Are there American Poets?

From Jeannine Gailey's blog:

My new hairstylist had recently visited Chile with friends, one of whom offered to take her on a tour of Pablo Neruda's homes. We talked about how important poetry was to the culture there. Then she said, "ARE there any American poets?" And I said, "Yes, but they're all in hiding at universities."

This conversation led me to think that maybe all those studies showing people just aren't aware of contemporary poetry are right on. Perhaps poets should join an American Idol tour or something. Or we should create a show called "So You Think You Can Write..." My dream judging panel would be Louise Gluck or Margaret Atwood (for the strict one) Denise Duhamel (the bubbly one) and maybe Bob Hicok (the one who has the feel-good factor but says things that make very little sense.)

Would you watch that show?

__________________

This reminded me of something I heard yesterday while I was listening to one of the Academy of American Poets' "poetcast" (podcast) on my iPod. I know, I am so unhip in the world. But nonetheless, I'm well read.

Anyway, this poetcast was Sharon Olds talking about Muriel Rukeyser. Sharon said that Muriel told her when she was a student that no one *wanted* to read poetry--Sharon said that Muriel said it to enthusiastically that it sounded optimistic! Muriel continued, saying that what poets need to do is to write the poem that the reader *can't* put down, write something that won't allow someone to shut the book.

Are we writing poems that are compelling to read? What makes a poem one that you can't put down?

For me, I find myself putting down poems where the poet is too self-conscious or poems that I feel are too calculating. As much as I love Tony Hoagland, there are a few poems where I feel as a reader I'm just being manipulated--he knows his talent and his skill and I am the girl in the bar he is trying to work his magic on. I don't want the clever pick-up line, I want the gaze in crowd that makes me feel as if I'm the only one in the room.

Hoagland's early work in Sweet Ruin does this. He was a younger poet at the time. He didn't have the following, the fans, the groupies, now in certain ways, he's become a caricature of himself. Even the photo on his newest book, the one where he looks like the nutty professor, suggests this self-conscious image, this I'm-the-whole-package idea.

And know that I say with a little hesitation because Hoagland is one of my favorites and I think he's one of the poets that can reach out to a wider audience.
And mostly, his poems are ones that I can't put down, but occasionally there's a poem that becomes the creepy stranger who feels he knows me well enough to tell me about his eczema, who occasionally comes up with the cheesy line: If I could rearrange the alphabet, I would put U and I together.

From The Virginia Quarterly Review Online

Read the full article on the link above...

Shoot the Messenger: Dana Goodyear, David Orr, and the Stewards of Poetry
John Casteen

When Dana Goodyear’s New Yorker piece on Poetry magazine and the Poetry Foundation appeared in March, many poets and readers felt a profound sense of gratitude to her. It came as a tremendous relief to find a writer as articulate and credible as Goodyear leveling the criticisms many of us have been developing privately for several years: that Ruth Lilly’s gift to the magazine is being squandered by managers with little imagination and no apparent sense of purpose or history; that the current editorial regime has lessened the magazine by making uninspired choices for the front of the magazine (poems) and vindictive ones for the back (reviews); and that many talented writers, whether new to publishing or well established, may smell decay between Poetry’s pages and choose as a result to send their best work elsewhere.

. . .
Poetry forgot the critic’s role along about the time its editors fell in love with the sound of William Logan’s voice, and in recent years most readers have found greater interest—albeit a tabloid, rubbernecking-after-a-car-crash interest—in its predictable prose than in its predictable verse. It has become the place for those who’d want to see Jeff Clark (the poet) compared to Kim Jong Il (the demagogue), who’d enjoy a public evisceration of Franz Wright in the Letters section, who’d find value in a review of Derek Walcott that condemns his body of work without discussing his poems, and so on.

. . .

Wiman’s stable of writers—Orr, Dan Chiasson, and Peter Campion chief among them—generally are brilliant and intense prose stylists—thoughtful, erudite and well-read thinkers, and passionate writers of clear rhetoric. That is to say, they resemble Logan. Also, like Logan, with some commendable exceptions, their work tends toward the arrogant, masturbatory, spiteful, bombastic, and mean-spirited hatchet job.

. . .

The pain a critic causes must be slight and illuminating. Hugh Kenner was a critic; Harold Bloom is a critic, and Helen Vendler, and probably James Longenbach. The writers in the back of Poetry are mere reviewers of books, mistaking their own pyrotechnically phrased opinions for the kind of enlightened utterance that reveals poetry to its readers and earns their good faith.


. . .

It saddens even those of us who’ve long since lost confidence in Orr and his colleagues to see him stoop to the kind of ad hominem tactics that bring Goodyear personally into an argument that was supposed to be about the best stewardship of poetry. Orr’s need to point out that Goodyear is thirty years old doesn’t tell us she’s not gifted enough to have appeared in The New Yorker; it tells us that his apparent bias against comparatively young poets might well keep him from bringing his readers the next John Keats, who died at 25.


. . .

Furthermore, some talented writers and readers will arrive at the conclusion that Poetry can no longer be considered English-language poetry’s gold standard, that its scope and reputation will be diminished for the imaginable future by a doctrinaire and wrong-headed editorial stance, and that their energies probably are best directed elsewhere. Those of us whose affections for the magazine predate the Lilly gift are deeply saddened by that prospect.



# # #

Forsythia by Mary Ellen Solt - Poem of the Day

Forsythia (1966)

Mary Ellen Solt (1920- )


“The design of ‘Forsythia’ is made from the letters of the name of the flowering shrub and their equivalents in the Morse Code. The text is part of the design.” (M.E.S.)


"Forsythia...by Mary Ellen Solt…[was] typographically concretized by John Dearstyne. In the introduction to Flowers in Concrete, George Zadek writes: “Traditionally the typographer has given form and order to words, thus serving both the writer and the reader. His problem is mainly one of clarity of communication, literary meaning, and hopefully aesthetic contribution to the art of the printed page. When publishing concrete poetry, it is sometimes difficult to draw a line between the contributions, as well as the final responsibilities, of the poet and the typographer. The literary and visual meaning of concrete poetry as conceived by the poet and interpreted by the typographer is somewhat analogous to a stage performance of a play.”

An Anthology of Concrete Poetry , Edited by Emmet Williams, Something Else Press, New York , 1967

Cover Your Eyes, I'm Using Words!

This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:

death (4x)
gay (3x)
strangle (2x)
breast (1x)

Trying for an R....

Peter ended up with a PG-13 rating on his blog for saying gay and corpse-- first, since when are either of those PG-13 words?

But nonetheless, what if we were quoting the Flintstones, "We'll have a gay ol' time!" or Deck the Halls, "Don we now our gay apparel, Fa la la, la la la, la la la..."

Or what if I wrote, today I visited the corpse flower and its scent strangled me.

Or I read Dick and Jane while listening to the Killers. Or what else could I saw that might sound so good? How about tonight I was going to fo to the Vagina Monologues or the Forty Year old Virgin but decided I better get my yearly breast examination at the doctor.

I've reached a dead end. Let's see if I'm not an R rating

You're all Welcome Here, Kiddos!

This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:

death (3x)
strangle (1x)

Click on the above to see what your blog is rated!

Just Stuff--

Tiny Bubbles--

I realized tonight that last night's post was written in tiny letters.  It wasn't intentional.  It wasn't a metaphor for what a poet makes vs. what she pays to submit her book.  It was just me trying to email in my blog post.  I'm sort of silly with font size.

 

 

Stressed is Desserts spelled backwards--

I went to a stress class today with my mum.  We weren't learning how to find stress but to deal with it better.  Driving over the floating bridge I saw Bill Gates' house. which reminds me that bigger is not necessarily better. 

 

Lake Washington filled with lily pads. I ended up taking the wrong exit and driving past Bellevue Square.  I think Americans are stressed because there are too many signs all pointing in the wrong directions. 

 

I saw a restaurant called Pasta and Co. and a Denny's on the same block.  I also saw a redundant yuppie driving a BMW with a license plate holder that read: BMW.  Welcome to the Department of Redundancy Department. 

 

My favorite sign didn't have have words, just a picture of one large duck and three little ducks.  The real ducks showed up a few moments later.

 

 

Notes from a Small Town: 

We have a business that fixes VCRs and Televisions.  Somehow, this makes me hopeful in a world of disposable goods.

 

 

 

 

Contest Central - My 2 cents

A fantastic, to-the-point post on Contest Central about two presses (Ausable & Tupelo) and their non-reading fees & reading fees.
I have to agree that Tupelo's $35 reading fee is too much. It feels as if they want the press to profit from writers/poets and not through book sales. Tupelo has published some of my very favorite poets-- Aimee Nez, Ilya Kaminsky, Pat Fargnoli--and they produce beautiful books, but this reading fee rubs me the wrong way. Presses need to value writers, not find value by pressing the writer.

Small Town Life with a Dash of Poetry

Garden Update--

My Peruvian have been flattened by a rainstorm.  This is not a metaphor.  The Spanish lavender creeps into the empty space.

 

 

Three Little Birds--

A friend emailed me worried that I sounded depressed in my last post.  I reread it and she was right.  I did sound a little down in regards to the newly acquired MFA...but no worries, I'm not down.  I'm actually quite pleasant these days.  Lots of gratitude and sunshine, and in fact, I feel pretty good!  I'm just trying to find my place in the world again, create a new schedule, and new goals.  The Capricorn in my requires these meals.

 

It's been interesting spending the last three years with a continual deadline, one after the other.  About every six weeks I was required to have completed 5-6 poems, 3 critical essays, and to have read at least 3 books. Now, I'm accountable to myself.  I have to remind myself that I was a writer before I was in school.  I published my first book and chapbook without an MFA.   I realize an MFA is just a piece of paper saying that I completed this much work in this amount of time, nothing more.  But what I'm dealing with is the transition from student back to writer.  They are different selves. 

 

Thankfully, even while I babble about this "dilemma,"  know that I'm from the Bob Marley School of Life, which is "Don't worry... about a thing, because every little thing is going to be all right..."  So while it may seem I'm roaming the beach of life searching for meaning under every shell, I'm actually just taking a walk and watching the seabirds and noticing how many ways there are to soar.

 

 

Reading List--

Still reading Honeymoon with my Brother (did I mention I somehow reserved the LARGE PRINT version of this book from the library--you can read the pages from across the room & the book is about the size of a toaster). 

 

I'm interested in finding some new poets to love. I remember when I found Dorothy Barresi, Julianna Baggott, Olena Kalytiak Davis (her first book before she became so self-conscious).  I remember when someone introduced me to Dean Young and Barbara Hamby. 

 

A few poets keep mentioning Joshua Marie Wilkinson to me (so I bought his book).  Someone else said Richard Siken, whose book I do not have read.

 

Who can I fall in love with now?  I'd be interested in hearing your recommendations. 

 

 

* * * * *

Notes from a Small Town Life & a Poem

Just Say No to Noxious Weeds

I'm participating in the "Take Back the Yard" event in our rural neighborhood.  No longer will the blackberry vines, the volunteer butterfly bushes, the morning glory, the buttercups, the volunteer alder trees and holly trees make me stay inside afraid of what they are doing to the garden.  I am not afraid.  I will press on.

 

 

Yogi, is that you?
Yesterday, a bear was spotted in my neighborhood crossing the street.  S/he was about a block and a half away from my house... dragging a picnic basket.

 

 

Scenes from a Walk--

Yesterday on my walk, I noticed something glimmering on a sign that said "Yard Sale."  When I approached the sign, I saw silver dogtags that said, "Lieutenant."  I thought about the war for a few moments, then continued on.

 

Reading List:

Read a few William Stafford poems yesterday as well as Honeymoon with my Brother, which I'm thoroughly enjoying.  I get lost in books about travel or unique places.  I also loved Under the Tuscan Sun though a friend told me reading that book was like watching paint dray.  But I love memoir and biographies.  I eat them up.  Other favorites-- Planet of the Blind by Stephen Kuusisto.  I'm looking forward to his new book The Art of Listening.

 

Feelings, whoa whoa whoa, Feelings:

Some friends have told me that sometimes when you finish your MFA you go into a bit of a depression.  I've had it best explained by a poet who said that when you finish your MFA it's not as if you've finished your MBA and then you go out to find a job, it's still just you and yourself.  And I think I understand how I'm feeling, now that I'm done I feel a little pressure to publish something important, do something big, and well, art doesn't work that way. 

 

I think with art and writing, the more you try to do something *important,* the less it works out.  It's sort of like saying "I'm going to save the world," when you realize, the *world* can't be saved, but you can clean up your neighborhood.  Sort of like the war on terror, how can you win a war on something abstract?  It's like battling clouds.

 

So, being the Capricorn that I am, I'm trying to work this out over the summer while I'm happy and active before the gloom of winter sets in.  I'm trying to remind myself to have faith, that it will all work out and I will know what I need to do, what I need to write.  I know I need to "go with the flow," but I'm always trying to put on waterwings, hold on to a rope.

 

I guess we'll see what happens. . .  I'll keep you posted.

 

Previously Published in 32 Poems--

 

 

You Ask Why I Write About Death and Poetry

 

 

There's entirety in eternity,

and in the pearly gates—the pages relate.

 

I fall prey to

       poetry,

 

have hated

       death.

 

You know, I've never understood reality,

            then try to relay it—tearily, irately—

            and I'm a liar yet.

 

But when I write about death and poetry,

            it's donated therapy

     where I converse with

Emily Dickinson, my inky misled icon.

 

And when my dream songs are demon's rags,

            I dust my manuscript in a manic spurt    

hoping the reader will reread

 

because I want the world

to pray for poets as we are only a story of paper.

 

 

 

* * * * *

Happenings in a Small Town

Sightings--

Yesterday on my walk, Buddy Holly & I saw a baby garter snake, a deer, and what I thought was a jogger with two dogs off leash--as I got closer I realized this was a deer with her two fawns.  (BTW, Buddy Holly is my golden retriever, not the ghost of the dead singer.)

 

 

Farmer Girl--

I worked in our yard for 8 hours.  Do not romanticize "a third of an acre."  While it looks lovely in the print of a home ad, in real life is holds the roots of what will strangle your time. 

 

 

Revise, Revising, Revised--

If my manuscript can be improved, then let the poet gods appear on my desk and tell me.  Methinks it's complete.  Now let the editorial gods open their doors.

 

 

CHIPS--

I wrote earlier that our neighbor had a sign that read "CHIPS" in her yard.  Turns out to be wood chips and not French fries.  My tears are salty.

 

 

Doubt Twins--

The doubt twins have been visiting my Poet's Hotel, even with my NO VACANCY sign.  I haven't been writing much.  I've been folding clothes and playing skee ball at Chuck E. Cheese.  While the doubt twins wander my thoughts, my laptop purrs.  How the writing life swerves and skids to a stop.  Where are the keys to start the engine?  Where's the accelerator?  First gear?  I open the door.

 

 

Gratitude Journal--

1.  Poetry

2.  Whipped Cream

3.  Honeymoon with my Brother

4.   Long walks

5.  Honeybees

6.  Our neighbor's strawberries

7.  Picking cherries from our tree

8.  Deer

9.  Tadpoles

10.  New fish for our pond.

 

* * *

 

"In times of crisis, we must all decide again and again/whom we love."

                        --Frank O'Hara

 

 

Dream big.

Good Reads!

Book Lovers! --

 

Here's a great website to help you keep track of your books and see what others are reading as well.  It's called Good Reads  

 

Enjoy & hope to see you there!

I owe you...Now, you can have someone owe you too.

Okay, after my slightly whiny, bad hair post, I have to now post something that matters and here's what made me very excited about tonight listening to World Vision on NPR.

 

There is this incredible organization called KIVA and you can help an entrepreneur in a third world country with his/her business.  Now, they aren't looking for huge loans, in fact you can help someone out with as low as $25.  99.1% of the loans have been paid back.  You can help one person with $25 or a few people, or make a large donation.  They list people who need assistance and you read their stories and needs and choose who you'd like to help. Here's the list of loans needed.

Here's the story from NPR's World Vision where I learned about this opportunity.

 

 

Unlike normal loans, they aren't paid back with interest, but what you get is the one on one opportunity to help someone out, some unique individual in a country thousands of miles from you who needs a little help.  Kiva calls them "loans that change lives."  And while their life will ultimately be changed with the extra help, so will yours.  So much happens when you give back to the world.

 

If you are reading this in the US at night on 6/18, it seems PayPal is down as I just tried myself, but try again in the morning. 

Also, NPR's Marketplace did a story on this as well.

 

Here's a clip--

 

VIGELAND: So, what's the benefit to you of doing this?

KRISTOF (NY Times Columnist who donated/loaned money to people on Kiva) : A couple of different things. I mean, it is a way of feeling like you're making a difference, of doing so in a way that encourages economic activity, which ultimately will provide more employment to support the economy. I also think that there's really a benefit, though, of just engaging with the rest of the world, and of seeing who you are helping. And you know, in this case, I happened to lend to two men, but that is actually unusual in microcredit. Usually, the borrowers are women, and one central purpose of microcredit has been to raise the status of women in the developing world.

VIGELAND: As people, as consumers, as our listeners are deciding how to allocate their charitable giving, how is this kind of effort different from, say, just giving a charity donation to an aid group? Because for example, there is no tax deduction here.

KRISTOF: I think most people, in the case of Kiva, essentially roll over their loans. When one is paid back, then they roll it over to somebody else. And look, there are a million incredibly important potential recipients for donations. You know I, as you know I believe passionately in Darfur, malaria. You know, but, I think that especially for somebody who wants, you know, visibility, and they kinda want to know directly who does their money go to and what does that person look like? Kiva is, or that whole approach, is one useful addition to their portfolio.

________________

Anyway, I was just listening to two nuns talking about how we have so much in America and if we, the folks with the money, could just live a little more simply, someone else could live a little more well.

 

Something to think about...

Girl Talk - Can't change the world? Change your hair.

It is early.  But with my new haircut, I am rewarded with extra time in the morning.  But there was a trade-off, for this extra time, I must spend my days looking like Little Lord Fauntleroy.  Yes, I did it, I cut--read: bobbed--my long hair to a short style.  For some reason, I'm not seeing Victoria Beckham when I look in the mirror, but a young confused boy who has more time to write.

 

I am what you'd describe in toddler talk as "slow to warm up" or "slow to change."  So while I know it's "just hair" and will "grow back", it's these first weeks after the cut where my stomach feels a little queasy knowing that who I looked like a week ago is not what I appear today.  And I'm still trying get comfortable with the new image the mirror shows me.  I could never go on a makeover show.  Even if the new me looked better, it wouldn't matter, I'd be the woman on stage crying because I missed the old uglier me because she was me and now she's gone. 

 

What's interesting is I've had this look before-- see the photos from Europe 1992 when I cut my hair short to make my backpacking trip easier.  1998-- I left my corporate job, moved to this rural seaside community of 2000, dyed my blonde hair dark brown and cut it again, into the classic bob, my fall-back hairstyle if there ever was one.  I even think there's a photo on the web of this haircut.

 

But I think finishing up school, realizing I'm going to be living the life of a writer and creating my own schedule, I wanted a haircut to match.  And I guess in certain ways I'll always be searching for the that "perfect" haircut.  Just as I'm always trying to write the perfect poem, but we are imperfect beings and there is a part of me that looks in the mirror at my tomboyishness and am thankful that I'm far away from the Orange County Housewives look, but there's another part of me that puts on a little more lipstick and mascara so not too look too much like my father--his blue Irish eyes, his freckles. 

 

 

Weather & A Writer's Guide to Listening

Welcome Summer!

I woke to rain, rain, and rain.  This is why I'm a writer in the Northwest.  If I lived in a place with nice weather, I'd never get anything written.

 

 

Secret Decoder Rings (out of stock)--

On a women's poetry listserve I'm on, there's been a lot of talk on "how to get your book published," which really means, "How do I win a contest?"  There is no secret handshake, every suggestion you receive from someone else will bring you both closer and farther away from winning depending on who the judge is--poetry is subjective.  Each press, poet, judge has his or her own tastes.  Because of this, you need to write the best book for yourself.  You need to create what *you* want to read, what's interesting for you, and follow your instincts on your book.  Hopefully, someone will be able to see your vision also. 

I believe in mediation.  I believe in those moments just before you fall asleep, to think about your manuscript.  I have always believed the answers are inside of us.  This doesn't mean don't ask for help, but listen to the responses you receive and if it truly goes against your inner judgment after you've sat with that advice for awhile, then follow your best instincts.  Yes, it's hard and scary and you there will be mistakes.  So what.  There will be money foolishly spent and acres of paper around your desk.  It's normal.  Keep trying.

Gazing into the Abyss

Excellent essay written by Christian Wiman (editor of Poetry) in American Scholar.  Read it here.

 

The sudden appearance of love
and the galvanizing prospect of death
lead a young poet back to poetry and

a"hope toward God"

 

 "It is the same with us and God," she [Simone Weil] says. "Every separation is a link." . . .It has taken three events, each shattering in its way, for me to recognize both the full beauty, and the final insufficiency, of Weil's image.

Wish I Was Here!

NY Poets and their Bridge

Question to the Technology Gods--

Why do people talk twice as loud when they are on cellphones? 

 

* * *

 

"Can you hear me now?"  -- oh yeah.  And so can the rest of the town.

Thoughts from a Small Town--

 

AM Journal

It's morning and I'm gathering my thoughts.  I'm a routine lass, raisin bran for breakfast, a cup of coffee in my red holiday Starbucks mug I was given for Christmas.  Take shower.  Check email.  Check to make sure no one has destroyed a city or the world overnight.  Go on with life. 

 

 

Have Laptop, Will Travel

Today is one of my "office" days.  At 9-ish, I will pack up the Vaio and off we'll go to the coffeeshop (C.C)  that is always rearranging their tables.  There Emily from my yoga class will make me a non-fat chai tea and I will unpack my poems onto the table.  A man who looks like someone from Jimmy Buffett's band will arrive and talk about the gas mileage of his Prius.  People will wander in and out and I will not notice them, only their shadows across my table.  At around 10, the chair has become a little uncomfortable and I'll want to work faster so I can return home for lunch.  At 10:45, I'll be amazed how much I've done and still have at least 45 minutes to go.  Today is about poems at the CC.  Afterwards, I'll go to the post office to send off a fellowship I'm applying for.  The postal worker will tell me his daughter writes poems too and I will smile. 

 

CHIPS

This is the sign my neighbor has painted in blue and put at the end of her driveway.  "CHIPS"  --I have no idea what she is selling or giving away.

 

 

Dream of the Returning Poets--

Last night I had a dream that Bob Hicok and Li-Young Lee were at my reunion.  And of course, I didn't talk to them.  I'm even a coward in my dreams.

 

 

Optimistically Speaking--

I'm feeling good about poetry and where poetry is in this culture.  I know, so many want to write the "Poetry is Dead" article.  What year is it anyway?  Haven't we gone over that?  "Poetry is dead and Paris Hilton killed her."  Honestly, no one died.  Poetry has not vanished.  In fact, on the women's poetry listserve I'm on, we started talking about the various ways to connect poetry with the public and create a greater readership and I realized how much poetry was around me.  For the next month, I'm going to make a note every time I stumble upon poetry and see what I find.  Stay tuned, poetry people, stay tuned.

 

 

 

Running of the Poems - Or Why Seattle is a Great Place for Poets & Poetry

This event was started by The Poetess of Greenlake who printed forty poems on forty shirts and gave them to runners who were circling the lake.

She wrote in a recent email:

"The Running Poets of Green Lake" (on Sunday 10 June) was a stellar success! Thank you to every poet, runner, spectator, friend and helper who contributed to the energy of the day. The weather was perfect, full sun with a cool breeze. Just before 9am, we set out 3 lovely signs made by local sign-maker Russ McDaniel and off they veered. There was no shortage of runners! Large, large, medium, large... Within 40 minutes the shirts had all been given away. I even gave away the shirt I was keeping for myself with Robert Dickhoff's poem on it. It had a hole in the seam so I figured I'd keep it, but how could I say no to that spirited, gray-haired grandmother raring to go? She didn't care about the hole. She wanted a poem!

Here are some photos she included from the day. They want to make it an annual event! Too cool!

Thinking Blogger Awards--

Thinking Blogger Award-- Deborah A. chose me (yeah! thank you) as one of her thinking bloggers and with that, I am now to choose 5 others. (If you are chosen, you can go here to read more about the Thinking Blogger Award & choose your top favorites...)

Jeannine Hall Gailey-- Jeannine's blog is always full of poetry information, news, (all with links!) and book reviews along with honest comments about her life (poetry and otherwise) as it happens. Like a box of chocolates-- you never know what you're gonna get!

Peter Pereira-- Peter's blog always has some new interesting word and definition along with just treats for inspiration like an image from the Seattle Asian Art Museum or notes from his garden. Upbeat and appreciated.

Cornshake's blog: This supersecret blog offers great links to you-never-know-what!, captured conversations (the me/madre conversations always leave me smiling), photos of a very special dog in outfits, and is just a happy welcoming place to visit.

Joanie Stangeland: Joannine's blog is a newer blog I wandered onto this year that explores the poetry life and process and asks questions directly to its readers. Always a treat to read.

Mary Biddinger: Mary's blog is a favorite because she always has great visual photos along with words. I'm always inspired to see what she's up to and she just started a new literary journal! Now how great is that?

Gratitude Journal

1.  Libraries

2.  Coffee in the morning

3.  S'mores

4.  The man who held the door open for me and said, "Chivalry isn't dead, it's just tired."

5.  Short happy hair

Poetry Quotes:

From PoetMom:

 

Give us at least 10 quotations pertaining to poetry—from 10 different writers and/or poets—that best coincide with your philosophy, vis-à-vis ars poetica. They can be posthumous or otherwise. The order is not important—unless it is to you.

 

 

1)  "Poetry proceeds prose in all cultures and we don't want to be the generation that drops the ball."  Ed Hirsch

 

2)  "Poetry is not just about feelings flowing down your arm and to the page.  You can do that, but just don't ask someone else to read it."  Thomas Lux

 

3)  "Art gives back to you."  Li-Young Lee

 

4)  In a workshop, one student criticized something eccentric another student had tried to do in a poem, Theodore Roethke replied, "You want to be very careful when you criticize something like that, because it may be the hallmark of an emerging style." 

 

5)  "Never be ashamed of the strange" and "Don't be ashamed if you belch when you try to sing."  Theodore Roethke

 

6)  "The good stuff and the bad stuff are all part of the stuff. No good stuff without bad stuff. " Marvin Bell

 

7)  "People think you can't be a poet without being drunk.  Women poets are expected to commit suicide.  Someone once asked me when, not if, I would commit suicide."  Margaret Atwood

 

8)  "I think I developed language skills to deal with threat.  It's the girl thing to do—you know, instead of pulling out a gun."  Barbara Kruger

 

9)  "For me, humor is a way to catch the reader—as I sometimes catch myself—unaware.  Humor opens a poem and invites people in, even people who may not exactly agree with you.  It's a way to avoid being didactic in political poetry."  Denise Duhamel

 

10)  "Art is not a Tupperware party"  Albert Goldbarth

 

What's on My Nightstand

At the Drive-In Volcano, Aimee Nezhukumatathil

The Wild Braid, Stanley Kunitz

 

God on a Harley, Joan Brady

 

Earlier Poems, Franz Wright

 

Native Guard, Natasha Trethewey

 

 

________________

 

What I've recently finished:

 

The Writing Life, Annie Dillard

 

The Three-Martini Playdate, Christie Mellor

Scattergories

I saw this on someone else's blog and thought I'd try it myself.  Feel free to do it as well on your blog.

Rules are same as before - each answer has to start with the same letter as the first letter of your name and if an answer is a place name it should be real, not fictional. If someone who answers before you has the same first letter, try to come up with different answers than they did. Now on to…

Scattergories

Your name: Kelli
A Country: Kazakhstan
A Song Title: Karma Chameleon

An Artist (painter, photographer, etc): Kahlo or Klimt (Frida & Gustav)

A Reason to stay home from Work or School: Kite flying
Something you'd see at a Zoo: Koala
A Snack: Kit-kats
A Character in a Book: Katya from Brothers Karamazov
Something Icky: Klingons
A Six-letter Word: Killer
Something Breakable: Kaleidoscope
Non-Alcoholic Drink: Krispy Kremes in a blender
Something you Whisper: Kiss me.

Okay, we get it, you're not interested...

Poems for the People, article in TIME Magazine:

 

"Chances are, you don't read much poetry, at least not the new stuff. Don't feel bad, hardly anybody does. To hit the best-seller list for verse, a book has to sell only around 30 copies. Poetry is the spinach in America's media diet: good for you, occasionally baked into other, tastier dishes (like the cameo that W.H. Auden's Funeral Blues made in Four Weddings and a Funeral) but rarely consumed on its own. In the hierarchy of cultural pursuits it sits somewhere just below classical music and just above clogging."

 

Okay, ouch.  But at least we're the spinach and not the beets.

 

 

 

You Tube Doesn't Like First Draft

For some reason, my YouTube videos won't post on this blog, but you can see two entirely different videos here: Book of Kells

Pay No Attention to the List

I'm a list maker.  I write lists of things I need to do and I do them.  For poetry, I make a list of places I'd like to submit to, submissions deadlines, contests, etc. and submit to them--except this month, I'm like that scene in Seinfeld about the car rental place:  "You know how to make the reservation, you just don't know how to hold the reservation."  I have been making the list, I just haven't been completing the list.

 

I can blame this on graduation, on those summer days, but honestly, I've had enough time, I just haven't been submitting.  I tend to write less in the summer.  Poetry becomes this thing I long to do in the fall, but I sort of have this disappointment with myself for being so lazy and also, to see myself as this separate person who is doing the job because right now, as I type this, I could be printing out 4 poems and mailing them off, but I'm not.

 

I believe as writers and artists, our lives move like the tide.  Sometimes we're calm and the beach is full of sand dollars.  Other times, we're stormy and beach is littered with debris.  I'm in a transitioning place right now, I'm not calm, but I'm not stormy.  I could be the eye of the hurricane, except maybe the weatherman got it wrong.  Mostly, I'm the person on the beach watching the sunrise.  Not because I'm being metaphorical and sunrise actually means I've come to an end in my writing, but because I'm comfortable here and it's a nice view.

 

So, to all the saltwater poets out there with their stiff beach hats and flip-flops.  Enjoy the view this summer, but bring a pencil and take notes.

 

Poem of the Day--

nothing else to do

spread fallen leaves sleep on them

the mountain's beauty

 

---Taneda Santÿka

Check in: My Weekend & I Want to Return to the Days of a "Healthy Tan..."

Back from a weekend at this place - Lake Quinault Lodge in Washington's rainforest. Though the weather was lovely, just as it has been.

The best way I can describe this place is that it reminds me of the resort in Dirty Dancing except no creepy Patrick Swayze guys giving "dance lessons." Also, no end of the summer musical put on by the guests, but it takes you back in time. The rooms have no TV's, no internet, no email, and the entire area has no cellphone service.

They do have a resident ghost named Beverly who I tried to hunt out by sneaking up this old dark stairwell to an attic door that was...unlocked. So I opened it, but it was spooky enough, I didn't open it much until I saw white boxes and decided I may not find ghosts up there, but I could find myself in a lot of trouble, so down the stairs I came. I took a photo to see if there were any ghosts (aka "orbs of light") but didn't see any. I'll post it if I "captured" Beverly or any of her spirit friends.

Other than that, I'm still getting over a bad sunburn. Completely my fault. I've been warned about global warming, Al Gore is in town even. I am a pale white girl, have always been a pale white girl. Part Irish. Part moron. But those days out in the sun, it felt good. I'm guessing it must be what a cigarette feels like in the lungs of an ex-smoker who never really wanted to quit. I never wanted to "quit" the sun. I did though. Sunblock. Sunscreen. Sun umbrellas. Sun hats. I'm like that movie Powder, except cuter...and female.

And I'm half French, so I *can* tan. It's just not in the way my olive skinned family tans. It's more red to tan, but this time, I over did it. The time ticked on and I laid on my deck reading magazines, trying to read magazines, but falling asleep, turning over and watching the clouds and falling asleep. The sun, a yellow sleeping pill. I know, it's bad for me-- melanoma, wrinkles, age spots, bad bad sun. But how can something that feels so good be so bad? But I've had my summer fix, I'll wear my SPF 1000 and walk around draped in fabric. It was you and me, sun. A quick hit and now I must be going to the island where people hide under palm trees and shade is synonymous with no fun.