Literary Safari

I’m a creature of habit and making lists is at the top of my “habit list.” My day does not go right unless I sit down in the morning and make a list of goals, things to do, and even, places to go. My father used to make lists too. After his death, I found yellow legal notepad after yellow legal notepad filled with numbered lists of his daily goals. I’m sure that if he were alive today for me to ask him what he liked best about his list-making (apart from the direction it gave him), he would answer, “Crossing out things!”

There’s also something lyrical about lists, the way one line flows into the other, creating a rhythm and space in which to find yourself. I suppose that’s what attracted me to the anthology of original children’s list poems, Falling Down the Page, edited by Georgia Heard (Roaring Brook Press, 2009).

Inspired by Walt Whitman’s classic list poem Song of Myself, this collection of original poems highlights a variety of styles, all of which are tied together by the common themes of school and the everyday experiences of the school year. Featured authors include Jane Yolen (“In My Desk”), Marilyn Singer (“In My Hand”), Eileen Spinelli (“Creativity”),  Bobbi Katz (“Things to Do If You are the Sun”), and one of my favorite poets, Naomi Shihab Nye (“Words in My Pillow”).  The poems span a range of moods — lighthearted, serious, thoughtful, funny, and whimsical. There’s something for every type of kid here.

Besides my fascination with lists, there was also something about the size of the book that I found extremely appealing. Laid out vertically at 5×10 inches, its topsy-turvy text, curvy font treatment of titles, and offbeat design are a visual invitation to readers to think differently — outside of the standard horizontal box of our minds — and to sit down and invent our own list poems.

I recently wrote a piece, “Summer School: Play with Words” for Kahani magazine (forthcoming in the Summer 2009 issue). Building upon my previous advice at A+ Advice for Parents, it offers ideas for wordplay exercises. I wish I’d come across Heard’s anthology earlier so that I could have also recommended it to readers. Oh well; better late than never. If you have school age children, why not sit down with them and write a list poem this summer? Or, you could do what I did after earlier today, after re-reading Falling Down the Page: sit down with your own pencil and sheet of paper and see what emerges.

Below the fold is my little list poem inspired by the cloudy skies we’ve had in NYC of late.

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I’ve been on Poetry Friday hiatus for the past couple of months (though I was doing a South Asian themed series for adults at Sepia Mutiny). Today: poetic justice and Robert Frost, plus a giveaway of “Voice of the Poet: Robert Frost” audio CD and book (Random House). A full round up is at Snoring Scholar.

In the news this week was a story about a group of underage teens from Vermont who threw a party of drunken proportions at a farmhouse in Rimington. The farmhouse turned out to be none other than Robert Frost’s summer writing haven (which now belongs to Middlebury College).

From Vermont’s WCAX TV News:

On December 28, about two dozen young people trashed a summer home that [Robert] Frost visited for decades to write and reflect. A quiet farm house in Ripton on a road not taken by most. An ideal spot for an out-of-the-way illegal drinking party where kids wouldn’t get caught. Or so they thought.

Broken windows, furniture, and dishes littered the home. The partying vandals discharged a fire extinguisher, vomited and urinated on rugs. Nearly $11,000 in damage left behind.

28 people were charged, all but two of them teenagers. [full story]

So, what was the punishment meted out to these “delinquents”? County State Attorney John Quinn decided on “poetic justice” — a two-session poetry class with Frost biographer Jay Pirini which is intended to “show the vandals the error of their ways and the redemptive power of poetry.”

“I guess I was thinking that if these teens had a better understanding of who Robert Frost was, and his contribution to our society, that they would be more respectful of other people’s property in the future and would also learn something from the experience,” said Addison County State’s Attorney John Quinn. [see full Boston Globe article]

Chances are they’ll be reading this poem:

The Need of Being Versed in Country Things

The house had gone to bring again
To the midnight sky a sunset glow.
Now the chimney was all of the house that stood,
Like a pistil after the petals go.

The barn opposed across the way,
That would have joined the house in flame
Had it been the will of the wind, was left
To bear forsaken the place’s name.

Read the full text of this poem at Bartleby.

If you want in on Literary Safari’s giveaway of the CD of Robert Frost reading his own poetry, which is part of Random House Audio’s “The Voice of the Poet” series, just put your name down in the comments section and we’ll do a random drawing by next Friday, June 13.

To mark Women’s History Month, I’ve been featuring works by desi women poets in a “Poetry Friday” series at Sepia Mutiny all month long. Here’s the last of four installments (1, 2, and 3.)

Songs are poetry, and singer-songwriter Rupa Marya has been on my radar for the past couple of weeks, ever since I found out about her world music band Rupa and the April Fishes (think the Indigo Girls meets traces of Natalie Merchant meets “classic French chanson, Argentinean tango, Gypsy swing, American folk, Latin cumbias, and even hints of Indian ragas”). [It turns out that Abhi wrote about them last year. link]

The group’s debut album “Extraordinary Rendition” has been picked up by Cumbancha, a record label founded by the head of music research and product development at Putomayo World Music, Jacob Edgar. It releases on May 1, and Rupa and her gang are in the middle of a North American tour that includes NYC and the Montreal Jazz Festival.

A musician, songwriter, and (yes!) physician, the American-born daughter of Indian immigrants spent part of her childhood in France. Many of the songs on the band’s new album are in French. From an article in the SF Chronicle:

The years between the World Trade Center attacks in 2001 and the 2004 presidential election changed her outlook on life and prompted [Marya] to alter her sound completely, by writing in French.“What happens if you communicate … in a way that people who don’t speak that language can understand what you’re saying?” Marya says. “Especially when the world was becoming much more afraid of differences. That’s when everything sort of took off into another place.

Her song Une Américaine à Paris, I think, conveys some of her post 9/11 reflections. The lyrics (reprinted with permission of Rupa and the April Fishes) follow, both in the original French and in Rupa’s English translation.

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To mark Women’s History Month, I’ve been featuring works by desi women poets all month long [catch up on past week’s poets: Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Shailja Patel]. Today’s featured work is “Corona, Queens,” by Bushra Rehman, a bi-coastal, Pakistani-American poet whose words sing of place, family, religion, and identity with an honest, insightful, and poignant sensibility.

A few years ago, the Bowery Poetry Club and City Lore asked a bunch of NYC poets to write an epic poem about New York. Bushra was one of them, and of course, she wrote about Corona, Queens, the neighborhood where she lived as a child.

Corona, Queens

Fitzgerald called Corona the valley of ashes
when the Great Gatsby drove past it, but
we didn’t know about any valley of ashes
because by then it had been topped off by our houses,
the kind made from brick this tan color,
no self-respecting brick would be at all.

We knew Corona,
home of World’s Fair relics
where it felt as if some ancient tribe
of white people had lived there long ago.
It was our own Stonehenge,
our own Easter Island sculptures
made from a time when New York City
and all the country
was imagining the world’s future.

Read the rest of this poem and find out why I think it’s a perfect accompaniment to the (currently showing) multimedia exhibit Crossing the Blvd: Strangers, Neighbors, Aliens in a New America over at Sepia Mutiny, where I’m guest blogging this month.

In honor of Women’s History Month, I thought I’d feature South Asian women poets on Poetry Fridays for the remainder of March. Today’s selection is “Shilling Love,” by Kenyan-Indian-American spoken word artist Shailja Patel. Her work “Migritude” premiered last fall in the San Francisco Bay area to packed audiences—it uses her collection of saris, passed down by her mother (another take on Mama’s Saris!), to unfold hidden histories of women’s lives “in the bootprint of Empire, from India to East Africa.”

“Shilling Love” is the first poem from “Migritude” that I came across a couple of years ago, and it has stayed with me since.

Shilling Love
By Shailja Patel

They never said / they loved us

Those words were not / in any language / spoken by my parents I love you honey was the dribbled caramel / of Hollywood movies / Dallas / Dynasty / where hot water gushed / at the touch of gleaming taps / electricity surged / 24 hours a day / through skyscrapers banquets obscene as the Pentagon / were mere backdrops / where emotions had no consequences words / cost nothing meant nothing would never / have to be redeemed

My parents / didn’t speak / that / language

1975 / 15 Kenyan shillings to the British pound / my mother speaks battle

Storms the bastions of Nairobi’s / most exclusive prep schools / shoots our cowering / six-year old bodies like cannonballs / into the all-white classrooms / scales the ramparts of class distinction / around Loreto Convent / where the president / sends his daughter / the foreign diplomats send / their daughters / because my mother’s daughters / will / have world-class educations

Read the rest of this post over at Sepia Mutiny, where I’m guest blogging this month.

I’ve always had a thing for elephants. My first (and favorite) stuffed animal was a gray elephant. In those days, stuffed animals were not very soft or fuzzy. Mine is rough andhttp://www.sepiamutiny.com/sepia/archives/mohan.jpg tough, but he has survived three decades, and continues to thrive (despite his half-fallen off trunk) alongside my collection of elephant kurtis; shell, glass, and metal elephants (including Ganeshas); elephant paintings and silkscreens, elephant magazine holder … yeah, OK, you get the point!

So, today’s poem—which I recently discovered in Billy Collins’ anthology 180 More: Extraordinary Poems for Every Day—is (brace yourselves for the long title) “Aanabhrandhanmar Means ‘Mad About Elephants’” by Aimee Nezhukumatathil (Nez for short).

I like to pair literary and artistic selections the way people pair wine and cheese, so when I read this poem, it seemed to me a perfect accompaniment to Australia-based photojournalist Palani Mohan’s images in his new book, Vanishing Giants: Elephants of Asia.

Aanabhrandhanmar Means ‘Mad About Elephants’
Forget trying to pronounce it. What matters
is that in southern India, thousands are afflicted.
And who wouldn’t be? Children play with them
in courtyards, slap their gray skin with cupfuls
of water, shoo flies with paper pompoms.

Read the rest of this post and the conversation it generated over at Sepia Mutiny where I have a guest stint this month.

Happy Leap Year to you! I’ll pay forward bookish desi’s wish to me: Hope you’re getting to leap into fabulous endeavors today, new and old!

A little haiku today, from a haiku a day, by Gimble:

February’s haste
to usher in an early
March slowed by one day.

And, here is a compedium of trivia, for your leap year reading pleasure:

> Origins of the use of the word leap to describe a year made of 366 days, courtesy of word origins.org :

“The use of leap to denote calendrical shifts like this dates to Old English, c.993 to be more exact. It appears in AElfric’s De Temporibus Anni. AElfric of Eynsham was a Benedictine monk who is probably the chief prose stylist of the late Old English period. De Temporibus Anni is his attempt to provide monks and priests with a text on astronomy and the calendar that they could use in the education of themselves and the laity and in combating superstition and myth. AElfric wrote in reference to the moon (which needs a leap day added to its orbit of the earth about every 19 years):

se dæg is gehâten Saltus lune • þæt is ðæs monan hlyp
(the day is called Saltus lune, that is the leap of the moon)

At the New York Times, Chris Turney, a professor of geography at the University of Exeter, asks the question: “Now that we’re in the 21st century, and time is measured according to oscillations of vaporized atoms, why do we still need something as oddly quaint as leap year?”

BBC News points out that those of us who receive an annual salary are working an extra day without extra pay today. (Should today have been a holiday then?)

And, my favorite: Magnum Photos presents images of great leaps and jumps at Slate’s Today in Pictures. (You can also click on the image above to go there.)

Earlier this month, at Well, the New York Times health blog, Tara Parker-Pope invited readers to “dispense wisdom in seven words,” using 3-2-3 word sequences.The contest was inspired by Michael Pollan’s new book, “In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto,” which has the simple edict “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” (Times Book Review editor Dwight Garner rightly pointed out that this slogan has a “haiku-like resonance.”)

Over 1,000 readers submitted entries to the Well contest and the winners, selected by Michael Pollan, were posted here. (Incidentally, Tara PP’s pick was Emma, a seven and a half year old who wrote: Be nice. Love your mom. And dad. )

Because I was in India, then subsequently recovering from jet lag during this cool contest’s duration, it completely slipped past me. No matter the past deadline, I thought it would be fun to engage in a bit of wordplay, which is always a good stretch of one’s writing muscles.Without further ado, here’s my take on the question: “How much advice can you distill down to seven words?” I didn’t mean for it to be a little poem, but that’s how it turned out, which is just fine since that means I get to post my first original for Poetry Friday …

Take it. Or Leave It. My Two Cents.

Don’t honk. Loud is obnoxious. And pointless.
Walk slowly. Really see things. Beauty abounds.
Spot butterflies. Watch them dance. Stop sulking.
Don’t shout. Throats get sore. Joy buried.
Eat chocolate. Lick your fingers. Make love.
Whisper softly. Hug for long. Fall asleep.
Wake up. Watch the sunrise. Say thanks.

Check out today’s Poetry Friday round up here.

Ever noticed that manhole covers in NYC streets have a “Made in India” stamp? Well, they do. This week, the NYT featured a fascinating article and slideshow (From Ladles of Molten Metal) about the work conditions of foundry workers in India, the very men who make the manhole covers. See “New York Man Hole Covers, Forged Barefoot in India.”

There was a fervent discussion about both over at Sepia Mutiny a few days ago, and it prompted me to remember this lovely poem by Purvi Shah from her book Terrain Tracks (New Rivers Press), a collection that won the 2005 Many Voices Project prize from New Rivers Press, and is a finalist for the 2007 Asian American Writers Workshop Members’ Choice Awards.

Made in India, Immigrant Song #3

(a note from a New York City streetwalker)

Some worker in the sweat

of Madras, some former weaver

from Kashmir, some hand in Ahmadabad‘s dust,

has been pounding iron again.

 

The New York streets swell with feet;

multihued tracks glide over the flat steel

disks which offer entry into the city’s interior

lairs. The writing seeps through our soles

though few fathom the signature, “Made

in India .” These alien

 

metal coins, transported

like my birth, mask

a labyrinth of tunnels

in a city where origin

and destination are confused.

Sometimes I wear the stamp

on myself; sometimes I feel

the wear of a surrounding world erase

the fine etchings. Here the imprint

 

of India is a traveler’s

mutation: the body’s chamber is made

hole, the skin not smooth, circular,

but cloaking a bumpy network

of channels, spirit mobile, expanding.

Copyright © Purvi Shah. Used by permission of the poet. Read more poetry by Purvi Shah here.

These manholes have been a source of much fascination to me for a while. Last year, they inspired a short story I wrote for Kahani magazine, “Made in India.” It began:

On the streets of New York City, there are many cast iron manhole covers that say “MADE IN INDIA.” Whenever I see one, I stand on its giant letters and pretend that I am Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz. I click my heels together and whisper to myself, “There’s no place like India, the home where I was born.” Then I shut my eyes and imagine what would happen if the manhole cover flew off and sucked me in. Would I shoot through the darkness and land in India? Thud! What would I see? [read the full story]

The manhole covers have inspired more than poetry and short stories. In this article from Little India, we learn about artists including Michele Brody who created a line of lighting that transforms the into Mandalas and more!

And, that’s my roundabout poetry celebration of the day. For a full Poetry Friday roundup and a lovely Billy Collins poem, make sure you visit Two Writing Teachers. Have a great weekend. I’ll be back next week!

I first heard Garrison Keiller read this poem a few weeks ago on The Writers Almanac, and I liked it so much that I found myself reading it over and over again.

Bullies, playgrounds, childhood. The three are so often inextricable. Add culture, gender, and identity to the mix, as Aimee Nezhukaumatathil did, and you have this memorable poem.

After Challenging Jennifer Lee to a Fight
I hesitate, because what would my father say? My aunts in India
are swathed in sarees, glass bangles and crimson nails.
Their perfect ropes of hair, oiled and glossy black, never
betray them to the wind or the chase of a chicken

in the courtyard. They’d watch my grandmother
shape bricks of dark halva, wrap each one
in tight plastic they’d chill for days.
Always calm, serene.

At least, that’s how my father
tells it, but I know when pressed,
my aunts would have done the same thing.
Jenny Lee called my younger sister

Shrimp in front of the whole group of Bus Kids—
no way I could let Jenny just swing her pink backpack
all the way home. Once the bus pulled away
from our stop on Landis Lane, I tapped her

on the shoulder and, and-we were a mess
of ribbons and slaps. She was easy to scare
from my nail marks drawing tiny pinpricks
of blood on her arms, her puffy cheeks. I told her

the red dots meant she had rabies, that
she shouldn’t tell anyone because then she’d infect
them and most of all, she better say sorry to my sister,
else I’d push her face into the barrel cacti littering

the sidewalks. My first rage, my first fire. Jenny
sniffled Sorry and I was relieved: I wasn’t sure
I could hit much more and my skinny legs
were spent with dust and sweat. My sister

and I walked home in silence. If we wore sarees,
all the yards and yards of shiny sateen would’ve
unwound from our tiny bodies, too light to drag
in the dust, too proud and taken with wind, like flags.

The poet tells me that this piece stems from a true incident: “My mother is Filipina and my dad is from Kerala [South India] so kids in suburban Phoenix didn’t know what to do with us!”

Credit: From At the Drive-In Volcano (Tupelo Press, 2007). Reprinted with permission of the author.

For a complete round up of Poetry Friday posts, please drop in at Big A little a later today. You’ll be so glad you did!

BOO!! Halloween is less than a week away. Just in time, we have a healthy helping of spooky and spritely things, candy scenes, and of course, a little bit of Edgar Allan Poe.

The Simple and the Ordinary served up “The Raven.” Sylvia, an original poem “Chocolate Covered Ants” by J. Pat Lewis in honor of National Chocolate Day, autumn, and Halloween!

“By the pricking of the thumbs, something wicked this way comes.” Kelly Fineman has a great scene from Shakespeare’s Macbeth with the witches.

You must check out the awesome ghost tree at The Cole Mine, and the original cinquain inspired by it. There’s more Shakespeare here too (“The Three Witches”).

I loved Aileen Fisher’s “The Witch in the Wintry Wood,” courtesy of Becky at Farm School. It’s from a 1936 anthology of Halloween writings.

Crooked House has Michael Rosen’s spooky poem “The Hidebehind.” Rosen is currently the Children’s Laureate in the U.K. She also shares his great ideas for advancing the state of children’s poetry.

Alyssa at The Shady Glade has Halloween song lyrics “Grim, Grinning Ghosts.” She invites us to guess which group they’re from. Anyone, anyone?

Rebecca of Ipsa Dixit offers up “The Utter Zoo Alphabet” by Edward Gorey. Read it side-by-side with “Jabberwocky” at Rosepixie.

Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast has Kenn Nesbitt monster poetry that I guarantee you’ll want to read out loud. (and that made me want to look at my copy of Maurice Sendak’s Mommy!)

Mary Lee (Two Teachers Who Read. A Lot.) has a review of Eve Merriam’s Halloween ABC.

At Susan Writes, read a delightful William Allingham poem about fairies who “live on crispy pancakes of yellow tide-foam. It’ll make you want to flit about!

Calendar Connections

It’s Rudyard Kipling’s 343^rd birthday this weekend (Oct. 28). RM1(SS) (ret) gives us one of Kipling’s poems “Soldier and Sailor Too.” And, Charlotte has “Sing-Song of Old Man Kangaroo,” from Just So Stories.

Michele has some Shakespeare (Henry V), in honor of St Crispin’s Day, yesterday. So does Miss Erin.

Fall is on our minds.

Tricia (Miss Rumphius) was inspired by the leaves that are falling around her, and shared “Gathering Leaves,” as well as a reading list of books about fall.

Suzanne is feeling sad as the leaves are flying. She shared “Leaves” by Elise Brady. (more…)

Update (late Friday) : The roundup is on its way. I’m compiling all the gems!

It’s my honor to be hosting Poetry Friday for the first time. Welcome to Literary Safari. I haven’t been as regular about participating as I would like, BUT I have noticed that I’ve actually started paying much more attention to verse in my everyday life. Most days, I feel like I’m walking around with a poem in my pocket!

I’m baking blueberry muffins on this rainy Friday in New York, and the cold apartment smells so sweet and yummy. So, my poem for the day is “Blueberries,” by Robert Frost:

“You ought to have seen what I saw on my way
To the village, through Mortenson’s pasture to-day:
Blueberries as big as the end of your thumb,
Real sky-blue, and heavy, and ready to drum
In the cavernous pail of the first one to come!
And all ripe together, not some of them green
And some of them ripe! You ought to have seen!”

It’s a long and funny poem in dialogue that begged me to read it out aloud – which is a nice way to start a day, actually. You can read it in its entirety here.

Now, down to business. Please use Mister Linky to submit your poem/url so that I can successfully execute my Poetry Friday roundup duties at the end of the day.

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