Filed under: art, literature, world | Tags: berlin wall, fall, mark doty, poets, vera pavlova, yusef komunyakaa
Nine prominent poets memorialize the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall in today’s NYT. Mark Doty writes about an ordinary construction site in his U.S. neighborhood; Russian poet Vera Pavlova contrasts the momentous occasion with her everyday experiences as a mother.
Yusef Komunyakaa writes in “Nostalgia” (my favorite of the bunch):
While the east slept in the arms of the west
each house broke into two divided houses
& concertina rolled out across the dead of night
to cleave a full moon.
and
Let’s not speak of official good & evil,
but of a man and woman spooning bodies,
knowing what it takes to make love
go through gray concrete brightly.
Filed under: gay rights, social justice | Tags: homophobia, mark doty, subway hero
As the little girl in Poltergeist says, “I’m back.” My dog, Lucy, recently passed away and my fear in blogging again has been that all of my posts would be about her. She was a loving, smart, one-of-a-kind dog and she will be missed. Enough said.
Two interesting stories of note: poet Mark Doty was strolling with his partner in San Francisco this weekend, and was told to “Get lost, faggot,” by homophobic passersby and restaurant owners in North Beach. A disturbing account, not only because it happened to such an articulate, beloved writer, but because it happened in this day and age. Think we’re in a post-homophobic era? Read Doty’s account or Houston’s reaction to GLBT mingling or to China’s censoring of the Oscars or this hate crime involving a 62 year-old man in Vancouver.
To combat these depressing state of affairs (not to mention our downward-spiraling economy), here’s an article I read this morning about a subway hero who lifted a man from the tracks, saved him from an oncoming train, and then quietly left the scene before the media and authorities could congratulate him.
Filed under: literature | Tags: fire to fire, mark doty, national book award, poetry
Lyrical poet and all-around nice guy Mark Doty won the National Book Award for Poetry for his book of New and Collected Poems, Fire to Fire. The award was presented last night at a black-tie dinner in New York.
I say “nice guy” without guile because, in the several times that I’ve met Doty, he has been one of the most gracious and unassuming major writers I’ve met. I happened upon his poems more than a dozen years ago, when he was giving a small poetry reading at a Newbury Street art gallery. I was just beginning to take myself seriously as a writer then, and the epic scale of his work and its unapologetically gay content made an impression. Now, I often teach his poem “At the Gym”, from Source, as an example of the way that an everyday act like benchpressing can be layered with poetic meaning.
Whenever I hear Mark Doty’s name, I’m also saddened by the fact that Doty could have been a part of the English deparment faculty at B.C. Our loss.
Doty is a stunning poet, and, as he mentions in interviews, the National Book Award is especially sweet because it honors a collection of his life’s work.
