Looking Back at 2018 and Ahead to 2019!!!

So it's the last day of 2018. On Jan 1, 2018 I blogged here about a couple resolutions: 1) getting really brave and going for 100 rejections; 2) blogging more, especially about othering.

I got 98 rejections and 4 acceptances this year. This isn't 100 rejections, but it's pretty close. And since the point wasn't to be rejected, but to be brave and put myself out there, I did that. I put my poems or myself out there 100 times, actually 102. This is way up from 34 from the year before. So that's awesome!!!

In reflecting on how this went, I have to say that I found the emphasis on rejections a bit counterproductive. Since the point was to be brave, the fact that I could only count my brave effort when I got some kind of response made me pretty obsessed with checking Submittable. Since I always sweat contest response dates anyway, this just fueled my obsessions. It also made me more dependent on others' responses when what I wanted to celebrate was my courage. So for 2019, I plan to go for 200 submissions! I include poetry submissions, but also grant submissions and other ways of putting myself out there when I can be rejected.

(Note: I count each poem as a submission, not each bundle or packet of poems. So 200 is not nearly as much as it sounds like. I thought of changing it to a set number of submission packets, but I haven't tracked that so well so I don't know what is a fair but challenging number. I plan to track all of it a lot better this year.)

About blogging: I started blogging Israel-Palestine poems, but then stopped because I was busy at work. (I've quit my job, but I don't think I'm going to go back to blogging Israel-Palestine poems.) I also blogged about how the psychology of genocide can help us address our own racism, prejudice, and othering on the blog on my website. I think those blogposts were very important because they helped me start to imagine the longer work I want to create on that content, but I'm not sure that blogging about it is the best way forward for that project. I stopped though when I needed to focus on the Holy Land Poems and found that creating those blogposts took a lot of dedicated time every week.

What I would very much like to do blogging-wise is to blog about the place I live and try to understand it better, make peace with it, even love it. I'm sick of fighting with winter and seeing the obvious drawbacks of where I live. There's a lot to love here but I don't name it very well. Blogging would help with this. Place has always been very important to me: my poems include a lot of focus on place, even winning the Phenomena of Place Poetry Award and most recently appearing in Scintilla's special issue on The Patterns of Place: Seeking Shelter; Finding Home; I was also the editor of Plains Song Review, a journal exploring a sense of place in the Great Plains.  And there are all sorts of things about this place I would like to explore, including the history of my land and Michigan-ness. I'd also like to blog about my garden and chickens and ducks, which is very tied to my sense of this place. And I need to make friends with real northern winter, making sure I have the right equipment. (Is it in Sweden they say there is no such thing as bad weather, only the wrong equipment?)

But I'm not making any promises about blogging, though, to myself or you today. Much of my energy will have to be focused on crafting myself a new career (or getting a job). Since I've done a fair amount of editing/proofreading in the past, I'm going to refresh my skills and build myself a freelance editing business. And for that with my introversion, I will need to be very very brave. 

Let's celebrate all our efforts and accomplishments in 2018! And have a great creative, blessed, and fun 2019! Happy New Year!!!!

Just because I love my garden and pond

Hi everyone! Over the weekend, my husband and I were doing long-overdue weeding of the garden, and I was just struck over how much I love working in the garden, even weeding on a sweaty day. I also love that we have all sorts of animals living on our property: snapping turtles, a family of muskrats, a groundhog we call Mr. Berryman. We also get lots of visitors in our pond. And I decided over the weekend that I would blog about the garden and the pond just because I love it. (The world can take a little joyful Joy, can't it?)

This morning, a rainy day when we're supposed to get thunderstorms all day (which means we can't go to the group playdate we were planning -- such is life in a place where it rains in summer -- since I love to be cozy in my house when it rains, I don't mind), we got this visitor in the pond.

It's hard to see. Is it a great blue heron or a sandhill crane? I'm not sure. Great blue herons, so I've read, have yellow bills and this one definitely has a black bill more like a sandhill crane. But sandhill cranes have red on their heads and when I zoomed on the photo, I couldn't see any red. But no matter the name of the bird, it's beautiful and stately and slow. I gratefully accept the blessing of this visitation! (This same bird, I'm pretty sure, visited us last week too, when I had potatoes to peel for cottage pie, something that often takes, for me, a long time. This visitor stayed slowly stalking the water at the water's edge the entire time it took me to peel and boil the potatoes! That was also a rainy stormy day, and she stayed with me the entire time.)

I love living in the country!

March Hiatus

As you can see, I've fallen down on the job of putting out Israeli and Palestinian poems each week. I've been very busy preparing new classes and now I'm sick. So I'm going to take a March hiatus so I can get well and then back to prepping these classes. See you in April!

"Meting Out Justification: A Military Judge's Testimony"

This week's poem is my own "Meting Out Justification: A Military Judge's Testimony" published today in Blotterature's Propaganda issue.  It's on page 12.

This poem is a found poem, so in a sense it's not really mine (so can I get away with using it as my weekly Israel-Palestine poem?). It comes from the documentary, The Law in These Parts, an examination of the system of military administration in place since the Six Day War in the Occupied Territories through interviews of Israeli judges, prosecutors, and military advisors. I highly recommend it if you're interested in human rights issues.

I've never had two poems published within a week of each other before! I feel very blessed!

And today it was nearly 60 degrees! Feels like spring!

"On Arafat's Yahrzeit"

It just so happens that my "On Arafat's Yahrzeit" was published today by HEArt Online Journal: Human Equity through Art! And as you can tell by the title, it's about Israel-Palestine, so I'm counting it as my poem for the week.

The long winter seems to be letting up, and we're in for a four-day spell of rain, complete with all manner of warnings. But it's rain! It won't be that cold! I've always read that peas don't mind a little snow, so today I went and did my best to plant peas in one of my soil's-only-frozen-in-the-corner raised beds. I rarely plant my peas early enough to be good and sick and them by the time it's time to pull them up and put in the green beans, so here's hoping. We'll see what happens. But probably because I didn't start artichokes in the basement this year (after two years of meager rewards), it felt good to have my hands in the dirt again.

Elana Bell's "There are things this poem would rather not say:"

This week's poem is Elana Bell's "There are things this poem would rather not say:"

I'm thinking about how American poets announce that their poems are about Israel/Palestine this week. I was thinking about some of Irena Klepfisz's poems and Ellen Bass's "Moonlight" and thought I would spend more time with how they announced -- or really located -- their subjects, but I discovered that I couldn't find these poems online. This brings up some interesting questions about which poems get posted online and why (that aren't specific to Israel/Palestine). So instead here is a poem that never actually announces that it is specifically Israel/Palestine, but all the specific markers are there. But by not actually naming Israel or Palestine, the poem also opens up to being about the situation -- of being a remorseful person who is a member/descendant of a colonizing and ruling force, which is, alas, a more common situation than being an Israeli or a Jew. This poem is almost an apology and gives me a lot to think about. For example, what would this poem look like if it were in the voice of an American speaker to Native Americans?

Enjoy!

By the way, I'm sorry about posting this late, but last night when posting this poem was the last thing left on my to-do list, my ear started to ache; I decided rest was the best thing.

Taha Muhammad Ali's "Exodus"

This week's poem is Taha Muhammad Ali's "Exodus."

Last week I was thinking a lot about how I come to poems by Palestinian and Israeli poets with an expectation that I'll find traces of the conflict. If I don't find them, as in last week's poem, then I mark the silence. In Amichai's poem, this silence can be seen as privilege. But of course all poets write about many things; while it's safe to assume that a poet may speak to his/her own oppression or specific historical situation, it's not required. What's more, every trace of conflict in a Palestinian poet's poem may not be the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

When reading Taha Muhammad Ali's poem, it seems safe to assume that those who refuse to leave are Palestinians. And this may be true. But there are interesting complicating factors. The poem's title, "Exodus," has a particularly Jewish cast to it, at least to me, Exodus being the name of the book of what most people think of as the great Jewish story in the Torah/Bible -- the story of Passover, the most important holiday in the Jewish year. (Probably most Jews will agree that Passover is most important; but not all. After all, two Jews, three opinions!) At the same time, the Biblical story of Exodus was a story of leaving, not of refusing to leave, not cleaving to the land. But then there's the interesting date at the end of the poem "5.11.1983." When I look up May 11, 1983, I don't see anything. Maybe this has personal rather than political significance. But when I look up November 5, 1983, inverting the month and day as people in the Middle East do (I remember this from when I lived for a short time in Cairo), I see that's the date when a truck loaded with explosives crashed through the entrance of an Israeli compound in Tyre, Lebanon, setting off a bomb, killing 39 people and injuring more. Muslim Jihad claimed responsibility. Israel responded by striking Palestinian targets on the Beirut-Damascus Highway. So if we bring the specifics of this particular set of events into our reading of the poem, as may be suggested by the date, then who is refusing to leave? Is it the Palestinians? Is it the Israelis?

I don't know. But the poem is bigger than these answers. Enjoy!

Yehuda Amichai's "Jews in the Land of Israel"

This week's poem is Yehuda Amichai's "Jews in the Land of Israel."

This week I'm thinking about how, although Palestinian and Israeli poets do not always write about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it's easy to read that into their poems. With Palestinian poets, I find I often interpret conflict in a poem as being a reference to the occupation (I'm not saying such a reading is correct). With Israeli poets, like Yehuda Amichai, a wonderful poet who loved Israel and loved life, it's easy for me to see the conflict in the silence, the absence of reference to Palestinians.

So this week's poem is one I'm sure I read quite differently from its original intentions, with its "spilled blood."

Susan Tichy's "Letter from Palestine"

This week's poem is Susan Tichy's "Letter from Palestine," published in Beloit Poetry Journal (one of my favorite journals -- they send the nicest rejections)! (Just so you know, the above link will open up a PDF.)

Susan Tichy's debut in 1983 was an amazing collection of poems, The Hands In Exile, the bulk of which detail her experiences on a kibbutz in Israel. Never before had I read poems that so accurately convey the ever-present fear in Israel that whatever normalcy there is could shatter at any moment -- in poems!!! I highly recommend the National Poetry Prize-winning collection and am so grateful to Cyrus Cassells for telling me about it.

"Letter from Palestine" is not actually from the collection, but I imagine that the person described within it is someone she met during that time, whom she hears from later. (I don't know whether this is true at all.)  Like many of Tichy's poems (and she's written great collections since then, though not on Israel-Palestine), I learn a lot from this one. Here, that the speaker is far away from Palestine and remembering and imagining are important aspects of the poem. (This teaches me something because I often feel like I must place myself in Israel/the West Bank in the poems, that the poem lacks some documentary credibility if I don't place it there.) The occupation and its costs are fully part of the poem, but the focus is drawn tight around specific individuals. The costs are beautifully portrayed here, suggesting the many through the one. (Oh writing about wonderful poems is so difficult. Go read it! It's lovely!)

In other news, one of my Israel-Palestine poems was accepted by a really cool online journal that I'm very proud to be a part of. My poem should be published in February, so I'll let you know more about that when it happens.

Have a peaceful week.

Mahmoud Darwish's "Identity Card"

Click here to read Mahmoud Darwish's "Identity Card" (here "ID Card") at Ha'aretz, an Israeli newspaper.

A couple dedicated readers of my weekly Israel-Palestine poem have told me they can't find the links, and I'm thinking this is because the link color is not bright enough, especially for those who use tablets or Smartphones. I have neither, so please feel free to tell me whether I'm right about this. So I'm experimenting with just putting the link at the top, especially because I'm a bit too busy tonight to futz with the link colors, which I promise to do soon.

Mahmoud Darwish's poem, "Identity Card," is a great poem of Palestinian resistance. The poem is one of anger and direct confrontation, speaking back to a representative of the occupying force, likely an Israeli policeman or soldier. This poem was important in establishing Darwish's early reputation -- in fact, the poem was made into a protest song, prompting the IDF to put him under house arrest. Later, Darwish moved far away from this kind of rallying cry of a poem.

In the US, we too often talk about how "poetry makes nothing happen," but not only did "Identity Card" have very real effects -- both on the Palestinian people and Darwish himself -- but this poem still ruffles feathers. The rest of the Ha'aretz article about the poem is how in July 2016 the Israeli Defense Minister gave the Army Radio commander a dressing down for broadcasting a discussion of this poem on one of the station's educational programs.

Some poems stay dangerous forever.

Slick roads, people. Cold temps. Stay warm. Be safe. Go slow.

If you're not in the frozen north, go outside and dance for me please!

Wordcloud of My Draft-in-Progress

With thanks to Daisy Fried, for the cool idea.

This Week: Aharon Shabtai's "Lotem Abdel Shafi"

During this last week, here, as in many places, it's been terribly cold. The kind of cold that has me rethinking my reactions to conversations I've had over the years with people who live in the Mediterranean climates of California (where I grew up) and refuse to leave. My grandmother, for one, said of the year she spent in Detroit, "you couldn't pay me enough to go live in that cold." (She lived in or around Burbank, California for much of her life.) "But four real seasons. . ." I probably retorted, when I should've shut my mouth and listened deeply. Anyway, since most of you probably survived some version -- or worse, New England! -- than I did, I'll shut up and move on to our Israel/Palestine poem of the week! (May it be warming up if it's been cold wherever you are!)

This week's poem is "Lotem Abdel Shafi" by Aharon Shabtai and translated by Peter Cole. Shabtai is an Israeli poet critical of the occupation. This poem is so interesting to me because this poem teaches me a lot as a writer, or at least presents particular approaches. Here Shabtai includes details that may be unfamiliar to American readers (this may be more Cole's problems and choices as a translator as well) such as who Haidar Abdel Shafi is. I think the poem does include enough detail that one can still enjoy the poem without knowing. (I admit I looked Haidar Abdel Shafi on Wikipedia, though I did not have to look up Ben Gurion, for example, though I wonder whether most poetry readers would need to.) Since I'm writing about Israel/Palestine to an American audience, I often wonder about what knowledge or presuppositions can I assume? how much do I need to explain? how much can I put in notes? how important is it to each poem and the whole that the reader understand these contextual details that to me seem so resonant and important? This poem shows one way of answering those questions of knowledge versus image.

What I also really like about this poem is its approach to a positive vision, a positive future of coexistence. I knew I wanted to write a poem with a positive vision of the future, but for a long time I really struggled with that. I finally did write a draft I'm still working on. In Shabtai's poem, I feel like you can see both the vision and the struggle. What an inspiration!

Enjoy! Have a wonderful productive and peaceful week!

Happy New Year! Happy First Weekly Poem about Israel-Palestine!

I have several resolutions this year. One is to go for 100 rejections in 2018 -- to put myself out there again and again. Hopefully there'll be some acceptances in there too, but the real goal here is to get really brave.

Another resolution concerns this blog. I'd like to write here more and not let the blog languish. It seems to me that my studies in the psychology of genocide and human rights abuses have given me some insight -- or at least a different perspective -- on politics and, especially, othering. I'd like to share some of that and will be thinking of different ways of doing that in the coming days and weeks.

But more concretely, I've decided to link a poem related to Israel-Palestine here each week. (At first, I thought I would type it up here, given that actually writing someone else's poem with one's own fingers is such a great practice. But then I started researching copyright of poems on the web and found that those-in-the-know recommend not even quoting a line of someone's else's poem without explicit permission. So, linking it is!) These poems might be explicitly about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or by an Israeli or Palestinian poet (though I'll probably choose it for what it suggests to me about the conflict or perspective on the conflict), or by Palestinian-Americans or Jewish-Americans explicitly or obliquely about the conflict.

This weekly link and the research to support it will help me with my own poems about Israel-Palestine. I include American poets here because sometimes poetry in translation assumes cultural information I don't have -- and certainly translations from languages as different from English as Hebrew and Arabic can sometimes leave a gulf that is difficult to cross as a reader. Since my own poems are an attempt to cross the distances between people and they grapple with how to talk about the conflict to readers who may or may not have a background in the conflict, poems by Americans here are particularly useful to me.

This week's poem is Naomi Shihab Nye's "How Palestinians Keep Warm." I'm so happy to find the poem online because I've been reading and copying certain poems out of her Red Suitcase and especially loved this one for the themes of legacy and story. Don't let me ruin it for you. Go read it at the Academy of American Poets.

For all in the northern climes, keep warm!