Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation

Martin Farawell, Program Director, Poetry

Part of what has been unique about the Dodge Poetry Festival since the first in 1986 is the feeling it engenders of being in a place made for poetry. We live in a culture and a time that makes space for countless other things. Sometimes it feels as if there are so many coming at us so quickly we can barely keep up with them. More and more it seems that what demands our attention is designed to distract us from our inner lives, the rich source of imagination, reflection, creativity and renewal.

But every other year thousands come together to make a place for poetry. They travel from all the mid-Atlantic and New England states, and from Florida and Texas, from Michigan and California, and from nearly every state between, and from Europe, the Middle-East and Asia, to create a village with poetry as a living art at its center.

A village is made up of its citizens. This year the poetry village that is the Dodge Poetry Festival is gathering in Newark’s Downtown Arts District. As always, there will be days full of an overabundance of opportunities to encounter some of our most celebrated poets in conversations, readings, craft talks and panel discussion in an array of intimate and inviting settings. On Thursday night, October 7th, we will join together in NJPAC’s beautiful Prudential Hall to celebrate the launching of the 13th Dodge Poetry Festival. Won’t you join us?

Martin Farawell, Program Director, Poetry

In “Romantic Moment,” which he read at the 2006 Dodge Poetry Festival, Tony Hoagland manages to turn both love poetry and nature poetry on their heads.

For centuries, poets have asserted that poetry forces us to stop and look more closely at the world around us. Like the thousands of nature poems that have come before it, Hoagland’s poem pays meticulous attention to detail. The more specific his descriptions become, the greater the absurdity of the images evoked, and the louder the audience laughs. Although he never states it directly, the poem forces us to wonder at the absurdity of the elaborate protocols that dominate human courtship.

And yet, there is gentleness in his treatment of the couple, who finally decide to simply get some ice cream at this stage of their particular mating ritual. There is always heart at the heart of Hoagland’s humor. Although the poems can often be biting—there were several points during his readings at the Festival when the audience shared a collective gasp—Hoagland turns his wit most often against himself.

Poets have also asserted that poems force us to look inward, at ourselves. Hoagland is a relentless observer of human behavior and motivation, constantly digging into the deeper layers beneath what consciousness typically allows us to acknowledge about ourselves. His is not an escapist’s or a cynic’s humor. It is rooted in tenderness toward our human foibles and faith in our potential. He invites us to laugh, and we do because sometimes when we hurt, laughter offers greater relief than crying.

The text of “Romantic Moment ” can be found in the chapbook Hard Rain. Tony Hoagland’s most recent full-length collection was What Narcissism Means to Me, and Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty will be out soon.

Be sure to return for upcoming Poetry Fridays, when we will feature many poets from past Dodge Poetry Festivals in the weeks ahead, including Linda Hogan, Taslima Nasreen and others.

* * *

Follow Dodge on Twitter
Become a fan of the Dodge Foundation on Facebook
Become a fan of the Dodge Poetry Festival on Facebook

Martin Farawell, Program Director, Poetry

Linda Gregg’s observation of the two horses in “The Weight,” one of two poems she read at the 2006 Dodge Poetry Festival, is reverent, and the poem’s tone is almost prayerful. It is as if, for Gregg, attention to the sensual is spiritual. Her reading leaves no doubt that the horses love each other, and that Gregg loves them.

Yet Gregg avoids the word and the connotations it carries. In his equally reverent “A Blessing,” James Wright states directly of the two horses in his poem: “they love each other.” But Gregg knows she cannot name what is passing between the horses, or what passes between any intimate sentient beings. She is willing to remain in a state of wonder. Gregg is one of our rare contemporary poets who will write about wonder without irony. This is not to suggest she lacks a sense of humor, about herself or our human foibles.

In her introduction to “Alone with the Goddess,” Gregg tells the audience that she admires the families in Java that include rituals from three or more faiths in their burial ceremonies. Despite its title, the speaker in this poem is clearly not alone. Her offering ritual to the goddess is interrupted by the judgmental comment of a present observer, and young men on horseback are racing up and down the beach. Gregg’s description of the horses in this poem is also admiring and attentive, even as she notices that they wear blinders, and the young men that ride them do not look either left or right.

We don’t know why the speaker needs to protect the man she loves with a ritual from another culture, or why she is so quick to refute that her offering has been rejected. It could be that she, like the young men on horseback, is just “pretending to be brave.” Or perhaps, like the Javanese, she knows we need to seek out as many avenues as we can into life’s mysteries.

The text of “Alone with the Goddess” can be found in Things and Flesh. “The Weight” is from Linda Gregg’s most recent collection, All of It Singing.

Be sure to return for upcoming Poetry Fridays, when we will feature many poets from past Dodge Poetry Festivals in the weeks ahead, including Linda Hogan, Tony Hoagland, Taslima Nasreen and others.

* * *

Follow Dodge on Twitter
Become a fan of the Dodge Foundation on Facebook
Become a fan of the Dodge Poetry Festival on Facebook

Martin Farawell, Program Director, Poetry

Jorie Graham has too deep a respect for the art of poetry to take anything for granted, whether it concerns her own perceptions, human consciousness or any notion of what a poem is. With each new collection, she questions the assumptions behind everything she has previously written.

Those assumptions include not only the nature of the line, of the image, of syntax, form and structure, but extend to voice, perspective, and the very self that embodies any given perspective. She is constantly challenging her own expectations, and ours.

Although her poems are sometimes described as difficult, the real difficulty may be in confronting our own expectations. This experience is not limited to poetry.

For example, if we expect a drawing or painting to present us with a realistic or even idealized view of things as they appear in the world, we may be disturbed by Marcel Duchamp’s “Nude Descending a Staircase,” with its cascade of body parts fractured into hard-edged metallic shapes. Odds are that for most of us drawing a realistic nude is a great challenge, and we admire those who have mastered a skill that is beyond us. But drawing realistically might not be so engaging to the artist who does not find it a challenge.

All of us come to poems with expectations, and it is perfectly natural, in art as in life, to favor what brings us comfort. We also know that nearly every important experience in our lives, whether or not it included our engagement with a work of art, pushed us beyond the boundaries of our comfort zones. Graham pushes relentlessly against those boundaries. To follow her, we must be willing to enter the active, questioning and questing mind alive in her poems.

“Studies in Secrecy” can be found in The Errancy. Jorie Graham’s most recent collection of poems is Sea Change. She also published Overlord in 2005 and Never in 2003.

Be sure to return for upcoming Poetry Fridays, when we will feature many poets from past Dodge Poetry Festivals in the weeks ahead, including Linda Hogan, Tony Hoagland, Taslima Nasreen and others.

* * *

Follow Dodge on Twitter
Become a fan of the Dodge Foundation on Facebook
Become a fan of the Dodge Poetry Festival on Facebook

Martin Farawell, Program Director, Poetry

The youngest poet to appear at the Dodge Poetry Festival, Ekiwah Adler Beléndez was nineteen years old when he read “Topography,” “Haiku” and “Coyote’s Trace” during the Friday Afternoon Poetry Sampler in 2006.

The son of a North American father and a Mexican mother, Ekiwah is from Amatlán de Quetzalcoalt, a small town surrounded by mountains an hour south of Mexico City. Born ten weeks prematurely and weighing barely two pounds, he was diagnosed shortly thereafter with cerebral palsy and paralytic scoliosis.

Of the physical challenges he has faced, Ekiwah has said, “Having cerebral palsy is both a curse and a blessing because it has allowed me to be directly in contact with my creativity. I’m sure I was born a poet, and not being able to walk made me find different ways of entertaining myself; this made it easy for me to tune into my inner world, where I discovered words and poetry.”

He discovered words and poetry at a very early age, composing poem fragments aloud by the time he was three years old. He studied and composed poetry throughout his childhood and his first poetry collection, Soy (I Am), was released when he was twelve. His other poetry collections include: Palabras Inagotables, (Never-ending Words); Weaver, his first book in English; and The Coyote’s Trace. Fluent in English and Spanish, Ekiwah has given readings in schools and colleges across Mexico and the United States.

Be sure to return for upcoming Poetry Fridays, when we will feature many poets from past Dodge Poetry Festivals in the weeks ahead, including Jorie Graham, Tony Hoagland, Taslima Nasreen and others.

* * *
Follow Dodge on Twitter
Become a fan of the Dodge Foundation on Facebook
Become a fan of the Dodge Poetry Festival on Facebook