More Haiku Postcards to the President

Here are some more Haiku Postcards to the President, collected at AWP this past week-end. Try your hand? We'd love to see more. We'll keep posting our favorites.

DEAR PRESIDENT,

I saw the White House
recently from a distance.
I couldn't get close.

--Thad Rutkowski


DEAR PRESIDENT,

My father retired
from the Army just in time.
I am so thankful.

-- Dani LeBlanc

SENOR ARBUSTO,

In retirement, read more
listen more, repent

-- YF

LISTEN,

Now we are talking
about you: you had your turn.
our decision: peace!

-- Christi Kramer

On a bathroom hand-
dryer, a note states: "push butt-
on to hear Bush speak"

-- Alan King

SPECIAL DELIVERY: A MESSAGE FROM CHILDREN

They said to tell you,
we are all ashamed of you.
Say you are sorry.

-- Christi Kramer

Congratulations!
You've topped murders in Texas!
Now: pack light, quick.
Go!

-- Yael Flusberg

Masculinity:
history of honoring
and harboring love.

-- M.R.R.

Dear President,

Bushie- Poo No child
left behind. No more jails please
in Alabama.

-- Anonymous

Dear President,

My friend's boy came back
His nightmares have not ended
Please bring the rest home!

-- L. Desrosiers

Dear President,

Read the bible, man.
Preferential treatment for
the poor, says Jesus.

-- anonymous

Dear President,

We can't wait until
You go back to your ranch and
we can all read Joyce.

-- anonymous

Dear President,

End the war right now
and secure your legacy.
End the war right now.

--Eric Pankey

It is difficult to read the names on the postcards, so please let us know if we misspell your name.

(more Haiku below...)

Postcards to the President

Greetings from the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference!

We are here in New York at a gathering of 7,000 writers. It's a tremendous pleasure to be here among so many like (and unlike) souls and to have the opportunity to meet people from around the country who are planning to make the trek to DC this Spring to come to the Split This Rock Poetry Festival.

We have a table at the bookfair (table 213) and will be here through Sunday. While we are here we are giving a writing assignment to those who stop by our table to write a haiku postcard to the president and we invite you to join us via cyberspace. Attached below are some of our favorites from yesterday's writings. We'll post again at the end of this day & tomorrow, so stay tuned...

Much love from all of us here in NYC, Melissa Tuckey

DEAR PRESIDENT:


MATH HAIKU

For not being a
Math'metician, George Bush is
A great divider.

--B. Geyer

Do you dream children
in Kabul in Mosul killed
by your certainty

-- Suzanne Gardinier

STATE OF THE UNION

I listened
with ears
made of Napalm

-- Brian Dickson

Catch and release?
A border crossing is not
a fishing trip-- sir!

-- Jaime Jarvis

The world is watching
Empire shatters as glass
What's left? People. The Arts.

-- Robert M.

What is the
sound of one
president leaving
office?
A Great Celebration!

-- Marlon Fick


(P.S. I am reading names of postcards, so please drop me a note if I misspelled, or misread a name and I'll correct it)

Split This (Global) Rock: Love letter to Kenya

Mukoma Wa Ngugi, a Kenyan poet, author of Hurling Words at Consciousness and co-editor of Pambazuka News , heard about Split This Rock from the Africa Poets Yahoo Group. Mukoma is sharing with us a poem commissioned by the BBC World Service on the ongoing crisis in Kenya.

Kenya – A Love Letter
Mukoma Wa Ngugi

Inside looking out, snow is falling and I am thinking
how happy we once were, when promises and dreams
came easy and how when we, lovers covered only

by a warm Eldoret night, you waved a prophecy
at a shooting star and said, "when the time comes
we shall name our first child, Kenya" and how I

laughed and said "yes our child then shall be country
and human" and we held hands, rough and toughened
by shelling castor seeds. My dear, when did our

clasped hands become heavy chains and anchors holding
us to the mines and diamond and oil fields? Our hands
calloused by love and play, these same hands – when

did they learn to grip a machete or a gun to spit hate?
And this earth that drinks our blood like a hungry child
this earth that we have scorched to cinders - when we

are done eating it, how much of it will be left for Kenya?
My dear, our child is born, is dying. Tomorrow the child
will be dead.

Special Split This Rock issue of Beltway Poetry Quarterly

Beltway Poetry Quarterly is beginning 2008 with a rousing issue featuring seventeen poets who are participating the Split This Rock poetry festival as organizers or readers. As co-editor Regie Cabico writes in his introduction, these poets sing "about gentrification, pop culture, immigration, war, heritage, disability, history and American iconography" to create a home "in the gut of a government that should hear, swallow, and ingest verses of provocation and witness."

The Split This Rock Issue of Beltway Poetry Quarterly features poems by: Winona Addison * Naomi Ayala * Sarah Browning * Grace Cavalieri * Teri Ellen Cross * Heather Davis * Joel Dias-Porter * Yael Flusberg * Brian Gilmore * E. Ethelbert Miller * Princess of Controversy * Tanya Snyder * Susan Tichey * Melissa Tuckey * Dan Vera * Rosemary Winslow * Kathi Wolfe

The Split This Rock Issue (Volume 9, Number 1), is co-edited by Regie Cabico and Kim Roberts. The issue is available online now at http://www.beltwaypoetry.com

Attention Videographers and Filmmakers

Split This Rock Poetry Festival has put out a call for film and video submissions. Looking for a max of 15 minutes on "artistic, experimental, and challenging interpretations of poetry that explore critical social issues." Deadline is January 30, 2008. It will be juried by Francesco Levato, Executive Director of the Poetry Center of Chicago.

Do you have memories of great film or video exploration of poems or the role of poetry in witness and provocation? If so, leave a comment and links if available.

Howard Nemerov for some New Year's inspiration

A recent reading by Brookland Area Writers and Artists included this poem by former poet laureate Howard Nemerov, which I thought a great example of poetry using humor to skewer jingoism.

TO THE GOVERNOR & LEGISLATURE OF MASSACHUSETTS

When I took a job teaching in Massachusetts
I didn't know and no one told me that I'd have to sign
An oath of loyalty to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
Now that I'm hooked, though, with a house
And a mortgage on the house, the road ahead
Is clear: I sign. But I want you gentlemen to know
That till today it never once occurred to me
To overthrow the Commonwealth of Massachusetts
By violence or subversion, or by preaching either.
But now I'm not so sure. It makes a fellow think,
Can such things be? Can such things be in the very crib
Of our liberties, and East of the Hudson, at that?
So if the day come that I should shove the Berkshire Hills
Over the border and annex them to Vermont,
Or snap Cape Cod off at the elbow and scatter
Hyannis to Provincetown beyond the twelve-mile limit,
Proclaiming apocalypsopetls to my pupils
And with state troopers dripping from my fingertips
Squeaking "You promised, you broke your promise!"
You gentlemen just sit there with my signature
And keep on lawyer-talking like nothing had happened,
Lest I root out that wagon tongue on Bunker Hill
And fungo your Golden Dome right into Fenway Park
Like any red-celled American boy ought to done
Long ago in the first place, just to keep in practice.

Garcia Lorca in Iran

This past Sunday's New York Times Magazine featured a wonderful essay by Zarah Ghahramani (as told to Robert Hillman) titled "Poetry of Protest."

In it, Ghahramani talks about how the work of Federico García Lorca inspired her as a young woman living under Iran's dictatorship. She became involved in the peaceful student protests and Garcia Lorca was an inspiring model for her during this time.

...I raised my voice in the street, along with thousands of other student protesters. I believed I was keeping faith with García Lorca, and also with the great poets Saadi and Hafez of long-ago Persia, who honored love and liberty.
-- Zarah Ghahramani

It's a moving testament to the power of poetry to inspire and to agitate. I was reminded of Dennis Nurkse at the Cut Loose the Body reading who spoke of García Lorca's martyrdom for freedom and his example of one who was tortured for his beliefs and his standing against tyranny. -- Dan Vera

You can read the entire essay here.