Poem of the Week: Susan Brennan

Poets Against the War

We stand at the Capitol

seized in snapshots

of curious tourists

our rumpled posters reflect

in an officer's shades as he speaks

so softly it surprises me

asking us to step off the sidewalk

his voice as a shepherd beckons

his flock, his accent sunned in Southern

syllables. Maybe "sheep" is not the most

desirable metaphor for human protestors

but clumped with the others I let go

of my small life to be a cluster

warmed by fellow shoulders

our faces a brief constellation of togetherness.

In the February chill as the Capitol

glows lunar behind us, our silence

mushrooms into a vortex

a great ear hinged to the cold skull of the sky.

Poets, watchers, news camera, officers,

residents hurrying by on their cells, callers

on the other end of those phones -- pinched

together in an irrevocable clay.

From the far end of Lafayette Park a drove

of starlings twists and wheels

silver flash under wings, black top feathers

sweep the space between us and the sun

as if to clean the sky

of blood and bone wind-born.

I'm not listening to the birds now clamped

to a single tree top, chattering whether

to stay or move on; I'm not listening to the listening,

the fruit of silence; I'm not listening to the deaf bell

stamping its hard thick notes to the downward wind --

I'm listening to the war. To its silence.

It sounds like peace, it sounds like rest;

but it is hollow, it is the whole endless groan

of mothers who have lost their motherhood.

- Susan Brennan

Used by permission.

Susan Brennan's poems appear in various publications. Her manuscript, Sweet Demons has been nominated as a finalist for several book awards. Vegas,a film she co-wrote, premiered in competition at the Venice and Tribeca Film Festivals.Her script for the web series Verse, a poetry murder mystery was awarded first place at the LA Webfest for dramatic script. She received her MFA in Poetry at NYU and is a yoga teacher. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband Ed.

Brennan was on the panels The Yogic Path to Poetry and Off the Page and Into the Streets - Reports From the Field at Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation & Witness 2008 and attended 2010.

Please feel free to forward Split This Rock Poem of the Week widely. We just ask you to include all of the information in this email, including this request. Thanks!

Split This Rock
www.splitthisrock.org
info@splitthisrock.org
202-787-5210

War and Art: Creativity and Youth In Action

Stanley Kirshner Breen partners with 10 Years + Counting in their effort to to create something positive out of the devastative war, by connecting a community of people through art.

"Art engages students in a way that nothing else can... I hope students across the country will get involved with 10YAC - and use creativity to imagine a world where education is more important than war."

Read more at Stanley's blog:
http://www.mikeshighschoolnews.com/blogs/stanley-kirshner-breen/07/19/2011/war-and-art-creativity-and-youth-action

Review of Wisdom Teeth by Derrick Weston Brown

- Review by Kaitie O'Hare
 
After reading Derrick Weston Brown’s Wisdom Teeth, it’s hard to believe this is his first collection of poems. As Busboys and Poet’s first Poet-In-Residence, Brown approaches his poetry with an incredible confidence, which often touches on tense topics of history and culture.

The collection begins with a clever poem, "Hourglass Flow", about the struggle of writing and being stuck inside one’s own head. Brown ricochets blame around from comfort and the city, to competition. However, my favorite blame is “the voice that wants to sound like a poet, but not sound // like a poet wanting to sound like a poet,” which all poets have feared at one point in their lives. This is just one way that Brown says what people think, but hardly say themselves.

He moves through the collection with a cool charisma such as this, even when he explores many voices, like Halle, Paul A, Paul D, Paul F, and Sixo of Tony Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize winning Beloved. Brown dedicates a chapter of his collection called “The Sweet Home Men Series,” which features a few poems of his ongoing series of persona poems from the voices of slaves on the Sweet Home Plantation in Beloved.

The distinguished voices separate the chapter from the rest of the poems in a delightful way, letting them stand strongly on their own, yet they seem to fit perfectly into the collection as a whole with its commentary on history, culture, and race. “The Sweet Home Men Series,” a creative and bold chapter, adds a new layer to the collection that it would feel like something was missing without it.

Wisdom Teeth continues this great discussion of African American culture and history throughout the remaining chapters, writing about giants like Malcolm X and Duke Ellington. A Split This Rock poem of the week, "Duke Ellington’s You St. Lament" is one of my personal favorites, giving weight to the great Duke Ellington mural painted on a brick wall of the True Reformers Building, which looms over U Street. Brown puts a clever spin on the name of the street, and reminds his readers of the history behind the neighborhood, which is quickly gentrifying and—some might say—losing its roots. This poem brings the mural to the foreground of U Street, reminding readers to look up every once in a while and see things for what they are.

While this poem is one of the greats in the collections, there are plenty more that I could recall and write about, but there are more important aspects of Wisdom Teeth to be discussed, like its humor for example. While the collection may not be considered a knee slapper, Brown reminds us that poetry doesn’t always have to be taken so seriously. From a poem about Snagglepuss to clever puns of “You Street,” Brown sews threads of wit through the entire collection, including in his form. He puts his own spin on the haiku form and appropriately titles it “Brownku.” The brownkus in Wisdom Teeth are longer than the standard 5-7-5 syllable haiku, but still maintain a short structure.

Besides his cleverly named forms, Brown also includes a poem about the inner thoughts of awkward tension about being single between a man and a woman trapped in a car together. "In the Car" excludes spacing between some words, creatingafeelingofpanickedfrenzy, accurately portraying how our inner thoughts differ from our outer actions and spoken words. This poem adds a welcomed lightheartedness about dating into a collection otherwise filled with more serious topics.

Brown’s many voices and talents offer something for everyone as they read through the collection. But don’t take my word for it. Here’s what other authorities in the poetic world have to say about Brown’s debut collection—

"Full of wit and whimsy, Wisdom Teeth postulates a poetics of heart-whole appreciation and honesty—for love and life, for family and friends, for literature and history, for pop culture and the poet's ever-cognizant powers of observation." —Tony Medina, author of My Old Man Was Always on the Lam

“We need more songs like this young man’s right here. Truth cuts its way beneath the unspoken like new teeth on their way to light. Son of Langston, come on through.” —Ruth Forman, author of Prayers Like Shoes

Read the collection yourself and decide which poem your favorite. And come him read this Sunday at “Sunday Kind of Love” at Busboys and Poets at 5 pm.

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Kaitie O'Hare is a student at American University and an intern at Split This Rock.

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Split This Rock received a review copy of Wisdom Teeth, PM Press, $14.95. The book is available from the press, and from the Teaching for Change bookstore, online and at Busboys and Poets at 14th and V.

Split This Rock Poem of the Week - Derrick Weston Brown

Split This Rock Poem of the Week - Derrick Weston Brown Duke Ellington's You St. Lament I try to follow his eyes see where his stare lands. The Duke watches from an elevated perch. Now. Not like before when his face used to be ground level. Maybe he just watches over you, me, and the faces still left in the color corridor. Or maybe that's a worried look on his wrinkled brow as if he's dreading a gentrified tap on his shoulder reminding even the Duke to fear a rise in rent. - Derrick Weston Brown from Wisdom Teeth, used by permission Derrick Weston Brown holds an MFA in creative writing from American University. He is Poet in Residence at Busboys and Poets (14th & V). He has studied poetry under Dr. Tony Medina at Howard University and Cornelius Eady at American University and is a graduate of the Cave Canem Summer workshop for black poets and the VONA summer workshop. His work has appeared in such literary journals as Warpland, Mythium, Ginsoko, DrumVoices, The Columbia Poetry Review, and the online journals Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Howard University's Amistad, LocusPoint,and MiPOesias. His debut collection, Wisdom Teeth, was released by Busboys and Poets Books in 2011. Brown attended both the 2008 and 2010 Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation & Witness. Please feel free to forward Split This Rock Poem of the Week widely. We just ask you to include all of theinformation in this email, including this request. Thanks! Split This Rock www.splitthisrock.org info@splitthisrock.org 202-787-5210

Sunday kind of love- Derrick Weston Brown and Ernesto Mercer

July Sunday Kind of Love

Featuring:

Derrick Weston Brown

& Ernesto Mercer

Sunday July 17, 2011

5-7pm

Langston Room - Busboys & Poets
2021 14th St. NW

Washington, DC

Hosted by Sarah Browning and Katy Richey
Co-Sponsored by
Busboys and Poets and Split This Rock

Open mic at each event!
Suggested donation: $5

For more info: www.BusboysandPoets.com
browning@splitthisrock.org

www.SplitThisRock.org
202-387-POET

Derrick Weston Brown holds an MFA in creative writing from American University. He has studied poetry under Dr. Tony Medina at Howard University and Cornelius Eady at American University. He is a graduate of the Cave Canem Summer workshop for black poets and the VONA summer workshop. His work has appeared in such literary journals as Warpland, Mythium, Ginsoko, DrumVoices, The Columbia Poetry Review, and the online journals Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Howard University's Amistad, LocusPoint, and MiPOesias. His debut collection, Wisdom Teeth, was released in 2011.

Ernesto Mercer is a poet. Recent work includes RIVER NEVER RESTS / MAN UNDA WATA film (2010), RIVER NEVER RESTS/ MAN UNDA WATA (2009), NNANDI AND THE HUNTER'S SHIRT and the libretto for FELA 70 (2008) at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of African Art. In October 2011 he will be presenting MATCH + WOOD a new performance commissioned by the Smithsonian's Museum of African art. A Cave Canem Alumni fellow, he is published variously.

Poem of the Week: Ailish Hopper

Dark-sky Society

Each time, Kenny says

With Love,

I look at you, I see

...........Princess.... Diana

His skin ginger,

..........mine, peony,

And, between us now,

...........The color line,

No static beam

---More like

Light-bomb;

.........Blanching

The....star-

.........Dark,

Our lumen-

..........Natural

-Ailish Hopper

Used by permission.

Ailish Hopper was born and raised in Washington DC. Her chapbook, Bird in the Head, was selected by Jean Valentine for the 2005 Center for Book Arts prize; other poems have appeared or are forthcoming in numerous places, including American Letters & Commentary, Ploughshares, Poetry, and Tidal Basin Review. She's received grants and fellowships from the Baltimore Commission for the Arts and Humanities, Vermont Studio Center, and Yaddo. She lives in Baltimore.

Hopper was on the panel, "Personal and Political: The Difficult Art of Writing a Manuscript of Poems That Bear Witness" at Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation & Witness 2008. She attended the 2010 festival.

Please feel free to forward Split This Rock Poem of the Week widely. We just ask you to include all of the information in this email, including this request. Thanks!

Split This Rock
www.splitthisrock.org
info@splitthisrock.org
202-787-5210

Recreating Baghdad's Lost Literary Street

The following are excerpts from a Foreign Policy in Focus article by Split This Rock Director Sarah Browning. For the full article, click here.

In 2007, a car bomb exploded on Al-Mutanabbi Street, killing 30 and injuring another 100. Residents of Baghdad felt it as not just another attack but a strike against the richness of Iraqi literary history and against the free exchange of ideas and openness of thought. Books and papers lay scattered and charred beside the corpses on Al-Mutanabbi Street that day in March.

Beau Beausoleil, an American poet and bookseller based in San Francisco, ... created the Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here project because “... I felt we needed some sort of response [to the bombing] from our own arts community.”

***
The broadsides have been exhibited in libraries, galleries, and universities throughout the United States, Ireland, the United Kingdom, and Canada. This month they come to Washington, DC, to the Corcoran College of Art + Design from July 7 to 31.

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Split This Rock ... has joined forces with the Corcoran College of Art + Design and Foreign Policy in Focus to present a reading of poems from the project itself and others inspired by Al-Mutanabbi Street. ... The reading and a reception take place in Gallery 31 at the Corcoran College of Art + Design, 500 7th Street, NW, Washington, DC where the broadsides will be exhibited, Thursday, July 7, 6-8 pm.