To Germany

To Germany

Heading to Germany for a few days to end the break and explore a little. First stop, Frankfurt, Goethe's birthplace and economic hub. When I get back, a post about Germany, its awesome book fair, and of course the poetry world!

image source

Holiday Gifts

Holiday Gifts

After a brief hiatus, I'm back with a brief post. Today, I'm talking about gifts. If you are still looking for something that will make you or someone you know who likes poetry happy, here are a few ideas that might help you (and all gifts that are on my wish list!).

1. A subscription to a contemporary journal you feel does a good job of displaying the best in contemporary writing. Standard big name choices with large subscriptions might be Poetry magazine out of Chicago, The Kenyon Review, or Crazy Horse. Other journals of interest to support with a donation or with an online subscription could be BOXCAR Poetry Review or MiPOesis. (Small plug for my old undergraduate journal The Broken Plate, where two poems of mine will be in their next issue, and for my graduate journal Natural Bridge. Small and dedicated staff with each journal that has continually put out an awesome product.)

2. A book of poems published by a living poet in the last five years (preferably bought at your local independent bookstore, which if you are in St. Louis should be here.

3. Two books of poems published at anytime by anyone, anywhere.

4. A membership to a national poetry advocacy organization like The Academy of American Poets where the person receives much more than their name on a list.

5. Poetry's roots are in music, and I would assume you could find one artist on the Yellow Bird Project's website that you or your cared-for-one likes. Each artist has teemed up with the nonprofit to create a t-shirt that supports that artist's charity. Click around in amazement.

6. Last but not least, there are many organizations like Oxfam, National Resource Defense Council, and Amnesty International that support environmental and social justice here and around the world. When I receive a card noting a donation has been made in my name, it inspires me–and an inspired poet has a better chance of writing inspired poems.

Happy Holidays to all, and I look forward to digging into some new poetry for the blog soon!

image source

Begin Again-ings

Begin Again-ings

"The Fine Art of Flipping" is a recent article on the Poetry Foundation's website where Jeff Gordinier details a few good books he has found by flipping through random pages, and reading it I was reminded of how I will often decide on a certain book this way, especially books of poetry by writers I'm not familiar with. And while mentioning unfamiliar writers, I believe giving those writers a few minutes of our time, even if it is just a flip, to be an area where we can all improve. It is very easy to Google a best-selling list, or ask which titles are popular at the local bookstore, but finding a book on your own that grips you with just a few lines can open literary doors that all too often remain closed.

Gordinier describes his interest in the opening lines of poems: "I look for an opening line that teases me, haunts me, or slaps me across the face: I’m a journalist by training, so I am susceptible to the impact of a great lead." Journalist or not, the beginning lines of a poem, especially when just "flipping," are crucial to the entertainment value on which an entire book can be judged.

The word "entertainment" should not make you cringe when thinking about literature; we read because we seek entertainment on a large scale, where learning and mindless disconnect are at opposite ends. It is true that a book can be and often is made more "readable" to tip the scale, but that issue is too abstract to place in this post. Most importantly in terms of writing, we must make our opening lines–prose or poetry–equal to our best lines in order to fulfill one of the larger goals of writing: to connect with another person.

This is not to reduce writing into an advertisement gimmick, but to show the importance of first impressions. First lines aren't everything, but they can be for a reader flipping through your book. So, as we all head to the local bookstore, and if you are in St. Louis, MO I encourage you to visit my former place of employment and all around awesome shop Subterranean Books, flip around a few unknowns and give one a chance.

image source

Another note on Experimentation

Another note on Experimentation

Click here for the full text of a poem, "Psalm," by Vanessa Place that is full of experimentation: in form, in diction, and in argument, specifically. Normally I would post the poem below, but the form of the poem does not comply with what I can do here.

Hopefully you have read the poem.

But if not, here are some brief thoughts about it. The poem, centered on the page, expands and contracts with each new thought. It can be divided roughly into three parts, with part three giving us what the poem wants us to take; the first two-thirds seem there only to warm the reader up to help make sense of the ending, one which ends "there'd be no need for Americans / for heart would will what it would want / and all of art be / damn'd." This statement providing the ground for the beginning lines to flower from, lines like "(S) Being a good people, if we were wrong, we would change. / (S) We would not change."

Vanessa Place's poem, though disjointed and difficult at first, does provide entertainment and insight without distracting the reader too much from its main point, with obstructive rhythm, that absolute power is laughable and that helpless victims are everywhere ("Were babies born not guilty"). I enjoyed the experience the poem provides, being playful, evasive, and most importantly brave. This poem is out on a limb, for sure, but I am there with it.

Often, I want to turn away from poems like this, because at first glance it seems "too much." Reading the poem reminds me how working through certain poems can be just as rewarding as finally coming to terms with them.

image source

Poem and a Robot, a Love Story

Poem and a Robot, a Love Story

Experiments with form are necessary and often produce interesting visual qualities in addition to their challenge to experience an unusual poem. As with all experiments, they can produce the unexpected, and this unexpected result can either be a good or a bad thing. Joshua Bell, in his poem "Our Bed Is Also Green," has its mix of both (click here for the whole poem). Here is a sample:

Please speak to me	only of the present
or if you must	bring up the past
bring up only that	which you and I
don't share. I know	this is a selfish
thing to ask. Yes, as I	have often
remarked, shore lunch	at hanging rock
was lovely. Your	hair and mine
stayed put. Later on	we didn't, as we
do now, pull it from	each other's clothes
as if for final proof	that we've been
sleeping with	each other.

This double column provides a fun game for the reader in deciding how to read it, first, and then how to make sense of the form, second. For the first question, reading across columns quickly makes the most sense, though there is always the interplay and ability for double meaning because of the form. For the second question of Why? the poem's subject is the answer.

The poem concerns the "I" and the "you" and their romantic relationship. In this opening, we have the speaker pleading with the "you" as the dive into memory takes shape, continuing onward for four more equal length parts that make up one (two?) stanza(s).

Bell's choice of form does well to make the poem visually engaging, but when it comes to sound, how the poem actually resonates in my head when I read it, the effect reminds me of phrases fed into an all-too-ready-to-speak robot: the result is jarring by both removing me emotionally and not fitting perfectly with the poem's content. Here is another section that I challenge you to read out loud:

we scrape across	with paddles toward
the weedtops,	sticking up, like alien
flags, above	the invisible
settlements, the castle	you've dropped
your hooks	inside of. I love
how destructive	you are with the fishes,
so go ahead	and bring your war
against them, Ramona,	against the duck,
against time,	against any things
that swim. Our fiber-	glass canoe is of

"[H]ow destructive you are with the fishes" is an interesting line that lends credibility to the poem's form, along with lines like "as if we were / two people." So the next question, what comes first, form or sound? Often the advice form follows content, or form creates content, or form and content in other combinations is proclaimed, but what about the sonic qualities at stake in a poem because of the form that is so intricately connected to content? Doesn't rhythm influence a poem's overall value in a way equal or greater to form? Rhythm that matches the poem's content?

The argument for this specific poem that the detached tone that comes from this robot-like phrasing matches the detached tone of the speaker does not work for me, because the speaker seems very attached: they have written the poem because of this attachment to the "you."

Experimentation produces unpredictable results. In this poem, the negative result was a sacrifice in sound, a quality so crucial to poetry's differentiation from prose. The positive result, is, well, I'm not sure now (I was going to say interesting line breaks).

"Our Bed Is Also Green" is a reminder of how difficult writing in unusual or nonstandard forms can be in poetry, as in all genres that balance so many elements at once.

image source

American Life in Poetry: Column 298

American Life in Poetry: Column 298

Ted Kooser created American Life in Poetry as a free weekly column for newspapers and online publications to promote poetry and add value for print and online readers. To round out a theme recently on the blog of different programs that exists to help add poetry to your day, I thought it would be nice to highlight Kooser's project he started as, official title, Poet Laureate Consulate in Poetry to the Library of Congress during 2004-2006.

Each week, Kooser gives a brief introduction to a contemporary poem. These poems, since I have started following the column that is conveniently placed in your inbox, often align with Kooser's aesthetic: more narrative in style, contemplative in mood, given over to a speaker that is affected by their environment and comments to some length about the effect, and, to be honest, a little dull (click to read a Ted Kooser poem). However, dull only because they don't fit my own aesthetic preference, which tends toward the surreal, and so I'm not as surprised by what I read and yada, yada, yada.

As poems, they have been solid. This week's poem is by Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz and is called "At the office Holiday Party."

I can now confirm that I am not just fatter
than everyone I work with, but I’m also fatter
than all their spouses. Even the heavily bearded
bear in accounting has a little otter-like boyfriend.

When my co-workers brightly introduce me
as “the funny one in the office,” their spouses
give them a look which translates to, Well, duh,
then they both wait for me to say something funny.

A gaggle of models comes shrieking into the bar
to further punctuate why I sometimes hate living
in this city. They glitter, a shiny gang of scissors.
I don’t know how to look like I’m not struggling.

Sometimes on the subway back to Queens,
I can tell who’s staying on past the Lexington stop
because I have bought their shoes before at Payless.
They are shoes that fool absolutely no one.

Everyone wore their special holiday party outfits.
It wasn’t until I arrived at the bar that I realized
my special holiday party outfit was exactly the same
as the outfits worn by the restaurant’s busboys.

While I’m standing in line for the bathroom,
another patron asks if I’m there to clean it.

Forgive the font. The font used is a little grating to read, and it makes the poem seem as if it was scrawled with a crayon. This, though, might be a subtle way to knock poetry off its false high-horse, a problem that alienates many would-be readers of poetry because they feel it is "too hard" or they feel "excluded." Certainly there are poets who actively seek to do just that (keep out readers) or make their poems difficult (see Modernism), but Kooser is not interested in those poets, and for good reason. The poems he chooses are meant for a large audience, and that's a good thing.

image source

Holiday

Holiday

The Academy of American Poets' website poets.org has a poem-a-day feature that brings a new poem to your inbox every morning. Like Poetry Daily (poems.com) I mentioned earlier, the poem-a-day program is just another way to ensure, even on the busiest days, we take a brief break and read some poetry.

Usually, the poem does nothing more than make me say, "Nice," then I click delete and go on to search aimlessly at GoodSearch.com, a search engine that drops a few pennies in your favorite non-profit's piggy bank (check it out). Today though, Sarah Gambito's "Holiday" has grabbed my attention:

I want to lick someone

with an antelope for a head.

A whole-person-boxer for a fist.

Circulatory, fruited over

nostalgia to overcome me like

a truck I'll drive over his body

while he reaches for a

telephonic breast. The way gods

do when they create

the first animal cracker

steams of existence.

Fat plant and vernix.

The shattered cursive equations

my love was capable of.

I said there will never be a night like this

How is it I was right?

How fibrous and incidental it seems.

The tiny leather jackets we wore.

What was it about that quality that I admired?

Loping around like a christening polecat.

There is the poem in full. What a great opening line, "I want to lick someone," then topped by "with an antelope for a head." This poem does not waste time, and its stylistic force is surprise: I never had a clue about what might come next. Often this can be disorienting, or feel overwrought, but in "Holiday" it captures the essence of, well, holidays. But that isn't the whole story.

It also sneaks in love and regret, which is the poem's reason for existence (this might sound dramatic, but a good question to ask poems so disjointed and strange as "Holiday" is the question, Why was this written?).

Last comment about this poem concerns end-stopped and enjambed lines. Notice how heavily end-stopped the poem is towards the end, contrasting heavily with its quick beginning. This stylistic decision helps to emphasize the poem's theme at the end (love, desire), while still allowing all of its quirkiness, especially at the beginning. "Holiday" is an excellent example of modern poetry's use of surprise, abstraction, sonic play, and inability to remove itself (so often, it seems) from love/ love lost/ desire for love. Ah, fun stuff.

Well, Happy Holidays, everyone.

image source

MFA vs. NYC

MFA vs. NYC

This week has been tough to sit down and really dive into a good essay or poem to bring to the blog (it snowed! and Jack Frost took my blanket), so instead I thought I would pass along a semi-long article on Slate.com that explores the distinction between the "MFA writer" and the "NYC writer." Every few months I come across an article that discusses the MFA. Usually, the question is whether it is a good thing or a bad thing for a writer. This article takes a different angle.

LINK TO ARTICLE

Brief thoughts:

The article attempts to coldly distinguish the motivations of MFA programs and writers with NYC writers in the publishing-cocktail. The difference related mostly to NYC= focused on big-bang book, and the MFA=writer-professor focused on nice jobs at the expense of fame.

The comparison of short-story and novel are interesting, also accessibility, expansion of MFA programs, and how we are all affected by the MFA.

image source