Monthly Archives: March 2018

17 posts

We Interrupt This Plot-Based Novel to Give You a Poetic Moment

poetry

As a lifetime dog guy, I know better than to say, “I hate cats,” because my wife and I have owned a few cats along the way and, I’ve discovered, you do get your occasional cat who acts like a dog. It would be more accurate, therefore, to say I am a dog guy who might like the rare cat that runs against the snooty cat grain.

Ditto poems and novels. There’s no black and white. I read novels for escapism and, often, the words. Every poet knows it when he or she is in a “poetic” novel. Heck with the roses. You stop and smell the imagery, the metaphors, the word choice.

As you can imagine, it can take a long time to read a poetic novel due to all this stopping and sniffing. But sometimes, like Cracker Jacks, there’s a surprise inside of garden-variety, read-for-pleasure novels, too.

Once such book is the recently-released ghost tale, The Afterlives, by Thomas Pierce. After the required-by-law slow start, it picks up steam. Plot, mostly. Flip, flip, flip. This is what pages are for, most readers will assure you. But then, on p. 251, I came across this:

“She slept peacefully, her warm rump turned toward me, the blanket halfway up her leg, a burn mark on the sheet from the dryer. Everything felt significant, fleeting.

“I wanted to appreciate every aspect of this moment, to preserve it, to live in it forever. Annie’s light wheezing breath, the dance of the curtain across the AC vent on the floor, the clock’s red flashing colon that held the hours from collapsing into the minutes. I was in agony. I was crying. Sobbing, actually, face pressed to the pillow, the heat of my face rebounding off the fabric.”

No, it’s not Wallace Stevens or anything, but for one brief, shining moment, the speed-read-me novel of entertainment pauses to slow down its story, to catch a breath and drop a little imagery (Annie’s warm rump, the heat of his face on the pillow, the dancing curtain above the vent, the burn mark on the sheets).

I especially enjoyed the clock’s red flashing colon acting like a bulwark, trying to keep hours from collapsing into minutes. This novel is concerned, after all, with time and its partner in crime, death, with where we go after we die, and (the crowd-pleasing part) with ghosts who can’t quite cross the river, preferring to loiter among mortals who still haven’t figured out they’re not immortal. Thus, the clock imagery is especially apt to the moment.

So, yeah. As a reader you just never know when your escapist novel might gift you a poetic interlude. When you find it, take it for what it’s worth.

And, if your plot book gives you NO poetic moments, so be it. Make like Lewis and Clark and move on — over the western horizon to a book of poetry where you can breath deep the loyal doggy air for a bit. Variety, someone told me, is the spice of life….

The Possibilities in an “Endlessly Muddled Middle”

philosophy poetry writing writing inspiration writing poetry

story

They say man is a storytelling animal, which therefor means he is a story-listening animal.

Children love story time, of course, but adults do as well. Teachers know that high school seniors will be as rapt to a great story read aloud as kindergarteners will. As for movies and the theater and television? One big, ear-and-eye-popping story.

In his book, Minds Made for Stories, Thomas Newkirk argues that all writing–expository, persuasive, descriptive–is essentially narrative at its root. Jonathan Gottschall, meanwhile, put out a bestselling book in 2012 called The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human. His thesis? You must be some kind of monster if your dislike stories (never mind that monsters make for wonderful stories, as the dark space under your bed can testify).

It’s hard to argue with all this, right? We are surrounded every day by unfolding storylines. Our lives are storylines, in fact. Ones where Free Will steps into the ring to do battle with Fate on a daily basis. We either write our own lives or watch helplessly as our lives get written for us.

Into this end-of-story fray steps William H. Gass. In his essay, “Finding a Form,” he begs to differ with the story enthusiasts. With relish, even! Hark:

“If words find comfort in the sentence’s syntactical handclasp, and sentences find the proper place of pieces of furniture in the rhetorical space of the paragraph, what shall control each scene as it develops, form the fiction finally as a whole?

“Well, the old answer was always: plot. It’s a terrible word in English, unless one is thinking of some second-rate conspiracy, a meaning it serves very well. Otherwise, it stands for an error for which there’s no longer an excuse. There’s bird drop, horse plop, and novel plot. Story is what can be taken out of the fiction and made into a movie. Story is what you tell people when they embarrass you by asking what your novel is about. Story is what you do to clean up life and make God into a good burgher who manages the world like a business. History is often written as a story so that it can seem to have a purpose, to be on its way somewhere; because stories deny that life is no more than an endlessly muddled middle; they beg each length of it to have a beginning and end like a ballgame or a banquet. Stories are sneaky justifications. You can buy stories at the store, where they are a dime a dozen. Stories are interesting only when they are floors in a building. Stories are a bore. What one wants to do with stories is screw them up. Stories ought to be in pictures. They’re wonderful to see.

“Still, a little story gets into everything. Thank the Ghost of Fictions Past for that.”

An amusing foray, I found it–especially the word play: “There’s bird drop, horse plop, and novel plot.” And what about this: “Stories are interesting only when they are floors in a building.”

God save us from the 13th story, eh?

For poets, Gass’s rant is inspirational in its way, for which genre “screws stories up” more than poetry? Yes, yes, we have narrative poems, and we have those who love them. But more often the Hansel-and-Gretel trail is lost in the dark wood of a poem. Dark and lovely wood, one hopes.

I once wrote a young adult novel that actually got a reading and a handwritten reply from an editor at a top publishing house. Her rejection apologies were all about the plot, but she ended on a positive. “Beautiful descriptions,” she wrote. “The imagery is inspiring. Have you considered poetry?”

Truth be told, I had not. But the seed was planted, and when a seed germinates and pierces the earthy ceiling of possibilities above it, a story begins and rushes and commences the search for its “endlessly muddled middle.”

Therein lies the art, I think. No need to be spellbound with neatly-ribboned endings are advance-screen cheers for happily ever afters. Life is a muddle. And reading poems that muse on that muddle in unique and beautiful ways is a story unto itself. Leave plots to the rabble and the cemetery’s diggers. The end may just be another beginning.

Poetry Pays in Strange Ways

blathering comma mine humor my poems poetry

book

Writing is work–a craft as much as the handsomely-paid job of carpentry. Too bad payment for writing is nowhere near that enjoyed by the lads of lumber. Poetry specifically pays poorly. Most often, when you submit to a journal, your compensation is (ta-da!) a complimentary copy.

Which brings us to today’s conundrum–what to do with all of those complimentary copies. My shelves are already looking at me cross-eyed thanks to all the book weight. Like Atlas, they shoulder the load as asked, but they’re beginning to wonder, “Do you have to jam them in so much and slide horizontal books on top of the vertical ones to boot? I mean, really. There’s reasonable, and then there’s you.”

I dare not bring up the complimentary copy topic because they, too, are beginning to spread like a magazine megalopolis on the far left space of the second shelf. At first, of course, I was thrilled with not only the compliments, but the copies. Look! I thought. These poetry journals are publishing me, myself, and I — my three favorite nouveau poets!”

But then, after the thrill flew south, the mailbox arrival of another journal became more pedestrian. And the bookshelf! I had near-civil war breaking out between books and journals. “They’re called BOOKshelves for a reason!” my copy of War and Peace said to the nearest journal. (It’s never good when personification erupts between books and journals, let me tell you.)

And that’s not the end of the story with complimentary journals, either. When they arrived, I found myself reading my accepted poems — always in fear of finding an error — and a few of the other poems but never the whole thing.

The routine often went like this: Open with trepidation to own page, read own poem for errors, breathe sigh of relief, shelf.

Only what to do with them once they’re shelved? In all honesty, I haven’t taken a single one out to read again. In the words of the prophets Simon & Garfunkel: “Time, time, time, see what’s become of me!”

“You could steel yourself and toss them,” one friend suggested.

“But what if my kids want to read them someday? You know, once they live in Posterity, N.Y., and I’m gone like the wind?”

“Do your kids want your furniture now that you’re downsizing? Your appliances? Your clothes? No, no, and no–so who are you kidding? All kids want of their parents’ is money and expensive jewelry.”

I call my friend The Voice of Truth. Then I show him the door, so he can hang outside with Honesty, another impertinent sort.

Eh. Not a big deal, in the end. So if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to settle the latest squabble on my bookshelf….

March Snow

blathering comma mine poetry

springsnow

Waiting for snow today. And the only thing more poignant than March snow is the “cruelest month’s” snow come April. With a few spring-like days behind us, winter’s fate is already taken for granted. No one takes it entirely seriously when it drops snowfall heavy and wet and weary, the cold sweat of a few months’ work already weighing its skies.

None know this better than the red-winged black birds I have already heard in the marsh behind us this week. The bands of robins who arrive earlier and earlier each year. The sleep-deprived black bear whose hibernation grows shorter and shorter each carbon-cankered winter.

So bring it on. It will be pretty on the witch hazel buds already reddening. The tiger lily shoots already prowling at dawn for spring sun. The white pine’s ever-gentle green.

Drivers will tolerate snow with an amused look now. Some might even hit the brakes in the parking lot at work, sneaking in a final skid and swerve. A little fun late in life, both the driver’s and the winter’s. A little reminisce of distant teenaged days. A final toast to snow that’s slow to go, that hangs on to life like all living things do.

We all enjoy a good fight to the end. An underdog. A snow whose life story is already written and ready for the press. Thus, our subconscious tolerance for snow like today’s, as beautiful as November’s first snow, after all.

Pulitzer Pablum and Other Curiosities

humor opinion poetry

Hello, Ruby Tuesday. Special, apparently, to Mick Jagger, but for me, just another day of the week to wonder, whine, and wax ineloquent about this wonderful world we share through no choice of our own. (Please, though. Don’t blame Mom and Dad. They were young and restless, too, at one time!)

Is it me, or do award shows like the Oscars begin to verge on self-parody more and more?
March Madness is here! Unfortunately for NCAA basketball, the “madness” is more about corruption and greed than about zone defense and buzzer beaters. Bracket that.
I’ve loved getting to know Marie Howe’s poetry in recent weeks, but looking at her author photo makes me worry about the weight of her hair. What some of the receding-hairline crowd would do for some of that profusion!
Since writing about listening at poetry readings on these pages, I have heard from more and more people (even poets!) admitting that they often don’t fully grasp what’s being read to them, either. “Listen my children, and you shall hear…,” is all I can say. Well, actually, I can say a lot more than that, as you can see…
Ever notice how some poetry terms refuse to stick? Dactyls and litotes and haibuns (oh, my!). Like Teflon, I fear. Sliding off the cerebellum every time.
Best poet’s name of all time? I nominate William Wordsworth.
Did you know that Ernest Hemingway’s first literary efforts were in the field of poetry? It didn’t go so well, but credit where credit’s due: some men know when to retreat.
In reading William H. Gass’s essay, “Pulitzer: The People’s Prize,” I came across these amusing quotes: “The Pulitzer Prize in fiction takes dead aim at mediocrity and almost never misses…,” “Not only will [judges] be partisans of their own tastes–that’s natural–each will be implicitly asked to represent their region, race, or sex…,” “While the Pulitzer Prize for poetry has none of the esteem that the Bollingen conveys, it has been spared fiction’s shame, partly, I think, because there is no appreciable audience at all for poetry, consequently no reader whose moral and mental welfare the judges must consider their prizewinning poems to improve.”
Rest assured, when Gass uses “People’s” as an adjective, he means it as a pejorative.
While we’re on classical Gass and his opinions (the man does not lack!), he despises the present tense. (Should I say he despised the present tense?) Many poets, on the other hand, seem to love it as much as the dish did the spoon (hey diddle, diddle).
March, the Season of Mud (or “mudluscious,” as edward estlin might say), gives us but one holiday: St. Patrick’s Day. Call the famous beer mix a “black and tan” at your own risk (at least in Ireland). Half and half, that’s called!
And I have no idea what “Erin Go Bragh!” means, but I do know this much about the 17th: If you’re not Irish, fake it.
Enya: Flash in the pan, or talent?
The world is divided into two kinds of poetry lovers: Those who see Rupi Kaur as a “gateway poet” leading our youth to better things, and those who see Rupi Kaur as a gateway (in need of oil).
Credit where it’s due: Some “Instagram Poets” (anything like the “Lake Poets”?) are making more hay than their more conventionally-published brethren (ahem).
I love the word “brethren.” I like it’s sound: “Brethren.”
I am dabbling in Inscape, a meditation app that I borrowed my wife’s iPad to use (as I have no cellphone). The lady who leads you through your meditative practice has a lovely voice (making her my brethren), a lovely accent (though I can’t place the country), and a peculiar way of saying “nose” (like it’s the plural of “no”).
For those keeping score, so far it’s Monkey Mind 56, Me 0.
Goodreads, Amazon’s latest glom, recently switched its Goodreads Giveaway program for authors from free to $119 a shot (make that $599 for a “premium Giveaway,” because the word “premium” is expensive). Each GR author sees an “Authors & Advertisers” blog on his or her Author Dashboard. And Goodreads invites comments to these blog entries, of course — except for posts about the Goodreads Giveaway program. Comments are mysteriously closed on those posts.
Amazon, champions of freedom of speech! (Care for a little verbal irony with your coffee this morning?)
A good day’s reading, suggested dosage one poem each: Galway Kinnell, Jane Kenyon, Jack Gilbert, Robert Frost, Wislawa Szymborska, Zbigniew Herbert, Marie Howe, Jane Hirshfield, James Wright, and Tony Hoagland. With plenty of liquids and lots of bedrest.
I’m never quite ready for the surprise question: “Name your favorite poem.” Even if you tell me in advance.
Best headline seen the past month, from Charles M. Blow of the New York Times: “America Is a Gun.”
I recall the line “Pass, crow…” from a poem, but cannot recall the poem itself. That doesn’t stop me from talking to the birds in question, occasionally: “Pass, crow,” I say. They laugh in their crow kind of way.
I had to look up “pablum” for the headline of this post. Just to make sure. You know. Teflon again. But I had it right. “Trite, insipid, simplistic writing.” First drafts, in other words.

Outrage as Political Muse

poetry reading poetry

check

Some writers believe politics and poetics do not mix. Like oil and water, fire and water, cats and water. Not true, of course. Almost any argument in poetry’s clothing is a political poem, and then there’s the obvious statement. The Dirty Harry, Go-Ahead, Make-My-Day poem.

Before I put my Wendell Berry collection aside, I’ll share a poem of this breed. In these dark times, I regret to say, Americans could add many stanzas to Berry’s work, then deliver the amended poem to the White House, where it would have to find someone who could read (much like medieval times, where a member of the clergy was on hand to read and write for the king).

Questionnaire by Wendell Berry

1. How much poison are you willing
to eat for the success of the free
market and global trade? Please
name your preferred poisons.

2. For the sake of goodness, how much
evil are you willing to do?
Fill in the following blanks
with the names of your favorite
evils and acts of hatred.

3. What sacrifices are you prepared
to make for culture and civilization?
Please list the monuments, shrines,
and works of art you would
most willingly destroy

4. In the name of patriotism and
the flag, how much of our beloved
land are you willing to desecrate?
List in the following spaces
the mountains, rivers, towns, farms
you could most readily do without.

5. State briefly the ideas, ideals, or hopes,
the energy sources, the kinds of security;
for which you would kill a child.
Name, please, the children whom
you would be willing to kill.

Don’t misunderstand me. Donald Trump, who this weekend responded to the news of China’s presidency becoming permanent by musing about America following its lead, has not cornered the market on having to fill such questionnaires out. More and more, the world begins to resemble the 1930s with the types of leaders Trump, in his utter simplicity, admires.

Therefore, if it applies, many “leaders” may take up a pencil and respond to Berry’s queries. No matter, though. Wherever it’s taken, the final score will be Poet 1, Politician, 0.

Questionnaire Wendell Berry

How To Be a Poet

poetry reading poetry

The old joke goes: “I’m not a doctor, but I play one on TV.” And, of course, any word could be substituted for “doctor”–even “poet.”

Wendell Berry’s poem “How To Be a Poet” got me to thinking: Is there, as with Taoism, a “way”? When my students insist they cannot write poetry, I show them Naomi Shihab Nye’s One Boy Told Me, a found poem consisting of wonder straight from the mouth of her young son.

“We’re all poets when we’re little,” she says. For young writers who all share on their résumés this thing called “childhood,” it’s helpful. Each student can recollect things they said and noticed as a kid, and if they can’t, they need only interview their parents for homework and come back “poets” the next day!

But back to Wendell Berry. His “how-to” is more poetic, as you might expect. Thus, would-be poets thinking in terms of black berets, happening cafés, and certain prescribed ways need not apply. If muses could be bought in a bottle, after all, every alchemist would sell them.

How To Be a Poet
(to remind myself)

Make a place to sit down.

Sit down. Be quiet.

You must depend upon

affection, reading, knowledge,

skill—more of each

than you have—inspiration,

work, growing older, patience,

for patience joins time

to eternity. Any readers

who like your poems,

doubt their judgment.

Breathe with unconditional breath

the unconditioned air.

Shun electric wire.

Communicate slowly. Live

a three-dimensioned life;

stay away from screens.

Stay away from anything

that obscures the place it is in.

There are no unsacred places;

there are only sacred places

and desecrated places.

iii

Accept what comes from silence.

Make the best you can of it.

Of the little words that come

out of the silence, like prayers

prayed back to the one who prays,

make a poem that does not disturb

the silence from which it came.

The last two lines are a bit like a koan: “make a poem that does not disturb / the silence from which it came.”

Meditate on that, grasshopper. Then see if you can figure your own way to be a poet, for someone else’s way is never yours. If that comes as some disappointment to you, trust me. You’ll be better for it in the long run.