Indiana U. Writers' Conference reading schedule (Sunday through Thursday of next week, June 11-15): http://www.indiana.edu/~writecon/schedule.html (scroll down past the workshops and classes)
And the Fine Arts Work Center has finally posted at least some of their summer readings/events: http://www.fawc.org/events/index.shtm
If you're within driving/ferry distance of Provincetown, check this schedule -- there's a lot of good stuff! And yes, of course I will sign up for the student reading on the 22nd. Me? Pass up a chance to get up in front of people and force them to listen to me for a minute or two? Hell no. *grin*
The Stanley Kunitz memorial will be on July 29 (a Saturday) at 11 am, with a broadsides exhibition & reading the following evening. I bet that will be a Big Event. If I win the lottery between now & then, I'm buying a plane ticket...
Tuesday, June 06, 2006
Saturday, June 03, 2006
Quiet
Today I was supposed to go to a monthly journaling discussion group, which I usually enjoy a great deal, and I'd intended to go to a late-afternoon concert in the park featuring several local women musicians. I skipped out on both, though -- after the last couple of weeks, I desperately need this weekend just to get myself together and prepare for the heavy-duty, high-energy writing push that I intend to experience in Provincetown. So I have spent the day watching tennis, snuggling up with the cats (who have both been ridiculously affectionate -- even more so than usual, and they are both lovey cats -- today), and napping. There is no nap more restorative than one taken in the sunshine, with a sacked-out cat draped across one's chest, purring in one's face. Unless, of course, one is allergic to cats, in which case I guess it wouldn't be terribly restorative at all. Thank goodness I'm not. Cats are such creatures of comfort, and their sense of comfort is contagious.I have not even touched my paper journal since closing down "my" branch library, having a birthday, spending the long weekend at my mom's, and starting my new job. Sometimes when I haven't written about stuff, I don't quite know how I feel about it. Now that I seem to be finished napping, I think writing is next on my agenda. Once I've written a bit I think I will feel less scattershot. Sure hope so anyway.
Provincetown plans are coming together. I had a brief panic when I found that most of the B&B's there are requiring a three-night minimum stay on June weekends these days, and I'd planned to stay at FAWC through Friday night, then move to a B&B Saturday and Sunday after my workshop ends -- I'm going on an all day whale watch that Saturday, which should be great fun. As it turns out, someone I've known online for a number of years (and her husband) will be driving from Boston to Provincetown to join me on the whale watch, so we've jointly reserved a room -- they'll take Friday night, then I can drop my bags there Saturday morning before the whale watch and I'll take the room Saturday and Sunday nights. It should work out beautifully, and I'm also pretty excited to meet this person in "real life" for the first time. Plus, after a week of eating/breathing/sleeping poetry, it will be good to spend a day out on the ocean doing something entirely non-literary. And then the next day, Sunday, I plan on going to the beach and just being a lazy bum all day.
All I have to do now is reserve my spot on the Boston-to-Provincetown ferry, and my spot in the airport parking lot. Two weeks from tomorrow I will drive my car to the airport, take the shuttle bus from the parking lot to the airport proper, fly to one city, change planes and fly to another city, take the bus to the water transportation, take the water taxi to the ferry dock, take the ferry across the bay, and then most likely (since I will have an unreasonable number of bags, what with my laptop and the fact that I have to bring my own sheets and towels) take a taxi to the Fine Arts Work Center. That's a lot of transportation. And I look forward to being transported.
I can't wait to feel the ocean breathing in my ear.
Thursday, June 01, 2006
Tired.
The last couple of weeks have been entirely exhausting, as I've gotten the branch library I used to coordinate closed down and have moved into my new position (currently in temporary desk space until someone else vacates her space mid-summer). I will like my new job, I think; one of my next tasks is actually to come up with my own job title, which amuses me greatly. I will be doing lots of instructional writing and creating documentation, among other things, and working a couple shifts a week on a busy reference desk serving primarily undergraduates, and some other stuff as well -- it started out feeling like a real hodgepodge, but I'm starting to see how it all really fits together and all belongs in the same job description. It's an evolving thing, for sure.
And exhausting. Every night this week I've crashed out on the couch for a lengthy evening nap. I haven't written a poem in at least three weeks now. Which is bad timing, as it will be best for me to go to Provincetown (just over two weeks away!) with fresh writing in hand and in an energetic writing mode. I am hoping to recuperate this weekend, do some reading which will hopefully spark a new draft or two. If all else fails, I do have a pile of poems from April that still need work -- and I may well take one or two of those along (we're supposed to bring 3 poems to workshop with enough copies for everyone), but I also want to be in the midst of productivity when I arrive, because then I will be ready to start working hard the moment I get there instead of taking a day or two to get into the swing of it.
So this weekend's agenda is a reunion with the Muse. Anyone who's ever been in a long-distance relationship knows how lovely reunion sex can be; hopefully reunion poetry will be as good. :)
We shall see.
Meanwhile, it's raining.
And exhausting. Every night this week I've crashed out on the couch for a lengthy evening nap. I haven't written a poem in at least three weeks now. Which is bad timing, as it will be best for me to go to Provincetown (just over two weeks away!) with fresh writing in hand and in an energetic writing mode. I am hoping to recuperate this weekend, do some reading which will hopefully spark a new draft or two. If all else fails, I do have a pile of poems from April that still need work -- and I may well take one or two of those along (we're supposed to bring 3 poems to workshop with enough copies for everyone), but I also want to be in the midst of productivity when I arrive, because then I will be ready to start working hard the moment I get there instead of taking a day or two to get into the swing of it.
So this weekend's agenda is a reunion with the Muse. Anyone who's ever been in a long-distance relationship knows how lovely reunion sex can be; hopefully reunion poetry will be as good. :)
We shall see.
Meanwhile, it's raining.
Sunday, May 28, 2006
Insert cliche here
Today I am forty-five years old. Which is halfway to ninety, a number I do not even remotely expect to see. I am acutely aware that I don't have all the time in the world.
This year is "shit or get off the pot year." (I just typed "shit or get off the poet" which may be painfully apropos.)
Driving up to my mom's this afternoon, I counted fifteen turkey vultures before I gave up and stopped counting. They were everywhere, soaring over woods and fields and roadkill, soaking up the hot sun on their broad black fingery wings.
This year is "shit or get off the pot year." (I just typed "shit or get off the poet" which may be painfully apropos.)
Driving up to my mom's this afternoon, I counted fifteen turkey vultures before I gave up and stopped counting. They were everywhere, soaring over woods and fields and roadkill, soaking up the hot sun on their broad black fingery wings.
Friday, May 26, 2006
13 weird things about me
This one's going around and it looks kind of fun. It was supposed to be "13 things for a Thursday" but it's Friday. Deal. ;)
1. Although I have been told I sound taller online, I am only 5 foot 1. (And a half.)
2. I studied karate (U.S. Kyokushin style) for about seven years in my twenties, got as far as second degree brown belt, and was at one point the senior assistant instructor in my dojo.
3. When I was a small child I often slept with my head underneath my pillow. This was because I was certain that burglars would break into the house someday, and if my head was underneath my pillow they would not know I was awake and they would thus not have to kill me.
4. My first job other than babysitting was working in a zoo. I worked in the concession stand and I was also a "Volunteer Zoo Guide" in the petting area, where I frequently had to explain to small children that the little brown things on the ground behind the goats were not raisins and should not be eaten.
5. I am 25% Bolivian.
6. I once set my hair on fire at a poetry reading during the intermission by casually leaning against a table on which there were burning candles.
7. The movie "Whale Rider" makes me cry even though I have seen it at least 6 or 8 times.
8. I didn't learn to drive until I was 29 years old.
9. I saw the ocean for the first time when I was 20 years old.
10. I fall in love with places much more easily than with people.
11. Lately I have been calling my long-haired cat "Mister Fluffypants." He does not actually wear pants, at least not when I'm looking.
12. I studied Latin for a year in high school. The only sentence I can come up with now in that language is "Rana est in urna." (The frog is in the water jar.)
13. I love all the trappings of academia, from libraries to fresh notebooks for a new semester to the pomp and circumstance of graduation and honors ceremonies. I joke that I'm sometimes tempted to pursue a doctorate solely so I can get hooded, but there's a little grain of truth in that.
14. (Ooh! Special extra bonus fact!) In elementary school I played the violin until I broke my arm and couldn't practice for months and got behind everyone else. To this day I'd likely trade all my other talents, such as they are, for music. Especially if it meant a fabulous singing voice.
1. Although I have been told I sound taller online, I am only 5 foot 1. (And a half.)
2. I studied karate (U.S. Kyokushin style) for about seven years in my twenties, got as far as second degree brown belt, and was at one point the senior assistant instructor in my dojo.
3. When I was a small child I often slept with my head underneath my pillow. This was because I was certain that burglars would break into the house someday, and if my head was underneath my pillow they would not know I was awake and they would thus not have to kill me.
4. My first job other than babysitting was working in a zoo. I worked in the concession stand and I was also a "Volunteer Zoo Guide" in the petting area, where I frequently had to explain to small children that the little brown things on the ground behind the goats were not raisins and should not be eaten.
5. I am 25% Bolivian.
6. I once set my hair on fire at a poetry reading during the intermission by casually leaning against a table on which there were burning candles.
7. The movie "Whale Rider" makes me cry even though I have seen it at least 6 or 8 times.
8. I didn't learn to drive until I was 29 years old.
9. I saw the ocean for the first time when I was 20 years old.
10. I fall in love with places much more easily than with people.
11. Lately I have been calling my long-haired cat "Mister Fluffypants." He does not actually wear pants, at least not when I'm looking.
12. I studied Latin for a year in high school. The only sentence I can come up with now in that language is "Rana est in urna." (The frog is in the water jar.)
13. I love all the trappings of academia, from libraries to fresh notebooks for a new semester to the pomp and circumstance of graduation and honors ceremonies. I joke that I'm sometimes tempted to pursue a doctorate solely so I can get hooded, but there's a little grain of truth in that.
14. (Ooh! Special extra bonus fact!) In elementary school I played the violin until I broke my arm and couldn't practice for months and got behind everyone else. To this day I'd likely trade all my other talents, such as they are, for music. Especially if it meant a fabulous singing voice.
Monday, May 22, 2006
IU Writers' Conference
The Indiana University Writers' Conference is coming up in about three weeks, right here in lovely Bloomington. I am not attending the conference this year, though I've had some good experiences there in the past -- nothing that's felt as pivotal as last year's workshop in P-town, but I've had excellent teachers like Carolyn Kizer, Cleopatra Mathis, and Lucia Perillo.
Anyway, the evening reading series is free and open to the public, so I will probably attend most or maybe all of those. Here's the schedule for anyone who might be within driving distance and interested in catching some good readings. Looks like they have a new location this year, in the Chemistry Building (next to Ballantine Hall, if you're familiar with the IU campus) -- not sure why they aren't using the normal location in the Union building this year -- that's odd.
Like last year, the IUWC takes place right before I go to Provincetown. June will be poetry overload month for me, for sure. And hooray for that.
Anyway, the evening reading series is free and open to the public, so I will probably attend most or maybe all of those. Here's the schedule for anyone who might be within driving distance and interested in catching some good readings. Looks like they have a new location this year, in the Chemistry Building (next to Ballantine Hall, if you're familiar with the IU campus) -- not sure why they aren't using the normal location in the Union building this year -- that's odd.
Like last year, the IUWC takes place right before I go to Provincetown. June will be poetry overload month for me, for sure. And hooray for that.
Saturday, May 20, 2006
Carl Phillips
Really nice, lengthy article on Carl Phillips from the Riverfront Times -- thanks to Jilly Dybka over at Poetry Hut Blog for this one. (If you don't visit the Poetry Hut, I recommend it; Jilly does a great job of collecting interesting poetry-related articles from all over the place.)
Phillips will be teaching at the Fine Arts Work Center the week I'm there, so I will at least get to hear him read, and I hope to get a chance to chat with him a bit. I know two people who'll be in his workshop, so with any luck I'll get to hear a lot about how it goes. I haven't picked up his newest book yet; I'll probably buy it out there.
What I like about reading his work is the idea that it's okay to write these long, convoluted, syntactically complicated sentences in a poem -- something I've tried to steer myself away from, as I have a tendency to get long and convoluted (or at least overly parenthetical) myself; maybe it's time to try giving myself free rein and see where it goes. Maybe I will try to write a two-page poem that is all one sentence, just to see what happens. Muahaha (evil laughter).
* * * * *
I bought myself an adorable little portable USB hard drive today. 80GB of storage, which is four times the size of my laptop's hard drive. Now I just need to stay in the habit of backing stuff up religiously. If you store your writing on computer (or your photos, or music, or whatever) please, please back it up somewhere. You won't ever regret it.
(I also have one of those cute little USB flash drives, about the size of a pack of gum, which holds every poem I have ever written. This just boggles my little middle-aged mind. It's a wonderful feeling, though, when I'm packing the cats down to the basement for a tornado warning, to know that all I have to do is stick that puppy in my pocket and no matter what blows through, I will still have all my words. I used to worry what would happen if I had to evacuate and didn't have time to pack up the half-dozen fat three-ring binders that held typed copies of all my poems, or what if my house burned down when I wasn't home, etc. It is also nice to be able to take everything with me when I travel. You young people who take technology more for granted probably find yourselves amused by how mind-boggled I am by this stuff. But I started writing back when electric typewriters were relatively new technology. So being able to keep some 1300+ poems on a doohickey the size of a pack of gum... I think I have to go lie down now.)
* * * * *
Today, I hate horse racing. Prayers for Barbaro.
Phillips will be teaching at the Fine Arts Work Center the week I'm there, so I will at least get to hear him read, and I hope to get a chance to chat with him a bit. I know two people who'll be in his workshop, so with any luck I'll get to hear a lot about how it goes. I haven't picked up his newest book yet; I'll probably buy it out there.
What I like about reading his work is the idea that it's okay to write these long, convoluted, syntactically complicated sentences in a poem -- something I've tried to steer myself away from, as I have a tendency to get long and convoluted (or at least overly parenthetical) myself; maybe it's time to try giving myself free rein and see where it goes. Maybe I will try to write a two-page poem that is all one sentence, just to see what happens. Muahaha (evil laughter).
* * * * *
I bought myself an adorable little portable USB hard drive today. 80GB of storage, which is four times the size of my laptop's hard drive. Now I just need to stay in the habit of backing stuff up religiously. If you store your writing on computer (or your photos, or music, or whatever) please, please back it up somewhere. You won't ever regret it.
(I also have one of those cute little USB flash drives, about the size of a pack of gum, which holds every poem I have ever written. This just boggles my little middle-aged mind. It's a wonderful feeling, though, when I'm packing the cats down to the basement for a tornado warning, to know that all I have to do is stick that puppy in my pocket and no matter what blows through, I will still have all my words. I used to worry what would happen if I had to evacuate and didn't have time to pack up the half-dozen fat three-ring binders that held typed copies of all my poems, or what if my house burned down when I wasn't home, etc. It is also nice to be able to take everything with me when I travel. You young people who take technology more for granted probably find yourselves amused by how mind-boggled I am by this stuff. But I started writing back when electric typewriters were relatively new technology. So being able to keep some 1300+ poems on a doohickey the size of a pack of gum... I think I have to go lie down now.)
* * * * *
Today, I hate horse racing. Prayers for Barbaro.
Friday, May 19, 2006
And the Lammy goes to...
The Lambda Literary Awards for GLBT literature were announced the other night. Poetry winners were:
Gay Men's Poetry
Crush by Richard Siken (Yale)
Lesbian Poetry
Directed by Desire: Collected Poems by June Jordan (Copper Canyon)
If anyone wants to see the complete list of winners (doesn't look like it's up on their website yet), let me know and I can email it to you...
* * * * *
Chaotic work day. My branch library closes for good one week from today. They are already starting to dismantle bookshelves and haul away filing cabinets, etc. Next week will be pretty crazy. Then I turn forty-five. Then it's almost time to go to Provincetown.
Every ten years I seem to hit a "reassess my life" point. It happened at twenty-five, at thirty-five, and guess what. The next few months should be interesting.
* * * * *
"Interesting" can mean a lot of different things.
I guess we'll find out.
Gay Men's Poetry
Crush by Richard Siken (Yale)
Lesbian Poetry
Directed by Desire: Collected Poems by June Jordan (Copper Canyon)
If anyone wants to see the complete list of winners (doesn't look like it's up on their website yet), let me know and I can email it to you...
* * * * *
Chaotic work day. My branch library closes for good one week from today. They are already starting to dismantle bookshelves and haul away filing cabinets, etc. Next week will be pretty crazy. Then I turn forty-five. Then it's almost time to go to Provincetown.
Every ten years I seem to hit a "reassess my life" point. It happened at twenty-five, at thirty-five, and guess what. The next few months should be interesting.
* * * * *
"Interesting" can mean a lot of different things.
I guess we'll find out.
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
Like the commercial says...
...when you're #2, you try harder.
Had a lovely voicemail from the Fine Arts Work Center today to let me know I was selected as the first runner-up for the Agha Shahid Ali scholarship. (Remember when I was asking about artistic resumes a while back? That's what it was for -- they needed that, and a brief statement, and of course a manuscript.) Apparently it was pretty tough competition, with some 60 applicants for the one scholarship. Too bad they don't have more to give out, but it does feel good to know that in some way I am at least playing on the right field, that at least the judges didn't read my manuscript and say "*snerk* yeah right. Next?" This feels like an affirmation -- a welcoming. I'm pleased.
And yes, scholarship or no, I'm still going -- even if I have to fund it the good old-fashioned American way. That's why God invented credit cards, right? *grin*
* * * * *
Also: Today's poem on Verse Daily caused me to make unseemly noises. Who is Alison Apothecker and where can I find some more of her work? WOW.
I really need to get around to subscribing to Crab Orchard Review (where this poem first appeared).
Had a lovely voicemail from the Fine Arts Work Center today to let me know I was selected as the first runner-up for the Agha Shahid Ali scholarship. (Remember when I was asking about artistic resumes a while back? That's what it was for -- they needed that, and a brief statement, and of course a manuscript.) Apparently it was pretty tough competition, with some 60 applicants for the one scholarship. Too bad they don't have more to give out, but it does feel good to know that in some way I am at least playing on the right field, that at least the judges didn't read my manuscript and say "*snerk* yeah right. Next?" This feels like an affirmation -- a welcoming. I'm pleased.
And yes, scholarship or no, I'm still going -- even if I have to fund it the good old-fashioned American way. That's why God invented credit cards, right? *grin*
* * * * *
Also: Today's poem on Verse Daily caused me to make unseemly noises. Who is Alison Apothecker and where can I find some more of her work? WOW.
I really need to get around to subscribing to Crab Orchard Review (where this poem first appeared).
Monday, May 15, 2006
Finale
Anyone else catch the shout-out to Jimmy Santiago Baca on last night's West Wing series finale?
Man, I'm gonna miss that show.
Man, I'm gonna miss that show.
Sad news...
Stanley Kunitz, 1905-2006
I never actually met him, but was fortunate enough to hear him read in August of 2003, at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, in the room named for him. Being there was a true gift. So many of us owe so much to him.
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
to its feast of losses?
__________
Links:
Poetry Foundation (includes links to other sources)
Saturday, May 13, 2006
Full
Few things can make me feel as deeply peaceful as a good meal in a quiet place. I just got back from a late brunch at the Runcible Spoon, where I've been going for years and years (probably the first time I went there was in 1980 or so). I had their Weekend Special, which consists of: two eggs cooked however you want them (I had mine over medium); two pieces of toast with jam or appple butter; bacon or sausage or home fries or maybe there was one other choice (they were out of home fries, but I always get the bacon because their bacon is, for some reason, always perfect); and two pieces of French toast or one pancake (the pancake I had today was maybe the most humongous pancake I have ever had at the Spoon -- not only was it bigger than Julie Dill's head, it was the size of a large dinner plate and a full half-inch thick) with butter and maple syrup. And lots of good coffee. All for under ten bucks.
(Since some of the keys on my elderly laptop are a bit recalcitrant, I almost told you that my pancake came with male syrup. That would have been a different sort of meal entirely.)
For some reason the Spoon is the perfect place to be on a rainy afternoon. There are plants in the windows and fish in the bathtub, and instead of feeling gloomy it feels cozy. Plus I had one of the better, long-time waitrons, as opposed to the one I had last weekend who dropped my jam (I'd asked for apple butter, but whatever) and never brought me a new one, and had to be prompted for silverware. I wrote in my journal for a while before my food arrived, and then while I ate I started reading an interesting history of Provincetown. (I bought it last summer at Now Voyager bookstore in P-town, but am just now getting around to reading it.)
Although I visited Provincetown once in the summer of... hm, 1982 or 1983, I guess (for a women's martial arts camp), I didn't fall in love with the town until I spent a week there, alone, in June 2001. It was a wonderful, relaxing, energizing week which I credit for helping to bring me back to a place where I could write again after several years of not writing much at all. I know that in many ways it is past its heyday. People like me -- lower-middle-class folks, people who can't spend much money on things like vacations -- can barely afford to spend a week there, and it's no longer the kind of town where a starvingartist* can find refuge in a cottage or a dune shack just being an artist/writer, not without working a couple of jobs to pay the bills or being sponsored in some way. And the Portuguese fishing families that settled the town many decades ago? They can barely afford to live there anymore either, and many of them have given up and left. While it is still a town that welcomes the artist, the odd character, the queer in whatever sense of the word you choose, it's also a town that has gentrified itself almost beyond recognition in some ways. I'll never, unless I win the lottery (and a pretty substantial one at that), be able to afford a house there, not even a little three-room apartment.
And yet that town still reeks of magic for me. Partly it's the ocean and the air and the light -- things no amount of gentrification can eradicate. Partly it's the sense of literary and artistic tradition that pervades the place. Partly it's the joyous queerness of it all -- you gotta love a town where the sight of drag queens on rollerblades gliding down the middle of the main street is an everyday occurrence. It's a place that values independence, and is home to very few chain establishments -- there's a Ben & Jerry's, and a small Subway, and as far as I know that's about it. It's a small town, with big white church steeples and the sense of being reasonably safe walking back to your room at midnight after spending a few hours drinking beers at the Squealing Pig or eating a slice of pizza at Spiritus or window shopping or listening to music or just hanging out watching the nightly parade.
It's a place where, for so many reasons, I feel safe letting my inside be my outside. I get that sometimes in Bloomington, because it's home here, but it's different. And yes, the fact that I don't live in Provincetown -- that I can go there and be whoever I am and then walk away from it -- probably helps. It's like writing a poem every day: wonderful for short periods of time, but I probably couldn't live that way forever. (Although I do often feel that, if not for the money and the having to work for a living part, I would be very happy to live in Provincetown. If I ever win that big-ass lottery, I'll find out. At the very least, I do hope to spend some time there in the winter, before too long -- or at least the fall or spring; well outside of tourist season anyway.)
So that's today: loving my town, eating a good meal in a restaurant I've frequented for twenty-five years or so, watching it rain, dreaming of another town I also love. I think I fall in love with places more than I do with people.
Also: Lotus kitten would like to announce that his Loudest Purr can be heard well into the next county. I guess he likes it here. :)
__________
* In Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh, Harriet's father is always saying "starvingartist" or "starvingwriter." She writes in her notebook, "Are rich people ever going to grow up to be writers or are writers all like Mr. Rocque with no money? My father is always saying starvingartist or starvingwriter. Maybe I better reduce."
(Since some of the keys on my elderly laptop are a bit recalcitrant, I almost told you that my pancake came with male syrup. That would have been a different sort of meal entirely.)
For some reason the Spoon is the perfect place to be on a rainy afternoon. There are plants in the windows and fish in the bathtub, and instead of feeling gloomy it feels cozy. Plus I had one of the better, long-time waitrons, as opposed to the one I had last weekend who dropped my jam (I'd asked for apple butter, but whatever) and never brought me a new one, and had to be prompted for silverware. I wrote in my journal for a while before my food arrived, and then while I ate I started reading an interesting history of Provincetown. (I bought it last summer at Now Voyager bookstore in P-town, but am just now getting around to reading it.)
Although I visited Provincetown once in the summer of... hm, 1982 or 1983, I guess (for a women's martial arts camp), I didn't fall in love with the town until I spent a week there, alone, in June 2001. It was a wonderful, relaxing, energizing week which I credit for helping to bring me back to a place where I could write again after several years of not writing much at all. I know that in many ways it is past its heyday. People like me -- lower-middle-class folks, people who can't spend much money on things like vacations -- can barely afford to spend a week there, and it's no longer the kind of town where a starvingartist* can find refuge in a cottage or a dune shack just being an artist/writer, not without working a couple of jobs to pay the bills or being sponsored in some way. And the Portuguese fishing families that settled the town many decades ago? They can barely afford to live there anymore either, and many of them have given up and left. While it is still a town that welcomes the artist, the odd character, the queer in whatever sense of the word you choose, it's also a town that has gentrified itself almost beyond recognition in some ways. I'll never, unless I win the lottery (and a pretty substantial one at that), be able to afford a house there, not even a little three-room apartment.And yet that town still reeks of magic for me. Partly it's the ocean and the air and the light -- things no amount of gentrification can eradicate. Partly it's the sense of literary and artistic tradition that pervades the place. Partly it's the joyous queerness of it all -- you gotta love a town where the sight of drag queens on rollerblades gliding down the middle of the main street is an everyday occurrence. It's a place that values independence, and is home to very few chain establishments -- there's a Ben & Jerry's, and a small Subway, and as far as I know that's about it. It's a small town, with big white church steeples and the sense of being reasonably safe walking back to your room at midnight after spending a few hours drinking beers at the Squealing Pig or eating a slice of pizza at Spiritus or window shopping or listening to music or just hanging out watching the nightly parade.
It's a place where, for so many reasons, I feel safe letting my inside be my outside. I get that sometimes in Bloomington, because it's home here, but it's different. And yes, the fact that I don't live in Provincetown -- that I can go there and be whoever I am and then walk away from it -- probably helps. It's like writing a poem every day: wonderful for short periods of time, but I probably couldn't live that way forever. (Although I do often feel that, if not for the money and the having to work for a living part, I would be very happy to live in Provincetown. If I ever win that big-ass lottery, I'll find out. At the very least, I do hope to spend some time there in the winter, before too long -- or at least the fall or spring; well outside of tourist season anyway.)
So that's today: loving my town, eating a good meal in a restaurant I've frequented for twenty-five years or so, watching it rain, dreaming of another town I also love. I think I fall in love with places more than I do with people.
Also: Lotus kitten would like to announce that his Loudest Purr can be heard well into the next county. I guess he likes it here. :)
__________
* In Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh, Harriet's father is always saying "starvingartist" or "starvingwriter." She writes in her notebook, "Are rich people ever going to grow up to be writers or are writers all like Mr. Rocque with no money? My father is always saying starvingartist or starvingwriter. Maybe I better reduce."
Friday, May 12, 2006
They're playing torch songs on the radio
Do poems have to be about something important in order to be important poems?
I mean, no, I know they don't (red wheelbarrow? come on). And I've read (and written) so many poems that desperately want to be important, but fall on their faces from trying too hard.
But what makes a poem an "important poem"? What?
Discuss.
I mean, no, I know they don't (red wheelbarrow? come on). And I've read (and written) so many poems that desperately want to be important, but fall on their faces from trying too hard.
But what makes a poem an "important poem"? What?
Discuss.
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
All aboard...
The new issue of Boxcar Poetry Review is up, including my poem "Sugar Hits the Highway." This poem is one of a series I'm writing about a character named Sugar; in this one, she's apparently driving north on US 31, somewhere north of Peru, Indiana. :)
This journal may have given me a new submission-to-publication record; I emailed the poems to them on March 31, got the acceptance on April 20, and the issue is up today. Pretty impressive!
* * * * *
Also: Terrific Carl Phillips poem over on Poetry Daily today. Check it out.
This journal may have given me a new submission-to-publication record; I emailed the poems to them on March 31, got the acceptance on April 20, and the issue is up today. Pretty impressive!
* * * * *
Also: Terrific Carl Phillips poem over on Poetry Daily today. Check it out.
Sunday, May 07, 2006
April showers brought May pollen. Achoo!
Gorgeous weather yesterday. Gorgeous weather today. Supposed to be gorgeous weather tomorrow. Just about 70 degrees, sunny, some of those puffy clouds that look like alligator heads and buffaloes and sailing ships.
Yesterday: the Kentucky Derby. I usually watch it, though I no longer follow horse racing closely -- I used to, in my teenage-horse-crazy days. (I actually got to meet Secretariat once, and stroke his huge glossy shoulder.) Now I'm more aware of the class issues nobody on the screen is talking about, less caught up in the pure animal beauty of those shiny Thoroughbreds; now it's kind of like watching a rich-people party I know I'll never, ever be invited to. I catch myself deeply resenting rich people sometimes, when I realize the money they spend on one hat to wear to the Derby could pay for -- but never mind. The horses, the horses are still beautiful and muscular and fast.
Today: going to a party to celebrate a friend's daughter's graduation from college. It seems like it wasn't that long ago that it was me graduating from college, and now it's the children of friends. But it was that long ago: over twenty years now. Yikes! I've known this particular young woman since she was about two years old, so it's really cool to see her growing up and getting on with her life.
Tomorrow: I'm taking a vacation day. My branch library is closed for the oh-so-brief break between spring semester and the first day of summer session (spring finals ended Friday and summer classes begin on Tuesday). The rest of May is going to be nuts, since my branch closes for good on May 26th and there is much to do between now and then, so I decided to take a vacation day just to breathe first. I have a long list of chores that should be done, but what I really want to do is just read and write all day. Hopefully I can find some happy medium: get the oil changed, drop off stuff at Goodwill, do a bit of house cleaning, then indulge myself with words.
* * * * *
If you haven't seen Charlie's good news yet, go congratulate him! I like it when good poems (and these are very good poems) get recognition.
* * * * *
A thought-provoking short essay from Adrienne Rich in the Virginia Quarterly Review, about poetry and politics. I need to read it again, and more closely, but this:
* * * * *
Outside my window right now, up in the sky, a cloud that looks like a fat fish. Next to it, a cloud that looks like a fish skeleton.
And next to that, the sky's unbelievable blue.
Yesterday: the Kentucky Derby. I usually watch it, though I no longer follow horse racing closely -- I used to, in my teenage-horse-crazy days. (I actually got to meet Secretariat once, and stroke his huge glossy shoulder.) Now I'm more aware of the class issues nobody on the screen is talking about, less caught up in the pure animal beauty of those shiny Thoroughbreds; now it's kind of like watching a rich-people party I know I'll never, ever be invited to. I catch myself deeply resenting rich people sometimes, when I realize the money they spend on one hat to wear to the Derby could pay for -- but never mind. The horses, the horses are still beautiful and muscular and fast.
Today: going to a party to celebrate a friend's daughter's graduation from college. It seems like it wasn't that long ago that it was me graduating from college, and now it's the children of friends. But it was that long ago: over twenty years now. Yikes! I've known this particular young woman since she was about two years old, so it's really cool to see her growing up and getting on with her life.
Tomorrow: I'm taking a vacation day. My branch library is closed for the oh-so-brief break between spring semester and the first day of summer session (spring finals ended Friday and summer classes begin on Tuesday). The rest of May is going to be nuts, since my branch closes for good on May 26th and there is much to do between now and then, so I decided to take a vacation day just to breathe first. I have a long list of chores that should be done, but what I really want to do is just read and write all day. Hopefully I can find some happy medium: get the oil changed, drop off stuff at Goodwill, do a bit of house cleaning, then indulge myself with words.
* * * * *
If you haven't seen Charlie's good news yet, go congratulate him! I like it when good poems (and these are very good poems) get recognition.
* * * * *
A thought-provoking short essay from Adrienne Rich in the Virginia Quarterly Review, about poetry and politics. I need to read it again, and more closely, but this:
I need to reach beyond my interior decoration, biography. Art is a way of melting out through one’s own skin. “What, who is this about?” is not the essential question. A poem is not about; it is out of and to. Passionate language in movement. The deep structure is always musical, and physical—as breath, as pulse.That bit makes me say yes, yes, yes.
* * * * *
Outside my window right now, up in the sky, a cloud that looks like a fat fish. Next to it, a cloud that looks like a fish skeleton.
And next to that, the sky's unbelievable blue.
Thursday, May 04, 2006
My voice is very small
Sent off a chapbook manuscript today. I keep revising it and changing it and sending it here and there. Hey, everyone needs a hobby.
Watched "ER" tonight, which was set in Darfur. I know it's just TV. I know.
I am very lucky. Almost unconscionably so.
And so are you.
Watched "ER" tonight, which was set in Darfur. I know it's just TV. I know.
I am very lucky. Almost unconscionably so.
And so are you.
"The Poet of Provincetown"
Nice article in this week's Provincetown Banner about poet Harry Kemp, aka "The Poet of Provincetown." Apparently he was quite the character. At one point Upton Sinclair said he was the next Walt Whitman -- and today hardly anyone outside Provincetown remembers him.
I'm sure there is a lesson there about poetic fame'n'fortune, but at the moment I am too sleepy to extract it, so I'll just leave it at that.
I'm sure there is a lesson there about poetic fame'n'fortune, but at the moment I am too sleepy to extract it, so I'll just leave it at that.
Sunday, April 30, 2006
It's one of those nights...
Rain on the wind, quiet in the house. Thinking of people who aren't here.
[yes, there was a poem here... now it's gone. They do that.]
[yes, there was a poem here... now it's gone. They do that.]
Friday, April 28, 2006
Friday night in the big city
Tonight's monthly reading at the Runcible Spoon was good in a reassuring sort of way. Lately, when I pick up the local paper, I've felt like I wasn't in the right town -- there was a shooting in a park not far from me, and a couple of other gun-related incidents right smack downtown; plus that awful plane crash -- shootings and plane crashes just are not the Bloomington I know. But tonight was a very Bloomington night, and for that I am grateful.
Most of the readers/performers tonight are people I've known, one one level or another, for ages and ages. Dennis Sipe I don't know well at all, just from seeing him around at poetry stuff, but he's been around for quite a while. Shana Ritter is someone I met very soon after she first moved into town -- was it 1985 or 1986? -- she joined my writing group right after she arrived, and I've always loved her poetry. Tonight she read an old poem that we must have critiqued three or four times in that group, sometime in the eighties, and it was neat to hear it again. David Christman, who played several songs on the ukulele (yes, I said ukulele), lived in the same dorm I did when we were undergrads -- of course it was the hippie/artsy dorm, the Collins Living-Learning Center, and though he and I were never close friends we had lots of friends in common. Roger Mitchell was the other reader; I took a class from him as an undergrad & then some years later I sat in on his section of "Teaching Creative Writing" which was mostly full of first-year MFA students. You know, I don't think I appreciated any of my teachers nearly enough when I was an undergrad -- I guess people who are 19, 20 years old never really appreciate what they are learning, do they? You know everything when you're 19 and teachers just get in the way, those pesky assignments just take you away from writing the Great Art you are of course hell-bent upon committing.
Ugh. Thank goodness we all grow out of being 19, huh? And those of you who teach 19-year-olds, take heart -- some of us really do get around to appreciating our teachers eventually. I look back at my undergrad classes now, particularly with Roger Mitchell and Maura Stanton, and jeez, I was lucky to get to work with teachers like them. Those workshops were so much more important to me than I understood at the time, just for the sense of being around people who took poetry seriously -- and on occasion even took my poetry seriously.
Anyway, Roger read from two of his books (The Word for Everything and Delicate Bait), as well as work from his forthcoming book Half Mask and some other new work. He read the title poem from Delicate Bait, which I have to say is one of my very favorites of his. It's linked there. Go read it. Like many of his poems it's discursive, takes the long way round, uses a lot of commas and not-quite-parenthetical phrases, and then when you're not quite expecting it you get walloped upside the head. (I also have to admit that I love the poem partly because, although I don't know precisely where it is set, it could easily take place in my very favorite restaurant in the world on Maui, so it brings back a lovely memory of Mama's Fish House. Which has nothing to do with the poem, except that it evokes that particular atmosphere. And now I'm hungry for some macadamia-encrusted ahi, dammit.)
I signed up for the open mic and read two poems; was going to cut it to one because I felt like things were getting a little long, but what with all this napowrimo-ing I feel like I've got more new poems than I know what to do with, and I really wanted to read them both just for the sake of hearing them out loud in a room full of people, because that helps me revise. And we were allowed three minutes, and they were both short poems, so I read them both. The first one went over okay, I think; I could hear the places where it worked and some places where it lost energy a bit, but overall I think people heard it and got something from it. The second one was a funny poem, and people laughed where I wanted them to laugh, so you can't ask for more than that, huh? I think I will read that one again on Sunday at the BWWC benefit thingie.
(As a side note: I am really enjoying reading lately. I have to watch out lest I become one of those annoying spotlight hogs. It's funny though; I'm a fairly shy person, but give me a stage and a handful of poems, and I turn into a veritable Miss Piggy of a ham. It does feel good to enjoy it, though, and to feel comfortable instead of all stage-frighty and nervous like I used to be.)
Hung out and chatted with folks for a while afterwards, and you know what, it's getting a little weird with the "oh yeah, I read your blog" stuff. Hee. It's one thing when people I've never met read my blog, but when actual people I actually know are reading this thing -- it's a bit weird somehow. Makes me feel a bit self-conscious. Fellow bloggers, does that kind of thing ever feel weird to you? How do you handle it? Hey, I'm a poet; I'm not used to people actually reading what I write unless I hand it to them and say here. *grin* It's not a bad weird, it's just ... weird.
Anyway, then I gave my friend Tonia a ride home and came home myself, and have been sitting here listening to the cars out on the speedway -- apparently tonight is opening night. The speedway is a couple miles south of me, but I can always hear the cars. It's a small-town summer kind of sound, makes me think of getting ice cream at DQ and the way your skin feels at night when you've been out in the sun all day, so even though it's an obnoxious gas-guzzling noise, I kind of like it.
And now if you'll excuse me, I have a poem to write. Three more poems and I'll have made it for the whole month. Damned if I'm gonna slack off now.
Most of the readers/performers tonight are people I've known, one one level or another, for ages and ages. Dennis Sipe I don't know well at all, just from seeing him around at poetry stuff, but he's been around for quite a while. Shana Ritter is someone I met very soon after she first moved into town -- was it 1985 or 1986? -- she joined my writing group right after she arrived, and I've always loved her poetry. Tonight she read an old poem that we must have critiqued three or four times in that group, sometime in the eighties, and it was neat to hear it again. David Christman, who played several songs on the ukulele (yes, I said ukulele), lived in the same dorm I did when we were undergrads -- of course it was the hippie/artsy dorm, the Collins Living-Learning Center, and though he and I were never close friends we had lots of friends in common. Roger Mitchell was the other reader; I took a class from him as an undergrad & then some years later I sat in on his section of "Teaching Creative Writing" which was mostly full of first-year MFA students. You know, I don't think I appreciated any of my teachers nearly enough when I was an undergrad -- I guess people who are 19, 20 years old never really appreciate what they are learning, do they? You know everything when you're 19 and teachers just get in the way, those pesky assignments just take you away from writing the Great Art you are of course hell-bent upon committing.
Ugh. Thank goodness we all grow out of being 19, huh? And those of you who teach 19-year-olds, take heart -- some of us really do get around to appreciating our teachers eventually. I look back at my undergrad classes now, particularly with Roger Mitchell and Maura Stanton, and jeez, I was lucky to get to work with teachers like them. Those workshops were so much more important to me than I understood at the time, just for the sense of being around people who took poetry seriously -- and on occasion even took my poetry seriously.
Anyway, Roger read from two of his books (The Word for Everything and Delicate Bait), as well as work from his forthcoming book Half Mask and some other new work. He read the title poem from Delicate Bait, which I have to say is one of my very favorites of his. It's linked there. Go read it. Like many of his poems it's discursive, takes the long way round, uses a lot of commas and not-quite-parenthetical phrases, and then when you're not quite expecting it you get walloped upside the head. (I also have to admit that I love the poem partly because, although I don't know precisely where it is set, it could easily take place in my very favorite restaurant in the world on Maui, so it brings back a lovely memory of Mama's Fish House. Which has nothing to do with the poem, except that it evokes that particular atmosphere. And now I'm hungry for some macadamia-encrusted ahi, dammit.)
I signed up for the open mic and read two poems; was going to cut it to one because I felt like things were getting a little long, but what with all this napowrimo-ing I feel like I've got more new poems than I know what to do with, and I really wanted to read them both just for the sake of hearing them out loud in a room full of people, because that helps me revise. And we were allowed three minutes, and they were both short poems, so I read them both. The first one went over okay, I think; I could hear the places where it worked and some places where it lost energy a bit, but overall I think people heard it and got something from it. The second one was a funny poem, and people laughed where I wanted them to laugh, so you can't ask for more than that, huh? I think I will read that one again on Sunday at the BWWC benefit thingie.
(As a side note: I am really enjoying reading lately. I have to watch out lest I become one of those annoying spotlight hogs. It's funny though; I'm a fairly shy person, but give me a stage and a handful of poems, and I turn into a veritable Miss Piggy of a ham. It does feel good to enjoy it, though, and to feel comfortable instead of all stage-frighty and nervous like I used to be.)
Hung out and chatted with folks for a while afterwards, and you know what, it's getting a little weird with the "oh yeah, I read your blog" stuff. Hee. It's one thing when people I've never met read my blog, but when actual people I actually know are reading this thing -- it's a bit weird somehow. Makes me feel a bit self-conscious. Fellow bloggers, does that kind of thing ever feel weird to you? How do you handle it? Hey, I'm a poet; I'm not used to people actually reading what I write unless I hand it to them and say here. *grin* It's not a bad weird, it's just ... weird.
Anyway, then I gave my friend Tonia a ride home and came home myself, and have been sitting here listening to the cars out on the speedway -- apparently tonight is opening night. The speedway is a couple miles south of me, but I can always hear the cars. It's a small-town summer kind of sound, makes me think of getting ice cream at DQ and the way your skin feels at night when you've been out in the sun all day, so even though it's an obnoxious gas-guzzling noise, I kind of like it.
And now if you'll excuse me, I have a poem to write. Three more poems and I'll have made it for the whole month. Damned if I'm gonna slack off now.
Thursday, April 27, 2006
Dailiness, part 2
...to use poetry, not as a special set of glasses which you put on for doing close work, but as a way of seeing every day.
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
Blogging and dailiness
Like many of us around these parts, I occasionally stop and wonder whether blogging contributes to my "real" writing or detracts from it. (Well, most of you probably don't wonder whether blogging contributes to MY writing... you know what I mean.) And the truth is, although I don't spend that much time actually blogging -- I don't post every day or anything like that -- I do spend time reading all y'all's blogs, time which could probably be spent reading poems or actually writing or something.
But I've decided that, for now anyway, it works out to my benefit. When I first started this blog, I told myself that this was my writing blog. I may talk about other stuff in here, but I try to keep thoughts of writing/poetry at the center of it -- I try to think of myself as a writer, as a poet, here. And believe me, when you work 40 hours a week doing something else and come home to a messy house and cats who need attention and a tv that promises wonderful things will happen if you just park your butt on the couch and watch long enough, it's easy to forget to think of yourself as a writer. (As I've said before, nobody's going to come running after me begging for poems if I don't write.) So I come here and I read about other people's writing and I think about writing, think of myself as a writer, every day. It really does help to remind me that poetry is at the center of my life. And it works (sometimes to the detriment of other things in my life, not that there are that many other things in my life). Sometimes poetry feels like the only thing that really matters. And when I'm in that frame of mind, I'm bound to get more writing done than if I fail to think about poetry at all for a day or more. It's always there, tugging at my sleeve.
And hell... if it weren't for the fact that I would feel obligated to come over here and tattle on myself if I gave up, I don't know that I would actually have made it this far with the NaPoWriMo thing. I've written far more lousy poems than good ones this month, but I knew that would be the case, and I've written some that I hope aren't lousy which I don't think I would have written had I not been making the effort to write something every day.
I read an interview with David Lehman (where did I see it? it's really true, the short-term memory is the first thing to go...) in which the interviewer asked him whether he still writes a poem every day. His answer was essentially "yes, but I miss a lot of days." It occurred to me when I read it that "I write every day although I miss a lot of days" is a very different mindset than "I don't write every day." I think if the default setting on your write-o-meter is "daily," you're a heck of a lot more likely to get more work done than if you sort of wait around till you feel like writing, or till you find the time, or whatever. Even if you don't actually write every day. (And I think it's important not to beat up on yourself if you don't. Okay, you didn't write today ... tomorrow's a new day.) And after this poem-a-day month is over, that's where I want to be: I write every day, except for some days when I don't.
So that's what this blog (and many of the blogs I read) does for me: it's like the little squeaky voice of poetry, hanging right behind me, poking me in the butt, tugging on my sleeve, saying "pssst. I'm everywhere. I'm every day. Don't forget me."
But I've decided that, for now anyway, it works out to my benefit. When I first started this blog, I told myself that this was my writing blog. I may talk about other stuff in here, but I try to keep thoughts of writing/poetry at the center of it -- I try to think of myself as a writer, as a poet, here. And believe me, when you work 40 hours a week doing something else and come home to a messy house and cats who need attention and a tv that promises wonderful things will happen if you just park your butt on the couch and watch long enough, it's easy to forget to think of yourself as a writer. (As I've said before, nobody's going to come running after me begging for poems if I don't write.) So I come here and I read about other people's writing and I think about writing, think of myself as a writer, every day. It really does help to remind me that poetry is at the center of my life. And it works (sometimes to the detriment of other things in my life, not that there are that many other things in my life). Sometimes poetry feels like the only thing that really matters. And when I'm in that frame of mind, I'm bound to get more writing done than if I fail to think about poetry at all for a day or more. It's always there, tugging at my sleeve.
And hell... if it weren't for the fact that I would feel obligated to come over here and tattle on myself if I gave up, I don't know that I would actually have made it this far with the NaPoWriMo thing. I've written far more lousy poems than good ones this month, but I knew that would be the case, and I've written some that I hope aren't lousy which I don't think I would have written had I not been making the effort to write something every day.
I read an interview with David Lehman (where did I see it? it's really true, the short-term memory is the first thing to go...) in which the interviewer asked him whether he still writes a poem every day. His answer was essentially "yes, but I miss a lot of days." It occurred to me when I read it that "I write every day although I miss a lot of days" is a very different mindset than "I don't write every day." I think if the default setting on your write-o-meter is "daily," you're a heck of a lot more likely to get more work done than if you sort of wait around till you feel like writing, or till you find the time, or whatever. Even if you don't actually write every day. (And I think it's important not to beat up on yourself if you don't. Okay, you didn't write today ... tomorrow's a new day.) And after this poem-a-day month is over, that's where I want to be: I write every day, except for some days when I don't.
So that's what this blog (and many of the blogs I read) does for me: it's like the little squeaky voice of poetry, hanging right behind me, poking me in the butt, tugging on my sleeve, saying "pssst. I'm everywhere. I'm every day. Don't forget me."
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
Density
Carol Peters posted a terrific poem by Laurie Sheck today. I've been reading it over and over, trying to tease apart all the ways in which it wallops me upside the head, trying to figure out how she manages to get the poem to hold as much as it does without it becoming so dense and heavy it just plummets like the proverbial lead balloon.
A poem is like the air. Really, it'll make sense in a minute. The atmosphere can hold only so much moisture before it releases the accumulated water in rain, or fog; how much it can hold depends in part on the temperature (think about how much more humid it is in the summer than in the winter, at least in this part of the world). Similarly, how a poem is constructed -- its temperature, its movement, etc. -- influences how much it can carry: how much imagery, how much information, how much feeling, how much strangeness. Poems fail sometimes, or at least mine do sometimes, because the poet fails to construct a strong enough scaffolding to carry all that they're trying to stuff into the poem -- or, conversely, because they construct the poem in such a way that it can carry a great deal and then fail to give the poem enough to carry.
Sheck wants to say a great deal in this poem: "the dark like a god // and our small bodies like errors / the god wants to take back again"? Daaamn. And there are so many lines in this poem with that level of weight, of freightedness. And yet it doesn't feel crowded, crammed-together. The poem is at its optimum humidity, carrying just as much as it is constructed to comfortably carry. Part of that, I think, is the underlying iambic meter. It's certainly not a regular meter by any stretch of the imagination, but it's there as an undercurrent, and it gives the reader something to hold on to.
I think the use of questions creates a certain space in the poem, too, a space that keeps the intensity of the imagery from dragging it down too much. I love it when poets ask questions in poems. Love it. I certainly like it better than when they try to give me lofty answers (something I catch myself trying to do too often, ugh).
And of course, there is specificity of image, the intensely visual and aural ("The drawers of the cash registers clack open again and again / like solved equations" or "how he rubs his palms into his eyes // then slides his bony shoulders and thin face toward the light / of the narrow doorway"). This kind of imagery gives the poem a solid structure on which the poet can hang all kinds of more abstract stuff.
I'm finding that I crave density and weight in poems, that it's something I aspire to and (in my opinion) rarely achieve. I either don't push the poem to do enough, or I try to stick too much stuff in there and it falls apart. I want to spend more time with poems like Sheck's and try to figure out how they do what they do. I think this poem is doing a lot that I haven't put my finger on yet.
And now for something completely different... :)
This poem is definitely not dense, at least not in the sense I've been talking about. It will go away in a day or so. I think I may read it at Sunday's benefit reading, though. Just for grins.
[the poem went *poof*! for my next trick, I'll pull a rabbit out of ... ok, no, I won't. ]
A poem is like the air. Really, it'll make sense in a minute. The atmosphere can hold only so much moisture before it releases the accumulated water in rain, or fog; how much it can hold depends in part on the temperature (think about how much more humid it is in the summer than in the winter, at least in this part of the world). Similarly, how a poem is constructed -- its temperature, its movement, etc. -- influences how much it can carry: how much imagery, how much information, how much feeling, how much strangeness. Poems fail sometimes, or at least mine do sometimes, because the poet fails to construct a strong enough scaffolding to carry all that they're trying to stuff into the poem -- or, conversely, because they construct the poem in such a way that it can carry a great deal and then fail to give the poem enough to carry.
Sheck wants to say a great deal in this poem: "the dark like a god // and our small bodies like errors / the god wants to take back again"? Daaamn. And there are so many lines in this poem with that level of weight, of freightedness. And yet it doesn't feel crowded, crammed-together. The poem is at its optimum humidity, carrying just as much as it is constructed to comfortably carry. Part of that, I think, is the underlying iambic meter. It's certainly not a regular meter by any stretch of the imagination, but it's there as an undercurrent, and it gives the reader something to hold on to.
I think the use of questions creates a certain space in the poem, too, a space that keeps the intensity of the imagery from dragging it down too much. I love it when poets ask questions in poems. Love it. I certainly like it better than when they try to give me lofty answers (something I catch myself trying to do too often, ugh).
And of course, there is specificity of image, the intensely visual and aural ("The drawers of the cash registers clack open again and again / like solved equations" or "how he rubs his palms into his eyes // then slides his bony shoulders and thin face toward the light / of the narrow doorway"). This kind of imagery gives the poem a solid structure on which the poet can hang all kinds of more abstract stuff.
I'm finding that I crave density and weight in poems, that it's something I aspire to and (in my opinion) rarely achieve. I either don't push the poem to do enough, or I try to stick too much stuff in there and it falls apart. I want to spend more time with poems like Sheck's and try to figure out how they do what they do. I think this poem is doing a lot that I haven't put my finger on yet.
And now for something completely different... :)
This poem is definitely not dense, at least not in the sense I've been talking about. It will go away in a day or so. I think I may read it at Sunday's benefit reading, though. Just for grins.
[the poem went *poof*! for my next trick, I'll pull a rabbit out of ... ok, no, I won't. ]
Friday, April 21, 2006
I think this is mostly about community.
A lot going on locally this weekend. It is Little 500 weekend -- every college town has its major party-weekend event, and this is IU's. (If you've seen the movie "Breaking Away," you know something about it -- or at least about the race itself, which sometimes seems like just an excuse for a lot of partying.) So campus and downtown are relatively crazy. In one of those unholy juxtapositions that always seems to happen, last night a small plane carrying five IU students, all graduate students in the music school, crashed in dense fog near the airport killing all aboard. (One of them worked part-time as an announcer on the local NPR station, so I knew his name and his voice pretty well.) All of the students were highly talented, promising young musicians and composers pursuing advanced degrees at one of the best music schools in the country -- a music school that is a vibrant and relatively close-knit community. It's terribly sad.
Tonight there was a poetry reading at the local Barnes & Noble, celebrating Nat-Po-Month, and the "Celebrating Seventy" anthology that came out a couple years ago (and of which many copies are still sitting around waiting to be sold), and the ending of the daily poetry show Jenny Kander had on our community radio station, WFHB. There were 17 poets on the slate, and we each read our two poems from the anthology; the reading went a bit over an hour, which felt about right. It was a nice mix of voices, many of whom don't have any particular ambition towards being widely published or anything like that but are just regular people who read a poem now and then, write a poem now and then -- people who would probably define themselves as parents, teachers, whatever long before they'd define themselves as poets, and it felt really good to listen to those voices especially. There were plenty of good poems read, but what struck me almost more than the poems themselves was the sense, however momentary, of community & collegiality. A nice evening.
A week from tonight at the monthly Runcible Spoon reading series, my friend Shana Ritter (a fine poet who was in my first writers' group; I've known her since 1985 or '86) will be reading, as will my former teacher Roger Mitchell. (Hey! He has a blog -- I had no idea. Jeez, everybody's doing it, huh?) Should be a good one. I may pull something out for the open-mic part at the end, even though I just read at the Spoon last month, mainly because I would enjoy sharing a new poem (or maybe two short ones) with both Shana & Roger, both of whom have been important parts of my writing life.
To end on a happy note: got word yesterday that Boxcar Poetry Review will be taking two of my poems, "Sugar Hits the Highway" and "Deuce." I have been writing a series of poems about a character named Sugar, and these are the first from that series to be accepted. So, yay.
Tonight there was a poetry reading at the local Barnes & Noble, celebrating Nat-Po-Month, and the "Celebrating Seventy" anthology that came out a couple years ago (and of which many copies are still sitting around waiting to be sold), and the ending of the daily poetry show Jenny Kander had on our community radio station, WFHB. There were 17 poets on the slate, and we each read our two poems from the anthology; the reading went a bit over an hour, which felt about right. It was a nice mix of voices, many of whom don't have any particular ambition towards being widely published or anything like that but are just regular people who read a poem now and then, write a poem now and then -- people who would probably define themselves as parents, teachers, whatever long before they'd define themselves as poets, and it felt really good to listen to those voices especially. There were plenty of good poems read, but what struck me almost more than the poems themselves was the sense, however momentary, of community & collegiality. A nice evening.
A week from tonight at the monthly Runcible Spoon reading series, my friend Shana Ritter (a fine poet who was in my first writers' group; I've known her since 1985 or '86) will be reading, as will my former teacher Roger Mitchell. (Hey! He has a blog -- I had no idea. Jeez, everybody's doing it, huh?) Should be a good one. I may pull something out for the open-mic part at the end, even though I just read at the Spoon last month, mainly because I would enjoy sharing a new poem (or maybe two short ones) with both Shana & Roger, both of whom have been important parts of my writing life.
To end on a happy note: got word yesterday that Boxcar Poetry Review will be taking two of my poems, "Sugar Hits the Highway" and "Deuce." I have been writing a series of poems about a character named Sugar, and these are the first from that series to be accepted. So, yay.
Wednesday, April 19, 2006
Making the commitment
Thanks to those who commented on my previous post -- you have helped me to focus my thoughts on this.
It's not just about publication. In fact I think it's only about 1% about publication. Do I want to have a book published? Hell yeah. I want to see my book on the library shelf, I want my very own ISBN, I want a beat-up copy of the thing that I carry around to readings and read from. Sure. I love books more than anything, and having one with my name on it would be a huge kick.
But what's much, much more important to me is the process of it. Writing the poems, rewriting them, putting them together and listening to how they talk to one another, looking through the individual poems and hopefully seeing past them to some larger vision. It's that larger vision I am after, and have so far found myself shying away from.
I have felt myself, many times in the past, come close to a place of risked commitment with my writing. I have allowed myself to steer clear of difficult material and difficult form. I have dropped a poem before it's sufficiently revised, too lazy to do the work of pushing on it as hard as it needs to be pushed on. It is no coincidence that my several-year writing hiatus began shortly after I started getting some publications in particularly nice journals and a few finalist nods in chapbook contests, no coincidence that I went (within about six months) from seriously contemplating selling my house and moving to wherever I could get accepted in a good MFA program to spending my evenings farting around online or watching tv.
The truth is, if I spend my evenings farting around online or watching tv, nobody's going to care. I'm not suffering under the delusion that if I don't publish a book I will somehow have deprived the world of the opportunity to appreciate my great and powerful vision. *snork*
Just as two people can have a perfectly wonderful and committed and fulfilling relationship without ever getting married, so can a poet devote herself to writing, and write (yes) great and powerful poetry, without ever publishing a lick of it or giving a shit about publishing. But me, I want to make that public statement. I want to say, yes, here is what I am, what I do. Here it is, world, it's not just mine, it's yours. And so far I've gotten cold feet every time I've come near that point. I've left off revising the poem because it got too hard. I've shied away from writing the difficult poem, instead choosing to whine into my journal or take a nap or, yes, blog. I've written individual poems, but have not made myself step back and take the long view of them, made myself ask what my larger vision is -- and for me, putting together a book will, I think, be one way to make myself do that. I've been at this for over twenty-five years and I feel like I'm still just farting around with it, and it's about time I took it to another level.
I should say here that this is just me, my own process, where I want to go. Just because I want to make that public statement of commitment doesn't mean I don't respect those who "don't need a piece of paper from the City Hall, keeping us tied and true" (thanks, Joni Mitchell) -- I admire and even envy those who do write purely for themselves, who will push their work as hard as it needs to be pushed and take the difficult risks without caring whether the poems ever go out into the world. But for me, imagining my work in that more public format, envisioning a book, helps me to write towards a vision that's beyond my little self -- because I find it all too easy to get bogged down in my own little self, and I want to write towards something larger. I want to say to the world, this isn't just mine, this is yours, this is a part of the Big Something. Boy, that sounds self-aggrandizing and high-falutin', and I don't mean it that way. Sigh.
I don't know if this babble will make sense to anyone but me, and I've already screwed up the post and blown away half of it once so maybe it would have made more sense if I hadn't done that. (Grr!) It's just that I've been thinking about why I write, and it's not just for the fun of pushing words around; it's something that feels larger than a hobby or an amusement or even a craft. Letting it be that large feels like a risk (and certainly the risk of sounding like a self-important hoohah is a big part of that). The risk is to push my work beyond the place where I am personally comfortable and let it be about the poetry, not about me. The risk is to try making a book out of it, something that can go out into the world all by itself without me. The risk is to look at a whole bunch of my work from the past several years and ask myself what the point of it is. What I have to trust in order to do this is that there is a point to it -- and that's difficult. But I've been at this for twenty-five years, and it's about time I stepped back and looked at my body of work instead of just looking at one poem at a time, and asked about the larger vision. Because I doubt I have another twenty-five years, and if I'm going to take this stuff to the next level, I think it's about time for me to start looking at it differently -- and I think that thinking in terms of a book rather than thinking in terms of poems will help me to do that.
(I've read interviews with poets who've published their first book late in life, and they usually have a reason for it -- circumstances, illness, child-raising, or just plain didn't even start writing until later. Me, I've been writing since I was a little kid, have been serious about it since I was an undergrad, 25+ years. I have no excuse. I just haven't tried. I've been lazy, is what it boils down to. )
So, all of that may or may not make sense. But I did want to clarify that it's not just about wanting to have a book out, wanting to see my name in lights (ha!) or whatever. It's about wanting to see beyond my little self, making the self subservient to Poetry (and I don't mean the journal of the same name). I don't just want to express my little self. I want to be in service to something larger. And for me, that begins with trying to understand what I do as a body of work. And so far, that's a risk I've mostly let myself get away without taking.
Boy, am I full of hot air tonight. *grin*
It's not just about publication. In fact I think it's only about 1% about publication. Do I want to have a book published? Hell yeah. I want to see my book on the library shelf, I want my very own ISBN, I want a beat-up copy of the thing that I carry around to readings and read from. Sure. I love books more than anything, and having one with my name on it would be a huge kick.
But what's much, much more important to me is the process of it. Writing the poems, rewriting them, putting them together and listening to how they talk to one another, looking through the individual poems and hopefully seeing past them to some larger vision. It's that larger vision I am after, and have so far found myself shying away from.
I have felt myself, many times in the past, come close to a place of risked commitment with my writing. I have allowed myself to steer clear of difficult material and difficult form. I have dropped a poem before it's sufficiently revised, too lazy to do the work of pushing on it as hard as it needs to be pushed on. It is no coincidence that my several-year writing hiatus began shortly after I started getting some publications in particularly nice journals and a few finalist nods in chapbook contests, no coincidence that I went (within about six months) from seriously contemplating selling my house and moving to wherever I could get accepted in a good MFA program to spending my evenings farting around online or watching tv.
The truth is, if I spend my evenings farting around online or watching tv, nobody's going to care. I'm not suffering under the delusion that if I don't publish a book I will somehow have deprived the world of the opportunity to appreciate my great and powerful vision. *snork*
Just as two people can have a perfectly wonderful and committed and fulfilling relationship without ever getting married, so can a poet devote herself to writing, and write (yes) great and powerful poetry, without ever publishing a lick of it or giving a shit about publishing. But me, I want to make that public statement. I want to say, yes, here is what I am, what I do. Here it is, world, it's not just mine, it's yours. And so far I've gotten cold feet every time I've come near that point. I've left off revising the poem because it got too hard. I've shied away from writing the difficult poem, instead choosing to whine into my journal or take a nap or, yes, blog. I've written individual poems, but have not made myself step back and take the long view of them, made myself ask what my larger vision is -- and for me, putting together a book will, I think, be one way to make myself do that. I've been at this for over twenty-five years and I feel like I'm still just farting around with it, and it's about time I took it to another level.
I should say here that this is just me, my own process, where I want to go. Just because I want to make that public statement of commitment doesn't mean I don't respect those who "don't need a piece of paper from the City Hall, keeping us tied and true" (thanks, Joni Mitchell) -- I admire and even envy those who do write purely for themselves, who will push their work as hard as it needs to be pushed and take the difficult risks without caring whether the poems ever go out into the world. But for me, imagining my work in that more public format, envisioning a book, helps me to write towards a vision that's beyond my little self -- because I find it all too easy to get bogged down in my own little self, and I want to write towards something larger. I want to say to the world, this isn't just mine, this is yours, this is a part of the Big Something. Boy, that sounds self-aggrandizing and high-falutin', and I don't mean it that way. Sigh.
I don't know if this babble will make sense to anyone but me, and I've already screwed up the post and blown away half of it once so maybe it would have made more sense if I hadn't done that. (Grr!) It's just that I've been thinking about why I write, and it's not just for the fun of pushing words around; it's something that feels larger than a hobby or an amusement or even a craft. Letting it be that large feels like a risk (and certainly the risk of sounding like a self-important hoohah is a big part of that). The risk is to push my work beyond the place where I am personally comfortable and let it be about the poetry, not about me. The risk is to try making a book out of it, something that can go out into the world all by itself without me. The risk is to look at a whole bunch of my work from the past several years and ask myself what the point of it is. What I have to trust in order to do this is that there is a point to it -- and that's difficult. But I've been at this for twenty-five years, and it's about time I stepped back and looked at my body of work instead of just looking at one poem at a time, and asked about the larger vision. Because I doubt I have another twenty-five years, and if I'm going to take this stuff to the next level, I think it's about time for me to start looking at it differently -- and I think that thinking in terms of a book rather than thinking in terms of poems will help me to do that.
(I've read interviews with poets who've published their first book late in life, and they usually have a reason for it -- circumstances, illness, child-raising, or just plain didn't even start writing until later. Me, I've been writing since I was a little kid, have been serious about it since I was an undergrad, 25+ years. I have no excuse. I just haven't tried. I've been lazy, is what it boils down to. )
So, all of that may or may not make sense. But I did want to clarify that it's not just about wanting to have a book out, wanting to see my name in lights (ha!) or whatever. It's about wanting to see beyond my little self, making the self subservient to Poetry (and I don't mean the journal of the same name). I don't just want to express my little self. I want to be in service to something larger. And for me, that begins with trying to understand what I do as a body of work. And so far, that's a risk I've mostly let myself get away without taking.
Boy, am I full of hot air tonight. *grin*
Bits & pieces
Bill Maher, on the Internet: " 'It's like a library,' my friends told me. Yeah, a really rude library. Have you ever been in a library where someone comes running up to you screaming, 'YOU WANT VIAGRA?' "
* * * * *
Still keeping up with napowrimo. Of the 18 poems I've drafted so far, my guess at the moment is that maybe 5 or 6 are worth revising and working with. Not too shabby, for someone who normally considers one poem a week to be a pretty steady pace.
The titles:
Stumble
Unsaid
Harbinger
Monologue
Intercepting the Supercell
Why I Wait Till Late
The Last Storm
[untitled: "Again, I find myself dreaming"]
Daylight Saving
Things You Should Not Write About
Making Sense of Entropy
Migration
Storm Haiku
Sugar Takes Shelter
Shelter
Easter
Lint
Sugar Ignores the Morning Paper
* * * * *
The process of closing my branch library continues. May 26th will be our last day of operation as a library; after that it is turned over to the academic department, which will operate it as an information commons type space. There are an overwhelming number of details to contend with throughout this process. The good news is that as I transition into my new position over the summer, I will be working a few hours per week on the reference desk in the Information Commons/Undergraduate Library Services. It's a fairly busy ref desk, and I've never provided reference services to undergrads (other than the occasional one who wanders into my branch library) so it will be a bit intimidating at first, but I am assured (and I do believe) that the "deer in headlights" feeling goes away after the first couple of weeks. I'm looking forward to it, actually. When I first started library school I was quite certain I had no interest in doing reference work. Then I took the introductory reference class and absolutely loved it. Go figure. Also, I really like all the librarians & staff I will be working with over in the IC/UGLS; they're all very friendly and knowledgeable and for the most part they seem to enjoy their jobs. I'm looking forward to learning a lot from them.
* * * * *
Next month I turn forty-five. No two ways about it: I am middle-aged. Turning forty was good; I made my first solo trip to Provincetown when I had just turned forty, and it was a happy, relaxing, exhilarating week. I ate some fabulous meals, spent significant chunks of time just relaxing on the beach, saw my first humpback whales, and wrote a couple of my first tentative poems after a long hiatus. Forty-five feels, from here, like it might be a bit challenging. Lots of transition. Job transitions, and the sense that I need to decide what role this poetry thing really is going to play in my life from here on out. Am I going to make the effort of putting together a book manuscript and trying to get it out there? (Which presupposes, of course, deciding that I think my work is good enough.) Am I going to finally do what I've been yapping about for years and apply to low-residency MFA programs? Am I just going to keep plodding away writing my little poems and sending them off to journals now and then? How can I make sure I push myself hard enough with this stuff -- and how do I know whether it's worth the effort? If I stopped, nobody would call me up begging me to start writing again -- it didn't happen when I stopped before, and it wouldn't happen if I stopped now. The momentum has to come from me; I'm the only one who really gives a shit whether I write or not. I've been at this, in my interrupted way, for over twenty-five years now. It is very likely that I don't have another twenty-five years left to work on it. So I had better either get busy, or make peace with the fact that I didn't.
* * * * *
Fear the Poet!
* * * * *
Still keeping up with napowrimo. Of the 18 poems I've drafted so far, my guess at the moment is that maybe 5 or 6 are worth revising and working with. Not too shabby, for someone who normally considers one poem a week to be a pretty steady pace.
The titles:
Stumble
Unsaid
Harbinger
Monologue
Intercepting the Supercell
Why I Wait Till Late
The Last Storm
[untitled: "Again, I find myself dreaming"]
Daylight Saving
Things You Should Not Write About
Making Sense of Entropy
Migration
Storm Haiku
Sugar Takes Shelter
Shelter
Easter
Lint
Sugar Ignores the Morning Paper
* * * * *
The process of closing my branch library continues. May 26th will be our last day of operation as a library; after that it is turned over to the academic department, which will operate it as an information commons type space. There are an overwhelming number of details to contend with throughout this process. The good news is that as I transition into my new position over the summer, I will be working a few hours per week on the reference desk in the Information Commons/Undergraduate Library Services. It's a fairly busy ref desk, and I've never provided reference services to undergrads (other than the occasional one who wanders into my branch library) so it will be a bit intimidating at first, but I am assured (and I do believe) that the "deer in headlights" feeling goes away after the first couple of weeks. I'm looking forward to it, actually. When I first started library school I was quite certain I had no interest in doing reference work. Then I took the introductory reference class and absolutely loved it. Go figure. Also, I really like all the librarians & staff I will be working with over in the IC/UGLS; they're all very friendly and knowledgeable and for the most part they seem to enjoy their jobs. I'm looking forward to learning a lot from them.
* * * * *
Next month I turn forty-five. No two ways about it: I am middle-aged. Turning forty was good; I made my first solo trip to Provincetown when I had just turned forty, and it was a happy, relaxing, exhilarating week. I ate some fabulous meals, spent significant chunks of time just relaxing on the beach, saw my first humpback whales, and wrote a couple of my first tentative poems after a long hiatus. Forty-five feels, from here, like it might be a bit challenging. Lots of transition. Job transitions, and the sense that I need to decide what role this poetry thing really is going to play in my life from here on out. Am I going to make the effort of putting together a book manuscript and trying to get it out there? (Which presupposes, of course, deciding that I think my work is good enough.) Am I going to finally do what I've been yapping about for years and apply to low-residency MFA programs? Am I just going to keep plodding away writing my little poems and sending them off to journals now and then? How can I make sure I push myself hard enough with this stuff -- and how do I know whether it's worth the effort? If I stopped, nobody would call me up begging me to start writing again -- it didn't happen when I stopped before, and it wouldn't happen if I stopped now. The momentum has to come from me; I'm the only one who really gives a shit whether I write or not. I've been at this, in my interrupted way, for over twenty-five years now. It is very likely that I don't have another twenty-five years left to work on it. So I had better either get busy, or make peace with the fact that I didn't.
* * * * *
Fear the Poet!
Saturday, April 15, 2006
Fear the Poet update
Apparently, ever since I blogged the link to the "Fear the Poet" t-shirt (I posted it both here and on livejournal), they have sold more shirts than they normally sell in a month, and they're back-ordered! The bookstore manager tracked down the sudden flurry of activity to me and called me to find out how in the heck I heard about them, and to let me know they were placing double their usual order to restock. Okay, it's a small bookstore that doesn't normally do that much business -- the "more than we normally sell in a month" magic number was actually only six -- but still, I am highly amused.
He said "the only top ten list Whittier College ever makes is 'top ten silliest mascots'" (yes, their athletic teams are actually the Whittier Poets) and "Fear the Poet" seemed to make a better slogan than "run away from the crazy person." Hee. He seemed quite pleased with the extra business. I originally got the link from a friend who just got hired for a faculty position at Whittier; I think she gets credit for doing some fundraising before she even arrives on campus!
Anyway, if you ordered a shirt and it's back-ordered, rest assured they truly are ordering more.
He said "the only top ten list Whittier College ever makes is 'top ten silliest mascots'" (yes, their athletic teams are actually the Whittier Poets) and "Fear the Poet" seemed to make a better slogan than "run away from the crazy person." Hee. He seemed quite pleased with the extra business. I originally got the link from a friend who just got hired for a faculty position at Whittier; I think she gets credit for doing some fundraising before she even arrives on campus!
Anyway, if you ordered a shirt and it's back-ordered, rest assured they truly are ordering more.
Friday, April 14, 2006
NaPoWriMo, day 14: Tornado Alley
Batting 1000 so far on NaPoDoMoHoHoHo, though I've stretched the boundaries of "poem a day" to mean "before I go to bed at night" rather than "by midnight" -- and yesterday's poem was a pathetic three-liner, sort of a lousy faux-haiku.
It's been a terribly stormy spring. I went to bed last night having watched the first few hours' reporting of the tornadoes in Iowa City, was awakened at 4 am by the kitten tugging at my hair because he was frightened by the storm that was blowing in just then. Tonight there are bad storms just north and west of Indianapolis, hail reported up to softball size, tornadoes, et cetera. It all rather gives me flashbacks of the F5 tornado (wind speeds of 261-318 mph) on June 8, 1966 that damaged our house in Topeka, Kansas when I was five years old -- this June it will have been forty years ago. I'm watching the continuous severe-weather coverage on the Indianapolis tv stations right now, just amazed by the radar & other technology -- in 1966 we had only a few minutes' warning and considered ourselves pretty lucky to get that.
Anyway, this weather has certainly found itself reflected in my napowrimo efforts. Last week I wrote a little narrative thingie about a storm chaser; last night I wrote a (bad) radar haiku; and tonight a recurrent character named Sugar has popped into a poem to tell me about some storms she's seen. (Someday I may have a whole chapbook worth of Sugar poems. Maybe. It would be nice.)
[poem fall down go boom. you know the drill.]
It's been a terribly stormy spring. I went to bed last night having watched the first few hours' reporting of the tornadoes in Iowa City, was awakened at 4 am by the kitten tugging at my hair because he was frightened by the storm that was blowing in just then. Tonight there are bad storms just north and west of Indianapolis, hail reported up to softball size, tornadoes, et cetera. It all rather gives me flashbacks of the F5 tornado (wind speeds of 261-318 mph) on June 8, 1966 that damaged our house in Topeka, Kansas when I was five years old -- this June it will have been forty years ago. I'm watching the continuous severe-weather coverage on the Indianapolis tv stations right now, just amazed by the radar & other technology -- in 1966 we had only a few minutes' warning and considered ourselves pretty lucky to get that.Anyway, this weather has certainly found itself reflected in my napowrimo efforts. Last week I wrote a little narrative thingie about a storm chaser; last night I wrote a (bad) radar haiku; and tonight a recurrent character named Sugar has popped into a poem to tell me about some storms she's seen. (Someday I may have a whole chapbook worth of Sugar poems. Maybe. It would be nice.)
[poem fall down go boom. you know the drill.]
Wednesday, April 12, 2006
Scared yet?
Yeah, I totally ordered myself one of these today. You can get 'em from the Whittier College bookstore.
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
Blah blah blah, but at least it's spring
For the first time in over thirty years, Indiana is observing Daylight Saving Time. I haven't had to make this time-zone transition since I was what, ten years old? Before digital clocks existed, that's how long ago it was. And it is weird. Suddenly it's darker in the mornings, which feels like a rip-off after gritting my teeth and plowing through the long winter and enjoying the relief of "finally the sun is up when the alarm goes off" -- that's been taken away all of a sudden and it's just plain disconcerting. And in the evenings, I keep thinking it's earlier than it is and then I look at the clock and feel rushed. I don't understand the light, all of a sudden. It's speaking a different language.
* * * * *
I've hit the wall with this poem-a-day thing. I keep putting it off till the end of the evening then dashing something off resentfully. I feel bored with the sound of my own voice. I know that's part of it, part of the exercise, hitting that point where you think you're through and continuing to push and getting to a place you might never have reached otherwise. It feels like stink right now, though. What I need to do is to remember that this is a practice, not a chore. A practice. Like the practice of meditation, or medicine, or kindness. It's something one does day to day, moment by moment, act by act, but always with the long haul & the big picture in one's mind.
* * * * *
It's fully spring, Bradford pears starting to bloom in earnest, daffodils everywhere, grass and trees green enough that you finally know you're not imagining it. Work is fairly nuts right now as we prepare to close down the branch library I've been coordinating for the past three years (we're closing at the end of May -- yes, I will still have a job, guaranteed; I'll even get to do some writing in the new job, instructional stuff, which is pretty cool). I'm taking lots of solace in the explosion of energy that is a Bloomington spring.
(And the explosion of pollen. Achoo!)
* * * * *
Two readings coming up. One will be an omnibus extravaganza type of thing, partly to celebrate National Poetry Month (about which I am feeling grumpy at the moment, see above), partly to honor a daily radio show on our local community radio station which will be leaving the air at the end of the month (er, the show is leaving the air; the station's gonna be around), partly to promote a local anthology that hasn't been selling as well as it should and maybe sell off some of the copies that are still sitting around. So I'll be reading two poems (the two that were included in said anthology, Celebrating Seventy). Barnes & Noble here in Bloomington, 7:30 pm on Friday the 21st.
The other will be a benefit reading/concert for the Bloomington Women's Writing Center. I haven't been involved with this organization so far, but have been watching from a distance and appreciating what they're doing. I think this is also about a two-poem deal. Sunday, April 30th from 5 to 8 pm at the Players Pub here in Bloomington, ten bucks in advance (purchase at the BWWC website) or $15 at the door.
* * * * *
Watching American Idol. Jenni, I blame you!
* * * * *
I've hit the wall with this poem-a-day thing. I keep putting it off till the end of the evening then dashing something off resentfully. I feel bored with the sound of my own voice. I know that's part of it, part of the exercise, hitting that point where you think you're through and continuing to push and getting to a place you might never have reached otherwise. It feels like stink right now, though. What I need to do is to remember that this is a practice, not a chore. A practice. Like the practice of meditation, or medicine, or kindness. It's something one does day to day, moment by moment, act by act, but always with the long haul & the big picture in one's mind.
* * * * *
It's fully spring, Bradford pears starting to bloom in earnest, daffodils everywhere, grass and trees green enough that you finally know you're not imagining it. Work is fairly nuts right now as we prepare to close down the branch library I've been coordinating for the past three years (we're closing at the end of May -- yes, I will still have a job, guaranteed; I'll even get to do some writing in the new job, instructional stuff, which is pretty cool). I'm taking lots of solace in the explosion of energy that is a Bloomington spring.
(And the explosion of pollen. Achoo!)
* * * * *
Two readings coming up. One will be an omnibus extravaganza type of thing, partly to celebrate National Poetry Month (about which I am feeling grumpy at the moment, see above), partly to honor a daily radio show on our local community radio station which will be leaving the air at the end of the month (er, the show is leaving the air; the station's gonna be around), partly to promote a local anthology that hasn't been selling as well as it should and maybe sell off some of the copies that are still sitting around. So I'll be reading two poems (the two that were included in said anthology, Celebrating Seventy). Barnes & Noble here in Bloomington, 7:30 pm on Friday the 21st.
The other will be a benefit reading/concert for the Bloomington Women's Writing Center. I haven't been involved with this organization so far, but have been watching from a distance and appreciating what they're doing. I think this is also about a two-poem deal. Sunday, April 30th from 5 to 8 pm at the Players Pub here in Bloomington, ten bucks in advance (purchase at the BWWC website) or $15 at the door.
* * * * *
Watching American Idol. Jenni, I blame you!
Friday, April 07, 2006
Anyone need a NYC sublet?
Storms here today; not as bad as they've had in Tennessee, but we did have some two-inch-diameter hail this afternoon, which is the largest hail I've seen in many years. It's something else to see these smooth chunks of ice, the size of golf balls or small chicken eggs, just plummeting out of the sky.
Passing this along at the request of a friend (& fellow poet) -- if you need, or know anyone who might need, a summer sublet in NYC, his contact info is below. I know nothing about NYC to know whether this is a decent neighborhood or an okay price, so I'm just passing on what I've got. If you know anyone who can help him out, that would be great! Michael's been picking up some sweet acceptances lately, so there may be some good poetic karma to be found in his apartment. :)
Passing this along at the request of a friend (& fellow poet) -- if you need, or know anyone who might need, a summer sublet in NYC, his contact info is below. I know nothing about NYC to know whether this is a decent neighborhood or an okay price, so I'm just passing on what I've got. If you know anyone who can help him out, that would be great! Michael's been picking up some sweet acceptances lately, so there may be some good poetic karma to be found in his apartment. :)
Hi,
Just wanted to spread the word in case anyone's looking:
I'll be subletting my studio apartment this summer and traveling.
It's located at 15th Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenues.
That's Gram. Park/East Village, just a street from Union Square.
So it's a pleasant neighborhood on a quiet street beside a park.
And it is centrally located to all transportation (subways and buses).
I have a queen-sized bed and a full-sized futon,
a flat screen tv/dvd/vcr,
ac, small kitchen with fridge, oven and microwave
and bathroom has shower/tub.
Also, building has laundry room and elevator.
The apt is on the top floor (sixth) so there's no noise overhead.
It's available JULY, AUGUST, SEPTEMBER
and most (if not all) of June too.
I'm asking 1500 (ish) a month, which covers rent and bills.
Please forward to anyone interested.
Thanks.
Michael
(917) 817-7171
mikemont17@hotmail.com
today's napowrimo
This one -- like most of 'em this week -- is not necessarily a keeper, but I'm posting it just to show I'm still hanging in there. There may be phrases in here I can cannibalize, but really, the point is just to get something on the page. I sort of cheated here and wrote about my own procrastination, since I fell asleep on the couch all evening (thus missing the Indiana Review reading that featured Diana Marie Delgado, darn it) and didn't get diddly done till almost midnight.
Again, this will disappear shortly.
and, poof, gone. Like the last one, if you missed it & want to see it, backchannel & I'll send it on.
Again, this will disappear shortly.
and, poof, gone. Like the last one, if you missed it & want to see it, backchannel & I'll send it on.
Wednesday, April 05, 2006
NaPoWriMo update
So, five days, five poems. One is probably a keeper, and four pretty much suck (but at least a couple of them have words or phrases I may be able to cannibalize for something else later). I suspect it's no coincidence that the probable keeper was written when I was relaxed and comfortable, on a weekend day, having consumed sufficient caffeine and spent a half-hour or so reading poetry -- and a couple of the sucky ones have been "oh crap, I'd better write a poem before I go to bed, damn it" poems. Go figure, huh?
How's everyone else doing?
Beyond that: When you've written a first draft, do you generally have a strong sense of whether or not it's a keeper? I always think I know immediately, and then I'll go through a pile of drafts that are six months or a year old and suddenly some of them look promising enough to work on. "Gee, when the heck did I write that? That's not bad."
And of course, sometimes I get all excited about a first draft, and then I either can't figure out how to revise it to completion, or realize I was just infatuated with the thrill of having written something new but it actually sucks after all. I think writing a new draft every day may help me get away from that, since having written something new won't actually be a big deal.
So what about it: do you know? And if so, when? (I'd ask "how" as well, but I suspect that's kind of like "how do you know the milk is bad" ... you just smell it and you know.)
How's everyone else doing?
Beyond that: When you've written a first draft, do you generally have a strong sense of whether or not it's a keeper? I always think I know immediately, and then I'll go through a pile of drafts that are six months or a year old and suddenly some of them look promising enough to work on. "Gee, when the heck did I write that? That's not bad."
And of course, sometimes I get all excited about a first draft, and then I either can't figure out how to revise it to completion, or realize I was just infatuated with the thrill of having written something new but it actually sucks after all. I think writing a new draft every day may help me get away from that, since having written something new won't actually be a big deal.
So what about it: do you know? And if so, when? (I'd ask "how" as well, but I suspect that's kind of like "how do you know the milk is bad" ... you just smell it and you know.)
Tuesday, April 04, 2006
More linky goodness
Michael Montlack, who I met in D.A. Powell's workshop last summer, has a good short story in the new issue of Blithe House Quarterly.
I really like it when people I know get published. :)
Also, I found out that the Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies and the Portuguese Princess Whale Watch have an all day whale-watching trip planned for the day after my workshop in June! They plan to go all the way out to Jeffreys Ledge and/or the Great South Channel in hopes of seeing some North Atlantic right whales, an extremely endangered species (about 300 individuals remaining). I have been wishing for a way to see a right whale or two someday -- seriously, I love watching humpbacks and finbacks and minke whales, but if I saw a right whale I would be pee-my-pants excited. So I am scheming about schedules and money in hopes of making this happen. A week of poetry, then a full day out on the water peering into the distance for any sign of flukes? Sounds like heaven.
I really like it when people I know get published. :)
Also, I found out that the Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies and the Portuguese Princess Whale Watch have an all day whale-watching trip planned for the day after my workshop in June! They plan to go all the way out to Jeffreys Ledge and/or the Great South Channel in hopes of seeing some North Atlantic right whales, an extremely endangered species (about 300 individuals remaining). I have been wishing for a way to see a right whale or two someday -- seriously, I love watching humpbacks and finbacks and minke whales, but if I saw a right whale I would be pee-my-pants excited. So I am scheming about schedules and money in hopes of making this happen. A week of poetry, then a full day out on the water peering into the distance for any sign of flukes? Sounds like heaven.
"You knew I was a poet when you hired me."
Extremely funny, but too big to post on the blog, cartoon here.
Seriously, go look. I'm still giggling.
Seriously, go look. I'm still giggling.
Saturday, April 01, 2006
napowrimo #1
This won't stay up for long.
---and the poem goes *poof* like a tripped-over shadow. (if you missed it and wanna see it, backchannel me...)
---and the poem goes *poof* like a tripped-over shadow. (if you missed it and wanna see it, backchannel me...)
po on rye
So there's a growing NaPoWriMo movement afoot (for example, here and also here) -- the plan being to write a poem every day throughout the month of April, aka National Poetry Month. (NaPoWriMo being a takeoff on NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month.) A lot of people plan to post their daily poems on their blogs. I won't be doing that, but I do have every intention of writing a poem every day for the next thirty days.
Note that they don't have to be good poems, or long poems, or finished poems. *grin* I usually write about four poems a month, and maybe two of them are keepers; figure my percentage will be lower if I write a poem every day, but surely I'll end up with more than two that are worth working on some more. Too, I think it's good to remind oneself, now and then, that you are in control of your own writing -- not some "Muse" that you have to wait around for.
If you want to write, write. That's the main thing.
And by the way, if you don't care to write poems but want to take part, reading a poem every day would also be a fine way to celebrate.
Happy Poetry Month, all!
Note that they don't have to be good poems, or long poems, or finished poems. *grin* I usually write about four poems a month, and maybe two of them are keepers; figure my percentage will be lower if I write a poem every day, but surely I'll end up with more than two that are worth working on some more. Too, I think it's good to remind oneself, now and then, that you are in control of your own writing -- not some "Muse" that you have to wait around for.
If you want to write, write. That's the main thing.
And by the way, if you don't care to write poems but want to take part, reading a poem every day would also be a fine way to celebrate.
Happy Poetry Month, all!
Friday, March 31, 2006
Something to watch
The brother of one of my livejournal friends got shipped off to Iraq (again, even though he was not supposed to get deployed again). She's taken the "make your own Chevy Tahoe commercial" website and created a pretty powerful, subversive political statement with it, as a tribute to him. Highly recommended. Go check it out.
Tuesday, March 28, 2006
Jane Hirshfield
I went up to Butler University in Indianapolis yesterday evening, along with three other members of my poetry group, to hear Jane Hirshfield read. I actually (and this is a bit embarrassing to admit) wasn't very familiar with her work when I first heard about the reading, but since my friends were going I figured what the heck, I'd go along. I checked out Given Sugar, Given Salt from the public library, and was very impressed -- I love how she doesn't shy away from large and/or abstract issues, but always arrives there via the concrete and specific. Though I guess you could say that about any number of poets. She also, in this book, wrestles with some things that feel very specific to middle age -- something I'm wrestling with now in my own work (and my own life).
After the reading she took a few questions, which she answered graciously. One question was about how to arrange a book of poems, which certainly seems to be a topic that's out there in the poetic zeitgeist these days, on listservs & around the blogosphere. She didn't really say anything I hadn't heard before about this, but it's obviously something she has struggled with and spent a lot of time thinking about.
Although it was a splurge since it's only out in hardcover, I bought a copy of After, and had her sign it like a big ol' fangirl. Hey, if you can't splurge on a hardcover right in front of the poet, when can you, y'know?
I also chatted for a few minutes with a young poet who's in her final semester of the low-res program at New England College, and has absolutely loved it. Contagious enthusiasm. I have got to find a way to make a low-res program happen -- to come up with the money, and the time/energy.
I, a woman forty-five, beginning to gray at the temples,Last night she read exclusively from After, her new book. I enjoyed her reading very much; she spent more time chatting and providing background than many poets do, but I didn't feel she overexplained the poems, and I got a better sense of how she works -- something I always enjoy. I also got the impression that she would be a good teacher, just from how she talked about the poems and about her own writing process. I think my favorite poem was the one she opened with, "Theology," which had dogs in it. (It wasn't just because of the dogs that I liked it.)
putting pages of ruined paper
into a basket, pulling them out again.
[from "Waking This Morning Dreamless After Long Sleep"]
After the reading she took a few questions, which she answered graciously. One question was about how to arrange a book of poems, which certainly seems to be a topic that's out there in the poetic zeitgeist these days, on listservs & around the blogosphere. She didn't really say anything I hadn't heard before about this, but it's obviously something she has struggled with and spent a lot of time thinking about.
Although it was a splurge since it's only out in hardcover, I bought a copy of After, and had her sign it like a big ol' fangirl. Hey, if you can't splurge on a hardcover right in front of the poet, when can you, y'know?
I also chatted for a few minutes with a young poet who's in her final semester of the low-res program at New England College, and has absolutely loved it. Contagious enthusiasm. I have got to find a way to make a low-res program happen -- to come up with the money, and the time/energy.
Sunday, March 26, 2006
Catching up
I know, there hasn't been much to see here lately. Sorry about that! I haven't fallen off the face of the earth or anything, I promise.
I've got a poem in the new issue of The Cortland Review. It's got a really cool photo on the front page of the issue.
The fourth-Friday-of-the-month poetry reading at the Runcible Spoon a couple nights ago was very nice. Five Women Poets, the group I'm in, were the featured readers (those of us who were in town anyway; Anya couldn't make it), along with a storyteller from the Bloomington Storytellers' Guild. Usually Patricia tries to have a musician or something to provide a little break from all the poetry, so this time it was a storyteller. Anyway, I opened by reading Gayle Brandeis' "Pear" because I think it is such a kick-ass poem that I really wanted to share it; I think I said her name three or four times to make sure people knew it wasn't my poem, heh. Then I read two car-crash poems, two jazz poems, and a Provincetown poem. The car-crash poems and one of the jazz poems were very very new, but they seemed to go over well, especially "So What" (one of the jazz ones). The person in charge of the new Bloomington Women's Writing Center caught up with me afterwards and asked if I would read a couple poems in their benefit concert next month, which was neat. It takes like three people to make the Spoon feel crowded, and there were maybe twenty people there, so it was a nice full house. And I had a lovely glass of pinot grigio. Maybe that's why I enjoyed the evening so particularly much. ;)
I enjoy readings. I'm not the best reader out there, certainly not the most dynamic performer, not (my five-foot-one pudgy middle-aged self) the sort of reader who commands the attention of everyone in the room the moment she stands up. But over the years I think I've learned how to more or less do the poems justice, and I don't get at all nervous about reading anymore, which is kind of weird considering I am relatively shy (yes, really) and not at all fond of public speaking. On Friday, after the featured readers, there was (as always) an open mic. There weren't too many participants this time -- three, I think -- and one of them reminded me so much of me when I was first starting out reading my stuff, when I was 19 years old or so. Actually if I'm not mistaken the first time I read was at an open-mic at the Cornucopia, a natural-foods restaurant in South Bend, when I was in high school, back in the late seventies. I don't remember much about it, which is probably a very good thing for my ego. *grin*
Good mail this week: got my copy of Susan B.A. Somers-Willett's Roam. I know Susan a bit from online, though I haven't met her, and am just tickled to death (now there's a middle-aged midwestern phrase for you!) to see her having some good success. Also, the cover is really cool. I look forward to spending some time with this book. And, I hope that reading a book by someone I kind of know will prod me in the direction of working on my own stinkin' book manuscript. I turn forty-five in a couple of months; maybe "get the stinkin' book manuscript together and start sending it out" should be my birthday resolution. I don't know if it will be any good, but at 45, I have to recognize that I don't have forever to do this if I'm gonna do it.
I thought I might have something more interesting to blog about, but I now have a Very Large Cat draped across my lap making it difficult to type on the laptop, plus he's purring so loud I can't hear myself think -- so I'll come back later if I think of anything.
I've got a poem in the new issue of The Cortland Review. It's got a really cool photo on the front page of the issue.
The fourth-Friday-of-the-month poetry reading at the Runcible Spoon a couple nights ago was very nice. Five Women Poets, the group I'm in, were the featured readers (those of us who were in town anyway; Anya couldn't make it), along with a storyteller from the Bloomington Storytellers' Guild. Usually Patricia tries to have a musician or something to provide a little break from all the poetry, so this time it was a storyteller. Anyway, I opened by reading Gayle Brandeis' "Pear" because I think it is such a kick-ass poem that I really wanted to share it; I think I said her name three or four times to make sure people knew it wasn't my poem, heh. Then I read two car-crash poems, two jazz poems, and a Provincetown poem. The car-crash poems and one of the jazz poems were very very new, but they seemed to go over well, especially "So What" (one of the jazz ones). The person in charge of the new Bloomington Women's Writing Center caught up with me afterwards and asked if I would read a couple poems in their benefit concert next month, which was neat. It takes like three people to make the Spoon feel crowded, and there were maybe twenty people there, so it was a nice full house. And I had a lovely glass of pinot grigio. Maybe that's why I enjoyed the evening so particularly much. ;)
I enjoy readings. I'm not the best reader out there, certainly not the most dynamic performer, not (my five-foot-one pudgy middle-aged self) the sort of reader who commands the attention of everyone in the room the moment she stands up. But over the years I think I've learned how to more or less do the poems justice, and I don't get at all nervous about reading anymore, which is kind of weird considering I am relatively shy (yes, really) and not at all fond of public speaking. On Friday, after the featured readers, there was (as always) an open mic. There weren't too many participants this time -- three, I think -- and one of them reminded me so much of me when I was first starting out reading my stuff, when I was 19 years old or so. Actually if I'm not mistaken the first time I read was at an open-mic at the Cornucopia, a natural-foods restaurant in South Bend, when I was in high school, back in the late seventies. I don't remember much about it, which is probably a very good thing for my ego. *grin*
Good mail this week: got my copy of Susan B.A. Somers-Willett's Roam. I know Susan a bit from online, though I haven't met her, and am just tickled to death (now there's a middle-aged midwestern phrase for you!) to see her having some good success. Also, the cover is really cool. I look forward to spending some time with this book. And, I hope that reading a book by someone I kind of know will prod me in the direction of working on my own stinkin' book manuscript. I turn forty-five in a couple of months; maybe "get the stinkin' book manuscript together and start sending it out" should be my birthday resolution. I don't know if it will be any good, but at 45, I have to recognize that I don't have forever to do this if I'm gonna do it.
I thought I might have something more interesting to blog about, but I now have a Very Large Cat draped across my lap making it difficult to type on the laptop, plus he's purring so loud I can't hear myself think -- so I'll come back later if I think of anything.
Sunday, March 19, 2006
artistic resume?
I'm applying for a thingie that requires an "artistic resume." Anyone have advice about how to structure one of these? Should I just throw together sections for publications, awards, readings, education/workshops, and other activities? Should publications go in chronological order, or alpha by journal title, or what? I have no clue here.
Thanks to anyone who can make a suggestion. :)
Thanks to anyone who can make a suggestion. :)
Saturday, March 18, 2006
Nota bene
Here's an interesting note: I went back into my submission files today and did the math. "O" was rejected ten times before getting that honorable mention in the Thomas Merton Foundation contest. (Of those ten, I think I had one or maybe two encouraging notes that didn't single out any particular poem from the submission packet, and there was one that specifically said they enjoyed this poem.) Ten rejections isn't all that many as those things go, but it's enough to notice.
The moral of the story, of course, is that if you've written a poem you believe in and you want it to be published, persistence pays. Sometimes, anyway.
Of course, first you have to write poems you believe in. That's the hard part. I wish I did it more often, that's for sure.
This coming Friday evening, Five Women Poets -- the poetry group of which I am a member -- will be featured at the Runcible Spoon Reading Series. Should be fun. At our meeting the other night we decided we can each have about ten minutes, so I need to figure out what to read. I'm thinking two car-crash poems, two jazz poems, and one or two others -- but I'm not sure yet. I love reading at the Spoon because I've spent SO much time there over the years that it feels very comfortable and homey to me. (In fact, I was just there today for brunch!)
I've been reading Jane Hirshfield's Given Sugar, Given Salt today and loving it. I've probably read scattered poems of hers here and there, but hadn't read any of her books, and am now kicking myself for waiting so long. She's reading at Butler University in Indianapolis the week after next and I am planning to go.
The weather is still chilly, but after drenching rains and quite a bit of flooding last week the grass is green and there are crocuses, a few daffodils, and the beginnings of forsythia. Robins are hopping around. The days are longer. I think we've just about survived another winter.
EDIT: As soon as I said that, I may have to retract it -- the weather forecast I just saw calls for heavy snow and single-digit temperatures early in the week. YEOW.
The moral of the story, of course, is that if you've written a poem you believe in and you want it to be published, persistence pays. Sometimes, anyway.
Of course, first you have to write poems you believe in. That's the hard part. I wish I did it more often, that's for sure.
This coming Friday evening, Five Women Poets -- the poetry group of which I am a member -- will be featured at the Runcible Spoon Reading Series. Should be fun. At our meeting the other night we decided we can each have about ten minutes, so I need to figure out what to read. I'm thinking two car-crash poems, two jazz poems, and one or two others -- but I'm not sure yet. I love reading at the Spoon because I've spent SO much time there over the years that it feels very comfortable and homey to me. (In fact, I was just there today for brunch!)
I've been reading Jane Hirshfield's Given Sugar, Given Salt today and loving it. I've probably read scattered poems of hers here and there, but hadn't read any of her books, and am now kicking myself for waiting so long. She's reading at Butler University in Indianapolis the week after next and I am planning to go.
The weather is still chilly, but after drenching rains and quite a bit of flooding last week the grass is green and there are crocuses, a few daffodils, and the beginnings of forsythia. Robins are hopping around. The days are longer. I think we've just about survived another winter.
EDIT: As soon as I said that, I may have to retract it -- the weather forecast I just saw calls for heavy snow and single-digit temperatures early in the week. YEOW.
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
Happy news!
I don't normally blog from work, but I can't resist sharing this happy news. I just got a phone call from someone at the Thomas Merton Foundation in Louisville, telling me that my poem "O" was awarded honorable mention in their Poetry of the Sacred contest! The judge was Sena Jeter Naslund, whose book Ahab's Wife I just adored -- so to think that she liked my poem makes my little heart all tingly.
Apparently the poem will be posted on their website eventually, so when it is, I'll link to it. It's a poem I've always been particularly (maybe unreasonably) fond of, so I kind of feel like one of my favorite children just brought home straight A's on her report card. *grin* Sort of makes up for all those other poems that were ordered to report to the principal's office...
EDIT: They've already posted the winners on their website!
Here's the winning poem, and here are the honorable mentions.
Wow, the other poems are really good! "Pear" (one of the other honorable mentions) just made my toes curl up a bit.
Apparently the poem will be posted on their website eventually, so when it is, I'll link to it. It's a poem I've always been particularly (maybe unreasonably) fond of, so I kind of feel like one of my favorite children just brought home straight A's on her report card. *grin* Sort of makes up for all those other poems that were ordered to report to the principal's office...
EDIT: They've already posted the winners on their website!
Here's the winning poem, and here are the honorable mentions.
Wow, the other poems are really good! "Pear" (one of the other honorable mentions) just made my toes curl up a bit.
Monday, March 13, 2006
Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself.
Have you ever argued with one of your own poems? By writing another poem that contradicts the first? I tried it once, and I think I may make myself do it again as an exercise.
The first poem is one I wrote back in 1990, and for quite a while it was my favorite poem that I'd ever written. (Probably because it got me the nicest acceptance letter I've ever gotten -- not just "we want your poem" but a few words about why the editor liked it, which just tickled me to pieces.) The second poem was written 12 years later, begun while listening to a panel discussion on poetry at the public library, written in a fit of annoyance with myself because I felt like I was working too hard to make everything in my poems Oh So Deep And Meaningful -- a fault, if it is a fault, which "Let X Equal..." is certainly guilty of.
Note that I still like "Let X Equal..." even though I argued with it. (I contain multitudes, bla bla.) Actually I think it served as a better exercise to argue with a poem I didn't particularly disagree with. Can I feel equally committed to both sides of my own argument? Well, I am a Gemini, so I suppose that may be one of my talents. *grin* I've never presented these two poems side-by-side, not in a reading or anything, so it will be interesting for me to look at them together. I won't say which one I think is the better poem, though I do have an opinion about that, oddly enough. (I also think they are both crap, but I am having an "everything I have ever written is crap" night so I know better than to put too much stock in that.)
* * * * *
Let X Equal...
Let the woman wake
from sleep, as she does each morning
of her life. Let her arm
reach out, drowsy, and brush
the bedroom curtains aside,
let her watch for five whole minutes
the cat washing herself
on the front lawn, the bird
pecking madly at damp earth,
the neighbor clutching the front of her robe
as she steps out the door
and stoops for her morning paper.
Let the sunlight be quiet
and warm across the lawn. Let the grass
be succulent and green.
Let the day unfold like a perfect
equation, every moment growing
toward some simple answer,
some singular integer.
Let the woman stand for the thesis,
the given, all the formulas that build
a body of knowledge. Let her waking
be the question, and the window
equal some visible understanding, the work
she is asked to show. Let the neighbor
and the curtains be variables, the light
and the lawn be the sum
of each other, the pure reciprocity of morning.
Let the woman's hand, opening
curtains, and the woman, rising,
be a new theorem, solid and given,
the beginning of an elegant
and irrefutable proof.
[1990; first published in Northwest Review, vol. 30 no. 3]
* * * * *
Against Metaphor
Today, let the cat
be just a cat, crouching
in the kitchen where he hears
a scrabbling mouse. Let this glass
of clear cold water
be simple refreshment,
the morning sun be the rising
that happens every ordinary
day. My face is just my face,
my feet are in my shoes
which are on this wooden floor
in my house which is just a place
where I can live. Sometimes a life
is just a life, and at night
as I fall into my prosaic dreams
let me learn to be grateful
for having lived the day
as it actually was, one place
at one time,
simple witness.
[2002; first published in Calyx, vol. 23 no. 1]
The first poem is one I wrote back in 1990, and for quite a while it was my favorite poem that I'd ever written. (Probably because it got me the nicest acceptance letter I've ever gotten -- not just "we want your poem" but a few words about why the editor liked it, which just tickled me to pieces.) The second poem was written 12 years later, begun while listening to a panel discussion on poetry at the public library, written in a fit of annoyance with myself because I felt like I was working too hard to make everything in my poems Oh So Deep And Meaningful -- a fault, if it is a fault, which "Let X Equal..." is certainly guilty of.
Note that I still like "Let X Equal..." even though I argued with it. (I contain multitudes, bla bla.) Actually I think it served as a better exercise to argue with a poem I didn't particularly disagree with. Can I feel equally committed to both sides of my own argument? Well, I am a Gemini, so I suppose that may be one of my talents. *grin* I've never presented these two poems side-by-side, not in a reading or anything, so it will be interesting for me to look at them together. I won't say which one I think is the better poem, though I do have an opinion about that, oddly enough. (I also think they are both crap, but I am having an "everything I have ever written is crap" night so I know better than to put too much stock in that.)
* * * * *
Let X Equal...
Let the woman wake
from sleep, as she does each morning
of her life. Let her arm
reach out, drowsy, and brush
the bedroom curtains aside,
let her watch for five whole minutes
the cat washing herself
on the front lawn, the bird
pecking madly at damp earth,
the neighbor clutching the front of her robe
as she steps out the door
and stoops for her morning paper.
Let the sunlight be quiet
and warm across the lawn. Let the grass
be succulent and green.
Let the day unfold like a perfect
equation, every moment growing
toward some simple answer,
some singular integer.
Let the woman stand for the thesis,
the given, all the formulas that build
a body of knowledge. Let her waking
be the question, and the window
equal some visible understanding, the work
she is asked to show. Let the neighbor
and the curtains be variables, the light
and the lawn be the sum
of each other, the pure reciprocity of morning.
Let the woman's hand, opening
curtains, and the woman, rising,
be a new theorem, solid and given,
the beginning of an elegant
and irrefutable proof.
[1990; first published in Northwest Review, vol. 30 no. 3]
* * * * *
Against Metaphor
Today, let the cat
be just a cat, crouching
in the kitchen where he hears
a scrabbling mouse. Let this glass
of clear cold water
be simple refreshment,
the morning sun be the rising
that happens every ordinary
day. My face is just my face,
my feet are in my shoes
which are on this wooden floor
in my house which is just a place
where I can live. Sometimes a life
is just a life, and at night
as I fall into my prosaic dreams
let me learn to be grateful
for having lived the day
as it actually was, one place
at one time,
simple witness.
[2002; first published in Calyx, vol. 23 no. 1]
Friday, March 10, 2006
Apropos of nothing...
...today marked the twenty-year anniversary of my full-time employment at Major Midwestern University. (Yes, twenty years. I was a mere child of almost a quarter-century when I first started.) My boss took me out to lunch, and when we got back, there was a whole surprise party with cake and flowers and cards and everything! I couldn't believe it. Most of my student workers (the ones who hadn't already left on spring break) were there, and some of the faculty & staff from the department my branch library serves stopped by, and some librarians & staff from other departments -- I was amazed at how many people stopped by. The only official recognition one gets from the university is a little pin, so I certainly was not expecting Festivities. It was especially nice because in a couple of months the branch library I've been coordinating for the past 3 years will be closing (being transformed into a technology commons sort of space for the students in the department) and I'll be moving to a new position within the Libraries, so it was just kind of appropriate to have Festivities and a Big To-Do right about now. Then after work I went out to the Irish Lion with a couple of friends, and I stuffed myself to the gills on Blarney Puffballs (delicious little deep-fried balls of potato/cheese/onion, served with sour cream for dipping), fish & chips, and Bass -- enough decadent fried-ness there that I am probably now assured of not surviving for another twenty-year anniversary. Soooo good.
I do not normally like being the center of attention (but since there was cake, I was happy) -- don't normally do much to celebrate my birthdays or anything. But it felt nice to have Festivities today. I felt appreciated, and that's a pretty cool thing to feel at one's place of employment. I still say it would be awfully nice if it were possible to make a living writing poetry, but since it's not, I'm glad that I work in a place where people are mostly pretty nice to me, doing something (library stuff) that feels like a reasonably good and useful thing to do in the world.
I hope you AWPeople are having a good time down there in Austin. Post more! I want pictures and gossip. I want to know who flirted shamelessly with who. I want to know who drank too much and started dancing on the tables. I want ... oh, okay, no, I really don't want that kind of a report. (Feel free to backchannel with all such info, though. Muahaha!)
I do not normally like being the center of attention (but since there was cake, I was happy) -- don't normally do much to celebrate my birthdays or anything. But it felt nice to have Festivities today. I felt appreciated, and that's a pretty cool thing to feel at one's place of employment. I still say it would be awfully nice if it were possible to make a living writing poetry, but since it's not, I'm glad that I work in a place where people are mostly pretty nice to me, doing something (library stuff) that feels like a reasonably good and useful thing to do in the world.
I hope you AWPeople are having a good time down there in Austin. Post more! I want pictures and gossip. I want to know who flirted shamelessly with who. I want to know who drank too much and started dancing on the tables. I want ... oh, okay, no, I really don't want that kind of a report. (Feel free to backchannel with all such info, though. Muahaha!)
Tuesday, March 07, 2006
Watson, come here.
From Garrison Keillor's Writers' Almanac today:
Alexander Bell, working fiercely in the lab,
spilled acid on himself that day.
There was something about invention
and necessity, and his words crackled out
into another room, thin and urgent,
carried through air into a moment
when everything changed.
Why then do we always wait
until that last panicked moment
to shout out what we need? We build
the devices, thin glowing wires,
lay the paths to carry signals
from lips to distant ear,
set up elaborate inventions
of intention, plot the ways to speak
our need, then let the creation sit
while we fiddle with one toggle or the next
never testing it by giving voice -- but
finally the burning
becomes too much to bear, impulsively
we grab the wires and cross the distance
with what we know, once said,
is true. Desire crackles out
into another room. Come here.
I want you.
It was on this day in 1876 that Alexander Graham Bell received patent No. 174,465 for the telephone. He filed for his patent on the same day as a Chicago electrician named Elisha Gray filed for a patent on basically the same device. Bell only beat Gray by two hours. Bell offered to sell his patent to Western Union for $100,000, but Western Union turned him down.
In honor of this event, an old poem of mine:
The Message"Mr. Watson, come here. I want you."
--first words spoken via telephone
Alexander Bell, working fiercely in the lab,
spilled acid on himself that day.
There was something about invention
and necessity, and his words crackled out
into another room, thin and urgent,
carried through air into a moment
when everything changed.
Why then do we always wait
until that last panicked moment
to shout out what we need? We build
the devices, thin glowing wires,
lay the paths to carry signals
from lips to distant ear,
set up elaborate inventions
of intention, plot the ways to speak
our need, then let the creation sit
while we fiddle with one toggle or the next
never testing it by giving voice -- but
finally the burning
becomes too much to bear, impulsively
we grab the wires and cross the distance
with what we know, once said,
is true. Desire crackles out
into another room. Come here.
I want you.
published in New Zoo Poetry Review, 1998
and in A Linen Weave of Bloomington Poets, ed. by Jenny Kander (Lexington, KY: Wind, 2002)
Sunday, March 05, 2006
Three good things
1.
Thanks to Ginger for linking to this fabulous essay (or I guess it's actually meant to be a talk) by Rachel Zucker:
Confessionalography: A GNAT (Grossly Non-Academic Talk) on "I" in Poetry
I just read through it quickly, but definitely want to go back and chew on it a little more. I find myself, as is proper for someone in middle age I think, wanting to escape the confines of personal history in my poems, but at the same time I find myself drawn harder and harder to the pull of personal truths. Paradox? Sure. But that's what poetry is all about, Charlie Brown. (As a side note, we talked about truth vs. fact in the journaling discussion group I attended yesterday. I said that there were three things -- stating the facts, telling the truth, and making sense -- and that none of those things were necessarily related to or dependent upon one another. Well, I don't think I said it quite that succinctly, but you know.)
2.
Because the Other Driver's insurance company came through with flying colors, I have no reason at this point to think I won't be able to make it out to FAWC this summer. I truly can't afford it, but I just feel I have to do it, so (in my mind at least) I'm now committed to it. Gonna try and apply for some scholarships, which would make it immensely more do-able. But if you can't commit to doing the impossible and/or seriously impractical now and then -- well, again, that's what poetry is all about. Hey, being able to pay the bills is overrated anyway.
3.
Charlie has a new love in his life and she's adorable. *grin* Go see!
Thanks to Ginger for linking to this fabulous essay (or I guess it's actually meant to be a talk) by Rachel Zucker:
Confessionalography: A GNAT (Grossly Non-Academic Talk) on "I" in Poetry
I just read through it quickly, but definitely want to go back and chew on it a little more. I find myself, as is proper for someone in middle age I think, wanting to escape the confines of personal history in my poems, but at the same time I find myself drawn harder and harder to the pull of personal truths. Paradox? Sure. But that's what poetry is all about, Charlie Brown. (As a side note, we talked about truth vs. fact in the journaling discussion group I attended yesterday. I said that there were three things -- stating the facts, telling the truth, and making sense -- and that none of those things were necessarily related to or dependent upon one another. Well, I don't think I said it quite that succinctly, but you know.)
2.
Because the Other Driver's insurance company came through with flying colors, I have no reason at this point to think I won't be able to make it out to FAWC this summer. I truly can't afford it, but I just feel I have to do it, so (in my mind at least) I'm now committed to it. Gonna try and apply for some scholarships, which would make it immensely more do-able. But if you can't commit to doing the impossible and/or seriously impractical now and then -- well, again, that's what poetry is all about. Hey, being able to pay the bills is overrated anyway.
3.
Charlie has a new love in his life and she's adorable. *grin* Go see!
Friday, March 03, 2006
Lammy Finalists, etc.
1. Not quite a cover girl
Got my printed catalog for the Fine Arts Work Center's summer program today. There I am, on the inside front cover, right next to Hunter O'Hanian's signature. Je suis arrivée. Or, uh, something. Anyway, I'm sure they will send you a catalog if you write to them and ask for one, and then you too can gigglesnort at me in my oh-so-touristy aloha shirt trying to look all writerly in that comfy Adirondack chair in the FAWC courtyard. (I was scribbling in my journal and waiting for the caffeine to kick in, is what I was doing.)
2. Lambda Literary Award Finalists
The list of 2005 Lammy finalists came out today. (For those who may be out of this particular loop, they're awards for GLBT literature, in a bunch of different categories, awarded by the Lambda Literary Foundation. The awards ceremony is in May.)
Finalists in poetry:
Gay Men's Poetry
School of the Arts by Mark Doty (HarperCollins)
For Dust Thou Art by Timothy Liu (Southern Illinois)
Sugar by Martin Pousson (Suspect Thoughts)
Crush by Richard Siken (Yale)
Blue on Blue Ground by Aaron Smith (Pittsburgh)
Lesbian Poetry
Where the Apple Falls by Samiya Bashir (redbone press)
Directed by Desire: Collected Poems by June Jordan (Copper Canyon)
Life Mask by Jackie Kay (Bloodaxe Books)
New and Selected Poems, Volume II by Mary Oliver (Beacon Press)
Eye of Water by Amber Flora Thomas (Pittsburgh)
There are a few people here I don't know. Never heard of Martin Pousson; anyone know him? Samiya Bashir's name sounds familiar, but I can't think where I might have heard of her; same for Jackie Kay. I'm not familiar with Amber Flora Thomas, but looking her up on amazon.com I see that she won the Cave Canem prize in 2004, and has blurbs from no less than Yusef Komunyakaa, Carl Phillips, and Molly Peacock. Her book also has a really gorgeous cover. Looks worth checking out.
If anyone hasn't seen the full list of nominees in all categories and wants it, either comment with your email, or backchannel me, and I'll be happy to forward it along.
Got my printed catalog for the Fine Arts Work Center's summer program today. There I am, on the inside front cover, right next to Hunter O'Hanian's signature. Je suis arrivée. Or, uh, something. Anyway, I'm sure they will send you a catalog if you write to them and ask for one, and then you too can gigglesnort at me in my oh-so-touristy aloha shirt trying to look all writerly in that comfy Adirondack chair in the FAWC courtyard. (I was scribbling in my journal and waiting for the caffeine to kick in, is what I was doing.)
2. Lambda Literary Award Finalists
The list of 2005 Lammy finalists came out today. (For those who may be out of this particular loop, they're awards for GLBT literature, in a bunch of different categories, awarded by the Lambda Literary Foundation. The awards ceremony is in May.)
Finalists in poetry:
Gay Men's Poetry
School of the Arts by Mark Doty (HarperCollins)
For Dust Thou Art by Timothy Liu (Southern Illinois)
Sugar by Martin Pousson (Suspect Thoughts)
Crush by Richard Siken (Yale)
Blue on Blue Ground by Aaron Smith (Pittsburgh)
Lesbian Poetry
Where the Apple Falls by Samiya Bashir (redbone press)
Directed by Desire: Collected Poems by June Jordan (Copper Canyon)
Life Mask by Jackie Kay (Bloodaxe Books)
New and Selected Poems, Volume II by Mary Oliver (Beacon Press)
Eye of Water by Amber Flora Thomas (Pittsburgh)
There are a few people here I don't know. Never heard of Martin Pousson; anyone know him? Samiya Bashir's name sounds familiar, but I can't think where I might have heard of her; same for Jackie Kay. I'm not familiar with Amber Flora Thomas, but looking her up on amazon.com I see that she won the Cave Canem prize in 2004, and has blurbs from no less than Yusef Komunyakaa, Carl Phillips, and Molly Peacock. Her book also has a really gorgeous cover. Looks worth checking out.
If anyone hasn't seen the full list of nominees in all categories and wants it, either comment with your email, or backchannel me, and I'll be happy to forward it along.
Thursday, March 02, 2006
Boruch & McGrath reading
Marianne Boruch and Campbell McGrath read tonight to a packed house. (Really. They drew like four times as many people as the J.D. McClatchy reading on Sunday. To be fair, the publicity for Sunday's reading got screwed up and half of it said it was on Saturday, so people may have gotten confused.) I spotted several members of IU's MFA program faculty (Cathy Bowman, Maura Stanton, Richard Cecil, probably others) as well as several people I knew -- it was defintely the Poetry Place To Be tonight.
And it was a good reading. Boruch led off with a poem from her recent Selected, but then read all new work, which was quite good. McGrath read a sheaf of new poems, then several from Pax Atomica (including "Rock and Roll" and "The Human Heart," two of my favorites in the book), then a few from a manuscript he's currently working on -- one of which, "Ode to Bureaucracy" I think it was called, had me struggling not to keel over laughing. What I love about McGrath's poetry is that he's simultaneously one of the funniest & one of the angriest (I'm not kidding, read some of the rants in Florida Poems if you don't believe me) poets around today. --Maybe "angriest" isn't the right word, maybe I just mean "ranty-est" but man, he does a mean-ass rant when he gets going. I envy that.
Happily, Boxcar Books had a table outside the room selling a few books afterwards, so I bought my own copy of Pax Atomica & can now return the public library's copy to them; I also bought Marianne Boruch's book of essays, In the Blue Pharmacy (which I also have out from the public library). I thought about going back in to get them signed, but the room was mobbed with people most of whom were swarming towards one or the other of the readers, and decided not to fight the crowds. I'm not an autograph fiend, though I do really enjoy having books signed by people I know somewhat (fellow bloggers, I'm lookin' at you) and by summer-workshop teachers. I enjoy getting books signed by people I don't know sometimes, too, but it's not a big enough deal for me to make like a salmon and swim upstream through the throngs or whatever.
(I did once stand in a very long line at a bookstore to get Alice Walker's autograph in a book. But that was Alice Walker and she's pretty much a rockstar.)
Also, I got new shoes today and they have purple insoles and I love them.
Also, I'm jealous of all you people going to AWP. I am not very good at schmoozing in crowds, but if I found a couple of people I could mostly hang out with so that I wasn't constantly wandering around trying to break into conversations, I think it would be a blast going to readings and buying (way too many, I'm sure) books and meeting up with various bloggers for a drink or five. Maybe next year.
Also also, I have marshmallow peeps. Peeps!
And it was a good reading. Boruch led off with a poem from her recent Selected, but then read all new work, which was quite good. McGrath read a sheaf of new poems, then several from Pax Atomica (including "Rock and Roll" and "The Human Heart," two of my favorites in the book), then a few from a manuscript he's currently working on -- one of which, "Ode to Bureaucracy" I think it was called, had me struggling not to keel over laughing. What I love about McGrath's poetry is that he's simultaneously one of the funniest & one of the angriest (I'm not kidding, read some of the rants in Florida Poems if you don't believe me) poets around today. --Maybe "angriest" isn't the right word, maybe I just mean "ranty-est" but man, he does a mean-ass rant when he gets going. I envy that.
Happily, Boxcar Books had a table outside the room selling a few books afterwards, so I bought my own copy of Pax Atomica & can now return the public library's copy to them; I also bought Marianne Boruch's book of essays, In the Blue Pharmacy (which I also have out from the public library). I thought about going back in to get them signed, but the room was mobbed with people most of whom were swarming towards one or the other of the readers, and decided not to fight the crowds. I'm not an autograph fiend, though I do really enjoy having books signed by people I know somewhat (fellow bloggers, I'm lookin' at you) and by summer-workshop teachers. I enjoy getting books signed by people I don't know sometimes, too, but it's not a big enough deal for me to make like a salmon and swim upstream through the throngs or whatever.
(I did once stand in a very long line at a bookstore to get Alice Walker's autograph in a book. But that was Alice Walker and she's pretty much a rockstar.)
Also, I got new shoes today and they have purple insoles and I love them.
Also, I'm jealous of all you people going to AWP. I am not very good at schmoozing in crowds, but if I found a couple of people I could mostly hang out with so that I wasn't constantly wandering around trying to break into conversations, I think it would be a blast going to readings and buying (way too many, I'm sure) books and meeting up with various bloggers for a drink or five. Maybe next year.
Also also, I have marshmallow peeps. Peeps!
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