American Life in Poetry: Column 180
By Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate, 2004-2006
What's in a name? All of us have thought at one time or another about our names, perhaps asking why they were given to us, or finding meanings within them. Here Emmett Tenorio Melendez, an eleven-year-old poet from San Antonio, Texas, proudly presents us with his name and its meaning.
My name came from. . .
My name came from my great-great-great-grandfather.
He was an Indian from the Choctaw tribe.
His name was Dark Ant.
When he went to get a job out in a city
he changed it to Emmett.
And his whole name was Emmett Perez Tenorio.
And my name means: Ant; Strong; Carry twice
its size.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. 2000 by Emmett Tenorio Melendez. Reprinted from Salting The Ocean: 100 Poems By Young Poets, Greenwillow Books, 2000, by permission of the editor. Introduction copyright © 2008 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
I see from LinkedIn that a friend of mine, Michael Thome, has co-written Scripting Your World: The Official Guide to Second Life Scripting. Congratulations, Mike! And all you Second Life users, click here and buy one now.
...from my new office, five floors above the sanctuary at Old South Church.
Coordinates here. The Boston Public Library is right across the street, and the restaurant scene is great around here.
Copley Square is the first Boston neighborhood I considered "mine." Even though I grew up just outside the city, we always came into Boston--for shopping, movies, a special meal out. I had a Boston Public Library card as a kid. My trip to the orthodontist took me through Copley Square by trolley and bus. I can't remember the name of it now, but a record store on Boylston Street near Fairlfield (above Copy Cop!) became my first regular place to buy albums. My first job in Boston, toward the end of high school, was in the Prudential Center down the street. Later, I would go to grad school at Emerson, which is downtown now but then inhabited a loosely grouped set of brownstones centered at Beacon and Berkeley streets. After I joined Houghton Mifflin in the 1990s, they soon after moved their headquarters to Berkeley and Boylston. They remain a client to this day, and I can see the building from my new window.
And, as I type this, someone is on the organ. On that "note," time to grab some lunch and get back to work.
I have been playing fantasy baseball for years (long enough to pause before typing "fantasy" and almost typing "rotisserie"), but I am pretty new to its football equivalent. However, my boys love it, especially my younger son, so I like to do it to have another thing to talk with them about it. I drafted my team last night, and named it after one of my favorite Boston Patriots players, Houston Antwine.
Courtesy of Amazon.com.
I finally got around to updating my Acrobat and Flex aStore to reflect the latest releases of Acrobat and Flex. One sign of a robust software business is an active program of independent writing and publishing around the products, and Adobe has plenty of that.
Inspired by Marianne Calilhanna over at the Really Strategies blog, I created a word cloud of the first chapter of Joyce's Ulysses.
American Life in Poetry: Column 179
By Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate, 2004-2006
I've always loved shop talk, with its wonderful language of tools and techniques. This poem by D. Nurkse of Brooklyn, New York, is a perfect example. I especially like the use of the verb, lap, in line seven, because that's exactly the sound a four-inch wall brush makes.
Bushwick: Latex Flat
2001
Sadness of just-painted rooms.
We clean our tools
meticulously, as if currying horses:
the little nervous sash brush
to be combed and primped,
the fat old four-inchers
that lap up space
to be wrapped and groomed,
the ceiling rollers,
the little pencils
that cover nailheads
with oak gloss,
to be counted and packed:
camped on our dropsheets
we stare across gleaming floors
at the door and beyond it
the old city full of old rumors
of conspiracies, gunshots, market crashes:
with a little mallet
we tap our lids closed,
holding our breath, holding our lives
in suspension for a moment:
an extra drop will ruin everything.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright © 2007 by D. Nurkse, whose newest book of poetry The Border Kingdom, is forthcoming from Alfred A. Knopf, 2008. Poem reprinted from Broken Land: Poems of Brooklyn, ed., Julia Spicher Kasdorf & Michael Tyrrell, New York University Press, 2007, by permission of D. Nurkse. Introduction copyright © 2008 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
You can do it here if you sign up for an Amazon Rewards Visa Card. I'd be tempted, but I am not in the market for a credit card right now.
I happened to check on the Amazon aStore I created for Dubus books and realized it had somehow lost the listing of primary books. I restored it and republished it here. Shop early and often!
American Life in Poetry: Column 178
By Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate, 2004-2006
We mammals are ferociously protective of our young, and we all know not to wander in between a sow bear and her cubs. Here Minnesota poet Gary Dop, without a moment's hesitation, throws himself into the water to save a frightened child.
Father, Child, Water
I lift your body to the boat
before you drown or choke or slip too far
beneath. I didn't think—just jumped, just did
what I did like the physics
that flung you in. My hands clutch under
year-old arms, between your life
jacket and your bobbing frame, pushing you,
like a fountain cherub, up and out.
I'm fooled by the warmth pulsing from
the gash on my thigh, sliced wide and clean
by an errant screw on the stern.
No pain. My legs kick out blood below.
My arms strain
against our deaths to hold you up
as I lift you, crying, reaching, to the boat.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright © 2008 by Gary Dop. Reprinted from New Letters, Vol. 74, No. 3, Spring 2008, by permission of Gary Dop. Introduction copyright © 2008 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
American Life in Poetry: Column 177
By Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate, 2004-2006
Kristen Tracy is a poet from San Francisco who here captures a moment at a zoo. It's the falling rain, don't you think, that makes the experience of observing the animals seem so perfectly truthful and vivid?
Rain at the Zoo
A giraffe presented its head to me, tilting it
sideways, reaching out its long gray tongue.
I gave it my wheat cracker while small drops
of rain pounded us both. Lightning cracked open
the sky. Zebras zipped across the field.
It was springtime in Michigan. I watched
the giraffe shuffle itself backwards, toward
the herd, its bone- and rust-colored fur beading
with water. The entire mix of animals stood
away from the trees. A lone emu shook
its round body hard and squawked. It ran
along the fence line, jerking open its wings.
Perhaps it was trying to shake away the burden
of water or indulging an urge to fly. I can't know.
I have no idea what about their lives these animals
love or abhor. They are captured or born here for us,
and we come. It's true. This is my favorite field.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright © Kristen Tracy, whose most recent teen novel is Crimes of the Sarahs, Simon & Schuster, 2008. Poem reprinted from AGNI Online, 9/2007, by permission of Kristen Tracy. Introduction copyright © 2008 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
... Charlie Zink!
And a knuckleballer no less.
His last name makes me wonder if I need a new category of baseball names. Besides names that are also the names of Massachusetts cities and towns and food names, should I add a category of chemical elements? A quick search of baseballreference.com suggests the pickings are a little slim...
One of the pleasures of the Sunday Boston Globe is reading the baseball notes, a long collection of short essays, stats, random facts, and other baseball detail. The format is a staple in major metropolitan newspapers, usually for the four major team sports (baseball, football, basketball, and hockey), but my memory tells me it was invented by Peter Gammons when he was the Globe's baseball beat writer.
Today's notes has a terrific graphic detailing the "six degrees of separation" from Manny Ramirez to each of the sluggers ahead of him on the all-time home run list. Unfortunately, they only shoveled into a GIF format, not even bothering to add links. They could have created something that was fun and instructive. Still, the details are cool--who knew, for instance, that Dave Winfield and Willie McCovey were once teammates?
