Big Bang Poetry

Moment of Craft Fridays: Your Relationship to Language

My father tells this joke often: there are two types of people--the type of people who put everyone else into types of people and the type of people who don't.

Reading Real Sofistikashun by Tony Hoagland, I'm often hitting the question of what type of writer I might be. These questions are good to think about.

I see it this way: there are two types of poets--the type who feels well served by their language and the limits of words and the type who feels the language fails them profoundly. Do you write about how words fail you or do you write about how they succeed to describe your living experience?

Some writers aim to share and connect through their poems. Others are dealing with disconnection and alienation.

How accessible should you choose to be might be related to your relationship with language itself and your feelings about your abstract reader.

There's no right answer. It's a temperament, your unique temperament.

And further, are you trying to express your one essential self or do you want to explore your many selves. Hoagland talks about the differences. He quotes Cszelaw Milosz from "Ars Poetica?"

The purpose of poetry is to remind us how difficult it is to remain just one person.

Later he considers Guillaume Apollinaire and says,

"The purpose of poetry," Apollinaire might have said, in response to Milosz, "is to remind us how unnecessary it is to remain just one person."

Which one of these statements do you feel more confortable with?

Ron Koertge

I missed blog posts this week due to adopting our second dog  Saturday morning. Our fur-kid Franz Alanzo now has a sister-mate, Bianca Jean, a shelter dog who had been seriously neglected, the result of which she has had two litters of puppies (one litter a few months ago) and a severe shoulder injury.

Meanwhile, our lives have been close to chaos since the weekend while we've all been sorting out the new arrangements. Like my husband's classmate warned him, with two dogs the house gets very doggie.

But I want to talk about one of my favorite poems ever, one by Pasadena poet Ron Koertge. Getting a degree from Sarah Lawrence College, most of my exposure to living poets were to East Coast writers popular in the 1990s like Mark Doty, Stanley Kunitz and Molly Peacock. 

Moving to Los Angeles in 2002, I was pleased to encounter West Coast voices.  Now I have Koertge's selected works, Making Love to Roget's Wife. With similarities and connections to Billy Collins, the titles are always meandering, compelling and his poems are humorous, irreverent, and often about pop culture subjects like "On the Anniversary of His Death, the Men of the Village Meet to Talk about Frankenstein;" and yet he can be just as ecstatic and reverent with "What a Varied Place the World Is So Trusting and Strange So Deserving of Praise" or a poem called "Lazarus" that ends, "God's name in vain on his cracked and loamy lips."

He has wonderful short poems like this one, "Diary Cows" (and you know I love me some poems about cows!)

Got up early, waited for the farmer.
Hooked us all up to the machines as usual.
Typical trip to the pasture, typical
afternoon grazing and ruminating.
About 5:00 back to the barn. What
a relief! Listened to the radio during
dinner. Lights out at 7:00.
More tomorrow.

I found the favorite poem one day while working at The Prostate Cancer Foundation, Mike Milken's cancer charity in a Santa Monica building I used to dub The Castle. I was sitting at my desk hating my boss at the time (an incompetent blowhard who issued insults office-wide to hide his mistakes) and I was depressed about the situation when I found this poem online, "A Guide to Refreshing Sleep"

 It is best to remember those nights
when grown-ups were singing and breaking
glass and someone who smelled good
carried you up hushed stairs toward strange
cold bedrooms to be launched on a dark
lake of coats.

If Memory does not suffice, you may
summon the obvious mascots of sleep,
but forego counting. It is miserly. They
will come and stand by your bed, nodding
their graceful Egyptian heads, inviting you

across the crooked stile to one of those
hamlets nestled between blue hills
where the curious are curious about sleep,
the enthralled are enthralled with sleep,
and the great conclusion is always,
Its time for bed.

Look--a cottage door stands open. On the night
table is a single candle, yellow sheets are turned
back, and in the garden are marshaled
the best dreams in the world. Lie down.
The horrible opera of the day is over.
Close your eyes, so the world which loves you
can go to sleep, too.

More about Ron Koertge

Marylu Terral Jeans

Who?

Yes, Marylu Terral Jeans published two books of poetry in her lifetime, Statue in the Stone  (1966) and Moonset (1971) and she's my only related (out-of-the-closet) poet.  Terral is the name of my great-great-grandfather, a circuit Methodist preacher who moved around Oklahoma, Texas and New Mexico founding Methodist churches back in the mid-to-late 1800s. He founded the town of Terral, Oklahoma, and the Methodist church in Roy, New Mexico, my family seat. He is buried all by his lonesome in the old cemetery in Las Vegas, New Mexico.

Marylu was my grandmother's first cousin. My Aunt Jane recently explained to me Marylu's place on the family tree. Aunt Jane said when she first married and moved to Walnut Creek, California, in 1944, Marylu's father, Ernest Terral, invited her to come visit them nearby. 

Personally, I always pictured Marylu to look like a dotty old lady because that's what I think of when I imagine women poets who are related to me from somewhere back in time. However, Aunt Jane tells me Marylu lived in a trailer park and made herself up like Zsa Zsa Gabor every day and wrote poetry "sitting amidst the dirtiest house I had ever been in."   

But remarkably, her poems were published in Better Homes and Gardens, California Farmer, Ladies' Home Journal, McCall's, New York Herald Tribune and Saturday Evening Post reminding us of a day when poems were actually published in these magazines. Aunt Jane gave her copy of Statue in the Stone  to my mother who a few years ago gave it to me. It was published by The Golden Quill Press and her book jacket oozes over the power of her sonnet-making. The book is divided into somewhat staid but funny sections like Death of a Dream, Mute Testament, Valley of Stars, Love Match and Love-Armored. She uses words like "threnody."

I expected to hate the book's old-style rhyming verses but I didn't. I was intrigued by lines like this from her poem "Ghost:"

So love's sweet ghost, with undiminished art,
Remains to haunt each hall-way of my heart.

In fact, there's a melodramatic 18th-century novel reader in me who loves stanzas like this from "Dark Fire:"

Not that I love you in a smaller measure,
Not that I seek to hide my love from view,
But I no longer have a dream to treasure,
And lacking dreams, what could I offer you?

Although most of the poems have the rhythm and musicality of Dr. Seuss, some transcend the singsong, as in this little gem, "Hepzibah Higby:"

Hepzibah Higby fought the devil,
Fought his image, fought his ways;
Railed at sin, denounced all evil,
Had no time for words of praise.

Hepzibah saw a world in darkness,
Lost to light from up above;
Wept about the foolish sinners,
Never spoke a word of love.

Hepzibah Higby died, bemoaning
Man, the weakling and the dunce;
Gave her life to fight the devil,
Never saw an angel once.

I read Aunt Jane's story and some of her poems to my husband tonight.

He says he accepts living with a lazy poet.
He could even accept my dressing like Zsa Zsa Gabor.
But he refuses to live in a low-rent dirty trailer,
No matter how good my sonnets are.

Self Publishing Poetry: Caring About Kerning

In the first post about self publishing, we talked about educating yourself about the challenges and advantages of self publishing, creating a marketing plan and gathering up all your book assets, which include logos, permissions, ISBN and LCCN numbers.

The next big project is getting the book into shape. This means copious rounds of self-editing, followed by finding a professional editor/proofreader. You don't have to follow every grammatical rule but you need to be aware of the ones you are intentionally breaking versus the ones you are unintentionally breaking. A professional editor for a book of poetry is very inexpensive. Spending a mere $100 could save you real embarrassment. A good editor will also point out formatting mistakes you may have missed. Typos compromise your credibility. Invest in your credibility. 

Last year, my husband encouraged me to connect with artists to illustrate some of my poems. He felt this might jump-start my project. I put an ad out in the Santa Fe Craigslist to find artists interested in my theme. In this way I found two artists I wanted to work with, one who is currently working on inner sketches and my book cover. An artist is invaluable to helping you bring your poems out into the world. And I personally love seeing my poems come to life in someone else's imagination.

As for the interior, CreateSpace (through Amazon.com), provides a template to help you create the innards of your book. Here again, Catherine Ryan Howard and her book Self Printed was indispensable in showing me the way through this process of making all sorts of decisions, from planning out the front and back matter to adding page numbers. I created various samples of font and size styles for poems and their titles and had to make some tough choices when many of my poems stretched to just one lonely line past a book page. Creating a book causes you to rework and give up words, line breaks and, in some cases, entire lines to fit the realities of a physical book.

One of the harsh truths of self publishing is the fact that you do not have all the tools in your arsenal that a professional publisher does, such as rare and expensive fonts that "class up" your words.

Self publishing means you have to start caring about line spacing and character kerning. You start to become intimate with the idea of your book as a physical object.

Joy Harjo Speaks to the Incoming Class of IAIA

What a thrill it was for me to be able to attend the welcoming ceremony for new students at the Institute for American Indian Arts in Santa Fe on August 16th. Teachers, students and staff all gave very emotional speeches welcoming and inspiring the new art students and it was hard not to be moved, even if you are someone like me, not Native American but with a somewhat fractured cultural identity that includes both Mexican and Native American culture...a long story that involves where both of my parents grew up, but one that might explain my being such a visceral fan of Joy Harjo. (A quote from Harjo closes out my wedding program!) So it was doubly thrilling that she would be at the welcoming ceremony as the keynote speaker. She just has this energy that is hard to describe. I felt similarly about Alice Walker when I saw her read in New York City. They're both very demure I guess which is an energy that jazzes me up.

Harjo said two things I found interesting. One, she talked about the value of failure, saying this was primarily what her memoir Crazy Brave is about. The book talks about her early struggles and mistakes from early childhood up through attending IAIA as a high school student (saying the school saved her life) and early relationship abuses. The book talks briefly but emotionally about how writing poetry saved her soul, but the book does not give us a happily-ever-after ending, on purpose I think, to illustrate the value of struggle through failure.

Failure is something I feel poets fear to such a great extent it keeps them from forming close relationships with one another. Because any other poet's success ultimately reflects back on another poet's failure. And so mutual encouragement is virtually nonexistent. If a poet can't be actually discouraging, he can be silent.

Failure in poetry has many levels: the failure of the respect in both the culture and academia, the failure of sales, the failure of the individual poet (before and after publishing), the failure of an individual poem. It's a sad state. And the paradigm has to change, maybe by reinterpreting failure.

Failure, as Harjo says, teaches you everything. You learn more from failure than from success.

Taking on my first book project, I feel at peace with its failure because this practice teaches me the entire road map of assembling a book. And inside that cloud of failure lies either the secret to success or the path to the next enlightened failure.

Secondly, Harjo also implored students (and aren't we all students?) to ask for help. Another difficult thing for poets because we believe ourselves to be the magic, embodied kernel of all enlightened thoughts (even when we pretend to question ourselves). To admit we need help is to admit we are not ordained by God to speak the truth.

Can we accept the idea that each of our poems is a community project and that maybe we didn't build that business by ourselves?  

Moment of Craft Fridays: Define Your Characteristic Emotion

I just began to read Real Sofistikashun by Tony Hoagland, his book of essays on craft. Right away he begins with an exercise which he uses to begin workshops with his students:

"Describe your work in terms of its most characteristic emotion, or "humour"-- whether you write from a taproot of rage, pity, love or grief. It seems as important to know this about yourself as to know your country of origin.

I'm struggling to define my voice today. I think facing your "taproot emotion" is challenging because it may show you an emotion you're not comfortable with. For example, I'm a bit concerned that my predominant emotion is derision with a slight contempt. I can be sarcastic.

The last chapter in the Hoagland book is called "Negative Capability, How to Talk Mean and Influence People." The back cover elaborates on this idea: "Meanness, the very thing that is unforgivable in human social life, in poetry is thrilling and valuable. Why? Because the willingness to be offensive sets free the ruthless observer in all of us, the spiteful perceptive angel who sees and tells, unimpeded by nicety or second thoughts. There is truth-telling in meanness."

Instinctually I agree with this because I've always had a queer sensibility. As a catty Cher fan, I've often joked that I'm a gay man in a woman's body. But the truth is, I sympathize with the most bitchy, irreverent, flaming martyr in the room...because this is fundamentally part of my personality, but one that only finds life in my writing and with my husband (poor feller).

On the one hand, the "sweet Mary" side of me is not happy about this manifestation of myself as a writer, the emotional tone I gravitate toward, the one with the meaner edge, disdainful and cutting. My inner Oscar Wilde or Mark Twain.

If only I could write aphorisms as well.

"When an honest writer discovers an imposition, it is his simple duty to strip it bare and hurl it down from its place of honor, no matter who suffers by it; any other course would render him unworthy of the public confidence."

Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad, 1880

"I shall not write any poetry unless I conceive a spite against the subscribers."

Mark Twain as editor of the Buffalo Express in 1869

"Even prophets correct their proofs."

"There are two ways of disliking poetry, one was is to dislike it, the other is to read Pope."

"Most people become bankrupt through having invested too heavily in the prose of life. To have ruined oneself over poetry is an honor."

Oscar Wilde

Monday Poetry News Roundup

Poetry headlines in the news

• Is there a New York poet? 
• Does poetry have something to teach the business world? 
• Where Poets Receive Pensions
• UK Poet Laureate lauds people's Games, targets bankers
• Is poetry fading from contemporary Chinese life?
• Mexican poet prepares U.S. peace march 
• A Poet From China’s Avant-Garde Looks Back
• 'Swim Your Own Race' Wins NPR's Poetry Games

 

Moment of Craft Fridays: Critical Thinking

So we've been talking about how working on thinking skills can help your poetry. I know there is some resistance to this idea, as if the creation of poetry is only natural thinking, without effort. I agree that some degree of organic inspiration is involved, however thinking about thinking is still a crucial component of both gaining wisdom and communicating your wisdoms. Consider the competitive runner. Although "getting into the zone" is important, so is practice and the harder she pushes herself (within safe limits), the more races she will run.

Which brings me to the next point: reading essays and books about theory and thinking can be dry and difficult. "It's too hard! It feels like college!" my fellow writers whine. Don't fret over the stuff that's too dense to penetrate right away. Read through it and glean what you can. As long as you're always learning, as long as your mind is always working and thinking and making some connections--you don't have to understand all of it. The next babble of theory will get easier.

I hit the same wall when I started reading pop-culture theory this year (I am also, after all, Cher Scholar). Pop culture books can be even more esoteric. But if you keep coming at concepts and ideas from different angles, the better you'll run.

Thinking in Writing by Donald McQuade and Robert Atwan is, as I've mentioned before, a good overview on ways we organize our thoughts.

 

 

 

For years I've had Literary Theory, A Very Brief Introduction by Jonathan Culler on my bookshelf. Last week I started reading it and although it was a hard slag at first, it should be required reading for all writers, especially poets.

To understand how the car runs, it's always good to know how the parts all work together. How do poems create meaning?

"...theory involves a questioning of the most basic premises or assumptions of literary study, the unsettling of anything that might have been taken for granted: What is meaning? What is an author? What is it to read?"

Although you may not think these big ideas matter to your little poems, thinking about these things can take you down some new and amazing intellectual paths. And it's helpful to know how the critics and theorists qualify various rhetorical tropes.

Many lament the fact that college curriculums (not to mention bookstores and large book-fest events) focus almost entirely on fiction, while poetry (once the definition of literature) gets the short shrift. Culler elaborates on why this is:

"This is not just a result of the preferences of a mass readership, who happily pick up stories but seldom read poems. Literary and cultural theory have increasingly claimed cultural centrality for narrative. Stories, the argument goes, are the main way we make sense of things."

So you see, this is what we are up against as poets, this is what our own intellectual peers have surmised about the value of poetry versus fiction. Ignoring the reality won't help poetry as a art form and it probably won't serve your individual poems much either.

Sitting on my desk at IAIA, stuffed behind one of those ancient phone-message books (the ones with carbon copies no less), I found a little blue mini-book called The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking, Concepts and Tools. What a find! I haven't cracked it yet but I did skim through the graphics, great overviews of thought like this one (so sorry my scanner sucks!):

 

 

Reading More Poetry to Things That Don't Care...on the Santa Fe Trail

I've been away for the last week, visiting my in-laws in Kansas. My husband and I decided to drive from Santa Fe to where his sister lives in Independence, Missouri, along the Santa Fe Trail. This little trek provided many occasions for us to stop and smell the indifference to poetry. I was able to add six pictures to Reading Poetry to Animals and Things Who Don't Care.

Reading poetry to the Santa Fe Trail outside of Clayton, New Mexico. Wagon train traffic, art thou so loud this trail cannot hear me?  (2012, photo by John McCray)

 

 

Reading poetry to the beautiful Kansas grass outside of Fort Larned on the Santa Fe Trail. When the wind blew, the grass whispered "husssssh...silly poetess."  (2012, photo by John McCray)

 

 

Reading poetry to fake soldiers outside of Fort Larned, Kansas. I tried to tell them I had the latest Walt Whitman fresh off the presses. They did not seem to care.  (2012, photo by John McCray)

 

 

Reading poetry to a sod house in Kansas. Although my poetry was as dense as a mud brick, this house of earth could not relate. (2012, photo by John McCray)

 

 

Still reading poetry to a sod house in Kansas. Come on, sod house! You have to admit that line from W.H. Auden was pretty funny.  (2012, photo by John McCray)

 

 

Reading poetry to one of the whirling fellows on a windmill farm. Although the blades say "I'm excited about the truths you're laying down," this reader does not believe that windmill will make any serious literary changes in his life going forward.  (2012, photo by John McCray)

 

 

To see the full set of things that don't care about poetry

Books About Poetry to Read

In a recent article I found for this week's poetry news, poet Katy Lederer provides an indispensable book-list of books on poetry:

• Language of Inquiry by Lyn Hejinian (for a philosoph ical dismantling of poetic language and practice)
• Attack of the Difficult Poems by Charles Bernstein (for a philosophical dismantling of poetic language and practice that's funny)
• Ordinary Genius by Kim Addonizio (for writing exercises)
• Real Sofistikashun by Tony Hoagland (for a survey of mainstream American poetry)
• Beautiful and Pointless by David Orr (for a survey of mainstream American poetry that's funny)
• Poetry Home Repair Manual by Ted Kooser (for analytical exercises with personal narrative)

That should be a good syllabus for winter's reading.