WBEZ | poetry

Poetry Saloon at Noon & the Sulzer Library

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 12:45:00 -0500

Twenty-five years ago, saloon poetry and slam poetry were being birthed in the vibrant arts scene in the Wicker Park neighborhood of Chicago. Saloon poetry differed from slam poetry in several important ways. Sometimes poets simply wanted to recite their poetry. They wanted an alternative to the raucous competition of the poetry slams. Poets and artists that built community, sometimes just wanted to relax and enjoy the abundance of poetry, art, and music that flourished in the mid-80's. Spend time in the neighborhood bar, coffee house, tea house, or gallery and be surrounded by other artists.

Saloon Poetry was the slam's after-party. And Saloon Poetry's red-carpet was the sidewalk that led to a favored oasis, that served beverages and nourishment and most of all, fostered camaraderie and friendly competition.

Poetry Saloon at Noon is the brick & mortar venue of the poetry & arts publishing website, www.SaloonPoetry.com. The venue has rotated between different sites in the city and usually features an open-mic.

Recorded Live Monday, June 10, 2013 at the Chicago Public Library's Sulzer Regional Library.

Jay Ponteri muses on marriage

Mon, 03 Jun 2013 14:54:00 -0500

If we are always changing, how do we enter into relation with another person? How do we evolve with someone else, instead of away from them? Jay Ponteri, author of the lyrical book, Wedlocked, lets us in on the truth of his life and marriage. He admits to a brokenness, which on the surface could seem to be an unraveling, but ultimately comes from a willingness to see what is real in all of its flawed confusion. Jay reminds us that a deeper relationship is always possible if we do not become fixed or believe ourselves to be whole in a way that is final. To overtly resist change is to deny life. And to will change, constantly, is to live.

Jay Ponteri is the author of the new, acclaimed book, Wedlocked (Hawthorne Press, 2013). He directs the undergraduate creative writing program at Marylhurst University and Show: Tell, The Workshop for Teen Writers & Artists. He is the founding editor of both the online literary magazine M Review and HABIT Books. His work has appeared in Tin House, Puerto Del Sol, Seattle Review. His essay “Listen to This” was chosen as a Notable Essay in The Best American Essays 2010. Jay lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife and son.

First launched in April 2013 to celebrate National Poetry Month, WBEZ now continues our weekly series, The Gift – produced by Stanzi Vaubel and curated by Rachel Jamison Webster, author ofSeptember: Poems. This project is a collaboration with UniVerse of Poetry, a station partner that aims to celebrate poets from every nation in the world. Each piece drops us into a poets’ inner life, reminding us of the gift of being human among others.

Quiz: Who wrote this poem?

Thu, 30 May 2013 09:11:00 -0500

SONGBIRDS OF MERIDA

I carry you with me into the stillness

into the shadows of the sun.

Here my thoughts alight: tiny buntings

settling in amid the distant sound of brass.

Dancing without moving, holding

until holding feels familiar.

At dawn the urge to move again

becomes so intense I take to flight,

emboldened by what you said

that one fine morning.

TOGETHER is a place I won't soon forget.

Click here to discover the author and source of this poem.

Follow Claire Zulkey @Zulkey

Kwame Dawes sings of Jamaica

Thu, 23 May 2013 16:52:00 -0500

Imagination is the seed of empathy – a centrally important function – and both the gift and burden of the writer. Here The Gift series producer Stanzi Vaubel talks to poet Kwame Dawes, who writes in many voices, and who laughs that this is the curse of the writer. “I live in you, I feel everything,” he says to his brother. Here he shares a poem called “Impossible Flight” in which he observes the 1980 Revolution in Jamaica and tries to hold his brother to earth – to its beauty and its pains.

Kwame Dawes is the author of 16 award-winning books of poetry, including Wisteria, Hope’s Hospice, Wheels, and his most recent book of selected poems, Duppy Conquerer, which he reads from here. Dawes has also written novels and scholarly work and plays, fifteen of which have been produced. He has won an Emmy Award for his Pulitzer-supported project “LiveHopeLove.com,” in which he reported on H.I.V., Aids in post-earthquake Haiti. Dawes was born in Ghana and raised in Jamaica.

First launched in April 2013 to celebrate National Poetry Month, WBEZ now continues our weekly series, The Gift – produced by Stanzi Vaubel and curated by Rachel Jamison Webster, author of September: Poems. This project is a collaboration with UniVerse of Poetry, a station partner that aims to celebrate poets from every nation in the world. Each piece drops us into a poets’ inner life, reminding us of the gift of being human among others.

Lois Lowry shares the pain and pleasure of memory

Fri, 17 May 2013 05:14:00 -0500

In an interview with The Gift series producer Stanzi Vaubel, writer Lois Lowry talked about memory. In her novel, The Giver, one person holds the memories for the entire community. When the Giver grows old, someone must be chosen to receive the memories. Jonah, the new receiver, is confused. "I thought there was only us. I thought there was only now," he says. The Giver replies "No, there's so much more. There's all that is elsewhere. All that goes back and back and back. It's how wisdom comes. It's how we shape our future."

Jonah's confusion and the Giver’s response speaks to us, reflecting the negotiation that must always take place between the present and the past. Can we have one without the other? Can we appreciate the immediacy of the now if we don't feel the echoes and shouts, insights and wisdom of those who came before?

The Giver is weighted with his memories. He has been made old and tired by them. But as Jonah begins to receive, he realizes that there is pleasure mixed with pain, that opposite emotions are inextricably linked. That's what a memory is. Jonah doesn't understand why the community has sterilized themselves from memory, leading to a one-dimensional existence. What he has experienced from the Giver has changed him, but it is a change that is awakening, and one that he wishes to share.

Lois Lowry is the author of more than thirty children’s books, and an autobiography. She won the Newberry Award for Number the Stars (1989) and The Giver (1993). Two years after The Giver was published, Lowry’s son Grey was killed in a fighter plane crash, allowing her to more poignantly examine the pain – and beauty – of memory. Lowry continues to write and read from her work. "I am a grandmother now,” she wrote on her blog. “For my own grandchildren – and for all those of their generation – I try, through writing, to convey my passionate awareness that we live intertwined on this planet and that our future depends upon our caring more, and doing more, for one another."

First launched in April 2013 to celebrate National Poetry Month, WBEZ now continues our weekly series, The Gift – produced by Stanzi Vaubel and curated by Rachel Jamison Webster, author of September: Poems. This project is a collaboration with UniVerse of Poetry, a station partner that aims to celebrate poets from every nation in the world. Each piece drops us into a poets’ inner life, reminding us of the gift of being human among others.

Edward Hirsch: Poems for my father(s)

Sat, 11 May 2013 08:00:00 -0500

The poet Edward Hirsch was born in Chicago in 1950, and many of his poems are haunted by little glimpses back into that old city of his youth. In the 2008 poem “Cotton Candy,” for example, Hirsch is again a small boy, walking with his grandfather over one of Chicago’s many bascule bridges:

We walked on the bridge over the Chicago River
for what turned out to be the last time,
and I ate cotton candy, that sugery air,
that sweet blue light spun out of nothingness.
It was just a moment, really, nothing more,
but I remember marveling at the sturdy cables
of the bridge that held us up
and threading my fingers through the long
and slender fingers of my grandfather,
an old man from the Old World
who long ago disappeared into the nether regions.
And I remember that eight-year-old boy
who had tasted the sweetness of air,
which still clings to my mouth
and disappears when I breathe.

There is pain here, but also tenderness, and maybe even a little nostalgia -- a recognizable combination where the subject matter is childhood and family.

As an adult, Hirsch won the Lanvan Younger Poets Award from the Academy of American Poets and the prestigious Rome Prize, as well as fellowships from the MacArthur and Guggenheim foundations (the latter of which he now chairs) and the National Endowment for the Arts.

But Hirsch’s future success was not necessarily forecast by his Chicago childhood. Early on Hirsch was burdened by a biological father, his “first father” as he calls him in one poem, with poor boundaries and cruel attachments. In one poem, Hirsch depicts Harold, nicknamed “Ruby,” talking openly to his young children about his sexual preferences and his frustration with their mother’s “frigidity.” Ruby then left the family when Edward was a still a child, an event Hirsch writes about in “My Father’s Back”:

There's an early memory that I carry around
In my mind
like an old photography in my wallet,
little graying and faded, a picture
That I don't much like
but nonetheless keep,
Fingering it now and then like a sore tooth,
Knowing it there,
not needing to see it anymore....
The sun slants down on the shingled roof.
The wind breathes in the needled pines.
And I am lying in the grass on my third birthday,
Red-faced and watchful
but not squalling yet,
Not yet rashed or hived up
from eating the wrong food
Or touching the wrong plant,
my father's leaving.

And yet, Hirsch was also cared for by his “other father” – the man who raised him. He writes about this father with the great longing of a grown-up son who has just lost his parent in “Early Sunday Morning”:

Give me back my father walking the halls
of Wertheimer Box and Paper Company
with sawdust clinging to his shoes.
Give me back his tape measure and his keys,
his drafting pencil and his order forms;
give me his daydreams on lined paper.
I don’t understand this uncontainable grief.
Whatever you had that never fit,
whatever else you needed, believe me,
my father, who wanted your business,
would squat down at your side
and sketch you a container for it.

Of channeling these feelings and memories into his work Hirsch said, “I became, I’d say, addicted to this idea: That you could take the muck and mire of your own life, you could take the messy things in your own life, the difficult experiences you didn’t understand, and try to turn them into something.”

“And the idea that you could turn them into something that you thought was beautiful? That seemed noble to me. I aspired to that,” Hirsch added.

The poet gave a reading in Chicago in April, and read several poems that touched on these two men in his young life. You can hear his reading in the audio above.

Dynamic Range showcases hidden gems unearthed from Chicago Amplified’s vast archive of public events and appears on weekends. Edward Hirsch spoke at an event presented by the Society of Midland Authors in April of 2013. Click here to hear the event in its entirety.

Robin Amer is a producer on WBEZ’s digital team. Follow her on Twitter @rsamer.

Poet Kate Daniels remembers her delicious baby girl

Fri, 10 May 2013 06:30:00 -0500

Kate Daniels describes herself “as a poet who has always been interested in what could not or should not be said.” Just in time for Mother’s Day, she talks about the truth of motherhood – its strangeness, its wonder, and its lusciousness. She fearlessly tells of her experiences breast feeding, raising children, and falling in love – and trusts that these stories of gritty, juicy living have a collective significance. They are not meant to be kept secret but joyously shared.

Kate Daniels is a recent recipient of a Guggenheim Award, a Professor of English at Vanderbilt University and author of four volumes of poetry: The White Wave and The Niobe Poems, from the Pitt Poetry Series, and Four Testimonies and A Walk in Victoria’s Secret, from LSU Press. Her poetry explores aspects of gender-based and Southern working-class experience.

First launched in April 2013 to celebrate National Poetry Month, WBEZ now continues our weekly series, The Gift – produced by Stanzi Vaubel and curated by Rachel Jamison Webster, author of September: Poems. This project is a collaboration with UniVerse of Poetry, a station partner that aims to celebrate poets from every nation in the world. Each piece drops us into a poets’ inner life, reminding us of the gift of being human among others.

Rachel Webster makes the past a destination

Fri, 03 May 2013 07:00:00 -0500

After a year of conversation about poets and poetry, The Gift poetry series Producer Stanzi Vaubel recorded Rachel Jamison Webster reading from her book, September, and decided to produce this piece not as a conversation but as a direct drop into the poems. “I Know Why I Make the Past a Destination,” Rachel begins, reminding us of the mystery of time – how sometimes we can “almost, but not quite, remember the future,” how we can live days that feel layered with earlier lives, earlier selves. It makes us think about presence, how presence is a kind of fullness of time that suggests the future and past even as it remakes them.

Rachel Jamison Webster curator of this series, The Gift, is Artist in Residence at Northwestern University. Her poems and essays have been published in many journals and anthologies, including Poetry, The Paris Review and The Southern Review. Her book of poems, September, was just published by Northwestern University Press.

First launched in April 2013 to celebrate National Poetry Month, WBEZ now continues our weekly series, The Gift – produced by Stanzi Vaubel and curated by Rachel Jamison Webster, author of September: Poems. This project is a collaboration with UniVerse of Poetry, a station partner that aims to celebrate poets from every nation in the world. Each piece drops us into a poets’ inner life, reminding us of the gift of being human among others.

Woman Made Gallery Poets Showcase at the Chicago Public Library Poetry Fest

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 09:51:00 -0500

For over twenty years, Woman Made Gallery has offered stimulating and educational programs with a focus on women artists, performers and writers who share an interest in the interaction of the arts in contemporary culture. Over the past few years, the poetry series has ventured into the community, with readings at Chicago Public Library and the Poetry Foundation’s Printer’s Ball.

This group reading offers a sampling of the diversity of women’s voices, topics and writing styles that can be heard at the gallery. Featured poets include Yolanda Nieves, Robin Fine, Kelly Norman Ellis and curator Nina Corwin. In addition, three younger poets from area schools are presented: Nina Li Coones, Natalie Richardson and Jennifer Linstrom.

Recorded live Saturday, April 27, 2013 at the Harold Washington Library Center.

Jennifer Steele and the poetry of self-discovery

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 09:00:00 -0500

Chicago is home to many organizations that help young people to express themsleves, including Young Chicago Authors, After School Matters, Street-Level Youth Media, Free Write Jail Arts, and YOUmedia, a learning space housed in Chicago Public Library’s Harold Washington Library Center that gives teens access to countless books, innovative technology and mentorship with working artists.

Series producer Stanzi Vaubel traveled to YOUmedia to talk to young poets and their instructors, which led her into a conversation with teaching artist Jennifer Steele. While they were talking, Jennifer discovered that poetry is a kind of prophecy for her, a way to discover what she does not yet know about herself. Jennifer reminds us of the voice that can speak – and illuminate – a little of our own mystery. When we write, we come into contact with memories and feelings – and also the future selves that are still dreaming, and writing, us into existence.

YOUmedia was created as an innovative, 21st century teen learning space that works to connect young adults, books, media, mentors, and institutions throughout the city of Chicago in one dynamic space designed to inspire collaboration and creativity. Mentors from Digital Youth Network as well as Chicago Public Library librarians lead workshops to help teens build their skills and create digital artifacts – from songs to videos to photography to blogs.

Jennifer Steele is a teaching artist for various organizations around the city of Chicago including Hands On Stanzas, Camp of Dreams, and Young Chicago Authors. Her poems have appeared in Columbia Poetry Review, Caduceus, Warpland Journal, and Beltway Quarterly Online. She received her B.M. from Howard University and her M.F.A. from Columbia College Chicago.

In celebration of National Poetry Month, WBEZ presents The Gift – produced by Stanzi Vaubel and curated by Rachel Jamison Webster, author of September: Poems. This project is a collaboration with UniVerse of Poetry, a station partner that aims to celebrate poets from every nation in the world. Each piece drops us into a poets’ inner life, reminding us of the gift of being human among others.