Official New Hampshire website
NHSCA logo 50th anniversary tagline

 

 nh arts home
 program services
trans div
 arts & artists
   artist rosters
   poet laureate
   artist laureate
   fellows
 
 
trans div
nh folklife
 grants
 news & calendar
 FAQs
 links
 about us
 site map
     

 

 


Arts & Artists  
    

New Hampshire Poet Showcase
From NH Poet Laureate, Pat Fargnoli

At my request, The NH Arts Council is providing me with a link to the poet laureate page on their website in order that I may showcase poems by a number of New Hampshire Poets. The poets will be by my invitation only, but I plan to include both the famous and the less famous ....those who are seriously working at poetry craft from many areas of the state. A different poet and poem will be presented every 2 weeks.

Featured Poet : J. Kates, Fitzwilliam

J. Kates is a poet and literary translator. He is the author of "Mappemonde" (poems) Oyster River Press, 2001, and the editor of  the anthology of Russian poetry: In the Grip of Strange Thoughts: Russian Poetry in a New Era, Zephyr Press, 1999.  In addition, he’s published five other books of translations and two more are forthcoming in 2007: "Say Thank You", a translation of poems by Mikhail Aizenberg (Zephyr)"When a Poet sees a Chestnut Tree", a translation of poems by Jean-Pierre Rosnay (Green Integer). Kates facilitates a popular poetry reading-discussion group at the Fitzwilliam Library.


Of his showcase poem, Kates writes:

A woman I loved left me. The poem has proved prophetic and accurate, even after more than thirty years.

The New Bridge

They built it of unmortared stone
and started calling it the New Bridge.
Later, the older, wooden ones
burned to the water's edge--

one by one, in their own time
and not without replacement.
But the New Bridge kept its name
downstream from concrete abutment

and suspended steel.  And still
in my heart I call you lover
though even the river has silted full
and changed its course forever.


Kates declined to give a photograph saying: “It’s the poem that’s important.” As further explanation he offered the following poem:


The Vanity of Portraiture


These features you have come to photograph —
my hair receding like Antarctic ice,
a mottled visage mapped with years of laughing,
a beard gone white, bifocals (mended twice)
framing the false sincerity of two
indifferent eyes and their too bushy brows,
the fuzzy ears, the ill-shaved neck  — oh, who
of all your readers wants that portrait now?
Those who know me well need no reminders
(or have their own) and those who don’t, don’t care.
And while you’re peering into your view-finder,
dissatisfied with misplaced shadows there,
I simper, freeze, and watch the birdie, full
face in focus, however blurred the soul. 


To learn more about J. Kates visit....

Click here for a list of previous Poet Showcases

Last updated: September 19, 2007

 
 
 
 
nh nh.gov | privacy policy | accessibility policy