Thanks to everyone who gave me congratulations on the Poetry Midwest acceptance. Comments aren't playing well with others tonight so I'll respond to a couple things here...
Jennifer: "Garretless non-carousal"! I love it. That would be a great blog title.
Woody: Thinking?! Uh-oh... should I duck? ;)
Charles: I did not do the dance, because I was at work and they already think I'm weird. I did manage a bit of a seated butt-waggle though.
Poetry Midwest took a poem of mine called "Door" last year. The one they're taking for the upcoming issue is called "Windows." I think in order to keep getting published by them I'm going to have to write a poem called "Chimney" ... or perhaps "Joist" or "Soffit."
Note to self: two pieces of colby-jack cheese and a handful of slightly stale croutons does not constitute a proper dinner. Good grief.
Finally: Does anyone have any "inside scoop" on Notre Dame's MFA program? Don't get excited, it's mostly just idle curiosity. I did notice when I poked around on their website that two of their poetry faculty (Sonia Gernes and John Matthias) are retiring this year, but I have no idea who's coming in to take their places.
Notre Dame has a lovely new-ish bookstore on campus. I've only been there once, but next time I visit my mom (who lives quite close to the ND campus) I think I'm going to try & visit it again.
That's all for tonight, just rambly little tidbits. Oh, and now the truck that was blocking me into my driveway has moved, so I can leave the house and go get some proper food. GOOD.
Wednesday, April 20, 2005
Tuesday, April 19, 2005
Broke the streak...
...of rejections at last. Poetry Midwest took one of mine for the summer issue. Cool. They're still reading for this issue till June 13, in case anyone else wants to submit some stuff.
Good snailmail today too: my tax refund from Indiana (I e-filed, but for some reason the website wouldn't take my routing number for direct deposit, so I said the heck with it and let them cut me a check -- hey, it was only 8 bucks, how much of a hurry could I be in to get it), a $10 check from the Kinsey Institute for a questionnaire I filled out, a "$10 off any $25 purchase" coupon from Lowe's, and the new issue of the Writer's Chronicle (hopefully this one won't suffer the same fate as the last one, which went astray on recycling night and got recycled before I was finished reading it).
Thinking, in the aftermath of Li-Young Lee's reading and the comments people made, about what we expect a poet to be like. Some people expressed dismay at what they perceived as a lack of professionalism or a lack of respect for the audience; some expressed delight at what they perceived as a bit of poet-y wildness. Should poets be wilder than regular people? If so, I think I'm in trouble; besides the fact that I don't always fully conform to gender roles and (like the librarian I am) I tend towards comfortable shoes, I don't think I come across as particularly wild or mysterious at all. I make every effort to avoid unnecessary drama and angst in my personal life. (I'm not particularly interested in dying young, either.) Does that mean I suck as a poet? I sure as hell hope not.
But are poets somehow fundamentally different from non-poets? I don't know. I used to think "creative people" saw the world differently from others, and this might be true to some extent, but if it is, then "creative people" has got to be expanded to include scientists and other people actively engaged in some kind of investigative process -- I sometimes think poets have more in common with scientists than with painters, and that writing is most fruitfully seen as a process of investigation and discovery. (There are flaws with that analogy, especially in that the writing process is much less clearly defined than the scientific method, but I think it's a useful analogy nonetheless.)
The more I read about science, the more I realize how completely everything -- everything -- is intertwined. Right now I'm reading a book about the conflict between whale conservation and the commercial fishing industry (Entanglements: The Intertwined Fates of Whales and Fishermen by Tora Johnson) -- there is such a complex web of interactions governing, well, everything; the reproductive success of the right whale depends on the abundance of a particular type of plankton (copepods), and the success of the copepods depends on ocean currents and water temperature, which depend on the overall climate of the Earth and things like El Nino, which are in turn changed and influenced by human activity -- and humans' survival depends on the survival of phytoplankton, which are eaten by copepods, and which are responsible for the production of a large percentage of the planet's oxygen. (Even that's an oversimplification, but you get the idea.) Scientists have a responsibility to see, simultaneously, the macro and the micro, and to understand all the tangled, complex interrelationships among ... everything. So much that on the surface appears completely unrelated is at heart utterly interdependent. And I think poets also have a responsibility to see connections that aren't immediately obvious; in fact, I would say that revealing unexpected connections is one of the hallmarks of a good poem.
Anyway, that's a bit of a tangent, although I feel like it does have something to do with the question of who a poet should be. I think that poets have to be curious and open to the unexpected, but I don't think that means we have a responsibility to be "weird" or whatever.
Actually, I think poets are about like regular people in that there are all kinds of us -- wild, boring, bizarre, professional -- and I think it's the poetry itself that we should put our expectations on. Although, of course, without the creative/investigative process of actually writing, the poetry wouldn't exist in the first place.
More later, perhaps.
Good snailmail today too: my tax refund from Indiana (I e-filed, but for some reason the website wouldn't take my routing number for direct deposit, so I said the heck with it and let them cut me a check -- hey, it was only 8 bucks, how much of a hurry could I be in to get it), a $10 check from the Kinsey Institute for a questionnaire I filled out, a "$10 off any $25 purchase" coupon from Lowe's, and the new issue of the Writer's Chronicle (hopefully this one won't suffer the same fate as the last one, which went astray on recycling night and got recycled before I was finished reading it).
Thinking, in the aftermath of Li-Young Lee's reading and the comments people made, about what we expect a poet to be like. Some people expressed dismay at what they perceived as a lack of professionalism or a lack of respect for the audience; some expressed delight at what they perceived as a bit of poet-y wildness. Should poets be wilder than regular people? If so, I think I'm in trouble; besides the fact that I don't always fully conform to gender roles and (like the librarian I am) I tend towards comfortable shoes, I don't think I come across as particularly wild or mysterious at all. I make every effort to avoid unnecessary drama and angst in my personal life. (I'm not particularly interested in dying young, either.) Does that mean I suck as a poet? I sure as hell hope not.
But are poets somehow fundamentally different from non-poets? I don't know. I used to think "creative people" saw the world differently from others, and this might be true to some extent, but if it is, then "creative people" has got to be expanded to include scientists and other people actively engaged in some kind of investigative process -- I sometimes think poets have more in common with scientists than with painters, and that writing is most fruitfully seen as a process of investigation and discovery. (There are flaws with that analogy, especially in that the writing process is much less clearly defined than the scientific method, but I think it's a useful analogy nonetheless.)
The more I read about science, the more I realize how completely everything -- everything -- is intertwined. Right now I'm reading a book about the conflict between whale conservation and the commercial fishing industry (Entanglements: The Intertwined Fates of Whales and Fishermen by Tora Johnson) -- there is such a complex web of interactions governing, well, everything; the reproductive success of the right whale depends on the abundance of a particular type of plankton (copepods), and the success of the copepods depends on ocean currents and water temperature, which depend on the overall climate of the Earth and things like El Nino, which are in turn changed and influenced by human activity -- and humans' survival depends on the survival of phytoplankton, which are eaten by copepods, and which are responsible for the production of a large percentage of the planet's oxygen. (Even that's an oversimplification, but you get the idea.) Scientists have a responsibility to see, simultaneously, the macro and the micro, and to understand all the tangled, complex interrelationships among ... everything. So much that on the surface appears completely unrelated is at heart utterly interdependent. And I think poets also have a responsibility to see connections that aren't immediately obvious; in fact, I would say that revealing unexpected connections is one of the hallmarks of a good poem.
Anyway, that's a bit of a tangent, although I feel like it does have something to do with the question of who a poet should be. I think that poets have to be curious and open to the unexpected, but I don't think that means we have a responsibility to be "weird" or whatever.
Actually, I think poets are about like regular people in that there are all kinds of us -- wild, boring, bizarre, professional -- and I think it's the poetry itself that we should put our expectations on. Although, of course, without the creative/investigative process of actually writing, the poetry wouldn't exist in the first place.
More later, perhaps.
Monday, April 18, 2005
The best thing...
...anyone said in comments on my post about Li-Young Lee's reading came from Didi:
Well,
You are one with God when you write. You are one with man when you read.
That is all I have to say about that.
Lot of work I want to do tonight, several poems I know I want to revise, but I have a splitting headache. I got some poems back today (as in rejected) and wanted to figure out where to fire them off next, but I may just go to bed. I got two packets sent out today, so I have a total of eleven packets out at the moment ... maybe I'll just wait until some more come back and shuffle them around a bit. I'm feeling a bit head-to-brick-wall-ish about publication right now, as I haven't had an acceptance in a while; I think the cure for that is probably not to think about it for a bit and to spend more time writing -- which is, after all, the point.
Edited to add: Hey, I found the blog of someone who actually did take notes at LYL's reading. Here, if you're interested.
Well,
You are one with God when you write. You are one with man when you read.
That is all I have to say about that.
Lot of work I want to do tonight, several poems I know I want to revise, but I have a splitting headache. I got some poems back today (as in rejected) and wanted to figure out where to fire them off next, but I may just go to bed. I got two packets sent out today, so I have a total of eleven packets out at the moment ... maybe I'll just wait until some more come back and shuffle them around a bit. I'm feeling a bit head-to-brick-wall-ish about publication right now, as I haven't had an acceptance in a while; I think the cure for that is probably not to think about it for a bit and to spend more time writing -- which is, after all, the point.
Edited to add: Hey, I found the blog of someone who actually did take notes at LYL's reading. Here, if you're interested.
Sunday, April 17, 2005
Why can't every day be like today?
Today was a good day. The weather was perfect beyond perfection; I drank just a smidgen too much coffee (which nearly always propels me into productivity one way or another); I spent the entire afternoon reading and writing & plan to do more of the same this evening. I finished reading Mark Doty's newest volume, which is wonderful and something I'll be returning to. I drafted a couple of new poems (one perhaps a bit overmuch inspired by Doty, but revision should make that a bit less obvious at least) and revised another. WFHB (our volunteer-run community radio station) aired a particularly interesting installment of their weekly series "A Cycle of Poets" this evening, featuring Jenny Kander interviewing poet Roger Mitchell and his wife, fiction writer Dorian Gossy -- there was a bit of cross-genre discussion of language, and Dorian said some nice things about how poetry has influenced her fiction, particularly (though I don't think you'd necessarily guess it just from reading her) LANGUAGE poetry. That's made me think about how good it is to admit influences that stem from impulses very different from your own natural ones & to read work that's very different from your own.
Which reminds me, I'm also reading the new issue of Bloom. I love that journal, the range of work they publish. Really need to send them something.
**********
Bumper sticker of the week:
I love my country ...
... but I think we should start seeing other people.
Which reminds me, I'm also reading the new issue of Bloom. I love that journal, the range of work they publish. Really need to send them something.
**********
Bumper sticker of the week:
I love my country ...
... but I think we should start seeing other people.
Saturday, April 16, 2005
Lesbian Academic Love Poem
Because I know at least a few of you out there will appreciate this (hi Em and Julie)...
Lesbian Academic Love Poem by Sara Jane Stoner
Lesbian Academic Love Poem by Sara Jane Stoner
book sale finds!
Just finished fighting my way through the IU Library book sale. Boy, I found some good stuff. There was more I could have bought -- a few hardcover poetry books -- but I kept reminding myself that these books are actually IN the library and I can check them out ANYTIME and even for cheap, I should only buy the ones I actually want to *ahem* OWN.
But I did spend eight bucks. Here's what I got:
Hardcover ($3.00)
The Writings of John Lennon (combined edition of In His Own Write and A Spaniard in the Works)
Paperback ($1.00 each)
Wallace Stevens - The Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality and the Imagination
May Sarton - The House by the Sea
Frank O'Hara - Lunch Poems (Pocket Poets edition)
Dylan Thomas - Under Milk Wood
Journal Issues (25 cents each!)
Poetry - June 1933, June 1966, October 1967, August 1974
The August 1974 Poetry has perhaps the worst cover ever seen on a Poetry. It is, ah, very much a product of its times. It's pink and has two stylized naked people seen from behind, a man and a woman, with a serpent sneaking up behind them. I can't describe it adequately except to say it is very 1970's. Maybe I'll try to scan it.
From the "News Notes" section of the June 1933 issue:
This issue also includes the winner ("America Remembers" by Paul Engle) and honorable mentions from the "Century of Progress" contest. The "News Notes" section includes bionotes for the poets included, and mentions that
I am highly amused. :)
But I did spend eight bucks. Here's what I got:
Hardcover ($3.00)
The Writings of John Lennon (combined edition of In His Own Write and A Spaniard in the Works)
Paperback ($1.00 each)
Wallace Stevens - The Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality and the Imagination
May Sarton - The House by the Sea
Frank O'Hara - Lunch Poems (Pocket Poets edition)
Dylan Thomas - Under Milk Wood
Journal Issues (25 cents each!)
Poetry - June 1933, June 1966, October 1967, August 1974
The August 1974 Poetry has perhaps the worst cover ever seen on a Poetry. It is, ah, very much a product of its times. It's pink and has two stylized naked people seen from behind, a man and a woman, with a serpent sneaking up behind them. I can't describe it adequately except to say it is very 1970's. Maybe I'll try to scan it.
From the "News Notes" section of the June 1933 issue:
We apologize to Robert Tallman and our readers for a mistake, due to editorial carelessness, of a kind which never occurred before in POETRY's history -- the inclusion in the May number of a poem which had already appeared in February. The editor's Mexican trip must have cleared her mind of other matters, and Mr. Tallman, because of a change of residence, received his May proof just one day too late to correct the error.
This issue also includes the winner ("America Remembers" by Paul Engle) and honorable mentions from the "Century of Progress" contest. The "News Notes" section includes bionotes for the poets included, and mentions that
The editor's own poem, on a Century of Progress subject but not contributed to the contest, took her by surprise on the train in January.
I am highly amused. :)
Thursday, April 14, 2005
book sale
For anyone who might be in or near the Bloomington, IN area (and if you are, freakin' introduce yourself already!):
Giant Book Sale!
Well, the books are normal size, but it is a really big sale....
InULA (Indiana University Librarians Association) Book Sale will take place Saturday and Sunday in the Herman B Wells Library (Main Library), room E174. (If you go in the main lobby doors on the parking lot side of the library, this room is in between the two sets of doors.)
Preview sale 9 am to noon Saturday, $20 admission.
Free admission from noon-5 pm Saturday and 11 am-2:30 pm Sunday.
Books sold by the bagful (SUPER CHEAP) from 3-5 pm Sunday.
I have found lots of really cool stuff at this sale in years past, including some nifty out-of-print poetry books and -- the coolest find -- the 1979 edition of Who's Who Among American High School Students, which I didn't buy when I had the chance (yes, my name is in it) because it was ridiculously expensive -- but for a dollar, twenty-plus years later, I snapped it up and gave my mom a thrill.
I'm thinking I may not allow myself to go. I need more books in this house like I need more cat hair in this house.
Giant Book Sale!
Well, the books are normal size, but it is a really big sale....
InULA (Indiana University Librarians Association) Book Sale will take place Saturday and Sunday in the Herman B Wells Library (Main Library), room E174. (If you go in the main lobby doors on the parking lot side of the library, this room is in between the two sets of doors.)
Preview sale 9 am to noon Saturday, $20 admission.
Free admission from noon-5 pm Saturday and 11 am-2:30 pm Sunday.
Books sold by the bagful (SUPER CHEAP) from 3-5 pm Sunday.
I have found lots of really cool stuff at this sale in years past, including some nifty out-of-print poetry books and -- the coolest find -- the 1979 edition of Who's Who Among American High School Students, which I didn't buy when I had the chance (yes, my name is in it) because it was ridiculously expensive -- but for a dollar, twenty-plus years later, I snapped it up and gave my mom a thrill.
I'm thinking I may not allow myself to go. I need more books in this house like I need more cat hair in this house.
An odd reading
OK, OK, I knew someone would ask. Yes, Li-Young Lee's reading Monday night was odd. I don't want to speculate about what's up with him; and I don't know how unusual this reading was for him, as I've only seen him read a couple of times, and the most recent one was in the rather controlled context of the IU Writers' Conference. And I'm not "in the loop" of MFA-program gossip, so I don't know what's being said or what transpired at his Q&A/discussion on campus the following morning. (I would've loved to have gone, but there is this little working for a living thing they make me do during the day.) I don't know how much of what transpired was pure theatrics.
Anyway. Cathy Bowman stepped up to introduce Lee, and after giving the usual quick biographical sketch, she asked the audience to say in unison the phrase "God in Man." This apparently had to do with a conversation the two of them had been having. The audience complied, sounding a bit confused. Lee stepped up to the podium with the requisite stack of papers & folders and water bottle. He said something about how that was what he wanted to write about, God in Man, but it always ended up being too much Man and not enough God, and he just wanted the God, or something. He started reading poems, but seemed frustrated, and before long he was revising poems as he read them -- stopping, shaking his head, going back and reading the stanza again with different bits in it. He expressed frustration quite a bit. Then he started reading a poem, talked about what wasn't working in the bit he had read (just a few lines) and how there were too many R sounds, finally put the poem down without reading past the first few lines. Cathy Bowman called out from the front row to ask him to finish the poem anyway. He didn't. (I was thinking at this point that it was kind of cool to see that maybe even Li-Young Lee has periods of thinking everything he has written is crap. Heh.)
At this point he seemed like he was going to go on reading poems, but he sort of went into ranting a bit. I wish I'd taken notes (although some of the bits I remember made their way into the poem I posted here). "I want to go home," he said several times, pounding on the podium. "You guys, I am in so much trouble up here. I want to get out of here, I want to go home, Cathy, I want to go home." He went on about God and Man and language, and I wish I'd been taking notes because there was a bit about a bird; he talked about how music and poetry and (a bunch of other stuff) wasn't the answer, sex was the answer, and we've got to get the sex thing right, sex isn't just about genitals but about the whole body, and if people would get sex right they wouldn't want to kill each other, and in fact the reason people kill each other is that they really want to fuck each other. He went on like this for oh, ten minutes maybe? fifteen? I wasn't really keeping track of time. Then he finally said something like "you guys just sit there, I'm leaving" and picked up his papers and his water bottle and left the room.
Cathy Bowman kind of looked around and went up to the podium as people applauded in a confused fashion. First she said that maybe that was just part one, but then I guess she realized he wasn't coming back, so she plugged the Q&A/discussion the following morning in Ballantine Hall, and said he'd be out in the lobby to sign books and so on (but I didn't see him as I left). All in all the reading was maybe 35 minutes or so, not a really unreasonable length for a reading I guess, though certainly shorter than I'd planned on -- and certainly much lighter on actual poetry!
I had a few thoughts about what was going on. Maybe he really was going through some kind of an emotional or existential or midlife or substance-related crisis and was just kind of falling apart. Maybe he was just having one of those "everything I've written is crap" days and couldn't deal with it. Maybe he was in the midst of working on an important new piece and he was so fully in the midst of the creative process that he couldn't talk to normal human beings at the moment (some of his ranting did kind of remind me of stuff I might mutter to myself as I pace around the house in the midst of writing a difficult poem). In a way it seemed like he was trying to read us poems that he hadn't actually written (or thought of) yet. Maybe he was just being a bit of a diva. I don't know. It certainly wasn't a boring stodgy academic Poetry-Voice reading, anyhow. And since I got a poem out of it, I'm not complaining....
**********
Edited later to add: Here's a blog entry from someone who was there & actually took notes, which (other than the poem I started drafting as I listened) I failed to do. It may be somewhat enlightening, since she got down more of what he actually said than I managed to.
**********
On a totally unrelated note, Amy Ray (of the Indigo Girls) just released her second solo album, Prom, and holy crap does it kick butt. Folkish-punky rock for the most part, with lots of electric guitars, some particularly excellent drumming from Kate Schellenbach, some cool melodies, and some fabulous lyrics. The whole thing is sort of a meditation (if you can meditate at the top of your lungs, haha) on high school, and how we learn about gender roles, and the intensity of being that age, and being queer in high school, and stuff like that -- some great lyrics like "I had a sex education without a word for my gender." I just got it on Monday (I'd pre-ordered it via Daemon Records) and already I've listened to it a half-dozen times. Good, good stuff.
Anyway. Cathy Bowman stepped up to introduce Lee, and after giving the usual quick biographical sketch, she asked the audience to say in unison the phrase "God in Man." This apparently had to do with a conversation the two of them had been having. The audience complied, sounding a bit confused. Lee stepped up to the podium with the requisite stack of papers & folders and water bottle. He said something about how that was what he wanted to write about, God in Man, but it always ended up being too much Man and not enough God, and he just wanted the God, or something. He started reading poems, but seemed frustrated, and before long he was revising poems as he read them -- stopping, shaking his head, going back and reading the stanza again with different bits in it. He expressed frustration quite a bit. Then he started reading a poem, talked about what wasn't working in the bit he had read (just a few lines) and how there were too many R sounds, finally put the poem down without reading past the first few lines. Cathy Bowman called out from the front row to ask him to finish the poem anyway. He didn't. (I was thinking at this point that it was kind of cool to see that maybe even Li-Young Lee has periods of thinking everything he has written is crap. Heh.)
At this point he seemed like he was going to go on reading poems, but he sort of went into ranting a bit. I wish I'd taken notes (although some of the bits I remember made their way into the poem I posted here). "I want to go home," he said several times, pounding on the podium. "You guys, I am in so much trouble up here. I want to get out of here, I want to go home, Cathy, I want to go home." He went on about God and Man and language, and I wish I'd been taking notes because there was a bit about a bird; he talked about how music and poetry and (a bunch of other stuff) wasn't the answer, sex was the answer, and we've got to get the sex thing right, sex isn't just about genitals but about the whole body, and if people would get sex right they wouldn't want to kill each other, and in fact the reason people kill each other is that they really want to fuck each other. He went on like this for oh, ten minutes maybe? fifteen? I wasn't really keeping track of time. Then he finally said something like "you guys just sit there, I'm leaving" and picked up his papers and his water bottle and left the room.
Cathy Bowman kind of looked around and went up to the podium as people applauded in a confused fashion. First she said that maybe that was just part one, but then I guess she realized he wasn't coming back, so she plugged the Q&A/discussion the following morning in Ballantine Hall, and said he'd be out in the lobby to sign books and so on (but I didn't see him as I left). All in all the reading was maybe 35 minutes or so, not a really unreasonable length for a reading I guess, though certainly shorter than I'd planned on -- and certainly much lighter on actual poetry!
I had a few thoughts about what was going on. Maybe he really was going through some kind of an emotional or existential or midlife or substance-related crisis and was just kind of falling apart. Maybe he was just having one of those "everything I've written is crap" days and couldn't deal with it. Maybe he was in the midst of working on an important new piece and he was so fully in the midst of the creative process that he couldn't talk to normal human beings at the moment (some of his ranting did kind of remind me of stuff I might mutter to myself as I pace around the house in the midst of writing a difficult poem). In a way it seemed like he was trying to read us poems that he hadn't actually written (or thought of) yet. Maybe he was just being a bit of a diva. I don't know. It certainly wasn't a boring stodgy academic Poetry-Voice reading, anyhow. And since I got a poem out of it, I'm not complaining....
**********
Edited later to add: Here's a blog entry from someone who was there & actually took notes, which (other than the poem I started drafting as I listened) I failed to do. It may be somewhat enlightening, since she got down more of what he actually said than I managed to.
**********
On a totally unrelated note, Amy Ray (of the Indigo Girls) just released her second solo album, Prom, and holy crap does it kick butt. Folkish-punky rock for the most part, with lots of electric guitars, some particularly excellent drumming from Kate Schellenbach, some cool melodies, and some fabulous lyrics. The whole thing is sort of a meditation (if you can meditate at the top of your lungs, haha) on high school, and how we learn about gender roles, and the intensity of being that age, and being queer in high school, and stuff like that -- some great lyrics like "I had a sex education without a word for my gender." I just got it on Monday (I'd pre-ordered it via Daemon Records) and already I've listened to it a half-dozen times. Good, good stuff.
Monday, April 11, 2005
a very rough draft
Li-Young Lee's reading tonight was ... odd. I'll leave it at that for now, except to say that I think he was trying to read us poems that he has not written yet.
However, it spawned a new poem for me. This is as rough as a rough draft gets; comments are welcome, but bear in mind I haven't really had a chance to read it myself yet! :)
The Problem of Birds
[deleted; if you missed it and would like to see it, comment here or backchannel me]
However, it spawned a new poem for me. This is as rough as a rough draft gets; comments are welcome, but bear in mind I haven't really had a chance to read it myself yet! :)
The Problem of Birds
[deleted; if you missed it and would like to see it, comment here or backchannel me]
Saturday, April 09, 2005
Palm
Trying to decide whether this one goes in the chapbook ms. or not... leaning towards not.
Palm
[deleted 04-12-2005; if you missed it & want to see it, comment here]
Palm
[deleted 04-12-2005; if you missed it & want to see it, comment here]
Saturday-night manuscriptin'
Landlocked Travels (shamelessly ganked from an Indigo Girls song, so possible copyright issues)
Animals at Home
The Landlocked Body
Landlocked Light
Landlocked Weather
Landlocked Luck
Stupid Stinkin' Chapbook
Untitled
---possibilities so far
I am either good or bad at titles -- there's no in between. I really liked "Breach" as a title, but this manuscript has changed so drastically that it just doesn't work anymore. Bah.
Animals at Home
The Landlocked Body
Landlocked Light
Landlocked Weather
Landlocked Luck
Stupid Stinkin' Chapbook
Untitled
---possibilities so far
I am either good or bad at titles -- there's no in between. I really liked "Breach" as a title, but this manuscript has changed so drastically that it just doesn't work anymore. Bah.
Thursday, April 07, 2005
"Nothin' matters and what if it did" --John Mellencamp, 1980
Jeez. First Creeley, now Bellow and Conroy. It's a bad month for writers.
Here's the Iowa City newspaper's Conroy obit.
I used to think "ugh, Iowa, who would want to go there, that program is mean." Then I went to the Iowa Summer Writing Festival a few times -- which is, I know, a completely different animal from the Workshop, but it gave me the opportunity to talk to a lot of people affiliated with the Workshop & several of its recent grads. And for all its faults, I think programs like that instill in one the understanding that writing MATTERS. Doing the work matters. Doing it as well as you can matters. It matters enough to hurt.
I came real close to applying to Iowa (& other programs as well, of course) then, around 1992 or so ... probably would not have been accepted, but who knows. Who knows how different my life would have been.
Anyway. Met up with Jenni yesterday evening at the Runcible Spoon; we talked poetry and blogging and read each other's chapbook mss. Didn't do any in-depth critique or anything, but it felt really good to talk about putting together a chapbook with someone else who's actively working on one -- my poetry-group colleagues aren't doing anything of the sort. Jenni's fun to chat with, opinionated (that's a good thing), and she's got some terrific poems in her manuscript. And it's always so good to spend time talking poetry with someone who cares passionately about it.
It matters, this poetry stuff. Not the po-biz of it, not the networking (though I find that fun sometimes, getting to know people and making small talk and everything), not the publishing -- publishing matters in the sense that it's one way of trying to chisel out a lasting space for your work, but that's a different kind of mattering. It's the poetry itself that really matters, both the process of writing it (and the learning/understanding process that goes along with the writing) and the poems that result.
That's why I feel so frustrated when I'm not writing well, when I'm not able to devote to it the kind of time I think it would take to become the best poet I could possibly become, when I can't figure out how to get better. Because it matters so much, and I don't want to give it half-assed attention. This isn't a hobby. It's a life.
I need to win the fucking lottery. Don't we all. *heh*
Here's the Iowa City newspaper's Conroy obit.
I used to think "ugh, Iowa, who would want to go there, that program is mean." Then I went to the Iowa Summer Writing Festival a few times -- which is, I know, a completely different animal from the Workshop, but it gave me the opportunity to talk to a lot of people affiliated with the Workshop & several of its recent grads. And for all its faults, I think programs like that instill in one the understanding that writing MATTERS. Doing the work matters. Doing it as well as you can matters. It matters enough to hurt.
I came real close to applying to Iowa (& other programs as well, of course) then, around 1992 or so ... probably would not have been accepted, but who knows. Who knows how different my life would have been.
Anyway. Met up with Jenni yesterday evening at the Runcible Spoon; we talked poetry and blogging and read each other's chapbook mss. Didn't do any in-depth critique or anything, but it felt really good to talk about putting together a chapbook with someone else who's actively working on one -- my poetry-group colleagues aren't doing anything of the sort. Jenni's fun to chat with, opinionated (that's a good thing), and she's got some terrific poems in her manuscript. And it's always so good to spend time talking poetry with someone who cares passionately about it.
It matters, this poetry stuff. Not the po-biz of it, not the networking (though I find that fun sometimes, getting to know people and making small talk and everything), not the publishing -- publishing matters in the sense that it's one way of trying to chisel out a lasting space for your work, but that's a different kind of mattering. It's the poetry itself that really matters, both the process of writing it (and the learning/understanding process that goes along with the writing) and the poems that result.
That's why I feel so frustrated when I'm not writing well, when I'm not able to devote to it the kind of time I think it would take to become the best poet I could possibly become, when I can't figure out how to get better. Because it matters so much, and I don't want to give it half-assed attention. This isn't a hobby. It's a life.
I need to win the fucking lottery. Don't we all. *heh*
Monday, April 04, 2005
Still Life With NCAA Championship
Bad Poet No Donut, Part II: I found out that Ishle Yi Park's reading on campus was at 7:00, not 8:00 as I was originally told, and since I didn't get home from running errands until after 6 I decided not to go. I swear I'm going to hear Li-Young Lee next week come hell or high water, though. Although the MFA program is making it darned hard to do so, since they have yet to update their website with a time or location. Maybe I'll call the MFA office tomorrow, much as I hate making phone calls to people I don't know.
**********
As has been noted by several bloggers, news sites, et cetera, Ted Kooser has won the Pulitzer Prize in poetry, and Marilynne Robinson in fiction. (I really do need to pick up both of those books, as well as Brigit Pegeen Kelly's Pulitzer-nominated volume. Do you suppose people could stop publishing books for a few years so I can have a chance to catch up? Bloggers excepted, of course -- y'all can publish all you want. I'll just read faster.)
**********
Had a headache for three days. After work I had to run out to the vet clinic to pick up some Cosequin (tuna-flavored glucosamine chondroitin powder for the arthritic geriatric cat), and on the way back I took a spontaneous detour into a Starbuck's drive-thru. Mind, I don't patronize Starbuck's that much -- their coffee isn't that great and I'd rather support locally-owned establishments, although I do love Panera for some reason -- but my aunt gave me a Starbuck's card for my birthday almost a year ago, and I still haven't used it up yet, so I may as well. Anyhow I got a caramel frappuccino. As soon as I had finished half of it, I realized my headache was entirely gone. Mmmm. Magic caramel frappuccino. We'll just ignore the fact that those things have about 179463 calories in them.
**********
In today's mail: new books by Lucia Perillo and Mark Doty. I have been looking forward to Doty's book ever since I heard him read some of these poems in Provincetown in the summer of '03. "Heaven for Paul" in particular has stayed with me since that reading. I can just picture the two of them on that plane. And the combination of humor, tenderness, and understated wisdom in that poem blows me away. (I suppose it's best when he's reading it out loud with Paul in the audience though.) His "Heaven for Stanley" was especially moving as well that night, in the room named for Kunitz, the night after most of us in the audience had heard Kunitz read in that same room. It was pure serendipity that I managed to be there for those readings; I'd thought I wouldn't be able to afford to visit P-town that summer, but a semi-last-minute bargain airfare popped up, and when I checked the FAWC website to see who was reading in the next few weeks and realized I could hear Kunitz and Doty, I booked that puppy in a hurry and flew out for a long weekend. Well worth it -- both readings were truly special.
I'm pleased to have Lucia Perillo's book, too. I took a workshop with her at the IU Writers' Conference a couple of years ago -- 2002, I guess it was -- and enjoyed her immensely. Amusingly enough, I originally tried to get into Mark Doty's workshop that year, but sent in my application too late and his was already full. I was terribly disappointed at first, but as these things usually turn out, Lucia's workshop was absolutely the right one for me.
Also got the Indigo Girls' "Live at the Uptown Lounge" DVD -- I've had this on VHS since the early nineties (in fact, if I recall correctly, I purchased it with my winnings from the office NCAA tournament pool, the one and only time I won!), and am happy to have it now on DVD.
I am such a consumer.
**********
Speaking of consumerism, Jenni is in so much trouble. Caveat Emptor, our good used bookstore, is having a "Spring Cleaning" sale this week while she is in town -- 30% off all used books. I don't know if she has internet access where she's staying. Maybe I'll be kind and not tell her. Ssssshhhhhh.
She and I are going to try to meet up at the Runcible Spoon tomorrow evening to drink coffee and talk poetry, or to drink poetry and talk coffee, I'm not sure which. Although I've met tons of "Internet people" over the years, from various BBS's (I never know how to pluralize that) and from livejournal and from various listservs and such, this will be my first "blogger person" meeting.
So with any luck, by tomorrow night I will have Official Blogger Person Verification that I Am Not A Half-Crazed Axe Murderer in person. Er, I hope so anyway.
**********
As has been noted by several bloggers, news sites, et cetera, Ted Kooser has won the Pulitzer Prize in poetry, and Marilynne Robinson in fiction. (I really do need to pick up both of those books, as well as Brigit Pegeen Kelly's Pulitzer-nominated volume. Do you suppose people could stop publishing books for a few years so I can have a chance to catch up? Bloggers excepted, of course -- y'all can publish all you want. I'll just read faster.)
**********
Had a headache for three days. After work I had to run out to the vet clinic to pick up some Cosequin (tuna-flavored glucosamine chondroitin powder for the arthritic geriatric cat), and on the way back I took a spontaneous detour into a Starbuck's drive-thru. Mind, I don't patronize Starbuck's that much -- their coffee isn't that great and I'd rather support locally-owned establishments, although I do love Panera for some reason -- but my aunt gave me a Starbuck's card for my birthday almost a year ago, and I still haven't used it up yet, so I may as well. Anyhow I got a caramel frappuccino. As soon as I had finished half of it, I realized my headache was entirely gone. Mmmm. Magic caramel frappuccino. We'll just ignore the fact that those things have about 179463 calories in them.
**********
In today's mail: new books by Lucia Perillo and Mark Doty. I have been looking forward to Doty's book ever since I heard him read some of these poems in Provincetown in the summer of '03. "Heaven for Paul" in particular has stayed with me since that reading. I can just picture the two of them on that plane. And the combination of humor, tenderness, and understated wisdom in that poem blows me away. (I suppose it's best when he's reading it out loud with Paul in the audience though.) His "Heaven for Stanley" was especially moving as well that night, in the room named for Kunitz, the night after most of us in the audience had heard Kunitz read in that same room. It was pure serendipity that I managed to be there for those readings; I'd thought I wouldn't be able to afford to visit P-town that summer, but a semi-last-minute bargain airfare popped up, and when I checked the FAWC website to see who was reading in the next few weeks and realized I could hear Kunitz and Doty, I booked that puppy in a hurry and flew out for a long weekend. Well worth it -- both readings were truly special.
I'm pleased to have Lucia Perillo's book, too. I took a workshop with her at the IU Writers' Conference a couple of years ago -- 2002, I guess it was -- and enjoyed her immensely. Amusingly enough, I originally tried to get into Mark Doty's workshop that year, but sent in my application too late and his was already full. I was terribly disappointed at first, but as these things usually turn out, Lucia's workshop was absolutely the right one for me.
Also got the Indigo Girls' "Live at the Uptown Lounge" DVD -- I've had this on VHS since the early nineties (in fact, if I recall correctly, I purchased it with my winnings from the office NCAA tournament pool, the one and only time I won!), and am happy to have it now on DVD.
I am such a consumer.
**********
Speaking of consumerism, Jenni is in so much trouble. Caveat Emptor, our good used bookstore, is having a "Spring Cleaning" sale this week while she is in town -- 30% off all used books. I don't know if she has internet access where she's staying. Maybe I'll be kind and not tell her. Ssssshhhhhh.
She and I are going to try to meet up at the Runcible Spoon tomorrow evening to drink coffee and talk poetry, or to drink poetry and talk coffee, I'm not sure which. Although I've met tons of "Internet people" over the years, from various BBS's (I never know how to pluralize that) and from livejournal and from various listservs and such, this will be my first "blogger person" meeting.
So with any luck, by tomorrow night I will have Official Blogger Person Verification that I Am Not A Half-Crazed Axe Murderer in person. Er, I hope so anyway.
Saturday, April 02, 2005
I want to be a Girlyman
Sounds like you AWP-ers are having a good time! Maybe someday I'll get to go. I love that kind of thing -- conferences, festivals -- the intensity of it. I'm a fairly shy person, though I am relatively good at finding common ground with people and making conversation once I feel like I know them a bit -- though I tend to hang out on the fringes. I suspect my Provincetown trip/workshop in June is going to drain my travel/vacation budget for the next couple of years, so who knows when I'll make it to AWP -- but hopefully someday.
Right now I'm in full-on "wish I were a musician instead of a poet" mode though. I went to hear Girlyman last night and they were just so much fun. You haven't lived until you've experienced a queer-folk-singalong of "Rock Me Amadeus," in German and everything. And then there were songs like "Speechless" and "The Shape I Found You In" that just about made me cry. There are things you can do with music that you just can't do in poetry. Plus, of course, musicians get flirted with WAY more than poets do. Heh.
I did buy a Girlyman T-shirt, which will be especially fun to wear to my workshop in P-town.
I meant to get some writing done today but have had a headache most of the day. I know -- whine, whine, whine. Maybe this evening.
This is, I think, the world's most boring blog today -- so I will close.
Right now I'm in full-on "wish I were a musician instead of a poet" mode though. I went to hear Girlyman last night and they were just so much fun. You haven't lived until you've experienced a queer-folk-singalong of "Rock Me Amadeus," in German and everything. And then there were songs like "Speechless" and "The Shape I Found You In" that just about made me cry. There are things you can do with music that you just can't do in poetry. Plus, of course, musicians get flirted with WAY more than poets do. Heh.
I did buy a Girlyman T-shirt, which will be especially fun to wear to my workshop in P-town.
I meant to get some writing done today but have had a headache most of the day. I know -- whine, whine, whine. Maybe this evening.
This is, I think, the world's most boring blog today -- so I will close.
Wednesday, March 30, 2005
By request...
As I posted in a comment on Emily's great blog post on poetry & ambition:
Anyhow, Em asked me to post the Cosmos poem so, uh, here it is. Remember, I was a mere child of 21 at the time. (eek!) Oh, and also, there was a running joke in the class about "snow in April," since it had (you can see this coming, right?) snowed in April, and almost every single person in the class trotted in with a poem about snow in April that week. So that's sort of an in-joke in this poem.
GRAPPLING WITH THE COSMOS
"Write a poem that tackles the big issues.
Grapple with the cosmos... "
--Roger Mitchell
I
in the grey April snow
me & the cosmos met
on the bad side of town
kicking litter out of the way
it was a face-off from the start
the cosmos, he had this grudge
against me, we traded insults
& fists for a while
he gave me a black
eye but I got him with a left
to the jaw
teeth were flying
we rolled around on the pavement some
when he stumbled out
of the alley there was nothing
but the wind bouncing off brick walls
scattering paper
II
it was one of those dark
& stormy nights in April, the kind
young writers are obliged to revel
in & I went to this bar
just to get a beer
sit at a corner table & write
a poem, but the cosmos followed me in
he used all the oldest lines in the book
I mean of all people
he should have been able to come up
with something I'd never heard
but I fell for him
turned out he lived
just around the corner, & in no time
we were wrestling in the dark
but I woke up at four
in the morning with darkness
on the other side of the bed & hunger
rattling the windows
found my way home where my friend
asked me where I'd been "oh out
grappling with the cosmos"
she's used to me being
a poet, or trying to, & didn't ask
what I meant by that just
fixed me a cup of catnip tea
"was it good for the cosmos too?"
spent the day watching clouds
change, never did
get that poem written
--A.H. 1982
published in Sidewalks, 1991
I remember when I was in my last undergrad poetry workshop, and a bunch of us had been -- as 21- and 22-year-olds will -- bringing in poem after poem about lost or unrequited love, childhood trauma, and the like. Toward the end of the semester, Roger Mitchell told us, "Write about the big stuff. Grapple with the cosmos."Edited to add: Apparently I was wrong -- Roger Mitchell's class was spring semester of my junior year. Maura Stanton's class, the following fall semester, was actually my last undergrad workshop. Not that anyone cares but me.
I then proceeded to write an extremely silly poem in which I encountered the Cosmos in a dark alley somewhere and had a little cosmic wrestling match (and it even got published!), but silly poem aside, I think he was exactly right. While you can grapple with the cosmos through poems about bad love and childhood trauma, I think at its best what poetry does is to reach through its own subject to touch the unspeakable, the unnameable. The stuff that Li-Young Lee would say happens in the line breaks. And I think you can do that using the language of science, of Greek mythology, of romantic love, or of Barbie dolls -- it's just probably a whole lot easier to get distracted from the deeper goal when you're playing with Barbie dolls.
Anyhow, Em asked me to post the Cosmos poem so, uh, here it is. Remember, I was a mere child of 21 at the time. (eek!) Oh, and also, there was a running joke in the class about "snow in April," since it had (you can see this coming, right?) snowed in April, and almost every single person in the class trotted in with a poem about snow in April that week. So that's sort of an in-joke in this poem.
GRAPPLING WITH THE COSMOS
"Write a poem that tackles the big issues.
Grapple with the cosmos... "
--Roger Mitchell
I
in the grey April snow
me & the cosmos met
on the bad side of town
kicking litter out of the way
it was a face-off from the start
the cosmos, he had this grudge
against me, we traded insults
& fists for a while
he gave me a black
eye but I got him with a left
to the jaw
teeth were flying
we rolled around on the pavement some
when he stumbled out
of the alley there was nothing
but the wind bouncing off brick walls
scattering paper
II
it was one of those dark
& stormy nights in April, the kind
young writers are obliged to revel
in & I went to this bar
just to get a beer
sit at a corner table & write
a poem, but the cosmos followed me in
he used all the oldest lines in the book
I mean of all people
he should have been able to come up
with something I'd never heard
but I fell for him
turned out he lived
just around the corner, & in no time
we were wrestling in the dark
but I woke up at four
in the morning with darkness
on the other side of the bed & hunger
rattling the windows
found my way home where my friend
asked me where I'd been "oh out
grappling with the cosmos"
she's used to me being
a poet, or trying to, & didn't ask
what I meant by that just
fixed me a cup of catnip tea
"was it good for the cosmos too?"
spent the day watching clouds
change, never did
get that poem written
--A.H. 1982
published in Sidewalks, 1991
Random notes, starring Far Too Many Semicolons
Okay, so those of us who aren't at AWP -- we're gonna have a party without all those Vancouver-going spoilsports. Right? Right! Who brought the beer? PAR-TAY!
**********
Sad news about Robert Creeley's death this morning. I am embarrassed to admit I do not know his work well, though I recognize him as an important poet and have enjoyed what I've read of his work. (I am shamefully underread!) My good friend Shana worked with him when she was an undergrad, and has always spoken highly of him.
Mortality's a bitch.
**********
All the kind words about my last blog post have made me smile. I often feel horribly inarticulate when it comes to writing/talking about poetics, and I think the opportunity to think and write critically in that area -- and to enter into a critical dialogue -- is one of the things about an MFA program that would be super good for me. But I will say that in the absence of that, reading poet-blogs is a wonderful thing: blogs invite dialogue; the writing in them is not necessarily polished work or finished thought; I can get a sense of how people come to the ideas they write about; and the sense of ongoing dialogue, sort of a group movement in similar directions sometimes, is just a lot of fun. Sometimes it's "poems that get you laid" and sometimes it's "poetry & ambition" (hey, wait, there's a difference??) but I love how ideas will propagate themselves throughout the blogosphere.
I think this is a fairly new mode of scholarly communication -- other disciplines have always had a tradition of sharing "working papers," but my impression of writers/poeticists (is that a word?) is that although ideas are shared among small groups, or exchanged between two writers and perhaps forwarded to others, or shared a couple times a year at conferences, the kind of ongoing, daily, open-ended group conversation like we bloggers are having is something new. And I think it has the potential to change the field and how the writing happens, in some ways. It feels qualitatively different from the kind of conversation that happens on a listserv, perhaps because a blogger can post something for their own enjoyment without particularly expecting a response (which happens occasionally on a listserv but not, in my experience, often) -- it becomes sort of a mash-up of journaling and scholarly conversation.
If I were to do a doctorate in library science (heaven forbid!), this is the sort of thing I'd study. Because it fascinates me. (And it has some pretty immediate, practical implications as well -- what should librarians do with "grey literature" like blogs? I mean, there's some seriously good stuff here and some not so useful stuff as well -- but some of it is knowledge that should absolutely be preserved. What is the librarian's responsibility towards this material?)
This sort of thing also, you know, gives me something else to think about in case all my actual poems really are crap. *grin*
**********
Spring has finally, you know, sprung. Today it was 76 degrees, sunny, breezy, with a good chance of noisy thunderstorms tonight. The daffodils are blooming; there is the faintest brushstroke, light as breath, of green on the trees; and today I spotted a tiny bedraggled forsythia bush with tiny bedraggled bright yellow blossoms popping out on it. We've had a few warm springlike days already this year, but today was the first one where I could tell it was the kind of spring that brings summer along behind it. Although maybe that's because I booked a plane ticket for Provincetown today (yes, three months early, but the way gas prices are going I don't think it's going to get any cheaper) and so I have summer on the brain.
Summer on a college campus is lovely. Lots of twenty-two-year-olds wearing not very many clothes .
Oh, was that out loud?
**********
Sad news about Robert Creeley's death this morning. I am embarrassed to admit I do not know his work well, though I recognize him as an important poet and have enjoyed what I've read of his work. (I am shamefully underread!) My good friend Shana worked with him when she was an undergrad, and has always spoken highly of him.
Mortality's a bitch.
**********
All the kind words about my last blog post have made me smile. I often feel horribly inarticulate when it comes to writing/talking about poetics, and I think the opportunity to think and write critically in that area -- and to enter into a critical dialogue -- is one of the things about an MFA program that would be super good for me. But I will say that in the absence of that, reading poet-blogs is a wonderful thing: blogs invite dialogue; the writing in them is not necessarily polished work or finished thought; I can get a sense of how people come to the ideas they write about; and the sense of ongoing dialogue, sort of a group movement in similar directions sometimes, is just a lot of fun. Sometimes it's "poems that get you laid" and sometimes it's "poetry & ambition" (hey, wait, there's a difference??) but I love how ideas will propagate themselves throughout the blogosphere.
I think this is a fairly new mode of scholarly communication -- other disciplines have always had a tradition of sharing "working papers," but my impression of writers/poeticists (is that a word?) is that although ideas are shared among small groups, or exchanged between two writers and perhaps forwarded to others, or shared a couple times a year at conferences, the kind of ongoing, daily, open-ended group conversation like we bloggers are having is something new. And I think it has the potential to change the field and how the writing happens, in some ways. It feels qualitatively different from the kind of conversation that happens on a listserv, perhaps because a blogger can post something for their own enjoyment without particularly expecting a response (which happens occasionally on a listserv but not, in my experience, often) -- it becomes sort of a mash-up of journaling and scholarly conversation.
(Perhaps we should start a movement to give out MFB degrees: Master of Fabulous Blogging. There really is a lot of terrific thoughtful energy going around the blog world, and it's got me fairly excited these days.)Academic librarians are interested in this kind of thing, in how scholarly communication develops within and across disciplines, in how publishing happens. I'm particularly interested in how disciplines take shape, how they "decide" to take one direction or another. Informatics, for example, which is fairly new as a scholarly discipline; it draws from cognitive science, library and information science, computer science, sociology, psychology, semiotics, and perhaps other disciplines as well. The development of informatics departments within universities is a fairly new phenomenon. Who sat down and said "okay, a pinch of this and a dash of that and we'll have ourselves something we can create a whole department to study?" Who sat down and decided that queer studies could be a scholarly discipline and not just an activist movement? What's the relationship between activist movements and academic disciplines? What's the relationship (and I'm coming back to poetry now) between artistic endeavor and scholarly communication?
If I were to do a doctorate in library science (heaven forbid!), this is the sort of thing I'd study. Because it fascinates me. (And it has some pretty immediate, practical implications as well -- what should librarians do with "grey literature" like blogs? I mean, there's some seriously good stuff here and some not so useful stuff as well -- but some of it is knowledge that should absolutely be preserved. What is the librarian's responsibility towards this material?)
This sort of thing also, you know, gives me something else to think about in case all my actual poems really are crap. *grin*
**********
Spring has finally, you know, sprung. Today it was 76 degrees, sunny, breezy, with a good chance of noisy thunderstorms tonight. The daffodils are blooming; there is the faintest brushstroke, light as breath, of green on the trees; and today I spotted a tiny bedraggled forsythia bush with tiny bedraggled bright yellow blossoms popping out on it. We've had a few warm springlike days already this year, but today was the first one where I could tell it was the kind of spring that brings summer along behind it. Although maybe that's because I booked a plane ticket for Provincetown today (yes, three months early, but the way gas prices are going I don't think it's going to get any cheaper) and so I have summer on the brain.
Summer on a college campus is lovely. Lots of twenty-two-year-olds wearing not very many clothes .
Oh, was that out loud?
Tuesday, March 29, 2005
The most mysterious rest
Peter mentioned the new journal Rock & Sling , and I wasn't going to bother looking since it's billed as a Christian-ish journal and, well, I'm not one of those. But I looked anyway, and I'm glad I did because it looks quite interesting (and I do deal with spirituality in my work sometimes, even borrowing from Christian imagery occasionally, so I just might have something to send them). But mostly, I just wanted to share this excerpt from an excerpt from an interview they did with Li-Young Lee -- something about this paragraph just made me stop in my tracks:
This is an entirely new way of thinking about lines and line breaks for me, and it's blowing my mind just a tiny little bit. (And interestingly enough, Li-Young Lee is coming here to read in a couple of weeks, so now I have a bit of something extra to listen for in his reading.)
When I took modern dance, lo these many years ago, there was a position my teacher called "constructive rest." It was a position of controlled relaxation, with limbs placed in positions where the pull of gravity would train them into good habits and work to stretch and limber them.
I think that periods of not-writing can, if you do it with thoughtful attention, serve as "constructive rest" too, and can be "full of meaning, and full of decision" as Lee says. What I love about what he says here is incorporating the idea of mystery -- which, when I took a workshop with Lucia Perillo a couple of years ago, was an idea she kept returning to and felt like something I needed to pay attention to. I once knew someone who was a new-age/psychic/spiritual worker, and she conducted a series of workshops called "Mystery School" -- and though I wasn't drawn to her particular spiritual path, I always have liked the idea of "mystery" in its religious or spiritual significance. Especially, I like the idea of accepting mystery, embracing the questions that can never be answered, embracing the very answerlessness of them. (My god, is that a word?)
But thinking about all this specifically in connection with the line-break ... thinking of the line-break as a measurable unit of not-writing, of constructive rest, of mystery and readiness -- a moment filled simultaneously with the mystery of silence and the intentionality of the poem.
And, of course, there is the rest in music as well, which is an essential part of the language of rhythm and time. Rhythm, like the heartbeat; and time, like mortality. And we're back to spirituality again.
I swear I'm not a religious woman, but my poetry sometimes feels it necessary to contradict me.
I feel as if this whole idea of the Sabbath, and the idea of rest, is built into poetry. The greatest Sabbath, the greatest peace, and the most mysterious rest that we can find in language is the rest at the end of a line; that pause at the end of a line is the most mysterious rest, or the most mysterious peace, or Sabbath, in the world. It’s all about the pauses, and it’s all about the rests. When we write poems, that’s what we’re working with, that’s the real medium, the rests between words, between two lines, between stanzas. All those rests, I feel like those are versions of Sabbath. By rest, I don’t mean flaccid rest, something dead, but I mean something that is very full, full of meaning, and full of decision. I’m thinking now of between words and at the ends of lines in poems that go anywhere, so it’s full of myriad directions and surprise and at the same time, resolution, and fullness, and emptiness, and, on the one hand, it’s full of expectation. So it’s full of Parousia. Full of waiting, on the one hand, and full of deep answering. And so I feel as if, when we write poems and we wrestle with line endings, we’re wrestling with spiritual matters.
This is an entirely new way of thinking about lines and line breaks for me, and it's blowing my mind just a tiny little bit. (And interestingly enough, Li-Young Lee is coming here to read in a couple of weeks, so now I have a bit of something extra to listen for in his reading.)
When I took modern dance, lo these many years ago, there was a position my teacher called "constructive rest." It was a position of controlled relaxation, with limbs placed in positions where the pull of gravity would train them into good habits and work to stretch and limber them.
I think that periods of not-writing can, if you do it with thoughtful attention, serve as "constructive rest" too, and can be "full of meaning, and full of decision" as Lee says. What I love about what he says here is incorporating the idea of mystery -- which, when I took a workshop with Lucia Perillo a couple of years ago, was an idea she kept returning to and felt like something I needed to pay attention to. I once knew someone who was a new-age/psychic/spiritual worker, and she conducted a series of workshops called "Mystery School" -- and though I wasn't drawn to her particular spiritual path, I always have liked the idea of "mystery" in its religious or spiritual significance. Especially, I like the idea of accepting mystery, embracing the questions that can never be answered, embracing the very answerlessness of them. (My god, is that a word?)
But thinking about all this specifically in connection with the line-break ... thinking of the line-break as a measurable unit of not-writing, of constructive rest, of mystery and readiness -- a moment filled simultaneously with the mystery of silence and the intentionality of the poem.
And, of course, there is the rest in music as well, which is an essential part of the language of rhythm and time. Rhythm, like the heartbeat; and time, like mortality. And we're back to spirituality again.
I swear I'm not a religious woman, but my poetry sometimes feels it necessary to contradict me.
Monday, March 28, 2005
Hitting snags
I don't think I'm the only poet who has ever gone through a phase of thinking "wow, everything I've written is crap." At least, I hope I'm not the only one, and I hope it's not just that I'm right and everything I've written is crap!
Sure, an acceptance would help -- preferably with a nice little note from an editor praising my work -- but other than sending out a bunch of stuff, hopefully to more or less appropriate markets, I can't make that happen. (And I do have a bunch of stuff out right now.)
Failing that, anyone have any tricks that work for them? (If this ever happens to you, that is.) How to I trick myself into believing in my work again, at least long enough to get motivated to sit down and write some more?
Oh, I know this will pass on its own, but I'm impatient.
Sure, an acceptance would help -- preferably with a nice little note from an editor praising my work -- but other than sending out a bunch of stuff, hopefully to more or less appropriate markets, I can't make that happen. (And I do have a bunch of stuff out right now.)
Failing that, anyone have any tricks that work for them? (If this ever happens to you, that is.) How to I trick myself into believing in my work again, at least long enough to get motivated to sit down and write some more?
Oh, I know this will pass on its own, but I'm impatient.
Saturday, March 26, 2005
bad poet, no donut
So I skipped the Barbara Hamby/David Kirby reading today, for which I feel a bit guilty, especially after my little rant about how the local poets & the MFA folks need to support each other's efforts. But Jenny Kander (local poet who hosts a couple of radio shows, edits anthologies, and does other good stuff) had invited several of us over to have a bit of a discussion group about journaling (ok, ok, journal keeping!) and rather than blow out of there early to catch the reading, I decided to stay and continue the discussion. This is, apparently, going to evolve into an ongoing group, sort of a salon-type thing.
I brought up blogging and online journaling; some of the folks there were intrigued & wanted to know more (and if any of you are reading this, hi!) and some felt that they just didn't want to spend that kind of time online. Which I can kind of understand -- hello, it is a bit of a time-sink -- although I have discovered a number of wonderful poets, some of my fellow bloggers definitely included, who I might otherwise not have stumbled across.
Also: got a postcard from Calyx today, informing me that two of my poems have made their second cut. I feel really good about this, because I love Calyx. The final decision won't be made for another 5-6 months though. Gotta love feminist collectives. (And to be honest, I do love them.) They're good about staying in touch though -- I got a postcard right before Christmas to say my packet had made the first cut, and now they've let me know which two poems they are specifically (potentially) interested in, so I can send the others elsewhere. So I'll forgive them for their slooooow editorial process.
Happy Easter tomorrow, to those of you who celebrate it!
I brought up blogging and online journaling; some of the folks there were intrigued & wanted to know more (and if any of you are reading this, hi!) and some felt that they just didn't want to spend that kind of time online. Which I can kind of understand -- hello, it is a bit of a time-sink -- although I have discovered a number of wonderful poets, some of my fellow bloggers definitely included, who I might otherwise not have stumbled across.
Also: got a postcard from Calyx today, informing me that two of my poems have made their second cut. I feel really good about this, because I love Calyx. The final decision won't be made for another 5-6 months though. Gotta love feminist collectives. (And to be honest, I do love them.) They're good about staying in touch though -- I got a postcard right before Christmas to say my packet had made the first cut, and now they've let me know which two poems they are specifically (potentially) interested in, so I can send the others elsewhere. So I'll forgive them for their slooooow editorial process.
Happy Easter tomorrow, to those of you who celebrate it!
Friday, March 25, 2005
Tonight's reading
Poetry reading at the Runcible Spoon tonight, featuring local poets Jen Derosa, Sara Jane Stoner (third-year IU MFA student), Jacqueline Jones LaMon (second-year IU MFA student), and Alyce Miller (IU MFA fiction faculty) followed by an open-mic. It was billed as a "women's history month" reading, and the idea was that open-mic readers would be reading work by women, but that didn't quite happen -- a couple of men got up and read poems by women, which was fine, but then several men got up and read their own stuff, seemingly oblivious to the general theme of the evening. In fairness to them, I'm not 100% certain it was made clear that the open-mic was supposed to be an extension, thematically, of the main reading; if it had been "a reading featuring four poets from the MFA program followed by an open-mic" I don't think anyone, myself included, would have assumed the open-mic was only supposed to be MFA poets or work by them. It was pretty clear in this morning's newspaper article that the open-mic was for work by women, but people may not have read that. And for those of us who've been a part of the feminist movement, and who "get" that a Women's History Month reading would, well, be expected to feature the work of women, it was pretty clear. But apparently not everyone got the memo. A couple of people got pretty pissed-off about this.
That issue aside, it was a nice little reading; the room was full (although Alyce Miller left immediately after finishing her part of the reading, not sticking around to hear anyone else -- hopefully she had somewhere she needed to be and wasn't just being rude), and I enjoyed the featured readers and some of the open-mic. These readings happen every fourth Friday at the Runcible Spoon, and it's one of the few venues that often draws both community folks & MFA-ers. There is generally a pretty big brick wall between the MFA program and local non-MFA or non-IU-affiliated writers, as evidenced by the fact that when big-name poets come to read, like Molly Peacock a year or two ago, it's barely publicized at all outside the confines of the English department (and to be fair, few non-IU folks make the effort to find out about or attend MFA-program-sponsored events). I have a big beef with this, as I believe pretty strongly that good writing can be found both within and outside of MFA programs & that each of those factions can learn something from the other. I think there is more town/gown interaction now than there used to be a few years ago, though.
Anyway, I read 2 poems in the open-mic, both new ones that I'm still working on. As I was reading them I could hear where the energy dropped, places where I need to revise. Here's one of the two (comments are welcome):
The Barren Woman
[poem deleted 04-06-2005; comment here if you missed it & would like to see it]
That issue aside, it was a nice little reading; the room was full (although Alyce Miller left immediately after finishing her part of the reading, not sticking around to hear anyone else -- hopefully she had somewhere she needed to be and wasn't just being rude), and I enjoyed the featured readers and some of the open-mic. These readings happen every fourth Friday at the Runcible Spoon, and it's one of the few venues that often draws both community folks & MFA-ers. There is generally a pretty big brick wall between the MFA program and local non-MFA or non-IU-affiliated writers, as evidenced by the fact that when big-name poets come to read, like Molly Peacock a year or two ago, it's barely publicized at all outside the confines of the English department (and to be fair, few non-IU folks make the effort to find out about or attend MFA-program-sponsored events). I have a big beef with this, as I believe pretty strongly that good writing can be found both within and outside of MFA programs & that each of those factions can learn something from the other. I think there is more town/gown interaction now than there used to be a few years ago, though.
Anyway, I read 2 poems in the open-mic, both new ones that I'm still working on. As I was reading them I could hear where the energy dropped, places where I need to revise. Here's one of the two (comments are welcome):
The Barren Woman
[poem deleted 04-06-2005; comment here if you missed it & would like to see it]
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