Monthly Archives: April 2018

11 posts

Three “Hit the Open Road” Poems

open road

I’m in the habit, when I read a poetry anthology, of marking my favorites in the table of contents. When I pull the book off the shelf in need of a little protein boost of good poems, this helps in a big way. Instead of thumbing through an anthology randomly, I simply seek the starred entry and reference the page.

One such anthology I own is Garrison Keillor’s Good Poems: American Places. Keillor divides the poems into 15 sections, but these three are taken from the first, “On the Road.” Jack Kerouac would be proud. How about you?

Small Towns Are Passing
by Wesley McNair

Small towns are passing
into the rearview
mirrors of our cars.
The white houses
are moving away,
wrapping trees
around themselves,
and stores are taking
their gas pumps
down the street
backwards. Just like that
whole families picnicking
on their lawns tilt
over the hill,
and kids on bikes
ride toward us
off the horizon,
leaving no trace
of where they have gone.
Signs turn back and start
after them. Packs of mailboxes,
like dogs, chase them
around corner after corner.

The Sacred
by Stephen Dunn

After the teacher asked if anyone had
a sacred place
and the students fidgeted and shrank

in their chairs, the most serious of them all
said it was his car,
being in it alone, his tape deck playing

things he’d chosen, and others knew the truth
had been spoken
and began speaking about their rooms,

their hiding places, but the car kept coming up,
the car in motion,
music filling it, and sometimes one other person

who understood the bright altar of the dashboard
and how far away
a car could take him from the need

to speak, or to answer, the key
in having a key
and putting it in, and going.

Driving at Night
by Sheila Packa

Up north, the dashboard lights of the family car
gleam in memory, the radio
plays to itself as I drive
my father plied the highways
while my mother talked, she tried to hide
that low lilt, that Finnish brogue,
in the back seat, my sisters and I
our eyes always tied to the Big Dipper
I watch it still
on summer evenings, as the fireflies stream
above the ditches and moths smack
into the windshield and the wildlife’s
red eyes bore out from the dark forests
we flew by, then scattered like the last bit of star
light years before.
It’s like a different country, the past
we made wishes on unnamed falling stars
that I’ve forgotten, that maybe were granted
because I wished for love.

Good stuff, no? In McNair’s poem, I love the concept of white houses wrapping trees around themselves as you speed past them in the car. In Dunn’s it’s that stop-the-show line: “the bright altar of the dashboard.” And in Packa’s poem, I like “It’s like a different country, the past.”

Amen to that, and to the fact that we all own our own Fodor’s guide.

Work in Progress — A Better Way

Lost Sherpa of Happiness poetry revising poetry The Indifferent World writing poetry

wip

We all know the joke by now–the sign on the road reading MEN WORKING. It’s how we learned the word “oxymoron” as the car sped past workers in hardhats leaning on shovels, sipping Dunkin Donuts coffees, chatting each other up.

“Work in Progress” is another matter, one with greater meaning and impact. As my third poetry manuscript grows (though not in Brooklyn), I’ve changed my approach. With the first two books, The Indifferent World and Lost Sherpa of Happiness, I created a folder on my computer and then created separate docs for each poem within them.

With this one, I smartened up. The folder is called “Work in Progress,” and it is a single doc containing ALL the poems as I go along. I keep them in the order I wrote them, leaving any new arrangements for the day when I’ve mustered 45 or more–about the number you need to call it a poetry collection as opposed to its little brother, the chapbook.

The advantage to this approach has proven to be huge. Why? Often I’m not in the mood to work on my most recent poem because it is frustrating me. In the past, I would seldom click other docs to look at other poems in the collection. Instead, I would avoid the frustration of the recalcitrant new poem by reading a book or, worse, the online news.

Now? I open up the “WIP” doc and am faced with the first two poems I wrote every time. “Oh, yeah,” I feel like saying. “You guys!” I scroll down and see the whole parade of so-called “finished” poems.

Revising is my middle name (thanks, Mom). It is also the lifeblood of poetry writing. Using this system, I find myself tinkering, changing, and–blessed be!–deleting entire lines and stanzas of poems I had considered “done.”

A couple of times, I’ve taken on the revision task of working on each poem in order until I worked my way back to the present poem. More often, as a warm-up, I find myself reading random poems in the “Work in Progress.”

Interestingly, I often change a word in a poem one day and then change it back the next. Must be the different light on Tuesday vs. Wednesday, but over time and with enough looks, I settle on a word I like better, even though I could go either way.

The revision practice of a “Works in Progress,” all-in-one-doc approach has also reined in my habit of sending babies to market prematurely like so many poor Oliver Twist waifs. Now when I send poems, they’re a sturdier lot, more fully grown and refined. It’s even emboldened me to submit to tougher markets, what the going-to-college kids would call “reaches.”

Though it came about by accident and through convenience, the new method has won me over. It works. It keeps the whole brood of babies in front of me. And, after a few days of revision, I’m all refreshed and ready to tackle that tough poem I’ve been ducking–the one that used to send me to all the bad news on the virtual front pages.

Tracy K. Smith Declares…

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In case you don’t keep track of such things, our latest poet laureate in the Estados Unitos is Tracy K. Smith. There was a nice profile on her in the April 15th copy of The New York Times Magazine, titled “The Poem Cure” by Ruth Franklin.

Included in the piece are many quotes and excerpts from her new book, Wade in the Water. “Literature allows us to be open, to listen and to be curious,” Smith tells Franklin. And as she travels the U.S. in her new national role, Smith vows, “I want to go to places where writers don’t usually go, where people like me don’t usually show up, and say: ‘Here are some poems. Do they speak to you? What do you hear in them?'”

As an African-American, Smith’s poems often confront issues of race. “You want a poem to unsettle something,” she says. “There’s a deep and interesting kind of troubling that poems do, which is to say: ‘This is what you think you’re certain of, and I’m going to show you how that’s not enough. There’s something more that might be even more rewarding if you’re willing to let go of what you already know.'”

This, of course, is a tall order. One thing we’ve learned in these days of division perpetuated by a “president” who specializes in dividing, is that people are *not* willing to let go of what they already know–perhaps because they can’t be bothered with poetry.

One of Smith’s interests is erasure poetry, wherein you take existing text, erase great swaths, and leave words which speak in a new voice. The article includes one that Smith created from Thomas Jefferson’s greatest hit, The Declaration of Independence. It appears and in her new book and looks like this:

Declaration
by Tracy K. Smith

He has
sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people
He has plundered our —
ravaged our —
destroyed the lives of our —
taking away our —
abolishing our most valuable —
and altering fundamentally the Forms of our —

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for
Redress in the most humble terms:…

Not a bad collaboration on Jefferson’s and Smith’s part–and further proof (as if we needed any) that we still CANNOT hold these truths to be self-evident, sadly.

Breakfast with Tolstoy

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One of my gifts to myself this year was Tolstoy’s A Calendar of Wisdom, a book offering a page of wise thoughts for each day of the year. What does it look like? Not much, which is what I like best.

Emblematic of its humility are the themes for each page. Tolstoy offers a few quotes sourced from various religions and cultures, then offers his own two rubles. By way of example, here is the entry for today, April 23rd, where the theme is one of my favorites, simplicity.

Real goodness is always simple.

Simplicity is so attractive and so profitable that it is strange that so few people lead truly simply lives.

Do not seek happiness elsewhere. Give thanks to God, who made necessary things simple, and complicated things unnecessary. — Gregory Skovoroda

Most of our spending is done to forward our efforts to look like others. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every great thing is done in a quiet, humble, simple way; to plow the land, to build houses, to breed cattle, even to think — you cannot do such things when there are thunder and lightning around you. Great and true things are always simple and humble.

No one looks less simple than those people who artificially strive to seem so. Artificial simplicity is the most unpleasant of all artificial things.

Except for the two attributions, all words are Tolstoy’s. Tomorrow’s entry, with a theme of bravery, quotes the Bible (Book of John) and Cicero. Some entries quote the Talmud, scientists, philosophers, writers, Confucius, Eastern wisdom, Persian wisdom, etc.

All in all, not a bad (or terribly difficult) way to start the day — with words and with meaning.

Poetry in Motion and Other Moving Thoughts

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acela

Notes on my return from spring break:

Time flies even when you don’t (file under “fear of flying”).
Which is to say, a week off traveling someplace will always disappear faster than a week off at home.
Reading on a train is conducive to sleeping.
After training south on Amtrak’s “Quiet Car” and failing to nab a seat on the “Quiet Car” heading back north, I now fully appreciate how and why the “Quiet Car” was invented.
Which begs the question: Why is there only one “Quiet Car”?
Good news: I finished one book going south and read half of another coming north.
Bad news: As you mathematicians can see, “quiet” = whole book and “noisy” = half a book.
I did not see a single raindrop all week.
Why is it that I love the sound of rain and even the feel of rain but NOT while I’m on vacation?
The book I am reading, A Time for Everything by Karl Ove Knausgaard, was originally written in 2004 but raised from the dead by his notoriety after the My Struggle books.
Meaning: His sales are not struggling.
I only read one poem all week and came home hungry.
Which is more than I can say for my stomach, which seemed to like the looks of every poetic cake, cookie, and candy it saw.
Back to the noisy car north: the culprits were primarily of a technological bent.
Meaning: I think we were on the “Giggly Car,” as three couples around us were watching videos on their phones slash iPads slash laptops while laughing hysterically as if no one else was around them.
Is there anything more annoying than other people continuously laughing on a plane, train, or automobile?
(Answer: “No.”)
(Acceptable Answer #2: “Hell is other people laughing. Continuously.”)
Coughing. It should also be noted that the whole world is coughing uncontrollably. No one seems to have a cough drop or hard candy. No one seems to think of buying Amtrak’s expensive bottles of water to douse their coughing. They just cough. Into the air. With only a half-hearted effort to cover their mouths.
Surely Sartre knew (but kept secret) that Hell is also other people coughing. Continuously. In your air.
One grown man was watching a cartoon on his laptop and telling anyone who would listen all about it. Something on the Comedy Channel. Gigglingly-good.
Is everybody 12?
One woman who was giggling loudly for 45 minutes straight finally fell asleep (apparently exhausted by her laughter). When someone opened and slammed shut an overhead compartment, however, she startled awake and gave the offender a menacing look.
Meaning: It’s OK if I make a lot of noise (because it’s me) but not if you make a lot of noise (because it’s you).
I saw hardly any news this past week and learned that a Trump-free week is good for both body and soul. Especially soul. Call me “Zen Craft,” then. I feel like Columbus after he discovered India in the Caribbean. (Try that next time you are in the Caribbean.)
Today is my official recovery day. The problem with thinking in advance by arranging for an official recovery day before returning to work is there is too much to do on official recovery days, like grocery shopping and laundry and planning lessons and looking at notes for future poems jotted on the blank pages at the end of Karl Ove’s new old book while other people are giggling.
If you’ve come this far, gentle reader, welcome back!

Teaching an Imitation Poem with “The Delight Song of Tsoai-talee”

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Once they leave the elementary grades, students are typically loath to write poetry. One way to get them to do so is to use a template based on well-known poem. I get good results with N. Scott Momaday’s “The Delight Song of Tsoai-talee.”

To start, I read the poem and discuss it like you would any other. What do you notice? (Students will surely mention the repetition.) What’s the coolest line? (Many students dig that long track of the moon on the lake.)

From here, I ask students to use Momaday’s structure to write an imitation poem. Thus, all lines in the longer first stanza start with the metaphor-producing words “I am…” and all lines (except for first and last, which I have them use verbatim) in the second stanza start with the words “I stand in good relation to….” In the name of variety, I ask them not to stand in good relation to any of the same things as Momaday, nice as they are.

As a less-intimidating model, I compose my own imitation poem of this poem on the SmartBoard. I also demonstrate a little revision on the whiteboard by writing the rather prosaic line “I am the frost on the grass.” I improve it a bit by changing it to “I am the frost on the morning grass,” but we had already done a lesson on distrusting adjectives — especially if they would come readily to the mind of readers, given the nouns they modify — and students will usually allow that frost on grass is most associated with the morning.

Great! For revision the third, then, I write “I am the crystal on the first frost of November grass.” Still imperfect, but definitely becoming more specific and subtle — similar to the insights Momaday uses to show his intimacy with nature.

For further practice on both identifying unnecessary adjectives (because they’re obvious), write “cold snow,” “white clouds,” “green grass,” and “blue sky” on the board. Ask for a revision competition–something realistic, but, for readers, unexpected. You’ll see how much more satisfying student creativity is when they give you things like “blue snow,” “slate clouds,” “burnt grass,” and “tangerine skies.” (And yes, you might add, using the writerly trick of using a THING that is that color instead of the color itself, works wonders in poetry).

Without fail, the first drafts produced in 18 minutes or so are remarkable, especially when they correlate to each student’s daily life. I have students do a read-around with their groups and choose a favorite from each group to be shared with the class.

Each of these creations are named “The Delight Song of (Student’s Name).” Once placed in a portfolio and read by Mom and Dad, they often draw comments and (dare I say it?) delight.

As it should be!

What Does “National Poetry Month” Actually Mean? I Found the Answers.

humor Lost Sherpa of Happiness opinion poetry The Indifferent World

I almost forgot, but it’s National Poetry Month. How I ever went a full week without realizing it is beyond me, but here we are and here I am, apparently unscathed.

What the heck does National Poetry Month mean, anyway? Is it more inept political meddling on the part of our Do-Nothing Congress led by our Do-Demagogue President? Actually, no. National Poetry Month is the invention of the Academy of American Poets.

Which begs the question: What in the world (OK, country) is the Academy of American Poets, and why am I not an honorary member? Turns out, it is comprised of not only poets but booksellers, librarians, publishers, and teachers. Together, back in 1995, they noted the successes of Black History Month (February) and Women’s History Month (March) to plot National Poetry Month (April) beginning in 1996.

(All I can say is, “Look out, May!”)

The venerable poets.org website offered these tips on how you can celebrate the month, but I have devised a few tips of my own:

Isn’t it time you memorized a poem? Pick one you like and then, in the time you would ordinarily use to check texts on your cellphone every day (about 9 hours and 36 minutes), commit it to memory, two lines at a time.
Read a poem aloud to someone you love. You can do it in lieu of grace some night at supper. Or instead of the maniacally-repetitious “Happy Birthday” song just before the day’s star blows out the candles and spreads his germs all over the frosting.
Copy a short poem onto a large piece of paper and post it at work after hours or before hours. I did this once and then, when everyone tried to figure out who did it, played dumb. It wasn’t hard. (The “playing dumb” part, not the posting a poem part.)
Read a book of poems. Honestly, I can’t tell you how many proud “bookworms” and self-described “readers” never read poetry. It’s a national scandal, which is why I’m leaning toward a National Scandal Month for May (and I know I’ll get cooperation from our president on that one).
In honor of National Poetry Month, the publisher of my first book is practically giving away my first book’s Kindle version for only three bucks. This alone is a national scandal (OK, quite localized scandal), but if it exposes more people to the radiation of my poetry, so be it.
Me, I like the feel of an actual book in my hands, however. I also like the National Sniff-a-Book Month (June is available) smell of its new paper and ink. And while The Indifferent World in paperback is $15.95 at amazon dot glom, I have copies for $12 each, which is something-something percent off (I hate numbers). Just e-mail me for the National-Poetry-Month deal (see “About” section above for e-mail).
And speaking of deals, my newest book, Lost Sherpa of Happiness, can be found on sale the same way.
Which can only mean that National Poetry Month is a way for poets not named Rupi Kaur to sell their books. May you wonder no longer. And if you made it this far, accept my blessings and gratitude. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m off to enjoy National Eat-Some-Pancakes-Drowned-in-Maple Syrup Month…

The Problem with “Best” Poems

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Let’s start with the judging-by-the-cover. The color is green-awful, giving perfectly delicious pea soup a bad name. And the chair. I’m not sure I would fancy the chair, for fear of turning into a fern before page 12 (were I to sit in it, and I would not).

That said, I’m sure Natasha Trethewey, guest-editor for Year of Our Lord 2017, had nothing to do with this cover. Nor did David Lehman (whoever he is), series editor. Sometimes covers just happen. Like Heaven’s Gate in the movies.

Every review of the “Best” series sings the same song: “Unevenly As She Goes.” Me, I like to see what poetry publications the poems are plucked from for future reference. The thinking goes like this: “Golly. Maybe if I send poems to the same publications, THEY’LL be selected as the best among American poems (2018, 2019, what have you) too!”

But it’s like chasing yesterday’s hot stock. Next year’s guest editor may have a yen for very different poetry publications, though you can always count on a few big boppers like Poetry, of course, and The New Yorker.

Among my faves in this collection: “Higher Education” (Jeffrey Harrison), “Certain Things” (David Brendan Hopes), “The Watch” (Danusha Laméris), “The Mercy Home” (Michael Ryan), “Seeing Things” (Charles Simic), “Good Bones” (Maggie Smith), and “Afraid to Pray” (Pamela Sutton).

There. Flip through to these next time you’re at the bookstore. It will be one man’s “best of the best” and equally uneven, proving the futility of the whole process of choosing the best. Or the best of the best. Or the best of the best of the best.

I best stop here. But first, a link to the Charles Simic poem, “Seeing Things.” Simple. Straightforward. However…. My kind of poem.

The Paradoxical Poetry of Tao Te Ching

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The Tao is the way. Too bad Machiavelli never heard of it. Or got to read it. If he had, The Prince might have been a different fellow. An unrecognizable one, in fact.

I like to read Lao Tzu’s paradoxical pages every now and then, and when I do, I reach for my copy of Tao Te Ching. The wisdom here is unsettlingly logical. So un-Western. And in this day and age, sadly, so un-Eastern, too.

Here is one entry I particularly enjoyed. Like rivers and streams, the metaphor is simple yet deep. If only a few leaders I know (their weaknesses exposed one Tweet at a time) would read it. But that won’t happen unless it is read aloud to him. On Fox Channel story time. Which gives the fox–an otherwise fine animal–a bad name.

From Tao Te Ching:

The reason the river and sea can be regarded as
The rulers of all the valley streams
Is because of their being below them.
Therefore they can be their rulers.
So if you want to be over people
You must speak humbly to them.
If you want to lead them
You must place yourself behind them.

Thus the sage is positioned above
And the people do not feel oppressed.
He is in front and they feel nothing wrong.
Therefore they like to push him front and never resent him.

Since he does not contend

No one can contend with him.

The moral of our story: Lead from behind. Get on top from below. Be humble! Most of us have lost our way!

When Good Poems Arrive in the Mail

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horse

You can’t support every poetry journal you admire, and you can’t purchase every book by every aspiring, talented poet you admire, true. But just as true? You can’t sit on the sidelines and support neither.

One of the journals I support is Beloit Poetry Journal out of Maine. When one of your subscriptions arrives in the mailbox, it is good news — gold lying among the muck called bills to pay. And when you find a poem you admire tucked inside its pages, you read it and reread it. You feel like looking up the poet and writing down his or her books to perhaps explore further.

This was the case when I read this little mood piece that had deeper meaning, especially in the last stanza with that wild plum orchard and high corn, with those simple but somehow essential farm bodies “wanting to hear how it is with him now.” See if you like it, too:

after oats they lie down
by J. T. Ledbetter

when las light falls out of the sycamores
into the horse tank work horses plunge their soft noses
into the cold water their backs steaming in the snow

after oats they lie down in straw kicking their legs in their dreams
their eyes white as shadows running beside them

the man waits for the tea kettle pluming on the stove
upstairs his wife combs out her long grey hair and lies down

he cups the hot tea inside his coat and goes to the barn to help the mother
birth the colt then lies down in the bloody stall
watching her nibble at the sack her lips pulled away from her teeth

later he sits in the kitchen with some cold meat and dips a piece of bread in his tea
he sits very still because the blood on his clothes is hard
he does not know his wife has died nor will he know what to do
he will sit beside her until morning then call a neighbor
and wonder if he should turn off something

he will go to the barn to throw down some hay and listen to the pigeons
thrumming against the tin roof
and when shadows move from Turley’s Woods toward the farm
he knows they wait to press their farm bodies against him
wanting to hear how it is with him now
he thinks he could go in if he walks through the wild plum orchard
if he crosses the old bridge into the high corn

— Beloit Poetry Journal, Winter 2018 issue

All I can say of Turley’s Woods (whose shadows move a bit like Birnam Wood) is “whose woods they are, I think I know.”

We all do.