Monthly Archives: February 2018

10 posts

Marie Howe Teaches Us How

poetry poetry books

You meet new old poets in the strangest ways. A “new old” poet is not something found in the oxymoron section of Dewey’s Decimals, but rather an established poet who is new to you (a great name for a consignment store).

My daughter, who likes to gift me poetry, gave me a copy of the new book Magdalene, by Marie Howe for my recent birthday. Ostensibly about the Biblical character, this short book, every poem double-spaced, is more about Marie Howe, mother, and the everyday questions of wonder she gets from her daughter. These questions allow her to contrast the vast questions of life with the simple, quotidian ones of childhood. The chasm is vast–and grist for Howe’s mill.

Here is a poem from Magdalene right up my wheel house (and why I have a domicile for wheels is beyond me). See if you like it, too:

October by Marie Howe

The first cold morning, the little pumpkins lined up at the corner market, and

the girl walks along Hudson Street to school and doesn’t look back.

The old sorrow blows in with the scent of wood smoke

as I walk up the five flights to our apartment and lean hard against

the broken dishwasher so it will run. Then it comes to me: Yes I’ll die,

so will everyone, so has everyone. It’s what we have in common.

And, for a moment, the sorrow ceased, and I saw that it hadn’t been sorrow

after all, but loneliness, and for a few moments, it was gone.

The double-spaced couplets, as is. The quotidian subject of seeing a daughter off to school and returning to an empty apartment, as is. And the swallow-me-alive topic of death, as… is? Maybe not.

Thus, the balancing act of these poems. I’m looking forward to Marie Howe’s opus. It is, as they say, in the mail and heading my way, even as I type….

Listening Two Ways at Poetry Readings

poetry poetry books reading poetry

falling awake

This blog isn’t subtitled “Updates on a Free-Verse Life” for nothing. It would be a lie to call it “Updates on a Rhyming-Couplet Life.” I’m about as devoid of rhyming as a guy can get.

Confession: When I listen to a poem, I often don’t even notice the rhyme scheme. Instead, I notice “pleasant sounds.” Somehow I feel a bit guilty about this, but without the visuals, I cannot “see” how these rhymes are lining up, and the slant rhymes vs. true rhymes get muddled in my head because I’m too busy listening for meaning to bother with the sounds. They’re more background music, in many cases darn good background music (elevators need not apply).

Of course, if I have a copy of the poem in front of me while the reader reads it, it’s a whole new ball game. But that’s seldom the case when it comes to poetry readings. It’s all on the ears.

As for the eyes, some listeners might wisely choose to close them. After all, some readers’ gestures and facial expressions can distract you from the meaning.

But here you are saying, “Hold on, Sir. Even with your eyes shut, you can be distracted–by the way the poet reads the poem.”

Point taken. But wouldn’t it be double jeopardy if the reader were both histrionic with the voice and overdramatic with the body? Lord.

What about quiet readers, you ask? It’s a trick some believe in: Read more softly and the audience will listen for your words harder. They’ll lean in.

But… what if you overdo your trick and speak so softly that even the most disciplined listeners miss words? In this way, both sotto and voce can amount to a trap (albeit a Latin one, which is lovely in its ancient way).

Maybe I should just admit it. I am an undisciplined listener. Exhibit A is this poem by Alice Oswald. I heard her read it on-line thanks to a link provided by my virtual Goodreads friend, Trish, on her blog, The Bowed Bookshelf. (Scroll down and give it a listen.)

I loved it on first listen, and I noticed how sonorous it was to the ear. But rhymed couplets? I whiffed on that observation.

Of course, you’re forewarned here, so the listening test is ruined for you. Still, if you’ve been to readings, you probably have learned to listen either two ways (unlike me) or one (like me). I listen for enjoyment and comprehension. I’m not, at the same time, mentally analyzing what’s going on with the poem.

Whether I am the exception or the rule, I cannot say. How about you?

Note: After following the above link for a listen, enjoy Oswald’s poem below. It’s taken from her book of the same title, published by W.W. Norton & Company.

“A Short Story of Falling” by Alice Oswald

It is the story of the falling rain

to turn into a leaf and fall again

it is the secret of a summer shower

to steal the light and hide it in a flower

and every flower a tiny tributary

that from the ground flows green and momentary

is one of water’s wishes and this tale

hangs in a seed-head smaller than my thumbnail

if only I a passerby could pass

as clear as water through a plume of grass

to find the sunlight hidden at the tip

turning to seed a kind of lifting rain drip

then I might know like water how to balance

the weight of hope against the light of patience

water which is so raw so earthy-strong

and lurks in cast-iron tanks and leaks along

drawn under gravity towards my tongue

to cool and fill the pipe-work of this song

which is the story of the falling rain

that rises to the light and falls again

Frank Stanford: Dreamer, Poet

poetry poetry books

I’ve been reading the collected works, published and unpublished, of Frank Stanford, in a book called What About This. He is a voice from the 70s, one cut short by his suicide at age 29.

The tome, over 700 pages long, is evidence that Stanford wrote a lot in his abbreviated life. A lot. As you know, productivity on that scale could be good and it could be bad. Reading the poems of this man I’d never heard of (I simply pulled it off the library shelf out of curiosity), I was intrigued by the thin line between good and bad he walked. I also appreciated how his work developed over time.

Here’s a short poem from his first book, The Singing Knives, that intrigued me:

The Minnows by Frank Stanford

If I press
on its head,
the eyes
will come out
like stars.
The ripples
it makes
can move
the moon.

In short order, you see Stanford’s raw skills for imagery and metaphor. You don’t have to be a Southern boy (Stanford was born in Mississippi and grew up in Arkansas) to recall the effect of pressing your thumb on a minnow’s head before placing it on a hook. And the image, reminiscent of the ancient Chinese poets, of the moon moving on the water like a shimmering white thread is lovely.

Here’s another, from his book, Shade:

This Conflict by Frank Stanford

A body with very few clothes
An old radio
Some apples
You get to eat
as many slices of bacon as you want
the morning of a home game
The way his sweater smells
It gets so hot it smokes
After awhile
just when Sam Cooke’s new song
comes on
Worms and a homely girl from Texas
who can read quicker than you
Good marks
and a lost crop
like a whole season
that passed without a letter
from my brother

Stanford’s poems are choppy and often have a dream-like quality. He often dispenses with punctuation. That said, you can learn from him. Even if the poems are difficult to interpret, they never lack for concrete images. If these be dreams, they are sharply-drawn dreams, dreams we can see and smell, touch and taste, listen to at our leisure.

Like many artistic talents, Stanford was dogged by depression, it would seem. Death is a recurring presence, often personified, in his poetry. Stanford thought a lot about the hooded one before taking a gun to himself in 1978. Here’s an example from 1975’s Arkansas Bench Stone:

Shed by Frank Stanford

The old woman washed my socks
Light went through my hair
Like a school of minnows

Death had a socket wrench
That’d fit any nut
He knows a little tune
You can’t carry

Death say he give you credit
You better not sign

A journey is just like a journey
The so-called mystery of death
Will run you about an even seven bucks
Go ahead and see
This includes a washtub of beer
Advice on love
Snake oil on your tally-whacker

Wind blows over our plots
Whistling up the butt of our deaths
I could be anywhere
Wind on the island at night
Not the schoolbell full of mud

Another trait of Stanford is the mystery of connection between titles and poems. More often than not, the poem’s title provided little guidance—at least that I could see, especially as Stanford developed as a poet.

Reading his collected work, good or bad, mysterious or commonplace, is instructive. Stanford is different, and every difference teaches you something if you are willing to learn and not judge.

Reading Frank Stanford’s poetry, like reading so many others’ poetry, is truly like panning for gold—labor-intensive, but worth your time.

Why Is This Writer So Embarrassed?

poetry writing inspiration writing poetry

embarrassed

Embarrassment. Like death and taxes, it’s universal, only Ben Franklin overlooked it. Embarrassment is the title and subject of Thomas Newkirk’s latest book, and although the target audience is teachers of students whose learning is compromised due to the big “E,” it might as well be dedicated to all of us, especially writers and poets who put themselves out there each time they share or publish one of their works.

First, let’s look at the schools we all went through. Then, let’s draw parallels to writing. In school, there are many ways in which embarrassment yanks the reins on learning. As a reader, consider the moments you were forced to read aloud in class and tripped over or mispronounced words. Ouch. As a writer, consider the moments your paper was red-inked by the teacher or the moment your work ran the gauntlet called “public critique” in writer’s group. Ouch again.

Public speaking? I need not go into details. Being called on when you never raised your hand? Uh- and -oh. Listening but not getting it? Been there, done that (think math class). And, as Newkirk emphasizes with studies to back himself up, all of this embarrassment is magnified ten times by our stubborn conviction that everyone in the room is focused on our missteps, hesitations, incorrect answers, horrible writings, etc. Not true, of course, but the self is a mighty deceiver.

Writers and poets? They suffer embarrassment each time they share their work and the response is “I don’t get it” or “What is this about?” In fact, Newkirk champions the late Don Murray, a fellow University of New Hampshire professor, who often used the line “What is this about?” as a start when offering feedback. The follow-up from Murray, after listening to the writer’s embarrassed sputtering, was often, “If that is what it’s about, you don’t really get there until about page 5.” (Poets, you may substitute “stanza 5,” “line 15,” or whatever applies.)

So, yes, the very first step in finding your work a reader (for otherwise it is the falling tree that makes no sound) involves inevitable, if often well-intentioned, criticisms.

Surely getting a poem published in a journal changes everything, right? Wrong.

What if you read your own work in a journal and find it “looks different” or that it “doesn’t seem as impressive as it did on my computer monitor” — especially if you are reading it months after it was accepted (and you will be).

Time loves to embarrass you. No, I don’t mean things like wrinkles on your skin, a balding pate or white hairs, I mean your written work when it mischievously decides to look different from when you last set eyes on it.

What about when you get a book published? Are you immune? Safe at the plate? Not if you follow reviews. Surely there is someone who is bound to find your work so-so or even horrible, especially if they are comparing you to Keats and Coleridge and Frost (and some of them will).

What about when your book isn’t read (and the book you gave to Aunt Mae doesn’t count)? What if you ask yourself, “Why aren’t people reading my book? It took me months (or years) to write! It’s actually pretty damn good!” and the response is only people promising to read the book (so easy to do) but not actually following through (making them a breed apart).

It gets you thinking. And you KNOW what happens when you get to thinking! It’s Negative You that gets to do the thinking. Thoughts like: “Shoot. Maybe I’m kidding myself. Maybe this writing actually sucks after all.”

Next thing you know, like some blamed fool, you look at your sales numbers on Amazon dot all-is-never-calm. Lord. What could be more embarrassing than that? The wise athletes never listen to sports talk on the radio or read Twitter with their names hash tagged, so why would any writer make like a chump and look at his Amazon all-is-not-calm sales numbers as they make like inflation and head for the skies? Rhetorical question, I assure you.

Newkirk counsels self-generosity in his book. He argues that embarrassment is human nature and universal. And, most refreshingly, he uses himself as an example multiple times. He is shy. He doubts himself regularly. And yet, to the outsider or to someone watching him present at a conference, he comes across as a confident and successful professor / author.

In truth? Not quite. And for all of us who put ourselves out there with such little support and encouragement and even readers, it is a form of consolation. We’re not alone. We’re in this together. And, as we learned so well in schools (better, in fact, than what we were taught), embarrassment is life–as writers, life magnified multiple times.

So go ahead. Write, send it out, and doubt yourself. That’s the tour of duty you signed up for and part of the blushing game….

“All Writers Are Amateurs…”

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Readers love to read books about books, of course. And writers? They love to read about writers. Given the chance to interview an established author, developing and wannabe writers would most likely ask about routine and habit, as if it were some elixir they could purchase in aisle 7 of the local pharmacy, drink, and–voilà!–be not only published but famous.

This all came to mind as I was reading Karl Ove Knausgaard’s mini-essay, “Habits,” in his book, Winter. Here’s Karl Ove now:

“For some reason writers are often asked about their routines and habits, such as what time they get up to write, whether they write by hand or on a computer, whether there is something they can’t do without while they are writing. What it is about the writer’s role in particular that awakens public interest in their daily lives is hard to say, but there must be something, since this doesn’t happen with other comparable professions. Maybe it has to do with the fact that everyone can write and read while at the same time there is something exalted about the role of the writer, and that this gap, which seems incomprehensible, must be bridged. Or it may have to do with the fact that writing is voluntary, and that a person who writes can always refrain from doing so, which is unthinkable in the case of an employee, and therefore obscure or tempting. When I was young I read interviews of writers with avid interest. I wasn’t looking for a method, I don’t think; what I wanted to find out was rather what it took. A pattern, a common denominator: what makes a writer a writer? Now I know that all writers are amateurs, and that perhaps the only thing they have in common is that they don’t know how a novel, a short story or poem should be written. This fundamental uncertainty creates a need for habits, which are nothing other than a framework, scaffolding around the unpredictable….”

For Karl Ove, then, confusion and uncertainty heighten the natural human desire for order, structure, and scaffolding. Such logic brings Apollonian design into the messy Dionysian debris of creativity.

I especially like two points here. One about every writer, known and un-, being a mere amateur. That’s one box the wannabe can check! The other about everyone knowing how to read and write. Well, most bodies, if not every body. Not everybody knows how to paint, after all, or how to build a house or fly an airplane. Thus, the line of wannabes in those professions is considerably shorter.

Humans, as a defensive mechanism, have a quite high estimation of themselves. Therefore, if they can write, they are wont to say, “Why not me?” From there, it’s just a simple case of yes, reading a lot, but also of scrutinizing what famous writers “do,” right down to the mundane and banal.

To say, “Writers write” is rather boring and obvious, so the mystery of their success must be the hour they wake (say, 4 a.m.), the tools they use (say, a keyboard and screen), the ritual they follow (say, read a little King James Version of the Bible before beginning to write), the potions they drink (say, a little inspirational black coffee, no additions), the amount of time they spend at it (say, three hours straight before a dozen push-ups and a breakfast of eggs sunny-side up).

Carefully taking notes, the as yet undiscovered writer then mimics his hero, sends out his work, and awaits the editorial hosannahs and contracts. And that’s that. Until it doesn’t work. In which case, it must be the habits of another writer that are right. It’s only a question of finding that writer.

So if you’ll pardon me, I think I’ll put on U2’s “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” and continue the search….

Haiku-Like

Lost Sherpa of Happiness my poems poetry

moth

With poetry, inspiration often comes from small, unexpected sources. And ironically, it often comes when you are actively engaged in doing nothing, which speaks to the wisdom of leaving the race to the rats, the type personalities to the A’s, and the technology to the phone addicts.

Exhibit A: Last summer, while lying on a dock floating on a Maine lake, I simply stared over the edge, down into the water. That was my occupation for an hour or maybe more, who knows? Deadlines were dead, after all, as was the urge to check any messages or address any “Honey-do” lists. My partner in crime? The sun–lovely and warm on my back.

Soon I saw floating some six feet away a moth stuck to the still surface. It fluttered its wings, but wings on water are ineffectual. Instead, the moth became the epicenter of a small drama, sending an almost imperceptible ring of ripples to broadcast its final story. Only who would hear this story, I wondered?

This moment of “doing nothing” became the mortar and brick of something. Something called a poem, haiku-like in its brevity as nature poems often are. It appears in part two (“Second Search”) of my current book, Lost Sherpa of Happiness.

In our ways, we are all moths excited by the light of life. Some days we are down–stuck to a lake surface–but escape. And one day, we will not. But that is as it should be, because life’s great affinity is the circle, which figures prominently (in its quiet way) here:

Another Calling by Ken Craft

A moth, heavy
with water-
wounded
wings, fluttering
on the lake
as if the surface
were hot.

It sends
circular sonar,
saintly halos
of life
to the distant
bass of its
deliverance.

Ode to a Country Not in the Olympics

my poems poetry The Indifferent World

I’m not a big fan of nationalism, even when seen in the Olympics. I am a big fan of the country in the sky, though, particularly the night sky in the darkest-before-dawn when I’m out with the dog.

Here’s my pledge of allegiance, then, to that far away land, its president named Orion, its vice-president a bright and clever dog:

Another Country by Ken Craft

Under the frozen dome of December
mornings, the scrim of dawn
not even an orange thread
caught in the eastern branches,
I often marvel at the dog’s earthly
preoccupations when my nose,
called to greater heights, sniffs
at the cold and dry scent of the heavens.

His cold black snout, quivering
over a stale snowbank claimed
yesterday by some stray adversary,
is oblivious as the alpha dog
above us herds stars
and bounds at the heels
of his boreal master, belted
and deliberate in his stride.
In my heart I know that the crunch

of my blind boots in this darkness
carries an unearthly echo, that the stride
of the hunter heading for a hearth
deep under the western horizon
crackles over another country,
its frozen furrows black and uneven,
its broadcast ice studding the endless way.

Denise Levertov on a Biblical Scale

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In February, like it or not, our thoughts turn to love. Or, as Frank Sinatra would have it: love and marriage. Not that love always rides shotgun with marriage. To love and to cherish till death do us part is a tall order.

Some say all literature is about death. Others say it is about love. A rogue third group says, “What’s the difference?” because they are philosophers and are paid to argue. One thing is sure, however. Marriage is a fraught thing, making it the perfect subject for poets, who are all about catching fraught in whitewater with a wood spear.

One poem I have always admired for trying is Denise Levertov’s “The Ache of Marriage.” No one exchanging vows at an altar thinks of marriage in terms of “ache,” but they haven’t been in the belly of the leviathan yet. Marriage can ache on a biblical scale. And think of it: “ache” can be as good as it is bad. You can “ache with love” just as easily as you “ache with hurt.”

Check out Levertov’s metaphors and Biblical allusions. And check out the sound devices at the end. The last stanza I love to say aloud again and again–just for the sheer joy it brings my ears. It makes them ring, in fact. The tinnitus of truth, call it.

Here you go:

The Ache of Marriage by Denise Levertov

The ache of marriage:

thigh and tongue, beloved,
are heavy with it,
it throbs in the teeth

We look for communion
and are turned away, beloved,
each and each

It is leviathan and we
in its belly
looking for joy, some joy
not to be known outside it

two by two in the ark of
the ache of it.

If you’ll pardon the pun, you Noah good poem when you stumble upon it. You might not want to get up, in fact. At least for awhile, anyway. Sometimes the ache is a pleasant thing. Share it, why don’t you. The marriage of ideas is always a good first step….

Give Us This Day Our Logodaedaly Bread

humor poetry

dough

What the heckage is logodaedaly? A word, apparently. This morning I found it on my doorstep. The dog growled, then jumped over it to get outside. It was quite a jump, given how long the thing was.

“What are you, anyway?” said I to logodaedaly.

“That’s for me to know and you to find out.”

Apparently this fool hadn’t heard of Google. Searching it (after 27 misspellings), I found that both Merriam and Webster defined logodaedaly as “arbitrary or capricious coinage of words.”

Very cool. Words arbitrarily made at the U.S. Mint.

Before I put it in the bank, however, I checked the be-all, end-all called Wikipedia. It assured me that logodaedaly is only found in larger dictionaries. And on my doorstep. And in a poem called “Defenestration,” which is about jumping or being tossed out of French windows in an adventitious way, monsieur.

We should all get more fresh air, no?

To make a long word short, I took the little logo in. Maybe it would be useful, in a brillig kind of way, for future poems. Ones where I couldn’t come up with le mot juste because le mot juste was being une petite pisser and playing hide-and-go-seek.

But for now, there’d be no writing or coining. I had a football game to cook for.

First, though, where to store the logodaedaly. Ultimately I stuck it in the portmanteau. That’s where I keep all things that confuse me, like 500-piece puzzles and Trump sentences.

“Any portmanteau in a storm,” I was taught as a kid. That and, “Out of sight, out of mind. Sleight of hand, sleight of mind.”

And now, as a good Massophile, I will begin my prep work for some savory thermochiliancarnage made by way of slow cooker. You know, for the tomcast tonight–the one with all those great commercies and that wonderful intersticialact at hemitime.

Nota Bene: If you’re a poet in need of logodaedaly, it can be had at $3.99 a pound on Amazon. “If it ain’t a word, it is now,” says the description (now that’s poetic license). Click to cart, is my advice. Amazon is open on Sundays. Mice and track pads are standing by!

logodaedaly

Of Groundhogs, Super Bowls, and Sappho

poetry

Thank-God-It’s-Friday Musings…

It’s Groundhog Day! Only I wonder, is Groundhog Day only an American event? I suspect yes, though anyone in any nation can enjoy the movie, which is Buddhist in nature, though there’s not a monk or mantra in sight. If you haven’t seen it, do. If you have, see it again. And again. And again.
Issue Two of The Well Review (just rhymin’, folks), out of Ireland, just released this week and is available for purchase. Check this line-up of poets out! That’s right–that’s me in the alphabetical C’s, keeping company with Sappho (in the alphabetical S’s), Dorianne Laux, Gregory Orr, and Anne Carson. I always wanted to appear somewhere with Sappho, so I guess I can pluck that from my bucket list. As for you, I hope you click “Add to Cart” and enjoy the art (of poetry).
Let’s see. Sappho. Fragmentary poems. Themes of love. Isle of Lesbos. Yep. That’s all I’d be good for on Jeopardy!
Just finished Daniel Mendelsohn’s An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic. In it, Professor Daniel regales us with the story of his 80-something-old dad sitting in on one of his Bard College classes on The Odyssey. It’s a memoir and an analysis of The Odyssey combined, but what strikes me is how different Homer’s epics are (read on).
How many witty sayings start with this line: “There are two kinds of people in the world…”? I’ll add one: “There are two kinds of people in the world: Those who love The Iliad and those who prefer The Odyssey. Which are you? Me, I’m an Odyssey guy. Unlike The Iliad, it moves. And unlike the The Iliad, it’s less violent. Uh. Until the massacre of the suitors, anyway, at which point a mini-Iliad breaks out in Ithaca.
There are two kinds of poetry lovers in the world: Those who love rhyming poems and those who don’t.
Foxes and hedgehogs.
Chocolate lovers and vanilla sorts.
Ginger and Mary Ann (Gilligan’s Island), Betty and Veronica (Archie comics).
Those who like “There are two kinds of…” statements, those who tire of them.
Ever have trouble when someone asks who your favorite poet is? Why is that such a task? Robert Frost is a safe bet, but many of the poetically-inclined abhor “safe.” It’s just not cool to like what a lot of other people like. Ask any hipster.
Super Bowl weekend! Another drinking holiday! (Oh, yeah. And some football.)
Which, as was true with Groundhog Day, leads one to wonder: Do any other countries really care?
Extension of favorite poet exercise: Who is the greatest poet of each country in the world? Making the list should take you until Valentine’s Day at least.
Ugh. Valentine’s Day. Why prove your love one day a year when you’re proving it the other 364 days a year? (By the way, that line does not work with my wife.)
Chocolates and flowers = overrated. I would add diamonds, but the ladies in the audience would laugh.
Have any Twitter people ever wanted to use the hashtag “Who Cares?” to about a million tweets they read? How about Facebook posts? Thank God this blog isn’t on Twitter (#whocares) or Facebook (#whocares).
My pick for the Super Bowl? Being a Green Bay fan living in New England, I have no horse in the race. I’m also not the biggest fan of Tom Brady the Self-Marketer, though he’s earned his keep as Tom Brady the Quarterback. My pick is whoever wins. The over-under is a number. Take it to the bank and…
Happy Friday, friends.