The New York Times recently ran an article on a Brooklyn street poet named Robert Samuel Snyderman, who spends his days sitting on a white bucket with a powder blue typewriter, offering to channel his muse for a small donation. His hair appears to have exploded. A sign on his chest simply says “Poems.”

Harvesting the inspiration required to write poetry is a tricky business. I can't fathom writing a poem every day, much less doing it immediately, under the looming expectations of someone who has just paid me. How does Brooklyn's poetry entrepreneur manage? Snyderman finds that it helps to ask patrons for sources of inspiration rather than topics. The Times reprinted a poem he wrote for a woman whose friend had outlived a doctor's dire prognosis by 15 years, (for a mere $7). Here's the result:

I came here
to life

from bright poison.

My feet
immediately demanded
more from
my inheritance, from
my blood, from your
sermon.

Leak well,
human
blood. Leak well.
There is no time.

Snyderman attracts enough interest (and cash) to have lived solely on the written word since May. Not that he's living that well (the typewriter is on loan from a friend).

Brooklyn's plucky street poet reminds me of a great poet of the New York School of poetry, Frank O'Hara, known for plucking poems at will from his city surroundings. Here's an example:

Did you see me walking by the Buick Repairs?
I was thinking of you
having a Coke in the heat it was your face
I saw on a movie magazine, no it was Fabian's
I was thinking of you
and down at the railroad tracks where the station
has mysteriously disappeared
I was thinking of you
as the bus pulled away in the twilight
I was thinking of you
and right now

John Ashbery described O'Hara's concept of the poem as “the chronicle of the creative act that produces it,” and often saw him “dashing the poems off at odd moments — in his office at the Museum of Modern Art, in the street at lunchtime or even in a room full of people.” O'Hara referred to his poetry as “I do this I do that” poems. At his best, O'Hara's this and that was pretty spectacular, exemplified by “The Day Lady Died” (for Billie Holiday):

It is 12:20 in New York a Friday
three days after Bastille day, yes
it is 1959 and I go get a shoeshine
because I will get off the 4:19 in Easthampton
at 7:15 and then go straight to dinner
and I don't know the people who will feed me

I walk up the muggy street beginning to sun
and have a hamburger and a malted and buy
an ugly NEW WORLD WRITING to see what the poets
in Ghana are doing these days
I go on to the bank
and Miss Stillwagon (first name Linda I once heard)
doesn't even look up my balance for once in her life
and in the GOLDEN GRIFFIN I get a little Verlaine
for Patsy with drawings by Bonnard although I do
think of Hesiod, trans. Richmond Lattimore or
Brendan Behan's new play or Le Balcon or Les Nègres
of Genet, but I don't, I stick with Verlaine
after practically going to sleep with quandariness

and for Mike I just stroll into the PARK LANE
Liquor Store and ask for a bottle of Strega and
then I go back where I came from to 6th Avenue
and the tobacconist in the Ziegfeld Theatre and
casually ask for a carton of Gauloises and a carton
of Picayunes, and a NEW YORK POST with her face on it

and I am sweating a lot by now and thinking of
leaning on the john door in the 5 SPOT
while she whispered a song along the keyboard
to Mal Waldron and everyone and I stopped breathing

I expect that Mr. Snyderman could find a little inspiration in O'Hara (if he doesn't already). Here's to the street poet for bringing his city a little closer to the word. May his verses bring him wealth — at least enough to let him purchase his own typewriter.

@Allie @Blah
You must be reading some other news stories about this break up other than here.

Please provide links so the rest of us can figure out where u 2 get these ideas from. What is the source of your hatered ?

Also, thank you for your kind words of concern about the effects of this relationship ending on the custody issues. After all, ME & TLM do have to worry about their c/h/i/l/d/r/e/n, something which your posts addressed so carefully !

Your respect for LGB families deserves special mention !

2  1

As I wrote a few days ago, I was informed that alleged Russian spy Mikhail Semenko had my business card. Turns out I had his information as well in my personal lap top and had hoped to meet him before my next trip to China — as his blog on the Chinese economy interested me.

There are rumors that Semenko applied for jobs at both the New America Foundation and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. I've checked with New America's director of human resources, and there is no application — so I can't confirm that he applied. He may have wanted to; New America is a cool place for youngish policy wonks.

But I met Semenko at a meeting I chaired with global strategic risk guru Ian Bremmer, President of the Eurasia Group, who was speaking about his best-selling new book, The End of the Free Market: Who Wins the War Between States and Corporations?.

The fundamental thesis of Bremmer's fascinating book is that the biggest, most significant new feature of the global economy is the emergence of “state capitalism”. Bremmer argues that his state capitalism — as manifested in its most potent form in China — threatens both firms and states that practice more traditional laissez-faire market capitalism.

This debate on Chinese vs. American approaches to capitalism is what the handsome alleged Russian agent Mikhail Semenko came to learn about when he visited the New America Foundation on May 27, 2010. Fascinating.

Above is a short clip of my exchange with Ian Bremer on that day — and this is a link to the longer program. It would be interesting to see (I haven't had the chance to check) whether Semenko lodges any questions during the Q&A session.

The Washington Post is reporting that all or most of the alleged Russian spies are going to plead guilty and be deported to Russia as early as tomorrow. I sort of hope that Mikhail Semenko keeps up his blog from Russia — because “agent of influence” or not — his interest in key questions on how the world organizes itself is something we should all be thinking about.

– Steve Clemons publishes the popular political blog, The Washington Note. Clemons can be followed on Twitter @SCClemons

@iKid

I hope they don't fade away. They are awesome technology but I have one problem with ereaders.

The companies that produce them don't advertise like they should. They are letting Apple get away with telling consumers that the iPad is able to read book and is therefore an e reader, a bold-faced lie. Countless people believe that the iPad is better for reading books than ereaders because it can produce color and do so much more than read books.

It is near-impossible to argue an absurd contrast ratio, battery life, and free data to someone set on an Apple product, but the like of Amazon and Barnes and Noble had better find a way to do it before e readers go the way of the Kin.

One way that I think that e reader companies could cut major costs is by consolidating their online bookstores. I don't want to turn in to Gartenburg and start screaming about fragmentation, but if say, Amazon and Barnes and Noble became the only two ebook retailers, than there would be an awesome uniformity throughout the market that is missing from it now.

People are confused about buying ebooks and companies are wasting money upkeeping ebook retailers.

You could liken this revolutionized market with the Android Marketplace (Android Marketplace being the actual ebooks) and HTC, Samsung and Motorola (These companies being the OEMs). These companies make varying hardware and compete like crazy for profit and mind-share while still allowing you to buy apps from one place.

Having Barnes and Noble and Amazon in a fierce competition should keep prices down and other companies would be left with producing awesome hardware.

i also think that Barnes and Noble, Amazon and all the OEMs should agree on some sort of commission to pay to each OEM every time that OEM's ereader has been used to buy an ebook off Barnes and Noble or Amazon.

I'm sure this won't happen because many companies are convinced that their is a lot of money in purveying their own online book retailers but I am sure that consumers are hurt in this because selection is hurt, as is uniformity.

Henry Jenkins has a two part interview (one, two) with Marwan Kraidy, author of
Reality Television and Arab Politics. Jenkins asks:

As you note, many of these reality show formats come from the west but get localized in the Arab context. Can you describe this localization process? To what degree is their western origins central to their political impact?

Kraiday answers:

The localization process underpins the book's main argument that the
Arab reality television controversies are best understood as a social
laboratory where various versions of modernity are tested. The formats'
western origins were never directly important. In the early years of
Arab reality television, 2003 and 2004, critics leveled the charge that
the reality television wave was another episode in a western cultural
conquest trying to impose an alien reality on Arabs and Muslims.

Localization occurred in several ways.

One was a gradual take over by conservative forces. Consider the
case of Algeria, where state television initially aired the Lebanese Star Academy.
After opposition from Islamists, the Algerian president himself is said
to have ordered it off the air, replacing it with a locally-made,
ostensibly more conservative version. One season later, and the same
slot was filled by a Qoranic recitation show, reality style–nominees,
fan mobilization, viewer voting.

Two poetry reality shows epitomize another, and to me far more
interesting, process of localization. Poetry enjoys a status in Arab
culture that it is to my knowledge not accorded anywhere else in the
world. Since pre-Islamic times, poetry is at once art form, political
platform and entertainment. Numerous Arab television channels today
have talk-shows dedicated to poetry, and poets show up on all kinds of
talk-shows for women, youth, etc. A well-known poet in the Arab world
is treated like a rock star. So here comes Abu Dhabi Television,
supported by state financing, with the brilliant idea of launching
poetry competitions, reality television style. The two shows, one
dedicated to Arab poetry at large, the other focused on Gulf poetry,
were major hits. Followers of your blog may have read recently the
story of Hissa Helal, the Saudi woman who reached the finale of one of
these shows, with a poem (in the semi-final) that attacked the
reactionary clerics in her country, a gutsy move that was made partly
possible by the venue–a public, popular poetry competition.

(Hat tip: Jesse Walker)

National Post:

Karen Solie was named the Canadian winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize at a gala ceremony in Toronto on Thursday night, eight years after first being nominated for the country's most prestigious award for poetry.

Read the whole story: National Post

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