Counting the bucks yet ?
This also is a kick! 
Ed and Justin Coletti performing David Madgalene's "HooDoo Girl" at Occidental Center in 2017. I found it on YouTube. Just a bit over 3 minutes. Enjoy!
Our Summer Festival Reading will be held on Sunday June 23d at Café Frida Gallery, 300 South A Street, Santa Rosa, on the outdoor stage. Come early for lunch and to enjoy the Jazz!
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War Birds by Palestinian Poet
Marwan Makhoul
Joe Zaccardi On His Process
My process for writing poetry sometimes comes to me out of the blue. My daily habit is to jot down thoughts and musings in my notebook, or on flyers, envelopes, and scratch paper, and use those words to write a line or two, to quote the poet Renee Dixon,”Writing poetry is a passion, ignited by thoughts, fueled by ink.”
e. g. from Songbirds… If I could live in the woods among ferns and old pines, / I would fill my cabin with blue mountains…
I didn’t
start writing the poems for Songbirds of the Nine Rivers, about the Tang to
Sung dynasty poets and historical figures from that period, until 2002. Before
that, back in 1970, I spent hours at The Not So
Clean & Well Lighted Bookstore, a used bookstore
in the tenderloin of San Francisco. I bought and read every book I could find
of Chinese poetry: their histories, philosophies, and biographies of their
poets. I didn’t have much disposable income back then; but thankfully most of
the used books cost 25¢ to
50¢. I had saved my tips from “Kuster’s Last
Stand,” a hole-in-the-wall diner owned by Bob Kuster, where I worked as the
short order cook and server. Several years later, as my
financial situation improved, I bought different translations of Chinese poetry
by Red Pine, Ling Chung, Gary Snider, Wen Yituo, Dr. Pu Hsiang-hsing and
Professor Shen Yu-ting, Burton Watson, David Hinton, Arthur Waley and others. I
took notes of the differences and
similarities in their translations of the same poem. I also
kept notes about the historical events that the poems referenced.
e. g. from Songbirds…
I saw a tiger dozing in a hammock swagged between two ginkgos. / I saw a recluse sleeping on a lichen- and
moss-covered stone…
To write
about the poetry and life of Li Bai, Du Fu, Su Tung-po et al, I immersed myself
in multiple translations of their poetry. I studied the tones and rhythms to
the point where I became these poets, and their poetry became a part of me.
e. g. from Songbirds… In winter he loved the smell of apple seeds, /
Of thistledown and spirit weed.
Of course, there's a lot
more about my process in creating a poem. I would work and re-work until I
could feel the poem mature. However, sometimes I took Ginsberg’s advice to
heart “First thought, best thought,” though my poems were neither spontaneous
nor fearless. One must, I believe, refine, edit, and re-edit. After I typed out
a draft of a new poem, I’d cut some lines and save them for another day; I kept
a file, just for this purpose, in a red notebook that I labeled “Ten Thousand
Strands.” After a week or so, I’d revisit my poems in progress and trim or
expand the lines. I saved my first drafts in a Manila Envelope, because
sometimes my first thought was indeed my best thought. At some point, when I
got to where the poem felt it was near the finish-line, I set it aside for a
week or so, then revisited what I wrote and read my lines aloud to hear the
juice of my words, and asked myself: “Does this poem sing?”
The first
poem I wrote for Songbirds was in the year 2002, though I didn’t know I was on
a path to creating a book of poems at the time. It was a gift that came to me
while on a walk with my dog. I was daydreaming when I heard a ruckus of crows
in the crown of a black oak that was at least a hundred feet tall. I said out
loud, “My head is full of crows,” and that grew into the poem, “On a Walk Late
in the Day,” whose concluding line ends with my first thought.
e. g. from Songbirds… The hours leave me. / Dust and
smoke in the west. / My head is full of crows.
Another strategy, early on in composing my poems about the Tang through
the Sung Dynasty poets and the historical characters of that era, was to not
use end rhymes. Instead, I used the second or third word of some of my lines,
and let them rhyme or slant-rhyme with a word in the same line. I also employed
incantations and repetitions in many of my couplets, so that my poems would
sing like Li Bai and Du Fu’s poetry, to the point where each line could stand
alone as a whole poem; not to reproduce Chinese poetry, for that is impossible,
but to honor and treasure its quietness. I also allowed myself time to not to
be in any hurry to finish my manuscript.
e. g. from Songbirds… This bird’s pain is the same as
his pain, / Its cries rise and fall and rise…
What one gathers and scatters is windblown, / The way
red dust and willow tree fluff hover aloft…
One essential book I discovered in my search for
knowledge and inspiration, was firstly, The White
Pony, published
in 1947, a poetry anthology that starts in the Chinese age of the Yellow and the Red emperors,
and ends with the poetry of Mao Zedong. What made this anthology so important
to me was that the translations were a collaborative work; there being five
translators, three Chinese scholars conversant in English, and two English
scholars conversant in Chinese. This anthology included copious footnotes and
endnotes that energized me.
The second
essential book was a prose translation of Du Fu’s poetry, by William Hung, that
I found through the aid of my local librarian. She found copies of this rare
two-volume book at the library of Dominican University in San Rafael,
California. What made this work instructive was that after each poem the author
listed the historical backgrounds and conditions, and the challenges of when
each poem was written, that is, during periods of war and peace, famine and
prosperity, upheaval and reform.
A later influence for
me was the Misty Poets of China, so named because their work was officially
denounced as "obscure", "misty," and /or "hazy” by
Chinese censors. The Misty poets
reacted against the restrictions on art and poetry, and according to Gu Cheng, one of the most influential of the Misty
Poets, “The defining characteristic of this new type of poetry is its
realism—it begins with objective realism then veers towards a subjective
realism; it moves from a passive reaction toward an active creation.” Unfortunately,
this was a short-lived poetry
revolution, (1970-78), that was challenged through the censorship of the
communist government of Mao Zedong, during the Cultural Revolution.
Songbirds of the Nine Rivers: Section 2
China was known as
the Great Dragon, and the countries on its borders were known as the Little
Dragons. In 1402, the Chinese army, by order of Zhu Di, emperor of the Ming Dynasty, invaded and
occupied the country of Anam, currently the northern half of Vietnam.
Lê Loi, a wealthy
landowner of Anam, and Nguyễn Trãi, a Confucian scholar and a master
strategist, who was said to be capable of almost miraculous deeds in his
capacity as a close friend and advisor to Lê Loi, led the resistance
and defeated the Chinese army by their military strategies in 1424. Lê Loi also assisted
the beleaguered forces of the Ming army in their return to China. Thereafter Lê Loi was diplomatic
in his relations with the Chinese, sending tribute to the Ming emperor, who
grudgingly acknowledged his kingdom in 1428. Ascending the throne as the emperor, Lê Loi took the name of Lê Thai To, where he
established the third great Vietnamese dynasty, which maintained itself in
Vietnam for nearly 360 years.
Of Vietnamese poetry from the Later Lê dynasty poetry, I read and studied Nguyễn Do and Paul
Hoover’s translation of Nguyen Trai, and the poetry of such notable Vietnamese
poets such as Ly Thuong Kiet, Nguyễn Van Sieu, Nguyễn Du, Ho Xuan Huong, Tran Nhan-tong and Ly Dao Tai, et al. The poems in
this section are historically accurate, though I used some fictional characters
to bind the events and conflicts together.
I wrote the title poem for Songbirds of the
Nine Rivers in 2005. It is the last poem in my book, and it sings of the final
defeat of the Ming invasion of the Great Dragon by one of the smaller dragons.
The final draft of Songbirds of the Nine
Rivers took me about sixteen years to write. This includes the second section, which
initially I didn’t envision as being
related to my poems about the Chinese poets, (604 CE to 1400 CE), until I
realized the timeframe was historically in line with the Ming invasion of Anam
(North Vietnam) in 1402 CE.
Most of the
facts and legends in Songbirds of the Nine Rivers are historically traceable, though some have been
slightly embellished by me to make a point, and a few are pure fiction. All of
the idioms I use are accurate, insofar as any translation of an idiom can be
accurate. Some of the named individuals in these poems are fictitious.
Every poet, I believe, needs a sounding
board for their new creations. That too is part of my writing process. I am
fortunate enough to have been a part of two poetry groups whose members
critiqued my poems, and more importantly, asked me questions about my poems
that led me to new discoveries.
I use poems as a way to reach out to others.
I think of my poems as the canvas that shows what I’m thinking and feeling.
Bio:
Joseph Zaccardi’s sixth book of poems, Songbird of the Nine Rivers, was published by Sixteen Rivers Press in 2023. His poems have appeared in Atlanta Review, Cincinnati Review, Poetry East, Rattle, and elsewhere. Zaccardi served as the poet laureate of Marin County, California, from 2013 to 2015, and edited Changing Harm to Harmony: Bullies and Bystanders Project.
Send your Comments to edjcoletti(AT)gmail.com
1 comment:
John Celenza
What if you put it to music. That's exactly what Leonard Cohen did when he noticed there was no money otherwise.
9h
Reply
Edited
Ed Coletti
Good thought, John. Get me a song writer, please. How you getting along. I became an octogenarian Jan 24th.
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