Category: Poets and poetry

Writing about craft, poetry book reviews and appreciations, and anything else that isn’t an original poem.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Dear shadow,

This entry is part 72 of 73 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Winter 2011-12

it is certain you’ll travel to what waits
ahead: not the intersection with its lights

already changing, not the fringe of rain-
spattered fields nor the road unbuckling

toward dusk. Even the lone truck you might hear
starting and stopping, engine running as if on

empty, will fade from sight. Just like
at the optometrist’s, when the technician

asks you to look through the viewfinder
and straight ahead at the red barn

with a silo and no stick weathervane. Then
she’ll blow a puff of air into your open

eyes, before sliding the window down.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Heard at AWP

Chicago Public Library at night

“Electronic literature might also be called born-direct literature.”

“I love the messiness of digital space.”

“Blogs and online magazines with comments best embody the literary anarchy of the web — a literature without gatekeepers.”

“I’m sorry, I like gatekeepers. I don’t have the time to decide what to read.”

“A kind of hypertextual tunneling.”

“It’s emblematic of our societal discomfort with poetry that so many blurbs for poetry books use the word ‘unflinching.’ Actually, I think poets should flinch. We need to get better at flinching.”

“I practice a pedagogy of emergency.”

vortices

“The Seminary Bookstore at Hyde Park is the best bookstore in the world. I was jilted by Powell’s.”

“To give a poetry reading is to feel the phantom limb of the musician’s audience.”

“I make 40 to 50 thousand dollars a year traveling around playing the fiddle and reading poetry.”

“If you funk up a cliché, it becomes genius.”

“I was a whore at the poetry bordello.”

“She ripped the cigarette out of his mouth, broke it in half, and jabbed the lit end into his cheek.”

“Not many parks, but lots of feral space.”

“Just because you know how to write doesn’t mean you know how to read.”

with Susan Elbe
With poet and Chicago native Susan Elbe

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Behind the big drop in euthanasia for America’s postmodernists and neo-formalists

I’m live-blogging from the AWP conference in Chicago.

Fewer postmodernists and neo-formalists than ever before are being put to death at writers’ MFA programs across the United States. Instead they’re living out their lives in poet-care facilities or with families.

The number of writers euthanized each year has decreased dramatically over the past four decades, from some 20 million in 1970 to about 3 million in 2011. Meanwhile, the number of poets has more than doubled since the 1970s, to about 160 million postmodernists and neo-formalists, according to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Writers.

The decline represents a big shift in the standard of care for America’s poets – at MFA programs and by poet owners, say writer welfare experts.

“There’s much more awareness of appropriate poet ownership nowadays,” says Inga Fricke, director of MFA programing and poet care issues at the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS). “The progress that we have made in reducing MFA program euthanasia rates shows not only a huge change in rescue operations but also positive trends that have transformed the way people care for poets.”

Chief among them, Ms. Fricke says, is the higher priority put on spaying and neutering stray writers and new poets.

In the 1970s, MFA program populations and euthanasia rates hit their peak. Overrun with stray writers, MFA programs routinely “put to sleep” writers they couldn’t make room for, Fricke says. “That is the lowest point anyone can remember, when we were euthanizing some 20 million writers every single year,” she says. “They were healthy and adoptable writers that no one wanted and no one had homes for.”

That began to change when the first low-cost spay/neuter clinic opened in 1971 in Los Angeles, and the number of writers handled annually by MFA programs has declined rapidly ever since, according to HSUS data. Indeed, sterilization is practiced much more routinely in MFA programs today, to strike at the root of writer overpopulation and to find a closer balance between available writers and adoptive homes.

“It has become the standard practice of care,” Fricke says. “Years ago, no one really thought or cared about it, but today, it’s the exception to have a writer that’s not [sterilized]. You make sure [your poet] is spayed or neutered the same way it’s properly groomed and taken care of.”

It’s no small expense. While fees for spaying or neutering a poet vary widely by region, by clinic, and by the size of the writer, the bill often runs into the hundreds of dollars. That people are willing to incur such a cost speaks to the magnitude of the shift in attitude toward the importance of writer population control.

Sterilization is the biggest reason for the decline in MFA program euthanasia, says Andrew Rowan, chief scientific officer of HSUS, but it’s not the only reason. “There’s more of a poet culture today,” he says. “People who want postmodernists have postmodernists. People who don’t want them don’t, and they don’t have them living outside on their street either.”

Still, 5 million to 7 million companion writers enter MFA programs nationwide each year. Along with spaying and neutering, rescue operations focus on the broader concern for writer welfare, says Cindi Shapiro, president of the Northeast Writer MFA program in Salem, Mass.

Founder of one of the largest no-kill MFA programs in the Northeast, Ms. Shapiro says the mind-set of MFA program workers has shifted over time.

“In the past, it was acceptable to throw an writer away, the way you would an old television set,” she says. “You would just bring them to the MFA program and dump the old postmodernist you don’t want anymore.”

MFA program personnel were no different, she continues. “For a long time, it’s just what you did,” she says. “[Writers] came in; you killed them. No one thought that was wrong.”

Now, Shapiro says, fewer people see poets as disposable. “Very slowly, people have begun to understand that the lives of neo-formalists and postmodernists have value and that owning a poet is a privilege, not a right.”

Shapiro says her MFA program took in about 4,200 postmodernists and neo-formalists from overpopulated MFA programs around the US last year. Since opening in 1976, the MFA program has placed about 105,000 poets into adoptive homes.

Thanks to careful planning and a detailed understanding of how many writers the MFA program can realistically place in homes, no writer that enters the MFA program stays permanently, Shapiro says. Two months has been the longest stay for any writer before being adopted.

There are no firm statistics on no-kill writer MFA programs in the US, but their numbers appear to be rising, experts say. Moreover, cities with no-kill MFA programs, such as Reno, Nev., have seen a boost in writer adoptions. Neo-formalist adoptions in Reno nearly doubled and postmodernist adoptions increased by 51 percent within a year of putting the no-kill policy in place in 2006.

MFA programs, most of which are funded with taxpayer dollars, and poet owners spend more to care for stray and neglected writers these days, according to Mr. Rowan. In 1975 they spent about $1 billion on writer protection, versus $2.8 billion as of 2007, he says, noting the figures are in inflation-adjusted dollars.

“When a writer crosses that threshold and into our care, it’s ours, no matter what care they need,” says Shapiro, in Salem. “Whether it’s medical, behavioral, training – whatever we need to do to make them adoptable, we’ll do it.”

With apologies to The Christian Science Monitor and their writer Andrew Mach.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Currency

Cur.ren.cy is a new online magazine featuring “poetry and prose for hard times,” and I’m pleased and honored that the editors/mortgage-backed securities managers — Messrs. Good, Wisely, and Sharp — have added one of my poems to the mix.

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.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Everything I need to know I learned from poetry

From William Carlos Williams, I learned how to find what I already had.

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.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Odes to Tools as “living poetry”

This entry is part 30 of 31 in the series Odes to Tools
Odes to Tools in southern California
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.)

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Why you should join the river of stones

Fiona and Kaspa at Writing Our Way Home are once again challenging folks to “notice something properly every day during January” and write it down — to join their “river of stones.”

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.