A few quotes + links (please click through!) from the Poet Bloggers Revival Tour, plus occasional other poetry bloggers in my feed reader. If you’ve missed earlier editions of the digest, here’s the archive. (Note that I’ve just corrected the numbering of the weeks going back to early September, when I began miscounting. Sheesh.)
A somewhat shorter digest than usual this week, as the end of the semester looms and the holiday season gathers steam, but those bloggers who are finding the time to post seem to be in an especially lyrical mood, as you’ll see. On a geekier note, Friday saw the release of a major new version of WordPress (for self-hosted sites; not sure when it rolls out at WordPress.com) with a completely redesigned post editor and site builder called Gutenberg. Of interest to poets: one of the basic tools they include is a Verse block, as an alternative to the standard prose paragraph. It wraps everything in Pre tags so that all formatting, including intraline spaces, will be preserved exactly as you type it. And there’s a style definition so that one can easily specify a preferred font, font size, line height, etc. using CSS in the customizer. Anyway, if that’s all a little over your head, don’t worry about it. The main point is that the WordPress lead developers are looking out for us poets. Which makes sense, because the WordPress motto has always been “Code is poetry.” Now at long last, poetry has its own code.
One of them keeps sticking a stray beach ball from god knows where down her shirt to make a mono-boob, or up her shirt to make a nine-months-blown. Another keeps collapsing into howling giggles, falling out of her chair. I’m giving them words: poema, poeisis, onomatopoeia: the creation, the act of creation, the summoning of a thing by its name.
I call her name, the collapsed one, and say, in the midst of trying to define the etymologic relationship between psyche and breath, inspiration and the necessity of oxygen for life, I don’t even know what’s going on with you right now, and laughing a little, I hold out my hand to the one fooling around with the beach ball—give it up, here. I take it when she passes it, put it on the desk behind me. She says: we made you laugh, though, didn’t we, and I nod. You always look so sad.
Gut punch, her notice.
I take the etymology lesson and wrap it around some fairy tales, then ask them to write: inhabit someone, I say. A character, maybe minor. Write in their voice. Summon them into being. Make of their voice a creation: their story, from their point of view. Make us understand.
What are you going to write, one asks. I share some ways I have answered this particular prompt in the past, and get them started.
Their pencils stutter, then stroll, then gallop.
I do not say
I will write the voice of a frozen river, black
under feet of ice; I will envy that ice, forming
into carillon bridges, islands and trunks; the voice
of a woman under ice screaming the last air
from frozen lungs, each bubble become an ice bell
someone stops by the side of the road to photograph.
JJS, December 9, 2018: ice bells
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When I read a wonderful poem, I do feel the piece has exerted its power, that language, words, imagery have the strength to sway my emotional field. After reading an entire collection by a good writer, I sense a resonance–intuitive, unsettling. Sometimes, the work evokes in me a desire to do what that writer has done. That’s one type of influence. The list of such writers would be lengthy indeed.
~~
Other influences, though–amazing works of art, thrilling architecture, deeply moving music or dance–I could not exempt those as streaming into my consciousness, awakening me to something new. Or human beings, especially those I love best.
And places. Environment matters to my poetry. In the city, I wrote city poems. In the country, I write country poems. After I’ve traveled somewhere new to me, I conjure the place in my mind and it exerts its own kind of power on me.
Influences, in my writing life, are generally bound to experiences; I’m not a very imaginative writer. “A change in the weather is sufficient for us to create the world and ourselves anew,” wrote Proust. I am not contradicting myself in this paragraph. But I think I will have more to say on this topic soon, once I mull it over a little longer.
Ann E. Michael, Influences, personal & poetic
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Q~Your contributions helping other poets through your blog and social media were part of the inspiration for this interview series. What made you decide to do this work?
A~I’m so thrilled to hear that my blog helped to inspire your interview series! My blog really has been a happy accident. I originally created the site just as a place to post poems for others to read when asked about my work. As I started submitting and looking for writing resources online, I found that my blog was a good place to save them. Then I shared one of my posts in a Facebook group and received such positive response, I decided to keep sharing. I also noticed that in the writing community some writers are competitive—they don’t want to share opportunities for fear that someone else will be published or win the contest instead. It seems to me that poetry just does not get enough attention in general, and the more I can share, the numbers of poetry readers might just grow, which means a larger market for my work while supporting other poets along the way. I kept trying new things based on my own research, like lit mag submission calls, then interviews with editors, guest blog posts, etc. and continued to get more followers and great feedback. I’ve learned so much along the way and I’m still learning every day.
Q~How do you balance your time between your own writing, the work you do to help other writers and your life outside of writing?
A~This is a great question. I do have a lot of poetry projects going on, locally with my poetry group Rock Canyon Poets, Provo Poetry poemball machines, Poetry Happens (a monthly radio feature of poetry events in Utah), an annual community writing workshop, two annual anthologies, festivals, readings, open mics, the list goes on and on. And, of course, a full-time career in software product management, my blog, and my own writing. It’s a delicate balance to be sure. Ultimately, all the work I do for poetry feeds and supports my own writing practice as well. I’m continually learning, finding inspiration, and growing as a writer. Timewise, I focus a lot on efficiency, large blocks of time to work on specific projects or to write, so I’m not stopping and starting too often. And, I have a very patient husband and family, who let me spend hours in my office uninterrupted. They know how important poetry is to me and have been an amazing support system. I often combine poetry activities with other things—like weekend trips, family time, dinner before or after an event, etc.
Resurrection Party / an interview with poet Trish Hopkinson (Bekah Steimel’s blog)
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–“I have a uterus with puppies in it”: you can either file this under comments one usually doesn’t hear in the halls of academe as I did this week–or you could use it as a line of a poem–or you could create an interesting short story. And for those of you who are wondering, we have a Vet Tech dep’t, and I overheard one of the faculty members discussing visual aids that she has to show students.
–I posted this haiku-esque creation on Facebook, but I want to keep it in a place where it will be easier to find:
Write me from the camps.
Be my Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
Teach me how to live.
–I am still enjoying my online journaling class immensely. It’s interesting to see how our sketches are informing all of the future sketches–and also interesting to see how I have begun to recognize each person’s individual style.
–Here’s one of my favorite quotes from this week of the journaling class. It didn’t come from the book we’re reading together, but I might not have noticed the Rumi quote if my classmates hadn’t been quoting Rumi. I found it in Anne Lamott’s “Small Victories: Spotting Improbable Moments of Grace”: “Where there is ruin, there is hope for treasure.”
Kristin Berkey-Abbott, Saturday Snippets: Fetal Puppies and Other Vagaries
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Intentions: Double my submissions next year.
Should I pay more in entry fees? I don’t think so. This amount [$350] made me gulp, but it supports a variety of publishers I want to support, and that feels supportive of my work, whether it got accepted or not.
Is it all worth it? Can’t I just be content making work?
No. I want it out there. I want it read or viewed. I want it appreciated. Or criticized, or whatever.
Yeah, I know, friends, that I get down at the mouth throughout the year. But I also feel buoyed sometimes, amused often, engaged in my work, and hopeful. Do I fail to mention that? Remind me to mention that.
I sometimes get the sense from people that they think I should be content just making the work, that there’s some kind of purity in that. That the search for publication success is somehow a sullied enterprise. Egotistical, perhaps. Or at best, a fool’s errand.
I say, it’s part of the artistic process — do the work, put it out into the world, take your shots and huzzahs as they come. Complain bitterly along the way; dance foolishly around with glee. It’s all part of the equation.
Marilyn McCabe, An Accounting; or, Writing Submissions by the Numbers
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I was reading The Fish the other day, the classic anthologized Elizabeth Bishop poem, and it is just so good. And I read Crossing the Water by Sylvia Plath (the book before Ariel–I like this one better for some reason, though its considered transitional), and it is so very good. Listening to the Daily Poem podcast, they played Mending Wall by Robert Frost — as anthologized and read and reread as it is, it is so good and worth reading and rereading. I want to write poetry like that! Like Robert Lowell and Louise Gluck, Elizabeth Bishop and Emily Dickinson.
I don’t want to be famous–I don’t even care if I write these poems and only my family reads them. But I want to be able to write. those. poems.
How do I get there? Chances are, my talent has taken me about as far as it goes and I’ll only get better in little increments, never reaching the lofty heights of a truly great poet like the ones I so very much wish I could write like.
But maybe that is ok, and that is what drives me to keep writing–the tension between what I can create and what I envision creating.
Renee Emerson, Mediocrity
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Funny how I got here. I woke up thinking about the earthquake that just hit Anchorage Alaska, which was a 7 magnitude with all-day aftershocks and how quickly these life-threatening events dissipate on the news “cycle”. Amazingly there were no deaths reported and no tsunami. I was also thinking about how magnitude is reported in logs. I’ve felt a couple of distant 4-5 magnitude quakes; a 7 magnitude is 100 times stronger than a 5; and a 9 would be 10,000 times stronger. Although I’m not sure that magnitude equals strength exactly, so I’ll just think : ten thousand times worse.
But there is still poetry. For now.
Here’s a poem about rain:
Rain
Most days, I no longer long
for you. The rain has become
my welcome mat.
I soak clothes and skin in it,
bleach these personal stains,
staunch my body’s needs.
I dream in haiku
as it taps at my window
in tart syllables.
Nowhere is it fully documented
how terrifying it is to be me.
Risa Denenberg, Sunday Morning Muse in the Rain
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In response to a challenge at Ekphrastic Review. Here are all the poems generated by this photo of a Colombian Breastplate. Thanks, Lorette, for including my poem with the others!
A golden, first century breastplate —
mythic protection in battle. Mortals
have sought aegis from the gods
since time began, it seems.
When my youngest was three,
he wore an Incredible Hulk T-shirt
every day for a year, certain his kinship
with the angry green goliath
could transmogrify a toddler
to a Titan older kids would fear.
I hope the Columbian warrior
with a flying deity on his chest
found more success than my guileless,
doomed boy, whose brother and sister
held him down and made him smell
the lint in their belly buttons.
Sarah Russell, Birdman, Colombian
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I’m so grateful of the reading and work that went into this in depth and thoughtful review of my chapbook Footnote by Deborah Hauser published by Stirring, one of the oldest continuously publishing journals on the internet. And they are always open for submissions of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. A link to their submission guidelines is below.
Hauser’s careful reading and insight captured so much of what I was after in this collection of poems. She gives thoughtful descriptions and commentary on several of the poems along with samples. I couldn’t be more honored by the time she spent with my work and in writing this review! Here’s the first paragraph of the review where she describes the format and theme of the collection:
“Footnote, Trish Hopkinson’s clever new chapbook, is a multi-layered journey through literary history and popular culture. Each poem reads well on its own, but the footnotes (represented with an appealing * at the bottom of the page rather than the usual, academic 1) add context and meaning. Hopkinson embraces the anxiety of influence and openly engages with her predecessors who include the canonical (Emily Dickinson), the avant-garde (David Lynch), and the radical (Janis Joplin). It’s as if, in these poems, Hopkinson is answering the question “Which artists would you invite to a dinner party?” and the reader has been invited to eavesdrop on the ensuing conversation.”
Trish Hopkinson, Book Review: Footnote, by Trish Hopkinson – by Deborah Hauser via Stirring (always open for submissions!)
*
I have been a huge fan of KateLynn Hibbard’s work since her first book, Sleeping Upside Down, was published in 2006. She followed this up with her luscious collection, Sweet Weight. And now, after way too many years, her third full length collection, Simples, published by Howling Bird Press has just been released — a haunting collection of historical poetry inspired by women’s experiences living on the Great Plains frontier.
This is a book you do not want to miss. And while the music of the lines allows you to feel you are floating across the page, there is also true pathos in the work. Hibbard time travels through the Great Plains employing a variety of personas: healer, teacher, locust swarm and Jewish bride-to-be. In a lesser poet’s hands these characters might seem contrived but not in Hibbard’s hands.
Trees bowed over with the weight of them and they ate—
the tall grass the wheat the corn the sunflowers
the oats the barley the buckwheat the bark
(from Swarm)
The poems accrue and create a dreamscape of life where the work is unrelenting and the landscape both awe inspiring and cruel. Hibbard’s background in Women’s Studies (both as a poet and a scholar) is integral to this project.
Susan Rich, Simples: The Joy of Reading KateLynn Hibbard’s New Book
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There is a lot that I don’t talk about on this blog, as I am very conscious of respecting the privacy of those around me. So I will keep this brief. There was a sudden and tragic death of a young man in my family this week, and we are all reeling from it. I am shocked and saddened and very concerned for those who were closest to him. I’m unable to concentrate well enough to write anything at all today. So I will simply leave you with some poems, and a plea to hold your loved ones close. […]
On Emptiness
by Kristen McHenry
When I stick my hands in there to feel around there’s nothing. Once I sat for emptiness alone, entire months, flailing blindly in the spaces where emptiness had weight. Nothing rolls off of my palms, nothing mocks my efforts. I’m parched and have received bad information. All that time I sat, breathing in, only to know my own low feelings. To kneel there open-handed and say, this is all I have to offer. My palms no longer ferry light.
They say within a void lies all possibilities, but I think there are only two persuasions: Corpulent emptiness, and a nothingness that drifts above our heads, that will not acknowledge us. In second grade we planted seedlings. They came up vivid, lusty shoots. I understood then there was a kind of order, that this was nature’s outcome. It was impersonal and pleasing. Could I now proclaim, I am feeling full, or I must fill up, or, I am fully felt. I flounder with seeds and window boxes. The problem is that emptiness has teeth, and wishes of its own. The emptiness is un-content. It will not do with the least it can survive on. No stones, no feathers, no shells settle in my hands. Only a crusted thing, grown around its nut, seed of all nourishment, jewel of the essential.
Sit and think of nothing. Sit and engage only in the hollowness of breath, its motion in your veins. I tell people all day long because I believe it is important: We breathe in oxygen, we breathe out carbon dioxide, the lungs lunge, the lungs do their job. There is nothing easy in the effortless.
I remain to this day faithless despite everything I knew my heart could do. I stick my hands in there to feel around. I bring up tangled in my fingers a clear and weightless substance that slips off into space.
Kristen McHenry, Hard Days
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Even as this term’s portfolios and papers come snowing down and I organize next term’s particulars, however, I’m trying to bask in another grand finale: the re-launch of Shenandoah. It’s stunning how much Editor-in-Chief Beth Staples has accomplished since she started in August: the dated-looking website has been radically redesigned on a new server, but most importantly she recruited exciting new work–a few pieces by distinguished writers who’d appeared in the magazine under R. T. Smith’s editorship, but many, many others from writers who might not have considered sending to us before, so that the issue is more inclusive than ever along every possible axis. I say “us” because Beth, who has a collaborative spirit, included her new colleagues as volunteer readers from the beginning, and by mid-fall had appointed several of us as genre editors, including Seth Michelson for translation, Chris Gavaler for comics, and me for poetry. I didn’t read every entry or make every call on acceptance or rejection in my genre, and that will be true of the next issue as well (towards which a lot of work has already been accepted) but I did read thousands of pieces (and am still processing the last few from our fall reading period).
So, OF COURSE I’ll be teaching poems from the new issue next term. My syllabi always include plenty of books on paper; I love print as a medium. But a digital issue can be a great addition to the mix: free, ultra-contemporary, and diversifying a reading list in interesting ways.
Lesley Wheeler, Teaching from online magazines
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And after over a decade of submitting to Shenandoah, I have a poem in their newly relaunched issue. When Beth Staples, who recently took over the literary journal at Washington and Lee, sent me the e-mail a few months ago, I was in shock. A dream journal for me for sure, and happy to be part of the relaunch. The poem is called “Introduction to Writer’s Block.” It’s also an extremely personal poem for me, as it describes trying to write poetry again after a severe MS flare hospitalized me last fall, and I was struggling with memory loss and aphasia, trying to literally find my words again. Anyway, so happy to be in the issue! […]
Today the morning is clear and cold again, Stellar jays darting in the trees, hummingbirds around our feeders. I am looking forward to seeing some writer and artist friends for “art dates” in the next two weeks. I am thankful for publishers who send out royalty checks (this time, thanks to Two Sylvias – they always send royalty checks right before the holidays, which seems a lucky time to get a check) and thankful for people who volunteer at our zoo to keep red pandas and snow leopards alive and healthy, thankful to all people who create art – and those who support art with their time and money. I am thankful for days I have enough energy to get up and go out of the house to experience the lucky world I have around me – flowers, trees, holiday lights – and thankful that this year I am not as sick as I was last year around this time. I am starting to think, in a hopeful way, about 2019. May it be a better year for all of us.
Jeannine Hall Gailey, Lots to Celebrate Edition- New Poems up at the newly relaunched Shenandoah and SWWIM, Zoolights and Red Panda Cubs, Thanks to Escape Into Life for a Pushcart Nomination
