STOCKHOLM, Sweden - France's Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio won the 2008 Nobel Prize in literature on Thursday for works characterized by "poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy" and focused on the environment, especially the desert.
Le Clezio, 68, is the first French writer to win the prestigious award since Chinese-born Frenchman Gao Xingjian was honored in 2000.
The decision was in line with the Swedish Academy's recent picks of European authors. Last year's prize went to Doris Lessing of Britain.
The academy called Le Clezio an "author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization."
Le Clezio made his breakthrough as a novelist with "Desert," in 1980, a work the academy said "contains magnificent images of a lost culture in the North African desert contrasted with a depiction of Europe seen through the eyes of unwanted immigrants."
That novel, which also won Le Clezio a prize from the French Academy, is considered a masterpiece. It describes the ordeal of Lalla, a woman from the Tuareg nomadic tribe of the Sahara Desert, as she adapts to civilization imposed by colonial France at the beginning of the 20th century.
The Swedish Academy said Le Clezio from early on "stood out as an ecologically engaged author, an orientation that is accentuated with the novels Terra Amata,' The Book of Flights,' War' and 'The Giants.' "
Le Clezio has spent much of his time living in New Mexico in recent years.
He has long shied away from public life, spending much of his time traveling, often in the world's various deserts.
He has published several dozen books, including novels and essays. The most famous are tales of nomads, mediations on the desert and childhood memories. He has also explored the mythologies of native Americans, who have long fascinated him.
Academy Permanent Secretary Horace Engdahl called Le Clezio a writer of great diversity."He has gone through many different phases of his development as a writer and has come to include other civilizations, other modes of living than the Western, in his writing," Engdahl said.
Asked how he thought the prize would be received in the United States, given Engdahl's recent controversial comments about American literature, he said he had no idea.
"I'm not aware that there are today any anti-French sentiments in the U.S. And apart from that, Le Clezio, is a cosmopolitan. He lives part of the year in New Mexico," Engdahl said.
"He's not a particularly French writer if you look at him from a strictly cultural point of view. So I don't think this choice will give rise to any anti-French comments," he said. "I would be very sad if that was the case."
Since Japanese writer Kenzaburo Oe won the award in 1994, the selections have had a distinctly European flavor. Since then 12 Europeans, including Le Clezio, have won the prize. The last U.S. writer to win the prize was Toni Morrison in 1993.
Appearing on France Inter radio Thursday to promote a new book shortly before the prize was announced, Le Clezio was asked if he thought he might win a possible Nobel.
"Sure, why not," he replied. "When you're a writer you always believe in literary prizes."
Le Clezio said a Nobel "was something that makes you rebound, that gives you the desire to keep writing ... We write to be read, we write to have responses, and that is a response."
In an interview with news magazine Label France in 2001, Le Clezio said literature was a "means of reminding people of this tragedy and bringing it back to center stage."
Le Clezio was quoted as saying that "when I write I am primarily trying to translate my relationship to the everyday, to events.
Le Clezio was born in Nice in 1940 and at eight the family moved to Nigeria, where his father had been a doctor during World War II. They returned to France in 1950.
His most recent works include 2007's "Ballaciner," a work the academy called a "deeply personal essay about the history of the art of film and the importance of film" in his life.
His books have also included several tales for children, including 1980's "Lullaby" and "Balaabilou" in 1985.
In addition to the 10 million kronor ($1.4 million) check, Le Clezio will also receive a gold medal and be invited to give a lecture at the academy's headquarters in Stockholm's Old Town.
The Nobel Prize in literature is handed out in Stockholm on Dec. 10 - the anniversary of Nobel's death in 1896 - along with the awards in medicine, chemistry, physics and economics. The Nobel Peace Prize is presented in Oslo, Norway.
SECOND STORY:
STOCKHOLM/PARIS (Reuters) - French author Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio, a globetrotting novelist hailed as a child of all continents, won the Nobel prize for literature on Thursday.
The Swedish Academy, which decides the winner of the coveted 10 million Swedish crown ($1.4 million) prize, praised the 68-year-old's adventurous novels, essays and children's books.
"His works have a cosmopolitan character. Frenchman, yes, but more so a traveller, a citizen of the world, a nomad," Horace Engdahl, permanent secretary of the Academy, told a news conference to announce the laureate.
Underlining his international credentials, Le Clezio, who describes himself as French and Mauritian, answered questions in English, French and Spanish at a Paris press conference.
"Some kind of incredulity, some kind of awe, then some kind of enjoyment and mirth," he said, describing how he felt when he heard the news. Questioned about what he would do with the prize money, he added: "I have debts. I'm going to pay them."
Engdahl stirred up resentment among some U.S. authors and critics in the run-up to this year's announcement by saying American writers were too insular and did not participate in the "big dialogue" of literature. The last American to win the literature Nobel was novelist Toni Morrison in 1993.
When asked about the issue, Le Clezio replied: "I don't think you can say American literature is any one thing, because it takes many forms."
He added that Philip Roth, a perennial favourite among bookmakers to scoop the Nobel, would be a worthy winner.
"He will certainly win this prize, and even if he doesn't he will remain a very great writer."
GLOBETROTTER
Nice-born Le Clezio moved to Nigeria with his family at the age of eight. He wrote his first works -- "Un Long Voyage" and "Oradi Noir" -- during the month-long journey.
According to the Academy's Web site, he studied English at a British university and taught at institutions in Bangkok, Mexico City, Boston, Austin and Albuquerque, among others.
Le Clezio also spent long periods in Mexico and Central America and married a Moroccan woman in 1975. Since the 1990s he and his wife have shared their time between Albuquerque in New Mexico, the island of Mauritius and Nice, the Academy added.
The author said he believed French culture was a melting pot of influences.
"The French language is a result of a mix of cultures. It has received contributions from every corner of the world. That is what is wonderful about French culture. It is a place of encounters."
Le Clezio's first novel was "Le proces-verbal" (The Interrogation), written when he was 23. It went on to win the Renaudot prize in France.
Seen as an experimental writer in the 1960s, Le Clezio was preoccupied by themes including the environment and childhood.
His big breakthrough came in 1980 with "Desert," which the Academy said "contains magnificent images of a lost culture in the North African desert, contrasted with a depiction of Europe seen through the eyes of unwanted immigrants."
French President Nicolas Sarkozy hailed the award.
"A child of Mauritius and Nigeria, a teenager in Nice, a nomad of the American and African deserts, Jean-Marie Le Clezio is a citizen of the world, a child of all continents and of all cultures," Sarkozy said in a statement.
"A great traveller, he embodies the global reach of France's culture and values in a globalised world."
All but one of the prizes were established in the will of 19th century dynamite tycoon Alfred Nobel and have been handed out since 1901. The economics award was established by Sweden's central bank in 1968.
(Additional reporting by Adam Cox in Stockholm, Mike Collett-White in London and Estelle Shirbon in Paris)
(Writing by Mike Collett-White, editing by Paul Casciato)
WINNERS OF NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE SINCE 1960
-2008: Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio, France.
- 2007: Doris Lessing, Britain.
- 2006: Orhan Pamuk, Turkey.
- 2005: Harold Pinter, Britain.
- 2004: Elfriede Jelinek, Austria.
- 2003: J.M. Coetzee, South Africa.
- 2002: Imre Kertesz, Hungary.
- 2001: V.S. Naipaul, Trinidad-born Briton.
- 2000: Gao Xingjian, Chinese-born French.
- 1999: Guenter Grass, Germany.
- 1998: Jose Saramago, Portugal.
- 1997: Dario Fo, Italy.
- 1996: Wislawa Szymborska, Poland.
- 1995: Seamus Heaney, Ireland.
- 1994: Kenzaburo Oe, Japan.
- 1993: Toni Morrison, United States.
- 1992: Derek Walcott, St. Lucia.
- 1991: Nadine Gordimer, South Africa.
- 1990: Octavio Paz, Mexico.
- 1989: Camilo Jose Cela, Spain.
- 1988: Naguib Mahfouz, Egypt.
- 1987: Joseph Brodsky, Russian-born American.
- 1986: Wole Soyinka, Nigeria.
- 1985: Claude Simon, France.
- 1984: Jaroslav Seifert, Czechoslovakia.
- 1983: William Golding, Britain.
- 1982: Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Colombia.
- 1981: Elias Canetti, Bulgarian-born Briton.
- 1980: Czeslaw Milosz, Polish-born American.
- 1979: Odysseus Elytis, Greece.
- 1978: Isaac Bashevis Singer, Polish-born American.
- 1977: Vicente Aleixandre, Spain.
- 1976: Saul Bellow, Canadian-born American.
- 1975: Eugenio Montale, Italy.
- 1974: Eyvind Johnson and Harry Martinson, Sweden.
- 1973: Patrick White, British-born Australian.
- 1972: Heinrich Boell, West Germany.
- 1971: Pablo Neruda, Chile.
- 1970: Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Russia.
- 1969: Samuel Beckett, Ireland.
- 1968: Yasunari Kawabata, Japan.
- 1967: Miguel A. Asturias, Guatemala.
- 1966: Shmuel Y. Agnon, Polish-born Israeli, and Nelly Sachs, German-born Swede.
- 1965: Mikhail Sholokhov, Russia.
- 1964: Jean-Paul Sartre, France (declined award).
- 1963: Giorgos Seferis, Turkish-born Greek.
- 1962: John Steinbeck, United States.
- 1961: Ivo Andric, Yugoslavia.
- 1960: Saint-John Perse, Guadeloupe
Friday, October 10, 2008
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Flowering in Words a Poem
One will always be surprised at how one's poem is accepted by readers.
There are poems which I love very much but which readers do not even notice while there are poems which somehow become very popular.
I love this poem but when I posted it on the net, it did not get as much good response like the others.
Enjoy:
Flowering in Words
------------------------
poetry is nature
dancing with mind
a verse would sprint out
like the most colourful bird
from a bush completely unexpected
throwing a feast to our eyes
we cannot but oblige with
another verse going deep into
ourselves for a riveting repartee
to complete the challenge thrown to us
like a flower, the poem slowly blooms
out of our faintest expectation
nature might throw another verse
a la a fish jumping out of water
to carry us through an evolution game
the blossoming of the mind
this goes on and on until nature
derives the stamp of a mind
working towards its plan
a poem is nature flowering in words
by john tiong chunghoo
There are poems which I love very much but which readers do not even notice while there are poems which somehow become very popular.
I love this poem but when I posted it on the net, it did not get as much good response like the others.
Enjoy:
Flowering in Words
------------------------
poetry is nature
dancing with mind
a verse would sprint out
like the most colourful bird
from a bush completely unexpected
throwing a feast to our eyes
we cannot but oblige with
another verse going deep into
ourselves for a riveting repartee
to complete the challenge thrown to us
like a flower, the poem slowly blooms
out of our faintest expectation
nature might throw another verse
a la a fish jumping out of water
to carry us through an evolution game
the blossoming of the mind
this goes on and on until nature
derives the stamp of a mind
working towards its plan
a poem is nature flowering in words
by john tiong chunghoo
Monday, October 6, 2008
Phonomenal Woman
I really love this top of the world poem by Maya Angelou the ace American black woman poet. There is so much rhythm in the poem it is like a song being sung and even when reading quietly you can hear the words spoken right into your ears and touching your heart.
Phenomenal Woman
--------------------------
Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I'm telling lies.
I say, It's in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman, That's me.
I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.I say,
It's the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can't touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them
They say they still can't see.
I say,It's in the arch of my back,
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
Now you understand
Just why my head's not bowed.
I don't shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing
It ought to make you proud.
I say,It's in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,the palm of my hand,
The need of my care,'
Cause I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
Maya Angelou
Phenomenal Woman
--------------------------
Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I'm telling lies.
I say, It's in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman, That's me.
I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.I say,
It's the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can't touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them
They say they still can't see.
I say,It's in the arch of my back,
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
Now you understand
Just why my head's not bowed.
I don't shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing
It ought to make you proud.
I say,It's in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,the palm of my hand,
The need of my care,'
Cause I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
Maya Angelou
Sunday, October 5, 2008
An Autumn Red Carpeted depature
we wish love would linger
like flaming autumn a mood
so absorbing like the eons we
could spend in each other's eyes
time comes in circles and the leaves
play them out so well so green once
and now so red to accent their triumph
in keeping the host so cheerful and alive
a new dress, new look for a season of a
celebration of love and a swirling farewell
the wind comes as a friend to orchestrate
a grand departure, full of dance and songs
they clap and slap each other's back to
brazen up, they sigh and cry their last
separation song before diving our mind
to waltz in a frenzy into the circles of time
john tiong chunghoo
like flaming autumn a mood
so absorbing like the eons we
could spend in each other's eyes
time comes in circles and the leaves
play them out so well so green once
and now so red to accent their triumph
in keeping the host so cheerful and alive
a new dress, new look for a season of a
celebration of love and a swirling farewell
the wind comes as a friend to orchestrate
a grand departure, full of dance and songs
they clap and slap each other's back to
brazen up, they sigh and cry their last
separation song before diving our mind
to waltz in a frenzy into the circles of time
john tiong chunghoo
Saturday, October 4, 2008
Book signing tour in America
Literary luminaries are yours for the meeting
-------------------------------------------------------
By Chris McNamara Special to the Chicago Tribune
October 2, 2008
This one wasn't as bad as the book-signing back in 1980, where actor Tim Reid—at the height of his Venus Flytrap fame—was promoting his book of poetry "As I Feel It." With his 12-year-old daughter at his side he waited—and waited—for fans. One showed up.
Reid had to convince his girl that he was, indeed, a big star. At his mid-August book-signing at the State Street Borders, Reid didn't have that problem. In fact, more fans wanted copies of "Tim & Tom: An American Comedy in Black and White" than the store had in stock.
So what does this tell us as we enter the book-tour season, the season in which authors crisscross the nation hyping books they hope will top the best-seller lists during the holidays?
It tells us that author appearances vary as widely as the authors themselves. "You can never underestimate word-of-mouth advertising," explained Reid, when asked why he'd embarked on a nationwide book-signing tour for "Tim & Tom."
Adds co-author and native son Tom Dreesen (on his first-ever book tour): "Reading changed my life, and I never thought I'd be signing my own book. I wrote truthfully here, so this is like I'm signing my soul, signing my guts."
Author Neil Gaiman isn't quite as dramatic as Dreesen, but he does relish the chance to connect with fans, citing that writing is a lonely profession and the feedback is welcome. And he's blunt about other motivation.
"You do a book tour to make sure your book is right up there on the best-seller list," he says. And if that means icing your hand after Hancocking 3,000 times in a single day—as was common on Gaiman's last tour—so be it.
Glencoe's Doug Scherer scans listings online for upcoming book-signings. When somebody catches his eye, as did Reid and Dreesen, he's there. "It's not as much about the autograph as it is the face-to-face time," says the 42-year-old while in line at Borders. "Even if it's just shaking their hands."
Waiting behind Scherer was Marlyn Love, who has more of a connection to the authors. Some 40 years ago, when the two comedians performed at the Chicago Playboy Club, Love was a waitress—a Playboy Bunny.
She was at the signing to reconnect with the guys. Should book signing attendees expect a personal encounter with authors? That depends. The amount of time given to each fan varies depending on crowd size, schedule, even the mood of the author.
"There's no way to know how long the line is going to be," says Borders manager Thomas Ecks, who suggests calling on the day of the event. "Nor is there any way to know how long a celebrity will spend with each fan."
At a recent signing in Evanston, author David Sedaris spent a few minutes with each attendee. He was there for 12 hours, according to Ecks. Cookbook author Rachael Ray, for whom Borders has had to shut down the escalator to accommodate the snaking line, is quick.
"She signs and scoots," says the manager. "You should expect to just get a signature, say 'hi' or exchange a few words," explains Quimby's
Bookstore owner Eric Kirsammer. "There are usually a lot of people so if you're expecting to get to know [an author] it's not going to happen."
Kirsammer does have suggestions for making the most of the experience. He advises fans to migrate toward the back of the line rather than the front, as the last attendees are more likely to get the author's undivided attention.
He suggests calling his store during the signing to get a line update .Kirsammer has also noticed that authors at his bookstore have enjoyed signing alternative items.
"A lot of people bring in those rat-prevention signs," he chuckles. (Note: Many authors will sign only their books, purchased at the signing.)
"Don't be afraid to get involved and ask questions," advises author Reid. "We're glad to know that people are reading the book."
So is Gaiman, but those massive crowds at past book-signings have prompted him to test a new format on his current book tour, one in which presigned copies of "The Graveyard Book" are for sale at theaters in which he reads a chapter and answers questions from fans.
"I think they'll have a better time this way," he surmises, "rather than standing in a line that slowly snakes around a bookshop."
-------------------------------------------------------
By Chris McNamara Special to the Chicago Tribune
October 2, 2008
This one wasn't as bad as the book-signing back in 1980, where actor Tim Reid—at the height of his Venus Flytrap fame—was promoting his book of poetry "As I Feel It." With his 12-year-old daughter at his side he waited—and waited—for fans. One showed up.
Reid had to convince his girl that he was, indeed, a big star. At his mid-August book-signing at the State Street Borders, Reid didn't have that problem. In fact, more fans wanted copies of "Tim & Tom: An American Comedy in Black and White" than the store had in stock.
So what does this tell us as we enter the book-tour season, the season in which authors crisscross the nation hyping books they hope will top the best-seller lists during the holidays?
It tells us that author appearances vary as widely as the authors themselves. "You can never underestimate word-of-mouth advertising," explained Reid, when asked why he'd embarked on a nationwide book-signing tour for "Tim & Tom."
Adds co-author and native son Tom Dreesen (on his first-ever book tour): "Reading changed my life, and I never thought I'd be signing my own book. I wrote truthfully here, so this is like I'm signing my soul, signing my guts."
Author Neil Gaiman isn't quite as dramatic as Dreesen, but he does relish the chance to connect with fans, citing that writing is a lonely profession and the feedback is welcome. And he's blunt about other motivation.
"You do a book tour to make sure your book is right up there on the best-seller list," he says. And if that means icing your hand after Hancocking 3,000 times in a single day—as was common on Gaiman's last tour—so be it.
Glencoe's Doug Scherer scans listings online for upcoming book-signings. When somebody catches his eye, as did Reid and Dreesen, he's there. "It's not as much about the autograph as it is the face-to-face time," says the 42-year-old while in line at Borders. "Even if it's just shaking their hands."
Waiting behind Scherer was Marlyn Love, who has more of a connection to the authors. Some 40 years ago, when the two comedians performed at the Chicago Playboy Club, Love was a waitress—a Playboy Bunny.
She was at the signing to reconnect with the guys. Should book signing attendees expect a personal encounter with authors? That depends. The amount of time given to each fan varies depending on crowd size, schedule, even the mood of the author.
"There's no way to know how long the line is going to be," says Borders manager Thomas Ecks, who suggests calling on the day of the event. "Nor is there any way to know how long a celebrity will spend with each fan."
At a recent signing in Evanston, author David Sedaris spent a few minutes with each attendee. He was there for 12 hours, according to Ecks. Cookbook author Rachael Ray, for whom Borders has had to shut down the escalator to accommodate the snaking line, is quick.
"She signs and scoots," says the manager. "You should expect to just get a signature, say 'hi' or exchange a few words," explains Quimby's
Bookstore owner Eric Kirsammer. "There are usually a lot of people so if you're expecting to get to know [an author] it's not going to happen."
Kirsammer does have suggestions for making the most of the experience. He advises fans to migrate toward the back of the line rather than the front, as the last attendees are more likely to get the author's undivided attention.
He suggests calling his store during the signing to get a line update .Kirsammer has also noticed that authors at his bookstore have enjoyed signing alternative items.
"A lot of people bring in those rat-prevention signs," he chuckles. (Note: Many authors will sign only their books, purchased at the signing.)
"Don't be afraid to get involved and ask questions," advises author Reid. "We're glad to know that people are reading the book."
So is Gaiman, but those massive crowds at past book-signings have prompted him to test a new format on his current book tour, one in which presigned copies of "The Graveyard Book" are for sale at theaters in which he reads a chapter and answers questions from fans.
"I think they'll have a better time this way," he surmises, "rather than standing in a line that slowly snakes around a bookshop."
American Award Winning Poet Hayden Carruth Dies
Hayden Carruth, an editor, critic and poet who earned recognition late in his 50-year writing career for powerful work that explored the struggles, loves and desires of people who made their living with their hands -- as he did for two decades -- has died. He was 87. Carruth, who'd had a series of strokes, died Monday at his home in the small central New York town of Munnsville, according to his publishing house, Copper Canyon Press.
Hayden Carruth
Called a poet's poet for his technical mastery of forms from the sonnet to free verse, he wrote more than 20 books of poetry and prose, much of which emanated from the hardscrabble Vermont farm where he lived for 20 years.
In 1996 when he was 75 he won the National Book Award for Poetry for his collection "Scrambled Eggs and Whiskey." It was arguably the most prestigious prize among many that he received since publishing his first volume of poems in 1959. But it was bestowed without the presence of the excessively shy Carruth, who refused to attend the ceremony.He was an outsider in most respects: a self-proclaimed anarchist, who wrote unflatteringly of his family; an alcoholic who suffered from paralyzing phobias; a poet who lived on a hill farm far removed from the literary mainstream.
"Hayden Carruth is vast; he contains multitudes," poet David Barber once wrote. "Of the august order of American poets born in the Twenties, he is undoubtedly the most difficult to reconcile to the convenient branches of classification and affiliation, odd man out in any tidy scheme of influence and descent."
Born on Aug. 3, 1921, in Waterbury, Conn., where his father was a newspaper editor, he studied journalism at the University of North Carolina, earning a bachelor's degree in 1943. After serving in Italy with the Army during World War II, he used the GI Bill to further his education at the University of Chicago.
There he discovered that poetry was his true calling.After earning a master's in Chicago in 1948, he went to work for Poetry magazine, which had published some of his poems.
He became its editor in 1950 and wrote a controversial defense of Ezra Pound, the modernist poet charged with treason for his pro-Fascist views. A short time later, he lost his job. Then his first wife left him, taking with her their newborn daughter, Martha (who died of cancer in 1997).He found a new job, at the University of Chicago Press, and he remarried.
But, as he noted 20 years later in "The Bloomingdale Papers" (1974), named after the New York mental hospital where he was treated with electroshock for acute anxiety, depression and chronic insomnia, it was a trying time when
Booze helped immensely.
Work also, but not,
Unfortunately, writing.
Friends and parties and lovers
Lent ease to my unease
Sparingly.
The doctors kept
The anxious pot aboil.
So passed the years.
When he was released from Bloomingdale 15 months later, he was so emotionally fragile that he lived in his parents' attic for five years. When he was well enough, he embarked on the "hack work" that allowed him to eke out a meager living. He wrote for hardware catalogs, typed manuscripts, edited encyclopedias and churned out book reviews. He spent several years compiling the poems for his anthology.In 1961, he married for the third time and with his new wife, Rose Marie Dorn, had a son, David. Because he still "couldn't function in a social situation," they moved to a farm in Johnson, Vt., about 25 miles from the Canadian border, where he worked outdoors every day, chopping wood, digging potatoes and cutting hay.
When he wasn't toiling on his own farm, he was working for his equally poor neighbors. And way past midnight, when the chores were done, he wrote about them, in poems tightly packed with the details of their daily struggles. "One of the most striking things about his work is his ability to enter the lives of other people -- ordinary men and women -- and tell their tales," poet Galway Kinnell wrote in his introduction to Carruth's "Selected Poetry" (1985). "There is a reciprocity in all this, however. In telling their tales," Kinnell said, "he finds a means to express his own inner life. He gives them a voice, they give him a language."
As in "Marshall Washer," named after the dairy farmer who became Carruth's close friend:I see a man who drags a dead calf or watches a barn roaring with fire and thirteen heifers inside, I see his helpless eyes. He has stood helpless often, of course: when his wife died from congenital heart disease a few months before open-heart surgery came to Vermont, when his sons departed, caring little for the farm because he had educated them . . .
In Vermont, Carruth found his footing. As he told the University of Chicago magazine a few years ago, he managed "a gradual triumph over the internal snarls and screw-ups that had crippled me from childhood on." And he found freedom writing poetry "about things I really knew something about. . . . about simple things in simple language."
He described beauty in "The Cows at Night," inspired by a sighting of the beasts on a moonlit pasture, "turning to me, sad and beautiful/like girls very long ago/who were innocent, and sad."
He wrote wryly in "Regarding Chainsaws" of the body parts they maimed, but "mostly they wan't dangerous, and the only thing they broke was your back."
In "Emergency Haying," he turned reflections on a long day's labor into a meditation on injustice:We mow, rake, bale, and draw the bales to the barn, these late, half-green,improperly cured bales; some weigh 150 pounds or more, yet must be lugged by the twine across the field, tossed on the load, and thenat the barn unloaded on the conveyor and distributed in the loft. I help -- I, the desk-servant, word-worker --
and hold up my end pretty well too; but God,the close of day, how I fall down then. My handsare sore, they flinch when I light my pipe.
I think of those who have done slave labor,less able and less well prepared than I.He lamented hard times for farmers in "The Sleeping Beauty," in which the narrator yearns for the days when. . .
You could prevail
With but fourteen head of cows
Then, if you had the makings.
When he could no longer make ends meet, Carruth reluctantly accepted a job teaching English at Syracuse University in 1979. He taught there for a dozen years, near the end of which -- after a romantic flameout in 1988 -- he tried to kill himself by taking every pill in his possession.During his recovery, he was cared for by poet Joe-Anne McLaughlin, 30 years his junior, who had met him as a student.
After friendship deepened into romance, they were married in 1989. She survives him, along with his son and three grandchildren.He wrote and published well into his ninth decade, despite having emphysema, a heart condition and strokes. He remained cantankerous, declining a 1998 invitation to a poetry event at the Clinton White House because he
believed it would be "the greatest hypocrisy for an honest American poet to be present on such an occasion."
"Certainly I have never been a part of any literary group. . . . Where I am," he wrote in his memoir, "is the cosmic eye. Nothing grand, nothing romantic. A duck blown out to sea and still squawking."
elaine.woo@latimes.com
Hayden Carruth's Poetry
------------------------------
Scrambled Eggs And Whiskey
------------------------------------
Scrambled eggs and whisky
in the false-dawn light.
Chicago,a sweet town, bleak,
God knows,but sweet. Sometimes.
And weren't we fine tonight?
When Hank set up that limping
treble roll behind memy horn
just growled and I thought my heart
would burst. And Brad M. pressing
with the soft stick and Joe-Annesinging low.
Here we are no win the White Tower,
leaning on one another, too tired to go home.
But don't say a word,don't tell a soul, they
wouldn't understand, they couldn't, never
in a million years, how fine, how magnificent
we were in that old club tonight.
Graves
-----------
Both of us had been close to Joel,
and at Joel's death my friend had gone
to the wake and the memorial service
and more recently he had visited Joel's grave,
there at the back of the grassy cemetery
among the trees,"a quiet, gentle place," he said,
"befitting Joel." And I said,"What's the point of
going to look at graves?" I went into one of my
celebrated tirades. "People go to look at the grave
of Keats or Hart Crane, they go traveling just
to do it, and what a waste of time.What do they find there?
Hell,I wouldn't go look at the graveof Shakespeare if
it was just down the street. I wouldn't look at--"
And I stopped. Iwas about to say the grave of God
until I realized I'm looking at it all the time. . . .
February Morning
-----------------------
The old man takes a nap
too soon in the morning.
His coffee cup grows cold.
Outside the snow falls fast.
He'll not go out today.
Others must clear the way
to the car and the shed.
Open upon his lap lie the
poems of Mr. Frost.
Somehow his eyes get lost in
the words and the snow,
somehow they go backward
against the words, upward
among the flakes to the
blankness of air,the busy
abundance there.
Should he take warning?
Mr. Frost went off, they say,
in bitterness and despair.
The old man stirs and wakes,
hearing the hungry birds, nuthatch,
sparrow, and jay that clamor outside,
unfed,and words stir from his past like
this irritable sorrow of jay, nuthatch,
and sparrow, wrath which no longer
takes shape of sentence or song.
He climbs the stairs to bed.
The snow falls all day long.
Hayden Carruth
Called a poet's poet for his technical mastery of forms from the sonnet to free verse, he wrote more than 20 books of poetry and prose, much of which emanated from the hardscrabble Vermont farm where he lived for 20 years.
In 1996 when he was 75 he won the National Book Award for Poetry for his collection "Scrambled Eggs and Whiskey." It was arguably the most prestigious prize among many that he received since publishing his first volume of poems in 1959. But it was bestowed without the presence of the excessively shy Carruth, who refused to attend the ceremony.He was an outsider in most respects: a self-proclaimed anarchist, who wrote unflatteringly of his family; an alcoholic who suffered from paralyzing phobias; a poet who lived on a hill farm far removed from the literary mainstream.
"Hayden Carruth is vast; he contains multitudes," poet David Barber once wrote. "Of the august order of American poets born in the Twenties, he is undoubtedly the most difficult to reconcile to the convenient branches of classification and affiliation, odd man out in any tidy scheme of influence and descent."
Born on Aug. 3, 1921, in Waterbury, Conn., where his father was a newspaper editor, he studied journalism at the University of North Carolina, earning a bachelor's degree in 1943. After serving in Italy with the Army during World War II, he used the GI Bill to further his education at the University of Chicago.
There he discovered that poetry was his true calling.After earning a master's in Chicago in 1948, he went to work for Poetry magazine, which had published some of his poems.
He became its editor in 1950 and wrote a controversial defense of Ezra Pound, the modernist poet charged with treason for his pro-Fascist views. A short time later, he lost his job. Then his first wife left him, taking with her their newborn daughter, Martha (who died of cancer in 1997).He found a new job, at the University of Chicago Press, and he remarried.
But, as he noted 20 years later in "The Bloomingdale Papers" (1974), named after the New York mental hospital where he was treated with electroshock for acute anxiety, depression and chronic insomnia, it was a trying time when
Booze helped immensely.
Work also, but not,
Unfortunately, writing.
Friends and parties and lovers
Lent ease to my unease
Sparingly.
The doctors kept
The anxious pot aboil.
So passed the years.
When he was released from Bloomingdale 15 months later, he was so emotionally fragile that he lived in his parents' attic for five years. When he was well enough, he embarked on the "hack work" that allowed him to eke out a meager living. He wrote for hardware catalogs, typed manuscripts, edited encyclopedias and churned out book reviews. He spent several years compiling the poems for his anthology.In 1961, he married for the third time and with his new wife, Rose Marie Dorn, had a son, David. Because he still "couldn't function in a social situation," they moved to a farm in Johnson, Vt., about 25 miles from the Canadian border, where he worked outdoors every day, chopping wood, digging potatoes and cutting hay.
When he wasn't toiling on his own farm, he was working for his equally poor neighbors. And way past midnight, when the chores were done, he wrote about them, in poems tightly packed with the details of their daily struggles. "One of the most striking things about his work is his ability to enter the lives of other people -- ordinary men and women -- and tell their tales," poet Galway Kinnell wrote in his introduction to Carruth's "Selected Poetry" (1985). "There is a reciprocity in all this, however. In telling their tales," Kinnell said, "he finds a means to express his own inner life. He gives them a voice, they give him a language."
As in "Marshall Washer," named after the dairy farmer who became Carruth's close friend:I see a man who drags a dead calf or watches a barn roaring with fire and thirteen heifers inside, I see his helpless eyes. He has stood helpless often, of course: when his wife died from congenital heart disease a few months before open-heart surgery came to Vermont, when his sons departed, caring little for the farm because he had educated them . . .
In Vermont, Carruth found his footing. As he told the University of Chicago magazine a few years ago, he managed "a gradual triumph over the internal snarls and screw-ups that had crippled me from childhood on." And he found freedom writing poetry "about things I really knew something about. . . . about simple things in simple language."
He described beauty in "The Cows at Night," inspired by a sighting of the beasts on a moonlit pasture, "turning to me, sad and beautiful/like girls very long ago/who were innocent, and sad."
He wrote wryly in "Regarding Chainsaws" of the body parts they maimed, but "mostly they wan't dangerous, and the only thing they broke was your back."
In "Emergency Haying," he turned reflections on a long day's labor into a meditation on injustice:We mow, rake, bale, and draw the bales to the barn, these late, half-green,improperly cured bales; some weigh 150 pounds or more, yet must be lugged by the twine across the field, tossed on the load, and thenat the barn unloaded on the conveyor and distributed in the loft. I help -- I, the desk-servant, word-worker --
and hold up my end pretty well too; but God,the close of day, how I fall down then. My handsare sore, they flinch when I light my pipe.
I think of those who have done slave labor,less able and less well prepared than I.He lamented hard times for farmers in "The Sleeping Beauty," in which the narrator yearns for the days when. . .
You could prevail
With but fourteen head of cows
Then, if you had the makings.
When he could no longer make ends meet, Carruth reluctantly accepted a job teaching English at Syracuse University in 1979. He taught there for a dozen years, near the end of which -- after a romantic flameout in 1988 -- he tried to kill himself by taking every pill in his possession.During his recovery, he was cared for by poet Joe-Anne McLaughlin, 30 years his junior, who had met him as a student.
After friendship deepened into romance, they were married in 1989. She survives him, along with his son and three grandchildren.He wrote and published well into his ninth decade, despite having emphysema, a heart condition and strokes. He remained cantankerous, declining a 1998 invitation to a poetry event at the Clinton White House because he
believed it would be "the greatest hypocrisy for an honest American poet to be present on such an occasion."
"Certainly I have never been a part of any literary group. . . . Where I am," he wrote in his memoir, "is the cosmic eye. Nothing grand, nothing romantic. A duck blown out to sea and still squawking."
elaine.woo@latimes.com
Hayden Carruth's Poetry
------------------------------
Scrambled Eggs And Whiskey
------------------------------------
Scrambled eggs and whisky
in the false-dawn light.
Chicago,a sweet town, bleak,
God knows,but sweet. Sometimes.
And weren't we fine tonight?
When Hank set up that limping
treble roll behind memy horn
just growled and I thought my heart
would burst. And Brad M. pressing
with the soft stick and Joe-Annesinging low.
Here we are no win the White Tower,
leaning on one another, too tired to go home.
But don't say a word,don't tell a soul, they
wouldn't understand, they couldn't, never
in a million years, how fine, how magnificent
we were in that old club tonight.
Graves
-----------
Both of us had been close to Joel,
and at Joel's death my friend had gone
to the wake and the memorial service
and more recently he had visited Joel's grave,
there at the back of the grassy cemetery
among the trees,"a quiet, gentle place," he said,
"befitting Joel." And I said,"What's the point of
going to look at graves?" I went into one of my
celebrated tirades. "People go to look at the grave
of Keats or Hart Crane, they go traveling just
to do it, and what a waste of time.What do they find there?
Hell,I wouldn't go look at the graveof Shakespeare if
it was just down the street. I wouldn't look at--"
And I stopped. Iwas about to say the grave of God
until I realized I'm looking at it all the time. . . .
February Morning
-----------------------
The old man takes a nap
too soon in the morning.
His coffee cup grows cold.
Outside the snow falls fast.
He'll not go out today.
Others must clear the way
to the car and the shed.
Open upon his lap lie the
poems of Mr. Frost.
Somehow his eyes get lost in
the words and the snow,
somehow they go backward
against the words, upward
among the flakes to the
blankness of air,the busy
abundance there.
Should he take warning?
Mr. Frost went off, they say,
in bitterness and despair.
The old man stirs and wakes,
hearing the hungry birds, nuthatch,
sparrow, and jay that clamor outside,
unfed,and words stir from his past like
this irritable sorrow of jay, nuthatch,
and sparrow, wrath which no longer
takes shape of sentence or song.
He climbs the stairs to bed.
The snow falls all day long.
Friday, October 3, 2008
About Nikki Giovanni
Nikki Giovanni was born Yolande Cornelia Giovanni, jr June 7, 1943 in Knoxville, Tennessee, but raised in the Lincoln Heights neighborhood of Cincinnati, Ohio.
She attended the all-black Fisk University, where she became involved in both the Writers' Workshop and the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committe.
The connections between literature and politics would continue to absorb her attention for decades to come.
In 1967, she became actively involved in the Black Arts movement, a loose coalition of African-American intellectuals who wrote politically and artistically radical poems aimed at raising awareness of black rights and promoting the struggle for racial equality.
Radicalized by the assasination of Malcolm X and by the rise of the militant Black Panthers, her poetry in the 1960s and 1970s was colorful and combative; a recurrent theme of this era is the possible redundancy of poetry in the face of possible revolution.
In her first three collections of poems, Black Feeling, Black Talk (1968), Black Judgement (1968), and Re: Creation (1970), her content was urgently revolutionary and suffused with deliberate interpretation of experience through a black consciousness.
Giovanni's experiences as a single mother then began to influence her poetry. Spin a Soft Black Song (1971), Ego-Tripping (1973), and Vacation Time (1980) were collections of poems for children.
Loneliness, thwarted hopes, and the theme of family affection became increasingly important in her poetry during the 1970s. She returned to political concerns in Those Who Ride the Night Winds (1983), with dedications to black American heroes and heroines.
From the late 1960s Giovanni was a popular reader of her own poetry, with performances issued on several recordings, and a respected speaker as well.
In Gemini (1971) she presented autobiographical reminiscences, and Sacred Cows . . . and Other Edibles (1988) was a collection of her essays.
Nikki Giovanni is now (1998) a professor at Virginia Tech, where she teaches English. Recently, she underwent a successful operation for lung cancer.
List of Nikki Giovanni's works.
Major Works
---------------
Black Feeling, Black Talk (1968).
Black Judgement (1968).
Night Comes Softly (1970).
Poem of Angela Yvonne Davis (1970). Illustrated by Charles Bible.
Re: Creation (1970).
Gemini: An Extended Autobiographical Statement on My First Twenty-Five Years of Being a Black Poet (1971).
Spin a Soft Black Song: Poems for Children (1971). Illustrated by Charles Bible.
In My House (1972).
Dialogue (1973). Foreword by Ida Lewis; Afterword by Orde Coombs. Conversations with James Baldwin.
My House, Ego-Tripping and Other Poems for Young People (1973).
A Poetic Equation: Conversations between Nikki Giovanni and Margaret Walker(1974).
The Women Gather (1975). Broadside.
The Women and the Men (1975).
Cotton Candy on a Rainy Day (1978).
Black Feeling, Black Talk, Black Judgement (1979).
Vacation Time: Poems for Children (1980).
Those Who Ride the Night Winds (1983).
Sacred Cows and Other Edibles (1988).
Grand Mothers: Poems, Reminiscences, and Short Stories About the Keepers of
Our Traditions (1994).
Knoxville, Tennessee (1994). Illustrated by Larry Johnson.
Racism 101 (1994). Foreword by Virginia Fowler.
The Genie in the Jar (1996). Illustrated by Chris Raschka.
Shimmy Shimmy Like My Sister Kate: Looking at the Harlem Renaissance Through Poems (1996). An anthology of Harlem Renaissance ( more or less ) poets with Nikki Giovanni's comments.
The Selected Poems of Nikki Giovanni (1996).
The Sun is So Quiet: Poems (1996). Illustrated by Ashley Bryan.
Love Poems (1997).
About Nikki Giovanni
Virginia C. Fowler, Nikki Giovanni. Twayne, 1992.
She attended the all-black Fisk University, where she became involved in both the Writers' Workshop and the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committe.
The connections between literature and politics would continue to absorb her attention for decades to come.
In 1967, she became actively involved in the Black Arts movement, a loose coalition of African-American intellectuals who wrote politically and artistically radical poems aimed at raising awareness of black rights and promoting the struggle for racial equality.
Radicalized by the assasination of Malcolm X and by the rise of the militant Black Panthers, her poetry in the 1960s and 1970s was colorful and combative; a recurrent theme of this era is the possible redundancy of poetry in the face of possible revolution.
In her first three collections of poems, Black Feeling, Black Talk (1968), Black Judgement (1968), and Re: Creation (1970), her content was urgently revolutionary and suffused with deliberate interpretation of experience through a black consciousness.
Giovanni's experiences as a single mother then began to influence her poetry. Spin a Soft Black Song (1971), Ego-Tripping (1973), and Vacation Time (1980) were collections of poems for children.
Loneliness, thwarted hopes, and the theme of family affection became increasingly important in her poetry during the 1970s. She returned to political concerns in Those Who Ride the Night Winds (1983), with dedications to black American heroes and heroines.
From the late 1960s Giovanni was a popular reader of her own poetry, with performances issued on several recordings, and a respected speaker as well.
In Gemini (1971) she presented autobiographical reminiscences, and Sacred Cows . . . and Other Edibles (1988) was a collection of her essays.
Nikki Giovanni is now (1998) a professor at Virginia Tech, where she teaches English. Recently, she underwent a successful operation for lung cancer.
List of Nikki Giovanni's works.
Major Works
---------------
Black Feeling, Black Talk (1968).
Black Judgement (1968).
Night Comes Softly (1970).
Poem of Angela Yvonne Davis (1970). Illustrated by Charles Bible.
Re: Creation (1970).
Gemini: An Extended Autobiographical Statement on My First Twenty-Five Years of Being a Black Poet (1971).
Spin a Soft Black Song: Poems for Children (1971). Illustrated by Charles Bible.
In My House (1972).
Dialogue (1973). Foreword by Ida Lewis; Afterword by Orde Coombs. Conversations with James Baldwin.
My House, Ego-Tripping and Other Poems for Young People (1973).
A Poetic Equation: Conversations between Nikki Giovanni and Margaret Walker(1974).
The Women Gather (1975). Broadside.
The Women and the Men (1975).
Cotton Candy on a Rainy Day (1978).
Black Feeling, Black Talk, Black Judgement (1979).
Vacation Time: Poems for Children (1980).
Those Who Ride the Night Winds (1983).
Sacred Cows and Other Edibles (1988).
Grand Mothers: Poems, Reminiscences, and Short Stories About the Keepers of
Our Traditions (1994).
Knoxville, Tennessee (1994). Illustrated by Larry Johnson.
Racism 101 (1994). Foreword by Virginia Fowler.
The Genie in the Jar (1996). Illustrated by Chris Raschka.
Shimmy Shimmy Like My Sister Kate: Looking at the Harlem Renaissance Through Poems (1996). An anthology of Harlem Renaissance ( more or less ) poets with Nikki Giovanni's comments.
The Selected Poems of Nikki Giovanni (1996).
The Sun is So Quiet: Poems (1996). Illustrated by Ashley Bryan.
Love Poems (1997).
About Nikki Giovanni
Virginia C. Fowler, Nikki Giovanni. Twayne, 1992.
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