Eating in Public

Eating in Public
Originally uploaded by shinyu32.

Susan Schultz from Tinfish recently sent me a copy of this great little pamphlet book from Nomoola. Eating in Public is part performance art part community activism. Gaye Chan, who designs books for Tinfish, and a collaborator decided to see what would happen when they planted several papaya seedlings on public land, in the tradition of the Diggers. They put up a sign advertising their free papayas and offering them to who ever should want them. Joggers tramped several of the seedlings, ignoring the signs, but eventually, a handful of plants matured. In the mean time, Chan and her friend would receive handwritten notes from the representative of the owner of the land, saying that the papaya plants needed to be moved or they would be removed by the owner. Eventually, the papaya seedlings were cut down. The entire experiment inspired Gaye Chan to open a Freebay store, much in the spirit of Freecycle, where free plants, free building materials, and free labor have been made available. Participate in the gift economy! Pass on what you no longer need or use to someone who really is in need.

greenhouse effect

           after Carsten Höller

At the 54th Carnegie International, Carsten Höller installed his Solandra Greenhouse. Museum visitors entered a glass-walled structure filled with Solandra Maxima (golden chalice vine), a South American plant that exudes pheromones capable of inducing the hallucinatory effects of falling in love.

five-lobed corolla
blooms deepen
to gold with age

a billet-doux
inscribed on hand-pulled paper
the perfume of golden chalice

a car parked in sunlight
radiance of two lovers

a vine trained
to grow upwards
can be trapped

take the form
of a box-like hedge,
left untended

a clumped mass

smothering
the native vegetation

the heart’s desire
sustained inside

transparent walls

what makes the earth
suitable for life

cultivate enough
to feed a starving nation

We Japanese

At about 10:45 last night, I won the bid for this lovely item on e-bay.



I should say that I am a total neophyte to online auctions. In the days leading up to the auction's close, I read about sniping and how to increase your odds of winning. There were three different auctions going on for this book, being bid on by the same buyers. I lost the first auction on the 1946 edition of this book, which also included an author's signature and a photo of the author. All the action happened in the last 15 seconds, and I was surprised in reviewing the bidding history to see a third buyer jump in from out of nowhere to increase the bidding. So I got smart on Auction No. 2 and set a maximum bid and then waited and watched with heart palpitations and the constant refreshing of pages. Didn't get sniped. Kort says it's not really winning if you are competing to be able to spend your own money. Perhaps more akin to gambling. Somewhere, I do feel that's true.



So what exactly did I purchase? We Japanese was a book written and made in Japan by multiple authors who were basically commissioned by the Fujiya Hotel to create a book that could introduce Japanese customs, cultures and rituals to Westerners. It is chock full of illustrations, hand-bound in fabric covers, and a beautiful example of the book arts. It's a very interesting piece of visual culture that will be great for anthropological research.

Japan Festival

Yesterday we went here:




The Fort Worth Botanical Garden hosts a Japanese festival every fall in their Japanese gardens. They invite taiko drummers, haiku poets, dancers, a local bonsai club, ikebana practitioners and more to their annual culture fest. Because we have a sweet tooth and a love for pretty things at the Makura No Soshi, here are some pictures of imported Japanese sweets.



Wasanbon sweets made from pressed sugar, individually wrapped.



Sweets made from agar agar, a jelly like-substance that is not overly sweet. About the consistency of a New England jelly fruit slice.



Yokan embedded with chestnut and various goodies.

A Pantry Ballet for Jacques Offenbach

A Pantry Ballet for Jacques Offenbach
Originally uploaded by shinyu32.

I've decided to write about Joseph Cornell's box piece "A Pantry Ballet for Jacques Offenbach" for my commission for the Dallas Museum of Art. Listening now to Offenbach's opera Tales of Hoffman, a tale of a poet. Offenbach was known for writing light operas and for the Barcarolle (boat song) that appears in Hoffman. His opera Orpheus in the Underworld includes a legendary Can Can.

There is a poetry-writing exercise out there that proposes to take the structure of a poem from a table of contents. The idea always seemed to be a bit strange or artificial to me. Today I opened up Italo Calvino's novel If on a winter's night a traveler. The way that the TOC is laid out unfold in a very interesting and poetic way:

CONTENTS

1
If on a winter's night a traveler
2
Outside the town of Malbork
3
Leaning from the steep slope
4
Without fear of wind or vertigo
5
Looks down in the gathering shadow
6
In a network of lines that enlace
7
In a network of lines that intersect
8
On the carpet of leaves illuminated by the moon
9
Around an empty grave
10
What story down there awaits its end?

Congratulations, Sherwin!

Anchee Min

Anchee Min has been in town for the last two days giving talks and workshops for the Highland Park Literary Festival. She came thru last year for the Museum, but this was my first opportunity to really get more familiar with her work and her life. She grew up serving in Mao's Red Guard and was sent to a labor camp at 19 at the height of the Cultural Revolution. When she was in her 20s, she was discovered by a film crew working for Madame Mao who was looking for the ideal proletarian woman. They whisked her away to a Shanghai film studio and cast her in a propaganda film which would never be made. Eventually, Anchee Min was denounced and had to take minor jobs at the studio when her friend, the actress Joan Chen, wrote to her from the U.S. and suggested she move to America. Knowing no English at all, Anchee Min memorized basic English conversations and interviewed at the consulate where they approved her passport. She was accepted for school at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (my alma mater) and received her BFA and MFA degrees there. She was a gallery attendant during the legendary exhibition of Dread Scott. Anchee Min is an incredible and dynamic speaker - my dad would hate and make fun of her for singing Maoist propaganda songs on stage and in American classrooms, but these are all parts of her experience and she is educating the American people on a whole lost generation.

Poetry in Motion Dallas will be using "Stones" excerpted from my poem "Yes Yoko Ono" for their light rail and bus posters for the DART transit system which will encompass several hundred placards in all. Hopefully to be designed and installed by January. Thank you Richland College and Martha Heimberg for selecting this work!

Love Hotels update

There are about 25 copies of The Love Hotel Poems remaining. After that, there will be no more. Order them while they're still available from Press Lorentz.

Noon 4

NOON 4 is now available, in case you would like to buy a copy (the edition limited to 200 copies), mention it to friends who might be interested or request a sample or review copy. Contributors are Bob Heman, Andrea Strudensky and Geoffrey Hlibchuk, Saito Sanki, Hirahata Seito, Watanabe Hakusen, Sugimura Seirinshi (trans. Richard Gilbert and Ito Yuki), Marlene Mountain, Jeff Harrison, Duane Locke, Guy Simser, John Levy, Cralan Kelder, Jonathan Greene, Graham High, David Giannini, Michael McClintock, Victor Ortiz, Addie Tsai, Elizabeth Robinson, Sheila E. Murphy, Theodore Worozbyt, Boyer Rickel, Alexander Jorgensen, Christophe Casamassima, Kit Kennedy, Grant Lee Phillips, Rick Roth, Shin Yu Pai, Tom Gilroy, Jim McKay, Patrick So, Allison Roth, Joan Brossa (trans. Philip Terry), Rob mMclennan, John Martone, Scott Metz, John Parsons, Giles Goodland, and Leslie McGrath.

Single issue: ¥1500 / US$14 / GBP 7.50, airmail p & p included. Please make British bank cheques or international postal money orders in U.S. or Japanese currency payable to Philip Rowland. IRCs and U.S. bills also acceptable.

Thanks for your support and best wishes,

Philip Rowland, ed.
Noon: Journal of the Short Poem
Minami Motomachi 4-49-506
Shinjuku-ku
Tokyo 160-0012
Japan

Works on Paper

Haden the cat, the unofficial mascot of Convivio Bookworks, likes napping on my poems. Here he is snoozing on "An Abbreviated History on the Way of Tea." More printing is in progress this week and the publishers hope to have the book available in November for the press's annual open house.

The Gathering at the Orchid Pavilion (2004)

cool and dark as
                   Sensei Nakashima’s home
                         each Monday night
                   the gakusei wear
wool sweaters, stockings
                   beneath ankle-length
                         skirts gathered neatly
                   under knees
kneeling in tea practice

the cold that penetrates this room
                         penetrates the bones
                         penetrates still
                                                         the mind

columns you pass through
tall as stalks in
a bamboo forest

a tickle in the throat
or the heart stirring awake

the white-haired docent
                   instructs her group of students,
                         let’s walk out silently

Locus Point

Some how I missed the launch of the new poetry e-zine Locus Point. The featured cities of the moment are Boston, Seattle and St. Louis. I have never heard of a single one of the Boston poets highlighted in this issue, except for Peter Jay Shippy who teaches at Emerson and is already quite established. I wonder if these poets are new to Boston or there during the whole time I lived there.

Chicago Calling: A 24-Hour Festival

This week, one of my SAIC classmates, Jennifer Karmin, is participating in this festival. She'll be incorporating my poem "Meditation on Frank O'Hara" into her "Walking Poem" performance piece. Highlights and details here. Other classmates in the fest include Amina Cain, Alice George and Cecilia Pinto!

Fast Forward: Contemporary Collections for the Dallas Museum of Art

I will be working on a new commission for the Dallas Museum of Art for their upcoming show Fast Forward: Contemporary Collections for the Dallas Museum of Art which will showcase the new additions to the Museum's contemporary collections donated by three major Dallas families - the Rachofskys, the Roses, and the Hoffmans. The exhibition will be on display from February 11–May 20, 2007. Just received the object list which includes works by Marden, Richter, Polke, Beuys, Gonzales-Torres, Messager, Antoni, Judd, and other contemporary superstars. Not sure yet what I'll be writing about, but I've got until December.

Hotel Palomar and exhale grand opening

Hotel Palomar
Originally uploaded by shinyu32.

The Hotel Palomar which houses the exhale spa in Dallas had its grand opening last night. The scene was truly Zoolander meets Paper City society pages. I got there around 8 p.m. with my friend Nicole and as we approached the building we could see acrobats outfitted in red costumes scaling the wall of the exterior and repelling off of the building. The spa offered free treatments and classes for three hours last night and next door at the Palomar, a fashion show took place in the main ballroom. The renovated space is gorgeous - the hoteliers had a decent display on the walls of minimalist painting and some black and white photographs which looked very Keith Cartesque, though the print quality was terrible - dust spots everywhere. Downstairs, the hotel offers the "214" bar/restaurant - Dallas' zip code. We think we saw Andrew Firestone of The Bachelor making the rounds of pretty girls at tables. Upstairs at the outdoor pool, my brother-in-law reports seeing guests having catwalk/walk-off competitions by the infinity edge pool. Across from the pool, a projection of Breakfast at Tiffany's played silently, while back on the rooftop terrace a string sestet with conductor offered the accompanying music. Trendy "bed" couches surrounded one side of the pool, with the couches being set off in an area where the striped curtains could be let down and drawn for privacy - very Middle Eastern tent in the desert effect I thought. Dallas has never seen anything like it.

I've had a bad head cold and felt very close-mouthed since returning from the East Coast. Something has to change soon.

I was liberated of my job at The Dallas Morning News three days before I left for Dodge in September. Overspending in the department, buyouts and layoffs upstairs, and the freelancers are first to go. This was after the departmental head made cuts to her "liquids budget" and monthly "birthday bashes." I think my co-workers started sweating it when the coffee budget was slashed and there was no longer any half-and-half available. And we went thru a two- or three-day period where there was no water for workers except for what runs thru the taps, which is rumored to be laced with gasoline. Since my last day, I've received weekly phone calls from The Dallas Morning News subscription department asking if I'd like to become a subscriber. Dumbasses.

But in a profound way, I do feel liberated from the inaneness of that environment. The build-up of inks and toxins in the flooring beneath the basement where the advertising department resides, and where once the printing took place. The "Office Space" atmosphere of too many people jabbering on the phone in cubes to children, potential cyber-spouses, office pool betting, daily sexual harassment usually involving bad dick references, and bad humor directed towards third world countries and the disabled. The co-workers hedging bets on who's a "plant" and whose most likely to go postal. The slow mental and emotional death of co-workers and the death of the American newspaper. The compulsive reading of the Frontburner blog and the buyout blog by DMN staff, looking for hints of where the axe is to fall next. Retool those resumes!

I was an easy target to be let go of - young enough to be able to find another job, no children, no mortgage.

So to the Dallas Morning News, I say thank you for making my decisions easier and for this extra time to devote to the writing life.

In the same vein, farewell graduate school. I was accepted into 1 of the 14 spots in the graduate anthropology program at Goldsmiths College in London. I can't say whether it's typical of the British or their educational systems, but my application was handled administratively by three people (none of them in admissions), two of whom left the college without notifying me of who would be taking over my application. The second handler lost my letters of reference. I received a total of 4 letters from the college, 3 acceptances, and 1 rejection. One after the other. There is no notion of "customer service" and if that is indeed the case, I know for certain intuitively that I would be miserable in an environment where my contribution to the academic community means yes, you're welcome, but give us first your tuition dollars and no we won't call you, but you can call us.

Yoga teacher training starts in a month. We're thinking now about moving to Seattle. State law mandates insurance claims pay for acupuncture. I look at the proliferation of jobs in the Pacific NW related to the environment, sustainability, community, and the choice seems clear. Get out of Texas.

My new poetry book which is in the final stages of being designed is now available pre-order at the Ahadada website. Check out the press' new offerings from Jerome Rothenberg and Jim Daniels.

Seven years ago, I had a teacher in Chicago who felt strongly that I should write a poem about perfect pitch in Chinese-language speakers based on an article she had read in the New York Times. I printed out that article and have carried it around from apartment to apartment in my idea file, thinking that someday I might write about it, because she said it was a good idea and that she was "throwing me a bone" and that I should quite literally, listen. Today, I pulled out my idea file and reread an article about Princess Sayako and later, came across that old NY Times piece. While it's an interesting notion, my pitch is good, but not perfect, I don't speak Mandarin and I don't plan on teaching any future babies Mandarin to preserve their perfect pitch. Old ideas that no longer fit or engage.

*Norinomiya

The Emperor gave
this advice to
his departing daughter

polish virtue

when at the age of 36,
Princess Sayako left the royal
court to claim a place
among the unwashed masses
surrendering her name
her title, a royal allowance
to become simply

Mrs. Kuroda,
taxpayer, dutiful daughter-in-law
occasional ornithologist.

My mother Noriko
married outside of her caste
the youngest descendent
of immigrant tenant farmers
Renounced her society to travel
to a far country where
she learned
to drive, handle
money, write checks,
her offspring spelling
out the numbers
of a foreign tongue.

Sayako learned
to bank
to cook
to clean
to shop
to park the car
to pay the bills.

At the age of 62,
my mother still dreams
a princess’ life-
time spent sleeping
late, watching soap
operas, pruning fruit trees
feeding bread to koi
skimming the net
over lotus pond,
polishing an image
trapped in a tangled
mirror of unanchored roots
and overgrown reeds.


* the informal name of the former Princess of Japan

Ever wonder what the process is of the Academy of American poets in choosing poets for their online poetry encyclopedia?

Additions to our poet pages are based on committee decisions by our staff, often with input from our chancellors. Because our goal is to create an online encyclopedia of poets, we regularly add new authors to the site. However, due to limitations in funding and staff time, the number of poets we plan to add always outstrips the number we are actually able to add. There are many fine and deserving poets that are not yet included on our site. While we have over 500 poets on our site, our "to do" list includes over one hundred poets, many of whom won awards from the Academy of American Poets, or participated in the Academy's programs, dating back to 1934.

The poets featured on our site are selected according to three primary
criteria:

1. To create a representative selection illustrating the history of poetry
in America.

2. To provide background information in support of the Academy's other
programs.

3. To provide resources on those poets who are most often researched online and taught in classrooms--as determined based on requests from our site's visitors, poetry-related surveys, and statistics garnered through analysis of search patterns and traffic on our website.

* * * * * * * *
Robin Beth Schaer | Chief Online Editor
The Academy of American Poets
584 Broadway #604 | NYC NY 10012

On teaching

While I was in New York, this past week, I took a Core Fusion class at the exhale spa at Central Park South, a few doors down from Trump Towers. I've been now to several classes, taught by three different teachers and it's been interesting to enter into these classes as both participant and observer. Thinking back to grad school now, I wish that I had been as attuned to how my teachers taught as much as what they were teaching. I don't know why teacher observation isn't a part of everyone's training who wants to go into teaching.

I see nuances in the way in which each of the core fusion teachers approaches a set of leg-lift exercises which can alternatively be done at the bar, on the mat on all fours, or lying on one's stomach (probably the hardest to get right). Though they are all meant to work the same set of muscles, self-correcting and getting the form right seems to be the easiest from a standing position at the bar. The teacher in NY was very good about correcting form, and also incorporating squeezable rubber balls into the workout to better target lower-body muscles. But she also encouraged a full range of motion on the plies, down to the floor, and for those with a knee injury (i.e. me), that would only exacerbate the tension already in my knee. Whereas the Dallas teacher emphasized very short movements and a small range of motion which is also effective.

Noticing all of these subleties and how things feel in the body, I'm excited to move forward with yoga teacher training next month and to better fine tune what works for me.

Musicians I would love to see in a future Dodge Fest dream lineup:

Leonard Cohen
Damien and Naomi
Sonic Youth
The Scholars
Girls Against Boys
Steven Taylor
Patti Smith

The Dodge Poetry Festival

Gerald Stern, Anne Waldman and Taslima Nasreen spoke on a panel on "the poet and the community." Taslima was exiled from her home country of Bengal for writing feminist poems which caused women to resist the patriarchy when realizing their god-given rights. She became a threat to the state and was threatened with hanging. She now lives in Calcutta. Gerald Stern said, "Well at least poetry is read in your country and you're not ignored."


Ko Un is a former Buddhist monk and an activist. He went on silent retreat for 10 years, during which time he did not write a single poem. His books are becoming more widely known in the U.S. - they include Three-way Tavern and Flowers of a Moment from Boa Editions.


This was a panel on the notion of silence in poetry with the international poets in attendance at the fest.


Elizabeth Alexander and Terrance Hayes spoke on their experience of Cave Canem - the retreat for African-American poets founded by Toi Derricotte and Cornelius Eady. A woman in the audience questioned the "eliteness" of the organization, asking if everyone who is accepted has a M.A. or MFA degree. Terrance countered by saying that the retreat has taken students from age 19 to a woman in her 90s. They'd even accepted someone who had been in jail for 7 years. Did that person get a M.A. during that time in jail, the same woman asked.


Matthea Harvey read delightful and unusual poems about a baby in a washing machine and hidden beauty - i.e. cakes with icing on the inside and petticoats on top of skirts. She was very nice. Her husband Rob works for CLMP in NYC.


Brian Turner is the poet of the moment. He wrote Here, Bulletwhich was published by Alice James Books which effectively exploded his career. The poems are of the landscape of war. He is softspoken, kind and full of humanity.


Ekiwah Adler-Belendez was the youngest poet to ever grace the mainstage at 19 years old. He writes surreal and emotionally evocative poems that awaken the heart - poems that are far advanced for his age and experience. He was born with cerebral palsy and a kind of scoliosis which has kept him in a wheelchair for much of his life. In this photo, Ekiwah had just read his last poem, accompanied by a drummer and vocalist Lori Cotler. As Lori closed down the song, Ekiwah began to make very slow and purposeful hand gestures. I just about burst into tears when I realized that he was dancing.