We sat by the window with our coffees, and I broached the ostensible subject of our meeting: publicity for his book, his next project, and his busy reading and lecture schedule. He had just finished a teaching stint at the University of Texas's Michener Center, and seemed glad to escape the heat. With a lingering sense of awe at his good fortune, August recounted his first meeting with Jonathan Galassi, who had learned of his poetry from a friend by chance. He also described a trip he was planning to take to Rapid City and the 'Badlands' of South Dakota. He was writing the titular poem of his forthcoming collection, Sleeping It Off In Rapid City, but had never actually been there. I'm not sure which came first: the poem or the idea for the trip, but I think it was the poem. After a little less than an hour of this, August excused himself: he was driving to Sacramento (a three-hour car ride, factoring in East Bay traffic) to visit 'an old dame' whose birthday it was, and whom he visits every year on her birthday. As a parting gift, he recommended his favorite walk for my next visit to San Francisco: a meandering climb through the eucalyptus-covered hills of Twin Peaks. To this day, whenever I see a new note in my inbox from August, I think of him roaming up there, phrases aligning themselves in his brain.

I received my latest message from August on a recent cold March morning. After asking me to send his author photo to the director of a Polish book festival, he concluded in typical fashion: 'It's been almost sultry here in the Haight. Eat your heart out.'"

The Icing On The Cake

Frankly, after all the awesomeness that has been put forth on this day (Gjertrud Schnackenberg, Adam Zagajewski, Les Murray, Cara Spitalewiz), I can't believe I'm sharing anything else.

But it's Wednesday, and it's raining in NYC, and there's so long until the weekend, which is why I have two poems for you, from John Ashbery, both recorded back in 1996 at FSG's 50th Anniversary party--here's Ashbery reading James Schuyler's '3-25-66' and his own 'Chapter 2, Book 35.' Enjoy!