National Poetry Month Events in Salem

On Saturday, March 31, the Oregon state finals for this year's Poetry Out Loud competition were held in Salem on the campus of Willamette University, which was for the most part enjoying Spring Break at the time and so heard little about it; coverage in the local press was pretty slim, too, even though the winner of Saturday's contest goes on to represent Oregon at the National finals scheduled for May 13-15 in Washington, D.C. Go Oregon!

Saturday may have marked a milestone in some high school student's life—P&PC reporters can, as of yet, find no mention of who prevailed— but it might also be said to have marked the beginning of National Poetry Month 2012 in Salem as well. If you're in and around the state capital this month, you'll find plenty of poetry and poetry-related events to keep you busy. From open mics to visiting authors, poetry contests, and even a lecture on the poetry of fishing, you could say that this year's events are pretty, uh, diverse, and so we've done our best to gather as many as possible here for your convenience and easy reference.

N.B. P&PC's fact checkers have been out of the office and on Spring Break for the past week, so we can't vouch for the absolute accuracy of the following times, dates, and places. We therefore recommend that you double check with each sponsoring organization to make sure that information is up to date.

April 1-29
National Poetry Month Exhibit
Main Floor, Salem Public Library

The library continues its tradition of exhibiting finely printed poetry broadsides in celebration of National Poetry Month. This year’s show focuses on the works of four Oregonians—Carl Adamshick, twin brothers Matthew and Michael Dickman, and Michael McGriff—all of whom are recent winners of major national poetry prizes.

Tuesday • April 3 • 7:00 pm
Poetry Open Mic
Salem Public Library Loucks Auditorium

To celebrate National Poetry Month, Salem Public Library invites area poets and poetry aficionados to participate in this special edition of Grown-Up Storytime. Local actors Claire Diehl, Jeff Sanders, Tom Wrosch, Geri Greeno, and Lyndsey Houser read contemporary poems. Also, anyone who has a favorite poem—whether original or by a published poet—may also read. The only requirement is that it takes five minutes or less. For more information or to reserve a place on the program, contact Ann Scheppke at 503-588-6124 or ascheppke@cityofsalem.net.

Wednesday • April 4
First Annual Edible Book Festival
Hatfield Library, Willamette University

Held in conjunction with (who knew?) the International Edible Book Festival (Festival international du livre mangeable) this, uh, feast for the eyes offers some, well, food for thought as entries are made of food and inspired by literary titles, characters, or authors. Looking for inspiration? Check out some entries from the Seattle Festival, University of Puget Sound, Duke, and the University of Illinois. Viewing and drop-off of entries from 8:00 am - 1:00 pm; awards ceremony at 2:30 pm. Prizes include People's Choice, Most Beautiful, Most Creative, Most Literary, and Punniest.

Wednesday • April 4 • 7:30 pm
Oregon Book Awards Author Tour
Hatfield Room, Willamette University Library

In partnership with Literary Arts, Inc., of Portland, the Hallie Ford Chair and English Department will host a reading by three finalists—poet Geri Doran, memoirist Jennifer Lauck, and graphic novelist Greg Rucka—for this year's Oregon Book Award. The Oregon Book Awards are presented annually for the finest accomplishments by Oregon writers working in various genres, including fiction, poetry, literary nonfiction, and young adult literature.

Thursday • April 5 • 7:00 pm
Classic Poetry Group
Salem Public Library, Plaza Room

Meeting on the first Thursday every month, this group shares favorite poems from British and American poetry written before the First World War. Each member brings a handful of poems to read aloud to the group. For more information call Wendell Buck at 503-588-6317.

April 6-May 26
Art & Poetry Exhibition
Bush Barn Art Center

This year's Art & Poetry Exhibition will feature work by students from Hillcrest Oregon Youth Authority Correctional Facility. During this project, poet Dawn Diez Willis and photographer Barry Shapiro spent the semester bringing art and poetry to a group of exceptional young artists who wrote and then illustrated poems.

Wednesday • April 11 • 12:00-1:00 pm
"The Poetry of Fishing"
A lecture by Henry Hughes
Oregon State Library

Spend your lunch hour with Western Washington University English professor Henry Hughes as he shares his own poetry and meditates on various "classic and contemporary poems and stories that involve the art of angling."

Thursday • April 12 • 4:00 pm
Dan Kaplan Poetry Reading
Hatfield Room, Willamette University Library

Dan Kaplan is the author of Bill's Formal Complaint (The National Poetry Review Press, 2008) and the bilingual chapbook SKIN (Red Hydra Press, 2005). His work has appeared or is forthcoming in American Letters & Commentary, VOLT, Denver Quarterly, and elsewhere. He teaches at Portland State University and is visiting professor of creative writing at Willamette this semester.

April 13-15
Salem Public Library Spring Book Sale

Sponsored by the Friends of Salem Public Library, this might be the place to find that used copy of Rod McKuen or Jewell that you need to complete your collection.

April 13-21
Silverton Poetry Festival

Technically not in Salem, Silverton's annual festivities—poetry readings, workshops, feasting and hobnobbing—are worth putting on your to-do list since they're only a couple miles down the road. Public events held April 13, 14, 15, 18, and 21.

Saturday • April 14 • 5:00 pm
Celebrating Poetry with Airlie Press
Hatfield Room, Willamette University Library

The Willamette Store hosts five Airlie Press poets—Chris Anderson, Donna Henderson, Stephanie Lenox, Annie Lighthart, and Dawn Diez—in a cornucopia of locally-sourced Willamette Valley poetry. Admission is free with a suggested donation of canned and other non-perishable food items for Marion-Polk Food Share. For more information, call 503-370-6772.

Monday • April 16 • 5:00 pm
Deadline to enter the Willamette Store’s 6th Annual Poetry Contest

A cornucopia of awards—for best rhymed poem, best unrhymed poem, and best haiku in each category—are distributed each year by the Willamette Store to poets ranging in age from elementary school to adult.

Wednesday • April 18 • 7:00 pm
Who Are We? A Poetic Discussion of Our Identities
Willamette University, Hudson Hall

Come out for an evening of spoken word poetry focusing on the intersection of race, gender, sexuality, and other aspects of our identities. Say the organizers of this event, "We are still looking for poets to read a piece or two. This is not at all limited to Willamette students, so please spread the word and get in contact if you or someone you know are interested in speaking!" Click here for the Facebook Event Page.

Wednesday • April 18 • 7:00 pm
Chrysalis Reading
Hatfield Room, Willamette University Library

Enjoy a cup o' joe at Willamette University's student-run coffee house as writers from The Chrysalis—Willamette's campus literary magazine—read from their published work.

Thursday • April 19 • 7:30 pm
Poetry Night at the Willamette University Bistro

Take a break from the week and come listen to Willamette faculty and staff read their favorite poems.

Thursday • April 26 • 6:00 pm
Bold Expressive Arts Theater
West Salem High School

Bold Expressive Arts Theater (B.E.A.T. 2012) will perform live at West Salem High School. Students from the Oregon School for the Deaf will show a variety of talent on the stage. They will perform dance, song and poetry through American Sign Language. For more information on the show, call (503) 378-3840.

Thursday • April 26 • 7:30 pm
Musical Sing-Along: Chicago
Grand Theater

Come sing along to this fantastic musical! Lyrics are projected on the screen, so don't worry if you don't know all the words. Doors open at 6:30. Cost: $8 adults, $4 youth (16 and under).

Saturday • April 28 • 11:00 am
6th Annual Young Persons Poetry Reading
Salem Public Library, Loucks Auditorium

Winners of the Willamette Store's sixth Annual Poetry Contest start up an open mic by reading from their work.

Saturday • April 28 • 7:00-9:00 pm
Adult winners of the Willamette Store's Poetry Contest
Grand Vines Restaurant

Have a glass or two of wine and order from a menu of appetizers, soups, sandwiches, and chocolates as adult winners of the Willamette Store's annual poetry contest read from their work. For more information call (503) 399-9463.

Monday • April 30
Submission Deadline for Mama Ain't Raised No Fool

Willamette University's 'zine is accepting poetry submissions for its next issue. Accepted work submitted before April 21 will be read on stage at this year's Wulapalooza. Submissions from students may be sent to mama.aint@gmail.com; submissions from students and community members may also be delivered in person at Mama's festival booth.

April 30-May 1 • Times TBA
New Literary Works Festival
Putnam Studio, Willamette University Theater Building

This two-evening program will celebrate the written word with a combination of dramatic readings of plays, poetry, and prose by students in the Theater Department's Atypical Performance class and the English Department's Senior Seminar in Creative Writing.

Mermaids in the Basement & Automatons in the Loft: The Poetry of Hugo and The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane

Of the three films set in the 1920s that were nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards this year (The Artist, Midnight in Paris, and Hugo), P&PC liked Martin Scorsese's Hugo the best. It wasn't even close. I mean, we enjoyed the others a lot—we did. The characters of Salvador Dali and Ernest Hemingway in Midnight in Paris had us clutching our sides and ROTFLOL. And we sat, like the rest of the audience at the Salem Cinema, stunned as George Valentin did the best reworking of the silent-to-talkie transition thing since Sunset Boulevard (and way better than the 1975 Merchant Ivory film The Wild Party, which we mention here mainly because we've got to give it props for being one of the few films ever based on a poem (Joseph Moncure March's jazzy, underrated, and once-controversial 1928 book-length poem of the same title). But Hugo's story of the 12 year-old fugitive orphan who maintains the clocks at the Gare Montparnasse and who serendipitously strikes up a relationship with a toy store owner who happens to be the silent film maker Georges Méliès in hiding just got us. Based on Brian Selznick's novel The Invention of Hugo Cabret, Scorsese' movie had all the Parisian romance that Midnight in Paris did, and it had all the celebration of movies that The Artist did, but it had at least one thing that the others didn't: poetry.

We're not talking "poetry" in the "it was as eloquent as poetry" sense, nor in the "it had all the beauty and pathos of poetry" sense. No, Hugo really had poetry in it. About forty-five minutes into the film, Hugo and his precocious, middle-class schoolgirl friend Isabelle are at the train station. They've just been kicked out of a movie theater (Hugo sneaked them in by picking the lock to a back door), and Hugo is taking her to see the automaton that he's been trying to repair in memory of his father—the automaton that, with the help of Isabelle's heart-shaped key, eventually draws a picture that links Hugo to Isabelle's godfather Méliès (played by Ben Kingsley) and thus helps bring the automaton-like Méliès back to life. Before they can get to Hugo's digs in the train station loft, however, Hugo and Isabelle are stopped by the Clouseau-hilarious, existentially-wounded train station policeman Inspector Gustave—played wonderfully by Sacha Baron Cohen in the scene pictured here—who has had his eye on Hugo for weeks and who specializes in sending unchaperoned children off to the orphanage. Inspector Gustave grills Hugo and Isabelle about why they are roaming the station without parents, and Gustave's doberman companion Maximilien (as in Robespierre, we assume), who has given chase to Hugo a time or two before, sniffs them up and down suspiciously. Here's the exchange that follows:

Maximilien: Bark, bark.

Gustave: Seems Maximilien doesn't like the cut of your jib, little man. He is disturbed by your physiognomy. He is upset by your visage. Why would he not like your face? Eh?

Isabelle: Well, perhaps he smells my cat.

Gustave: Your cat?

Isabelle: Yes, Christina Rossetti's her name, after the poetess. Would you like me to recite?

My heart is like a singing bird
Whose nest is in a water'd chute;
My heart is like an apple-tree
Whose boughs are bent with thick-set...

Gustave: All right, all right. I know the rest. That’s enough poetry for today. I love poetry, particularly … that poem … by Christina...

Isabelle: Rossetti.

Gustave: Yeah yeah—she's one of my favorites. I know it's Rossetti. I know it's Rossetti. I love poetry, just not … in the station. We’re here … to get on trains 'n' get off 'em, work in different shops. Is that clear?

Isabelle: Yessir.

Gustave: Watch your step. Go on. Go!

Fending off Gustave's advances, Isabelle is quoting the first four lines of Rossetti's "A Birthday," and one of the many compelling things about this scene and the role of poetry in Hugo is that there's no mention whatsoever of Rossetti in the original novel—it was added for the film. Even more curious than this, perhaps, is that the poetry that is mentioned in the book is left out of the movie. Apparently, as Hugo's father suggests in one of the novel's early scenes, and as Selznick explains in his acknowledgments, the automaton that Hugo is trying to repair—and that, in the story that the movie tells, once belonged to Méliès—is based on an actual automaton (pictured here) that was built by the 18th century Swiss mechanician Henri Maillardet. Now in the collection of the Franklin Institute museum in Philadelphia, Maillardet's automaton not only draws four different pictures, but it writes three poems as well, two in French and one in English.

Examining the broken automaton in Selznick's novel, Hugo's father explains, "I'm sure that if it were working, you could wind it up, put a piece of paper on the desk, and all those little parts would engage and cause the arm to move in such a way that it would write out some kind of note. Maybe it would write a poem or a riddle. But it's too broken and rusty to do much of anything now.” Hugo's dad was right—one of the poems written by the Maillardet automaton is pictured here, and you can see a couple of videos of the machine working here—but Scorsese's automaton is, apparently, only capable of making pictures. We here at P&PC understand the movie logic, of course, which is also at play in other films like G.I. Jane, The Contract, and The Long Hot Summer that either construct their credibility as art in relation to poetry or else participate in waging what we've called a "strange, low-level, but ongoing smear campaign against poetry." Hugo is ultimately about the magic of movies, and so the magical things in it must (so movie logic goes) be associated with visual phenomena—pictures that are moving both literally and emotionally—and not with what emerges, in the process, as the counter-discourse of words and their epitome: poetry.

If you pay attention to these sorts of things like the investigative reporters on staff at P&PC do, then the Christina Rossetti scene in Hugo, as original as it seems, might actually sound a little familiar—not because it's in Selznick's book (which it's not), but because it's essentially a replaying of a scene from the disturbing 1976 Nicolas Gessner thriller and murder mystery The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane. In a great illustration of T.S. Eliot's quip about how the good artist borrows but the great one steals, Scorsese's film basically takes Gessner's scene—in which a precocious girl outmaneuvers a police officer by quoting poetry in a small New England town—and transports it to 1920s Paris. The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane is the story and quasi-Oedipal drama (adapted from Laird Koenig's 1974 novel of the same name) of Rynn Jacobs (Jodi Foster), an orphan (sound familiar?) who keeps living in her poet-father's house long after he's died (hello, Hugo). Rightly suspicious about the whereabouts of Rynn's parents, Officer Miglioriti stops by one night, asking to speak with Rynn's father for the purpose of telling him about the improper attention that town resident Frank Hallett (a totally creepy Martin Sheen) has been paying to Rynn. Rynn goes upstairs to get her dad, but, as usual, comes back down saying he's unavailable because he's hard at work on his poetry. Here's that scene:

Rynn: Sorry, he's working. He's translating some Russian poetry. When that door is locked I can't bother him.

[Rynn sits on the couch and picks up a cup of tea]

I suspect the only reason [landlord] Mrs. Hallet lets us into her village is because my father is a poet. Mrs. Hallet loves poets. That's one of his books over there.

Miglioriti [picking up the book from the mantle]: He wrote that, huh?

Rynn: Yeah. You want him to sign a copy for you?

Miglioriti: Yeah, sure, I never met a real poet. I mean … Look, don't laugh at me, but I can't believe people like poetry. I'm not talking about that birthday card stuff, but real poetry. And when it doesn't even rhyme!

[Rynn snickers}

Rynn: Oh, I'm not laughing at you. My father says that most people who say they like poetry only pretend to like it. You're honest.

Miglioriti: He's your favorite poet, huh?

Rynn: No, he's my father. Emily Dickinson's my favorite.

Miglioriti: Emily—Emily Dickinson, yeah.

[At the mention of Dickinson, Miglioritti changes the topic, and their discussion turns to Mrs. Hallet's son and how it can be pretty nice in the village once someone gets used to it.]

So you do the math: in both movies, a precocious young woman protects a secret from an older, threatening, male law enforcement official by rebuffing him with a magic charm in the form of an unmarried, nineteenth-century woman poet. Sure, Isabelle in Hugo actually quotes Rossetti while Rynn doesn't quote Dickinson. But isn't the reclusive Rynn—living alone in the house in a small New England town—actually channeling Dickinson herself? In fact, given the secrets Rynn has in the house's basement, and the father she pretends is on the upper floor, it's hard not to hear the first two stanzas of Dickinson's poem "I started Early—Took my Dog" as a silent soundtrack to this scene:

I started Early – Took my Dog –
And visited the Sea –
The Mermaids in the Basement
Came out to look at me –

And Frigates – in the Upper Floor
Extended Hempen Hands –
Presuming Me to be a Mouse –
Aground – upon the Sands –

Hollywood hasn't been shy about linking poetry with criminals and other people trying to avoid the law: an escaped hit man played by Morgan Freeman quotes it in The Contract; it makes up the world through which assassin Martin Q. Blank moves in in Grosse Pointe Blank; it is quoted by Ponyboy in The Outsiders; it interferes with Daddy Varner's authority in The Long Hot Summer; it is linked with "England's greatest sinner" in Bride of Frankenstein; and it is written by Edward Norton's character in Fight Club. Trend? We think so. Both The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane and Hugo participate in this tradition, but in putting poetry into the mouths of juvenile female speakers, they turn it, we feel, in slightly different direction. We're not sure what that direction is at the moment. But like Gustave's doberman Maximilien, we're not entirely confident, here at the beginning of National Poetry Month 2012, that we like the cut of its jib—or its visage.

P&PC in the Oxford History of Popular Print Culture

Between 1860 and 1920, advertising strategies for two products almost singlehandedly changed the face of consumer culture in the United States—or so Cary Nelson and P&PC claim in "American Advertising: A Poem for Every Product," which is Chapter 7 in the newly-released, 700-page tome U.S. Popular Print Culture 1860-1920 (Volume 6 of Oxford's History of Popular Print Culture series). At $160, the book's no cheapie (maybe Oxford needs a jingle or two to help advertise it?), but Nelson and P&PC offer ten images from their private collections and lots of great verse to show how poetry—a genre that many people associate with anticapitalist endeavors—fueled the development of the advertising industry and paved the way for a myriad of advertising techniques we're familiar with today.

In "A Poem for Every Product," Nelson and P&PC argue that, while poems were used to pitch everything from galoshes to carriages, two consumer items in particular—patent medicines and soap—deserve special credit (or blame) in powering the development and expansion of the American advertising industry and its poetry, as U.S. poets found at that conjunction the possibility for regular incomes and audiences appreciative of their skills. In the writing of this essay, Nelson took on the subject of patent medicines while P&PC picked up on the issue of soap (a topic we've addressed on this blog before), and we found the two products to be intimately related, as soap assumed the dominant place in advertising that patent medicines occupied prior to the Progressive Era's truth-in-advertising movements that culminated, in part, in the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. The shift from snake oil to soap—two items with simple recipes that needed advertising to differentiate one brand of similar material from another—was complicated and not accomplished overnight, but one of the poets helping it along was the phenomenally successful Canadian writer and artist Palmer Cox. Thus, Cox serves as a sort of fulcrum in "A Poem for Every Product," a moment halfway through the essay when Nelson's argument about patent medicines transitions to P&PC's thoughts about soap. Here, in the way of a preview of that essay, follows an excerpt from the moment in "A Poem for Every Product" when the shady business of advertising starts relying on soap to help, uh, clean up its act:

"In 1890, five years after writing 'Wisdom in Fable' for Pond's Extract, Palmer Cox [pictured here] produced 'A Friendly Turn' to advertise Ivory Soap for Cincinnati's Procter and Gamble Company. There, in four pages of his trademark tetrameter couplets and whimsical pen and ink illustrations, Cox called on his 'Brownies' to spin a tale of Ivory's elfin origin, purity, and medicinal qualities. While not as universal in its application as Pond's—which in 1885 had purported to resolve a range of skin ailments in addition to 'Sore Throat, Rheumatism, Wounds, Catarrh, Hemorrhages, Nose Bleed, Sprains, [and] Swellings'—Ivory is nonetheless credited with the ability to treat people's 'scabby heads,' 'unsightly pimples,' 'scaly crust,' and 'body sore.' Like a miracle cure, the 'pure and perfect' Brownie concoction works its transformative magic almost overnight:

No more were seen the scabby heads,
Or finest garments all in shreds,
No more unsightly pimples rose,
To mar the chaps, or scaly crust,
Made people wish themselves in dust.
For, from the infant on the breast,
To those who neared their final rest,—
For rich and poor, the great and small,
Found Ivory Soap had cleansed them all.

For people suffering, Cox writes, as if pitching the merits of a patent medicine, 'Their sole relief and only hope / Is found in using Ivory Soap.'

"The apparent ease with which Cox moves—or has been moved—between patent medicine advertising and soap advertising is in part an indication of his poetry's general marketability and public appeal, but it's also emblematic of a larger, conceptual shift that took place in American advertising in the last decade of the nineteenth century. That shift—which occurred as the age of patent medicine advertising was coming to an end—saw advertisers seize on and redeploy the curative rhetoric of nostrum advertising in order to market other consumer goods as well. In promoting a transformative power inherent to the commodity item, this new strategy not only contributed to the further fetishization of goods in the new 'modern' consumer economy by further obscuring the labour relations of their production. It also publicized the notion that the commodity item was itself a cure for people's many and varied ills—promising to be not just a physical good with a specific use, but a shortcut to social status, sex appeal, or lifestyle—and that the corresponding act of buying and consuming was a medicinal activity in its own right. That is, in the expansion of patent medicine advertising strategies more broadly at this time, we can see the birth of what we now call 'retail therapy.'

"That expansion didn't happen all at once, nor did it happen equally from product to product. Indeed, restructuring the logic of consumption and Americans' relationship to commodity items in this way required a tangible form of what Fredric Jameson would call a 'vanishing mediator'—that entity which 'serves as a bearer of change and social transformation, only to be forgotten once that change has ratified the reality of the institutions.' In the case of American consumer capitalism, that signal mediating product was soap, partly because soap had been included in the patent-medicine industry for a long time [it was oftentimes an ingredient in nostrums], and partly because it provided an outward performance—taking something dirty and making it clean—of the transformative character that advertisers hoped would eventually become linked in the American psyche to every other product....So twinned were the discourses of patent medicine and soap at the end of the nineteenth century that at least one nineteenth-century producer of nostrums—Palmer Cox's patron, Pond's Healing and Pond's Extract—was able to respond to the Pure Food and Drug act by transforming itself almost immediately into a skin-care cleansing specialist, Pond's Cold Cream, which is still on the market today."

For the rest of this essay—including the performance of Dreydoppel's Borax Soap in "The Great Contest!!"—check out Chapter 7 of U.S. Popular Print Culture 1860-1920 from Oxford University Press.

From the P&PC Vault: Happy St. Patrick's Day from Poetry & Popular Culture

The following posting—on Ella Higginson's little bit of Biblical shamrock & roll titled "Four-Leaf Clover"—ran just a year ago, but given the poem's history of being reprinted (read on to find out more), we here at P&PC see no reason not to follow suit by reposting it this year.

Here's a cool little postcard poem wishing you all the luck o' the Irish for St. Patty's Day 2011. Printed to look as if it were written out by hand, "Four-Leaf Clover" is signed by its author, poet and short story writer Ella Higginson (1861-1940) who was born in Kansas, grew up in Oregon, married in Portland, and later moved to Washington state where she became active in civic and political affairs. On the subject of divorce, she wrote, for example, the "real evil was not that divorce was too easy, but that marriage was too easy, and that there should be a law preventing marriage before the age of thirty." Higginson was named Poet Laureate of Washington State in 1931, a post that was apparently eliminated sometime thereafter but officially brought back to life in 2011 with the appointment of Samuel Green following passage of Washington Substitute House Bill 1279. Higginson's papers—18 boxes of them at least, all awaiting scholarly investigation—are now at the Center for Pacific Northwest Studies located at Western Washington University in Bellingham.

We here at P&PC like the look of this postcard for a number of reasons, starting with its appearance of having been personally handwritten by Higginson herself (pictured here), whose facsimile autograph stands in lieu of a commercially printed byline and copyright notice. This handwritten front, we think, encourages the postcard's user to view the writing of his or her own personal handwritten message on reverse as poetic in orientation as well—an invitation that this particular postcard's (unidentified) user seems to have accepted. "This is a beautiful thought," he or she writes in pen to an unnamed recipient, "and I want you to just try out this thought for yourself, and don't get nervous or to [sic] tired, 'for quietness and confidence shall be your strength.'"

Those of you who read your Bible don't need to be told that the phrase "for quietness and confidence shall be your strength" is from Isaiah 30:15; what's kind of cool, though, is how the sender is perhaps motivated to quote scripture by Higginson's own allusion to 1 Corinthians 13 in "Four-Leaf Clover" ("One leaf is for hope, and one for faith / And one is for love, you know"). As both writers sample and thus personalize Biblical passages, we have a really funky bit of communication in which the sender uses his or her own Biblical reference (Isaiah) in conjunction with Higginson's poem and its Biblical reference (Corinthians) to encourage the recipient to "try out this thought for yourself," which is pretty much an extension of the invitation we think the handwritten look of the postcard presented in the first place.

It is fair to say that "Four-Leaf Clover" got around. According to one source (1911's Studies in Reading by James William Searson and George Ellsworth Martin), "no other little gem of the language has been more widely appreciated and more warmly loved." Apparently, it was written in 1890 and published in Portland's West Shore magazine. Then it was published in McClure's (1896), The Outlook (1898), the Northwest Journal of Education (1898), Friends' Intelligencer and Journal (1898), American Cookery (1899), Oregon Teachers' Monthly (1902), the Journal of Education (1911), and Sunset (1918). Higginson included it in her book of poems When the Birds Go North Again (1899), and it was reprinted in Annie Russell Marble's Nature Pictures by American Poets (1899), Edmund Clarence Stedman's An American Anthology (1900), The Listening Child (1903), Robert Haven Schauffler's Arbor Day (1909), The Home Book of Verse (1912), and a range of school readers and publications for educators. It was also, Searson & Martin report, put to music "by at least fifty composers."

This is what happens when you don't copyright a poem: it goes viral. May you be so lucky this St. Patrick's Day.

Haiku to You, and You, and You and You and You: A Guest Posting by Ce Rosenow

About two years ago, Ce Rosenow (whom a P&PC office intern has since dubbed the undisputed Queen of Hai-cool) did two reviews of Ryan Mecum's books Zombie Haiku and Vampire Haiku that went on to become some of the most popular postings in the history of this blog. Thus, when P&PC readers more recently flooded us with mail asking for some sort of commentary on the recent spate of haiku on New York City street signs—and, as you know, P&PC has a particular fondness for the poetry of street signs—we knew exactly where to turn. In the following essay, Rosenow, who is currently president of the Haiku Society of America and founder of Mountains and Rivers Press, not only offers her take on the Big Apple's "Curbside Haiku," but also on related phenomena in Atlanta and West Hollywood and on a public culture that seems to have gone hai-cuckoo for the 5-7-5 form more generally.

Last fall, New York City installed the public art project "Curbside Haiku" by John Morse. The project features a series of signs (such as the one pictured here) containing artwork and nonliterary haiku which warn readers of various traffic dangers. "Curbside Haiku" is similar in form to Morse's 2010 work "Roadside Haiku" in Atlanta. Rather than warning signs, "Roadside Haiku" features "bandit signs" described by Meredith Blake of The New Yorker as "those dubious-looking advertisements that dot the country's commuter roads, promising fast money, easy weight loss, and painless hair removal. [They are] usually tacked to telephone poles or stoplights ...." Morse's haiku signs also recall the work of Los Angeles-based artist, Rebecca Lowry, whose installation REGARD. appeared on the streets of West Hollywood in 2010. Given the relatively high profile of these projects, I began to wonder about combining haiku with roadside signs and why the artists chose haiku rather than some other form of verse.

Morse's "Curbside Haiku" contains 216 signs featuring twelve different designs; ten are in English and two are in Spanish. They are located throughout New York's five boroughs at "high crash locations near cultural institutions and middle and high schools." Each sign has a haiku-like verse and a related visual image or an image and a QR code for smart phone access.

Although Morse describes the text as haiku, the poems are not haiku per se; they simply adhere to a 5-7-5 syllable count often in the form of three separate statements. They do, however, share some formal characteristics with haiku. For instance, they describe a single moment, and many of them conclude with a moment of surprise, humor, or insight:

Aggressive driver.
Aggressive pedestrian.
Two crash test dummies.

•

Cars crossing sidewalk:
Worst New York City hotspot
To run into friends

Others follow this format but provide a sober warning with no trace of humor:

Oncoming cars rush
Each a 3-ton bullet.
And you, flesh and bone.

•

Imagine a world
Where your every move matters.
Welcome to that world.

In both cases, the goal is to convey a message that has nothing to do with the typical content of haiku. Rather than using "imagistic language to convey the essence of an experience of nature or the season intuitively linked to the human condition," as the Haiku Society of America defines haiku, the poems and images on these signs are designed to raise awareness of traffic dangers and protect the public. Morse states that he strives to "engage, edify and inform," and he creates content with this goal in mind.

Morse had a similar goal in his earlier project, "Roadside Haiku." In this case, he engages the viewers by relying on the tropes of conventional bandit signs which, according to Blake, "are gloomy but reliable indicators of our collective anxieties." When passersby begin to read one of Morse's signs, they see common hooks, such as "BUILD PERSONAL WEALTH," "CASH 4 YOUR OLD GOLD," or "MEET LOCAL SINGLES." As they keep reading, Morse surprises them with an insight:

BUILD PERSONAL WEALTH
In the Comfort of Your Home!
Read to your children.

•

CASH 4 YOUR OLD GOLD
The Value of Memories
Measured by the Ounce

•

MEET LOCAL SINGLES!!
EASY: STAND NEAR OTHERS,
HANG UP YOUR CELL PHONE.

Morse's signs look exactly like the actual bandit signs found next to them on telephone poles or roadside posts (see the picture here), and they are nearly as ubiquitous as their conventional forbears: there are now 500 pseudo haiku bandit signs scattered across Atlanta—fifty each of ten different haiku. Again, some of the poems are in English and some in Spanish. Morse's project suggests that bandit signs are inherently predatory, taking advantage of people's insecurities and greed. As a corrective, his poems use humor and, at times, pointed advice, to change people's thinking not only about the motivation behind bandit signs but about their own participation in the culture that makes the bandit sign enterprise possible. Morse notes, "There’s a great deal of bad in the world, and one of the few things that ameliorates the cruelties of the world is art." He wants people reading his signs to examine their motivations and behaviors, possibly increasing their ability to think critically about the world and their place in it.

As I mentioned above, the poems in Morse's installations are not haiku, and therefore confusion about the haiku form proliferates with the publicity surrounding the installations. Articles and interviews refer to the poems as haiku, in some cases pluralizing haiku with an "s." True, Jack Kerouac (pictured here) intentionally changed haiku to haikus, but that's not what's happening here. (For a recording of Kerouac reading his haikus, click here.) If the poems aren't haiku and the intent is to either make readers safer or more socially aware, then what value comes from calling them haiku?

In thinking through Ryan Mecum's Zombie Haiku for P&PC two years ago, I described the way in which haiku as a form entered American literature. Just as those origins help explain Mecum's use of haiku for narratives about zombies, vampires, and werewolves, they also suggest a reason for incorporating haiku into something as seemingly unrelated as municipal signage. Modernist poets, and in particular those affiliated with Imagism, saw haiku as a means to an end. Rather than study the form in depth in order to create a viable form of English-language haiku, writers such as John Gould Fletcher, Amy Lowell, and Ezra Pound used elements of haiku to construct a new form of poetry. Similarly, Morse uses haiku not to make new American poetry but to make new the ways in which urban signage communicates with the public and to reinvigorate the importance of poetry in the public sphere.

The poets mentioned above also drew on the turn-of-the-century view of Japan that can be understood as one American version of the Orientalist discourse theorized by Edward Said (pictured here) in Orientalism. While Said's work focused largely on the Middle East and Western Europe, it has been adapted and applied to the Far East and the United States. What is relevant to considerations of Morse's pseudo haiku is that, in this discourse, Japan figures as, among other things, an exotic culture that is entirely other than that of America. Modernist poets read texts by late nineteenth-century writers such as Ernest Fenollosa and Percival Lowell that portrayed Japan in this way and, furthermore, emphasized its role as an artistic and cultural resource for America to mine. When the modernists discovered haiku, they found a poetic form that carried Orientalist associations into, and thus helped exoticize, American poetry. Poets drew on elements of haiku to emphasize the difference between their poems and those by popular, non-modernist contemporaries and poets of the previous era. This association of haiku with difference continues today in the alignment of nonliterary haiku with edgy or unusual topics and forms of transmission. Simply put, regardless of the quality of an individual haiku-like poem, the form itself brings attention to the subject matter because of the ongoing association of haiku with foreignness.

This sense of difference also helps create distance between haiku and the public perception of poetry as high art; limiting the defining char- acteristic of haiku to a mere syllable count and ignoring haiku's traditional subject matter only increases this distance. Such distance is necessary for the success of projects that have a largely nonliterary agenda because it makes the poems seem more accessible; anyone can write them, and one can write them about anything. The public response suggests that this approach works. The publicity generated by "Curbside Haiku," for example, resulted in a wave of new "haiku poets" and a barrage of "haiku." Morse notes that "One of the joys of doing this sort of thing is how many people have responded to it with their own haiku ... There's just a plethora of haiku coming out. It’s so exciting."

The public response illustrates the complexity of using pseudo haiku, even for worthwhile civic and artistic projects. Morse's work is creative, engaging, often humorous, and well-intentioned. After Morse, New York City may see a reduced number of traffic accidents, and Atlanta residents may view bandit signs with a warier and wiser eye. Art and poetry have been used, as Morse states, to "do a great deal of good." But is there a risk in this endeavor? Do these projects participate in maintaining the remaining strands of the Orientalist discourse in which haiku first entered the American consciousness? Possibly. Morse's poems still seem to suggest that Japanese culture remains something exotic and other, that this centuries-old Japanese poetic form is somehow less literary than other poetic forms, and that Americans can continue to use haiku (and, by extension, Japanese culture) as resource to meet American needs, civic or otherwise. If an appeal to popular culture were not central to the use of pseudo haiku, then these projects could be modernist indeed.

Rebecca Lowry's project REGARD. also utilizes urban signage, multiple languages, and Japanese poetic forms. As such, it shares some common characteristics with Morse's work but, as a few examples will show, it also differentiates itself from Morse's work in marked ways. For the West Hollywood installation, Lowry created eleven municipal signs that resemble parking signs, each featuring a haiku; some signs are in English, some in Spanish, and some in Russian. Lowry chose haiku that included words typically found on parking signs. She explains: "On parking signs, there is usually text in a larger and or contrasting font that can be read easily from a distance, giving you the main gist of the message 'NO PARKING' or '2 HOUR' and then as you get closer, the fine print fills you in on the details. So I looked for poems that had a similar capacity: poems that, with certain words highlighted, are read one way, and that then could be comprehended in their entirety closer up."

Like Morse, Lowry draws viewers in with the familiar and then, as they keep reading, presents them with the unexpected. She says, "I see these poem signs as a shared thought across time, a shared moment or experience. I hope to stop people in the course of their days and give them something to ponder, to take with them as they carry on." Her project, however, diverges from Morse's in what she asks people to think about and the poems she uses as part of her means of asking.

Lowry did not write the haiku herself, and, as the following examples demonstrate, the haiku she chose were literary (real) haiku:

when autumn winds blow
not one leaf remains
the way it was

•

my span of years
today appears
a morning glory's hour

•

the butterfly
behind before behind
the woman on the road

These haiku are literary because they combine both the form and content of traditional haiku; they may suggest a relationship between nature and the human condition or between two simultaneously occurring images in nature. Notably, the poems don't provide anything beyond their expression of the haiku moment. They offer the surprise and insight characteristic of haiku without pronouncement or instruction. Readers are left to consider on their own the wisdom afforded by such expressions. Lowry's artistically rendered literary haiku disrupt the lingering vestiges of nineteenth- and twentieth-century American Orientalist discourse because, unlike Morse's poems, they don't trade on the sense of foreignness. Her signs offer haiku as haiku, not as a vehicle for a separate message that requires the suggestion of difference to gain attention.

As the above three art installations suggest, a poetic form as concise and dense as haiku is congenial to adaptation. In addition to urban signage, both literary and nonliterary haiku have appeared in a variety of venues, including theater marquees and buses. As long as pseudo haiku circulate so widely in popular culture, however, it's unlikely that literary haiku will be incorporated as frequently in civic and artistic projects. The popular understanding of haiku will continue to be based on the most visible examples of the form: the abundance of pseudo haiku will simply create more pseudo haiku. Possibly, if literary and academic communities become more informed about the American haiku movement and continue, as we’ve seen recently, to analyze, write, and publish texts of or about literary haiku, the conventional understanding of haiku may move away from that of the early twentieth century and toward a more developed understanding in the twenty-first.

Thanks to Angie Thompson for her suggestions during the writing of this essay.

"There's Poetry Everywhere": The "Heartfelt Emotion" of George Jefferson

P&PC Heroes: Till Gwinn & His Personalized Poem Business

A year and a half back, in August of 2010, P&PC was playing tour guide for parents visiting Portland's famously crafty and idiosyncratic Saturday Market, and we happened upon a Personalized Poem service (pictured here) that even Don Draper couldn't have failed to love. "Complete with a menu ranging from a $1.00 haiku to a $5.00 slam poem and performance," we wrote on this blog shortly thereafter, "this mobile, briefcase-sized start-up may not be making any IPO's soon, but it's got our vote for best new business in town."

The woman sitting against the wall in the picture wasn't the brains behind the project, however. We waited around a bit in hopes of meeting the poet-typist-owner, but he or she never showed. At first, we thought maybe this absence was meant to be a clever statement about the death of the author, but then we figured, hey, maybe even personalized poem services are governed by federal regulations mandating regular breaks in the working day. So, lured by the promise of knick-knacks like blown glass ornaments, funky handmade hats, and flower vases made out of things like test tubes, we moved on, resolved to the fact that we might never meet the face behind the operation.

Imagine our surprise, then, a year and a half later and during a casual conver- sation with a couple of students in the WU campus coffee shop about the public profile of poetry, in discovering that P&PC actually knows the entrepreneur behind the operation. Here's how it happened. We were sitting with two English majors (Angela and Till) and mentioned, in a sort of offhand way, the Personalized Poem service we'd seen in PDX a few years earlier. Till (guy holding the ukulele in the picture here) got an odd look on his face and said it was funny—he himself did a Personalized Poem service in PDX for a while, and how weird it would be if someone had stolen his idea. Next thing you know, the laptop gets opened and P&PC's August 2011 posting is pulled up on screen and, wouldn't you know it, we're looking at a picture of what turns out to be Till's own business! Not only did P&PC know the person who started the biz, and not only was he a student at Willamette, but he was our own student too—a creative writing major who'd been in our English 332 (Intermediate Poetry Writing) class two years before and who's part of this semester's section of English 441 (Poetry of the Pacific Northwest)!

It took a day or two for all of us to find our more-than-metrical footing after that unlikely discovery, but then things pretty much returned to normal. Nevertheless, P&PC sent out one of its office interns to catch up with Till—a native of Oregon City, a current member of the Bearcat rowing team, and already no stranger to poetic controversy—and ask how his business, carrying on a tradition suggested by the picture here, is going. Here's what he had to say:

P&PC Intern: So how's business going?

Till Gwinn: Pretty well: on an average summer day I'll type up 10 to 20 poems. That brings in around $40 if I set up before noon and stay until around 5.

P&PC: What's it like being a poetry vendor? Do you need (ahem) a poetic license?

TG: It's pretty fun though overwhelming at times: when you have a line of folks waiting for poems on a wide variety of subjects, it gets tough to focus. The only people who disapprove are security guards and event staff who are picky about where I set up. I have been asked if I have a license to sell poetry and was subsequently moved out of the designated vending area at Saturday Market.

P&PC: How do people react to seeing your set up?

TG: They're usually pretty happy. Even if they don't buy a poem, I get delighted smiles all day long.

P&PC: Tell me about your menu. How did you arrive on a price breakdown?

TG: The menu is a hybrid of poetic forms that I'm familiar with and those I assumed people would want. The pricing is based on the ease of writing each form: free verse is 25 cents a line, heroic couplets are $2, sonnets (I quickly learned) are under-priced at $4 each, and a slam poem is $5. I want to change the menu around in the future though: jack up the price of traditional metrical forms and add a children's poem.

P&PC: How did you come up with the idea of selling poems in the first place? And why set up in Portland and not at the markets in Salem?

TG: Like with all good poetry, I stole the idea. I saw a girl selling "Poems of the Day" at the farmer's market in Arcata, California. I set up in Portland because I figured tourists would be most interested in buying poetry, and the Saturday Market seemed to have the highest density. As soon as the weather improves, I'll give Salem a shot.

P&PC: Do you have investors? I imagine there could be, uh, verse ways to spend money these days.

TG: Not really. The only expenses I have are bus fare, paper, and ink ribbons. So far I've only made a profit one day, but I figure more time means more business.

P&PC: What can you tell us about the type of poetry people want?

TG: Most people want Portland poems, poems about their kids or significant others, and poems about nature in general. The oddest, and probably my favorite, request came from a couple of teenage boys who wanted a heroic couplet about Zombraham Lincoln.

P&PC: Can you give us a free sample?

TG: Unfortunately I don't keep any copies. It makes me sad because I've written some (like the Zombraham Lincoln piece) that are pretty good on their own. At the same time though, I like how each piece goes out into its own universe separate from me.

P&PC: Um, where'd you get the typewriter? I didn't think anyone under 40 could use one.

TG: I found it in House of Vintage off of Hawthorne. Some folks are surprised I own one, being so young, but I think the more media one uses, the more one can find in his or her writing.

P&PC: So, what's the future have in store?

TG: More poems. I'm going to keep setting up at Saturday Market primarily, but by the time summer rolls around, anywhere with sun and a poetically appreciative populous is a viable space.