Monday, November 28, 2011
Monday, November 21, 2011
Afaa Weaver Poetry Reading
“… we are genes
we are the art of the mind of some great emptiness above
or here below inside the bulb of a beet, things that grow
underground and thrive on darkness, the humble fullness
of light.” – Afaa Weaver, Theme for Intermediate Chinese
Such an amazing poetry event. Everyone really enjoyed the interview and the reading. Thanks again to those who came out and contributed to this special evening.
Interview with Honoree Jeffers
During the interview with Honoree Jeffers, Afaa Weaver described his background, childhood and distinct memories that have made him who he is today and that are reflected in his poetry. He grew up in Baltimore, Maryland, in a neighborhood very similar to that depicted by the HBO TV series, “The Wire”.
“I’m a survivor,” Weaver said. “Black men barely made it past forty.”
Weaver discussed how the 1970s were a very difficult time in the United States and spoke about how he marched in protests against the war in Vietnam and how he was tear-gassed when he was eighteen years old. This was the fall after Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated.
Weaver discussed how his father’s family were sharecroppers, and how no one in his family had gone to college until his relative married a woman who had a degree in Chemistry. Weaver attended The University Maryland, where he began writing as a 16-years-old freshman. In the 1970s he made a firm commitment to being a writer and a poet. He published his first poem in 1974. In the late 70’s and early 80’s, Weaver worked at a factory packaging and manufacturing steel. He discussed how difficult it was to maintain a creative and artistic life during this time. He was eventually able to work in the warehouse, though, where he and his coworkers had a system of taking turns reading and writing while someone else served as a look-out. He remembers reading an Intro to Western Philosophy while also writing stories as a journalist. When Weaver told his coworkers he had applied to Brown University, they all laughed at him. He was accepted. This was during the Black Arts Movement and there was an abundance of intellectual artists and writers whom Weaver was eventually able to connect with. People like Gwendolyn Brooks, Rita Dove and George Bass, Langston Hughes’ secretary, who took Weaver in when he felt uncomfortable and overwhelmed at the mostly all-white University in the midst of violence and riots.
Poetry Discussion
Afaa Weaver talked about the concept of “home” that is intertwined with his personal trauma as a child and the national trauma that was taking place at the time.
“Displacement from your home is a displaced seed of your language,” Weaver said. “It’s not about uncovering past memories, but filling in the missing spaces.”
Weaver explained his hidden issues of anger from the trauma of his abusive childhood, and why he decided to study Daoism. He looks at his poetry over the years as a movement, removing or emptying layers, recognizing the full range of emotion within himself, realizing his own humanity and the enormity of human change, and reaching peace through detachment/emptiness or meditation. The pursuit of the lyric, confessional voice eventually led him to his trauma.
“To be able to tap into that emotion, avoid the journalistic stance in poetry narrative and break into a new immediacy with your own experiences requires engagement with the process of meditation,” he said.
He told us a quote that his teacher tells him: “When these things arise, do not talk to them.” This is referring to dark thoughts that may arise during meditation, and it is best to not engage them. This is the same when writing a poem. The past may arise, and you can force the past to deconstruct itself, but if you engage it, it will become aggravated. When the poem begins to deconstruct itself, it becomes its own thing, existing separately as images, thoughts, etc. This is very interesting to me, as I thought about emptiness and the concept that everything is nothing, existing as its own thing, until the imagination and/or the human gives it life or meaning. Even a poem. It should mean something different to whoever reads it. And this is the irony of writing a poem. It is channeled by the writer, has its own path, and manifested or deconstructed on the page. Weaver told us advice about a writing technique that he received from Lucille Clifton – simply rest your hands on the keys and just write the words that come. I feel this technique can be used with any form of art – painting, writing music, etc. – and just seeing where it takes you.
Afaa Weaver is practitioner of Tai Chi and a Dao disciple. This is where his life has led him, and it has helped him cope with his abusive childhood and the post-traumatic stress disorder he carried with him for so long. In his book, The Plum Flower Dance, Weaver groups his poems relating to his abusive childhood into five categories: Gold, Water, Wood, Fire, Earth. These are the five fist techniques and elements of Tai Chi and represent the creative path of healing that is reflected in his book.
Pi 劈 or metal 金, the splitting technique (melted by fire)
Zuan 鑽 or water 水, the drilling technique (muddied by earth)
Beng 崩 or wood 木, the smashing technique (cut by metal)
Pao 炮 or fire 火, the pounding technique (extinguished by water)
Heng 橫 or earth 地, the crossing technique (stilled by wood)
Dr. Jonathan Stalling interviewed Professor Weaver and discusses his Daoist philosophy and how Xingyi Chuan connects to his poetry. The interview will be posted soon right here and on our archive page.
Poetry Reading
Poems read by Afaa Weaver
1. “Radio Days”
2. “If My Enemies Sing of my Death”
3. “Government of Nature”
4. “Flying” (one of my favorites – this is about he out of body experiences he had as a child during the abuse. In this poem he claims he received the ‘gift of flying’ and writes, “We can fly when God falls asleep”.
5. “Apaloosa”
6. “For James, Our Beloved”
7. “At Lake Montibello with James”
8. “Scrapple”
9. “A City of Eternal Spring” – working title
10. “What the Lotus Said” one line I remember from this poem is ‘you grew in impossible circumstances’
11. “On Hearing that Michael Jackson Died”
12. “From the Plum Flower Days”
13. “Crushing Peanuts in a Hakka Village”
14. “MRT” … ‘knowing yourself as a space’
15. “The Link”
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Stanley Lombardo & Judith Roitman Poster/Links
Homer's The Iliad in Ancient Greak - Lombardo Sound File
Interview with Roitman & Lombardo
Poem by Judith Roitman
Slipped out
Tongue undeserved like popcorn
& what thing in the middle of
her trajectory
her rigid moment
mashed like popcorn & death also wanting
whose words
who says this today
whose tongue slipped out like a walk
like the middle of talking,
one cane held onto
one moment of trajectory
one undeserved cough stopped,
standing
left out of corners
instead difficult
instead wanting
instead slipped out & death
slipped out undeserved
cane touching
today trajectory
today talking in the middle of breathing
today
wanting popcorn
wanting trajectory
wanting stopped thing
stopped from
becoming.
& what thing in the middle of
her trajectory
her rigid moment
mashed like popcorn & death also wanting
whose words
who says this today
whose tongue slipped out like a walk
like the middle of talking,
one cane held onto
one moment of trajectory
one undeserved cough stopped,
standing
left out of corners
instead difficult
instead wanting
instead slipped out & death
slipped out undeserved
cane touching
today trajectory
today talking in the middle of breathing
today
wanting popcorn
wanting trajectory
wanting stopped thing
stopped from
becoming.
Monday, November 7, 2011
Monday, October 31, 2011
Afaa Weaver Poetry Links
Afaa M. Weaver (Michael S. Weaver) is a distinguished poet and playwright, and the author of nine collections of poetry, including Multitudes (Sarabande Books, 2000), The Ten Lights of God (Bucknell University Press, 2000), and most recently, The Plum Flower Dance: Poems, 1985 to 2005 (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007). This latest collection surveys twenty years of Weaver's published work, beginning with his first book of poems, Water Song (University Press of Virginia, 1985). He received his MFA. (1987) from Brown University. A student of Chinese language and culture, Weaver is the Alumnae Professor of English at Simmons College in Boston, where he is also Director of the Zora Neale Hurston Literary Center.
When: November 9 @ 6 pm
Where: Western History Collection, OU Campus (Monnet Hall, 630 Parrington Oval, Rm 452)
What: Honoree Jeffers will be conducting an interview with Afaa Weaver - "Poetry in Conversation" - followed by Wine and Cheese Reception and a Poetry Reading by Afaa Weaver at 7 pm
Works by Afaa Weaver
Reviews
Sound
Press Release about The Plum Flower Dance
Articles
Interviews
Personal blog of Afaa Weaver
I never inspect the withered assumption
of my face's petty dialogue in raindrops,
the deceptive spreading of the words
oozing from the skin to the edges of water
etched on the ground by gravity and wishing. - from "Self-Portrait" by Afaa Weaver
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Hank Lazer Poetry Reading
Where do I begin? Hank Lazer gave a wonderful, enlightening and inspiring poetry reading on October 13. He read selected poems from all, or most of his books. First he read from his book Doublespace, which is a book that opens and begins at both the front and back covers of the book, and meets in the middle. He described it as a collage of poems. He also read from The New Spirit, which is a book he dedicated to Glenn Mott, our final poet in the series. He and Mott corresponded through letters regarding their poems and mentored one another before his book came out. Lazer referred to The New Spirit as a challenge, even to poets. It was not accepted right away because of how different it was than Doublespace and his other work, even though it was well-respected. Mott asked him, “Well, what did you expect?” But it was what Lazer wanted to write, what he was inclined and inspired to write.
“Why would you do it [write poetry] any other way than you want to? It’s poetry,” Lazer said.
Backing up a little bit, Lazer told us he was a Mathematics/Physics major in college. It wasn’t until later that he became interested in English and poetry. In fact, he didn’t publish his first book of poetry until the age of 42. This is very inspiring to me, and probably many others who are aspiring poets. Of course, it is not about the money, it is about the art, the beauty of sound, the spiritual expression, as Lazer said. In our class discussion, Lazer talked about hybrid anthologies that introduce poetry and poetics to students in such a way that leaves them open to everything. But poetry cannot be framed. Classes serve as an introduction to technique and sampling work to see what we will latch onto, to plant the seed in our souls, but it is up the students to make “life-invested gestures” and go deeper… not to just play “dress-up”. He said it takes time to build a relationship with words, ideas and poetry, to delve beneath the surface and discover a true love with a poet, musician or art. It is an ethical and life-based commitment, he said.
Lazer reads much philosophy and poetry seeking wisdom. He spoke on language and gave us a quote, “It is not man who speaks, but language that speaks,” and said that we are carriers of language in a chemical sense – language expresses itself through us. His newest book Portions is more experimental in this regard. Silence has its own language, as he referenced John Cage’s 4’33”.
Buddhism is something that inspired his later poems, but in a Karmic sense, it was always there, always present in his earlier poetry. He also loves jazz and hip hop and has faith in music and sound and chant. “Method is belief,” he said, and he has faith in musicality and that it will take him somewhere interesting and others will follow and stay engaged. He raised an interesting, philosophical and very spiritual question. “What does music listen to?” He also made the point that every syllable counts and does not agree with scansion or stressed/unstressed syllables.
Lastly, Lazer got the audience involved in his poetry reading, with his notebook of visual poems and method of writing that he refers to as “shape-writing”. These are hand-written poems, no drafts or re-writes, all written in the form of shapes. This is a very spontaneous way of writing and exploring. There is no specific starting point or way of reading. As an audience, we split up into groups and read phrases in the shape poems, some repetitive, some read only once. It was very experimental and lovely to see everyone involved in the reading. Everyone was turning their hand-outs this way and that as they read aloud. He even signed my book in the shape of circle, so I had to turn the book to see what he had written. :)
We had a great turn out for the reading and we are so honored that Lazer came to the University of Oklahoma to share is thoughts, ideas, and most of all, his poetry with us.
Stay tuned, a video of Hank Lazer's reading will be posted soon on the MAE Poetry Series website.
-Morgen Moxley, MAEPoetrySeries Staff
-Morgen Moxley, MAEPoetrySeries Staff
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
Hank Lazer Poetry Links
Hank Lazer has published sixteen books of poetry, most recently Portions (Lavender Ink, 2009), The New Spirit (Singing Horse, 2005), and Elegies & Vacations (Salt, 2004). He is Associate Provost for Academic Affairs at the University of Alabama, where he directs Creative Campus and edits the Modern and Contemporary Poetics Series for the University of Alabama Press. In late 2011, N18 (complete), the eighteenth notebook in Lazer’s The Notebooks (of Being & Time), will be published by Singing Horse Press.
Works by Hank Lazer
About the Author
Sound Files on Penn Sound - MP3 Format
Interview
Poem
HUMID by Hank Lazer, from Portions
humid blanket thick
air wrap this
body awkward walking
as in dream
as with tongue
thickly coated &
speech a dream
babble wanting to
but not able
to say proper
words of blessing
superfluous i suppose
to bless what
is much more
than too specific
us begin baruch
& soon hit
scripted mystic unpronounceables
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