Big Poetry News and Best Music of the Year

I am psyched! I applied to attend the Palm Beach Poetry Festival this coming January in Delray Beach, Florida, a great annual conference that features some of the country's premier poets who run intensive workshops throughout the week, as well as special events, panel discussions and readings. I just found out the other day that I've been accepted into the conference, and I will be workshopping with one of my favorite poets, Jane Hirshfield. Also leading workshops there will be Thomas Lux, Heather McHugh, C.D. Wright, Alan Shapiro, Stuart Dischell, Ellen Bryant Voigt, and Vijay Shesadri. There will also be featured readers like Robert Pinsky and performance poet Taylor Mali. I'll be staying and hanging out with my wife's relatives there, too. It should be a great week!

I've been doing Robert Brewer's "Poem-a-Day Chapbook Challenge" again this year - a poem a day throughout the month of November, with the intent to create a chapbook manuscript at the end. I don't know if I have a unified chapbook theme at this point, but at least I'll have a few good poems coming out of it. I'm almost two days behind at this point, though, as I haven't written a poem yesterday or today so far. I feel like a slacker for not writing a poem in two days - how about that?

I was featured poet at Poetry in the Round at Barnes and Noble last Monday. It was a small audience, and my friend Kelly Fineman stepped in for regular host Barney Oldfield, who was under the weather. The highlight of the evening for me, however, was my friend Bill, who attended and read a poem he had written about his experience with cancer treatment in the last year. He said he hadn't written poetry in decades until he was inspired by another cancer survivor who attended one of these readings last year. I think it may be the first time he ever read one of his poems in public, and he did fine.

We also had a very successful reading in our Quick and Dirty Poets series, featuring Teresa Leo, last night. The little coffee shop where we meet, The Daily Grind, was standing room only, and the place was full of great poetry by Teresa and others

Music: I submitted my final lists of best 10 albums and songs of 2010 to WXPN this week, and I'm looking forward to their countdown at the end of the year. I have to say though, that this was a rich year for music, and cutting my lists down to a top 10 was a real chore, but here are my choices:

Top Ten Albums:

1. Arcade Fire – The Suburbs
2. The Hold Steady – Heaven is Whenever
3. The National – High Violet
4. Beach House – Teen Dream
5. Frightened Rabbit – The Winter of Mixed Drinks
6. Bettye LaVette – Interpretations: The British Rock Songbook
7. Drive-By Truckers – The Big To-Do
8. Black Keys – Brothers
9. Sufjan Stevens – The Age of Adz and All Delighted People EP
10. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers - Mojo

Honorable Mentions:
Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings: I Learned the Hard Way
Josh Ritter - So Runs the World Away
Alejandro Escovedo - Street Songs of Love
Yeasayer - Odd Blood
Spoon - Transference
The New Pornographers - Together
Bruce Springsteen - The Promise
Jimi Hendrix - Valleys of Neptune
Herbie Hancock - The Imagine Project
Ray La Montagne - God Willin' and the Creek Don't Rise
Natalie Merchant - Leave Your Sleep
Field Music - Field Music (Measure)
Vampire Weekend - Contra


Top Ten songs:

1. I Should Have Known It – Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
2. Measure – Field Music
3. Working This Job – Drive-by Truckers
4. Anchor – Alejandro Escovedo
5. Bloodbuzz Ohio – The National
6. Sprawl II – Arcade Fire
7. I Walked – Sufjan Stevens
8. Too Afraid to Love You – The Black Keys
9. Haul Me Up – Richard Thompson
10. Burn It Down – Los Lobos

Honorable Mention:
Laredo - Band of Horses
Zebra - Beach House
Cousins - Vampire Weekend
American Slang - The Gaslight Anthem
Repo Man - Ray LaMontagne
The Mystery Zone - Spoon
Swim Until You Can't See Land - Frightened Rabbit
Angel Dance - Robert Plant
Your Hands (Together) - New Pornographers
The Weekenders - The Hold Steady

Poem of the Month:

Here's one of the two poems published in the current issue of the online journal Tilt-a-Whirl:

Poe Boy Blues


Well, I woke up this mornin’,
there was a raven in my bed.
I woke up this mornin’,
there was a raven in my bed.
If I didn’t know better,
I’d swear that I was dead.

When I went downstairs,
I heard a thumpin’ under the floor.
Yeah, when I went downstairs,
I swear I heard thumpin’ in the floor.
It sounded like a beatin’ heart,
so I ran right out the door.

I’m pinin’ for my Annie,
I’m pinin’ for Annabelle Lee,
Yeah, I’m pinin’ for little Annie,
and pinin’ for sweet Annabelle Lee.
I’m a morbid Victorian lover,
wallowin’ in my misery.

Well, I got them Poe Boy Blues,
my face’s a perpetual frown,
Yes, I got the Poe Boy Blues,
my face’s a perpetual frown.
I ain’t felt so sad and lonely
since that Usher house fell down.

If the booze and drugs don’t get me,
It’ll be a broken heart for sure.
Yeah, if them booze and drugs don’t get me,
That ol’ broken heart will for sure.
I’m a Poe boy, baby,
and I’ll be happy Nevermore.

Mad Poets, Whale Sounds, Baseball Letdown, Trivia, and the National Book Award

I can't believe that October is almost over! This autumn has flown by, helped along by a wedding, our international student, a yard sale, a handful of poetry readings, a 9th grader who's already involved in the band, orchestra and school play; and an exciting but ultimately disappointing baseball season. Seems like I have a lot to talk about this time:

Poetry: The reading at Big Blue Marble in Philly last month went well - even though I got my dates mixed up and showed up a day early! A small but appreciate group attended, and I ended up selling two chapbooks, but I spent all my proceeds at the supermarket on the way home. (Who says poetry doesn’t bring home the bacon?)

Last week we had our Quick and Dirty Poets reading at Daily Grind in Mt. Holly, featuring Tony Gruenwald, a great New Jersey poet and co-editor of Edison Literary Review. I also read as a contributor to the new issue of Mad Poets Review – their annual book party, at the Delaware County Science Museum, is always a fun event, with lots of excellent local poets and goodies too. This new issue almost didn’t get off the ground due to loss of funding, but hats off to Eileen D’Angelo and company for persevering and getting another fine issue of MPR out to the world!
I’ll be reading later this week at Croft Farm in Cherry Hill, then on November 15 at Barnes and Noble in Marlton, and finally on December 12 in South Brunswick. (I’ll get paid for that one!)
Publication-wise, the only news since last time is that my poem, “Taking It All Back”, is featured on Nic Sebastian’s website Whale Sound. Nic has a lovely British-accented speaking voice, and she did a fine job on my poem.

Although returning to Peter Murphy’s Cape May festival again this winter was very tempting, I decided to apply instead for the Palm Beach Poetry Festival this coming January. It’s a week-long conference in Delray Beach, Florida, featuring some poetic heavy hitters like Robert Pinsky, Jane Hirshfield, Dean Young, Thomas Lux, Heather McHugh, and C.D.Wright. I’m applying for a workshop, with Hirshfield and Young as my first and second choices respectively. I won’t know till mid-November if I’m accepted, but if I go I’ll be able to stay with my wife’s relatives who live right in Delray Beach.

In other poetry news, I was very happy to hear that three of the five nominees for this year’s National Book Award in poetry are poets I’ve met: Terrance Hayes and James Richardson, whose workshops I have taken, and Kathleen Graber, who has been involved (along with Richardson) in the Cape May festival, and whom we Quick and Dirty Poets featured at one of our readings a few years ago. Congratulations, all!

Baseball: Woe is me – my Phillies didn’t make it to the World Series this year. The Giants beat them in six games to take the NL pennant and go on to play the Texas Rangers. I was super-bummed till the next day, then I started to wax philosophical. The Phillies had another great year, winning more games than any other team in baseball, despite being decimated by injuries most of the season. The starting pitching has never been better, with the lineup of Halladay, Oswalt and Hamels. Halladay pitched a perfect game (the 20th in MLB history and only the second Phillie pitcher to do it) and then pitched a no-hitter in Game 1 of the divisional playoffs (only the second postseason no-hitter in history and only about the fifth time a pitcher has thrown two no-hitters in one season). He should be a shoo-in for the Cy Young Award – the Giant’s Tim Lincecum is his only competition. The downside is that offensively, the Phillies were streaky at best. They rode an incredible hot streak from September into the playoffs, but then had trouble doing anything with the bat. Even when they swept the Reds in three games for the Eastern Division title, it was by virtue of two stellar pitching performances by Halladay and Hamels, and a game the Reds threw away on errors and sloppy playing. The Giants just outplayed the Phillies, getting all the key hits that seemed to elude our boys, and their pitching was at least as good as ours. Ryan Howard got a hit here and there, but not a single homer, or even an RBI, in the post-season. So no World Series for the Phils this year, but on the other hand, the Yankees won’t be making a repeat appearance either.

Miscellaneous: If you haven’t checked out the website Sporcle, do so now, especially if you are a trivia buff. There are thousands of quizzes, mostly created by registered members like myself, and if your quiz is popular and highly rated enough, it gets “published” on the site by the administrators, which gives it a much higher profile and lots more action. I just had my first one published this week: it’s called “Different Actors, Same Role”, and as of last night it had over 39,000 hits. My screen name is bruceN, if you want to check out my other quizzes, too.

Music: It’s been a great year for music, at least the music I listen to. I got the eagerly-awaited new album from Sufjan Stevens, The Age of Adz, and it’s pretty good stuff, though not the classic that his album Illinois was. It’s a bit more “noisy” with electronics and such, but still worth a listen. “I Walked” will be the breakout song from this album.
His EP from earlier this year, All Delighted People (really the length of a full album) is also worthwhile. Other new albums that have recently caught my ear:

Herbie Hancock: The Imagine Project
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers: Mojo
Trombone Shorty: Backatown
Richard Thompson: Dream Attic
Ray LaMontagne: God Willin’ and the Creek Don’t Rise

Poem of the Month: I wrote this one at last winter’s Poetry and Prose Getaway in Cape May for James Richardson’s workshop, as I anticipated my son’s upcoming nuptials. It appears in the new issue of Mad Poet’s Review:


Hoofing

Of the 58 things I need to do before I die,
Number 6 is to dance at your wedding.
Yes, me – the guy who once asked for a Virginia Reel
at my school dance, because we learned it in Gym,
and it was the only dance I knew. I’ll stumble and sway
with your mother and your bride through a slow dance,
but later I'll need at least three beers to lubricate
my creaky joints and my reserve, and a full dervish
on the dance floor, a Brownian movement of bodies,
where I’ll slip between Uncle Jack,
who lumbers like a grizzly bear; Aunt Lois
and her date, who’ve inexplicably slid into a tango;
and the flower girl, who randomly jumps up and down,
parachuting her petticoats. I’ll be a hoofer for you –
that is, I’ll dance like an animal without toes.
I won’t do that damned Chicken Dance,
but I will bounce and celebrate to Kool & the Gang,
or any of those obligatory songs, as this ecstatic mob
thrums along with abandon, in a rented hall,
under a clear, rosy evening sky, where somewhere,
your grandmother does the tarantella.

Wedding Bells III

More images from the wedding:

Wedding Bells II

Here's a slide-show video of my son and daughter-in-law's wedding done by their photographer, Ted Nghiem. I never would have thought that Modest Mouse's "Float On" would make a good wedding album soundtrack, but for this one it's surprisingly effective. Also, the video really captures the joy and fun that were Jer and Gen's wedding.

Jeremy and Genevieve from Ted Nghiem on Vimeo.

Wedding Bells!

Well, there’s no excuse not to blog now – a lot has been going on in the last month or two. First and foremost is #2 son’s wedding this past weekend. What a wonderful day! He and his bride have gone together for several years, and he (finally!) proposed at Christmastime last year. She’s a lovely person and they complement each other very well. The wedding was in our home town of Cherry Hill, at my wife’s home parish. Both older brothers were groomsmen and youngest brother was the altar server. Weather was picture perfect – sunny and high in the upper 70’s. The mass was beautiful and the reception was a blast – everyone commented on how much fun they had, including the 89-year-old mother of a friend of ours who spent half the evening on the dance floor.

Of course, gearing up for the big event was a bit hectic. One of the perks of being the father of the groom is that you don’t end up putting out a huge amount of money and effort, but still get much of the credit. But God bless my wife. She helped with much of the planning, especially making 72 small floral centerpieces – rose arrangements in martini glasses. The back apartment part of our house became the back of a florist shop, as well as the flower fridge – she turned the AC all the way down to keep the roses fresh, and it got below 55 degrees in there. But in the end it was all worth it, and son and new daughter-in-law are now enjoying their honeymoon in Dublin, Ireland.

The other big development is that we are hosting an international student for the year. He is from South Korea and beginning his senior year at a local Catholic high school. I was corrected early on: He’s an “international student”, not an “exchange student”, because his main objective is to complete his education here. After graduation, he hopes to attend an American college or university. So far things are going well – he’s a nice young man, curious and eager to learn with a sense of humor, and he speaks pretty good English, though we’re trying to help him improve it enough to do better on the SAT.

Poetry: My poetry has obviously had to take somewhat of a back seat to the other things going on, but there have been developments there as well: I recently read at the Manayunk Art Center in Philadelphia with two other local poets, and I have another coming up on the 24th in the Mt. Airy section of Philly. I’ve also had a few more poems accepted: The Barefoot Muse has accepted my blank-verse sonnet “Taking It All Back”, and Tilt-a-Whirl, a journal devoted to “repeating form” poetry, has accepted two poems: “Poe Boy Blues” and “All I Want”. I’m still hoping to attend at least one or two conferences or festivals in the upcoming “poetry year”, but other domestic and family matters may prevent some of that from happening.

Baseball: As big a Phillies fan as I am, I hadn’t attended a game all season till last night, when my wife’s cousin’s husband invited me to a game against the Braves, with whom the Phils are fighting for the NL East title. We had great seats – first row, second level right behind home plate. They won 3-1: Cole Hamels had another great outing (8 innings pitched, 6 strikeouts) and Brad Lidge was bringin’ it in the 9th. It was amazing to see 45,000 fans on their feet, cheering and waving their souvenir “rally towels” over their heads to spur Lidge on to get the save, putting down the Braves 1-2-3 including two strikeouts. You could feel the energy going out to him, and he even acknowledged that after the game. The Phillies are now 4 games up in first place over the Braves and their “magic number” is 8.

Music: My wife, my youngest son and I are all big fans of the men’s a cappella group Straight No Chaser. If you don’t know them by name, they’re the group of ten guys who met and performed years ago at Indiana University and reunited for a concert a few years ago. They performed an amusing version of “The Twelve Days of Christmas” that went viral and made them virtually overnight sensations. Now they’re PBS pledge-drive favorites, with two Christmas albums out and a more recent collection of pop songs. They’re an entertaining, often funny , and extremely talented group. They were artists-in-residence at Harrah’s casino in Atlantic City, and we all went to see them last month. They put on an amazing show, a song revue of pop hits from the 50’s to the present, and afterward they had a “meet-and-greet” – every one of them were there, signing autographs and chatting with fans, and they stayed till everyone in the long line got to meet them. They are a swell bunch of guys.

Poem of the Month: I would like to post the poem I wrote several months ago in anticipation of my son’s wedding, but I’m shopping it around for publication so that may have to wait. Instead, I will offer a love poem I wrote to my wife (who was also beautiful as mother of the groom). This appeared previously in the online journal Word Catalyst:

Time Travel

Maybe it's in the memory of skin -
a certain touch, chemical connection,
a circuit of nerves completed.

Maybe it's all in the mind -
a déjà vu of senses,
a re-opened file of valentines.

But when we share a serious embrace
or trade passionate kisses,
there is no need to compare

those kids in the old wedding photo
with what we see in the mirror.
Reflections are irrelevant,

time machines superfluous.
When I am in the moment of your arms,
I am nineteen again.

Miss Me?

My God, has it been two months since my last blog? What a slacker! It's hard sometimes to convince yourself that you have anything interesting to say. I mean, some folks post almost daily and always have something pithy and informative to share (are you reading this, Kelly Fineman?) while others just slap anything that comes into their head up on the page, whether it's interesting, or makes sense or not. I have to find the right rhythm and balance to blogging - I doubt I could do it more than once a week. But once in two months? Shameful!

Poetry: As you may know, I wrote a poem a day in the month of April (actually, a little more than one a day) as part of the Poetry Month challenge on Robert Brewer's Poetic Asides blog. Well, he invited the participants to submit the five best poems that they wrote that month, and out of over 1000 entries, he selected the best 50 and announced the winners on his blog. Two of my poems, "According to Hoyle" and "Mementos", made the list. The only prize is bragging rights, and a possible feature interview on the blog later this year. It's a nice recognition. I also just learned today that my poem, "Rapids Again", is being accepted for next year's issue of U.S. 1 Worksheets, and I may have another poem appearing in a future issue of the formal-poetry e-zine Barefoot Muse.

I'm debating about which poetry conferences I should attend in the coming year. Of course, time and money are always critical factors - ideally I would attend them all, but I'll have to pick one or two of four I have my eye on: (1) Peter Murphy's annual Winter Getaway in Cape May in January (this upcoming year featuring poets Dorianne Laux and Patricia Smith, as well as "regular" Stephen Dunn); (2) The AWP Conference, which will be in Washington DC in February (my friend Anna Evans will be chairing a panel there); (3) The West Chester Poetry Conference, which Anna has been encouraging me for years to attend (and she's actively involved in that one too), and (4) the good ol' Philadelphia Writers Conference, which is the same week as West Chester. I'm leaning heavily toward #2 and/or #3 as they are the ones that I've never done. Oh yeah, and there's the Dodge Poetry Festival in October.

Baseball: It's been one interesting year for my Phillies - fifteen players have been on the Disabled List this season, and currently Ryan Howard, Chase Utley and Shane Victorino, all key players, are sitting it out. Pitcher Jamie Moyer is out for the season (and possibly for the career, but after all, he's an "old man" of 47, LOL). Despite all that, as of this writing they are only one game behind Atlanta for the NL East lead. After a huge team-wide slump about a month or two ago, they've started putting things together, getting consistently good pitching (and the addition of Roy Oswalt now gives them one of the best starting rotations in baseball) and some key hitting from guys who until recently were not everyday players (Ross Gload, Brian Schneider, et al.) Anyway, I expect big things if everyone can get healthy again, though I'm doubtful whether they can get back to the World Series for the third year in a row.

Music: Lots of good stuff coming out this year. Just a few of the recent albums that have caught my ear - mostly perennial favorites but also two new "finds":

Mumford and Sons - Sigh No More
The Arcade Fire - The Suburbs
Los Lobos - Tin Can Trust
Sarah McLachlan - Laws of Illusion
The Black Keys - Brothers
Tame Impala - Innerspeaker
Alejandro Escovedo - Street Songs of Love

Poem of the Every-other-month:

I think I'll dust off an "oldie but goodie" - this appeared in the online journal Red River Review several years ago:

Background

Where I live,
in this quiet pocket of
congested civilization,
even on a still night,
windless, moonless
or moon –

there is a constant hum,
subliminal roar, a rumble
like blood rushing in the ears,
coagulation of sounds
just over the threshold –

traffic, planes, air conditioners,
thunder, music, radio waves,
clouds sliding through thick air,
plates of the earth groaning –

and the murmur of souls
only one week removed,
already receding
into the noise.

Why We Should Save School Music Programs

I’m quite proud of my eighth-grader’s musical accomplishments this year. I attended his middle school’s spring concerts last week (yes, that’s plural – there are so many kids and groups involved that they had to spread them over two nights), and I must say I was impressed by the virtuosity that they displayed. My son himself was in seven groups: concert band, jazz band, jazz combo, orchestra, string ensemble, chorus, and boys’ mixed chorus. One of the highlights for me was the jazz combo: about 10-12 kids performing “Moanin’ ” by Charles Mingus. Their director said that this piece, which is mostly improvisational, would be difficult even for high-schoolers to tackle, but after having heard another group perform it, they begged her to let them give it a try. After several weeks of intensive practice on this one number, they were ready. My son laid down the beat with an opening solo on the baritone sax, and the band took off from there. It was amazing – possibly the best jazz performance I’ve ever heard from a school ensemble. I also enjoyed the choral works: my son was in a boy’s a capella group who sang the old doo-wop song “Come and Go with Me” and the Straight No Chaser arrangement of Jason Mraz’s “I’m Yours”. Excellent! Both nights were filled with good music, everything from Bach (a movement from the Brandenburg Concertos) to an Iron and Wine song played by a marimba/percussion group. The second night finale – about 300 middle-schoolers singing “We Are the World” in perfect harmony – was enough to give one goose bumps. Here’s the icing on the cake: the music students went to a school music competition in Hershey PA last Friday, and they came home with first place trophies for the concert and jazz bands. Sweet!

Poetry: Not much going on lately on the poetry scene. I had to skip both of the two poetry events this weekend that I would have liked to attend - The West Chester Poetry Festival and the Philadelphia Writers Conference, partly due to parental obligations. My friend Anna Evans is going to West Chester again, and this time she will be a member of panel there. I wish I could be there to see her in action, meet some esteemed poets, and see Natalie Merchant, who is a featured performer, promoting her new album of songs based on children's poems.


Music: Run out and get (or sit down and download) Bettye LaVette's latest ablum, Interpretations: The British Rock Songbook. Ms. LaVette is in the midst of a major comeback after achieving some success in the 1960's and 1970's only to have her debut album inexplicably shelved by Stax Records in 1972. She fell on hard times for years afterward, but now she is back with a vengeance. This collection of classic British rock and pop songs, from the Beatles and The Animals to Traffic and Pink Floyd, is a tour-de-force as she puts her own interpretative touches on each one. She practically stopped the show at last year's Kennedy Center Honors when she wailed an amazing version of The Who's "Love Reign O'er Me", and she reprises it here. You may not recognize some of these songs the first time through, but once you do, you'll say, "Wow! I never heard it that way before." Her voice is an amazing instrument, and you probably will not hear a more soulful album this year.

Baseball: My Phillies seem to be mired in a major collective slump. They've already been shut out as many times this year as they were all of last season, and until a few nights ago they went through a two-week stretch where they couldn't muster up more than three runs a game. Thankfully, the pitching has been generally decent, and Roy Halladay recently tossed only the second perfect game in Phillies' history. Coincdentally, that same day I was wore a new Roy Halladay Phillies shirt, a gift from my wife, for the first time. I guess that makes it my lucky shirt, or maybe his.

Poem of the Post: Here's an "oldie" that was published in 2002 in the non-defunct print writer's magazine ByLine:

Appeal to the Captor

Dear Editor,
It has been six months since I sent you my poem.
I’ve received not a word, not a ransom note,
not even a stanza cut off and sent as a threat.

Is my poem alive and well?
When it’s returned to me, will it have lost its baby fat,
appearing instead as wiry, muscular, concise?

Or has it undergone some metamorphosis,
a bird, perhaps, feathering its nest with string
and self-addressed stamped envelopes?

Has it ensconced itself in your in-box?
Has it transformed to sconces itself,
like those eerie ones in La Belle et Le Bète,

the gilt-coated arms that move with you
as you cross the room, shadows shifting,
changing the lighting of walls and words?

Send me some word,
a photograph of it holding yesterday’s newspaper;
a tape of it, reading itself back to me.

Even a rejection slip – you pick the format:
wrapped around a rock through my window,
letters cut and pasted from magazines.

Until then, I await the day when it appears,
smiling wanly at my doorstep,
or singing choruses to the world on your page.