Lokum

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From Byzantine to Ottoman Empire,

          The lokum may have emerged sweet

As a confectioner’s syrupy mire

          Of sugar, spices, nuts complete.

The Sultan, it is said, wished to delight

          His wives for nightly pleasures they

Are wont to give to him in touch and sight,

          Continuing this so they may. 

Each cube of lokum the confectioner

          Dusted with icing sugar, so

Each wife can hold it and place it on her

          Awaiting tongue where pleasures grow. 

A British traveler must have partaken

          Of such enjoyment that he shipped

Cargoes, so mates back home were not mistaken

          What sweets that had his own tongue gripped.   

Turkish Delight is what the Westerners

Called this invention of confectioners.

Lokum © Ron Villejo

Traveling (A Sestina)

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Imagine if our travels were about

          Our staying more or less in place.

What if it were, instead, the places that

          Came one by one to visit us –

Tectonic shifts of space above the ground

          With sounds of slide and click and lock?

Strange, I suppose, were we resigned to lock

          Our universe to be about

Some antiquated physics on the ground.

          In time it can be commonplace

To see our destinations come to us,

          So we avoid the headaches that

Accompany our travels’ this-and-that.

          The people whom we meet unlock

Their mindsets, too, allowing all of us

          To know what each is all about –

Connecting deeply at a human place

          And hearing heartbeat underground. 

The politics of love, ear to the ground,

          May travel close afoot and that

Ironically may always be in place –

          We know the key to every lock

Can open things we never thought about,

          But also lock the door on us.    

The things that make a place so dear to us

          Stay vibrant as they shift their ground –

Those gardens of Versailles, this roundabout

          That makes a Muscat quaint, and that

Seafood cuisine of Boston such a lock

          On pleasuring the tongue and place.

This shall not be a simulated place

          Nor traveling a case for us

To lie immobilized with cabled lock,

          As in the “Matrix,” where the ground

Is generated by computers that

          Know all there is to know about.

The world shall know and place itself for us,

          Whenever we unlock the ground –

That traveling is what we are about.

Traveling (A Sestina) © Ron Villejo

Poet in Person: Philip Levine

I first heard of Philip Levine during my years at Northwestern University (1977 - 1981).  I read Poetry magazine regularly, and he was just the second winner of the generous Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize in 1987.  I often imagined winning the Pulitzer Prize, which Levine won in 1995, and the Lilly Prize, too, not so much for any self-aggrandizement, but more for the curiosity about where poetry income came from. 

I am glad to know that Brooklyn Heights is home not just for Levine, but also for Walt Whitman, Hart Crane, and WH Auden, the last of which of course is tops for among my favorites.  At age 86, Levine must be among the last of the old guards of poetry, who is inspired by crowd and scenery at Fulton Landings and also disenchanted at newer establishments in the city.  

One last thing, director and producer Guy Shahar is the namesake of a troubled but quite likable adolescent at The Learning House, where I was the Clinical Director (1993 - 1995).  Sadly our Guy died in a car accident.  This is an example of what I call synchronicity.

Poet in Person: Alan Shapiro

Then, I ran into this familiar gentleman in the Poets in Person Series from Cortland Review.  I commented:

I know Alan Shapiro! I was one of those 2000 - 3000 students he taught, when I was an undergraduate at Northwestern University. If memory serves me right, I was a sophomore (1978 - 1979) when I studied with him. Small world, eh :) This video is too funny! 
That sophomore year, I took the first of three poetry courses with Charles Hartman, and the second was with Shapiro.  The third was with Mary Kinzie at the beginning of my junior year.  I remember Shapiro to be earthy, which is to say casual and approachable, thoughtful and wryly humorous.  I believe Howard Nemerov was one of the poets he emulated, so his poetry often had vivid imagery and metered verse.  In turn, Shapiro taught me and influenced me thus.  I credit all of my NU professors for helping me build a strong foundation for the rigors and techniques of poetry, which many poets and would-be poets now sorely lack and with which I explored a range of emotions and matters.  

Poet in Person: Claudia Emerson

Claudia Emerson

I personalized Google News for Dr. Ron Art to include poetry, and the New York Times headline caught my attention Claudia Emerson, Pulitzer-Winning Poet, Dies at 57 (December 4th).  In particular, it was Pulitzer, Poet and 57 that prompted me to open the link.  I am a poet, I am 55, and I have imagined winning the Pulitzer Prize, since I discovered another such prize-winning John Ashbery in the late 1970s.  I loved reading about personal stories behind Emerson's book:

In an interview with PBS in 2006, Ms. Emerson said that writing “Late Wife” was a way to deal with her emotions about falling in love with a man whose beloved wife had died of lung cancer. She then looked back on her first marriage and found poetry in it, too. “I process the world through poetry,” she said.

Part of Ms. Emerson’s inspiration, as expressed in the poem “Artifact,” was seeing objects from her first marriage, to Jesse Andrews, a carpenter, and from her second, to Harry Kent Ippolito, a technical designer and musician. “When someone is missing, their possessions take on meaning,” she told PBS.

Then, I stumbled on Poets in Person Series by Cortland Review, and there was Emerson relating her down-to-earth, loving home and relationship with her husband: