On the Making of Seven Poets, Four Days, One BookIn October 2007, in the library of the Shambaugh House at the University of Iowa, six poets—Tomaž Šalamun from Slovenia, István László Geher from Hungary, Simone Inguanez from Malta, Ksenia Golubovich from Russia, Marvin Bell and Dean Young from the United States—and I met to write poems together. Over the course of several afternoons we took lines and images from one another, in a spirit of exploration, to create a conversation in poetry. We would write for thirty minutes, creating a poem of fifteen lines, and then read our works aloud, jotting down words and lines and images with which to start a new poem, and so it went until we had created, in a process of call and response, of laughter and exploration, 7 Poets 4 Days 1 Book. Here are three of my contributions to the sequence, which began with us reflecting on definitions of the word union: Of this and that. The union of fabric and flesh. As when the bugler rose one night from a deep sleep, pulled on his fatigues, and left the regiment camped outside the walled city to wander through the desert until he came to a cave in which the scrolls had moldered and the bones of the divine shone intermittently. Tracer rounds lit a new route to the interior of the mud hut in which the patriarch of the family at prayer opened the holy book to the page on which nothing was written, and closed his eyes to chant above the din of artillery shells and the staccato of small arms fire. The quartermaster studied the neighborhood associations listed in the appendix of the report on the bridges destroyed in the last offensive, and counted backwards from ten. A tune forgotten by the bugler echoed in the cave, like the words dissolving on the scroll. Five, four, three… __________ Quicksilver, and a sliver in the seam Of coal smoldering underground, and resin Collected from the final totem pole Carved for the anniversary of the war On the invisible. What did you see In the cruel hookah? A new red For the fall fashion show, another network To infiltrate before the spring offensive, Words in an ancient script that no one read Until the fire meandering through the earth Had been extinguished. Too late! the model cried, Slipping into an evening dress designed For someone else. What happened to the silver Mined by our enemies to pay their debts To us? The totem pole swayed in the wind. __________ Strip the tones of every color, every shade Of meaning, and tell the women in the light-blue shawls To meet us on the plain, near the burial mound Dug by the martyrs for a cause no one remembers. Their names were not recorded in the Book of Books; And if our elders deemed their sacrifice a waste We praised their unarmed charge in the most lavish terms— Albeit in the code we had devised to evade The censor’s heavy hand. Three moths! The leafless tree On which they fed until the autumn winds began Will bear new fruit next summer if the women find Their way to us before the marching band arrives. |
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