Big Bang Poetry

Interesting Waite Phillips Quotes Pertaining to Writing

I've spent the last 20 days with family and friends celebrating Monsieur Big Bang's graduation with his master's degree from nearby Highlands University. We took my parents up to the Cimarron area for a day. There we saw the remains of the town of Dawson, New Mexico. Dawson was a mining town important to our family because it's existence supplied the need for a railroad depot and a new town called Roy, New Mexico, where my grandparents were raised. Ironically, Roy still exists as a small town but Dawson was closed down decades ago by the railroad company that ran it. You can visit the cemetery and the memorial to the miners who lost their lives in some horrific mining accidents there.

We also visited Philmont Boyscout Ranch, where Monsieur Big Bang did his field work last summer. We visited the area where he camped (which is near the house of Gretchen Sammis, a very interesting woman rancher who was heir to the Chase Ranch) and toured the Waite Phillips house at Philmont. Oil entrepreneur Waite Phillips donated much of his New Mexico property to the Boy Scouts in the 1950s.I bought a little commemorative book of his epigrams from the gift shop. He had some good things pertaining to the writing life:

- If you want to be a singer, start to sing. (Elsie Robinson)
- A man is generally what he thinks about all day long. (Emerson)
- The man who never makes mistakes never makes much of anything. (Waite Phillips)
-  What is really important is what you learn after thinking you know it all. (Waite Phillips)
-  The big shots are only the little shots who keep shooting. (Christopher Morley)
-  'Tis not in mortals to command success but we'll do more Sempronius--we'll deserve it. (Shakespeare)
-  Those incapable of building seek to attract attention by tearing down. (Channing Pollock)
-  The trouble with many of us is that we would rather be ruined by flattery and praise than saved by honest criticism. (Waite Phillips)
- One of the most surprising compensations of life is that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself. (J. Pearson Webster)
- If we keep on going, the chances are we will stumble onto something but I never heard of anyone stumbling while sitting down. (Chas. F. Kettering)
- Regardless of ability, no one individual can accomplish and complete anything worthwhile without direct or indirect cooperation from others. (Waite Phillips)
- To hate is to hurt--not the hated but the hater. Fortunately I have learned by experience to reduce the hate factor to that of simple disapproval. (Waite Phillips)
-  An ancient Persian proverb states, "The dogs bark but the caravan passes on." So does modern man when subjected to unjust or petty criticism. (Waite Phillips)
- It is provided in the essence of things that from any fruition of success, no matter what, shall come forth something to make a greater struggle necessary. (Walt Whitman)
-  The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcomings....who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat. (Theodore Roosevelt)

And quoted in its entirety is this Rudyard Kipling poem, "If."

Artist Dawn Chandler does some amazing Philmont Boyscout Ranch paintings (see above). She's an alumni counselor of the Philmont Boyscout Ranch and I met her in one of Barbara Rockman's Santa Fe poetry workshops last year. Visit her website at: http://www.taosdawn.com/LandPhilmont01.html

Interesting note: I found out that girls can now join the Philmont Boy Scout Ranch summer treks through their co-ed Venturing programs. Although I'm skeptical of the recent decision by the Boy Scouts regarding gay counselors, I wish I would have had Adventuring programs when I was a kid. Girl Scouts never did anything too adventuresome and I dropped out after one year. Maybe they should have invented FagHag Scout Camp for me. I would have fit in well there, too: hiking treks by day, glitter crafts by firelight.

 

Comment on My Poem on a Virtual Poetry Circle

Savvy Verse & Wit was very kind to choose "Starbaby," one of the poems from Why Photographers Commit Suicide, for their 200th Virtual Poetry Circle.

 Please check it out and leave some comments!
http://savvyverseandwit.com/2013/05/200th-virtual-poetry-circle.html

I've also been meaning to complete the National Poetry Month blog circle on Savvy Verse & Wit. Here are my favorites from the second half of the month:

• Life's a Stage blog talks about fun Book Spine Poetry (April 15).
• Diary of an Eccentric does an explication of a Neruda poem about poetry (April 17).
• The blog Wordy Evidence of the Fact has an interesting discussion about Robert Penn Warren (April 19).
• The blog Insatiable Booksluts (I love that title...I really do) has a VERY GOOD page on e.e. cummings (April 21). This blog also posts an interesting piece about Matilde Urrutia, Neruda's romantic inspiration (April 27).
• So Many Books blog does a review of the newly published collected poems of Marcel Proust (which I intend to buy soon as Monsieur Big Bang and I are in the middle of reading The Captive) (April 23).

To see the full list, visit the tour's homepage.

Here are my favorites from the beginning of the blog tour.

 

Goings On In The Thick of National Poetry Month

This is my first year of close National Poetry Month awareness. And beyond the normal readings, there are some really interesting projects going on out there.

NaPoWriMo

For my part I decided to participate in NaPoWriMo, or National Poetry Writing Month, which challenges you to write a poem a day and post them somewhere online. Let me tell you, this has not been easy. It's difficult to relinquish a poem (for the time being) to be read after working on it only one day. And even a short poem takes a lot of energy and some days I barely skate a poem past the finish line. On the other hand, I'm glad I'm doing this. It's been rewarding to get to know and use the site Hello Poetry to post poems and get feedback. Two weeks in, my breakout stats look like this: 3 poems about death, 3 poems in meter, 4 poems with pop culture topics, 1 narrative about a murder, 3 poems "in the moment," and 3 ars poetica.

Check them out: http://hellopoetry.com/-mary-mccray/

 

Pulitzer Remix

My friend and poet Ann Cefola is involved with the project Pulitzer Remix. Poets were asked to read a Pulitzer Prize winning novel to excerpt 30 found poems. Visit the site and you can search for poems from novels you know (like The Yearling or Age of Innocence or The Color Purple). I also highly recommend Ann Cefola's poems posted so far (http://www.pulitzerremix.com/category/now-in-november/)  from the book Now in November. She is a master at picking out really striking scenes and then ending them with a punch.

 

Savvy Verse & Wit's Blog Tour

I would also recommend the blog tour going on at Savvy Verse & Wit; I really love the variety to be found there:

• Savvy Verse & Wit kicks it off  with a great video and transcript of Yusef Komunyakaa reading "Facing It" (April 1)
•  The blog Necromancy Never Pays posts a great poem  by Natalie Shapero called "Flags & Axes" (April 4)
• Booking Mama does a post of children's poetry reviews (April 6)
• Rhapsody in Books has two posts so far, one small essay defending poetry in general with a very funny practical use for poetry to be found at the end (April 7), and one post about the poetry found in rock lyrics. She posts the full lyric to Bruce Springsteen's "Thunder Road," a pretty perfect Americana poem IMHO. (April 14)
• Maximum Exposure has posted my favorite Neruda Sonnet XVII (April 8)
• The Picky Girl has a fabulous post about how to host a Blackout Poetry party. I'm gonna do this! (April 9)
• Tabatha Yeatts has an interesting post about Fibonacci Sequence poems. The Fibonacci Sequence is a mathematical form found throughout the natural world. I just learned about this form  from a lecture on poems using mathematics last year in Santa Fe. (April 10)

Check the blog tour timeline to read any or all of these. Explore and learn this month and every month!

 

The Overwhelming World of Poetry Websites

Gone is the world of ink and quill poetry. Well, actually there probably is a website out there dedicated to writing poems with ink and a quill pen; I just haven't found it yet. But for the most part, poetry has entered the Internet age, like it or not.

And maybe this isn't the end of the world. Ink writing, as can be seen in the graphic to the left, was a bit messy in its own way. When you start to dip into the world of poetry and literature websites, it's easy to get overwhelmed and throw yourself into lamentations that there are too many poets, too many bloggers, too many people spouting their opinions.

You may say there are not enough readers (for your poetry, let's be honest). But I've just spent hours and hours over the last few months visiting literally hundreds of writing, literature, academic and poetry blogs and websites and all of these folks are happily reading and reading ravenously. I don't believe for one minute that it's a shame so many people are blogging about literature and poetry. I think it means only that the Internet has felled the gates of the gatekeepers and the masses have risen to talk about their love of books.

Today we have to be our own gatekeepers. Which for those complainers, this might be a drag for you. It means more labor in the service of literature. (You don't sit on your fat ass reading books for nothin!)

I have discovered, however, that most literature websites have very messy blog rolls (lists of their favorite websites). Believe me, I've dealt with these blog rolls quite intimately. You have no idea perusing them which blogs are good for news, which blogs are good for commentary, which are good for book reviews.

And this is what makes my blog roll superior, in my humble opinion. I've used the social bookmarking site StumbleUpon to house my blog roll and recently I've created handy lists to categorize all the many fine websites. My categories are based not on what a website or blog may have been created to provide, but what I personally find useful about the blog. For instance a blog may be a book-review blog but I find it more useful in keeping up with industry news and so I've categorized it as such.

Please feel encouraged to visit my blogroll and peruse or "follow" my lists or leave comments about the way they're organized or what would be more helpful.

All 107+ of my favorite sites can be found randomly on my StumbleUpon Likes page.

You can view all 10+ lists on my StumbleUpon List page.

Here are the individual lists

• Poems to Read - Sites that primarily exist to provide you with good poems to read.
    
• Lit Chat - Braniacs working over all kinds of literature topics.
    
  
• Ruminations on Poetry -- like Lit Chat but all poetry braniacs.
    
  
• Lit News - My most favorite type of literature site: gossip!
    
  
• Life as a Poet - Blogs that talk about the day-to-day life of being a poet. Invaluable honesty.
    
  
• Off-the-Beaten-Path Book Reviews - Quirky reading journeys.
     
  
• Books as Objects - Sites that "cover" book design.
    
  
• Specialty Poetry - Sites that deal with specific kinds of poetry, war poetry, avant garde poetry, Sci Fi, Mathematical, sacred poetry, translations.
   
  
• Interaction - Sites that provide ways for you to interact with other poets, teachers or get involved in the world of poetry.
    
• Good Literary Distraction - Sometimes you just get tired of heady literary bickering and you want a website with pictures of books that have fallen into the bathtub or posts from a bookstore owner or reviews of the covers of dime-store novels or posts that will talk you down from ever desiring an academic career.
      
  

A Poet's New Years Resolutions

1. Set some writing goals and write poems.  I am halfway through the first draft of a new set and I'd like to finish them this year.
     
2. Buy more poetry. Try eBooks if you can't afford the paper ones. Some eBooks can be purchased for 99-cents and many are under five dollars. I'm going to try to create a folder for my new eBooks on my computer and hopefully this will inspire me to pare down my Amazon wish list.
      
3. Meet new poets socially. And not just to get some new ears and eyes hostage to your poems. Meet new poets because you are generally interested in having them in your life. Find some at local conventions or readings. Start a poetry reading group.
      
4. Read a few biographies of poets. Check out your local library. I'll be back to Highlands University next week to comb through their library. I've done the American section; time to move on to the Europeans or South Americans.
      
5. Start another writing project. Like a sorbet between courses, this might clear your head. I'm going to get back into my novel about Roy, New Mexico.
     
6. Take a class. I'll be back at the community college extension this spring. Classes there are only 90 bucks each.
     
7. Find a poetry journal you like and subscribe to it. I like American Poetry Review so that's my journal for this year.
     
8. Submit your poems to some journals. I'm going to get back into doing this...and also reaching out to journals for reviewers for Why Photographers Commit Suicide.
     
9. Tag some books of poetry on Amazon. If you truly believe in furthering the cause of poetry, then tag some books you love based on subject. This is the single greatest way non-poets can find our books. It's better than a review and with last year's scandal on Amazon over authors leaving negative reviews for competing books (and then getting all their reviews deleted), a safer use of your time.
     
10. Connect with other people on social networks. Find both writers, readers and new friends. You want to connect with the world. The world wants to connect with you.



  

How to Use Kickstarter to Help Poets

I recently joined my first Kickstarter campaign. I found out about it on Linked In. Filmmakers were looking for micro-funding for a film about the life of New Mexican poet Jimmy Santiago Baca. I had just bought his collected poems at a book shop in Las Vegas, New Mexico. I love his descriptions of the streets of New Mexico, his experiences in prison and his political poems about ethnicity and class.

For as little as $25.00 I could help and become a part of the film A Place to Stand, "a documentary about Jimmy Santiago Baca’s transformation from nearly illiterate convict to award-winning poet."

For your donation, you usually get a free copy of the project results (in this case a DVD of the film) or more, depending upon the level of your donation.

See this project's Kickstarter page: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/aplacetostand/a-place-to-stand-finishing-production

If you want to support poetry projects on Kickstarter, visit www.kickstarter.com and search 'poetry' or 'poet' or 'poet documentary will get you into film projects. Hunt around in there. It's fun and it does some good out there.

Nut Up or Shut Up

This week, as I was looking for bit of craft from Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet, I accidentally came across some good quotes for giving confidence when going out on a limb as a poet. Considering my latest projects, this was somewhat serendipitously comforting.

...rejoice in your growth, in which you naturally can take no one with you, and be kind to those who remain behind, and be sure and calm before them and do not torment them with your doubts and do not frighten them with your confidence or joy, which they could not understand.

...[you are] in a rough reality of being solitary and courageous.

Can I stop tormenting my husband with my doubts? This remains to be seen.

Making Fun of Celebrity Poems

In graduate school it was one of our more sinister pastimes to mock celebrity poems. Part envy, part smug critique, it all started with folk singer Jewel when she published A Night without Armor in 1998. Here's a sample:

I Miss Your Touch

I miss your touch
all taciturn
like the slow migration of birds
nesting momentarily
upon my breast
then lifting
silver and quick--
sabotaging the landscape
with their absence

my skin silent without
their song
a thirsty pool of patient flesh

She gets the juicy word taciturn in there but then leaves it alone to defend itself against the word all. Amazingly, people are still making fun of Jewel poems these many years later...like this piece from Funny or Die: Was This Poem Written by Jewel or Charles Manson: http://www.funnyordie.com/articles/3e2e0d2765/was-this-poem-written-by-jewel-or-charles-manson?playlist=featured_pictures_and_words

To be honest, I never read her entire book. But that didn't stop me from buying Beau Sia's spoof in 1998,  A Night Without Armor II. It's well-maintained inanity. Some examples:

love poem

I want
you
now.

do not think
about this.

we are in love.

if we die
tonight,
we
might as well
be having
the greatest sex
of our lives.

with each other of course.

I don't suppose raindrops

only one girl I kissed
did not love the rain

they were all still crazy
though.

that's why
poems about the rain
work so well
on a woman's thighs.

we all aspire to learn
more
about clouds.

After Sia's book, I sought out celebrity poetry. I waited a long time for the score of getting Suzanne  Somers' 1974 book Touch Me off eBay. The book has no table of contents or even page numbers and there are 23 poems broken across 4 or 5 sections.  Every other poem is also facing a black and white, soft-focus photo of Somers looking peaceful or contemplative. Poems are titled "Organic Girl" and "Houseplants" and "Last Night it Was Right." Some examples:

Lies

I have lied to you
    A thousand times
Reshaped the truth
     To keep you close
     And avoid hurting you.
But I always lied with words.

Last night I lied to you
    In silence
    With my hands, my mouth, my caress
The worst lie of all.
    And now I know something is over.
    Because before
I only lied with words.

No!

I don't give you time
    Because you're a cliche
    I meet a thousand times a day.
There's no need to talk.
    I know you're handsome
    And successful
    And extremely good in bed.
But really there's nothing to say,
Only a kind of game to play.
    Only a tedious cliche
    I meet a thousand times a day.
And I always forget your name.

 

Ouch!

The absolute worst was in Jimmy Stewart's book, Jimmy Stewart and His Poems from 1989. I found this at a garage sale and couldn't resist the self-satisfied stare of Stewart from the book cover. It's a mere four poems covering 31 pages, each poem prefaced with long passages explaining the context of each poem. Indulgent much? Some examples:

from The Aberdares!

The North Pole's rather chilly.
Those who've been there all will tell
There's lots of snow and lots of ice
And lots of wind as well.

An iceberg's really never warm
And takes a while to melt.
A snowball's not the hottest thing
That I have ever felt.

from I'm a Movie Camera

I'm a movie camera. Instamatic is my name.
I'm Eastman's latest model,
   Super 8's my claim to fame.
I was on a shelf in Westwood
   when an actor purchased me
And took me home to 918 in Hills the Beverly.

from Beau

He never came to me when I would call
Unless I had a tennis ball,
Or he felt like it,
But mostly he didn't come at all...

Discipline was not his bag
But when you were with him things sure didn't drag.
He'd dig up a rosebush just to spite me,
And when I'd grab him, he'd turn to bite me.

Bite me indeed.

I know what you're thinking and no: there is no indication on the cover or inside that these were written for children.

But I'm done goofing on bad poetry. I've decided it's a psychological sink hole. You feel superior for a little while but then you end up feeling inferior deep down where you don't want to admit it. Who am I to begrudge another person's poetic journey? Snob it up at your own risk, I say. You might be reincarnated as someone who dresses up in kabuki makeup and writes such things as "Lick it up."

Besides, there are amazing celebrity "poems" out there. Many poets were once transformed by Bob Dylan or now Lucinda Williams.  Joni Mitchell changed the way I write. "The Last Time I Saw Richard" is one of the few "poems" I've ever memorized. And Leonard Cohen...wow. What these writers can do is make up for a lot of dreck in the world, some of it most likely mine in all those petty previous lives.

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Self-Publishing Poetry: First Things First

So a week or so ago I spoke about why you might want to self-publish a book of poetry. Now I'm going to talk about the first few things I did to get my own project rolling.

Do Some Book Learnin'

First thing, I educated myself on what this bitch would entail: how to format a book, how to format an eBook, and what POD means. I would recommend these books to get your feet wet:

--Self-Printed, The Sane Person's Guide to Self-Publishing by Catherine Ryan Howard - Also self-published, this book is full of step-by-step, no-nonsense, tough-love advice. I couldn't have done what I'm doing without this book.

-- The Fine Print of Self-Publishing by Mark Levine - This is a market study on most of the self-publishing services out there. You must read this book to know how to be a savvy shopper. I was able to avoid an overpriced, poor-quality offer from a local publisher because I had read this book.

-- Sell More Books!  by J. Steve Miller -- This book is good for two reasons: one is that it is full of typos and layout disasters, which exemplifies, in every detail, the pitfalls of self-publishing. But like my grandfather once said, you can learn something even from from a fool. Which brings me to the second reason to like this book, although the production of it may suck, the marketing advise in this book is still very good.

-- Find the latest book on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and the latest book on social marketing. Internet rules change so fast, you need a book published no earlier than 2011.

Create a Publishing and Marketing Plan

Publishing entails a zillion details, so you need to make a to-do list. It all may look overwhelming but remember, as actor Sherman Hemsley taught me in one episode of Amen, you can eat an elephant one bite at a time.

You also need a separate marketing plan. All the how-to guides on self-publishing agree on this fact: you need some real educating in marketing to sell your book.

Assets, Companies, Permissions, Introductions

1. Set up a website. You have to at least have a website if nothing else. You can do this for free on WordPress.
       
   
2. Self-publishing is remarkably affordable to do these days. But most guides I've read recommend you spend some cash on three items: your profile photo, your book design, and an editor for your book. I found a professional photographer I knew, Stephanie Howard, to take my profile photos. I've also researched the book designer and editor I want to use. They say this is the most crucial aspect of your project, a respectable cover. It's worth paying for. And if Sell More Books! had hired an editor to catch all the typos, the book wouldn't seem like something done by an amateur.
3. Most poets love to begin their poems with an introductory quote to give the poem some gravitas. But you can overdo it. When you publish, you need to make some hard choices with those quotes because, unless the quote is from a piece of work in the public domain, you will need to seek permission to use it from the original publisher. This could take up to eight weeks to obtain and you should be prepared to hear the answer No. Do your poems lean on these quotes like a crutch? You should be able to live without them. I have two quotes left in my manuscript and I'm still waiting to hear back from the respective publishers, Discover Magazine and HarperCollins.
4. You don't have to start an LLC book company to self-publish, but you can if you want a creative logo on your book jacket or your own ISBN number (alternatively, you can use the ISBN  provided by CreateSpace or the POD-publisher of your choice). In New Mexico, it costs about $35 to form an LLC and $35 more to obtain a business licence.
5. I also arranged to have my first poetry mentor write the introduction to my book. This was probably the most sentimental piece of the project so far. This person taught me (pretty much) everything I know about crafting poems. My first semester with him was truly life changing and I was honored he agreed to contribute to my first book.