Channeling Jackie O

Almost two weeks ago, I watched a PBS show called Echoes from the White House in which Jacqueline Kennedy gave a tour of the White House. Though dated, the show was captivating, and my mind has returned fairly often to this mysterious woman in the days since. Did Jackie O drink beer? Did Jackie O sing in the shower? Did Jackie O like poetry?

Some details of Jackie's tastes and habits I may never know, particularly if I never bother to read one of her biographies (anyone have any recommendations?), but I am pleased to at least know that she was a lover of poetry. Earlier this week, I visited Chincoteague, VA, and spent most of my time at the surprising number of independent bookstores there. At the one whose name I can't remember, I picked up The Best-Loved Poems of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, selected and introduced by Caroline Kennedy. Aside from the tasteful selection of well known favorites (Frost, Whitman, Hughes, Yeats, Keats, etc.), there are a few poems written by Jackie O herself, when she was still Miss Bouvier.

Who cares what she read? I think it's fascinating. The introduction explains that Jackie memorized her favorite poems and taught many of them to her children. To read these (mostly) familiar poems with that knowledge makes me see them differently, or at least makes me look closer. What is it in a poem that holds a reader? What is it in a reader that lets a poem hold?

Happy New Year!

Would it have been heavenly? Hellish? Revisiting Romeo & Juliet

Well, while we're riding the sweet Shakespeare waves, let's tan with the lotion of contemporary poetic responses (but let's not get stuck on my bad metaphors). Most of us know the story Shakespeare made most famous, Romeo & Juliet. Teaching this brilliant play to ninth graders a few years ago was definitely a teaching highlight: seeing young people move beyond initial resistance and doubt to heartfelt classroom discussions and productions was deeply satisfying. For one lesson, we watched two versions of the famous balcony scene between the main characters: the classic and sexy Zeffirelli version and Luhrmann's modern adaptation (also sexy). The students analyzed the artistic decisions each director made (between giggles), and several of them performed creative renditions in pairs -- blushing, as I was blushing, at the awkwardness of performing romance in these crowded classroom conditions. It was a memorable experience!

What if the play had ended differently, we asked at the end of our unit. What if the lovers had found a way to make it? Maxine Kumin answers this question brilliantly (with tongue firmly planted in cheek) in her sonnet, "Purgatory," which can be read and listened to here. Enjoy!

Phoning Shakespeare

Last night, I downloaded Readdle's PlayShakespeare for the iPhone. Not only are all of Shakespeare's plays and poems now on my phone, but they are fully searchable! Utterly baffling.

Here: I give you his delightful 42nd sonnet:

That thou hast her, it is not all my grief,
And yet it may be said I lov'd her dearly;
That she hath thee is of my wailing chief,
A loss in love that touches me more nearly.
Loving offenders, thus I will excuse ye:
Thou dost love her because thou know'st I love her,
And for my sake even so doth she abuse me,
Suff'ring my friend for my sake to approve her.
If I lose thee, my loss is my love's gain,
And losing her, my friend hath found that loss;
Both find each other, and I lose both twain,
And both for my sake lay on me this cross.
But here's the joy, my friend and I are one;
Sweet flattery! then she loves but me alone.

On a completely unrelated note, check out my post, Writing Fibs, on Getting Something Read!

Speaking Ferlinghetti

A few months ago, a friend lent me Lawrence Ferlinghetti's second book of poetry, A Coney Island of the Mind, and I've been reading it sporadically in bits and pieces. It sits right next to my laptop, tucked into a cubby hole on my desk. Reading it fills in the odd spaces in my day: if a webpage is taking too long to load, I'm on hold, or I'm waiting for a phone call, I reach for Coney Island and skim it casually.

Earlier this week, I started over. I suddenly realized that I was stifling his momentum every time I read a poem -- or worse, half a poem -- and put it back down again. Without planning it, I started reading him aloud. Then I started pacing while reading, my arm conducting an imaginary poem orchestra, dancing on Ferlinghetti's clever rhythms and quieting down to a sort of prayer between verses. Poetry is meant to be read, I kept thinking. It's meant to be physical. Seeing, hearing, feeling.

And then I wondered, is it always? Are there poems only meant for the page (concrete poems, for example), poems that visually speak their meaning more than they do aurally? Are there poems only meant for the ears? Song lyrics, for example, can be written in paragraph form, even when the music indicates line breaks.

All I know is that speaking Ferlinghetti is wild. Who to speak next?

Mbembe Martin Smith

Before I left for a Thanksgiving holiday in the wild west, I sat in my bathroom (a virtual literary journal library!), and sipped my daily dose of Alehouse 2009. I look forward to my annual issue of Alehouse, a journal edited by Jay Rubin of The Peralta Press fame. Maybe "fame" is a strong word, but Peralta (now defunct) was the first place (outside of my own school journals) to publish my poetry. I've been a loyal fan of both journals ever since. This year's Alehouse is my favorite yet. A rich mishmash of new names and old, of great poetry and short prose pieces, it has kept me well entertained and reflective. This issue pays tribute to African-American poets and poetry, and scattered throughout are interviews, poems, and short essays by and about them.

Seventy-one pages in, there is a short piece by Anastacia Tolbert introducing and memorializing Mbembe Martin Smith, a poet I wish I'd heard of sooner. I'm thankful for the introduction, and I plan to order his Selected Poems from BkMk Press; I wish I could find more of his work online to share, but perhaps a very short excerpt from "Survival Poem" will suffice for now:

"we can let our speech become air
& our fist soft clay.

or we can rise
up thru these filty towns
to rule our own space."

His is a poetry of an urban experience, an African-American experience, but it also a poetry of our shared experience. His work recalls and foreshadows difficult issues he and those around him faced (racism, poverty, and suicide, for example) with a lyrical and straightforward intensity that insists on being felt rather than observed. That he took his own life at 36 is tragic, but it is not a reason to read or not read his work. Smith's work should be read because it is good, important, and needs to be remembered. I hope that his collection being back in print, as well as his tribute here and elsewhere, will help ensure that his contribution to poetry's widening canon is not forgotten.

Birthing a Manuscript

For the past several months, I've been working on a manuscript of between 60 and 70 pages to enter into contests and send to publishers. In poetry biz, having a book is like a having a passport; you can't get far from home without it. Furthermore, I've started to see my poems as related pieces meant to be presented together -- and I want people to read them. That seems obvious, but it is not always the case!

From what I understand, this desire to publish is not uncommon; nor is the practice straightforward. Since my first submission to a book contest was postmarked today, I thought I'd take this opportunity to talk a bit about process.

Like most things in my life, my process started with lists: I listed every single poem of mine that I thought was possibly publishable in a manuscript. I did this three or four times over two months, reconsidering work based on ongoing revisions and relationships to other poems. Once I had settled on 74 or so pages of poetry, I printed them out. I grouped poems together that felt connected (or interestingly disconnected) and made several stacks. In the process, I weeded out about ten pages (mostly due to redundancy).

Then I did what you see in the image: I wrote the titles of the final contenders on little bits of paper (recycled!) and sorted them on the keyboard tray of my desk. I used tape to hold them in place. This method allowed me to easily play with different orders without shuffling piles of paper all over my office floor. Clean up only involved sliding the tray back under my desktop!

After I'd settled on an order and on my sections (Part I through Part IV), I started to build the manuscript in a Word document, which allowed me to see the poems all together. Again, I found myself cutting (and sometimes pasting) poems based on the new experience of seeing them formally back to back.

My next step was giving my draft away to be read. Two generous and wonderful friends took a copy of the manuscript from me for about a week each, and each spent a few hours with me, giving me helpful feedback about placement, poem choice, and title. After each reading, I fine tuned: a word here, a section order there, cutting a stanza, adding a bridge poem.

After formatting a Table of Contents and an Acknowledgments page (four drafts in), I took the plunge. As I type this, my baby passes from postal basket to basket, making its way out of Bryn Mawr to its first contest. My little Moses, who will find you and give you a chance? Fingers are crossed!

I'm sure other poets have found more efficient (or perhaps more colorful) ways to build a book; if you know of any, please share!

Rich's Wild Patience

Last week I finished one of my many "night stand" books (though they technically sit on a shelf cleverly built into my headboard), Adrienne Rich's A Wild Patience Has Taken Me This Far. For those who have read and enjoyed Diving into the Wreck and/or The Dream of a Common Language, Patience is an indispensable addition to the Rich collection.

Here are some of Rich's words, out of context, pulled from poems throughout:

• "...I turn again, slip my arm / under the pillow turned for relief, / your breathing traces my shoulder. Two women sleeping / together have more than their sleep to defend." ("The Images")
• "Anger and tenderness: the spider's genius / to spin and weave in the same action / from her own body, anywhere-- / even from a broken web." ("Integrity)
• "The world as it is: not as her users boast / damaged beyond reclamation by their using / Ourselves as we are in these painful motions // of staying cognizant: some part of us always / out beyond ourselves / knowing knowing knowing" ("The Spirit of Place")
• "it is meant to be in silence that this happens" ("Frame")
• "When language fails us, when we fail each other / there is no exorcism." ("Rift")
• "Unborn sisters, / look back on us with mercy" ("Turning the Wheel")

For those who have not read this era of Rich's writing before, I hope these samples provide a useful tour (though superficial) of Rich's concerns and her artful turn of phrase.

I have heard from many students and friends that Rich is difficult, particularly on first read. She demands a curious, critical, and open reader, which none of us is all the time. I have put down her poems in the past when my mind was too dull with exhaustion or distraction, knowing I needed to return when I could give them more of my attention. So much of Rich's poetry is about the need to pay attention in life, to interrogate assumptions, to make decisions and bear witness with a critical mind. It is only fair that her poetry require the same quality of attention from her readers. It strikes me that reading Rich's poetry is practice for living the kind of life she models in her work. Surely my eyes, my mind, my body moves differently after living a bit in her words.

What I hope the sampled lines above reveal is that Rich can be prosaic in her poetry -- not in the dull sense of the word, but in the straightforward sense of it. In Patience, Rich gives us her characteristically tight, passionate poetry, but she also offers quite a few footholds to her reader. I often feel she is saying here, this is what I am trying to say. Read the poem again now. And I do. And I never regret it.

Patricia Smith's Blood Dazzler

Yesterday I had the strangely delightful opportunity to proctor a PSAT exam for a single student at a local school. She was accommodated with 50% extended time and reading assistance, which meant that I had five blocks of 38 or 45 minutes during which I might be asked to read a question, passage, or set of directions aloud. Otherwise, I could quietly read and mind the time.

I am so grateful that the book my fingers found in my canvas bag (I'd brought a few) was Patricia Smith's Blood Dazzler. It's getting a lot of attention because it's been nominated for the prestigious National Book Award, and I've been toting it around since I bought it at the Dodge Poetry Festival after hearing her read. When I say read, I mean recite. Patricia Smith told her poems to us without the page, seemingly making eye contact with everyone in the tent. The experience of her poetry aloud is transformative. It's no surprise she's also a poetry slam champion.

Blood Dazzler is a collection of poems about Hurricane Katrina. Some of the poems are in Katrina's voice, others in the voices of survivors, pets, rescuers, evacuees, and the deceased.
As the back of her book says, it is "[a] storm's-eye view of the devastation that forever changed New Orleans and America." Smith follows the progression of the storm through newspaper clippings, emails between FEMA officers, imagined inner dialogues, television broadcasts, and more. Although each poem stands alone, the collection is poetry of witness at its best: it tells a story, it brings the reader in, and it shimmers with fine craftmanship. I could not stop reading her aloud to guests last night. I imagine this might be an issue for a while to come. This is a book that needs to be heard, to be read.

Let's say you notice this one the next time you're in the bookstore, and you're not sure whether to take the plunge. Turn to p.25 and read "What to Tweak" or to p.50 to read "34." Or open to any page -- it's that good.

On Odes and Evolving Forms

It's often said that the best way to keep the old forms alive is to mess with them, to break them. Sonnets can break out of rhyme, villanelles can fudge the repeated phrases, haiku can concern themselves with more than nature, and so on. I agree, even as I also treasure the pure forms, that breaking the rules from time to time helps keep form relevant. This is how poetry evolves, building on the before as it creates itself anew.

John Drury's Poetry Dictionary does quite a thorough job defining and redefining poetic forms. I turned to it a few days ago to see how Drury defined an ode, as I was feeling a little self-conscious about the free verse odes I wrote recently after a friend noted that odes are, of course, typically quite a bit longer than my twelve-line pieces. Drury's definition is helpful, noting that an ode is a "song or lyric, often passionate, expansive, exuberant, rhapsodic" (195). He then goes on to discuss the evolution of the ode: Pindaric or choral odes, Horatian odes, Cowleyan or irregular odes, and Neruda's elemental odes. I wondered how Sharon Olds would categorize her odes to hymens, composting toilets, and the like; I suppose they, too, are elemental, "passionate and rhapsodic about the ordinary," even if composting toilets aren't quite ordinary to most people (198). I then wondered whether an ode can still be an ode if its expansiveness, exuberance, and passion are tight, focused, and small -- regardless of its subject. Surely an ode can be small as long as its heart is still big, right? I should think so. Perhaps resizing it can help the ode to stay alive in the years to come as readers continue to expect quick reads and bite-sized inspiration.

Mine Connections

For the last three summers, I've taught at Bryn Mawr College's summer program for high school girls, Writing for College. Each summer, we teach Diane Gilliam Fisher's beautiful Kettle Bottom, a personal favorite and a masterpiece in poetry. Fisher's poems tell the story of a West Virginia mine town through a diverse array of voices and dialects. She explores the perspectives of children, wives, and the miners themselves with dignity and seemingly simple poetics, but her collection of poems is far from simple. Every summer, I experience anew Fisher's gift for narrative that subtly but steadily pulls me into her concerns and characters, and I delight in facilitating students' experiences of it. The epigraph to her collection comes from Muriel Rukeyser:

What do you want--a cliff over a city?
A foreland, sloped to sea and overgrown with roses?
These people live here.

Saturday night I flipped through my first issue of American Poet, and I was drawn in to Marilyn Hacker's essay on H.D., Gwendolyn Brooks, and Muriel Rukeyser, "Three American Women Poets in the First Century of World Wars." At the end of the essay, as is the case in all of American Poet's essays, there is a poem by each of the featured poets (including the author herself). The Brooks poem, "the rites for Cousin Vit," is probably my favorite poem of hers, and the Rukeyser, "Gauley Bridge," is my first true introduction to her poetry. I read it with a quality of attention that I wish I brought to more of my life. How removed she is through it, how cold many of her observations. Then, the final stanza, in which she asserts herself and simultaneously calls upon her readers to pay attention to their own reading of these descriptions. It is the same stanza quoted above. How appropriate that Fisher brings Rukeyser into her Kettle Bottom; the women share a concern in their poems for the devastation of mining towns, but even more remarkably, they share a gift for unraveling a reader's judgment of the places and people they evoke. We become a part of their poems when we give them our attention, which they skillfully command. I can't wait to find more Rukeyser to read.

On another note, The New Verse News has published another of my poems today, "Driving the Slow Way to Buxton, NC." There have been some interesting poems there of late; check them out.

Being Open at Open Mic

Last night I attended a wonderful reading at Milkboy Coffee in Bryn Mawr. The reading was sponsored by the Mad Poets Society and featured Nathalie Anderson and my friend, J.C. Todd. Their readings were both excellent; I was particularly excited by hearing more of J.C.'s work. Her book, What Space This Body, is one of my favorites of the year, and she read some of my favorite selections from it ("Moon Blown Free," "Men Kissing," and "Pissing"). She also read some of her translations of exciting Latvian poets in New European Poets, as well as some newer work that is still in process. It was delightful in every way. I wish I could read with such a sharp, smiling presence as hers.

Nathalie Anderson read a variety of material, but mostly from a collection of poems written about her time in Kyoto. What I remember most are delicious poems about the food she ate there, as well as her remarkable ability to balance several books and pieces of paper at once in front of the mic. Hers was also a powerful presence.

When it was time for the open mic after the reading, the poets read works responding in some way to J.C. and to Nathalie: poems that answered J.C.'s dedication of "Men Kissing" to Sarah Palin, or poems that added to the feast of Nathalie's food poems. I only brought two poems with me, and they didn't necessarily respond to either poet's work. I brought them because they are fresh for me, easy enough to read, and upbeat. By all accounts, they were well received, but I wish I had thought about how to connect with the other readers. Other poets, I noticed, brought a pile of poems from which they chose appropriate responses to the night's readings. I love the ways in which poets and poems dialogue; in the future, I hope I am able to more skillfully enter the open mic conversation. It takes flexibility, and, well, openness!

The Gift

Today I finished reading The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World by Lewis Hyde. The Gift has been my trusty gym mate for months, gracefully entertaining me as I sweat my mind out in 30, 40, and 50 minute aerobic sessions. It has been stimulating and inspiring for both intellect and heart. Hyde tells an important story about gifts, those that are tangible and those that are inherent. He also illuminates the ways in which the culture of giving and receiving (and nurturing) gifts rubs up against capitalism. The strange roles that wars, religion, and individual leaders and artists have played in this often uncomfortable tension shed an appreciated fresh light on history.

There is much to be distraught about in this book, but Hyde somehow leaves the reader feeling hopeful and even empowered. The greatest solution to the inevitable discord between art as profit and art as gift that Hyde offers is, not surprisingly, a compromise: when art enters the marketplace, that market should funnel funds back into the arts. The prime example Hyde offers of this actually happening in our times is the Music Performance Fund. Once upon a time, the American Federation of Musicians (yay union!) bargained with the recording industry that a small percentage of profits from recorded albums would go into a fund to augment the income of performing musicians. The fund still exists, and many of the "free" and inexpensive concerts held at schools and other public venues across the U.S. and Canada are supported by this fund. Makes sense, right? The profit from art partly supports more art. If only this were more often true.

After I finished reading my book, I still had 20 minutes left to my workout, so I thought about my life as a practicing poet and writer. The poetry market, I internally whined, simply doesn't work like this for the individual. However, when we enter contests with contest fees, aren't we supporting one of our own, the one who will win the $1000 -- or whatever the prize is? Yes, perhaps so. And when publications start making a profit big enough to run these contests with low or no fees (see Narrative Magazine's free contest for young writers here), isn't that similarly supporting individual writers? Of course it is.

Maybe there is more hope for writers that I thought. Our renegade gift economy interacts necessarily with the larger capitalistic monster, but not to the total detriment of its core. There still is difficulty, it seems, in making a living purely as a writer -- at least for most of us.

The Beats

It is common, healthy, and reasonable for a 16-year-old to obsess over the Beats. When I was 16, I wrote a term paper on Kerouac and Ginsburg, positive that I was teaching my teacher about "real" literature and the shadowy side of the canon. I memorized some of Kerouac's shorter poems, read and re-read Howl and On the Road, and wrote with anguish and imitated drunkenness a poetry that I thought burned in the same, essential flame as the Beats'.

I am not about to tell you that I regret this. Nor am I about to confess that I no longer respect or enjoy this work (though, I am glad I have found my own voice in the years since). What I am writing to tell you is that Bennett Gordon at Utne Reader has found a new Beat in 2008. Read about this maverick maven here.

In other news, there's a short poem of mine called "Your Mother's Mouth" posted today at Getting Something Read.

Finding Natural Meter

Tonight I made a pasta sauce from farm fresh vegetables: roma tomatoes, grape tomatoes, onions, garlic, Swiss chard, rosemary, oregano, basil, red bell pepper, orange bell pepper, and carrots. Of course there was a bit of salt, pepper, sugar, butter, and olive oil. A feast for the senses, without a doubt. Boiling the tomatoes before icing them to peel off their skins, I delighted in the process as I ruminated on the labor: who has time to cook like this every day?

There is a parallel to crafting poetry. Many say English has a natural meter that is more often than not iambic, best digested in pentameter, and most pleasing with some level of rhyme or repetition. These qualities abound in English poetry, just as organic vegetables abound in the products I buy. I, however, do not find them simple or quick to work with raw -- at least not in my youth as a gardener, cook, or poet.

Earlier this evening, I received my first ever congratulatory call about one of my poems. "Ode to Terrible Days," a short poem I wrote in Castine this May, was chosen for the Mad Poets Review Contest winners list. I was so excited about the news, I immediately turned to the lucky poem to read it for clues: out of all the poems I submit to similar contests, what made this little ode so lucky? There is a consistent rhythm, a playful rhyme, a balance of furniture in its cute little room. It's not much like my other poems, nor do I feel like I can take full credit for it. It just happened one day in a notebook while I curled in a hammock.

The pasta sauce is in freezer bags, waiting to be enjoyed at a later date. Smelling it with anticipation, my partner suggested I recreate it for a large group of people we'll be having over in a few weeks. I blushed, confessing that I wasn't sure I'd be able to recreate it. The process had been so organic, so free, I hadn't thought much about what I was doing. Pieces of past experiences came together, informing my hands without much thought. I think my ode is like that, too. Maybe someday I'll learn to take notes to recreate my efforts-- or maybe I'll continue to move organically through these processes, learning movements and meters, if not exact steps.

No Heaven

I just finished Alicia Suskin Ostriker's No Heaven, a brave and beautiful text for our times. Ostriker's perspective is vast, nuanced, crafted, and compelling. Her poems speak to the spiritual longing many of us have in times of desperation and war, as well as to the hunger for better words, better ways of making meaning. Some of her poems are ekphrastic, many elegiac, and all certainly memorable.

The penultimate poem, "Daffodils," starts "The day the war against Iraq begins / I'm photographing the yellow daffodils" and closes "Don't you think / It is our business to defend it / Even the day our masters start a war? / To defend the day we see the daffodils?"

Don't be fooled, though. Ostriker is not the photographer with her back to the war. She is a lover of life in spite of war -- in response to war.

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!