Davidson Poet's Book Conceals Fellow Poets “Behind The Screen”
Alan Michael Parker
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12/15/2005
Contact: Bill Giduz 704/894-2244 or bigiduz@davidson.edu
Davidson College creative writer and teacher Alan Michael Parker showcases the extraordinary imagination of fellow poets in his latest book, “The Imaginary Poets.” At the same time, the whimsical, creative nature of the project highlights Parker's own extraordinary imagination.
Parker invited poets to write a poem under the pretense that it had been written by someone other than themselves, in a language other than English. Taking the exercise even further, he assigned each poet to “translate” the poem into English, and write a biography of the imaginary poets, and a short essay that considered the poem, the poet, and context of its creation.
The Academy of American Poets has highlighted Parker's book in the December 2005 edition of its magazine, “American Poet.” The title of the article, “The Writer as Ventriloquist,” serves as a gloss for how Parker's book offers up an engaging way for poets to speak to their audiences second hand. As he writes in the volume's introduction, the reader is warned “to pay no attention to the man behind the screen.”
Twenty-two poets accepted Parker's charge, and responded with gusto and flair. Andrew Hudgins of Ohio State University invented Alan Lutiy, a persecutor of Jews in World War II who experienced a post-war conversion that turned him into an amnesiac Jewish street car conductor who ended up as a plumber in Spandau Prison for war criminals. Hudgins' essay about Lutiy's work tells an extraordinary story of political intrigue. He describes how the poem was wrested with great difficulty from the hands of the German and Israeli governments, and was only released by Lutiy's petulant daughter through gifts of flowers and champagne. The poem itself comes from Lutiy's series of works that highlight sounds of the alphabet, and as printed in “The Imaginary Poets” the lines rhyme throughout with the sound of a short “A.”
Victoria Redel of Columbia University invented Tzadie Rackel, a nineteenth century hard-luck seamstress who stitched subversive poems written in Yiddish into hidden places in the clothes she tailored. In her essay, Redel muses that Rackel's poetry physically represents poetic notions of fabric and texture, and comments on the difficult choices she faced in translation of whether or not to leave some key words in Yiddish.
Parker said he got good response to his solicitation for work because of the assignment's intriguing complexity. “The poets were able to play with the relationship between the life of their imagined poet and what the poem says and does,” he said. “It also allowed for self-expression as a poet, a fiction writer, and as a translator. The complexity of the assignment escalates with each step, so that the volume ends up being about translation, the first person speaker, autobiography, fiction in poetry, and literary criticism.”
Parker developed the notion for the project from previous ventures exploring the complexity of the first person in poetry. In 1996 he edited a book of cross-gendered verse in which women wrote as if they were men, and vice versa. He also edited a tribute to the late poet John Berryman in which contributors wrote as different characters. Parker has also enjoyed giving students in his classes the assignment to write poems from different points of view. “I've always been interested in assumptions that the reader makes about the author-especially if the poem under consideration is in the first person,” Parker commented.
Contributors to “The Imaginary Poet,” which is published by Tupelo Press, represent a wide variety of perspectives: experimental poets, free verse poets, and formal poets. Parker was thrilled by the diversity of response. “It was fascinating to see what each person wrote,” he said. “There's a lot of World War II material and references, which I never could have anticipated. In addition, I received poems 'translated' from eighteen languages, including from a completely invented language, as well as from Egyptian hieroglyphics, Chinese, Greek, and German.”
In one case the entry includes two translations, plus the poem's French “original” version, because the writer wanted to demonstrate the problems of translation, showing how the same words can be interpreted differently in another language.
McArthur Fellow Mark Strand didn't submit a poem, but wrote a long essay about his imaginary poet. Contributors Aliki Barnstone and Garrett Hongo were so inspired by their experience that they may well write full volumes in the voices of their imaginary poets. Hongo's imaginary poet in Parker's volume wrote in a combination of Hawaiian, Japanese, and Pidgin English.
Some of the biographies include encounters between the imaginary characters and real historical figures or events. All are portrayed as leading complex, adventurous, and sometimes tragic lives. Parker said, “There are no poets portrayed who are like me - holding a teaching job at a college while quietly writing and raising a family!”
The book includes real biographies of each contributing poet in a section of authors' notes. In addition, Parker has written an introduction that provides a literary context for the project. “Writing as someone else seems fundamental to what writers do,” he states. He describes several incidents of imagined authorship, and points out that Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa had forty-four “heteronyms” -- invented characters over whose signature the poems appeared.
“The Imaginary Poets” premiered recently with a kickoff party at Poet's House in New York City, a foundation begun by former Poet Laureate Stanley Kunitz, who was Parker's professor during graduate studies at Columbia University. Six contributors read their work on that occasion. As many as nine plan to present their work at another scheduled reading on March 11 at the annual Association of Writers and Writing Programs conference in Austin, Tex.
Contributors to “The Imaginary Poet” represent a wide variety of perspectives -- experimental poets, free verse poets, and formal poets.
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Parker's next writing project will be published in January. It is a limited edition run of seven of his poems printed in hand-set type by an art press in Minnesota. He also is preparing a collection of new poems for publication in 2007.
Parker earned his B.A. from Washington University in St. Louis, and an M.F.A. in creative writing with a specialty in poetry at Columbia University in 1987. He joined the Davidson faculty in the fall of 1998, and currently directs the college's creative writing program. He specializes in poetry, fiction writing, and contemporary literature.
“The Imaginary Poets” is Parker's seventh published work, and his fourth since arriving at Davidson. He has published a novel, “Cry Uncle,” three books of poetry, “Days Like Prose,” “The Vandals,” and “Love Song with Motor Vehicles;” and two co-edited volumes, “Who's Who in 20th Century World Poetry” and “The Routledge Anthology of Cross-Gendered Verse.” His poems have appeared in “The American Poetry Review,” “The New Republic,” “The New Yorker,” “The Paris Review,” and “The Yale Review.” His prose has appeared in “The New York Times Book Review” and “The New Yorker.”
Parker received a Pushcart Prize in poetry in 1999 for his poem, “Vandals, Horses.” He has twice been honored by the National Book Critics Circle with a “Notable Book” citation, and in 2003 he received an Editor's Choice Award from “The Marlboro Review” for his poem “Love Song with Motor Vehicles.” That same year he also received the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, for his poem, “The Cat.”
Davidson is a highly selective independent liberal arts college for 1,700 students. Since its founding by Presbyterians in 1837, the college has graduated 23 Rhodes Scholars and is consistently ranked in the top ten liberal arts colleges in the country by "U.S. News and World Report" magazine.
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