originally posted on independent study, 8/14/09
Martha Rhodes of Four Way Books
stopped in to talk to the poets about "publishing," which is another
one of those gut roiling conversations. Much of what was asked, I knew
the answer for, partly from experience editing for Dislocate,
but also from other sources, from meek personal experience. So what I
have jotted in my notebook may not be useful to every reader as it was
for me:
- There is no longer a need to be wary of reading fees. Funding for publishing houses is tight.
- In ordering a manuscript, follow your intuition--make the book the tightest book you can. "I will find the weak poems. They can't hide behind the stronger ones."
- On thematic links within ms: "There has to be some reason why these poems have to be together."
- Consider temperature, thermostatic control--hot poems and cold poems
- (Don't give the editor whiplash)
- Places to search for reputable publishers: AWP, New Pages, CLMP
- It's nice to have a manuscript clipped together (rather than stapled or in a folder, etc.) and mailed in a protected envelope
-
Find good readers who are unfamiliar with your work to read through the
ms--they won't be as invested and won't already know your "tricks"
-
Make sure the contract is legit--run it by someone who might be
familiar--know how many books will be published, if it will be kept in
print, what the dates and deadlines are, what the marketing plan is,
what kind of production input you might have
Her big emphasis was this:
Don't
define yourself by the "career stuff"--the bile will rise. If you feel
that bile rising, write poems. Focus on writing and growing as a
writer. She cited an example of a poet who had all sorts of prestigious
awards but shopped his book around for seven years (he ended up winning
the Bakeless Prize) and in those seven years, instead of shuffling and reshuffling and focusing on that one book,
he kept writing, so that when the ms. was finally accepted, he had
three more manuscripts ready to go and has since published a total of
five books of poetry. Don't let those other books go because you are
being driven to distraction trying to get published.
Showing posts with label from the archives. Show all posts
Showing posts with label from the archives. Show all posts
Monday, June 10, 2013
Wednesday, February 13, 2013
from the archives: bread loaf, workshop two
originally posted on independent study, 8/14/09
Today's workshop continued the conversation on figuration and grounding. I am beginning, more and more emphatically, to agree with those that posit MFA programs ought to focus more on the ability to read and comprehend, more so than the workshop-based model. Or, as I'm discovering here, use the workshop as a place to train writers to become better readers. She threatened an air-horn noise if we wander off to things that resemble suggestions, bits that reflect our own aesthetic. I believe I was beginning to do this more after Kimiko Hahn's Palm Beach Poetry Festival workshop; my comments on peers' poems were often reflective of my own tastes or these line-edit reactions as opposed to: This is what I see and this is how I see it and you can use that as you see fit.
Questions raised during discussion (and of course, there was often reminders that these were not judgement questions, as whenever there is a rule, there is often a writer who can break it in an incredible manner and even more often, these questions don't imply judgement or rule-making but ways to tease out what's going on with the poem--how it's working, how it should work harder):
- What's competing with the surface? Is there anything underneath?
- Is the figure or the ground controlling the structure?
We started class looking at moments from the past day and a half--discussing tone in relation to different readings and lectures. We also took a look at an excerpt from the daily newsletter ("The Crumb") which are excerpts from manuscripts:
"I pushed up my sleeves (having mistakenly worn long sleeves and long pants), scrubbed my arms clean, and then plunged them into the warm liquid whey. The sweet, tangy aroma enveloped me as the curds slipped around my skin like tiny minnows. We gently stirred, using the age-old method, as opposed to paddles or automated blades employed by many cheese makers."
Today's workshop continued the conversation on figuration and grounding. I am beginning, more and more emphatically, to agree with those that posit MFA programs ought to focus more on the ability to read and comprehend, more so than the workshop-based model. Or, as I'm discovering here, use the workshop as a place to train writers to become better readers. She threatened an air-horn noise if we wander off to things that resemble suggestions, bits that reflect our own aesthetic. I believe I was beginning to do this more after Kimiko Hahn's Palm Beach Poetry Festival workshop; my comments on peers' poems were often reflective of my own tastes or these line-edit reactions as opposed to: This is what I see and this is how I see it and you can use that as you see fit.
Questions raised during discussion (and of course, there was often reminders that these were not judgement questions, as whenever there is a rule, there is often a writer who can break it in an incredible manner and even more often, these questions don't imply judgement or rule-making but ways to tease out what's going on with the poem--how it's working, how it should work harder):
- What's competing with the surface? Is there anything underneath?
- Is the figure or the ground controlling the structure?
We started class looking at moments from the past day and a half--discussing tone in relation to different readings and lectures. We also took a look at an excerpt from the daily newsletter ("The Crumb") which are excerpts from manuscripts:
"I pushed up my sleeves (having mistakenly worn long sleeves and long pants), scrubbed my arms clean, and then plunged them into the warm liquid whey. The sweet, tangy aroma enveloped me as the curds slipped around my skin like tiny minnows. We gently stirred, using the age-old method, as opposed to paddles or automated blades employed by many cheese makers."
-- From Lessons in Cheesemaking by Sheila McGrory-Klyza
This piece is focused on the ground, so when the simile comes in, it's figuration to get to the ground, and because it is passing (as in, not part of the pattern and variation), it is texture as opposed to form.
She quoted Robert Frost as saying, "Tone is when you can hear the neighbors through the wall." You may not hear what they are saying, but you can certainly get the tone.
And a list, of sorts, to categorize:
She quoted Robert Frost as saying, "Tone is when you can hear the neighbors through the wall." You may not hear what they are saying, but you can certainly get the tone.
And a list, of sorts, to categorize:
FIGURE & GROUND
figurative - literal
interior - exterior
figurative - literal
interior - exterior
invented - accessible
vehicle - tenor
trope - (literal)
vehicle - tenor
trope - (literal)
So then, if we are unsure where ground or figure is within a poem, it becomes difficult to parcel out the rest.
How then, do we know if punctuation, for example, fits under the category of "form" or is that a part of "texture"? She explained: If there is pattern and variation, then that is form; if it is without but still pleasing, still noticeable, then it is texture.
Another larger discussion was on these three sorts of poetry: dramatic, narrative, and lyric. The dramatic is a form that now belongs mostly to drama and prose, an element rife with conflict and protagonist-antagonist relationships. The narrative, once our epic poems, are steeped in time. And if a poem does not have a clear narrative, Voigt explained, you have an opportunity to get the reader to see what you want them to see when you when them to see it. And with Sappho began lyric poetry. The lyric, she said, takes us out of time and is "singing out of a single moment."
A few other bits:
When we read the poems aloud, she wanted us to "read the lines"--as in, how the poem was lineated--to exaggerate those pauses, in order to "hear" the pattern. When we read final drafts, she told us, read as we pleased. But while revising, this is incredibly helpful. Her variation on the who-reads-the-poem was to have one of the people who didn't write the poem to read it first, then discuss (for something close to an hour, forty five minutes per poem), then have the poet read the poem as a way to "sew things up."
She spoke of recoverable and non-recoverable syntax, especially in regards to Emily Dickinson and the dash. There is a book called A Poet's Grammer which she recommended. She recommended reading Brenda Hillman in regards to dismantling syntax.
She said, "The pleasure of enjambment is being pulled across the page."
Consider difficulties in point of view (and consistency within): where would the camera be pointing?
In closing, Voigt gave us another real-world example to help smooth out the vocabulary she's trying to build in us: A grocery list. The list itself is form, but the order of the food is the structure, and often it is a dysfunctional structure. As poets, we might impose form on it--organizing it by geography or alphabet, say.
It looks like I might be up first in our next session, which is on Sunday. Two days to roil my gut.
How then, do we know if punctuation, for example, fits under the category of "form" or is that a part of "texture"? She explained: If there is pattern and variation, then that is form; if it is without but still pleasing, still noticeable, then it is texture.
Another larger discussion was on these three sorts of poetry: dramatic, narrative, and lyric. The dramatic is a form that now belongs mostly to drama and prose, an element rife with conflict and protagonist-antagonist relationships. The narrative, once our epic poems, are steeped in time. And if a poem does not have a clear narrative, Voigt explained, you have an opportunity to get the reader to see what you want them to see when you when them to see it. And with Sappho began lyric poetry. The lyric, she said, takes us out of time and is "singing out of a single moment."
A few other bits:
When we read the poems aloud, she wanted us to "read the lines"--as in, how the poem was lineated--to exaggerate those pauses, in order to "hear" the pattern. When we read final drafts, she told us, read as we pleased. But while revising, this is incredibly helpful. Her variation on the who-reads-the-poem was to have one of the people who didn't write the poem to read it first, then discuss (for something close to an hour, forty five minutes per poem), then have the poet read the poem as a way to "sew things up."
She spoke of recoverable and non-recoverable syntax, especially in regards to Emily Dickinson and the dash. There is a book called A Poet's Grammer which she recommended. She recommended reading Brenda Hillman in regards to dismantling syntax.
She said, "The pleasure of enjambment is being pulled across the page."
Consider difficulties in point of view (and consistency within): where would the camera be pointing?
In closing, Voigt gave us another real-world example to help smooth out the vocabulary she's trying to build in us: A grocery list. The list itself is form, but the order of the food is the structure, and often it is a dysfunctional structure. As poets, we might impose form on it--organizing it by geography or alphabet, say.
It looks like I might be up first in our next session, which is on Sunday. Two days to roil my gut.
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
from the archives: bread loaf, workshop one
originally posted on independent study, 8/13/09
I've made it to Bread Loaf, that mythical place, and perhaps I've discovered a bit of its secret--you see, from conversations we are having, it seems as if the staff at Bread Loaf hire writers who are not only stunning in their field, but, and here it is: they are also stunning in the field of teaching. So the names might be dazzling, yes, but subsequently, the pedagogy matches up.
My own instructor is Ellen Bryant Voigt, and in just the two and a half hours we had workshop, I have fully fallen--my brain was buzzing, and I thought it would be such a shame, given the sloppiness of my charming memory, to not jot what I can down here, though some of it might not entirely make sense:
Voigt started, of course, with the requisite introductions, and what she was most interested in was how we came to poetry, who we were working with now (especially if we had a peer group), and who our mentors / teachers in the past might have been.
Then, we discussed how we needed this to be a descriptive workshop as opposed to a prescriptive workshop. You see, we've only just met; a group of students in, say, an MFA program might benefit from the "I love..."s and the "I would change..."s because we've known each other and know where those lovings and changings have originated; our aesthetic has been established. But here, she did not want to "make this the auto body shop" but instead help the poets with the next poem they will write. She likened it to saying, "This neck is way too long and it's strange and ... it's a giraffe."
We discussed the notion of figuration and asked: How deep can a figure go? The discussion returned to this again and again. What's on the surface? What's beneath the surface? We used the terms "figure" and "ground," how one is the foreground and the other is the background (and its the poet's job to determine which is which, though it needn't be obvious).
She expressed the importance of our asking questions. When she was a young poet, as all these instructing poets seem to have been, though I can't imagine any of these poets I've admired and studied with or read essays by ever being "young poets," and this is from someone who rarely had trouble imaging her parents as young and as ridiculous as I was--so when she was a young poet, an instructor told her that her poem wasn't working because "the form and the structure did not match." And everyone nodded. Ahhh. This makes sense. She nodded too, though it didn't make sense, and later she looked it up in one of those little poet-dictionaries and saw that these words were nearly synonymous.
But they're not. If we think of it in terms of prose, they are easy to differentiate. The structure is the order in which the information is released to the reader, and the form is the use of those elements such as stanzas, etc. You see?
She asked us questions, easy ones, to get us going: What do we notice first about the poem?
This brought us to form: pattern and variation. She said we need sufficient pattern--"otherwise it's just a pile of words"; we need pattern and variation--"otherwise, a computer could have wrote it."
It was easy to talk about the first (couplets, which one fellow noted was a form of declaration with its opportunity for obvious end-stops) and the second (tercets, whose function seemed mostly to be slowing the reader down, though there are, of course, plenty of other manipulations). We additionally spoke on how couplets give us focus, which may make us miss the patterns in syntax.
We spoke of the use of mirrors and repetition. She used the word "lexical repetition." I wrote it down. She said the reason we turned to poetry as opposed to prose is that we have "a formal appetite." I wrote that down too.
She asked us: "Is this poem Apollonian or Dionysian?", referring to Apollo's clarity and Dionysus's' chaos.
Then the use of tone: How does the speaker feel toward the subject? What is the affect? (Always: how do we know?)
Specificity: (I remembered the importance of verbs here, though it was not discussed, what implications are brought to the table with verbs.) What other connotations are brought with the word? Is it blatant? Does it need to be? How does that work?
This was where she recommended Jim Longenbach's The Art of the Line, which explains what is called "the parsing line" whose end reinforces the syntax (where there is a natural pause, be it a full end-stop, or a comma, or a breath as in a clause), and "the annotative line" whose purpose is to add commentary, another value (an enjambed line, one example of purpose being to mis-read the line, to question what comes after that hang to the next).
In closing, she reminded us of the three important tools we need to hone in our craft: texture, form, and structure.
She told us she wanted us "not to read as a reader but read selfishly, carnivorously, and as a poet." Ask ourselves: what is the poem doing and what can I use?
See everyday-type post about first day here.
***
originally posted on field | work, 8/13/09
Somehow, I've coaxed my camera to give me photos through the cord, but not to upload them permanently on my computer. I'm OK with that. Now, I can share a little bit through pictures, which is nearly all I can give you, as I'm directing my words to my writing notebook, to the margins of poems, to dance around (stomp around) in my brain. It's only been twenty four hours, thirteen of which I slept through, and I'm overwhelmed. Happily so.
Above: saying good-bye to the city as we fly to Newark. Little did I know, this would be the smoothest of the two flights, despite the smallness of this passenger plane, the way I was both aisle and window seat, the bumpy landing that makes sense for something without the width of planes I've grown accustomed to. And the next flight, Newark to Vermont, it wasn't really even that bad--it was the airport, which was so awful, with delays and delays and hearing them bounce around on the speakers for other flights, cancellations, and four planes later, we were in the air. I began to get to know the people around me and met Heather, who is studying non-fiction here. I've since lost her in the crowd.
Above: the propellers from our second flight. There, I sat next to a yoga instructor with a furious cold. We marveled at the swaths of trees, the lakes--you'd think it were northern Minnesota, but the mountains swelled, and I began to miss "home," as in the place of my childhood. (Chattanooga, Tennessee, for those who do not know.)
Above two: that's my room. I'm in a hall off the main inn, right above the dining hall. As I write this, I can hear the radio from the kitchen, listen to busboys pushing each other in the gravel teasingly, the clink of glasses and silverware. The room itself is typical of a dorm room: the bed juts into the tiny bookcase juts into the table juts into the closet juts into the dresser juts into the door juts into the bed. But it's a single, so I can keep my snoring and medical issues to myself.
Once settled, I stepped outside to the above sunset to the left of the main entrance. I'm always amazed at how sunsets translate on the camera; it's never quite what I see with the naked eye, but sometimes they're beautiful in their own way.
Oh, and I think I mentioned fog at some point--maybe in a previous jotted post, maybe in an email to my husband, but here it is--fog and trees and the mountain. Welcome to the mountain, they told us in the opening comments.
Full of vegetarian lasagna and spice cake, I headed over to the little theatre to listen to opening remarks.
Above: A glimpse in the dining room as I walked to the theatre. It's rickety and the food is decent. Everywhere is rickety though. This campus was gifted to the university, and the land cannot be developed. The buildings are old, wood planked.
There are so many of these Adirondack chairs spread across the campus. At some point, I'll end up in one, writing. Reading.
Michael Collier, who runs the program, gave the opening speech, which included speculation as to why Bread Loaf has the name that it does. One was the bread loaf shaped mountain; another was the bread loaf shaped bit of meteor discovered, part of which he "has here," which he wagged at the giggling audience.
Trish Hampl gave the first reading, and I cannot think of a better reader to do so. I've heard her read before, and last fall, had her as a professor for Reading Across Genres, the MFA class all first years take where professors visit and we get a taste of what it might be like to take a class from said professor. It was her that I fell in love with the most, and look forward to having her again for a memoir class in the Reading as Writers designation. Listening to her, I could hear how acute her word choice is, how precise her phrasing. It is no surprise that she started out as a poet.
Finally, Michael Collier came up again to read his poetry; Brigit Pegeen Kelly was supposed to read, but it sounds as if she was caught up in the airport nightmare half the participants seemed also to have been thrust into.
I'm still reeling. Still attempting to fall into the parceled schedule, the dips and peeks and find time to myself, to sleep, to understand where I am supposed to be and when. I have no alarm clock (no cell phone reception "on the mountain"), so a kind neighbor is waking me for tomorrow, and on Saturday, I'll buy the alarm clock the woman at the bookstore will bring from the main campus' bookstore.
I'll bring these posts a day after they happen--seems easier that way. And when I return, I will give you the rest of my Austin trip, since I can moderately access it, it would appear. Please also forgive the stumbling nature of my prose in these poets (or at any time)--I'm trying to save my best thinking for when I am outside this little room, my best words for my own work, my second best for the work of others, and when it comes to left-over, I'm plumb all out.
PS: For those of you interested in what I have to say about the poetry-side of things, I am writing about it on this blog, which is sort of my new space to keep me on track of being less lazy reader and participator in the writing world. This blog, of course, will be my center space, my everyday blog, my friends-and-family-and-welcome, stranger blog. But when I do want freedom to rhapsodize about, say, prosody, or parataxis, or the formal appetite, or figuration, and I don't want to worry about eyes glazing (too much anyway). I can't interest every reader, or even myself, all the time, but when I first started blogging, I did have an everyday blog, and I did have a professional blog (for teaching), so it only makes sense that when I finally feel confident about my place in this "profession" that I would find a space for that too.
Despite
a bumpy travel day, I am here, tucked into a slim room with a single
lamp that cannot be on at the same time as my laptop. There is lace on
the bathroom curtains, the sound of glass and silverware beneath my
window, and creaky floorboards abound.
I've made it to Bread Loaf, that mythical place, and perhaps I've discovered a bit of its secret--you see, from conversations we are having, it seems as if the staff at Bread Loaf hire writers who are not only stunning in their field, but, and here it is: they are also stunning in the field of teaching. So the names might be dazzling, yes, but subsequently, the pedagogy matches up.
My own instructor is Ellen Bryant Voigt, and in just the two and a half hours we had workshop, I have fully fallen--my brain was buzzing, and I thought it would be such a shame, given the sloppiness of my charming memory, to not jot what I can down here, though some of it might not entirely make sense:
Voigt started, of course, with the requisite introductions, and what she was most interested in was how we came to poetry, who we were working with now (especially if we had a peer group), and who our mentors / teachers in the past might have been.
Then, we discussed how we needed this to be a descriptive workshop as opposed to a prescriptive workshop. You see, we've only just met; a group of students in, say, an MFA program might benefit from the "I love..."s and the "I would change..."s because we've known each other and know where those lovings and changings have originated; our aesthetic has been established. But here, she did not want to "make this the auto body shop" but instead help the poets with the next poem they will write. She likened it to saying, "This neck is way too long and it's strange and ... it's a giraffe."
We discussed the notion of figuration and asked: How deep can a figure go? The discussion returned to this again and again. What's on the surface? What's beneath the surface? We used the terms "figure" and "ground," how one is the foreground and the other is the background (and its the poet's job to determine which is which, though it needn't be obvious).
She expressed the importance of our asking questions. When she was a young poet, as all these instructing poets seem to have been, though I can't imagine any of these poets I've admired and studied with or read essays by ever being "young poets," and this is from someone who rarely had trouble imaging her parents as young and as ridiculous as I was--so when she was a young poet, an instructor told her that her poem wasn't working because "the form and the structure did not match." And everyone nodded. Ahhh. This makes sense. She nodded too, though it didn't make sense, and later she looked it up in one of those little poet-dictionaries and saw that these words were nearly synonymous.
But they're not. If we think of it in terms of prose, they are easy to differentiate. The structure is the order in which the information is released to the reader, and the form is the use of those elements such as stanzas, etc. You see?
She asked us questions, easy ones, to get us going: What do we notice first about the poem?
This brought us to form: pattern and variation. She said we need sufficient pattern--"otherwise it's just a pile of words"; we need pattern and variation--"otherwise, a computer could have wrote it."
It was easy to talk about the first (couplets, which one fellow noted was a form of declaration with its opportunity for obvious end-stops) and the second (tercets, whose function seemed mostly to be slowing the reader down, though there are, of course, plenty of other manipulations). We additionally spoke on how couplets give us focus, which may make us miss the patterns in syntax.
We spoke of the use of mirrors and repetition. She used the word "lexical repetition." I wrote it down. She said the reason we turned to poetry as opposed to prose is that we have "a formal appetite." I wrote that down too.
She asked us: "Is this poem Apollonian or Dionysian?", referring to Apollo's clarity and Dionysus's' chaos.
Then the use of tone: How does the speaker feel toward the subject? What is the affect? (Always: how do we know?)
Specificity: (I remembered the importance of verbs here, though it was not discussed, what implications are brought to the table with verbs.) What other connotations are brought with the word? Is it blatant? Does it need to be? How does that work?
This was where she recommended Jim Longenbach's The Art of the Line, which explains what is called "the parsing line" whose end reinforces the syntax (where there is a natural pause, be it a full end-stop, or a comma, or a breath as in a clause), and "the annotative line" whose purpose is to add commentary, another value (an enjambed line, one example of purpose being to mis-read the line, to question what comes after that hang to the next).
In closing, she reminded us of the three important tools we need to hone in our craft: texture, form, and structure.
She told us she wanted us "not to read as a reader but read selfishly, carnivorously, and as a poet." Ask ourselves: what is the poem doing and what can I use?
See everyday-type post about first day here.
***
originally posted on field | work, 8/13/09
Somehow, I've coaxed my camera to give me photos through the cord, but not to upload them permanently on my computer. I'm OK with that. Now, I can share a little bit through pictures, which is nearly all I can give you, as I'm directing my words to my writing notebook, to the margins of poems, to dance around (stomp around) in my brain. It's only been twenty four hours, thirteen of which I slept through, and I'm overwhelmed. Happily so.
Above: saying good-bye to the city as we fly to Newark. Little did I know, this would be the smoothest of the two flights, despite the smallness of this passenger plane, the way I was both aisle and window seat, the bumpy landing that makes sense for something without the width of planes I've grown accustomed to. And the next flight, Newark to Vermont, it wasn't really even that bad--it was the airport, which was so awful, with delays and delays and hearing them bounce around on the speakers for other flights, cancellations, and four planes later, we were in the air. I began to get to know the people around me and met Heather, who is studying non-fiction here. I've since lost her in the crowd.
Above: the propellers from our second flight. There, I sat next to a yoga instructor with a furious cold. We marveled at the swaths of trees, the lakes--you'd think it were northern Minnesota, but the mountains swelled, and I began to miss "home," as in the place of my childhood. (Chattanooga, Tennessee, for those who do not know.)
Above two: that's my room. I'm in a hall off the main inn, right above the dining hall. As I write this, I can hear the radio from the kitchen, listen to busboys pushing each other in the gravel teasingly, the clink of glasses and silverware. The room itself is typical of a dorm room: the bed juts into the tiny bookcase juts into the table juts into the closet juts into the dresser juts into the door juts into the bed. But it's a single, so I can keep my snoring and medical issues to myself.
Once settled, I stepped outside to the above sunset to the left of the main entrance. I'm always amazed at how sunsets translate on the camera; it's never quite what I see with the naked eye, but sometimes they're beautiful in their own way.
Oh, and I think I mentioned fog at some point--maybe in a previous jotted post, maybe in an email to my husband, but here it is--fog and trees and the mountain. Welcome to the mountain, they told us in the opening comments.
Full of vegetarian lasagna and spice cake, I headed over to the little theatre to listen to opening remarks.
Above: A glimpse in the dining room as I walked to the theatre. It's rickety and the food is decent. Everywhere is rickety though. This campus was gifted to the university, and the land cannot be developed. The buildings are old, wood planked.
There are so many of these Adirondack chairs spread across the campus. At some point, I'll end up in one, writing. Reading.
Michael Collier, who runs the program, gave the opening speech, which included speculation as to why Bread Loaf has the name that it does. One was the bread loaf shaped mountain; another was the bread loaf shaped bit of meteor discovered, part of which he "has here," which he wagged at the giggling audience.
Trish Hampl gave the first reading, and I cannot think of a better reader to do so. I've heard her read before, and last fall, had her as a professor for Reading Across Genres, the MFA class all first years take where professors visit and we get a taste of what it might be like to take a class from said professor. It was her that I fell in love with the most, and look forward to having her again for a memoir class in the Reading as Writers designation. Listening to her, I could hear how acute her word choice is, how precise her phrasing. It is no surprise that she started out as a poet.
Finally, Michael Collier came up again to read his poetry; Brigit Pegeen Kelly was supposed to read, but it sounds as if she was caught up in the airport nightmare half the participants seemed also to have been thrust into.
I'm still reeling. Still attempting to fall into the parceled schedule, the dips and peeks and find time to myself, to sleep, to understand where I am supposed to be and when. I have no alarm clock (no cell phone reception "on the mountain"), so a kind neighbor is waking me for tomorrow, and on Saturday, I'll buy the alarm clock the woman at the bookstore will bring from the main campus' bookstore.
I'll bring these posts a day after they happen--seems easier that way. And when I return, I will give you the rest of my Austin trip, since I can moderately access it, it would appear. Please also forgive the stumbling nature of my prose in these poets (or at any time)--I'm trying to save my best thinking for when I am outside this little room, my best words for my own work, my second best for the work of others, and when it comes to left-over, I'm plumb all out.
PS: For those of you interested in what I have to say about the poetry-side of things, I am writing about it on this blog, which is sort of my new space to keep me on track of being less lazy reader and participator in the writing world. This blog, of course, will be my center space, my everyday blog, my friends-and-family-and-welcome, stranger blog. But when I do want freedom to rhapsodize about, say, prosody, or parataxis, or the formal appetite, or figuration, and I don't want to worry about eyes glazing (too much anyway). I can't interest every reader, or even myself, all the time, but when I first started blogging, I did have an everyday blog, and I did have a professional blog (for teaching), so it only makes sense that when I finally feel confident about my place in this "profession" that I would find a space for that too.
Thursday, January 24, 2013
from the archives: [...] poems
originally posted on independent study, Monday, August 10, 2009
While reworking my bookshelves these past few days, attempting to make room for my bulging collection, I've been drawn to a few titles: Morning Poems (Bly), Lunch Poems (O'Hara), Chicago Poems (Sandburg). Selected Poems.
The first two come from a pattern in writing, a kind of methodical progress. Since I left high school teaching and started the MFA program, I've lost my pendulous routine--I would write during my prep hour, one poem, send it to a friend, who also would send me one poem a day. Now, each day is shaded differently from the one before, my wake-up time off kilter, and with classes, there is no promise from one day to the next.
I've been carrying a sheaf of poems with me, enough for a chapbook, that has begun to be referred to as "the grandfather poems." This can't be the title; I can't imagine how many people who would turn away from such a collection. But for now, I have my own little collection with a unifying title. Many of which came from those poem-a-day practices while still teaching high school.
Aside: See what Obama has been caught reading. I especially appreciate that on my birthday last year, he was reading a book of poems.
While reworking my bookshelves these past few days, attempting to make room for my bulging collection, I've been drawn to a few titles: Morning Poems (Bly), Lunch Poems (O'Hara), Chicago Poems (Sandburg). Selected Poems.
The first two come from a pattern in writing, a kind of methodical progress. Since I left high school teaching and started the MFA program, I've lost my pendulous routine--I would write during my prep hour, one poem, send it to a friend, who also would send me one poem a day. Now, each day is shaded differently from the one before, my wake-up time off kilter, and with classes, there is no promise from one day to the next.
I've been carrying a sheaf of poems with me, enough for a chapbook, that has begun to be referred to as "the grandfather poems." This can't be the title; I can't imagine how many people who would turn away from such a collection. But for now, I have my own little collection with a unifying title. Many of which came from those poem-a-day practices while still teaching high school.
Aside: See what Obama has been caught reading. I especially appreciate that on my birthday last year, he was reading a book of poems.
Saturday, December 8, 2012
from the archives: the lure of plath
originally posted on independent study, 7/29/09
When I was fourteen, I used to think Plath's life was a template: live romantically, write a beautiful novel with fashion and numbness and pills, write poetry, angry and curious and angled, fall in love with a poet, marry, have two children, and by thirty, have achieved enough to die.
It's awfully morbid, my introducing Frank and Plath as my touchstones, a quick succession of poor role models, as timelines go.
But again, here we have a writer who started something in me: a curiosity to learn more of the life behind the words. To learn the words entirely, a comprehensive study of poet both publicly and privately.
I have yet to read every Plath poem and I still haven't opened one of her biographies, but I do have a shelf at home, collecting dust. I have a bookcase of critical studies on other poets' work, of biographies and memoirs and collected letters.
This is my place to center all that, to pause.
And this autumn semester, I opted for an independent study with MDB, who is retiring after this semester, and this study will fulfill a literature requirement for my MFA. I felt I ought to pause and take a close look at poets whose work I know only peripherally but ought to know more intimately: founding American poets Emily Dickinson, Edna St Vincent Millay, and Elizabeth Bishop.
But why stop there, of course? Why not center myself, study as many poets as my lifetime permits?
There are two issues I seek to resolve with this space: 1.) My memory is a bit more faulty than the average nearly-thirty-year-old. It's a bit disturbing, actually, just how much leaks out, and it's strange what sticks and what doesn't. Here's my attempt at making more of the good stuff stick. 2.) I need accountability. I have a charming tendency toward distraction, finding myself trotting off to knit a small army of dishcloths or photograph the entire baking process of a zucchini loaf. My distraction holds hands with my procrastination, and I hope to sever that, if only briefly, if only here.
I intend to take a close look at the lives and work of the poets. I intend to keep that experience here, preserve it, let it become a way of seeking out what came before.
When I was fourteen, I used to think Plath's life was a template: live romantically, write a beautiful novel with fashion and numbness and pills, write poetry, angry and curious and angled, fall in love with a poet, marry, have two children, and by thirty, have achieved enough to die.
It's awfully morbid, my introducing Frank and Plath as my touchstones, a quick succession of poor role models, as timelines go.
But again, here we have a writer who started something in me: a curiosity to learn more of the life behind the words. To learn the words entirely, a comprehensive study of poet both publicly and privately.
I have yet to read every Plath poem and I still haven't opened one of her biographies, but I do have a shelf at home, collecting dust. I have a bookcase of critical studies on other poets' work, of biographies and memoirs and collected letters.
This is my place to center all that, to pause.
And this autumn semester, I opted for an independent study with MDB, who is retiring after this semester, and this study will fulfill a literature requirement for my MFA. I felt I ought to pause and take a close look at poets whose work I know only peripherally but ought to know more intimately: founding American poets Emily Dickinson, Edna St Vincent Millay, and Elizabeth Bishop.
But why stop there, of course? Why not center myself, study as many poets as my lifetime permits?
There are two issues I seek to resolve with this space: 1.) My memory is a bit more faulty than the average nearly-thirty-year-old. It's a bit disturbing, actually, just how much leaks out, and it's strange what sticks and what doesn't. Here's my attempt at making more of the good stuff stick. 2.) I need accountability. I have a charming tendency toward distraction, finding myself trotting off to knit a small army of dishcloths or photograph the entire baking process of a zucchini loaf. My distraction holds hands with my procrastination, and I hope to sever that, if only briefly, if only here.
I intend to take a close look at the lives and work of the poets. I intend to keep that experience here, preserve it, let it become a way of seeking out what came before.
Friday, December 7, 2012
from the archives: the book that started it all
originally posted on my former blog, independent study: 7/28/09
I suppose it would make sense that the person who inspired me, who woke me up from the string of professions every little kid wants to be (lady police officer being the very first, when I was in pre-school), would be someone whose only published book was also a diary.
I remember there was this scene from My So-Called Life where her social studies teacher asks something like what might be a word to describe Anne Frank, and Angela, looking all dreamy-eyed, murmurs, "Lucky."
When I was a kid, I used to think lucky too, but not for those reasons. I was envious because Anne Frank's writing was so good for her age, and because her words, her book became symbolic of a moment in history, would be read on by so many generations. Because I wanted to write something so important it would be published and exist forever too.
It makes sense that The Book That Started It All (and by "it," I mean so many things, but most notably, that itch to write) doubled as a peek into the life of the author. I'm a voyeur, it is true. When we walk the dogs in the evening, I gaze in at open curtained rooms, the soft yellow glow of a living room at night, the man in an easy chair, the woman sponging at the sink, the patter of children's feet, the news flickering at the window. What will become of the receipts, the yellowing love letters, the photo albums? What choices are being made to lead us down these roads we take? Who holds our hand as we fall asleep? What's beating in those hearts inside?
Lucky: Yes. I am.
I suppose it would make sense that the person who inspired me, who woke me up from the string of professions every little kid wants to be (lady police officer being the very first, when I was in pre-school), would be someone whose only published book was also a diary.
I remember there was this scene from My So-Called Life where her social studies teacher asks something like what might be a word to describe Anne Frank, and Angela, looking all dreamy-eyed, murmurs, "Lucky."
-------------------------
INT LIBERTY HIGH - ENGLISH CLASS
Brian: Because it's written in the first person.
Mayhew: Thank you. Does it say, 'She was forced to go into hiding'? Somebody else besides Brian... Brian?
Brian: No.
Mayhew: No, she says, 'I', 'I was forced to go into hiding.' [the buzzing of a fluorescent light increases as it comes into view] It's called the first person, okay? This will be on the quiz. So how would you describe Anne Frank?
Angela: [staring at the light, unconciously speaks outloud] Lucky.
Mayhew: Is that supposed to be funny, Angela? How on earth could you make a statement like that? Hmm? [Jordan comes into class late, Angela watches him behind the teacher] Anne Frank perished in a concentration camp. Anne Frank is a tragic figure. How could Anne Frank be lucky?
Angela: I don't know. 'Cause she was trapped in an attic for three years with this guy she really liked? [glances at Sharon behind her, Bell]
-------------------------
When I was a kid, I used to think lucky too, but not for those reasons. I was envious because Anne Frank's writing was so good for her age, and because her words, her book became symbolic of a moment in history, would be read on by so many generations. Because I wanted to write something so important it would be published and exist forever too.
It makes sense that The Book That Started It All (and by "it," I mean so many things, but most notably, that itch to write) doubled as a peek into the life of the author. I'm a voyeur, it is true. When we walk the dogs in the evening, I gaze in at open curtained rooms, the soft yellow glow of a living room at night, the man in an easy chair, the woman sponging at the sink, the patter of children's feet, the news flickering at the window. What will become of the receipts, the yellowing love letters, the photo albums? What choices are being made to lead us down these roads we take? Who holds our hand as we fall asleep? What's beating in those hearts inside?
Lucky: Yes. I am.
Thursday, October 18, 2012
from the archives: "It’s only his outside; a man can be honest in any sort of skin. -- Herman Melville (Moby-Dick)"
(originally posted on independent study on 09/28/09)
While
I was at Bread Loaf, I met this girl, whose name I can no longer
recall, who had the most beautiful tattoo--a pair of poems twined
together on her arm. I marveled at the tattoo from a distance, and snuck
this shot during the Robert Frost talk at his cabin in the woods. I
already knew of Shawn through Meryl, one of my fellow poets in the program,
and we'd been emailing, discussing a tattoo Kelly and I have been
considering for much too long. It takes a while for two people to settle
into something permanent such as this, though I think the friendship
took a bit less time. But when I saw the above tattoo, my lack of
patience went into hyperdrive, and I began a dialogue with Shawn on how to do something like this on my own arm. First:
settling on the poem. It had to be something I loved, and though some,
who I've told I'm getting a poem tattoo, have asked if it would be one
of my own, I cringed--it seems narcissistic, and somehow, I don't
believe my own words are at a place that could claim that kind of
permanence. Not on my own body, especially.
Sharon Olds has always been my favorite poet. Since I was a junior in high school. And this poem speaks to me on so many levels, and that last line, oh, that last line:
It felt so right. Which led to contemplation: what shape would this poem take? The above tattoo seems to be based on a flower, and I'd been hoping the poem I'd select would lend itself to something obvious--but no pillars, no paper dolls. Instead, Shawn suggested two of something, for the two figures in the poem, and if I weren't already talking birds with my friend Kelly, he'd suggest that one, which led me to wings--the poem in the end seems to be about a kind of freedom, a revenge to bad memories. Also, I read this from an interview with Sharon Olds:
Wings, lungs. The senses, which are so important to both her work and my own.
So he sketched this for me:
Shawn has a special knack, I must add, for what he calls "illustrative realism." He creates these amazing creatures with such imagination.
Here are some of my favorites he has put up on his blog: book birdhouse and the opposite arm's bird as well as these shoulder doilies. Some other clever designs: the bird/swine flu, this crazed penguin, this brainwashed sheep, airline safety, the drag king and queen, and many others.
He added the words, and from a distance (hence, my keeping it thumbnail size), you can see the wings still:
But I also wanted to include the larger draft, so you could see the way all the words interact. My favorite about the top tattoo is the way the words interact, overlap, mingle.
Thank you, Shawn: for doing this in trade, for being so patient with me as I "line edited" the wings, for doing this on your day off, for being so encouraging, for having an awesome wife who was my own cheering section and reminds me how cool poetry is, for being so good at PhotoShop, for making art for all the world to see. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
PS:
All images, save the photographs, are copyright Shawn Hebrank. You can read
Shawn's post about the not-to-be-repeated tattoo.
------
Here are two photographs of the tattoo that were taken since getting it--the first is the following Christmas, and the second is from January of 2011 when I gave birth to my daughter (it's one of my favorites, and I have it framed in my living room):
I've since found out the name of the woman whose tattoo so inspired me to get my own. A picture of her tattoo is beside mine in the book The World Made Flesh, and I've also since learned more about the unspoken copyright of tattoos, and I hope this woman forgives my not-so-secret theft. For people who have them, tattoos are often so uniquely personal, as I've attempted to illustrate in this post, as is poetry. The woman was actually at BreadLoaf for nonfiction, which also speaks to how significant those two poems are to her. So, years later, I thank her, in hopes that she would have given permission, and in hopes that she appreciates this tattoo that is in homage to so many good things.
A tattoo is a true poetic creation, and is always more than meets the eye. As a tattoo is grounded on living skin, so its essence emotes a poignancy unique to the mortal human condition.
~V. Vale and Andrea Juno, Modern Primitives
While
I was at Bread Loaf, I met this girl, whose name I can no longer
recall, who had the most beautiful tattoo--a pair of poems twined
together on her arm. I marveled at the tattoo from a distance, and snuck
this shot during the Robert Frost talk at his cabin in the woods. I
already knew of Shawn through Meryl, one of my fellow poets in the program,
and we'd been emailing, discussing a tattoo Kelly and I have been
considering for much too long. It takes a while for two people to settle
into something permanent such as this, though I think the friendship
took a bit less time. But when I saw the above tattoo, my lack of
patience went into hyperdrive, and I began a dialogue with Shawn on how to do something like this on my own arm. First:
settling on the poem. It had to be something I loved, and though some,
who I've told I'm getting a poem tattoo, have asked if it would be one
of my own, I cringed--it seems narcissistic, and somehow, I don't
believe my own words are at a place that could claim that kind of
permanence. Not on my own body, especially.Sharon Olds has always been my favorite poet. Since I was a junior in high school. And this poem speaks to me on so many levels, and that last line, oh, that last line:
I Go Back to May 1937
I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges,
I see my father strolling out
under the ochre sandstone arch, the
red tiles glinting like bent
plates of blood behind his head, I
see my mother with a few light books at her hip
standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks with the
wrought-iron gate still open behind her, its
sword-tips black in the May air,
they are about to graduate, they are about to get married,
they are kids, they are dumb, all they know is they are
innocent, they would never hurt anybody.
I want to go up to them and say Stop,
don't do it--she's the wrong woman,
he's the wrong man, you are going to do things
you cannot imagine you would ever do,
you are going to do bad things to children,
you are going to suffer in ways you never heard of,
you are going to want to die. I want to go
up to them there in the late May sunlight and say it,
her hungry pretty blank face turning to me,
her pitiful beautiful untouched body,
his arrogant handsome blind face turning to me,
his pitiful beautiful untouched body,
but I don't do it. I want to live. I
take them up like the male and female
paper dolls and bang them together
at the hips like chips of flint as if to
strike sparks from them, I say
Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it.
It felt so right. Which led to contemplation: what shape would this poem take? The above tattoo seems to be based on a flower, and I'd been hoping the poem I'd select would lend itself to something obvious--but no pillars, no paper dolls. Instead, Shawn suggested two of something, for the two figures in the poem, and if I weren't already talking birds with my friend Kelly, he'd suggest that one, which led me to wings--the poem in the end seems to be about a kind of freedom, a revenge to bad memories. Also, I read this from an interview with Sharon Olds:
What did you mean when you once said that your poetry comes out of your lungs?
[Laughs] Well, you know, it's curious where different people think their mind is. I guess a lot of people believe that their mind is in their brain, in their head. To me, the mind seems to be spread out in the whole body -- the senses are part of the brain. I guess they're not where the thinking is done. But poetry is so physical, the music of it and the movement of thought. Maybe we can use a metaphor for it, out of dance. I think for many years I was aware of the need, in dance and in life, to breathe deeply and to take in more air than we usually take in. I find a tendency in myself not to breathe very much. And certainly I have noticed, over the years, when dancing or when running, that ideas will come to my mind with the oxygen. Suddenly you're remembering something that you haven't thought of for years.
Wings, lungs. The senses, which are so important to both her work and my own.
So he sketched this for me:
Shawn has a special knack, I must add, for what he calls "illustrative realism." He creates these amazing creatures with such imagination.
Here are some of my favorites he has put up on his blog: book birdhouse and the opposite arm's bird as well as these shoulder doilies. Some other clever designs: the bird/swine flu, this crazed penguin, this brainwashed sheep, airline safety, the drag king and queen, and many others.
He added the words, and from a distance (hence, my keeping it thumbnail size), you can see the wings still:
But I also wanted to include the larger draft, so you could see the way all the words interact. My favorite about the top tattoo is the way the words interact, overlap, mingle.
Thank you, Shawn: for doing this in trade, for being so patient with me as I "line edited" the wings, for doing this on your day off, for being so encouraging, for having an awesome wife who was my own cheering section and reminds me how cool poetry is, for being so good at PhotoShop, for making art for all the world to see. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
PS:
All images, save the photographs, are copyright Shawn Hebrank. You can read
Shawn's post about the not-to-be-repeated tattoo.And this tattooing had been the work of a departed prophet and seer of his island, who, by those hieroglyphic marks, had written out on his body a complete theory of the heavens and the earth, and a mystical treatise on the art of attaining truth; so that Queequeg in his own proper person was a riddle to unfold; a wondrous work in one volume; but whose mysteries not even himself could read, though his own live heart beat against them; and these mysteries were therefore destined in the end to moulder away with the living parchment whereon they were inscribed, and so be unsolved to the last.
~Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
------
Here are two photographs of the tattoo that were taken since getting it--the first is the following Christmas, and the second is from January of 2011 when I gave birth to my daughter (it's one of my favorites, and I have it framed in my living room):
I've since found out the name of the woman whose tattoo so inspired me to get my own. A picture of her tattoo is beside mine in the book The World Made Flesh, and I've also since learned more about the unspoken copyright of tattoos, and I hope this woman forgives my not-so-secret theft. For people who have them, tattoos are often so uniquely personal, as I've attempted to illustrate in this post, as is poetry. The woman was actually at BreadLoaf for nonfiction, which also speaks to how significant those two poems are to her. So, years later, I thank her, in hopes that she would have given permission, and in hopes that she appreciates this tattoo that is in homage to so many good things.
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