Poetry and the Examined Life

2007-07-18T12:15:00.000-04:00

Some Thoughts on Poetry

· There is metrical, formal, syllabic, free verse, language, and prose poetry.
· Most poems can be classified predominantly as either lyrical or narrative poems. Epic poems are usually narrative.
· One key choice for the poet writing a poem is whether the poem will be in past or present tense.
· Another key choice for the poet is whether the poem will be in first person, third person, or second person.
· What form will the poem be in? For example, a traditional form like a sonnet or villanelle, or free verse.
· So much depends upon the line break. You can break the line with these considerations in mind: a key word or emphasized word that lends itself to the theme(s) or message(s) of the poem, a word with energy such as a verb, for musical reasons, for line length in comparison to other lines in the poem, and for visual reasons (using the page as a canvas). Some poets believe that line breaks are like musical notation and are one of the main ways a poet can convey his or her unique voice in a poem (Denise Levertov). Generally it is best to break a line on a noun, verb or adjective rather than other parts of speech such as a preposition or article.
· It’s important to choose dramatic moment or peak experience for the moment or moments in a poem.
· “There is one rule for poetry. There are no rules.” --William Patrick
· “Make it new.” --Ezra Pound
· Make the real unreal and the unreal real. This lends interest and credibility to a poem.
· Generally, formal verse forces you to be more meditative, big picture, and make sweeping general statements. Free verse allows you to be more conversational and more specific.
· Prose proceeds and poetry turns.
· Think of a poem as content you draw a circle around and intensify through heightened language what is within the circle.
· Poetry has its roots in the oral tradition, so I believe it is meant to be musical and read aloud.
· One way to make your language sound more poetical is to cut words that you would normally include in prose.
· Poetry should be eloquently said or beautiful, even if the content of the poem is about ugly things.
· Diction: nitty-gritty monosyllabic or dissyllabic Germanic words versus polysyllabic Latinate words. Ex: dark, hammer versus ephemeral, cognition.
· Nouns and verbs are the workhorses in poems. Particularly verbs.
· No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader. –Robert Frost?
· There are witty poems. Meditative poems.
· Tone can be one of the greatest pleasures in a poem.
· Consider modulating your tone in a poem.
· There is so much magic and the essence of what is poetry to be found in imagery and specificity. Generally, the more specific the better.
· Poetry, like any art, is a vast ocean. There is always more to learn.
· Poets lie and steal. Don’t think you have to have allegiance to the truth of what actually happened. If it makes a better poem to alter the facts, do so.
· Always revise according to what’s best for the poem. Be ruthless.
· Don’t despair over cutting well said sections of your poem if they need to be cut from the poem. Don’t treat those words as precious things you can’t part with. If you wrote those words, you will be able to write plenty more like them in the future. If it makes you feel better about cutting them out of your poem, save all of your well said orphan words in a file somewhere lest you fear they will be lost forever.
· Poetry does not always translate well out of one language and into another. Translators have to choose between literally translating meaning or striking a balance with other considerations like tone and music.
· There is an art to titling poems.
· Art is about finding that just right balance among competing considerations.
· When revising a poem, you often have to make tough choices among competing considerations such as sound, sense, line length, look on the page, perfect or slant rhyme, etc.
· The objective correlative of T.S. Eliot. There’s a kind of imagery that corresponds to a specific emotion or mixture of emotions.
· Do you play it safe and write the “academic poem” that’s politically correct and examines fairly all sides of an issue, or take a stand and present it forcefully. I argue for the later. You can always write subsequent poems to adequately present the other aspects. Advice from Gerald Stern.
· When giving feedback on another person’s poetry, remember that we all have our aesthetic biases and try to make the other person write like we do. Try your best to keep this in check and instead see what the poem is trying to be on its own terms. Look for the hints it is giving towards what it wants to be. Try to take on the other poet’s aesthetics and imagine how the poet can best revise the poem from that point of view.
· “No ideas but in things.” --William Carlos Williams
· Write about what you know. Generally, yes, good advice, but you should also learn about things you don’t know and write about them. Write about what you know can be bad advice for young poets who don’t know a lot. It is better to send them to the library to learn about things that they can bring into their poems. Good and interesting poems can come from research.
· “Write as if a train is bearing down upon you.” With a sense of urgency. Advice given to Joshua Poteat in a Poteat interview.
· Tony Hoagland’s idea of how many poems suffer from not having enough things going on in them. Tony talks about angularities in a poem. How you should import other content into the poem, often random or out of left field content.
· Writing a poem well and easily is often about how well you can slip into a kind of trance mode when it feels like the poem is coming from a place other than you and you are just listening and taking dictation.
· You have to get to the unconscious and use the unconscious as your ally. You have to consciously give your unconscious marching orders to follow and problems to solve. The unconscious will work behind the scenes and if you are patient eventually come up with a creative solution.
· Be stubborn and patient when it comes to poetry. From Phillip Levine.

2007-07-17T13:04:00.000-04:00

Life ain't nothin' but a funny, funny riddle

--From “Thank God, I’m a Country Boy” by John Denver

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Hard work without talent is a shame, but talent without hard work is a tragedy.

--From a 7/16/2007 fortune cookie

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Laughter is an instant vacation.

--Milton Berle

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Poetry's project is to use every aspect of language to its maximum effectiveness, finding within it nuances and powers we otherwise could not hear. So the poet needs to be a supreme handler of the figurative speech we all use everyday, employing language's tendency to connect like and disparate things to the richest possible effects. In poetry, figuration is at its most sophisticated: condensed, alive with meaning, pointing in multiple directions at once.

…

It's a kind of perceptual signature, a record of a way of an individual way of seeing. This is one of the central things which poetry is: a vessel of individuality, a distillation of the way one person experiences the world, knows herself in time and in place.

--From “Speaking in Figures” by Mark Doty

2007-07-12T12:11:00.000-04:00

There are many here among us
Who feel that life is but a joke.

--from “All along the Watchtower” by Bob Dylan

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Light comes out of black.

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wis·dom (w¹z“d…m) n. 1. Understanding of what is true, right, or lasting; insight: “One cannot have wisdom without living life” (Dorothy McCall). 2. Common sense; good judgment: “It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things” (Henry David Thoreau). 3.a. The sum of scholarly learning through the ages; knowledge: “In those homely sayings was couched the collective wisdom of generations” (Maya Angelou). b. Wise teachings of the ancient sages. 4. A wise outlook, plan, or course of action. 5. Wisdom. Bible. Wisdom of Solomon. [Middle English, from Old English wºsd½m. See weid- below.]

--American Heritage Dictionary

2007-07-03T12:17:00.000-04:00

Poetry Dream

I dreamed this morning that I was the guest poet slated to read during an arts festival at a small college. The organizer of the events was around my age or maybe a little younger, and he was looking forward to my reading. I was being treated as an honored guest around the students, and there were some leather armbands that were made and distributed to the festival attendees that had words from one of my poems weaved in gold-colored thread into the black armbands. I remember feeling a bit nervous about the reading, but I knew that I would do a good job. I was going to read my very strongest work and work that works the best when read aloud. There was some sort of complication with the arts festival that was going to delay my reading an hour or so. In the dream I never got to read my poems.

2007-06-29T14:06:00.000-04:00

If there existed no external means for dimming their consciences, one-half of the men would at once shoot themselves, because to live contrary to one's reason is a most intolerable state, and all men of our time are in such a state.

--Leo Tolstoy

2007-06-19T12:53:00.000-04:00

Vote for the New 7 Wonders of the World

Only 17 days left to vote!

2007-06-14T12:10:00.000-04:00

Fortune Cookie Wisdom

Do not seek so much to find the answer as much as to understand the question better.

Great things are accomplished only by the perfection of minor details.

Over every mountain there is a path, although it may not be seen from the valley.

Ideas not coupled with action never become bigger than the brain cells they occupied.

How can you have a beautiful ending without making beautiful mistakes?

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News

I haven’t been posting regularly for quite awhile. Some news updates. The publication of my villanelle “For a Wreath on a Live Oak, Route 22” in Poetry Southeast was supposed to appear in the spring issue. It has now been deferred until the summer issue. For reasons I won’t go into here, I’ll be curious to see if my poem appears in the summer issue.

I received my contributor copies of SLAB a couple of weeks ago. The tercets of my long poem “Drive” with its long lines came out all wrong. It looks like ragged prose on the page. At least one of the editors took the time to include a card apologizing for the errors and assured me that the poem will be in the correct format when it appears online. It will probably be August or early September before the new issue of SLAB appears online.

I recently received an acceptance for my poem “Unacceptable” from Niteblade.

Yesterday I received my contributor copies of The Akros Review that contain my pantoum “Buona Notte.”

I’ve received around a half dozen rejections during the last couple of months. Notable among the rejections was a handwritten note on the rejection slip from Boulevard. They indicated that they liked “Thoor Ballylee” and “When We Met,” but they receive so much great work and can’t find a place for all of it. That’s probably the nicest rejection that I’ve received.

My enthusiasm for poetry has been absent for the past two months. Part of it has to do with how busy my 8 to 5 job has been (which has calmed down now). I think I’m also in one of those fallow periods where I don’t have much to say. I’ve also gotten out of the habit of writing regularly. I’m just now beginning to feel the poetry embers glow again.

2007-04-20T21:21:00.000-04:00

Good News!

I received word today that The Akros Review accepted my poem "Buona Notte" for publication in their forthcoming edition. This has put some spring in my step and is a nice way to start the weekend.

2007-04-01T14:34:00.000-04:00

A rejection yesterday from Minnetonka Review.

2007-03-30T12:18:00.000-04:00

Yesterday the mail brought a rejection slip from Sycamore Review. I was a bit surprised that there wasn’t any personalization on the slip since I sent them five of my strongest poems.

2007-03-27T12:52:00.000-04:00

Fortune Cookie 3/27/2007

Knowledge helps you make a living; wisdom helps you make a life.

2007-03-26T13:23:00.000-04:00

A rejection came on Saturday from the Toledo Review.

2007-03-23T21:23:00.000-04:00

Today I received a rejection from Paddlefish.

2007-03-23T12:31:00.000-04:00

Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.

--Oscar Wilde

An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.

--Oscar Wilde

2007-03-22T20:10:00.000-04:00

Joshua Poteat Interview

Are there any "words of wisdom" that linger in your head when you're writing? Any advice that has stayed with you?

Someone once told me to write as if a train was bearing down upon me, i.e., with urgency. That seems like good advice.

More

2007-03-21T11:55:00.000-04:00

Take the Good with the Bad

Yesterday my book review of Joshua Poteat’s Ornithologies was accepted by Rattle for their E-Reviews. Check it out.

I received this morning a rejection from The GSU Review for three of my poems.

2007-03-20T13:37:00.001-04:00

Untying the Writing Knot

Another part of the "knot" that I keep thinking about is that I don't feel very lucky when it comes to writing. I wouldn't say I have bad luck, just little good luck. The frustrating thing is that there is little that can be done about whether you are a lucky person or not. Some people just seem to be equally talented or even less talented, but they are luckier when it comes to the fruits of their writing. There is something unfair about this.

I think part of being lucky when it comes to writing is to do your due diligence and learn your craft, put in your time at the desk, read poetry, etc. Putting that work in on the front end makes it more likely that you will be lucky on the back end. Still, there are no guarantees.

My wife thinks that attitude helps shape this strange concept called luck. She suggests that if I have a more positive attitude and expect better things of my writing that it is more likely to happen. I will admit that I have at best guarded optimism and at worst pessimism/skepticism when it comes to the fruits of my writing.

Another part of the knot is that I don't feel that I am fully committed to writing. I feel that I don't spend enough time writing and reading. I spend my discretionary time often in other ways such as watching movies, playing video games, reading science fiction, and exercising. It is a constant question to find what is the right balance of writing to other pursuits/relaxation in my life. When I feel that there is little payoff for my writing, I think I am more likely to find the writing time/effort to be absurd, so I find myself tipping the scale more towards other pursuits/relaxation.

Intellectually, I realize that the most healthily place to be is to value writing for the internal benefits it provides. Some days I can remind myself of that and really believe it. Other days I really want that external recognition. By internal benefits from writing, I mean: learning more about myself, learning more about the nature of the unconscious, producing something that is distinctly "me," feeling that pleasure when you are in the zone of writing and the words seem to come from another place, sticking with something even though it is difficult, learning to master something and how mastery of one thing provides lessons and contributes to mastery of other areas in your life, and feeling like a god because with writing you start with nothing but a blank page or a blank screen and create in your image.

2007-03-20T08:58:00.000-04:00

I was not among the finalists for the Longleaf Press Chapbook competition.

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The Creative Process (OEPC):

Observe
Experience
Process
Create

Taking Care of Yourself (NURSE):

Nutrition
Understanding
Relaxation
Spirituality
Exercise

2007-02-20T21:53:00.000-05:00

And a rejection today from The Tusculum Review.

2007-02-13T20:58:00.001-05:00

A rejection from Tar Wolf Review today. The editor indicated that she liked "The Day the Wall Came Down" the best from the group of five poems

2007-02-08T21:32:00.000-05:00

Where has all my enthusiasm gone?

2007-02-07T11:57:00.001-05:00

Yesterday I received a rejection from Phoebe.

2007-02-02T12:29:00.000-05:00

One must be drenched in words, literally soaked with them to have the right ones form themselves into the proper pattern at the right moment. When they come . . . they come as things in themselves; it is a matter of felicitous juggling!; and no amount of will or emotion can help the thing a bit.

--from The Letters of Hart Crane, November 26, 1921

2007-02-01T12:33:00.000-05:00

People wish to be poets more than they wish to write poetry, and that's a mistake. One should wish to celebrate more than one wishes to be celebrated.

--Lucille Clifton

Like a great poet, Nature knows how to produce the greatest effects with the most limited means.

--Heinrich Heine

2007-01-23T12:47:00.000-05:00

I liked my wife’s iPod Nano so much that I bought myself one a couple of weeks ago. The genius in the design comes from the simplicity of navigation and having a small view screen to see your songs, playlists, albums, artists, etc. and find what you want to hear pretty quickly. I have almost 400 songs on my Nano already. Yesterday I bought some songs from iTunes for the first time.

Using Netflix I’m alternating between watching Star Trek Voyager season 5 and Kung Fu season 2. I love watching TV series shows without commercials. It occurred to me yesterday that watching a Voyager episode is like eating a favorite chocolate while watching a Kung Fu episode is like eating a meal. The Kung Fu episodes take more time to digest and resonate longer.

Rome on HBO is still holding my attention. I’ll be curious to see if the gods punish Lucius severely.

I took a day off from work yesterday and did absolutely nothing productive.

In other news, I received a rejection yesterday from Willow Springs. This weekend I’ll start sending out submissions.

2007-01-18T23:11:00.000-05:00

Absolutes are shortcuts to avoid the hard work of real thinking.

--Me

2007-01-11T12:28:00.000-05:00

I received a rejection yesterday from Blackbird. I was surprised to hear from them at all considering I sent them some poems back in April. It would be refreshing to receive an acceptance soon.

2007-01-08T12:04:00.000-05:00

On Saturday I received a rejection with a little ink from River Styx. I am very excited about the return of Rome on HBO on January 14th.

2007-01-04T13:28:00.000-05:00

I received a rejection from Ploughshares yesterday. Later this month I will need to send out more submissions and send my chapbook to a couple of contests.

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The artist is the creator of beautiful things.

To reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s aim.

The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things.

The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography.

Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.

Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty.

--Oscar Wilde, from The Preface of The Picture of Dorian Gray

2006-12-19T12:11:00.000-05:00

A rejection from The Madison Review came in the mail yesterday. I hope that I receive one final acceptance before the year 2006 is over.

My chapbook is ready to send out to contests.

2006-12-12T12:53:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I received a rejection slip from Crazyhorse. I WILL be accepted by that literary magazine some day. Oh, yes!

2006-12-11T16:50:00.000-05:00

Poems reveal secrets when they are analyzed. The poet's pleasure in finding ingenious ways to enclose her secrets should be matched by the reader's pleasure in unlocking and revealing these secrets.

--Diane Wakoski

Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.
--Robert Frost

Poetry is the revelation of a feeling that the poet believes to be interior and personal which the reader recognizes as his own.

--Salvatore Quasimodo

Poetry is thoughts that breathe, and words that burn.

--Thomas Gray

Poetry gives the griever not release from grief but companionship in grief. Poetry embodies the complexities of feeling at their most intense and entangled, and therefore offers (over centuries, or over no time at all) the company of tears.

--Donald Hall

2006-12-07T13:08:00.000-05:00

True poetry has no interest in improving or idealizing the world, which does well enough. It only wants to realize the world, to see it better.

--John Crowe Ransom

A poet looks at the world the way a man looks at a woman.

--Wallace Stevens

Democritus plucked his eye out because he could not look at a woman without thinking of her as a woman. If he had read a few of our novels, he would have torn himself to pieces.

--Wallace Stevens

Everything is complicated; if that were not so, life and poetry and everything else would be a bore.

--Wallace Stevens

If some really acute observer made as much of egotism as Freud has made out of sex, people would forget a good deal about sex and find the explanation for everything in egotism.

--Wallace Stevens

Intolerance respecting other people’s religion is toleration itself in comparison with intolerance respecting other people’s art.

--Wallace Stevens

Most modern reproducers of life, even including the camera, really repudiate it. We gulp down evil, choke at good.

--Wallace Stevens

The genuine artist is never “true to life.” He sees what is real, but not as we are normally aware of it. We do not go storming through life like actors in a play. Art is never real life.

--Wallace Stevens

To regard the imagination as metaphysics is to think of it as part of life, and to think to think of it as part of life is to realize the extent of artifice. We live in the mind.

--Wallace Stevens

2006-12-05T12:41:00.000-05:00

I received yesterday three rejections: Mid-American Review, The Pinch (formerly River City), and 42opus. Ouch! Getting three rejections at once versus them being spread out makes a big difference as to whether you shrug off rejection or it stings.

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Poetry is the one place where people can speak their original human mind. It is the outlet for people to say in public what is known in private.

--Allen Ginsberg

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The Sloth

In moving-slow he has no Peer.
You ask him something in his Ear,
He thinks about it for a Year;

And, then, before he says a Word
There, upside down (unlike a Bird),
He will assume that you have Heard—

A most Ex-as-per-at-ing Lug.
But should you call his manner Smug,
He’ll sigh and give his Branch a Hug;

Then off again to Sleep he goes,
Still swaying gently by his Toes,
And you just know he knows he knows.

--Theodore Roethke

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RCA Victor

The dog sits by the victrola,
his head cocked, listening
to the voice of his master
and thinking:

How different he looks today,
smaller, like a box,
and his head an ornate
megaphone.

Where are the legs
he needs to walk me?
Where are the hands
that throw my ball?

the dog wonders
and begins to shiver.

--Billy Collins

2006-11-30T11:48:00.000-05:00

If my family didn’t want me to write about them, they should've behaved better.

--Anne Lamott

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from an Essay on Criticism

A little learning is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring;
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.
Fired at first sight with what the Muse imparts,
In fearless youth we tempt the heights of Arts,
While from the bounded level of our mind
Short views we take, nor see the lengths behind;
But more advanced, behold with strange surprise
New distant scenes of endless science rise!

--Alexander Pope

2006-11-15T12:24:00.000-05:00

Poetry is a sword of lightening, ever unsheathed, which consumes the scabbard that would contain it.

--Percy Bysshe Shelley

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On Monday this week I received a rejection from The Southeast Review. One of the editors signed her name, and the slip’s text invited me to submit again.

2006-11-13T12:07:00.000-05:00

[Poetry is] such a portable art, for one thing, it travels. And it is made of this common medium, language. Through its very being, poetry expresses messages beyond the words it is contained in; it speaks of our desire; it reminds us of what we lack, of our need, and of our hungers. It keeps us dissatisfied. In that sense, it can be very, very, subversive.

--Adrienne Rich

2006-11-10T12:04:00.000-05:00

200th Post!

I received a rejection from The New Orleans Review yesterday.

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The poem should be what it means to readers. They can grow with it. If some reader really likes a poem, he might read it five years later and see in it something very different, because he’s lived a little longer and suddenly sees something very startlingly news. But if he were informed of it then, he might not be ready, or it may not be wanted or needed.

--Anne Sexton

2006-11-03T11:13:00.000-05:00

I received my contributor copies of Yemassee yesterday. Hurray! I like the look of the black and white cover with a ruffled-looking little bird perched on a rail staring straight at you. I feel like my two poems are in select company considering that there are only a total of fourteen writers in the issue. I’m happy with the look of my poems on the pages except that they broke up one of my tercets in “Response to the Examined Life” so that two lines are at the bottom of the page followed by one line at the top of the next page. “Churchyard” looks fine.

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Poetry is a human art, and we’re really talking about our lives, and poetry which is most readable is that which is most intimate and touching. At the same time, it requires a tremendous kind of craft to walk that tightrope of talking intimately about feelings or talking feelings and not producing a certain amount of gush.

--Diane Wakoski

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I’ve been trying to come up with a better title for the chapbook I’ve been assembling. It was suggested that I look at CD titles I like and determine why I like them as a way to see techniques behind good titles. See the paste below from an email.

Here are some CD titles I like and why:

- Staring at the Sea: Creates an instant image in your mind and evokes associations with contemplation, eternity, danger, origins, and the subconscious.
- You Must Believe in Spring: Like the imperative and makes you question what you must believe in about spring.
- The Better Life: Makes you ask yourself what is a better life or "the" better life.
- No Need to Argue: Associations of peace and rationality.
- Californication: An invented word from California and fornication.
- Automatic for the People: Not sure what I like about this. It's a mysterious title to me but interesting.
- Screaming for Vengeance: Can't you hear the shrillness and anger from these three words?
- The Ultimate Sin: Makes you think about what is the ultimate sin.
- And Justice for All: Taken from the end of The Pledge of Allegiance.
- The Sinister Urge: A malevolent sounding title and makes you wonder what the particular urge is.
- The Headless Children: Works as a horrible image and as a metaphor for unthinking or lost children/people.
- Educated Horses: Interesting because horses don't go to school like humans do if they go to school at all, so you wonder if it is a metaphor for humans (I think it is a sexual reference to women in the context of the song or possibly a fetish reference).
- Ride the Lightning: Creates for me a mythological image of someone like Thor or makes me think of the violence of a thunderstorm.
- Brand New Day: Like the optimism of the title. Fresh starts and beginnings.

Like our talks about effective poem titles before, the above titles are interesting to me overall because they

- Create an image or sound
- Give you a command
- Make you think about what the title could mean at a deeper level
- An invented word that's effective and communicating something
- Are an allusion to something else
- Argue for something or suggest thoughts/feels through association

2006-11-02T17:00:00.000-05:00

Poetry is the language in which man explores his own amazement. . . says heaven and earth in one word. . . speaks of himself and his predicament as though for the first time. It has the virtue of being able to say twice as much as prose in half the time.

--Christopher Fry (1907 - ) English dramatist, playwright

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Western Wind

Western wind, when will thou blow,
The small rain down can rain?
Christ, if my love were in my arms
And I in my bed again!

--Anonymous

2006-11-01T12:58:00.000-05:00

The essence of poetry is will and passion.

--William Hazlitt (1778 - 1830)

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I received a rejection on Monday from The Gettysburg Review. My Yemassee contributor copies should be arriving any day this week.

Here’s a word frequency counting web site if you ever need the service. My poetry friend J. passed it on to me after she found it on the web. I was using Control F in Word to count up key words in my chapbook.

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I dreamed a few days ago that I was driving an ice cream truck in reverse and keeping up with the traffic around me. I remember looking for a side street where I could turn around and drive normally on the main street. I felt confused and impressed with myself as I drove in reverse.

2006-10-27T12:22:00.000-04:00

A Blessing

I rejoice in the poems not written:
the cruelly discarded: the crippled,
the asthmatic, the anemic: the poem

about a photograph: about what love
is like: about how strangely I
felt that day: about something about me,

noticed. Bless you, go on the ash-heap,
that fine compost from muscle, blood, bone,
which fuels surely the green slick stalk.

--Josephine Jacobsen

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Is life not a hundred times too short for us to stifle ourselves?

--Friedrich Nietzsche

2006-10-26T12:53:00.000-04:00

You have to tell the truth in poetry. You have to be willing to say what you think, and be wrong, and fall on your face, and have jaded sophisticates laugh at your naïveté, and have cool populists laugh at your pompous elitism. Whatever, dude. You have to respect the deep seriousness of the act of writing a poem and be willing to stand behind what you have written....

--Campbell McGrath

2006-10-25T12:30:00.000-04:00

I have a thing about finding form rather than imposing it. I want to find correspondences and relationships which are there but hidden, and I think one of the things the artist does is to reveal.

--Denise Levertov

2006-10-24T13:01:00.000-04:00

Assembling a Poetry Collection

Below are some notes I took in North Carolina about assembling a poetry manuscript. Most of these ideas came from the following essay: "Dynamic Design: The Structure of Books of Poems" by Natasha Saje, The Iowa Review, Fall 2005. Mary Biddinger: Thanks for pointing me to this essay a few months ago.

Ways to Organize a Poetry Collection

· A narrative arc/sequence
· Autobiographical: narrative of a speaker or the poet’s life
· Mood arc/feeling arc: order for contrasting mood or feeling from one poem to the next
· How one poem ends and the next begins
· The space in between the poems becomes part of the sequence
· Groups 3 or 4 poems together because they have a common theme or subject matter
· Organize by the order in which they were written: as poet grows & changes, so do the poems
· Establish what are the 3 to 6 main themes, make a pile of poems for each theme, order manuscript by picking one poem from each pile and thereby weave the themes throughout the book
· Pay special attention to the first and last few poems
· Picking possible first and last poems for the collection can illuminate possible ways to organize the poems in between
· First poem usually a shorter poem, an appetizer
· Beginning of a book tells the reader a great deal about what will follow: welcoming gestures, strategies, getting the reader’s attention, creating mystery or anticipation, introducing themes
· Begin book with a prayer or invocation
· Start book with an Ars Poetica
· Start book with a poem about another art form
· Start book with a poem about language
· First poem heralds the theme of the collection, something I’m setting out to prove
· Last poem in a book underscores the book’s meaning emphatically
· Whatever tone the book adopts, the last poem must conclude
· Some books use a period of time as a container
· Some books return to some aspect of the opening gestures as a way of creating wholeness in the book, a “bookends” approach
· Balance and contrast
· Dynamic energy
· Surprise
· Breathing space/white space
· Dialogue between intent & serendipity or tension & inevitability
· A reductive process: omit poems that don’t get along well with others. The chosen poems form some sort of association, fit together organically or adhere.
· Book should have distinct openings and closings
· Use the conventions of film: jump cuts, flashbacks, develop a character, panoramic, extreme close-ups
· Move from the specific to the general or the general to the specific. Microscope to telescope or telescope to microscope. Ex: Personal/family concerns material to globalizing these concerns
· By place
· The way the end of one poem slides into or contradicts with the beginning of the next creates an associational order. Transitions of: sequence, time, comparison, contrast, example, cause & effect, place, concession, summary, repetition
· Abecedaraius: poems arranged alphabetically by title
· Randomly
· Poem groupings/divisions by them, form, tone, subject, place
· Can title poem groupings/divisions but does the section title highlight something that might be overlooked or needs to be added? Dividing a book into sections should make the experience more artful, not merely more clear.

Poetry Manuscript Organization Questions

· How does the book carry itself?
· How does the book move the reader?
· How does the organization provide a richer, more “writerly” experience for the reader?
· What about “contexture”? The contextuality provided for each poem by the larger frame within which it is placed, the intertextuality among poems so placed, an the resultant texture of resonance and meaning?
· How does the collection make the reader no longer a consumer but a producer of the text?
· Experience readers want poems to make them work harder, equating the worth with bliss. How does the collection do that?
· What is the book’s trajectory? How does the ending connect to the beginning?
· Does the book click shut, hang in the air, dissolve, fly away?
· Include explanatory/bibliographic notes in manuscript? Poets who trust their readers make their book’s structure a partnership, and invitation to find bliss.
· Book organization: Author interpretation, author intentions. Ex: Plath’s organization of Ariel to emphasize outrage at Hughes’ infidelity versus Hughes’ organization emphasizing madness.

2006-10-20T16:44:00.000-04:00

I dreamed this morning about a wasp that flew around the house that turned into a lobster crawling on the floor that turned into a kitten looking up at me and bathing itself.

Earlier this week on I received a rejection from Gulf Coast.

2006-10-17T12:36:00.000-04:00

Back from My Writing Retreat

I don’t really feel like blogging today but since I’ve not posted anything for some time…. Anyway, below is a paragraph I took from a recent e-mail about how my writing retreat in North Carolina went. I do feel that I returned from the writing retreat with a clearer vision of my work and where I need to go from here.

The week has been okay. Not as productive as I had hoped. I finished drafts on two new poems and started a third. I arranged a chapbook manuscript I’m excited about (9 poems, about 21 pages). It became pretty clear early on that I need around 10 more poems before I can really think about assembling a first book manuscript, so I still have a lot of revising and writing of new stuff ahead of me. I did work on trying to assemble a book despite knowing that I don't have enough poems that meet the "bar of quality" I have in mind. Doing that gave me some ideas as to how the book might be arranged in the future. The most helpful thing was to think about possible first and last poems. If I thought about what poem I might start with and what poem I might end with, things this gave me some direction about how the poems in between might best be arranged.

*

What is a poem but a hazardous attempt at self-understanding? It is the deepest part of autobiography.

--Robert Penn Warren

2006-10-06T13:04:00.000-04:00

Quick Update

Tomorrow I begin my week long writing retreat. I hope to get tons of things done.

I received a kind rejection from Puerto del Sol yesterday. The Assistant Editor took the time to compliment a couple of lines and the ending of my poem “Abandoned Texaco Station,” but she felt the rest of the lines didn’t live up to what was praiseworthy. I’ll look at the poem (yet again!) and consider revising it with her comments in mind. Puerto del Sol keeps commenting positively on what I send them, but they have yet to accept anything.

*

After one had abandoned a belief in God, poetry is that essence which takes its place as life’s redemption.

--Wallace Stevens

I became almost intoxicated by the idea of the line break. It seemed as if I were writing just to get to this point, this decision. But, although the line break is very important to me, I don’t really understand how I know when it is supposed to happen.

--John Ashbery

2006-10-03T13:15:00.000-04:00

Today is my birthday, and I’m celebrating it by being at work. Actually, I chose not to take the day off because next week I will be in North Carolina working on my manuscript. With the holidays fast approaching, I need to conserve my vacation time. I did open up my gifts from my wife before work this morning (great gifts: some clothes, a gym bag, a watch, and a bookcase for my stacked books on the floor in the study), and we did go to breakfast at Aunt Sarah’s before work so that I could get my chocolate chip pancake fix. I may try to cut out of work early today if the boss allows it.

Haven’t been doing much writing. I think that I’m conserving my energies for the concentrated effort of next week. I have been reading though: Alison Stine’s chapbook Lot of My Sister, David Lehman’s Evening Sun & When a Woman Loves a Man, and I just received my copy of Ashley Capps debut book called Mistaking the Sea for Green Fields.

In other news, I received a prompt rejection from Pleiades yesterday. I mailed the submission to them around the middle of September.

2006-10-02T12:44:00.000-04:00

Being a poet can help you to face some of your demons. But it doesn't mean that the writing is politically correct—or the life.

--Toi Derricotte, AWP's The Writer's Chronicle, Sept. 2006

Many young writers haven't learned to submit to their obsessions.

--Richard Hugo, The Triggering Town

2006-09-29T11:27:00.000-04:00

More on the Found Robert Frost Poem

UNKNOWN FROST POEM COMES OUT FROM HIDING AT U-VA.
September 29, 2006 Washington Post
On the opening page of a small leather-bound book in a University of Virginia library, graduate student Robert Stilling found an inscription in brownish-gray ink. It was a poem by Robert Frost, in the poet's own hand, unknown and, Stilling believes, unpublished. "It's like coming across aruin," he said, finding a poem that Frost seemed to have abandoned. "It was a complete bolt out of the blue," said Ted Genoways, editor of the Virginia Quarterly Review, the kind of dramatic discovery that scholars dream of as they pore over manuscripts and letters. The poem, "War Thoughts at Home," has particular resonance now, Stilling said. It will be published, for thefirst time, it is believed, in the Virginia Quarterly Review available Monday.

*

I believe that when you begin writing you must apprentice yourself to the trade. You need to master the forms, practice the exercises, like learning and practicing scales on a piano…. But now, when I write a poem, I discover the form as I write…. The first draft may happen quickly. I then try to recognize the poem’s configuration, its meter or rhythm, and attempt to give the poem voice and shape. What intrigues and fascinates me is how complex a creature a poem can be. The content, the emotion, the images will leap up at you, but the subliminal formal elements are at work in the background.

--Elise Paschen

*

Fortune Cookie 9/27/2006:

No problem can stand the assault of sustained thinking.

2006-09-28T11:18:00.000-04:00

OBSCURE ROBERT FROST POEM DISCOVERED BY GRAD STUDENT September 27, 2006 Associated PressAn unpublished Robert Frost poem, a tribute to a friend killed during World War I, has been rediscovered and will appear next week in the fall issue of the Virginia Quarterly Review, the University of Virginia announced Wednesday. "War Thoughts at Home" first emerged in 1918 when Frost inscribed it in a copy of "North of Boston," his second collection. The poem was not seen again until a graduate student at the University of Virginia, Robert Stilling, recently spotted "War Thoughts" while looking through some Frost papers

ROBERT FROST POEM IS DISCOVERED September 28, 2006 New York TimesA previously unknown poem by Robert Frost (1874-1963) is to be published on Monday in The Virginia Quarterly Review. Found by a graduate student, Robert Stilling, in a collection of books and manuscripts bought by the University of Virginia, the 35-line poem, "War Thoughts at Home," was written in 1918, not long after Frost's friend and fellow poet Edward Thomas was killed in World War I.

FROST POEM FOUND AT U.VA. / GRAD STUDENT DISCOVERS HANDWRITTEN WORK IN UNCATALOGED PAPERS September 28, 2006 Richmond Times-DispatchA U.Va. graduate student, poking through a box of uncataloged material at the school's library, has found an unpublished poem by Robert Frost. The poem, "War Thoughts at Home," was handwritten by Frost in a copy of "North of Boston," his second collection of poetry. The poem is signed by Frost and dated January 1918.

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Let the readers do some of the work themselves.

--Fyodor Dostoyevsky

2006-09-27T13:25:00.001-04:00

T. S. Eliot

Someone said: “The dead writers are remote from us because we know so much more than they did.” Precisely, and they are what we know.

--T. S. Eliot

*
T. S. Eliot (1888 – 1965)

Nobel Prize winner Thomas Stearns Eliot is considered the greatest poet of his generation, and a major influence on future generations. Like so many other poets, Eliot received help from Ezra Pound in publishing his first book of poems, Prufrock and Other Observations, in 1917, two years after Eliot had left the U. S. for Europe. In 1927 he became a British subject and converted to Anglicanism, the official Church of England. His major breakthrough was the publication of The Waste Land in 1922. Eliot’s poetry can be difficult for readers because of its use of allusions, foreign and historical terms, and classical and complex images. Mystical ideas appear also, especially in his final volume, Four Quartets (1943), and other late religious poems. The reader is called upon to supply an overall sense to Eliot’s seemingly disorganized structures. The poet expected the reader to approach poetry the way he would listen to music, understanding on an emotional level if not an intellectual one. Eliot insisted that poetry was supposed to be difficult. His Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats became the basis for the musical hit Cats.

--From Poetry Speaks

*

I received a rejection from RATTLE yesterday.

2006-09-25T12:28:00.001-04:00

I need to update my links to fellow bloggers. If any of you list my blog on your blog and you don’t see your name listed on my blog, please leave a comment so that I can add you. Thanks.

*

I received a rejection on Saturday from the Burnside Review. One of the editors wrote “Thanks” and signed his or her initials. The text of the rejection slip invited me to submit again in the future.

*

Writing ought either to be the manufacture of stories for which there is a market demand—a business as safe and commendable as making soap or breakfast foods—or it should be an art, which is always a search for something for which there is no market demand, something new and untried, where the values are intrinsic and have nothing to do with standardized values.

--Willa Cather

*

Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

--William Ernest Henley

From Wikipedia:

Invictus is a short poem by the British poet William Ernest Henley that is the source of a number of familiar clichés and quotations. The title is Latin for "unconquered". It was first published in 1875.

The poem in popular culture

In this poem, Henley gave the world the familiar phrases "my head is bloody, but unbowed" and "I am the master of my fate". These lines have been quoted many times by people who may not be familiar with the source. They seem an hyperbolic epitome of the "stiff upper lip" that popular culture has made of traditional British virtue and a comforting image of stoicism in the face of disaster.

In the climax of the 1942 film, King's Row, the poem is recited by Parris Mitchell (Robert Cummings) to friend Drake McHugh (Ronald Reagan) in an effort to overcome the latter's depression following a permanent injury.

It is also the name of an album by the Heavy Metal band, Virgin Steele, which use occasional lines of the poem as lyrics on the album.

Outlaw Country Music singer/songwriter David Allan Coe also named a 1980 album after the poem, calling it "Invictus Means Unconquered", reprinting the poem on the back sleeve, coupled with an original poem apparently intended as an homage and personal follow-up, to the Henley original.

The poem recently gained further notoriety for being quoted by the American terrorist Timothy McVeigh, who used it in a communiqué released shortly before his execution for his role in the Oklahoma City bombing. He used the full poem as his final statement in 2001.

More recently, American terrorist Eric Rudolph alluded to the poem when in court for the 1996 Centennial Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta, Georgia, on April 20, 2005. Rudolph made the following remarks: "By the grace of God, I am still here -- a little bloodied, but emphatically unbowed".

This poem was also used in the WB teen drama, One Tree Hill.

The American flashlight company Surefire uses this poem as part of an advertisement.

The poem is also the motto of BUD/s Class 228 in the song, "The Warrior Elite: The Forging of SEAL Class 228" by Dick Couch. It represents the indomitable spirit of the class members who finished the grueling Basic Underwater Demolition School training in their quest to become Navy SEALs.

The Invictus is also the name of a covenant of vampires in a role playing game published by White Wolf Publishing. The Game is called "Vampire: the Requiem".

Nelson Mandela famously quoted this poem during his prison years on Robben Island.

The Belgian black metal band Ancient Rites uses the poem as lyrics to their song Invictvs on the album Rvbicon.

2006-09-21T11:29:00.000-04:00

At first I was enthralled by certain tall, mysterious poems. Then some ordinary-looking poems that turned out to be great dancers captured me. Some poems don’t dance at all. They speak to you from deep inside their chairs, and you know that you are forming a friendship with them that will last your whole life.

--Molly Peacock

2006-09-20T17:36:00.000-04:00

AQR and My Sternum Biopsy Dream

I received a rejection yesterday from Alaska Quarterly Review. There was a wee bit of ink on the rejection slip. Above the usual verbiage of a rejection slip someone wrote, “Re: Your August Poetry Submission.” At the bottom of the slip this person also wrote, “Thank You.” I’m choosing to interpret this ink as an indication that my poems interested them at least a little and prompted someone to take a few seconds to say thanks. AQR is one of about six literary magazines that I would love to be published in some day.

Coincidentally, fellow blogger Justin Evans has an interesting post about how AQR focused just on poet Albert Goldbarth in their latest issue. Goldbarth’s 16 poems took up all of the poetry space and apparently 13 of the poems have been published previously. I too am at a loss trying to understand why AQR would publish 16 poems of Goldbarth’s and not other poets when Goldbarth is already a well-established poet. Add to this that 13 of the poems have published already—it doesn’t make sense to me.

*

I dreamed this morning that my PCP needed to do a biopsy on my sternum. I was in a private hospital room and had to stand and lean over the metal foot of the bed so that Dr. M. could cut at the right angle. I didn’t want the biopsy done and was asking lots of questions and delaying things. The details are hazy now, but somehow I managed to get out of having the biopsy done. I remember walking the halls of a hospital floor and realizing that I desperately needed to urinate. I ducked into an empty patient room and used the bathroom, locking the bathroom door behind me. While I was washing my hands and getting ready to leave the bathroom an orderly came in with a patient, and he tried the bathroom door. At this point I opened the door and beat a path out of the room and down the hall. The orderly got a good look at me as I went by and blessed me out as I walked down the hall. I remember walking down some steps outside towards my car and wondering if I would be reprimanded at work or even fired.

2006-09-19T12:00:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I received a rejection from Southern Poetry Review, and I received notification that I was not among the finalists of The Ledge’s poetry contest.

I finished my second read of Poteat’s book. I have eight or nine pages of notes for my review. Since I only have 500 – 1,000 words to work with, I’ll have to determine the most important aspects of the poetry collection and comment on those.

2006-09-15T13:28:00.000-04:00

Sigh

I haven’t felt like blogging lately, probably because I feel dry creatively, but I keep working on revising and writing new poems anyway. I’ve also not done any work on the Joshua Poteat book review for about a week. At least my review’s second read and note taking is about 75% done at this point.

I stayed up late last night working on a batch of submissions. I’ll mail them after work today. Then it’s off to the gym.

I’ve been thinking about William Carlos Williams’ “no ideas but in things” and T. S. Eliot’s objective correlative. I would like to have more and better imagery in my poems. To me, fresh imagery seems to come from intense feeling or actually observing something and taking notes on it. With my 8 to 5 job I tend to use my rational mind a lot more than my intuition or feelings. I can also be lazy to tell rather than show.

Tomorrow I will go with my wife to her high school reunion. Both of us are hoping that we have an okay time.

I wish there were some movies out that I actually want to see. I’ve felt generally disappointed in the movies that are out for about the last six months. Netflix is a lifesaver!

I need something new in my life. I think a change would do me good to echo the song. Something like a new CD, trying a new restaurant--something to get me excited about life for a couple of days. I had performance appraisal training at work this morning and found myself enjoying it; it was a variation from the normal grind of the work week.

*

Put it before them briefly so they will read it, clearly so they will appreciate it, picturesquely so they will remember it and, above all, accurately so they will be guided by its light.

--Joseph Pulitzer

2006-09-07T13:37:00.000-04:00

Always When You Least Expect It

An acceptance! Poetry Southeast accepted the revised version of my villanelle that Barrow Street almost took a few months ago. I’m very excited about Poetry Southeast accepting one of my poems because the list of poets in their last issue includes quite a few “name” poets.

Interestingly, Poetry Southeast does not ask for first rights:

“Authors retain all rights and copyright to their works. PoetrySoutheast DOES NOT request one-time, non-exclusive rights to print your work.”

I wrote Poetry Southeast to confirm my interpretation of this paragraph. They confirmed that if another literary magazine expresses interest in "For a Wreath on a Live Oak, Route 22" and wants first rights to it, they can do that. Poetry Southeast advised me to just explain upfront the Poetry Southeast situation in case the interested literary magazine has a problem knowing that the poem will also appear in Poetry Southeast.

My poem will appear in Poetry Southeast in the Spring 2007 issue.

*

Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.

--Buddha

Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.

--Buddha

2006-09-05T17:04:00.000-04:00

The Illusionist

My wife and I saw The Illusionist starring Edward Norton on Saturday. This is one of the better movies I’ve seen in a long time. I recommend it. My only complaint is that the plot was somewhat predictable. While exiting the theater, I was surprised to hear that quite a few people who watched the movie were confused by what happened. I mentioned this to my wife. We both agreed that the plot wasn’t that hard to follow. She noted that the people who seemed not to be able to follow the plot were mostly young and in their teens.

I’ve been revising poems and working on some new ones. I may send out some more submissions in the next week or so. I’ve also been working on my review. I plan to do some writing after work today.

*

There is pain in staying the same and there is pain in change. Pick the one that moves you.

--Earnie Larsen

2006-08-31T12:49:00.001-04:00

Well, This Was a Surprise

For those of you who have been regular readers of this blog for some time, you may recall that back in January I applied to an artist colony for a one week residency this fall. The artist colony turned me down and pointed out that late summer and early fall are the times in most demand because of the academic schedule. They asked if I wanted to be put on the waiting list. After getting over feeling slighted, I decided to go on the waiting list and in the meantime try to make other arrangements (which I did with my aunt in North Carolina). Well, yesterday I received an e-mail from the artist colony saying that they have an immediate opening from now through Labor Day. Below is the email exchange with some identifying information removed.

-----Original Message-----
Sent: Wednesday, August 30, 2006 2:58 PM
Subject: Immediate short opening in writer's studio at XXXX

Dear Gerald Huml,

This is probably too little too late, but I have a writer's studio available from now through September 4, 2006. Let me know of your interest.

Best wishes,

S.

Huml wrote:

S.:

Thanks, but I've made other arrangements for a week in October elsewhere.

Regards,

Gerald Huml

Sent: Wednesday, August 30, 2006 3:34 PM
Subject: Re: Immediate short opening in writer's studio at XXXX

Thanks for writing back so quickly. I'm glad you'll have a space to work this autumn.

Best wishes,

S.

*

I figure one of their scheduled artists/writers had to cut their stay short for something like a family emergency. While I appreciate the artist colony keeping me in mind, they certainly didn’t give me much notice or much time to write at the colony (I wanted a week) had I been interested in going. It felt satisfying to write back and tell them that I found other arrangements. Notice I kind of implied that the other arrangements are at another colony rather than my aunt’s. LOL.

I’ve met my 8/31/06 work deadline yesterday. I’m just doing some very minor tweaks to the data today.

*

No More Be Grieved

No more be grieved at that which thou hast done,
Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud,
Clouds and eclipses stain both Moon and Sun,
And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud.
All men make faults, and even I in this,
Authorizing thy trespass with compare,
My self corrupting salving thy amiss,
Excusing thy sins more than thy sins are:
For to they sensual fault I bring in sense,
Thy adverse party is thy Advocate,
And ‘gainst myself a lawful plea commence,
Such civil war is in my love and hate,
That I an accessory needs must be,
To that sweet thief which sourly robs from me.

--William Shakespeare

2006-08-30T11:43:00.000-04:00

Epistemology

I.

Kick at the rock, Sam Johnson, break your bones:
But cloudy, cloudy is the stuff of stones.

II.

We milk the cow of the world, and as we do
We whisper in her ear, “You are not true.”

--Richard Wilbur

2006-08-29T12:42:00.000-04:00

NAW, We Don’t Want Your Poems

Yesterday I received a rejection from New American Writing. From the time I mailed the submission to yesterday was ten days. That may be a new record or tied for a record. It makes me wonder if my submission was even read or read with any semblance of care. Oh, well. Let’s see how the other submissions go.

I received word yesterday that my parents won $1,666.67 from some kind of reverse lottery they bought a ticket for and didn’t attend the function. I told my wife yesterday that the only thing I’ve won in my life was a cake from a cake walk. She sweetly replied, “That just means you’re due for a really big win.” My wife is far luckier than I am. She won over a thousand dollars from a radio contest once, and she usually does well when she gambles.

I have this strange habit at work when I have some alone time away from my desk at say the restroom. I find myself asking myself, “How old are you?” I reply back to myself, “35.” Not sure what to make of this other than I must be bothered at a subconscious level at what I’ve not accomplished in my life. At what I’ve been disappointed about. I don’t ask myself this question at home, so I conclude that I must find my job to be less than completely fulfilling, and in some respects a waste of the time I have left in my life.

To fill out the rest of my book manuscript, do I write new poems, revise older poems, or both? I probably need about ten more poems so that I have some choices and can drop some poems if they are not working with the rest of the manuscript. My week in North Carolina focusing on my poetry is fast approaching.

How would Donne/Keats/Yeats/T. S. Elliott write today if they were alive and writing contemporary poetry? They were geniuses then, so they would be geniuses today. Or would they? Are some writers great writers only because of what they did during a certain point in history? If we took the writer out of that point in history, would he or she be recognized as a great writer today? Hmmm…. Regardless, I think many of the poems of Donne/Keats/Yeats/Elliott will be admired for years and years.

*

There’s nothing so wonderful as having constructed something arbitrary, without any help from anybody else, out of pure delight and self-delight, and then to find that it turns out to be useful to a few others.

--Richard Wilbur

*

From some song lyrics I’ve been thinking about:

“There’s nothing worse
than this bitter
cross.”

“So I’m heading out to the highway.”
“There’s miles and miles to put it back together.”

The open road with all its connected interstate highways, highways, and back roads as a place that can heal any emotional wound. Somewhere out there there’s a series of roads you can take that will take you on an adventure that will ultimately heal you. There is something healing about just driving with no particular destination in mind. Driving for the pleasure of driving.

2006-08-28T12:56:00.000-04:00

Work is keeping me busy. There’s a chance that I may finish before my 8/31 deadline, which would be most excellent.

This past weekend I spent a couple of hours doing the prep work for the review. I have two full pages of notes so far (legal paper). Also this weekend I finished revisions on three poems. I estimate that I have about two-thirds of my book manuscript right now.

My wife and I went to an African drum concert last night at Gravity Lounge in Charlottesville. We enjoyed the music very much. There were lots of people dancing to the music, which made it all the more interesting. One woman in particular was a very good dancer. She must take dance classes or teach dance.

2006-08-22T12:20:00.000-04:00

Last week and last night I sent out some submissions. I hope the poems find a home out there.

I’ve been revising the same group of poems for weeks now. I’ll be glad when I think they’re finished, and I can move on to other poems. I started a new poem on Sunday. I worked on it a little more yesterday—two promising lines so far.

I’ve agreed to do a review on a book of poems. I need to get cracking on that. I’d like to have a decent draft of the review within two weeks. I want to turn the review in way ahead of the deadline.

I’m dismayed that I can’t get my American Heritage Dictionary CD-ROM to load on my new computer at home. This older version of the program doesn’t appear to be compatible with Windows XP. I really like having that dictionary at my fingertips. At least I still have it on my laptop.

Other than that, I just have a major work deadline looming: 8/31/2006. I may not blog regularly until that deadline is behind me.

2006-08-21T13:45:00.000-04:00

The Purist

I give you now Professor Twist,
A conscientious scientist.
Trustees exclaimed, “He never bungles!”
And sent him off to distant jungles.
Camped on a tropic riverside,
Once day he missed his loving bride.
She had, the guide informed him later,
Been eaten by an alligator.
Professor Twist could not but smile.
“You mean,” he said, “a crocodile.”

--Ogden Nash, from Verses from 1929 On

2006-08-18T12:43:00.000-04:00

Kind of tired of blogging , so a quote and a poem.

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Poetry is not a creed or dogma. It is a special way of seeking and listening. Poetry is an art that stretches back to the origins of human civilization, a primal and essential art.

--Dana Gioia

*

Sonnet

A man talking to his ex-wife on the phone.
He has loved her voice and listens with attention
to every modulation of its tone. Knowing
it intimately. Not knowing what he wants
from the sound of it, from the tendered civility.
He studies, out the window, the seed shapes
of the broken pods of ornamental trees.
The kind that grow in everyone’s garden, that no one
but horticulturists can name. Four arched chambers
of pale green, tiny vegetal proscenium arches,
a pair of black tapering seeds bedded in each chamber.
A wish geometry, miniature, Indian or Persian,
lovers or gods in their apartments. Outside, white,
patient animals, and tangle vines, and rain.

--Robert Hass, from Sun Under Wood

2006-08-16T12:06:00.001-04:00

I've started reading Louise Gluck's Ararat. This book is an example of how you can be successful at "telling" rather than "showing," provided that the telling is interesting. I find the titles of the poems to be uninspiring though. The title of the collection is very clever given the content of the book, which is about anxiety, loss, and death in a family. Mount Ararat is the place where Noah’s ark came to rest after the great flood. I’m interpreting the great flood in this book to be metaphorically shed tears, real tears or at least felt sadness and loss.

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Last night I dreamed again that I was walking around in Europe—in Germany I think. Similar to the repeating dreams I’ve talked about before on this blog where I’m back in high school or college, I have repeating dreams about walking around in Europe. Usually I’m half lost or cannot speak enough of the local language to accomplish what I’m trying to do in the dream.

2006-08-15T15:14:00.000-04:00

Thinking Out Loud

A couple of years ago I participated in a philosophy discussion group that started out as Socrates Café (inspired by Christopher Phillips and his book Socrates Café) and met in Barnes & Noble once a month. Later on many of the core members of this group (yours truly among them) participated in a discussion group called Thinking Out Loud that was aired on our local cable access channel in Charlottesville. That died out after about a year because it was too much work to tape the shows and broadcast them, so now Thinking Out Loud is making an appearance on the web. Check out some of the links below.

http://www.blogger.com/www.citizenphilosopher.com

You should be able to just click on the link to make it download and play on your computer. Most computers will let you play the file while it is downloading. (Some computers may try to complete the download before starting to play the file. You should be able to override that and make the recording play as it is downloading.)

From the local cable access channel days:

"What is Love?"

If you hear “Jerry” speaking on these links, that would be me.

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There are no dull subjects. There are only dull writers.

--H. L. Mencken

The aim of writing poetry is to enable readers a little better to enjoy life or a little better to endure it.

--W. H. Auden

2006-08-14T12:27:00.000-04:00

Riddle Me This

I’m trying to solve a problem in one of the poems I’ve revising. Below are some notes that I’ve written to myself. If you have any additional ideas or solutions, please leave a comment. I’d love to hear from you.

Scenario: I have two poems that are companion poems. The first called “The Vicissitudes of Desire” is in the voice of a fortyish male literature and composition professor. The second poem called tentatively “What If” is in the voice of a nineteen-year-old female college student. The professor is highly intelligent, a good teacher, honorable, and somewhat unattractive as he is balding and a little hairy. The college student is attractive, intelligent, and keenly observant. The two poems give two different first-person accounts of the same slice of time/events. Essentially, the professor is attracted to this student for her intelligence and beauty but wants to do the honorable thing and not get involved with her. The college student is aware of his attraction and during an office hours meeting tests him/teases him for her own amusement. She is not attracted to him much physically, but she is attracted to him subconsciously due to his intelligence, knowledge, and sense of humor. The professor poem is believable and successful as a poem, but I am struggling with the young woman’s poem.

Question: How do I make a poem in the voice of a nineteen-year-old female college student interesting and also achieve verisimilitude so that readers believe this is the voice of a nineteen-year-old college student?

Problem: The way a typical person of this age group speaks/thinks is not very interesting rendered as poetry for a literary audience. More mature/interesting language so far makes her sound too much like the professor.

Possible Solutions:

· The young woman is somewhat of a prodigy or old/mature for her age. This justifies making her language more interesting, more mature sounding. Have to be careful here that she doesn’t sound too similar to the professor.
· Achieve verisimilitude not with HOW the young woman says things but with WHAT she says. Make her particular concerns and preoccupations more typical of her age group. The WHAT will have to carry the weight of being interesting over the HOW it is said.
· Recognize that a poem for the young woman is unavoidably an artifice (as all poems are) and represents her truer core thoughts and feelings rather than how she might express them to a friend or even to herself in her conscious mind. Readers may not buy this as a defense and say it doesn’t sound like a young woman’s voice.
· Give the young woman an extra dimension that occupies her in the poem like a book, movie, quote, or some other interest or activity that she thinks about in relation to the professor or in juxtaposition/apart from the professor. This can offset the less interesting content/expression in the poem.
· It’s been suggested that I interview someone of this age group to come up with new material. I’ve already tried eavesdropping on conversations from members of this age group, but that only reinforced the notion that HOW things are said is not very interesting.
· It’s also been suggested to me that I think about someone that I know from this age group and try to imagine their lives and borrow from that (e.g., someone at work, a cousin, etc.).

2006-08-11T12:08:00.000-04:00

Pictures from Assisi, Italy

Assisi is a town in the Umbria area of Italy where St. Frances and St. Clare have their tombs. You aren't allowed to take pictures inside the churches, but it was very interesting to see the relics of the saints and their tombs. There were lots of nuns and a few priests walking around Assisi.

From Wikipedia:

Saint Francis of Assisi (1182 – 4 October 1226) founded the Franciscan Order or "Friars Minor". He is the patron saint of animals, merchants, Italy, Catholic action, and the environment.

Saint Clare of Assisi, born Chiara Offreduccio, (July 16, 1194 – August 11, 1253) was one of the first followers of Francis of Assisi and founded the Order of Poor Ladies to organize the women who chose to take the Franciscan vow of poverty and celibacy.

2006-08-09T12:53:00.000-04:00

Pictures from Vatican City

The first three pictures are from inside The Basilica of St. Peter. The fourth picture is a ceiling from one of the Vatican hallways.

2006-08-08T11:46:00.000-04:00

Blogger only allowed me to upload one of the five pictures I wanted of Vatican City. I keep trying.

Every man supposes himself not to be fully understood or appreciated.

--Emerson

2006-08-07T13:41:00.000-04:00

After over a year I received a rejection on Saturday from The Sow’s Ear (a literary magazine in Winchester, Virginia). They apologized for the delay and said that they are usually better about responding in a timely fashion. The poem that came closest for them was “The Line Begins Here.”

I’ve been doing a lot of revising within the last week or so. I want to look over my poems again before I send out some more submissions.

I finished reading Claudia Emerson’s Late Wife. I really appreciate how the book is put together. Very clean and discernable structure. A good example of how less can be more (the book is a slim collection of about 55 pages). The poems themselves are accessible and fun to read. I think this would be an excellent book to teach students about how to put a collection of poems together.

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from “Essay on Psychiatrists”

II. Some Terms

“Shrink” is a misnomer. The religious
Analogy is all wrong, too, and the old,
Half-forgotten jokes about Viennese accents

And beards hardly apply to the good-looking woman
In boots and a knit dress, or the man
Seen buying the Sunday Times in mutton-chop

Whiskers and expensive jogging shoes.
In a way I suspect that even the terms “doctor”
And “therapist” are misnomers; the patient

Is not necessarily “sick.” And one assumes
That no small part of the psychiatrist’s
Role is just that: to point out misnomers.

--Robert Pinsky

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The following is an exchange between me and a friend over a quote. My friend provided the quote, and we alternated talking about it over e-mail. I think it is an interesting commentary over the dangers of giving power over yourself to an institution.

With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil -- that takes religion.-- Steven Weinberg

There's truth in that in many cases.

I would say so…

It is possible for a good person to do evil without the influence of religion. The desire for revenge could overwhelm a good person and cause them to maim or murder for example (e.g., a mother finding her child raped and murdered). I think the point of the quote is not that religion MUST be the influencing agent and always present for good people to do evil, but that it can certainly pervert people into doing evil while convincing them that the acts are good because the religion says so. I imagine that this is a contemporary quote, perhaps commenting on things like the justifications used for the 9/11 attacks.

I would agree with your assessment. When I read the quote I had a flash to 1930s Germany……the way someone to whom you give power over yourself (be it government or religion) can encourage good people to do or accept horrible things. I was also thinking of the whackos parading around in the streets with their "God Hates Fags" signs and such. Weinberg is a nobel laureate (physics - 1979) so the quote is probably contemporary in that sense.

I like the way you said this: "...the way someone to whom you give power over yourself (be it government or religion) can encourage good people to do or accept horrible things."

:-) makes me ill when people parrot boneheads and refer to torture as "practical joking" and such…..talk about accepting and condoning the most atrocious behavior.

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Be yourself. No one can ever tell you you're doing it wrong.
--James Hirlihy

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.
--Mahatma Gandhi

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From my Bazooka Joe gum fortunate for today (no, really):

You have the ability to become outstanding in literature.

2006-08-03T12:49:00.000-04:00

Some Dreams and Thoughts about Love & Sex

Blogger is still give me problems when I try to upload pictures. Maybe there is too much traffic on Blogger at lunch time.

I’ve had dozens of dreams during my life in which I am back in school—either high school, my undergraduate university, or my graduate school university. Out of these dreams, the ones I dislike the most are when I am back in high school. In these dreams I have to go back and finish a couple of classes because later in life my reviewed transcript reveals that I didn’t in fact qualify for my diploma. These dreams are embarrassing and stressful because I am now some old guy sitting in on a class with sixteen and seventeen year olds. I am old enough to be the teacher, and in some classes I should be the teacher. Anyway, last night I had a dream that I was back at my undergraduate university, but the details are now hazy. I take these dreams to mean symbolically that I have more to learn in life or that I missed learning about something essential during those time periods in my life.

On Monday morning I woke up with that Huey Lewis and the News song in my head “That’s the Power of Love” (or is it “Power of Love”?). Have no idea why. I don’t particularly like that band from the 1980s. I figure it must have come up during my dreams that night. The song’s lyrics made me think about love and marriage though. I’ve been married for close to eight years now, and my wife and I have been a couple since 1995.

Some Thoughts:

It’s true that there are phases in a romantic relationship. You start off being passionately in love where you can’t get enough of each other, have lots of sex, and everything is shiny and new. At some point whether you’re living together, married, or whatever and you know each other well and have a few fights with each other under your belts, you start to see the other person more as a best friend. This is not to say that you still don’t have passionate feelings towards the other person and act on them, but they are less frequent. Some people call this process: falling in love, to being in love, to standing in love (some call standing in love a more mature or realistic phase of love). Then there are the stresses and chores of daily living that tend to keep you looking at your partner as more of a best friend or ally than a passionate love object: the grind of work, paying the bills, who does what chores and when, etc. My wife and I don’t have children, but I imagine the rigors of raising children tend to make you see your partner as even less of a passionate love object. You have less time and engery to do just couple things.

It’s in this phase of love when it is very helpful if you were wise enough to pick a mate that is generally fair, willing to apologize and make amends, wants both of you to be equal partners in the relationship and keep it healthy, and he or she recognizes that you both bring certain strengths and baggage to the relationship. While this doesn’t sound very romantic, I think these are key ingredients necessary to stay together.

As I mature, I see sex for more of what it really is. It is just sex. A neutral thing. Sex won’t make you important or powerful. It won’t change who you are. It won’t necessarily make you feel valued or loved or fill a void, though it can. Sex is different every time you have it, even with the same person doing generally the same things. Sex can be delightful and mind blowing, or it can be disappointing. Sex can be addictive. Sex and its pleasures are sadly ephemeral in their very nature. The acts of sex can seem ridiculous if you think about it from a certain viewpoint (e.g., the desire to put one body part inside of another body part, the friction of two bodies moving against one another, the awkward looking positions, the strange and silly things people say during sex, how germaphobia doesn’t seem to apply when you are kissing, licking, and touching someone you find attractive, etc.) Sex may be the only time when some people address God aloud.

2006-08-01T12:39:00.000-04:00

Frustrations with Blogger

Well, that’s too days in a row now that I’ve tried uploading more Rome pictures, but Blogger will not cooperate. I want to post pictures of the Basilica of St. Peter in Vatican City.

I received a rejection yesterday from The Southern Review. Can’t say I was surprised by that one. I’ll say this for them. They have the most elegant rejection slips I’ve seen. The slips are on an attractive cream colored paper with what looks like a live oak on it.

The number of literary magazines still considering my poems has dwindled considerably, so it is time to prepare some more submissions. Fortunately, I have some revised poems and some new poems to send out. The submissions will probably go out next Monday.

2006-07-31T12:35:00.000-04:00

The thing about poetry is that if you're moved by a poem you might not wish to say anything at all. You might wish to live with that poem in silence for awhile. If you're not fully able to understand it, maybe if you just read it to yourself again and again, get it by heart, you will come around to understand it in a way we don't have terms for expressing.

--Galway Kinnell

2006-07-28T12:45:00.000-04:00

The Keats Shelley Museum in Rome

The museum is right next to the famous Spanish Steps. This is a very swank area of Rome with very expensive stores in the neighborhood. The bedroom picture is the actual room where Keats died of TB in 1821. That's his death mask on the wall. The bed is not Keats' bed but something similar from that period of time. The picture with the display case has a plaque on the wall that indicates that Keats died in this room. The fireplace is in Keats' bedroom.

This little museum is filled with display cases containing correspondence from poets like Keats, Shelley, Byron, and Tennyson. There is a lock of Keats' hair in one of the museum's display cases. They also have a little gift shop where you can buy books and such. I bought a very cool Byron bookmark. The museum is run by a small staff of young Brits.

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A few snippets of song lyrics rattling around in my head:

"...and all my crimes are self defense."

"I'll always be King of Pain."

"Where's your crown King Nothing?"

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Work is better today, but I have some catching up to do on what I was going to do yesterday before I was handed that special project that kept me insanely busy from 10:00 AM to 3:00 PM yesterday.

2006-07-27T15:49:00.000-04:00

Not having a good work day. Very busy. I just finished eating my lunch at 3:45 PM.

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A poet, any real poet, is simply an alchemist who transmutes his cynicism regarding human beings into an optimism regarding the moon, the starts, the heavens, and the flowers, to say nothing of Spring, love, and dogs.

--George Jean Nathan

2006-07-26T12:53:00.000-04:00

Suzanne Clements & Rome Pictures of the Basilica of St. Paul

Check out the art of Suzanne Clements. I saw some of her paintings in a gallery while I was visiting my parents. I like the Butterfly Series a lot, and I saw some of these paintings in the gallery.

Below are some of my Rome pictures from the Basilica of St. Paul (not to be confused with St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City).

2006-07-25T12:54:00.000-04:00

Quotes and a Few of My Favorite Things
(Okay Maybe A Lot of My Favorite Things)

Poems allow us to savor a single image, a single phrase. Just think how many people have savored a haiku poem over hundreds of years. It slows you down to read a poem. You read it more than one time. Your read it more slowly than you would speak to someone in a store. And we need the slow experience with words.

--Naomi Shihab Nye

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Living fast and dying young like an endless poetry….

--From White Zombie’s song “Thunderkiss ‘65”

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This applies nicely to poetry:

The ability to do a thing is not all there is. You must know the thing. You must master every facet of it. You must understand how it fits with everything else you know. You must possess it for it to be truly yours.

--Kevin J. Anderson

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These are a few of my favorite things…

My wife
Sex
Poetry
Wisdom
Brunette women
Redheaded women
Blonde women
California nectarines
The smell of freshly ground coffee beans
Quotes
Selected Poems of Galway Kinnell
Strawberry breakfast bars
Silver Queen corn on the cob
Air conditioning
Long hot showers
Movie popcorn
Pepsi Lime
The extra light during spring and summer
Autumn
Bottled water
Digital cameras
International travel
Philosophy
Star Wars
Xbox
Desktop computers
Flat screen monitors
Starbucks
Laptop computers
Venti nonfat caramel Macchiato with whip no foam
DVD players
Netflix.com
Magnet souvenirs from places I’ve been
Star Trek (TNG, Deep Space Nine, Voyager)
Fandango.com
The Internet
Cell phones
Vincent Van Gogh
Hand sanitizer
Whitening chewing gum
Grande Blackberry Green Tea Frappuccino
CNN
Sci-Fi Channel
Discovery Channel
National Public Radio
Ceiling fans
Sleeping in on Saturday mornings
Frederick Nietzsche
Buddhism
Taoism
Chicken with mixed vegetables in brown sauce with white rice
Paperweights
MP3 players
Baseball caps
Wireless rollerball mouse
Power windows and locks
Trees
Sunflowers
Tulips
Charlotte, North Carolina Airport
Elliptical cross trainer exercise machines with personal flat screen TVs
Paid Time Off cash outs near Christmas
Organizational charts
Skyscrapers
Keyless entry into cars
Baby carrots
Cucumbers
Wrist watches with metal bands
Fruit of the Loom boxer briefs
Hanes white T-shirts
Old Navy flip flops
Hyperion Analyzer at work that slices and dices data and can be tailored to your needs
Guadalajara Mexican restaurant
Oliver Garden restaurant
Listening to a favorite song at night while driving on an empty country road
A deliciously sweet watermelon

2006-07-24T13:38:00.000-04:00

More Rome Pictures from March 2006

What follows is the Italian unification monument, the Pantheon (Raphael is buried here), an arch near the Colosseum dedicated to the exploits of a Roman emperor (Marcus Aurelius Antoninus I think), a statue of a Roman emperor near a piece of the Roman Forum (either Gaius Julius Caesar or possibly Marcus Aurelius Antoninus again), and the ceiling of the Pantheon.

Any tips on how to get Blogger to load multiple photos onto Blogger in the order you want? Blogger seems to shuffle them around. It looks complicated to go into Edit Html and fix them there.

2006-07-21T12:36:00.000-04:00

Pictures from My March 2006 Trip to Rome

Yeah, I know it's four months later, but Blogger is actually working for me on this try. Hopefully, more pictures forthcoming.

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Writing, I feel, is an art; and artists, I feel are human beings. As a human being stands, so a human being is.

--E. E. Cummings

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The earth has many keys

The earth has many keys.
Where melody is not
Is the unknown peninsula.
Beauty is nature’s fact.

But witness for her land,
And witness for her sea,
The cricket is her utmost
Of elegy to me.

--Emily Dickinson

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Cassius Hueffer

They have chiseled upon my stone the words:
“His life was gentle, and the elements so mixed him
That nature might stand up and say to all the world,
This was a man.”
Those who knew me smile
As they read this empty rhetoric.

My epitaph should have been:
“Life was not gentle to him,
And the elements so mixed in him
That he made warfare on life,
In the which he was slain.”
While I lived I could not cope with slanderous tongues,
Now that I am dead I must submit to an epitaph
Graven by a fool!

--Edgar Lee Masters, from Spoon River Anthology

2006-07-20T12:18:00.000-04:00

This morning while I was getting ready for work I listened to Sting’s Ten Summoner’s Tales. It occurred to me that many of Sting’s songs (and not just on this album) are about the darker aspects of love and desire. Murder, infidelity, trying to change a person you are in a relationship with so that they suit you better, betrayal, stealing, competition with another suitor, meeting the new boyfriend when you are the ex-boyfriend, trying to control another person—these are examples from Sting’s songs about the darker side of love and desire. I think Sting is exploring in his lyrics the maddening complexities of love/desire, and in a sense he is posing the question: “What are you wiling to do for love?”

I read somewhere (it was probably Nietzsche—or at least he would agree with it if he didn’t say it) that one cannot truly be an atheist until one no longer believes in love. I think this is quite profound. It points out how our culture lauds the concept, the emotion of love to such an extent that it is commensurate to believing in God. Think about how many poems, songs, movies, novels, and television shows are about love. Think about how many women dream about their wedding day. Think about how much unhappiness is out there in the world due to a lack of love, due to disappointment in love. Think about our fascination with sex. Think about romance novels and soap operas. People have been known to commit suicide over love or the lack of it. Now imagine all of that sucked out of our culture or out of your personal belief system. It is hard to imagine living without love or without believing in it. It seems like such a cold, harsh, lonely existence, a truer atheism than not simply believing in God.

Regarding poetry, I’ve been thinking about how necessary collaboration is. How it is so helpful to have other people read your work and provide feedback on it. You then go back to your poems with a fresh set of eyes and make the tough decisions as to what feedback you’ll listen to and what feedback you’ll ignore. I find that I can only take my poems so far. At a certain point, I need the objectivity of others to help me revise further.

I’ve also been thinking about the role of luck in publishing. Yes, you have to be talented and work hard at your craft. Yes, it seems like to some extent or another that we all pay our dues, but don’t we all know poets of equal or lesser talent who seem to have it easier? They publish more. They win contests. They place their books with better publishers. Haven’t we all picked up a literary magazine at least once and scratched our heads as to why a particular poem was accepted? Are these “lucky” poets really better, or is it that their work is more in fashion right now? Does the love poem the “lucky” poet wrote just happen to come under the nose of a literary magazine editor when the editor is in the throes of a passionate love affair? The right place at the right time? In this context, I’ve never liked the concept of luck. It seems so unfair if you happen to feel that you are not lucky or as lucky.

What’s that saying you hear in one form or another? “I’d rather be lucky than …. (fill in the blank). Hmmm, probably a lot of this thinking is about sour grapes on my part. Still, at an existential level, doesn’t this kind of luck seem unfair in the cosmic scheme of things? The luck doesn’t appear to be justified; it doesn’t appear to have been earned. You could argue if you believe in karma or reincarnation that perhaps the person did something in a previous life or earlier in this life, and he or she is now reaping the rewards. Yes, interesting, and it does address the justified/earned piece, but what if this is not the case and some people, for whatever reason, are just plain and unjustifiably lucky? What does that say about the nature of existence? It’s troubling.

It’s been pointed out to me that that the poetry biz does to some extent operate on who you know. Friends help each other. Teachers help their students. Writers who are also editors may reciprocate my publishing writers/editors who accepted their work. But what if you are not good at schmoozing? What if you find going to poetry conferences to rub elbows and network distasteful (I realize that this is not the sole reason why many people attend conferences)? What if you are too busy with other areas of your life to take more workshops or get involved more with the local poetry scene? What if you are introverted and it takes awhile for you to open up and become relaxed among new people, so consequently you don’t always make a positive first impression? What if you want to earn your recognition on your own terms and solely on the merit of the work itself? Does this set you up to experience more difficulty? More disappointment? I think so.

2006-07-19T12:43:00.000-04:00

There must not be any preconceived notion or design for what the poem ought to be…I’m not interested in writing sonnets, sestinas or anything…only poems. If the poem has got to be a sonnet (unlikely tho) or whatever, it’ll certainly let me know.

--Amiri Baraka

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Anticipation

I have been temperate always,
But I am like to be very drunk
With your coming.
There have been times
I feared to walk down the street
Lest I should reel with the wine of you,
And jerk against my neighbours
As they go by.
I am parched now, and my tongue is horrible in my mouth,
But my brain is noisy
With the clash and gurgle of filling wine-cups.

--Amy Lowell

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from “Dream On”

Some people go their whole lives
without ever writing a single poem.
Extraordinary people who don’t hesitate
to cut somebody’s heart or skull open.
They go to baseball games with the greatest of ease
and play a few rounds of gold as if it were nothing.
These same people stroll into a church
as if that were a natural part of life.
Investing money is second nature to them.
They contribute to political campaigns
that have absolutely no poetry in them
and promise none for the future.
They sit around the dinner table at night
and pretend as though nothing is missing.
Their children get caught shoplifting at the mall
and no one admits that it is poetry they are missing.

--James Tate, “Dream On” from Shroud of the Gnome

2006-07-18T13:31:00.000-04:00

He’s Back

I had a great time visiting my parents. Some of the highlights: playing Mexican Train (a dominos game), going out on my parents’ boat, all the great food my parents fixed, seeing my mom’s artwork in the local gallery (it amazes me how she continues to improve in her oil paintings and watercolors), reading some science fiction, reading a fellow blogger’s chapbook, reading some more of Claudia Emerson’s Late Wife, catching up on my sleep, watching mindless TV, and stepping into the Atlantic Ocean on a beautiful day.

I didn’t do a lick of poetry writing while on vacation, but I plan to get back in the swings of things after work tonight. I was very surprised that there was no poetry news in the mail or e-mail.

2006-07-11T13:46:00.000-04:00

And Another

Yesterday I received a rejection from Rhino. This surprised me because they were receptive to a previous batch of poems I sent them and almost took one of my poems had not South Dakota Review beaten them to it, so I thought I had a really good shot at them taking something out of the most recent batch. One of the editors did write, however: “Gerald, ‘Prague’ series really intrigued us, voice & detail, but a bit prosey to some, thanks though!” Sigh. Another almost. I’ve heard that before about some of my poems being a little too prosey. Probably one of the hazards of working with a longer line. C. K. Williams gets away with being prosey I’ve noticed, but then I’m not C. K. Williams. I’m trying to be less prosey in my current poems and think about how other poets achieve being more lyrical/"poetic" when I read poetry, but to some extent a poet is stuck with how he or she writes at a given point in time. I think I posted something on this blog awhile back from Louise Gluck about how most poets spend their lives in various forms of torment. Not being able to write. Not being able to write the way they want to write, etc. It’s also been said about some of my poems that they just need the right kind of reader to appreciate them. I take this to mean that the way I write may be unfashionable.

After five rejections in a row to places in the market that should be receptive to my work, I’m beginning to think that I have a big number 13 stamped on my forehead. I’m beginning to feel that I have a big Hester Prynne embroidered R over my shirt’s left pocket. For a metaphor, I’m experiencing how I knock repeatedly on literary magazine doors, and the doors open just a crack to eyeball me and give me the once over. Then the doors close. Sigh. I’ll just keep at it. I need to keep the faith. I need to hold out for final victory. I need to keep telling myself what Phillip Levine said in an interview about how he is patient and stubborn as a writer.

One consolidation I guess is that some of my unpublished poems are close to being accepted. With my poetry coach B. and my new local poetry friend J., I now have two readers looking over my poems regularly. What one misses the other often catches. I’m beginning to see that maybe work that I thought was done actually needs some final tweaks here and there. Perhaps those final tweaks will get me over the threshold of literary magazine doors.

Enough hand wringing and whining. I’m annoying myself.

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Last night I finished watching on DVD the movie Saved! Jena Malone, Mandy Moore, and Macauley Culkin are in this funny little movie that is a tongue and cheek and sometimes spoof or lampoon about going to an Evangelical high school. The movie takes on subjects like degayification programs, sex before marriage, teen pregnancy, smoking, speaking in tongues, Christian Rock, Mary giving birth as a virgin, faith, doubt, missionary work, and the showmanship of some kinds of preaching. The movie is gently satirical but not exactly disrespectful towards conservative Evangelists views. There is a Jewish female student that attends the high school who is so cool and just hilarious! Ultimately, I think the movie explores through humor and the struggles of the characters what it truly means to be a Christian, and I think the movie’s point is that it’s really about tolerance, compassion, love, forgiveness, and being a bit humble about your beliefs and not forcing them on others. If the above sounds interesting to you, definitely check this movie out!

A great line from the movie: “Why would God make us all so different if He wanted us all to be the same?”

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Gentle readers: Over the next few days I’ll be visiting my parents, so my blog may be quiet.

2006-07-10T12:41:00.000-04:00

I received a rejection on Friday from Barrow Street. The one bright spot is that one of the editors wrote, “Your villanelle came very close. Best of luck with your writing.” I’d like some good writing news to come my way very soon.

I’ve been revising poems and reading poetry. I re-read Edward Hirsch’s Wild Gratitude, a book that I admire very much. Yesterday I bought Claudia Emerson’s book Late Wife and began reading it. Her poems are amazing. I can see why she won the 2006 Pulitzer.

I think a lot of the woes in the world could be ameliorated if we could lessen:

- Fear
- Ignorance
- Greed
- Poverty

Fear and ignorance are primary in the list above. I think the other two follow from fear and ignorance, and poverty in part from greed. It's interesting to watch the news and thing about how fear and ignorance come into play.

*

The Look

Strephon kissed me in the spring,
Robin in the fall,
But Colin only looked at me
And never kissed me at all.

Strephon’s kiss was lost in jest,
Robin’s lost in play,
But the kiss in Colin’s eyes
Haunts me night and day.

--Sara Teasdale

*

Cultivate the habit of attention and try to gain opportunities to hear wise men and women talk. Indifference and inattention are the two most dangerous monsters that you ever meet. Interest and attention will insure to you an education.

--Robert Millikan

Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking.

--William Butler Yeats

We train people how to treat us.

--Dale Richard Buchanan

(A thought on that: It is difficult to re-train people how you would like to be treated in the future once you've trained them. People resist this.)

2006-07-07T11:48:00.000-04:00

Two pieces of news yesterday. I received a rejection from Pebble Lake Review, and I learned that I was not a finalist in the Oberon Foundation 2006 Poetry Contest.

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Not Waving but Drowning

Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking
And new he’s dead.
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning).
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.

--Stevie Smith

*

Archaic Torso of Apollo

We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,

gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.

Otherwise the stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast’s fur:

would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.

--Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Stephen Mitchell

2006-07-06T12:43:00.000-04:00

I received yesterday a rejection from the New England Review.

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White Rose

The sundrenched beetle with a rainbow on it back
splayed and luxuriating on he wide white petal—
is that what our life could be?

Us, arms outstretched, prone
and petaled on a pillowed world?

Starved and drowning, I kneel to gather
white petals the wind has scattered.

--Elizabeth Spires

*

The Necktie

His hands fluttered like birds,
each with a fancy silk ribbon
to weave into their nest,
as he stood at the mirror
dressing for work, waving hello
to himself with both hands.

--Ted Kooser

*

A successful poem has all the best words in the very best places under the best circumstances. A poem is a little machine of words that’s meant to do some work of persuasion or communication.

--Ted Kooser

2006-07-05T12:53:00.000-04:00

Ah Sun-flower

Ah Sun-flower! weary of time,
Who countest the steps of the Sun,
Seeking after that sweet gold clime
Where the traveller’s journey is done;

Where the Youth pined away with desire,
And the pale Virgin shrouded in snow,
Arise from their graves and aspire,
Where my Sun-flower wishes to go.

--William Blake

*

Truth

Truth is as mysterious as God,
and as sacred.
It sustains and kills.

It is always dangerous.

--Michael S. Glaser

*

The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom. The figure is the same for love. No one can really hold that the ecstasy should be static and stand still in one place. It begins in delight, it inclines to the impulse, it assumes direction with the first line laid down, it runs a course of lucky events, and ends in a clarification of life—not a great clarification…but in a momentary stay against confusion. It has denouement.

--Robert Frost

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.

--Scott Adams

2006-07-03T13:20:00.000-04:00

Moon Dream

I dreamed this morning that I was walking between grassy rolling hills at night. I hiked up one of the hills and instantly became confused. It seemed as though sunrise and came early because it was so suddenly bright in the sky. The moon was so bright and close that it illuminated the sky the way the sun does shortly after dawn. I then felt like something gave me a great push, and I could observe myself in third person with some short of a glowing symbol over my head as I fell to the ground. The symbol looked like a slightly twisting number one or some short of Arabic letter. After I hit the ground I felt like I was a computer receiving huge amounts astronomy data with bunches of different ratios and formulas concerning the moon. The dream felt like a divine revelation or vision.

*

My local poet friend and I discussed our exchanged poems last night. She asked me for a list of poets that I think she might like to read. I sent her the following:

Probably Good Matches for You:
Frank X. Gaspar - Night of a Thousand Blossoms (a very spiritual, meditative, lyrical book)
Li-Young Lee - Book of My Nights and/or The City in Which I Love You
R.T. Smith - Brightwood (I think of him as being a Southern poet.)
Stephen Dunn - New & Selected Poems

Recommended Craft Books
Richard Hugo - The Trigger Town
Miller Williams - Patterns of Poetry

International
Rilke- Duino Elegies
Rumi - translations by Coleman Barks

Good First Books
Joshua Poteat - Ornithologies (a VCU MFA classmate of mine)
Jon Pineda - Birthmark (A VCU MFA classmate of mine)
Jeannine Hall Gailey - Becoming the Villainess (fellow blogger, book uses female mythology and comic book characters as a lens to comment on the condition of women, a highly readable page turner)

Other Poet Possibilities
Norman Dubie - Groom Falconer
Philip Levine - What Work Is
David St. John - Study for the World's Body
Jack Gilbert - The Great Fires
T.R. Hummer - Walt Whitman in Hell
Galway Kinnell - Walking Down the Stairs (interviews, essays)

2006-06-30T17:25:00.000-04:00

Things are better with my wife. We talked it out last night, but we are not exactly warm and fuzzy towards each other yet. It is work to be in a relationship. It forces you to stretch, grow, and acknowledge perhaps unflattering aspects about yourself.

My new local poet friend sent me and e-mail today after reading my blog and said this:

Couples fight about money, sex, drugs, attention/time and where it's spent, relatives, styles in raising children (and pets -- does the dog sleep on the bed? Yes.), sharing household chores/errands. This list reminds me why I live alone!

That last sentence made me laugh!

I’m feeling exhausted when it comes to writing poetry. I have so much left to do on my book manuscript, and the project seems so daunting. I’ve been holding at about 60% of a manuscript that I feel good about. The poems that I’m working on now all have unique and maddening problems that I have to solve. They are also ambitious poems, and I have a certain standard that must be met before I feel that I can put the poem away and consider it finished (finished at least until I look at all of the manuscript as a whole). On top of all of this I want to complete everything by the end of the year. With the way I’m feeling now, I may have to back off that deadline and give myself some space to recharge. Maybe I should just read poetry, poetic theory, and relax instead of writing for awhile. I’ve been afraid of doing just that because I will get out of the habit of writing regularly.

*

If the camel once gets his nose in a tent, his body will soon follow.

--Arabian proverb

Recent Fortune Cookie Fortunes:

You have an ability to sense and know a higher truth.

Those who bring sunshine to the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves.

Many a false step is made by standing still.

2006-06-29T12:52:00.000-04:00

The wife and I had a fight before we went to work this morning. I hate the unsettled feeling and tenseness you carry around all day when this happens. I also find myself thinking up defenses and ammo for future use. Mostly though, I’m trying to decide how much of this is my fault and what I should apologize for. We rarely stay mad at each other for more than a day or two.

*

Last Words

I hope for a happy exit, and I hope to never come back.

--Frida Kahlo

My son, may you be happier than your father.

--Sophocles, from Ajax

2006-06-28T12:31:00.000-04:00

On Sunday my new local poetry friend and I will be chatting about the poems we exchanged. She sent me some more to look at yesterday for a future discussion. I need to e-mail her a couple of my poems this week. Hmmm, but which ones…?

*

Style is the man himself.

--Comte de Buffon

Genius is only a greater aptitude for patience.
--Comte de Buffon

The original writer is not he who refrains from imitating others, but he who can be imitated by none.

--Francois-Rene Chateaubriand

Moments of crisis produce in man a redoubling of life.

--Francois-Rene Chateaubriand

Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures.

--Samuel Johnson

2006-06-27T12:40:00.000-04:00

Another One

I was given the slip yesterday by The Chattahoochee Review. As with Crazyhorse, it was a form rejection inviting me to submit future work but with no ink from the editors. At least I am hearing back from places now.

Strange. Last night when I went into my Excel submission tracking spreadsheet, I happened to have saved the document last on the row of The Chattahoochee Review.

I’m going to show my age with this one. I wish when I was an undergraduate student that we had laptops, cell phones, MP3 players, and most especially Starbucks. I would have loved to be able to go to Starbucks and study instead of studying in my room or going to the library. Plus, it would have been a place to go prior to being age 21 since I did not have a fake ID. Hell, today you can even scan into your computer text from a book using an electronic highlighter. Sigh. You kids have no idea how good you have it/had it. In my day I had to walk 5 miles uphill, both ways, with newspapers for shoes just to go to class. One day I even had to kill a bear with my 5.25 inch floppy disk.

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All animals, except man, know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it.

--Samuel Butler

The advantage of doing one’s own praising for oneself is that one can lay it on so thick and exactly in the right places.

--Samuel Butler

All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.

--Samuel Butler

The history of art is the history of revivals.

--Samuel Butler

An apology for the Devil: It must be remembered that we have only heard one side of the case. God has written all the books.

--Samuel Butler

2006-06-26T12:23:00.000-04:00

On Friday after work I bought a new computer printer, a USB cable for the printer, and an online computer game: Star Wars Galaxies. As predicted, I’ve already started to waste some hours of my life. For example, I opted to stay home on Sunday rather than do my usual Sunday morning writing ritual. I think the initial thrill of the new game has worn off (some). I’ll be more sensible going forward and work the game into a balance with my other interests and responsibilities.

On Saturday I received a rejection from Crazyhorse. No ink on the rejection, but the rejection did invite me to submit again in the future. I really like Crazyhorse and would love to have a poem published there. I’ll try again in a few months with some different poems.

*

[T]he ear is a prime judge of what I’ve accomplished or have not accomplished. I wouldn’t even know whether a poem was finished or not unless my ear told me. I think music must be in the poem somewhere. Poetry is traditionally a musical structure….people who don’t hear the poems are missing a good deal, and a poet who doesn’t hear his own poems is missing everything. He’s got to hear his own voice saying it. It’s got to come off the page.

--Paul Blackburn

The highest possible stage in moral culture is when we recognize that we ought to control our thoughts.

--Charles Darwin

Man with all his noble qualities…still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origins.

--Charles Darwin

Animals, whom we have made our slaves, we do not like to consider our equals.

--Charles Darwin

He who understands a baboon [will] would do more towards metaphysics than Locke.

--Charles Darwin

With me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy.

--Charles Darwin

2006-06-23T13:12:00.000-04:00

I Feel Good

I feel very upbeat and optimistic about my life today. I’m not sure if it’s all the sunny weather we’ve been having in this part of Virginia (though it’s been hot as Hades with stifling humidity). It could be that I’m in one of the calmer periods of my work cycles at work. I’ve also had some time off from work lately. It could be the excitement of having a new computer. I guess I’ll just enjoy the feeling and try not to over analyze it.

This week my wife and I watched a good movie that she ordered through Netflix. The movie was Blink with Madeline Stowe doing an amazing acting job as the main character Emma. Emma was blinded by her mother when she was eight. Twenty years later she receives eye transplants and is plunged into a strange world of wavy faces, bright lights, hallucinations, etc. as her brain tries to adjust to seeing again. Then a girl is murdered in the apartment above Emma’s, and Emma believes she encountered the murderer leaving the scene couldn’t see him clearly. Enter a Chicago detective who believes he is after a serial killer and needs Emma’s help to catch him despite Emma being an unreliable witness. I didn’t do justice to the groundwork of the plot, but you get the idea. The plot is pretty good, though I balked a bit over Emma and the detective becoming romantically interested in each other. The best aspect of this movie though is the dialogue. Very clever, funny, and almost always interesting. Emma is a strong woman comfortable in her sexuality, and she is very perceptive, confrontational, and sharp-tongued. She meets her match in the detective. I also loved the Irish music in the movie. Emma is a musician who plays the violin in a band called The Drovers.

*

God is dead: but considering the state the species Man is in, there will perhaps be caves, for ages yet, in which his shadow will be shown.

--Nietzsche

Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual.

--Nietzsche

The secret of reaping the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment from life is to live dangerously.

--Nietzsche

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.

--Nietzsche

The thought of suicide is a great source of comfort: with it a calm passage is to be made across many a bad night.

--Nietzsche

Master-morality and slave-morality.

--Nietzsche

2006-06-22T12:39:00.000-04:00

My new computer is up and running. My study is a mess with the old computer hardware on the floor. I suspect it won’t be long until I try one of those online games and waste hours of my life.

My new local poet friend and I traded poems and returned our comments to each other. I was relieved to see that poems that I think are pretty much done only seem to have a couple minor issues that I may want to correct. I enjoyed her poems. She tends to write shorter poems than I do, so I hope to learn something about economizing from her. We’ll probably chat on the phone this weekend about each other’s comments.

I worked on a new poem Tuesday that I think will be ready to show someone soon. This is one of two my poems inspired by a trip to Berlin and Dresden two years ago. This poem has been in my “in progress” file for some time, so I will be relieved when I feel that it is close to being done.

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I teach you the superman. Man is something to be surpassed.

--Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

What I understand by “philosopher”: a terrible explosive in the presence of which everything is in danger.

--Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. 1844-1900. German philosopher who reasoned that Christianity's emphasis on the afterlife makes its believers less able to cope with earthly life. He argued that the ideal human being, the Ubermensch, would be able to channel passions creatively instead of suppressing them. His written works include Beyond Good and Evil (1886) and Thus Spake Zarathustra (1883-1892). --Nie“tzsche·an adj. & n.

2006-06-20T14:11:00.000-04:00

I received a rejection yesterday from The Cincinnati Review.

To my surprise, my new computer arrived yesterday. I expected to receive it on Wednesday or Thursday this week. I’m kind of dreading all of the setup work that I have ahead of me. Last night I spend over an hour making backup files off of the old computer.

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The changing of bodies into light, and light into bodies, is very comfortable to the course of Nature, which seems delighted with transmutations.

--Isaac Newton

I don’t know what I may seem to the world, but as to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

--Isaac Newton

Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.

--Tom Stoppard