A wordle based on my poems:
Jason Crane Posts
Last night I went to the Albany Poets Presents open mic at Valentine’s here in Albany. A recording of that reading is now available at AlbanyPoets.com. My section starts about 9:45 into the recording, but I encourage you to listen to the whole thing.
Leave a CommentKooser’s book is aimed at the beginning poet, but anyone could pick up useful ideas about revision, metaphor and simile, and imagining an audience. Kooser’s writing is warm and often funny, and his advice is realistic and practical. This is not a book to read if you’re looking for a quick way to become a famous poet. But if you’re interested in putting in the necessary hours (and hours and hours and hours) needed to turn out respectable writing, Kooser can help you use your time more productively and enjoyably.
Recommended.
Leave a CommentBookshelves
All our bookshelves were made by our fathers,
crafted by calloused hands from woods
soft or hard, fine-grained or no,
fashioned in damp basements or dusty barns
on Saturday afternoons while Black Magic Woman
or Love Me Do played on what used to be the nice radio.
The bookshelves are, like all fathers’ creations, imperfect,
slightly wider at the front,
fitting some books better than others.
In one, there is a pair of hearts carved,
delicate filigree surprising
from a splitter of logs, a man of the earth.
The bookshelves are a framework, intended
by our fathers to be filled with thoughts
of our own choosing, maybe with a gentle nudge
from a “doctor of books.â€
But it is we who must encumber the wood
with our own words, we who must choose
which volumes to stack or lean,
we who receive the hard or soft legacy
cast in simple wood by complex men.
Here’s my contribution to the memory of Monday. For more, read Dan Wilcox’s Birthday Poem, 2009 and his write-up of the event.
Robby Burns’s Hat
Crusty snow beneath our boots
as we watch a limber young poet
scamper atop the McPherson Legacy.
Once settled between Robby’s legs,
he takes the beret — the same one
they used last year —
and balances it on top of Robby’s head.
The last time, it was up there a week before
a less young, but no less limber, poet
found the beret at the base of the Legacy
and rescued it from oblivion, restoring
the cap to its place of honor twelve months later.
And so it goes, year after year, in honor
of the man who started it all, and who
made the trail through the snow that we follow.
Back in the early 90s, I wrote and performed a lot of poetry. It was all very specific to its time and place. Looking back on it, it was mostly crap.
In recent years, I’ve started writing again. In fact, I’m getting serious about it, meaning that I’m actually trying to — gulp — improve and seek out criticism. I’ve been helped a great deal in this effort by some poets from the upstate New York region.
I decided last night to finally go read some poems in public again. And I chose the perfect event — Poets Speak Loud, an annual gathering in tribute to the former dean of the Albany poetry scene, Tom Nattell. You can hear last night’s event in its entirety at albanypoets.com. The site is a great example of how to run a local poetry site. Frequently updated, welcoming of all poets, full of useful features.
The open mic was a lot of fun. I felt very welcomed by the organizers and established poets, several of whom encouraged me to come out again. Little things like that mean a lot. By and large, the quality of the writing was good. There were highlights — Dan Stalter’s hilarious and insightful slam performance, Mary Panza’s reading of Elizabeth Alexander’s inaugural poem, and Scott Casale’s sensual reading of a poem about sex. Host Dan Wilcox kept everyone in good spirits and kept the evening moving right along, which is always appreciated.
After the reading, most of the gang walked to Washington Park. One of the poets — I know his name but will leave it out to protect him from prosecution — climbed atop the statue of Robert Burns and put a beret on top in honor of Nattell.
I was curious about the history of the statue. I found this online:
The Robert Burns Statue was erected in 1888 in Washington Park and has an amazing story. One Mary Macpherson, a poor house maid, saved all of her money and donated $30,000 to build what has been called the best statue of Robert Burns in the World and is the second oldest surviving statue of Burns to be created in the United States. It is also one of 20 monuments in the world erected before 1890 in honor of that great Scottish poet. The statue is the largest work ever produced by Charles Calverly, who was born in Albany in 1833. His most complex work was the 16 foot Burns monument, a seated figure cast in bronze, resting on a pedestal of Scottish granite. The statue is formally known as the Macpherson Legacy to the City of Albany.
Google Books has a Harvard publication from 1889 called Historical Sketch of the Burns Statue by R.H. Collyer. You can read it at the Google Books site.
Anyway, check out the podcast. I’m in Part 2.
Leave a CommentJournalist and comic book artist Joe Sacco has been rightly praised for this intense account of his time in the Palestinian territories during the first Intifada. Sacco decided from the start to tell the Palestinian side of the story — not to aim for the false balance of much of modern journalism. His graphic novel is primarily a series of interviews with Palestinians, some arranged in advance and some on the spur of the moment.
If you enjoyed Art Spiegelman’s MAUS books, you’ll probably like Sacco’s work.
Highly recommended.
Leave a CommentThis is essentially Artimage’s script for a BBC Radio production of the Odyssey. He condenses — if that’s the word — the story into a series of conversations between its characters.
The language is both rich and readable, everyday and heroic. Armitage uses the conversations to strike at the core of the story, and to offer a look into the psychology of gods and men.
Despite its much shorter length, this Odyssey manages to retain its epic scope. For those not familiar with the original work, this version may serve as a fine introduction. And for those who are steeped in the classic poem, this Odyssey offers a fresh perspective.
Highly recommended.
Leave a CommentI wasn’t sure what to expect from this collection, which gathers together Eisner’s three graphic novels about the mythic Dropsie Avenue, a street in New York patterned after Eisner’s own childhood neighborhood. I’d never read any of Eisner’s work, famous as he is, and I mostly thought of him as the creator of The Spirit, a comic book hero.
This trilogy, though, is both an autobiography of sorts for Eisner and a biography of a street in New York City. The three books share an attention to detail combined with an epic sweep of history. Eisner explores religion, the meaning of life, aging, poverty, immigration, racial and ethnic relations, and the development of urban centers with a keenly observant — if not objective — eye.
The black-and-white illustrations are perfect for the stories. The drawing has a raggedly realistic style that catches every piece of cracked plaster, every shadowed face, every trick of the light.
Recommended.
Leave a CommentThis brilliant graphic novel tells the unvarnished story of the development and amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The book is no hagiography of the document or its authors. Hennessey and McConnell point out the flaws in the Constitution and its unfortunate application to restrict the rights of many Americans.
In total, though, this book, like the best history books, inspires both an appreciation for past events and a desire to improve conditions going forward. Hennessy and McConnell are to be commended for furthering the cause of Constitutional literacy. Get this for every middle- and high-school student you know, and get a copy for yourself, too.
Highly recommended.
Leave a CommentI learned about Arthur Guiterman because several of his poems were included in the Library of America’s book American Wits: An Anthology of Light Verse (American Poets Project)
The Mirthful Lyre was published in 1918, when Guiterman was in his late 40s. It’s divided into several sections: Folks And Things; A Few Children; To The Littlest Of All; Fauna And Flora; and All-Out-Doors. Many of the funny poems are in the first section, but I was most impressed and moved by the All-Out-Doors section, Guiterman’s series of love songs about nature.
The nature poems are sensitive and adoring, displaying the poet’s obvious passion for escape from his city life. He seems to be completely at home in the woods, lovingly describing the animal life, the sound of the wind in the trees, and the stillness of travel by canoe.
Guiterman is well worth searching out. Highly recommended.
Leave a CommentIn 2008, I was a panelist on the Parents Panel of the Albany Times Union newspaper. That meant writing a monthly article and occasional blog posts. Here is part 1 of my look back at 2008 from a family perspective:
2008: A look back at my year in parenting (Part 1)
Leave a CommentPodcast: Play in new window | Download
In 2005, I interviewed biologist and noted atheist Richard Dawkins for my talk show, The Jason Crane Show. Here’s an mp3 of the interview from my subsequent 2006 podcast of The Jason Crane Show:
Interview with Richard Dawkins (mp3 – 31:26, 2 April 2005)
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This message — except the “probably†— has been approved by Richard Dawkins, scientist and author of “The God Delusion.â€
(Akira Suemori/Associated Press)
New York Times: Atheists Decide to Send a Message, on 800 Buses
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