Christopher Matthew Hennessy's Blog, page 4

For poets…"It's simply the world."– Eileen Myles

From a review Eilen Myles wrote on Muriel Rukeyser's The Life of Poetry:

"Poetry's so tiny it's universal: A famous painter might be invited by The New York Times to give us a tour of the Met, to show us what he knows, but for poets there's no such building, or even bookstore. It's simply the world."

"Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher…"

Lately been thinking about gay poets looking back onto their old courage-teachers.Today I love especially the ending to "A Supermarket in California" by Allen Ginsberg.

Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in a hour.

Which way does your beard point tonight?

(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and feel absurd.)

Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees add shade to shade, lights out in the houses, we'll both be lonely.

Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?

Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of Lethe?

A review of Love-In-Idleness that has me swooning

I'm really touched by this extremely searching and thoughtful and extensive review! Thanks so much, Erik Schuckers.

He ends the review by writing: "Hennessy is fully capable of springing surprises, too, as in the wonderful "Waiting Room," in which the glimpse of a woman's exposed ankle in close proximity to the "anticipation / of the doctor's press on my bare chest" prompts both an erection and a reflection: "I know there are dips in the human skin, / hollowed out like open mouths, places / meant to be found in the dark, fumbling / to fill or to excavate."

There's a persuasive affinity at work in "Waiting Room," as there is in perhaps the finest poem of this section, "Blood in the Cum," in which a love poem is figured as a "way to sew / our two mouths shut / with a kiss so thin it's invisible." Not a word feels out of place here: confident, concise, the poem moves with a grace and restraint that feel inevitable. It is, to a reader, a remarkable achievement, and to a poet, a goad and an inspiration and a gift all at once, and it leaves me eager to envy more and more of Christopher Hennessy's work."

Thank you!

 

'That's all homosexuality is. Just another love story–with a twist.'

The question of sexuality in literature — "it doesn not stand by itself"

"…it has become, in my opinion, imperative to achieve a shifted attitude… towards the thought and fact of sexuality, as an element in character, personality, the emotions, and a theme in literature. I'm not going to argue the question by itself; it does not stand by itself."

– Walt Whitman, "A Backwards Glance o'er Traveled Roads"

"Our erotic knowledge empowers us…"

"Our erotic knowledge empowers us, becomes a lens through which we scrutinize all aspects of our existence, meaning within our lives. And this is a gave responsibility, projected from within each of us, not to settle for the convenient, the shoddy, the conventionally expected, nor the merely safe."

the incomparable Audre Lorde

"this threadbare beauty / the ribs of the disaster / curving their assertion / among the tentative haunters."

Is there much better than this?  Adrienne Rich, you do it so powerful, and make it look so easy.  I want to memorize this.

the thing I came for:
the wreck and not the story of the wreck
the thing itself and not the myth
the drowned face always staring
toward the sun
the evidence of damage
worn by salt and away into this threadbare beauty
the ribs of the disaster
curving their assertion
among the tentative haunters.

 

Harold Norse's "To the Hustler"

A blogger posts a Harold Norse poem! Not many folks know about Norse, but he's likely going to be one of the poets I study for my diss.  The blogger writes, "'To the Hustler,'" [Norse's poem] always keeps me on my toes because the poem is not strong enough to hold a powerful message, or hold onto emotion.  The poem searches for it — desperately searches — the search is heartbreaking."  I'm not sure if the blogger thinks the poem is purposefully failing in its search, or not but in any case click on over to read the poem and judge for yourself.

"One element that has remained consistent is my identity as a politicized person." — Rigoberto Gonzalez

If we identify as a person is important, is how we identify as a writer important? Less so? More so? Here's an interview with essayist, memoirist, poet, and editor Rigoberto Gonzalez, who describes his background this way: " I was born in California, raised in Michoacán, educated in Spanish, and then English when my family returned to the U.S. when I was ten. I come from three generations of migrant farm workers, grape pickers mostly, and until I left for college I spent summers working alongside my family harvesting grape, onion, and green beans. As you can appreciate, our working class perception of the arts was enriched with folk music, Catholicism, and storytelling. I grew up with a strong sense of myself as a Mexican, and later, in college, as a Chicano and a gay man. One element that has remained consistent is my identity as a politicized person. My family was always willing to participate in boycotts and labor strikes. The good fight is the single sensibility I have kept sacred all these years. There was also familial conflict, of course, and not much freedom in a crowded household that resorted to physical and verbal abuse as a way of channeling the frustrations that came with poverty and exhaustion."

Check out this particular moment and then dive in to the rest:

Interviewer: Taking into account the current renascent politics of American nativism and the general anti-Latino atmosphere most exemplified by Arizona's and Alabama's draconian anti-immigrant-laws and the intentional or unintentional exclusion of Latino/as from all other aspects of the broader culture, literature included (take for example the long overdue recognition of Latino/a poets in Eduardo C. Corral's recent winning of the YaleSeries of Younger Poets Award and a Whiting Writers' Award) what is the role of a Latino/a writer in our times?

RG: I prefer to identify as a gay Chicano. I also embrace other terms, like queer and Latino. I think it's important to celebrate all of this language as an antidote to the hostility, derision and fear that others are attaching to them. A writer is an activist and a citizen, and has a responsibility beyond the poem, story or novel to participate in the political arena. For some of us that means picketing and organizing protests, others take to the pen or the computer and articulate positions through essays and editorials, and some perform that activism through the classroom as teachers. Activism is defined by the individual. I understand not everyone is willing to accept the challenge, but I sure as hell know that everyone can. In any case, this is an old argument and usually the only ones who speak up are the ones who want to negate that premise for selfish reasons.  At the very least, people who do not want to participate in these conversations should please cease from making such comments as "I don't want to be known as a Chicano writer" or "I don't want to be known as a gay writer." We need role models, not cowards.  

A conversation between snow men and women at www.poetryfoundation.org

I'm so excited to be teaching a 10-week master's poetry at Grub Street that starts today!  Before we workshop, we will be talking about this poem and this more recent poem, both of which deal in some way with winter.  Check 'em out.  You may have read one of them before! I think you'll find there's an amazing conversation going on between them.  And for a prompt, if time, I'm asking students to write a poem that begins or ends in "winter" but begins or ends in someplace else entirely.