Book Review: A Poetry Handbook

This morning I had the awful experience of having two of my wisdom teeth extracted. Aside from sleep and cold, soft food, I have consumed much of the written word: hour-by-hour updates on my mobile AP news app for the iPhone (a growing addiction), a story by Kumin, poems by Ostriker and Bracho, and the final few chapters of Mary Oliver's A Poetry Handbook: A Prose Guide to Understanding and Writing Poetry. I am well satisfied.

In Provincetown this past June, I acquired Mary's Oliver's At Blackwood Pond: Mary Oliver Reads Mary Oliver for the sole purpose of hearing her read "Wild Geese." I hear her poems often now in the car, whether I'm playing the CD or simply relishing in remembering them. When my partner brought home her Poetry Handbook, I expected good things.

The handbook is easy to read, clear, and thoughtful. There are subjects about which Oliver is more superficial than I'd prefer (image, prose poem), but there are many that she illuminates with complexity (line, sound, workshop vs. solitude). The text offers several example poems and words of encouragement. Here is a sampling of lines I underlined:

• "The free-verse poem sets up, in terms of sound and line, a premise or an expectation, and then, before the poem finishes, it makes good response to the premise" (68).
• "[A free-verse poem] need not follow any of the old rules necessarily. Neither does it have to avoid all of them necessarily" (68-69).
• "The poem is not a discussion, not a lecture, but an instance--an instance of attention, of noticing something in the world" (74).

Useful, practical, inspriring stuff. A good quick read that would be a lovely text for an introductory poetry or creative writing class at the high school or college level. As someone who is simultaneously reading sevearal writing guides, it was not hard to choose Oliver as the guide of choice on a tired day.

Stumbling Forth

What an overwhelmingly joyful and delightful festival! An estimated 19,000 poets and lovers of poetry gathered over four days in the lush and rustic Waterloo Village, NJ. It was incredible to hear some of my favorite poets read, as well as to discover some voices new to me. From Maxine Kumin to Patricia Smith, from Martin Espada to Ted Kooser, from Billy Collins to JC Todd, from Steve Sanfield to Coleman Barks, I was immersed and the air we all shared became a bit clearer, a bit more electric.

There is something particularly special about poets together. I dare not assume that we all vote the same, write similarly, or read any poem with the same response, but we are brutally and beautifully aware of our essential sameness and of the importance of words, worlds, and our shared world.

Now to take the overstimulated brain and turn it to its own creation: always the challenge. For tonight, I think I will just let it rest.

Going to the Dodge

The Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival is the Woodstock of poetry. The way I understand it, the Dodge is the one place poets can go and be mainstream, the one place we can go to be a part of an excited crowd of fellow poets. And by crowd, I mean huge tents, several events going on at once at all times, and food everywhere.

Right now, I write about the myth. I've never actually been to the Dodge before, and I'm excited to see what such a festival will really be like. Friends, mentors, and inspirations of mine will be reading, so I don't think I can possibly be let down. Stay tuned to hear more!

By the way, I've done nothing yet to advertise this blog. Is anyone reading it? If so, please leave a short comment.

Furniture

I participated in an excellent workshop at the Fine Arts Work Center this summer, and our workshop leader gave us some very good advice about poems. What sticks with me most several months later are two points:

1. A poem is like a room; it needs to have furniture that the reader can comfortably sit upon (concrete images, fresh language, surprising turns or ideas).
2. At the same time, a poem is a fragile space; it cannot survive being overcrowded by too many pieces of furniture.
   

Lately I've been reading the poems I'm cautiously organizing into a manuscript with this lens: where are the pieces of furniture? Are they appropriate to the space the poem creates? Do they overcrowd the room? Is there enough to sit down upon? This has been a helpful -- if at times discouraging -- exercise for me. I notice that I sometimes have the equivalent of a pink corduroy couch, a beige leather ottoman, and a nondescript plastic table in the same room. Rearranging is endless, and sometimes I decide, "Hey, this is a young manuscript. It can't afford a matching set!"

Don't worry. I usually come back to the poem the next day or so and return to editing. The manuscript will be a weird dwelling when it's done, but at least it will make sense to this particular poet!

Welcome!

At the start of September, I decided to go just part time enough with my day job that I could keep benefits and responsibly manage my work. Starting an MFA program this semester inspired me to cut back to do the reading, the writing, and the thinking that will help me grow as a poet. When I realized that my first residency would not be until this winter, I decided I could afford (fingers crossed) to stay part time anyway.

So, what am I doing with these extra hours? Well, this week I finished reading Joan Larkin's powerful and inspiring collection, My Body, and I've been reading Alicia Ostriker's No Heaven alongside Mary Oliver's A Poetry Handbook. Ostriker is delightful; Oliver is insightful. I also completed the first draft of my poetry manuscript (a frightening 71 pages as of this moment), and spent a few hours revising one of my oldest and most stubborn poems. Then, of course, the submission piece: I submitted to and was posted at a very cool website (The New Verse News), and I researched a few other potential markets. By "markets, " I do not mean paying markets. At least not usually. So far the writing of poetry has made me a whopping $10 and several "contributors copies." This is just the way it is, folks.

I'm going to try to post a few times a week with personal stories as well as useful or inspiring resources. If you have comments, please leave them. I'm new at blogging, and I'm certainly learning as I go!