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The Academy Of American Poets recently announced their mobile poetry website, complete with numerous poems arranged by theme or occasion and by form. Now, if anyone accuses you of being shallow, you can call up Paul Celan’s “Fugue of Death” on your iPhone, recite a few lines, and quickly prove them wrong.

Kudos to Phil Taggart for a rare feature in Ventura Life magazine detailing his extensive support of the Ventura-area poetry scene. The article also includes a striking combination of Phil’s poems overlaid against photos of his schizophrenic brother, Rick. A digital version of the entire magazine is available here. The “Living Askew” article begins on page 36. (Type 36 into the page display at the bottom, hit enter, and then double-click on the article to zoom in to a legible magnification.)

The current issue of Ventura Life also contains a complete reprint of Askew Issue 3, which Phil co-publishes, including one of my poems (page 126, at the bottom). It is rare for tireless supporters like Phil to receive recognition from mainstream press, and rare for new independent poetry publications (Askew being a broadsheet, no less) to get syndicated by more conventional channels — to have both happen at once is auspicious indeed.

“A writer is a reader moved to emulation”

I have been preparing notes for my upcoming talk on “Emulation, Originality, And The Writing Tradition” at the Ojai Center For The Arts. There is no better place than London to have spent time thinking about the English literary tradition. In this talk I intend to use concrete examples from my own relationship to the writing life, including poems and anecdotes, to show how emulation — as defined by a desire to imitate and transcend the spirit and tactical successes of works one admires — can actually enhance originality.

So many poets are concerned about losing their voice, and so many poets and non-poets hold the misbelief that art can exist in a vacuum — or that inspiration strikes best in a sealed cave, cut off from tradition. My hope is to inspire the audience into participating in the continuity of literary tradition through reading widely and responding genuinely to our rich heritage of literary arts.

Keith Woodruff has a poignant article on his site about his new relationship to statistics since the passing of his son. I, too, have experienced a profound thinning of the security blanket of probability since our own loss. Every time I got on a plane to and from Oregon, I was keenly aware of how I now neither can nor want to go back to the kind of drowsy false security of my privileged first-world life; nor can I bear to live under constant threat in my mind.

Our nation likewise had the psychic fabric of its imperviousness rent by the attack on the Twin Towers by airplanes. It was an immeasurable tragedy. Yet other countries suffer such losses in greater numbers and more frequently; other families lose more children than those who see adulthood. How can we live, awake to such fragility, without, in the process, being crushed?

Poetry is a kind of faith. The audacity of poem-making, in a world saturated with throw-away words, a preference for television and music, and suspicious indifference to all but the ironic - is itself a profession of belief. To commit one’s life to this art in such times is as irrational as any religion. Truly, we write against the odds.

Tonight I have been reading the poems of Ilya Kaminsky - a Russian poet from Odessa, deaf since early childhood, who, a year after arriving in America with little English, lost his father suddenly. He writes about Mandelstam, Akhmatova and others who survived the un-survivable, writing poems for which they could be killed or worse. Here is a fierceness of faith in humanity. What we pass on to each other in such thin books of poems is some likelihood of greater self-understanding - and a precious likelihood of hope.

The 2007 Ojai Poetry Festival has come and gone. Whew! We started deep planning back in 2006 - and the day-and-a-half of readings and discussions, as well as all the between-the-lines schmoozing and feasting - absolutely flew by. It was great to have Sandra Alcosser in town. She teaches at Pacific, and I was really impressed, during the January residency, with her generosity and keen interest in each student’s development. She gave up her lunch hours to meet with us individually and discuss the larger project of our work as a whole. A truly delightful woman, and a force to be reckoned with in the intersection between environmentalism and art.

She gave a dynamite reading alongside Sherman Alexie on Friday night. Alexie is a natural entertainer and wry comedian. He interspersed observational humor into poems of deep pathos about growing up on the reservation. He rarely missed an opportunity to quip about the insular attitudes of white liberals or to denounce himself as a “bad indian” for his modern urban lifestyle. He is no doubt a complex person grappling with many issues both personal and universal, articulating through the funny and poignant, glib and sincere.

María Meléndez read from what can only be called the most experimental body of work in the group - involving song, audience participation, word fragments and pictograms (such as a hand with upraised middle finger) printed in the middle of her poems. Alongside Alcosser and Gary Snyder, she spoke about the intersection of art and science during the Saturday morning panel. This is a topic squarely in Alcosser’s domain as well, who is fresh from a project of choosing nature poems to display in Central Park - a project which is reputed to have raised environmental awareness by 48% among the park’s four million visitors per year.

A host of outstanding regional poets read on Saturday afternoon - equally eclectic and engaging. The festival closed on Sunday night with Gary Snyder reading at length from Danger on Peaks and discussing the environmental implications of poetry and Buddhist philosophy - including how hope and compassion can reign even in the face of death. Both evenings all four poets were joined by a chorus of spring peepers, crickets and birds. Sunday night we were also treated to Venus in almost perfect conjunction with a crescent moon - like a great question mark blazing in the night sky.

I am grateful for having played my small part in bringing this festival to Ojai for another season and, frankly, glad to know it is all done - and done well. Thanks to all four poets for gracing us with their presences, to the regional poets and all the tireless organizers and volunteers - especially Tami Haggard and Jim Lenfestey - for bringing another magical season of poetry to Ojai’s Libbey Bowl.

Due in part to a migraine at the end of a long week, I once again didn’t manage to make it to the Outlaw Poets reading on Friday night. However, I did finally make it out to the Arcade Poetry Series reading in Oxnard last night to hear Dian Sousa and Jimm Cushing. The venue was one of the countless libraries built by Andrew Carnegie around the turn of the last century - a multi-story white Neoclassical renovated into a spacious visual art gallery. The exhibit of photographs from Tibet, currently on display until May 20th, was worth the $3 admission in itself.

Dian Sousa read exuberant poems from her first and (newly published) second collection of poems. Her work exhibits a voracious creativity and tremendous capacity for unique image and metaphor. She read longer poems with strong narrative threads, though if there is any fault with this vigorous work, Sousa might benefit from striking out the occasional weaker line, striving for greater compression. Still, she read extremely well, entertaining and edifying the thirty-person audience with some truly magical themes. Her work is exciting, original, and vibrant - expressing her belief, which she shared that night, that “if you’re not in love with the world every day, you can lose your job as a poet.”

Jackson Wheeler, who hosts this series now in its eighteenth year, introduced Jimm Cushing with a highly flattering quote from W.S. Merwyn about Cushing’s earlier work, illustrating Cushing’s prestigious lineage. Cushing began his reading with a sampling of poems by a variety of other authors published by Cahuenga Press. His generosity, and belief in poetry as a discipline best nurtured by collaboration rather than competition, shone through in his obvious appreciation of these other poets.

It was great to be back at the Bell Arts Factory, which is once again in full swing on the last Saturday of each month. Mary Kay Rummel read thoughtful and at times soulful poems from her newest collection, The Illuminations and Doris Vernon again brought cookies. New (to me anyway) this month was a Walt Whitman podium, with uncle Walt himself emblazoned on a pink triangle and broad leaves of grass made of painted wood sprouting from the pedestal base. I found out the Erotic Poetry Benefit, which I was too sick to attend, got a great write up in the VC Reporter. Finally, some press for this awesome community. The crowd was, as always, enthusiastic and eccentric. Poetry thrives here on the mid-coast.

In the democratic institutions of literary journals and open mics, reputation is not supposed to matter. A poet is only ever as good as her last poem, and everyone recognizes this. Such nice ideas. So untrue.

Reputation, like trust, is earned through experience. Observing myself at an open mic reading, I notice my attention ebb and flow. When a poet who has built some reputation with me takes to the microphone, I relax a little. I give them a bit more of my attention. I perk up. I take notice. I listen. As open-minded as I try to be, new faces have to earn my trust.

Christopher Buckley gave an excellent reading tonight at the Artist’s Union Gallery, followed by a first-string lineup of local poets at the open mic. I kept getting the sense that we poets are part of the same baseball team, stepping up to bat at the podium. Tonight we cleared the bench in Chris’ honor, celebrating news of his latest publication and huddling around the glow of words to keep warm.

In preparation for what promises to be an outstanding festival this coming May, The Ojai Poetry Festival just launched a newly redesigned website where you can learn more about the event that brings poets such as Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Galway Kinnell, Robert Bly, Jane Hirshfield, and Gary Snyder to Ojai every other year for readings and discussions. The festival is made possible through generous sponsors and loyal, fun-loving volunteers. If you are in the Ojai area and are at all interested in helping out, come check out the next volunteer’s meeting on January 8th at 7PM in the Ojai Library.

Also, if you or your company are looking to make some tax-deductible donations before the end of the year, why not support the literary arts? Contact the Ojai Poetry Festival for details on the benefits of sponsoring this organization, which brings poetry into Ojai Valley schools, sponsors spoken word events for local poets, and awards the Stan Brown Teen Poetry Prize to encourage local teens to see themselves as writers in the larger literary world. Sign up for the newsletter to stay current with news leading up to the festival and to be notified when tickets go on sale.