1,720,982 research outputs found
Inventing a Language for Love
No full textThis chapter describes sex as poetry and play. Our sexual experiences, the author suggests, must rise above the rote performances of “a bull in Wisconsin” if they are to play a significant part in our lives. Because sex is an animal urge but also a human endeavor, the author asks how we—how we can—infuse it with meaning. “We are alone in this world,” said Lissa, quoted in the writer and public radio producer Julia Hutton's book, Good Sex: Real Stories from Real People, “and we can't truly connect minds and hearts except through the tools we have—language, art, music, and sex.” No two people come to sex and sexuality the same way. The author talks about how we use language, story, poetry, and play to add aesthetics to sex; how we poeticize and humanize and create entire worlds of pleasure and angst based on the few ways that human beings can tuck ourselves into one another.</p
The Poetry of Ping-Pong
No full textIn this chapter, the author looks at the poetry of Ping-Pong, his favorite sport. According to Marty Reisman, the game of Ping-Pong died in Bombay, India, in 1952. Reisman, nicknamed “The Needle,” was favored to win the World Table Tennis Championship that day. The author says he has always loved Ping-Pong because you can get into a rhythm, hit the ball back and forth across the net for hours, with any racquet, and simply talk. Ping-Pong, like poetry, is a players' sport, not ideal for spectators. Bob Mankoff, the cartoon editor of The New Yorker, claims that there is palpable humor in the game. With Ping-Pong, the author insists that we are all capable of attuning ourselves to the hidden life of sports, a relationship that is about kinesthesia and embodiment.</p
Days of Chess and Backgammon
No full textThe author here considers the games of chess and backgammon. The author shares how he became fascinated by chess, intrigued by its philosophical side. He was twelve years old in 1959, when Bobby Fischer won the United States Chess Championship. As a folklorist, he did field research on chess havens in New York's West Village, interviewing the players in Washington Square Park and at the two warring chess clubs on Thompson Street, Chess Forum and the Village Chess Shop. He talks about the Capablanca table; José Raúl Capablanca, world chess champion from 1921 to 1927, is said to have won the World Chess Championship on that table. Fischer also played on that table, in New York in 1965. Chess, the author observes, seems to lend itself to grandiose metaphors. Metaphors abound in the down-and-dirty trash talk exchanged by the chess players in New York City parks. The author concludes by recalling how he and his father would engage in a gentle competition playing online backgammon games.</p
Intimacy in Language
No full textIn this chapter, the author considers poetry in family expressions, which, along with in-jokes and associations, are packed with alliteration, rhythm, and hyperbole. The author recalls how he was drawn to folklore because, even at an early age, he was aware of the beauty and power of folklore in his own life. The author grew up as an American expat in São Paulo, Brazil. His parents, Shirley and Irv, belonged to that notable group called sojourners—those who immigrate but never fully assimilate. He shares his experience with a song called “Red River Valley,” which he says inspired his love of folk music and also played a part in his becoming a folklorist and meeting his future wife, Amanda, a fellow folklorist. Besides the song, a few other incidents contributed to the serendipity of meeting Amanda. The author remembers a time when a conversation between him and Amanda shifts from prose toward poetry, a moment that highlights the importance of intimacy in language.</p
The Best Stories versus My Story
No full textIn this chapter, the author explains how you can afford to spend your time writing even if it brings no material rewards and can't help you make a living, arguing that it comes down to the compartmentalization of body and soul. The author describes a project at City Lore called City of Memory, a dynamic, participatory online story map of New York City. Visitors to the site would be interested in only two things: What are the best stories? and What is my story? Ultimately, the question becomes Is my story one of the best stories? There is only one way to find out: tell it and put it out there in the world. And one way of getting your story out into the world is to share work with family and friends. The author also reflects on the first People's Poetry Gathering he helped to create in 1999. Co-sponsored by City Lore and Poets House, the New York City event brought together literary and folk poets alike.</p
Breath on the Mirror
No full textThe author explains here bhow holding your breath on the mirror lets you express and discern your own distinctive voice and know who you really are. He talks about his creative writing class, in which students experiment with fiction and nonfiction, poetry and prose. The students learn that even if they are writing about something far outside themselves, it is still a reflection of who they are and how they interpret what they see. As his students endeavor to find their own voice, the author often shares the work of famous writers whose voice is embedded in their sentence structure and is immediately recognizable; for example, Joan Didion, Edith Wharton, and Jamaica Kincaid. He also encourages his students to look for moments when their own life stories intersect with a larger history.</p
All My Trials
No full textThis chapter reflects on the healing powers of poems and tales. From his family's poetry night, the author understood how poems can be used to share feelings and thoughts with loved ones, but he became interested in the role that poetry could play in getting people through hard times. The author shares an excerpt of the poem entitled The Black Sheep, inscribed on a sculpture by the performance artist Karen Finley; the concrete monolith stood in the corner park on First Street in New York City and read by homeless men and homeless women day after day. Perhaps stories and poems, like prayers, have the power to heal—or perhaps they open us to the healing power of the universe. Or perhaps they provide comfort and insight into our situations when our prayers don't work.</p
God Is in the Details
No full textThis chapter looks at what it calls ur-poem and place moments. For the author's course called Writing New York Stories, which he taught for more than ten years at Cooper Union University, the author developed an approach to remembering his students' names: he had everyone write, in class, a “list poem” in which each line began “I am from…” The poem that spawned this assignment is by Kentucky-born poet and children's book writer George Ella Lyon. He says “I am from…” poems are ur-poems: everyone has one in them. He also talks about the concept of “place moments” as well as the layers of history and lore and perceptions that make up what philosopher Edward Casey refers to as “place memory.” The author argues that personal experiences transform space into place and that the value of places should be measured by the sum total of the place moments that take place within them and are committed to memory.</p
Laughter for Dessert
No full textThe author reflects here on the important role that laughter has played in his life. His brother Murray laughs harder than anyone else he knows—and he caps it off by clapping in wild applause. The author's daughter, Eliza, once quipped: “We had laughter for dessert.” He even imagined a mystery story in which the murderer kills by devising a perfect joke that convulses people with laughter till they die. He also can remember a girl whose infectious laugh inspired a poem entitled Lily. His friend and Ping-Pong partner Bob Mankoff, the cartoon editor of The New Yorker, is a student of humor; he also teaches a class in humor theory at the University of Michigan. And like many long-married couples, he and his wife have developed routines for their own personal comedy team of sorts. The author adds that banter is a key ingredient of folk culture and family folklore.</p
The Poetry in Science
No full textThe author reflects here on the poetry of science and the ways scientists use homespun metaphors to make the mysteries of the universe as comfortable to lay audiences as a well-worn coat. The author marvels at the enormity of what was accomplished by men such as Thales, Democritus, Euclid, Archimedes, Galileo, Isaac Newton, and Albert Einstein, as well as the many scientists who collectively devised quantum theory. He says human beings used to look up into the sky and imagine stories about the gods written in the constellations; science and storytelling were one and the same. In modern times, storytelling and science appear to be different realms entirely. Nonetheless, scientists still turn to storytelling in order to explain the mysteries of the universe. Beyond their discoveries, scientists share an evolving body of stories—a kind of folklore of science—that conveys their ideas in lay terms.</p
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