Poet Highlight

Poet Highlight

At the American Library there is an adequate selection of poetry. A book series they have invested in is called the American Poets Project from the Library of America. If you are tired of the word America right now, you aren't 'Merican.

While looking through the titles, a name that seemed vaguely familiar caught my attention: Amy Lowell. Who was she? What did she write? Am I just thinking of Robert Lowell? After leafing through the introduction, reading, "Anyone with more than a passing knowledge of American poetry has heard of Amy Lowell..." by Honor Moore, I felt judged enough to borrow it.

Amy Lowell (1874-1925) is connected to the Imagist movement that was led by Ezra Pound. Though she and Pound had a love/hate relationship (Pound wasn't really a nice guy, so this type of relationship wasn't unusual), she identified herself as an Imagist and propounded its values in the U.S.

Her first book was published in 1912, and Lowell would go on to publish several books of poems, anthologies, and critical studies until her death. In her poems, she "pioneered the use of 'polyphonic prose' in English, mixing formal verse and free forms" (poets.org). Her work is characterized for its clarity, but it is also noted for its "bald audacity" and "eroticism" (Moore in Amy Lowell selected poems, American Poets Project). Amy Lowell was outspoken, forceful, kind, and a known lesbian in a time when silence was golden.

For links to some examples of her poetry, you can click here, here, or here. From what I've read so far, I am a bit wishy-washy, meaning I understand the rationale for those interested in her, but I don't find her in my top ten favorite poets. The first poem in this list of the three would be my favorite if I had to choose one to click.

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Journal Fest

Journal Fest

I was not able to go to the AWP conference this year, which is too bad. Not too bad because it's great to be surrounded by writers trying not to look too much like writers (or are trying really hard to look like them), or because I couldn't go to the off-site readings that I'm sure were mostly a great time. And it's not too bad I missed out on listening to an interesting lecture or missed wandering into a talk that was starting to get heated. No, it's too bad I missed out on all of the free journals and awesome books to tempt the plastic in my wallet.

However, with all of those journals passed around at AWP like coupons for discounted car washes, I wonder how many of them will be around ten years from now? Which ones will make their mark on the literary community? What editors will become respected for finding the next great so-and-so? Which one seems worth buying a subscription?

For the question concerning which print journals might be around ten years from now, a new study shows that if a journal has survived its first three years or has an affiliation with a university, the chances of sticking around for another seven plus are pretty good.

Of course, the print periodical industry as a whole has been licking its wounds for awhile, especially with the increasing quality of and demand for online journals. At 41% of literary journals still being published today from an initial 1980 launch, though it's nothing to go crazy about, literary journals and popular magazines (43%) are almost on par (source)

So, if you are fresh from AWP with an extra duffel bag of journals, take a few minutes and see who supports them and how long they have been printing. If there is no college affiliation, the journal is in its first three years, and you like what the editors have done, this is where your subscription dollars should go. Also, if you have been pounded by snow and ice and have driven through all of the salt-soaked roads, get your car washed.

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Cream City

Cream City

The Cream City Review is a nonprofit journal produced with help from, among other places, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. I first became aware of this journal after seeing Haines Eason leave a short note about some of his poems that will be published there (side note, Haines won the PSA chapbook contest last year and his poems, well, are often very good).

I've written about journals from time to time here, and I think The Cream City Review needs to be highlighted for a few things that it does well / could do better. First, they have been publishing poets and writers since 1975 and today have a large staff that is kept busy with numerous submissions. Second, they have an annual literary prize for fiction, poetry, and nonfiction (side note, Haines won this year's poetry prize). Third, the journal is large and diverse, putting out over 200 pages of material twice a year, and as of 2008 eight, CCR even includes comics.

On the down-side, however, navigating their website to find past material and not just lists of past contributors is difficult. I often find reading an issue from a year ago or two years ago, though not an exact gauge of the editors' tastes because staff change occasionally, at least something to help me decide whether I want to submit my own work, buy a subscription, or recommend the journal to someone I think would like it. CCR is a print journal, so it's no surprise that their focus is on producing a solid print issue. On the other hand, I found and would most likely only have found CCR online.

So, if you are interested in reading more about Cream City Review, follow the links.

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Pale Ravener of Horrible Meat

Pale Ravener of Horrible Meat

The Maldives is an island nation in the Indian Ocean connected by dozens of atolls, which are little ring-shaped islands. It is an area known for its sharks (over 25 types), and sharks are awesome, though I'm not sure exactly which one Herman Melville describes in this short poem, "The Maldive Shark," so maybe someone can help me:

About the Shark, phlegmatical one,
Pale sot of the Maldive sea,
The sleek little pilot-fish, azure and slim,
How alert in attendance be.
From his saw-pit of mouth, from his charnel of maw
They have nothing of harm to dread,
But liquidly glide on his ghastly flank
Or before his Gorgonian head;
Or lurk in the port of serrated teeth
In white triple tiers of glittering gates,
And there find a haven when peril’s abroad,
An asylum in jaws of the Fates!
They are friends; and friendly they guide him to prey,
Yet never partake of the treat—
Eyes and brains to the dotard lethargic and dull,
Pale ravener of horrible meat.

A few things about this poem draw me in. First, the word "phlegmatical" in the first line that, if not looked up, can be guessed at accurately using clues about the shark in the poem. A problem, sometimes, with words that come into poems and are not in the common vernacular is that they can seem a little pretentious, like the poet is talking down to you. In Melville's poem, published in the late 1800s, "phlegmatical" doesn't come off as pretentious but as a perfect fit: it makes the reader pay attention immediately, looks interesting, sounds interesting, and its definition fits (having an unemotional...disposition).

The most interesting aspect of this poem, though, has to be its perspective. Pilot fish congregate around sharks (and other species) in order to eat ectoparasites and loose scraps, and in Melville's poem we are with them, next to the shark, so the tension of the poem raises significantly. We are even inside the jaws, "an asylum." The metaphoric value held in "asylum" is that it is both a safe place and somewhere you do not want to be, or how Melville views the pilot fish's life, and this is another accurate and powerful word choice in "The Maldive Shark."

The last line strongly closes the poem while allowing the creation of the shark, one that is nasty, vicious, and dumb, to continue infinitely into some unknown. I'm not going to write much more about this now, but I'm definitely going to watch this a few times.

p.s. To see a "text-flow" of this poem on the Academy of American Poets website click here.

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Visual Poetics

Visual Poetics

Today I found this poem, which you must click in order to understand the very little I'm going to say about it because I can't post it here without Blogger exploding.

A major goal of poems, of course not all, is to arrange words onto lines that create an image in the reader's consciousness. A way to take this one step further is to create the image out of words you want your reader to imagine. For example, writing a poem about a swan while literally creating an image of a swan with the words in the poem. This is called concrete poetry, and this is often called cheesy poetry, at least by me.

A different twist is to still use words to create an image, except the only requirement is to make it interesting (assuming the poet wants you to be interested). This is what Mary Szybist does in her poem "All Times and All Tenses in this Moment."

This poem rotates around a point and its lines occasionally connect to others in terms of subject. At first glance, it's difficult not to say, "Cooool." But beyond this immediate reaction, I'm left feeling a bit let down by what the poem has to offer me. If a poem is to be judged by the originality of its language, its ability to create an emotional response in the reader, and its development from point A to B, Szybist does not win any medals from me with this poem.

However, this poem isn't playing by conventional rules, but rather against them, so the original criteria for a poem's success don't really matter. Maybe this poem only wants a, "Coooool," and nothing more. If so, then two "cool's" up; if this poem still wants to play in the conventional realm (but it doesn't), I give it only a half "cool." What'dya think? What are your thoughts on Szybist poem?

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Editor Tic-Talk

Editor Tic-Talk

The Kenyon Review's online feature that allows an editor to vouch for a particular poem or story is, if a little too "this is why I am smart and can spot good art," a really good thing.

Why We Chose It is KR's way of opening the sacrosanct box of editorial decision making. When we pick up a journal at the bookstore, or flip through one that has been shoved in our face by a man with a beard (call out, Patrick Harned), we read knowing little to nothing about the editorial process that went into shaping the work now held. The chances are high that at least one piece of work will beg the question, "Why was this in here? I hate it." KR's Why We Chose It will tell you, kind of.

The current featured poem is called "Why We Must Have Canonical Hours and Islands" by Elizabeth T. Gray Jr. The poem in full:

Iona

To resist the hollowing, difficult to bear,
that draws us across an expanse of sea or year
to meet, in winter, on a narrow stair,

a desolation folded in a cowl of wool
or winged lions at the edges of the air.
To allow some story from a hill or well,

or this sere call, through mottled glass, of gull,
the rise and fall of prayer, this full
and relentless curl and then recoil of swell.

To pull us past the brittle mainland’s edge
where the great beasts stand in gold and there
break open for us abbeys in the air.

The editor assigned to tackle the rationale for inclusion of this poem is Tyler Meier. In his reasoning, he mentions the pull of the title, the rhythm of the poem, its vowels playing tricks in your mouth. And he ends with a nod to John Keats's idea of Negative Capability, capable of dwelling in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason.

Basically, the the poem boggled him, leaving Meier "asking questions," so he was constantly drawn back to the poem partly because of its musical qualities and partly because he wanted to figure it out. The poem certainly leaves one asking questions, but so does the Why We Chose It feature. After reading the entire thing, I'm not sure if I'm any more knowledgeable about the reasoning for this particular poem's selection. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the poem and agree with what Meier is saying about its positive aspects, but perhaps a side-by-side with a "lesser" poem by this editor's standards might take the online feature a step further? Anyone, at KR, the lid has at least cracked some.

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Tongue in Cheek

Tongue in Cheek

Today I read a poem titled "Vision" which employs a classical turn with its last two lines, exposing itself to the reader and creating an ironic moment. The poet's tongue is in her cheek, the poet being Erica Funkhouser, someone I'm not familiar with beyond this particular poem. Her it is in full:

With age
mirage
assuages
what the youthful eye
would have studied
until identified—
chicory? bluebird? debris?
Today no nomenclature
ruptures
the composure
of a chalk-blue haze
pausing, even dawdling,
now and then trembling
over what I'm going to call
fresh water.

The final "what I'm going to call" makes the poem. More specifically, it makes the poem ironic and comedic, which are the poem's goals. Beginning at first with minor word play, all of those "ages" make more sense once we come to the penultimate line; the poet wants to pun in this poem, like I wanted to use a lot of "p's."

"Vision" is a poem that deals with a serious subject–becoming old and losing certain abilities–while reducing the threat of that subject through irony. Though I can't take a whole lot of poems like this without getting bored, they are fun, especially at the moment when they "turn," as with "what I'm going to call."

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