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Standard Bearer

Word Temple keeps the language flowing

By Bart Schneider

Katherine Hastings

Years ago, when I first heard the art-world term “curator” applied to someone organizing literary events, I thought it sounded pretty darn pretentious. Writing, it seemed to me, was at heart an activity for common men and women. If inner-city neighborhoods didn’t need community curators, then neither did writers. If the academics didn’t completely destroy literature with their tortured theories, here came the curators to finish the job.

I’ve given up being such a purist boor and also have had the good fortune to attend numerous literary events and series that have been shaped by a singular vision.

Katherine Hastings, the driving force behind the Word Temple Poetry Series, isn’t stuck on a title; she just does exceptional work. In a relatively short time (the series is in its third year), Hastings has found a way of bringing national and local poets together with a large and devoted audience. Word Temple’s success has hit the radar of major poetry publishers around the country.

As part of her series, Hastings has hosted three poet laureates of the United States: Robert Hass, Billy Collins and our current national poet, Kay Ryan of Fairfax. Other luminaries who’ve participated include Jane Hirshfield, Deborah Garrison, Ishmael Reed, Michael McClure, Al Young and Carolyn Kizer. But Hastings isn’t star-struck. Each Word Temple event kicks off with a 10-minute reading by a local, emerging poet.

Last week I attended a blockbuster Word Temple reading, celebrating the new Collected Poems of Philip Whalen, edited by Guerneville poet Michael Rothenberg. A troupe of nine poets had been recruited to read. As much as I wanted to hear the Beat master’s poems read by a myriad of voices, I feared the evening would stretch into the wee hours, as mass readings often do. But no. After a compelling kick-off by “emerging poet” Phyllis Meshulam, the Whalenites wailed for no more than an hour, wonderfully showcasing the poet’s work. I sensed the curator’s disciplined hand behind this triumph.

Hastings also hosts the eclectic monthly Word Temple radio hour on public station KRCB 91.1-FM. Here, Hastings operates as an inspired poetry DJ, sampling everything from ancient recordings of Whitman in his own voice to a rare session of Allen Ginsberg with Bob Dylan.

It turns out that Hastings is a fine poet herself, with an MFA in creative writing from Vermont College. She says that the work she’s done with Word Temple has given her work a greater sense of freedom. Here’s her poem “Pórtico.”

Pórtico

This porch isn’t really a porch but a stoop
of old cement, a steady rope of ants between
step and riser making its way to a mystery
that just yesterday smelled like something rotting
and today has no smell at all. Twice I’ve told people
die and meant it. Grandma Torrez spent three
comatose days draped with clinging familia. Just go,
Abuela. They’ll live. She died that hour.

Roses are lined up like laborers in the heat or hems
of Woolworth’s aprons. Some are wound tight in
jalapeño-green wraps, others unfold petal by petal
on their way to becoming nothing. Their scents
fuse in the breeze and arrive as one: Rosa. From
slavery and Mexico without a patch of ground to the
Hills Brothers factory, she found it possible then
to buy a house with a porch on Geneva Avenue.

The mockingbird is trying to fool every dove, finch,
and warbler in the neighborhood. Do they fall for it?
She wasn’t really my grandmother but a brutal
lover’s. After I left she let me live behind a
curtain in her garage, taught me a little español,
cooked me menudo y tamales dulces. She was the
only grandmother I ever had. I told her to die.
¡Le dije morir! And it worked.

_____________________________________________

Sample Katherine Hastings’ curatorial work at the final Word Temple reading of the season, featuring the potent San Francisco poet August Kleinzahler, on Friday, Dec. 5, at Copperfield’s Books, 2316 Montgomery Drive in Montgomery Village, Santa Rosa. 7pm. Free. 707.578.1242.

August Kleinzahler

© 2008 Bart Schenider and Bohemian.com

ALL STACKED UP | a column

 ______________________________________________________

Trumpets Without Portfolio

 
“WHAT WAS LOUIS ARMSTRONG’S wife’s name?” the homeless man asked.

“Lil Hardin Armstrong,” I answered at once. “She was a fine piano-player, too.” With a book in my lap, I’d been anxiously plotting out my journey across the Bay. His question startled everyone at the bus stop.

“Lillian,” he said, then stepped back. “That’s correct. You mean, she was a musician?”

“Oh, yeah. In fact, she taught him to read music. She was a classical player. She taught Beethoven, Mozart, Bach — ”

“Wait a minute,” he said. “What were the best recordings Louis made?”

“On trumpet? Or singing?”

“Trumpet.”

By now, all the other city bus benchers were staring and pulling an E.F. Hutton, pretending not to be engaged, yet coolly hanging onto to our every move and syllable. One or two women — who had been hanging on to their purses and bags at the approach of this tall. disorderly, tune-humming black man –  relaxed.

“The cuts he made starting with Earl Fatha Hines back in the Twenties,” I said. “And then on up through the early Thirties. In my opinion, those were some the best. Very creative. He’d just come over to New York from Chicago, where he’d been playing with King Oliver.It was King Oliver brought Louis up from New Orleans.”

The homeless man grinned at me with delight. “You know all about this stuff, huh?”

“I love Louis. Who doesn’t?”

“I used to play trumpet myself,” he said suddenly, fingering his lips. “I wish I didn’t have to give up studying out here in Oakland. But I had to let it go.”

“That’s too bad,” I said.

“Life got in the way. I let the trumpet go, but I didn’t let music go. I couldn’t. I still can’t”

On my way to San Francisco to deliver the keynote to a gathering at California Lawyers for the Arts. Topic: Arts and Environment. Like everybody else, I was looking up Shattuck to see if the bus was coming. Once the bus delivered me to BART, I would hop on the train, get to San Francisco without having to drive, then hail a taxi to Fort Mason Center.

“So you know about Duke Ellington, Coleman Hawkins, Art Tatum, Stan Getz, Fletcher Henderson, Billie Holiday, Woody Herman and Stan Kenton?”

“A little bit.”

“You know about Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie and Theo-lonious Monk and Wes Montgomery? And Miles?”

“I do, yes.”

“You know about Billy Eckstine?”

“Mister B, yes” I said.

“He was bad, wasn’t he?”

“Oh yeah.”

“But you know who the baddest? The baddest was Miles Davis, brother. Miles came up with two of the greatest albums of all time — for my taste, you know.”

“Which ones?”

“Sketches of Spain,” he said dreamily, his eyes rolling up into his head. “And Kind of Blue. You know Kind of Blue? — “Flamenco Sketches” and “So What?” and “Freddy Freeloader”? Every time I hear those jams, I think about all the trumpets I myself have invented. We talking about 25 to 30 different kinds of trumpets, you know.”

At this, the handful of other waiting bus hopefuls squirmed, or looked away.

“Really?” I said. “That many trumpets?”

The friendly fellow pushed back his greasy baseball cap and tapped at one ear with his fingers. “In my mind,” he explained. “I invented ‘em in my mind. But, brother, you ought to see ‘em. Aw, man. Every one of ‘em is distinctive.”

“You must’ve liked Dizzy’s trumpet, the one where the bell’s tilted up at an angle?”

“That’s where I first got the idea from,” he admitted.  “Then you got Don Cherry with that little pocket trumpet he used to blow on with Ornette Coleman.”

Now we could all see the bus approaching. We all felt relieved.

“What is the greatest, the baddest album of all time?” he asked.

“Kind of Blue?”

“No,” he said with unsubdued passion. “I’m talking about Bumpin’ on Sunset Strip — Wes Montgomery. Aw, it’s bad. I never get tired of listening to it.”

While one of boarding young passengers was helping an elderly woman with a folding wire shopping cart down the steps, the trumpet man bared his teeth to me.

“Hey, brother,” he said, “I need to have some work done on my teeth so I can play again. Can you maybe help me out a little bit with that?”

I stood away from the boarding crowd and fished out ten bucks.

“Thanks, sir,” he said, followjng me up steps into the bus. “This’ll help a lot.”

“Have a beautiful day,” I said, regretting the flat cliché, even if I did mean every word.

“You, too,” he said. “But, wait, hold the door open. I got something to give you.” He jammed his hands in one pocket and brought a fistful of mini Tootsie Rolls and other wrapped candies.

Quickly pocketing the sweets. I accepted his offering. “Thank you,” I said.

The bus driver was about to have a fit. “Hurry up,” she snarled, “I got to move.”

“Hang on,” said Trumpet Man. “I got some for you, too.” And, sure enough, he pressed a tangle of Tootsie Rolls and little hard cadies into the driver’s hands.

By now the whole bus was intrigued.

“Thank you,” the driver yelled. “Now get off the bus. Yall throwing me off-schedule.”

After I found me a window seat at the back of the bus, I effortlessly let the whole exchange float through my head again. Here you are on your way to an arts and environment meeting, I thought, and what could be more on-schedule than what had just played out?

Al Young

 © 2008 by Al Young

Go to TV NEWS LIES  for more of the not so same

 

Cartoon © by K. Bendib, all rights reserved

No margin of error, no ledge, no edge
of contention, no crackle, no snap
to let you know they know we’ll know
your every hello-goodbye by and by
– invasion trumps persuasion, perhaps.

So maybe your sexy phone call to Bali
right in the midst of global warming,
the conference, connected with agents
spying on you, now slows up email, lying
and laying for you — blam! Drop dead.

To mock democracy, you need more
than nerve; you need time and money.
Spasms and spectacles of greed spill out
and spell out big the C-word capitalism:
a bottom realm where Niggers always slave.

Al Young

© 2008 Al Young

 

Black regiments known as Buffalo Soldiers were among the first U.S. troops packed off to Europe to fight The War to End All Wars.

 

Ninety years after the war to end all wars came to a close, the Guardian.UK has collected together portraits and sketches of Wilfred Owen, Robert Graves, Vera Brittain, Isaac Rosenberg and Edward Thomas along with early drafts of some of their greatest poems.

View story and all 21 photos at Guardian.UK

Born in 1893, Wilfred Owen signed up for the Artists’ Rifles in 1915. He was killed in action on November 4 1918, just a week before the war ended

DULCE ET DECORUM EST

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! –  An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime . . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.

8 October 1917 – March 1918

DULCE ET DECORUM EST — the first words of a Latin saying (taken from an ode by Horace). The words were widely understood and often quoted at the start of the First World War. They mean “It is sweet and right.” The full saying ends the poem: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori – it is sweet and right to die for your country. In other words, it is a wonderful and great honor to fight and die for your country.

 

Partial draft of “Dulce et Decorum Est,” Owen’s celebrated anti-war poem
Click on image to see further draft development

© The English Faculty Library, University of Oxford / The Wilfred Owen Literary Estate

 Literature Project on Dulce et Decorum Est