In case you missed it, yesterday, October 5, was National Poetry Day in the UK. I”ve been poking around at the various bits of news and note that came out of the day with interest, and find it both amusing and surprising. Perhaps it”s because I”ve been immersed in poetry and its world for most of my life, but when people speak of the “lack of poetry” in everyday life, I find myself scratching my head in puzzlement. I don”t see a lack of it – in fact, there”s an abundance of poetry all around us all the time, and the last dozen years have only brought poetry MORE into the public eye. National Poetry Day in the UK, National Poetry Month in the US, a Poetry Festival awarded an international honor just last week, the National Poetry Slams in the US attracting as many competitors as some major individual sporting events… and that”s just the tip of the iceberg.

I will grant that I live in one of the richer areas for poetry in the U.S. – the little northeast triangle between Boston, Providence and Worcester, Massachusetts – but even granting that, how can poetry be dying when any day of any week, I have at least one venue presenting poetry within easy driving distance? When I can add any one of half dozen “Poem a Day” subscription services to download or email poetry to me every single day of the year? When municipalities are spending money to put poems on the walls of their mass transit systems so that people can be exposed to it? When poets are _complaining_ that poetry is being commercialized by being featured on television programs and in television advertisments?

In the UK, there are grants available to hospitals to bring poets in to work with patients and staff. In the US, poetry is being acknowledged as a healing force at such nationally known institutions as Harvard Medical School and UCLA. Even the web site for the UK”s National Poetry Day declares:

Such a variety of poetry is being written and read these days that we decided to choose a different theme each year to highlight particular poets and styles of poetry.

And yet, the BBC mourned yesterday,

But with National Poetry Day seemingly stuck in quiet church halls and municipal buildings, the advocates of mass market verse have their work cut out.

And yet…

…my chldren – regular, everyday American teens – read poetry, both their own and that of others. When their friends find out that I write poetry and write about poetry, they bring me their journals and ask me to read the poetry that they write. All over the country, venues that host adult poetry readings are hosting youth poetry slams and poetry readings – and most have high attendance. Spoken word, written word, slam, performance, journals, subway walls, Def Poetry Jam – they”re finding their way to poetry in enormous numbers. My own favorite voices in the world of poetry – both writing it and writing about it – sell cars, practice law, write for newspapers, raise children, work as computer programmers – and this is no different than it ever was. In every generation, its poets have held down other jobs to make their living – while they lived their lives in poetry. In every generation, their have been voices decrying the lack of poetry, the death of the literate world and the coming of the Visigoths. I agree wholeheartedly with John Burnside, chair of the committee that awards the prestigious Forward Poetry Prize, when he says,

“Poetry doesn”t have to become relevant, it is relevant,” insists Burnside. “We turn to it in tough situations, when we are in moving situations and in tender situations.

“We bring it out when we marry, bury and christen, it”s part of our lives – it”s just that we forget it sometimes.”

I believe that we are at the beginning of a period of remembering it. And I celebrate that fact every day.

I told you about this a few months back – the Brit company that was going to offer downloads of poetry for $.95 each. Well, it”s here and it”s happening today. Not only is it happening today, but they”ve caused enough of a splash to make the front page of Yahoo and get a short news story there. iPoems is modeled on iTunes, and will let people download audio poems to their iPods for just under a buck apiece. The site was designed by the British company 57productions, and features over 1000 selections of poetry to download. They officially launch this morning and are offering free one month subscriptions to the site. Currently, you can go directly to the index of poetry and listen to streaming poetry to your heart”s content. I did – and discovered the absolute, pure delight of John Hegley, whose brother-in-law is “ten stone in his pajamas and that”s ten stone overweight”, and the incredibly thought-provoking intimacy of Michael Rosen”s “It didn”t seem odd to be eleven“, a reminiscence of visiting post-war Berlin just 12 years after the end of the war. “Twelve years,” he says. “I can smell that far back now.”

So – it may or may not be a financial success. I hope it is. I hope that people like me discover new artists there, new wordsmiths with whom to fall in love, new poets to emulate and read and delight in. I hope that even if it isn”t, that 57productions deems it worthy to keep going in the hopes that we really are moving toward a time when poets speak as loudly as movie makers and pop music artists. We can cross our fingers, at least. Poetry is a worthy art – and it deserves to be easily and widely heard. Check out iPoems – and prod them to include more artists and more poets!

Technorati Tags: ipoems, itunes, ipod poems

Wunst they wuz a little boy wouldn”t say his prayers,–
An” when he went to bed at night, away up-stairs,
His Mammy heerd him holler, an” his Daddy heerd him bawl,
An” when they turn”t the kivvers down, he wuzn”t there at all!
An” they seeked him in the rafter-room, an” cubby-hole, an” press,
An” seeked him up the chimbly-flue, an” ever”-wheres, I guess;
But all they ever found wuz thist his pants an” roundabout:–
An” the Gobble-uns “ll git you
Ef you
Don”t
Watch
Out!
(James Whitcomb Riley, at PoetryArchive)

The perennial favorite by James Whitcomb Riley will be popping up in classrooms all around the U.S. any time now. It was always a mark of autumn chills and shivers when the English teacher stood up at the front of the room and intoned, “And the gobble-uns “ll git you ef you don”t… watch… out!” – a sign that Halloween was creeping nearer, with the spooky, delightful thrills of a night of haunts and howls.

The beginning of October is a wonderfully appropriate time for Indiana University-Purdue University to announce that the collected letters, photos and papers of poet James Whitcomb Riley will soon be available to net surfers. The Hancock County Public Library in Riley”s hometown of Greenfield, Indiana, received an $8,700 grant to digitize the collected works and archives from their collection of Riley artifacts. The library, with the aid of Indiana University-Purdue University, plans to scan 100 letters to and from the poet, as well as posters and handbills advertising his appearances, 200 photographs, handwritten poems and newspaper accounts. Riley, who died in 1916, would have appreciated the digitizing, says a Riley biographer. He would have found a way to publicize his poetry, says Elizabeth Van Allen. He was good at that.

He was indeed – and had, apparently, a rather wonderful sense of humor as shown in this story from the James Whitcomb Riley web site maintained by author Thomas E. Q. Williams. It details how Riley pulled off one of the most famous poetry hoaxes of the century.

The function of art in general and of poetry in particular has not been or is to solve the fundamental problems of men and women. Its function is to remind us, from an ever new perspective, the existence of these problems. And our potential to solve them. Poetry and art are there to widen our conscience, and to spur it on an emancipating direction.

On Thursday, the Right Livelihood Award Foundation announced the 2006 recipients of the Right Livelihood Award. Among the three are a U.S. man who exposed corruption in government, an Indian woman who has dedicated her life to securing equal rights for other women, and a poetry festival that is an inspiration to the entire world. The three recipients of the RLA for 2006 are Daniel Ellsberg of the United States of America, Ruth Manorama of India and The International Poetry Festival of Medellin. The Foundation Right Livelihood, headquartered in Sweden, annually makes an award to those who offer an outstanding vision and work on behalf of our planet and our people. Established in 1980, the $230,000 (approx) award has become widely known as the Alternative Nobel.

The Right Livelihood Award is about changing the world. It is about giving a little more scope and influence to people who have a vision and a commitment to better futures for all. And it is about shifting the balance in their favour against the Goliaths who will otherwise continue destroying the world for power or profit.
-RLA Aims and Objectives.

Historically, the RLA has been awarded to individuals and organizations whose work promotes peace, sound ecological policies and practices, social justice and human rights for all. In making the award to the Medellin poetry festival, the award”s granters stated that it is “…for showing how creativity, beauty, free expression and community can flourish amongst and overcome even deeply entrenched fear and violence.”

The Medellin Poetry Festival began in 1991 as a protest against political violence and hatred. It was, said the festival”s initiator, an attempt “to create through poetry an atmosphere that without ignoring the spiral of death and the inertial strength of hate could put a little light in this sombre scene.” The first Festival was organized by a group of 13 people. In the fifteen years since its inception, the “little light” has grown to a shining beacon with 200,000 people in attendance to hear and participate in 80 to 100 readings over the course of ten days.

The award will be presented in a ceremony to take place in Stockholm on December 8, the day before the presentation of the Nobel Peace Prizes.

What is the responsibility of the poet to truth? That may seem an odd question, but it”s one that poets sometimes struggle with, especially when they write poetry using the “I” voice. A story reported by Diantha Parker on NPR today brings up the question in a rather haunting way.

In 1993, Vice President Al Gore read a poem by a woman named Dana Shuster at the dedication of the Vietnam Women”s War Memorial. The poem, Hello David, was read by Laura Palmer, author of Shrapnel in the Heart, on NPR”s morning radio show when the book was published. The poem is simple – a few heartfelt lines that begin, “Hello, David. My name is Dusty. I”ll be your night nurse.” Says Palmer in a recent interview with NPR, “Her poetry helped people appreciate the sacrifice that women made in Vietnam.” The daughter of a man killed in Vietnam, Karen Spears Zachariah, says that the poetry has an emotional truth that still moves her, even now after learning that the poet, Dana Shuster, invented her tours of duty in Vietnam.

On the front page of the Vietnam Women”s Memorial Foundation, the bright red letters of the word Bulletin call attention to the legend, War Poet Dusty not a veteran. War poet Dusty, aka Dana Shuster, had been interviewed for Moran”s book as a war nurse who served two tours of duty in Vietnam. The book “Visions of War, Dreams of Peace“, a collection of poetry by women Vietnam veterans, contained a full dozen poems written by either Dusty or Dana Shuster. “What do you pack/to take to a war?” Shuster asks in the opening poem of the book. Other poems detail the emotional havoc of holding the hands of dying soldiers, of being entrusted to pass last messages, of being over and over and over, in Shuster”s words, “The last person who will love you.”

But over the years since the dedication of the Women”s Veteran”s Memorial, people were asking questions. No one could remember serving with Dusty, and eventually, author Palmer received a call asking if she was sure that Shuster had actually ever been to Vietnam. Pressed, Shuster admitted to Palmer that she had no way to corroborate her stories. For whatever reasons she might have, it appears that poet Dana Shuster invented her years of service, imagined and gave voice to a war nurse named Dusty who wrote poems about something the poet never experienced.

There is certainly a betrayal here – but the betrayal is not in the writing of the poems. The use of a poetic voice is a long-standing tradition, one of the tools of poetry used by most poets at one time or another. The betrayal is in assuming that persona as truth, as a part of the poet”s own history, as if the words don”t have emotional truth behind them. Shuster”s poems ring with that emotional truth, despite the fact that she never lived the life from which they were born.

Poets are not journalists. We are not bound to relate events as truthfully as possible. Rather, we are encouraged to take “poetic license” with facts to make them more real, more emotional, more telling. In this case, though, the poet took on the persona of her poems, and the end result is hurt and betrayal. One has to wonder if the poems would have been any less effective had Shuster presented them simply as a heartfelt tribute to women who served side by side with men in Vietnam.

On a side note, if you want to spend half an hour in tears, visit the Vietnam Women”s Memorial Foundation web site and read the poems of tribute there.

Technorati Tags: poetry, poems, Vietnam Women”s Veterans Memorial, Dana Shuster, Dusty, veterans poems