[New-Poetry] All Gerald Stern! All the time!

[David Graham]

Gerald Stern is featured in the latest Cortland Review.

http://www.cortlandreview.com/features/08/winter/index.html?ref=nl1208



========================================
David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu

Home Page:
http://web.mac.com/drjazz

Poetry Library:
http://web.mac.com/drjazz/iWeb/Site/DGPoLibrary.html
==========================================




Begin forwarded message:

> From: The Cortland Review Newsletter <newsletter at cortlandreview.com>
> Date: December 22, 2008 12:00:40 AM CST
> Subject: TCR 2008 Winter Feature - All Gerald Stern!
>
>
> THE CORTLAND REVIEW NEWSLETTER
>
> Winter Feature, December 2008
> http://www.cortlandreview.com/features/08/winter/index.html?ref=nl1208
>
>
> "Stern is one of those rare poetic souls who makes it almost  
> impossible to remember what our world was like before his poetry  
> came to exalt it."
> 								—"C. K. Williams
> "I turn to Stern's poetry because he's so wholehearted in his  
> embrace of the paradoxical nature of life, because of the ebullient  
> way his poems praise the foolishness and grace of our mortal dance."
> 				—"Gail Mazur, Boston Sunday Globe
>
> "For over two decades, no one has equaled Gerald Stern's  
> compassionate surreal parables about the burden of and the  
> exaltation at being alive. He wrestles pieces of incomprehensible  
> destiny into harmony, surging between everyday and the ineffable."
> 							—"Library Journal
>
> What an immense privilege, then, for The Cortland Review to have  
> the honor of presenting this all-Gerald-Stern Feature.
>
> In TCR's first conversation with Jerry about this Feature, we  
> decided he should invite poets he wanted to appear with . . . a  
> party of sorts with Stern as host. Every poet here was eager to  
> participate, and The Cortland Review thanks each and every one of  
> them for their eagerness and their poems. I know the pleasure,  
> reader, will be all yours, so grab a cup of something sweet and  
> warm and pull the shade down on everything else. Here is the first  
> of its kind in TCR pages: the Gerald Stern Feature, 2008, with a  
> Gerald Stern video greeting.
>
> Listen to the audio from our pages via Adobe Flash Player, probably  
> already downloaded on your computer. With Flash, audio is  
> instantaneous. If you can't hear the audio, you need to download  
> Flash Player, which is free. Audio, designated by the RealAudio  
> symbol from Issues and Features prior to 2007, is still accessible  
> via RealPlayer. RealPlayer can be downloaded free.
>
> Just as the entire Cortland Review staff sends its readers warm and  
> sincere holiday wishes, I want to personally thank each one of  
> them, past and present, for the dedication and loyalty that has  
> produced not only this exceptional example of their talent and  
> love, but ten years of archived Issues and Features. And all  
> together, we thank ten years of readers for the appreciation you  
> continually express.
>
> With sincerest warm 2008 winter wishes,
> Ginger Murchison
> Editor
>
>
>
> -----------
> CONTENTS
> -----------
>
> 1. Winter Feature Released
> 2 "Getting Down," by Linda Gregg
> 3. "Why Don't We Do It in the Road," by Dorianne Laux
> 4. From "While in Brooklyn" by Ira Sadoff
> 5. "Raymond Chandler," by Arthur Vogelsang
> 6. "The Final Vocabulary of Gerald Stern," an essay by David Rigsbee
> 7. "'Save the Last Dance' by Gerald Stern," a book review by David  
> Rigsbee
>
>
>
> -----------
> WINTER FEATURE RELEASED
> -----------
>
> 1. The full feature:
> http://www.cortlandreview.com/features/08/winter/index.html?ref=nl1208
>
> Five new poems by Gerald Stern. Poems from his invited guests:  
> Christopher Buckley, Michael Burkard, Jeff Friedman, Ross Gay, Jack  
> Gilbert, Linda Gregg, Jane Hirshfield, Tony Hoagland, Joan Larkin,  
> Dorianne Laux, Jan Heller Levi, Anne Marie Macari, Ed Ochester,  
> Alicia Ostriker, Katheen Peirce, Peter Richards, Ira Sadoff, Jean  
> Valentine, Arthur Vogelsang, Judith Vollmer, Anne Waldman, Peter  
> Waldor, and Michael Waters. "The Final Vocabulary of Gerald Stern,"  
> an essay by David Rigsbee, and David Rigsbee's book review of  
> Gerald Stern's "Save the Last Dance."
>
>
>
> -----------
> 2. EXCERPT FROM "Getting Down," by Linda Gregg
> -----------
>
> The full poem:
> http://www.cortlandreview.com/features/08/winter/gregg.html?ref=nl1208
>
> The snake leads the way
> to a place of absolutes
> where no man can talk
> you out of anything.
> It's a place as real as
> an empty pool in front
> of the not-in-service-at-
> this-time motel. Each
> person has a secret world.
> Places where nobody can
> visit. Places we live in
> after our death.
>
>
>
> -----------
> 3. EXCERPT FROM "Why Don't We Do It in the Road," by Dorianne Laux
> -----------
>
> The full poem:
> http://www.cortlandreview.com/features/08/winter/laux.html?ref=nl1208
>
> Why didn't we?  When we were young and could have
> stopped traffic with our perfect bodies, our silken hair
> and white teeth.  Why didn't we dance naked on the balcony,
> throwing our clothes to the gathering crowds or swim nude
> through the pool's blue lights, our taut calves shimmering,
> crossing our thighs and rolling, our breasts floating, our backs
> muscled and shining. Why didn't we walk into every church. . . .
>
>
>
> -----------
> 4. EXCERPT FROM "While in Brooklyn," by Ira Sadoff
> -----------
>
> The full poem: http://www.cortlandreview.com/features/08/winter/ 
> sadoff.html?ref=nl1208
>
> However much you scream, whatever fire,
>
> I will be beyond you, and earth is
> beyond you, and the first and the last,
>
> beyond you, and beyond you, I swear it,
> even beyond you, there is other.
>
>
>
> -----------
> 5. EXCERPT FROM "Raymond Chandler" by Arthur Vogelsang
> -----------
>
> The full poem:
> http://www.cortlandreview.com/features/08/winter/vogelsang.html? 
> ref=nl1208
>
>
> After the argument, all things were strange.
> They stood divided by their eloquence
> Which had surprised them after so much silence.
> Now there were real things to rearrange.
>
>
>
> -----------
> 6. EXCERPT FROM "The Final Vocabulary of Gerald Stern," by David  
> Rigsbee
> -----------
>
> The full essay:
> http://www.cortlandreview.com/features/08/winter/rigsbee_e.html? 
> ref=nl1208
>
> It was Kafka who remarked that in the last analysis, when all is  
> said and done, life isn't ironic. Sadly, I think it was an  
> intuition of this sort that fueled the greatly gifted David Foster  
> Wallace's wariness of his own talent for the ironic turn and of his  
> generation's interest in recentering literature. What I mean is  
> that there has been a perceptible wish to reach for the reset  
> button and refashion serious literature as a species of  
> authenticity (a thesis), rather than let it be one more ironic  
> "take" on some prior and illusory authenticity (an antithesis). In  
> a larger sense—and it is always in the larger sense that the truth  
> of Kafka's aside takes hold—American literature (including poetry)  
> has been seen as having succumbed too long to the tractor-pull of  
> irony. And yet why not let that tractor do its work? Irony is,  
> after all, a defense against the fear that we may be finally  
> incapable of tragedy. At the same time, as ironists have aimed dart  
> after dart at literature's many presumptions, those who allow the  
> occasional nod toward the old belief system have been stigmatized  
> as traditionalists in the bad sense, as benighted Sad Sacks of the  
> cultural right. Gerald Stern's example rejects the injustice of  
> such a claim on its face; as for the assigning of poets into the  
> camp of the right—preposterous!
>
>
>
> -----------
> 7. EXCERPT FROM "'Save the Last' Dance by Gerald Stern," a book  
> review by David Rigsbee
> -----------
>
> The full review:
> http://www.cortlandreview.com/features/08/winter/rigsbee_r.html? 
> ref=nl1208
>
> Like Picasso, Stern, now in his 80s, has moved into a phase that  
> mediates between immutable fact and implacable desire by adjusting  
> the succession of content and image upward (a feat for the verbally  
> robust Stern) while adjusting the level of form downward. Some  
> people I know don't go for late Picasso, those kinetic paintings  
> done sometimes three and four a day. I find them, however, full of  
> righteous impatience and imaginative candor. They're impatient with  
> our sense of time as luxury and at the same time never fail to keep  
> desire working at high pressure.
>
>
>
> ----------
> WINTER FEATURE (DECEMBER, 2008)
> http://www.cortlandreview.com/features/08/winter/index.html?ref=nl1208
> -----------
>
> The Cortland Review
> http://www.cortlandreview.com/
>
>
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