An Interview and Poem

I recently did an interview with the Brooklyn Arts Press for their Brooklyn Poets series, and I thought I would share it. They also published one of my recent poems, as well as a recording of me reading it. This is just optional reading in case anyone is interested.

Memories

--by Sophia Baradarian

The unapologetic snap
sizzle of
sun-bleached photos
seared in the candle’s flame.
You turn them over
flip, swish,
switch, repeat,
deciding which to keep.
Until you know every touch and corner.
Until you’ve palmed sepia cheeks
and auburn curls.
Until the names and places
where you’d held them meld,
melt on your tongue,
tumble and fuse
with the age-old blues
which take bitty
bites of the sounds and
sights they’ve
savagely left behind to
swallow you entire.
There you sit,
bottle of bitter wine in hand
and rummaging through,
if only to
down the remaining dregs
of a fading
dimpled smile.
Or to pluck what's
left of the dying
times when tinny
tines forked plump
cubes of watermelon
into mooching
little mouths
by the pool.
You’ve given up,
a creature hunted,
haunted by a past
which has yet to pass.
Not knowing whether to
caress or
crumple the tattered square
displaying three
picturesque children
hugging the skirts
of a long lost wife.
A long lost life.
Burn it or
turn it
between worn
fingers, still you’ll
find its eager
edge will slice
through any callus.

Haikus

--by Efrat Malachi


The more you give love
The more an angel's cup fills
The more holy wills


The moon rises bright
Not to replace the sun’s height
Both work day and night


Cradles me asleep
The sea is a lullaby
Rocking back and forth


The jungle runs wild
Beastly freedoms take control
Running forever



A tall tree bending
Feeling the downs of the day
Meeting me in pain



Colors shedding through
Along the rainy pavement
Now searching for gold



Seeing the sign up
Doesn’t mean being fluent
Speaking its language

The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner

I really enjoyed this NYT article about a public reading of Coleridge's famous poem, "The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner." People famous and not so famous recently gathered online for a dramatic reading of the poem, which featured sections by stars like Jeremy Irons, Hilary Mantel, Lemn Sissay, Marianne Faithfull, Iggy Pop and Tilda Swinton. Poetry scholars make a good case for the poem as emblematic of our modern moment:

“It’s the first modern work of literature to address the idea of isolation, in the most intense and visceral and scary, but yet strangely uplifting way,” said Hoare. “The Mariner’s cri de cœur of ‘alone, alone’ is part of us now.” 

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is “a founding fable of our modern age”, he said. “We are the wedding guests, and the albatross around the Mariner’s neck is an emblem of human despair and our abuse of the natural world. Yet in its beautiful terror there lies a wondrous solution: that we might wake up and find ourselves saved.”

You can access this dramatic reading by clicking here. 

5-7-5

Waiting Out the Virus

This poem from Bruno K Öijers Trilogy (trans Öijer and Victoria Haggblom) captures a certain feeling relevant to present times, so I thought I would share it here:

Growing Pains

--by Talya Hyman

If I had known that cradling you in my arms
With your silky cheek pressed to mine and
Teeny fingers twirled around my hair
Would be the last,
Would I have put you down?

If I had known that tucking you into bed
With your fairy princess duvet and
Stack of fantasy books beside you
Would be the last,
Would I have turned out the light?

If I had known that driving you to the playdate
With your backpack of crumpled homework
And box of worn dressed-up dolls
Would be the last,
Would I have kept on driving?

If I had known that holding hands crossing the street
With your skinny legs dragging us along,
Your jeweled toy ring digging into my palm
Would be the last,
Would I have wanted to reach the sidewalk?

But I didn’t know.
I didn’t know that for all times comes
A Last Time.
Because if I did,
Maybe I wouldn't have wanted you to grow up at all.

Dawn

--by Malka Gorbunov

There is a life to see before the dawn,
a world in hiding from the shameless sun
a world of creatures shunning human eyes
a world of dampest cold and darkest blue
a world that sings and hunts before the dawn.

The winter finches jumping in the snow
in keen contention for a fallen seed,
that leave no prints, and dare not make a sound,
a comic squabble in the feeble light;
The great horned owl's final journey home,
a stately shade beneath its massive wings;
The gentle call of drowsy mourning doves,
the homely sparrows singing out their souls.

A softer blue dilutes the inky sky.
A fawn, so proud of waking into March
pulls needles from a spruce with baby-glee;
Its mother watches from the forest's edge,
a grave and graceful sentry, still and keen,
observant, poised to signal and to fly.

A streak of gold upon unbroken snow.
The hawk who makes his habitat up north
and only strays by winter to New York,
swoops from the darkness of a shaggy pine
to claim a vole. There is a muted shriek,
a sudden flash of feathered sun- then dawn,
a bloody light. Both beings are no more.

Those I Wish I Knew

--Talya Hyman

The man with the melodic, steady voice and the worn out sneakers walking up and down the downtown-bound 1 train. His eyes closed. He hits every note. “Isn’t she lovely,” he serenades hundreds of commuters who do not wish to be serenaded.

The religious man standing on a cardboard mat along the side of a New York City street. Backwards baseball cap atop his head and shoes beside him on the pavement. He bows in his devotion, stands up, and bows again. The parked cab awaits its driver.

The old woman clanking a tin canister of coins at prayer-goers and tourists on their way down the slippery stairs to the Western Wall. Rain or shine, there she is. Baggy shawls, draped in layers around her head and across her body. "Please," she says to no one, but everyone, in particular. A tattered, crinkled prayer book is frozen in her other hand.

The man in yellow, or maybe it’s green, hanging off the side of the garbage truck early every Monday morning. He has it down to a science. Hop off. Trash can lid off. Trash dumped into the back end of the truck. Trash can left forgotten at the end of some neighbor's driveway. Hop on. He’s already at the next street over.

The small and alone African-American boy sitting in a subway car reading a paperback. Eyes dizzyingly dart from left to right. He only looks up when he realizes his stop is next. He walks over to the white, older couple sitting across the way. They smile as they lovingly clutch his shoulder, then his hands. The doors clank open and together, they descend onto the platform and head off into the night.

The "What"

--by Ellie Parker

(in the style of Alice Notley)

What are you in love with? What. Not
who. Who implies a face, a name, a some
body. What. What turned that lump of flesh
into a beating heart?
It can't be a mantra of "because I told you so's" & norms & have to's.
It must be an endless list
of want to's & need to's & the slightest of inflections &
feelings beyond what can be encompassed in a he/she/it/they/them
Or even us.
That is the meaning of the "what".
It surpasses the who's & how's.
It is the what.
It is the dichotomy of never understanding why,
but knowing that it's right all the same.

Your Turn at the Blog

As we discussed in class, I am inviting all of you to take a turn at handling how this blog appears visually. A few of you indicated you would like to try your own versions.

If you wish to do this, simply reply to this post (or to the email I sent on Canvas) and let me know and also provide the email address you use for blogging. I will then assign you as a blog editor, and you will be able to access it in your Blogger dashboard, along with the blog you use for posting your own poems, by selecting it from a dropbox in the upper left corner of the screen. After selecting "215Lexicon," you can use the formatting and customization features available through Blogger to make it appear however you wish. I only have this one restriction: please do not change the format so that the links to your blogs or the list of poets for workshop disappear. We need those there to conduct the class, so people can easily find each others' sites.

Thanks, and I look forward to seeing what you come up with for blog design. Whoever signs up first can have the first crack at it.

Criticism of Poetry

I.C.U.

--by Sophia Baradarian

Clock strikes 2.
Again.
Truth is,
no one’s ever believed
they’d be sitting there
in the tacky
hospital-issue blue chair
backed against
a starkly lit corridor.
Where the droplets outside
batter glass panels
brushing white ceiling,
to glimpse the strained face of
a sewn-up girlfriend
or catch the huffing rasp
of a dying, dead father.
One last time.
2:03 AM.
No wish made unto that pale,
pink candle of
a little girl’s
birthday cake,
enveloped in billowing folds of
vanilla buttercream
was for the steady
hiss...pump
of Mama’s
mechanical lungs.
Her timed breaths.
Clocking out,
much too soon.
The occasional
scuttle of sneakers
against white vinyl.
2:05.
Time’s up.
And…repeat.
Stifling scent of antiseptic,
shuffled papers,
slivers of death
murmured about
in voices so soft,
they fail to disturb
the weeping ghosts
hugging the walls.

The Tree

--by Rachel Pollack.

There’s something about the tree in the window
Something about the way it looks during the winter
When flakes of snow gently drape its branches
And how unbearably bare it becomes
When the wind is bitter and sharp
Forcing it still and silent

And how it is when the rain
Gives the tree what is desires
And the sun streams down its rays
To be soaked up into its core
And the tree sways calmly to the sound of the wind

And how bittersweet it is when its leaves drop
And the air smells of dampened earth
The clouds expel their withering breath
The scent of pine and musky dreams
And the tree dances as the wind screams

Welcome to 215 Lexicon

This is the first version of the blog we've been discussing in class. I've chosen this theme for now and customized it from the preset option. It's pretty bare bones, and we can change the appearance of the blog to suit our collective tastes later at some point. I've included links on the sidebar to each of your respective blogs and grouped you in the groups we assigned on Monday.

I need for you to do two things: First, please find your blog listing, and click on the link to make sure it works. Second, please create a link to this blog at your blog by adding a gadget to your sidebar. If you have trouble, I will show everyone in class how to do this. There's no hurry on this.

Note that you can always go here to find out what poems are up for workshop next. As soon as they have been chosen, I will list the author and title in the section on the right, labeled "Poets Up Next."

Email me if you have any problems or suggestions for the site. This is a work in progress!