Cock a snook?

I've whizzed past this phrase a couple times in the past couple weeks, with enough sense of its meaning from context not to bother looking it up.

Interestingly, The Economist -- which I find does such a good job of explaining who everyone is, title-wise, whenever they refer to some international muckety-muck -- feels this is common enough global lingo to breeze right by with it.

But then I thought, why not investigate? It was either that or casually drop it into my next convo with my English co-worker and see if he raised an eyebrow.

Turns out I've seen -- and made, though not too recently -- this gesture many times, but never knew the proper term for it. If pressed, I might have called it a Lansing Cheer.

So, are you one to cock a snook?

And better yet: can you use it in a poem?

Reading List

With an assist from the NY Public Library, I'm doing a crash course this week in the poems of the Sewanee Writers' Conference faculty poets.

So far, I'm enjoying Salter's first book, Henry Purcell in Japan, especially the closing poems set in Japan.

Also been skipping around in Mark Jarman's To the Green Man and Andrew Hudgins' Ecstatic in the Poison -- the co-winners for best book titles in this bunch, I think.

On deck for the train ride this a.m.: Claudia Emerson's Late Wife. (I heard her read from this book at AWP.)

Any fans of Salter, Emerson, Jarman, Hudgins, Brad Leithauser, Mark Strand or Greg Williamson in the proverbial house?

Calling All Ornithologists

Fascinating profile of jazz know-it-all -- or knew-'em-all -- Phil Schaap in The NYer this week:

During a Thelonious Monk festival, one of the d.j.s went on about how Monk created art out of "wrong notes." Monk, who rarely spoke to anyone, much less a college student, called the station and, on the air, declared, "The piano ain't got no wrong notes." In 1979, Schaap was at the center of a Miles Davis festival at a time when Davis was a near-recluse living off Riverside Drive. Davis started calling the station, dozens and dozens of calls—"mad, foul, strange calls," Schaap recalled. Davis's inimitable voice, low and sandpapery, was unnerving for Schaap. But then one day—"Friday, July 6, 1979"—his tone changed, and for nearly three hours the two men went over the details of "Agharta," one of his later albums. Finally, after Schaap had clarified every spelling, every detail, Davis said, "You got it? Good. Now forget it. Play 'Sketches of Spain'! Right now!"

Educational and Addictive

Trip Advisor's Map Challenge has been making the rounds at my office this week. This is a time-waster that's not a complete waste of time.

Good News on Friday

Happy to report that one of my favorite journals, Pool, has picked up my poem "Gravy Boat" for their seventh issue.

Thanks Patty and Judith!

Jason Shinder

I was very sorry to hear that Jason Shinder passed away. I didn't know him well, just briefly really, for a semester. He was a wonderful teacher.

Jason taught an excellent MFA seminar when I was a student at The New School. In the class, we discussed questions of influence, each week looking at a different living poet and one of his or her acknowledged influences -- for example, how Thomas Hardy influenced Donald Hall's writing. What made the class so good, in large part, was that Jason actually brought these poets to class to join in the discussion. So we got to meet and talk not only with Hall, but also people like Marie Howe, Gerald Stern and Minnie Bruce Pratt. The New School MFA program was still quite new then, and frankly pretty shaky on several fronts, but this class was great.

The other thing Jason did was ask each of us students to devise a concept for a poetry anthology, then spend the semester researching and collecting poems for it. Looking at his bibliography, it's probably no surprise to anyone that he would assign such a thing. But this, too, was a good and helpful experience. I had never thought about putting together an anthology before -- how you do it, nuts-and-bolts wise, or what might be a good unifying concept or theme for one.

Here's his obit from the NYT. And here's a poem he published in The NYer last year. Jason edited a number of anthologies, and most recently put together a book of essays on Howl, but I would especially suggest seeking out the two books of poems he published.

Woof!

My review of Chase Twichell's Dog Language is up now on Rattle.

Have a great weekend.

Surprise / No Surprise

This afternoon on the train ride home I finished reading Norwegian novelist Per Petterson's Out Stealing Horses, a book I'd never heard of when I received it as a Christmas present. It's been the surprise hit of my reading year, so far. In the novel, the narrator relates both his present life as a near-hermit living his last years in a remote cabin and his memories of 1948, when he was 15 and spent the summer with his father at a somewhat similar cabin -- the last time he sees his father, it turns out. The narrative jumps back and forth between the present and the past (as well as an earlier past, which is gradually shaded in as well), slowly filling in the details of each time's story. Petterson has a great way of holding back details and then sharing them offhandedly at key moments. And the prose (in this English translation) is simple, yet mesmerizing. Check it out.

***

What wasn't surprising is how much I've enjoyed Clay Matthews' Superfecta. (This one I'd been waiting for.) Clay's poems are big-hearted and they do a lot of walking around, winding up in places that can be unexpected but always feel right. Take "Ode on A Lower-Midwestern Storm System with its long first sentence stretching out across four couplets to get us to that Keats tattoo. And "Regarding My Sentimentality and Love of Hole in the Walls" -- I love his titles! -- with its pickle jar like a crystal ball, in which we see our various greeds, in that "barbeque joint off a state highway." Reading these poems, the music in my head (I don't know if he's a fan, but this is what I hear) is Bob Dylan. Sometimes Blood on the Tracks, and sometimes -- what else? -- Highway 61 Revisited. The book closes with a series of elegies, such as "Elegy for the Elbow Scab," which begins:

I come to understand the consistency of asphalt
the same way the middle of the chest comes
to understand a scalpel, which is to say not at all
or with humble and eternal thanks. ...

I can't point out all the good stuff, but let me leave you with one last one before you go get a Superfecta for yourself:

Handle

I never meant to start counting and never stop,
but if I never started I'd never have known
you to be that never girl who never wore lipstick
never even once. Happy birthday, blow out the light
again. Fold the covers again, go to the sink again,
write your name in bubble letters and ask the world
for another pair of sturdy brown shoes. Let's get this straight:
I never meant everything, but here I've said it
nevertheless. The whistle is blowing. The train is leaving.
I want to sit here by the window with you and think
about the hinges on that lonesome suitcase climbing aboard.

(Appeared originally on RealPoetik)

Calendar Check

Anyone else going to the Sewanee Writers' Conference this summer?

Can't Get Enough? Or, Enough Already!

I added a link over there on the right to video of the Library of Congress reading. Should you so choose, you can hear and see Charles Simic's intro, my reading and Monica's reading, all in gorgeous streaming video.