Two Tokyo Readings (Plus Four Random Things)

Tokyo friends, two poetry readings you should know about:

1) 'Taking a Line for a Walk': The Pleasures and Surprises of the Poem
At 6:30 on Sunday 18th May at Good Day Books, Paul Rossiter will be talking about some of the pleasures, surprises, fascinations, and frustrations of reading and writing poems. In the second half of the talk he will introduce and read some poems from From the Japanese, his book which collects poems on Japanese themes, ranging in time from his first visit to Tokyo in 1969 (the era of Vietnam and Zengakuren) to the post-tsunami Japan of today. There will be plenty of time for questions and discussion.

ADMISSION: Purchase from Good Day Books one copy of From the Japanese, or one copy of any other Isobar Press book (all at ¥1,500 + sales tax).

Good Day Books, Tokai Bldg. (big-b shoes building), 2-4-2 Nishi Gotanda, Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo 141-0031. Tel: 03 6303 9116.

Five minutes walk from Gotanda station; click below for a map.

http://www.gooddaybooks.com/contents/home/new_location?language=english


2) Launch of the second four Isobar Press books:

The launch of the second four Isobar Press books will be from 6–9 p.m. on Friday 6th of June in room 403/404 on the fourth floor of International House of Japan in Roppongi.

http://www.i-house.or.jp/eng/index.html

Royall Tyler will read from A Great Valley Under the Stars; Andrew Fitzsimons and Nobuaki Tochigi will give a bilingual reading of A Fire in the Head; Jessica Goodfellow will read from The Insomniac's Weather Report; and Paul Rossiter will introduce and read from Whispers, Sympathies, and Apparitions: Selected Poems of David Silverstein.

And now for some random things:

1) Each week, the Poets.org website will feature a different entry from Edward Hirsch's A Poet's Glossary. This week's word is 'poetry.' Sign up to get the weekly newsletter. 

2) According to Slate, Pennsylvania (my home state) is the most linguistically diverse in the union. I admit to missing the Philly accent, and to subscribing to two podcasts recorded in the Philly area in order to listen to the accent every week while living far away in Japan!

3) Slate also introduces us to the website Something Pop. It's a mathematical algorithm for helping you make decisions. I was intrigued but doubtful, so I used it on a decision already made but about which I feel ambivalent, and I was pleased to find that what I did chose was the (mathematically determined) better choice (the other option came in as not a bad choice either though). Believe it or not, that actually gave me some comfort.....though I continue to be intrigued but (slightly less) doubtful. 

4) Tapastic brings you Abstract Madlibs for PhDs and academics. If you're one of these (or partnered with one of these) you'll find this amusing. (Hat tip to Diane Nagatomo.) 

Collage by Mapes

If you are at all interested in collage, check out Michael Mapes' amazing photographic collages at Slate, in Christopher Jobson's article "Dissecting Photographic Specimens with Michael Mapes."  Mapes begins with photographic portraits, cuts them into pieces, preserves fragments in plastic bags, gelatin capsules, and in other mediums, and then reassembles the picture into a collage.

For an even closer look at Mapes' pieces, check out Wookmark.

Residing in my Dreams

I've never been to a writers' retreat or been awarded an artist's residency, and due to my particular geographical and personal situation, those experiences will not be within my reach for quite a few more years. I do sometimes wonder what I'm missing, so I enjoyed this article in Slate by Jan Swafford, called "Life in the Colonies." Who knew there were unspoken rules limiting self-promotion (though thank goodness for them) and other expectations of behavior?

Those of you with experience in artist colonies, retreats, and residencies, I'd love to hear about your experiences and assessments of the opportunities. Upside and downside and plain old anecdotes welcome.

Memorizing Poems

Do you memorize poetry?

I've been meaning to memorize 100 poems for a few years now...I read somewhere how important it was to learn the rhythm of poems by memorizing them, by carrying them around with you. I read that 100 poems was a worthy goal. It does sound like good training for a poet-wanna-be, but so far I've only memorized two. Which I am ashamed to admit. I think I have heretofore resisted because I grew up in a home where I was forced to memorize scriptures. My father even laminated certain verses and hung them in the shower so we could study while soaping up. And so I have been a bit resistant to memorization, which I am now releasing. I will now embrace memorizing text that I myself want to memorize.

Furthermore, since committing to read Moby Dick on this blog got me to do it within a month, I am committing here and now on this very same blog to memorizing 100 poems. But not in a month, not even in a year. It's going to be a long-term project, but I can (and will) commit to memorizing one per month at a minimum until I get to 100. Here it is in black and white. On my blog. And you may call me on it. Anytime.

So how about you? Do you memorize poems, and if so why? And do you have any recommendations for which poems I should memorize?

The two that I have so far are On Angels by Czeslaw Milosz (which I don't recommend for memorization because there is not much in the way of rhyme or meter to help) and Robert Frost's Fire and Ice (which I have to admit I memorized without even trying in junior high school, and I shared a bedroom with a sister six years younger than myself, and I forced her to memorize it too...I would not let her sleep at night until she said it...don't ask me why, I don't know...but in college she was asked to write a paper on this very poem and she wrote it about her wacky sister making her memorize it so my efforts didn't go to waste).

Here's an article from Jim Holt in the New York Times Book Review about his commitment to memorizing poems (he was at about 100 when this article was written 2 1/2 years ago). His tip is: "the key to memorizing a poem painlessly is to do it incrementally, in tiny bits. I knock a couple of new lines into my head each morning before breakfast..." His reasoning for this practice is: "It’s a physical feeling, and it’s a deeply pleasurable one. You can get something like it by reading the poem out loud off the page, but the sensation is far more powerful when the words come from within....And it’s a cheap pleasure." And he quotes Robert Pinsky as saying, "I wonder if anyone who has memorized a lot of poetry . . . can fail to write coherent sentences and paragraphs."

And here's a recent article in Slate by Robert Pinsky about how he misremembered a Yeat's poem, and what he learned about creative writing from trying to fill in the blank himself until he could get to a bookstore to find (and be stunned by) the actual word he had forgotten. It was this article that got me thinking about memorization today...

I'd love to hear from you blog-readers about poems you have memorized, and what you think about memorization in general.

And, I will post in a day or two which poem I am starting on next. To keep me accountable. Here I go....

Oh, and if anybody wants to join me and make a memorization commitment (but I'm not pushing...wouldn't want to push, having been on the receiving end), that would be great. Go ahead and post it in the comments section, if you are so inclined.

Hirshfield on Rembrandt

This poem is from Jane Hirshfield's book After (Harper Perennial, 2006).


Late Self-Portrait by Rembrandt


The dog, dead for years, keeps coming back in the dream.
We look at each other there with the old joy.
It was always her gift to bring me into the present—

Which sleeps, changes, awakens, dresses, leaves.

Happiness and unhappiness
differ as a bucket hammered from gold differs from one of pressed tin,
this painting proposes.

Each carries the same water, it says.



Listen to the poet read it herself here at Slate.