I hardly ever submit anything anymore, since I have this venue with its already established readership, and since most editors won’t consider previously blogged poems. But I’m a sucker for themed anthologies, and I liked the poems at cur.ren.cy so much — I couldn’t resist.

The name and theme of the magazine do make me reflect on how, for English-language poets, living in a society where poetry isn’t highly valued and doesn’t make anyone rich, prizes and publications function as a sort of scrip, redeemable for other opportunities from the PoBiz company store (readings, residencies, teaching positions, etc.). Self-publication on the web, e.g. on a blog like this, might be akin to issuing one’s own currency. But one can’t become too preoccuppied with status or social currency if one is to focus on posting new work that is not mere criticism or commentary, since “what is completely new or unique has no, or unknown, social currency.” One can, however, contribute to a gift economy in which original content, links, reviews and supportive comments are freely given with an eye to sharing poetic insights and increasing the net supply of aesthetic pleasure. I guess that’s what I aspire to here.

“The obvious,” Charles Simic once wrote, “is difficult/To prove.” (“The White Room,” from The Book of Gods and Devils.) This is my new favorite quote.

To prove used to mean to undergo or learn by experience, then to test, as in “the exception that proves the rule.” Prove/proof didn’t always have such an aura of certainty. Even today, we talk about proofing yeast or a manuscript.

The rest of Simic’s poem, by the way, concerns trees and secrets. We learn that obvious things are quiet because they are mute. Unlike trees, they are diurnal and have no stories.

Earlier this evening, Rachel finally got around to asking me what my politics were. It proved surprisingly difficult to answer. I believe in a politics of kindness, I said after a lot of blather. I admire certain anarchist, pacifist and ecological thinkers, but I revel in inconsistency. My own feet remain a terra incognita — forget about the ground!

From Rumi, I learned how to keep searching for it anyway.

From Dickinson, I learned that certainty is death-in-life.

From Whitman, I learned that Creation doesn’t require a God.

From Neruda, I learned that one can be entirely wrong and still be right.

From Francis Ponge, I learned that radical empathy and clinical analysis make good bedfellows.

From Lucille Clifton, I learned that four or five well-chosen words can punch harder than an entire blood-stained epic.

From Ryōkan, I learned that poets must never be too old for children’s games.

From Miguel Hernandez, I learned that onion tears are as good as real ones.

From the Bible, I learned that thoughts are better when they repeat once in a higher key.

From Ai, I learned that even the worst, most evil men and women can still be beautiful.

From Issa, I learned that a poet’s first duty is compassion.

From John Clare, I learned that siding with nature can get you locked away.

From Robinson Jeffers, I learned that weather is the best muse.

From Vicente Aleixandre, I learned that eternity devours us moment by moment.

From Mary Oliver, I learned why a question mark is shaped like an open mouth.

From Charles Simic, I learned how to listen to stones.

Odes to Tools in southern California (photo by Nicelle Davis)

I was surprised and honored tonight to learn that poet Nicelle Davis has been distributing poems from my chapbook, Odes to Tools, as the first exercise in her new Living Poetry Project. The project’s goal: “to physically take poetry everywhere I go and share it.” She says some very flattering things about my book, but what’s even better, she went to the trouble to distribute its contents to people who might appreciate it. This is of course the very sort of thing I hoped might happen when I decided to license the poems as Attribution-Share Alike under the Creative Commons, rather than just applying a standard copyright. But it’s still very humbling to have people like one’s poems well enough to aid in their dissemination.

To bring Odes To Tools with me in my hometown, I decided to hand write Bonta’s poems onto Thank You Cards. I gave these “love letters to tools” to people who work with them everyday.

I met many kind, generous, and funny people while sharing Odes To Tools with my community. For this (and many other reasons), I’m grateful to Dave Bonta. His book has helped me connect with the physical, intellectual, and emotional aspects of my home—it has helped bring poetry closer to those who construct the home I love.

The gratitude is mutual. Thanks, Nicelle!

(Be sure to read the full post — it includes many more photos.)

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

I’m not sure why I did this. I don’t actually celebrate the winter solstice in any way; I just like having a tree up this time of year. And since my parents have decided to bail on Christmas, that meant I could raid their stash of ornaments and lights.

First I had to transplant my Norfolk Island pine into a heavier pot so it wouldn’t tip over, then drag it away from the windows so I could get some lights and ornaments on it. The tree’s only five and a half feet tall with sparse boughs, so I could afford to be choosy about what I hung. I mostly stuck with birds and antique glass balls. You can’t go wrong with birds and balls. This is a well-hung tree. Of course, it also includes everyone’s favorite ornament, Santa in a bathtub, accompanied by a ceramic Mrs. Claus with arms out in a gesture of alarm. Two wooden elves are seeking escape, one on skis and the other in a small aircraft.

Probably I should’ve waited until St. Lucy’s Day on December 13, which had been the approximate date of the solstice before the adoption of the Gregorian calendar. Hence John Donne’s poem, “A Nocturnal Upon S. Lucy’s Day, Being the Shortest Day.”

‘Tis the year’s midnight, and it is the day’s,
Lucy’s, who scarce seven hours herself unmasks;
The sun is spent, and now his flasks
Send forth light squibs, no constant rays;
The world’s whole sap is sunk;
The general balm th’ hydroptic earth hath drunk,
Whither, as to the bed’s-feet, life is shrunk,
Dead and interr’d; yet all these seem to laugh,
Compared with me, who am their epitaph.

Study me then, you who shall lovers be
At the next world, that is, at the next spring;
For I am every dead thing,
In whom Love wrought new alchemy.
For his art did express
A quintessence even from nothingness,
From dull privations, and lean emptiness;
He ruin’d me, and I am re-begot
Of absence, darkness, death—things which are not.

And so forth.

Of course, in my solstice tree’s native Norfolk Island, it’s the summer solstice coming up on the 22nd. “The climate is subtropical and mild, with little seasonal differentiation,” according to the Wikipedia. “The temperature almost never falls below 10 °C (50 °F) or rises above 26 °C (79 °F).” Sounds dull. They do, however, have a Norfolk Island pine tree on their flag — it’s their biggest export. The name of their major settlement is Burnt Pine. They have 51 endemic plant species, including the world’s tallest tree-fern, but their native forests are reduced to a single, five-square-kilometer tract protected as a national park. Numerous endemic species of birds have gone extinct due to habitat destruction and the introduction of rats, cats, goats and pigs. Perhaps some of the fanciful bird ornaments on my tree can serve to evoke the spirits of this vanished avifauna: “the endemic Norfolk Island Kākā and Norfolk Ground Dove along with endemic subspecies of pigeon, starling, triller, thrush and boobook owl.”

The official motto of Norfolk Island is “Inasmuch.” I love that.

Writing small stones is a very simple way of engaging with the world around you, in all its richness and complexity and beauty. They are a gateway into praise and clear-seeing. They will help you to acknowledge the ugly things (the slugs in the compost pile) as well as the pretty ones (blackbird song). You don’t need to be a writer to write small stones – the important thing is starting to open up to what’s around you.

I guess I’ve been writing what you could call small stones for four years now, one a day except on rare occasions when I’m not at home. I’m a bit more focused on the quality of the writing and the accuracy of the observations than some participants in the “river of stones” writing challenge, so I don’t know how applicable my experience would be for everyone who takes part. But for what it’s worth, here are four things I’ve learned from doing it, lessons which I think might be more broadly applicable to other kinds of creative writing as well.

1) The most obvious subject is usually the best one to write about — or as the Zennists say, “first thought, best thought!” Doing the same thing every day is often a chore, and can quickly become overwhelming if you take it too seriously or hold yourself to too high a standard. Don’t be afraid to be boring or humdrum once in a while. You may say to yourself, “I always write about squirrels,” but if the neat thing you saw a squirrel do this morning is in fact what made the biggest impression on you, that’s probably what you should write about. And what I’ve found is that nine times out of ten, these obvious subjects result in the most popular small stones, measured in terms of retweets and favorites on Twitter and likes and comments on Facebook. Does that mean they’re necessarily the best? No, but since part of my agenda is to get other people interested in noticing what’s in their own yard or street, it’s important to write things that resonate with ordinary readers from time to time.

2) Unself-conscious immersion in the world outside one’s own thoughts is key to the whole process. For most of us, immersion in the creative process is addictive, a source of intense pleasure, and there’s a great temptation not to go beyond that. No doubt you can find plenty of readers just by continuing to write about the things you already know. But if you’re honest with yourself, I think you have to recognize that your best writing happens when you open yourself up to what you don’t know. Well, I contend that you don’t need to do anything more special than pay attention to the world in all its bewildering complexity to experience that kind of wonder and bafflement on a regular basis. I find that just a few minutes of mindful awareness can yield creative dividends for hours. In fact, I often purposely refrain from trying to write a small stone for a couple hours after I come in from the porch, giving my observations time to age. A mere grain can germinate and take root — or get under your skin, like a grain of sand in an oyster.

3) You can never know too much about what you’re seeing or hearing. William Carlos Williams famously declared “No ideas but in things.” But it’s hard to enter into the lives of other beings and objects if you don’t know much about them. Start by learning their names — what writer doesn’t benefit by enlarging his or her vocabulary? Even if you live in the city, there are probably birds or trees that you see every day whose exact identity you aren’t sure of, though you might not be aware of it at first because they’re such a familiar sight. Look them up. Once identified, there’s plenty of information to be found on the internet.

This is a huge part of how I’ve been able to keep my daily microblog going for so long without boring the shit out of myself or (I hope!) my readers. Sure, sometimes it might sound more lyrical to say “a bird” rather than “the Carolina wren,” and there’s always the risk that readers who aren’t as familiar with nature will misconstrue a common name to be your own, original adjective + noun combination, but nothing says you have to use the full name every time. I just think it’s a good idea to know it. (And at The Morning Porch website, I get around this by using tags, which can be more specific than the term used in the post.)

4) A practice of enforced brevity can encourage good writing habits. Twitter’s strict 140-character limit, while completely arbitrary and a little constricting for many, more conversational uses of language, is perfect for focusing attention on word choice. I make tough decisions every morning about which words, phrases and observations I have to leave out. Almost always, I think the results end up being much stronger and more lyrical than they would’ve been if I’d been able to indulge my usual verbosity. And in the four years I’ve been doing this, I’ve noticed it spilling over into my regular writing as well. Bad writing happens when decent writers are unwilling to let go of any felicitous expression. It’s natural to form attachments to the products of our imaginations, but we have to be merciless with ourselves and ask, What does the writing need? What is the sound and the rhythm trying to tell us? Though I think I was already fairly good at editing my own work, daily microblogging has made me even quicker to reject words and ideas that just don’t fit.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

I treated a group to a series of video/film poems, only a few, because they tired very quickly — poetry is demanding enough on the page, let alone strung at you in a video where you can’t slow down, re-read, consider before moving on – but someone said, the one with the woman, the drawing, the ocean, that one was my favourite. In unison, they all agreed.

I commented that I was struck by her claim that video/filmpoems are actually more demanding than poems on the page. So many people make the opposite claim, especially about animated poems. Here, for example, is how the folks at Motion Poems promote their efforts to potential donors at Razoo.com:

Contemporary poetry is a mystery to most casual readers: they rarely read it, and would have a hard time discovering great new poetry on their own. We think that’s a shame! So…

MOTIONPOEMS subverts that paradigm by giving casual readers a new way to discover poetry … as short films! That way, they can be distributed virally and on YouTube, in social networks, in classrooms, and in broadcast and film media. [ellipses original]

In close to three years of sharing videos, animated and otherwise, at Moving Poems, I’ve seen steady traffic but nothing to suggest I’m reaching very far beyond the existing fan base for poetry. The most popular videos tend to be those for Latin American poets, in particular Vicente Huidobro and Julia de Burgos. This makes sense: poetry is actually fairly popular in the Spanish-speaking world.

Of course, I do suck at promotion. With the names of poets included in the post titles at Moving Poems, and a reasonably good PageRank, the site is practically guaranteed to land in the first page of Google results for most poets I include. So O.K., I’m drawing in people who are already interested in poetry. But since I don’t use tags to describe the contents of the poems — something I’m reluctant to do on the grounds that it reduces a poem to the sum of its ostensible subjects — it’s very unlikely that, for example, someone interested in the Liverpudlian waterfront would land on my post of “Saltwater” (or Brenda’s, or Glenn-emlyn’s original upload at Vimeo), unless they did some very creative Google video search.

So yeah, doing things like using more descriptive tags could bring more traffic… but would that really enlarge the audience for poetry, or just disappoint more people looking for, you know, information? The question remains: Is mere conversion to the film or video medium enough to overcome the general reluctance of English-language readers to challenge themselves?

On YouTube and Vimeo, the most popular poetry videos in English tend to be either those for poets who are already popular (relatively speaking), such as Billy Collins and Rumi, or for videos that make a simple point extremely well and go viral as a result, such as a kinetic text animation for a spoken-word piece by Taylor Mali about people’s reluctance to express firm opinions, or Tanya Davis and Andrea Dorfman’s powerful statement on “How to Be Alone.”

I do think there’s an extent to which online poems in whatever form are helping to create a larger audience for poetry among those who have always kind of liked poems and/or enjoy an intellectual challenge, but may not be in the habit of sitting down to read poetry books and journals. That’s been my experience over the years with a number of sites, most notably this one, where I think one key to success has been my pattern of interspersing poems with other, more popular kinds of content (photos, personal or nature essays, brief polemics, etc.). This is the kind of thing blogs are good at: People come for the other stuff, develop an interest in the author, and eventually start reading the poems, too.

But if I ever thought that making and posting videopoems would enlarge the fan base for poetry here, I lost that illusion a long time ago. My videopoems usually average around 100 views — one quarter of what a poem in text form gets. That’s not as skewed as it sounds, since Vimeo only logs views from people who watch all the way to the end, and I don’t of course have comparable statistics for people who read a poem all the way through. The actual number of thorough readers may not be much more than 100 per poem. But the evidence so far does not suggest that Via Negativa visitors are more likely to take in a poem just because I’ve envideoed it.

So while I fervently hope that the animators at Motion Poems and similar projects are successful in bringing new audiences to poetry, I do tend to agree with Brenda that more elliptical or experimental film/videopoets will have to work at least as hard as traditional page-poets to reach an audience in the Anglophone world.

click to order from Phoenicia Publishing

At qarrtsiluni today we announced the publication of a new collection of poems: Ice and Gaywings by Kenneth Pobo. This might be of interest to Via Negativa readers for several reasons: the book was selected as the winner of our 2011 chapbook contest by VN contributor Luisa Igloria; the cover includes one of my own photos of gaywings (AKA fringed polygala) in bloom; and most importantly, the poems themselves are meditative, understated, urgent, and full of details about the natural world. Though Ken and his partner live in eastern Pennsylvania, they’ve been visiting the Wisconsin north woods for many years, and this collection is a sort of love letter to that part of the world. Let me just quote what Luisa had to say about it:

The experience I value most in reading this collection is the way its language (never romanticized) and tone (never overwrought) allows me to settle with increasing depth into the poems’ rhythms and precise observations — about the natural world, now only partially reclaimable from so many forms of artifice; about the intrusions of contemporary urban life and culture; about histories older than us that haunt and shadow place. And finally, its urgent reminder to listen, look, and learn to dwell again.

You can read all the poems at the online version of the book, which has been one of my projects this autumn. I’m kind of pleased with how it turned out. I enjoy the challenge of making online collections of poetry that people will want to browse. Last year, for Clayton Michaels’ Watermark, I hit on the idea of taking the abstract artwork we used for the cover of the paper edition and dividing it up into smaller images, a different one for every poem, with little arrows for navigation icons. It seemed essential to give each poem its own page, so it would room to breathe. This year, however, I started off looking at horizontally scrolling themes, and though I didn’t end up going that route (maybe next year!) it did push my thinking pretty far outside the usual box. I ended up adapting a WordPress theme designed for software documentation, with all the poems on one vertical page which expands or collapses, accordion-style, as the titles are clicked. (I did add permalinks below each poem for those who desire a more pristine reading environment — or just need the link.)

I hope readers don’t find this javascripty behavior too distracting. What I really liked about the design was the way it kept distractions to a minimum. Thanks to this unique arrangement, I was able to dispense with sidebars (or bottom bars) altogether — in WordPress terms, this is a site with zero widgets. I kept the page menu to a bare minimum, and decided not to hack the theme to add chronological posts back in; a static page would do fine for the news section, I thought. Anyway, I won’t bore you with all the details. Suffice it to say I had a lot of fun, even if I did have to re-do much of my work after I was kicked off my former webhost two weeks ago. Go take a look — and settle in with a cup of tea for a nice long read.