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Poets? They Know Godot!

godot

Though few of us have seen it, Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot is familiar to us all. It’s a play about nothing. Two characters, Vladimir and Estragon, wait for someone named Godot (note the surprise inside, the word “God”), only instead of someone they get no one. And a lot of waiting. Thus talking. Thus a play about waiting. And talking.

Circles, anyone? And why does the plot of Waiting for Godot remind me of the life of a poet? Let me make like Barrett Browning and count the ways.

Poets do a lot of waiting. First and foremost, for the inspiration of ideas. Second, for the “time” to write (or so they say, as they check their cell phone for the umpteenth time in the past ten minutes). And third for the discipline to write and then revise (wait for it) over and over and over and over and over again.

All of this waiting allows the poet to play Vladimir or Estragon all he wants. In lines and stanzas, if he wishes. A sonnet, if he’s playful. Haiku will do if he’s in his briefs.

But then comes more waiting. After due diligence the poems (usually in sets of five, usually in exchange for a reading fee to keep a poetry journal afloat) are turned loose on the reading world.

Response time? Surely Godot will know! If it says three months, figure six. If it says six, figure a year. If it says nine (It’s a boy! No, it’s a girl!), you may never hear back.

Keep records all you want, but keep a duster, too, so you can feather off the dates and scratch your waiting head.

There are other ways poets know Godot, I fear. Sometimes they share their poetry with other poets for criticism. Sometimes these poems are yet unpublished. Sometimes these poems are not only already published but in book form.

Nevertheless, engaging in such foolishness—especially with a poet who is more “established” (a relative term, like “uncle” and “Grandma”) than you—is just asking for the Godot treatment. Promises, after all, are the waiting experts (or so it says in their ad).

Such is the way of the world, friends. Which means? Beckett nailed it, and I can’t wait to see his play some day. And when I do, I’ll go into full solipsist mode, shouting, “Hey! It’s true! This is a play about me!”

Then I’ll look in the mirror. And see Godot.

The Benefits of Laziness

poetry writing inspiration

hammock

Whether you are Protestant or not, you’ve probably fallen victim to that “Protestant work ethic” thing. You know. The one where, as a kid, your parents or teachers or other adults berated you for being L-A-Z-Why Not. The one where, as an adult, your spouse, your friends, or your boss take over.

Please. How do they expect you to daydream? To ruminate? To wonder? To cut to the quick, how do they expect you to create?

Just because the body is doing nothing doesn’t mean the brain is lying fallow. In fact, the brain sometimes does 100 push-ups with one arm best when the body is at rest. The Chinese call it wu wei, which means “non-acting” or “non-doing” or, if you must, “acting without purpose,” all of which undercut what’s actually going on.

I mean, really. Unless you’re dead, something’s always going on upstairs, praise be. Writing doesn’t come in two days from Amazon, after all. Or from a pill, either.

It’s all on you. And though writing itself may be deemed “action,” the necessary first step is ideas—ideas that make you shout (like you discovered it), “Wu wei, this is fun!” because you’re doing a whole lot of “nothing” (accent on quotation marks, thank you) in style.

Raymond Carver knew. He was of the brotherhood. Read “Loafing” below and see what I mean. Yep. One of us!

Loafing
Raymond Carver

I looked into the room a moment ago,
and this is what I saw —
my chair in its place by the window,
the book turned facedown on the table.
And on the sill, the cigarette
left burning in its ashtray.
Malingerer! my uncle yelled at me
so long ago. He was right.
I’ve set aside time today,
same as every day,
for doing nothing at all.

When the News Kills the Muse

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news

Sometimes it feels like you’re faced with an everyday dilemma of rock or hard place, devil or deep blue sea, Scylla or Charybdis. You know what I’m talking about: poetry or citizenship.

A steady diet of the news, it seems, is good for becoming an informed citizen (something all countries of the world need today, but especially the Disunited States), but not so good for creativity.

So what, then? Be selfishly artistic by ignoring newspapers, magazines, and all news media in general? Seek your Muse in the sand, ostrich-like?

Sounds appealing, I’ll admit! I say this only after reading in the New York Times that the Environmental Protection Agency (which no longer protects anything but corporate interests) is changing the math on air pollution effects on the populace with the goal of reducing projected number of total deaths.. Get it? Rules are relaxed, air pollution and pulmonary-related deaths go up, but reported deaths go down (and math is a wonderful thing).

Or how about the bacterial scourge that has struck citrus farmers in the southeastern U.S.? You have to feel for these farmers because it’s their livelihood, but the solution of treating crops destined for people with antibiotic spray (also approved by the E.P.A.) has raised all manner of alarms with health experts and scientists who are already watching killer “superbugs” rise in numbers due to a world awash in irresponsible application and distribution of antibiotics—to people, to animals, and now to plants.

Reading material like this is like a cold shower on the poetic mood. You feel more anger and despair than inspiration. Europe and Brazil have laws protecting their citizens from antibiotic spraying of crops, but I guess their governments are for the people vs. for the corporations. Make America Corporate Again (MACA). Teapot Dome and Tammany Hall are back, like the backwater infiltrating the late, great, supposedly drained swamp.

Which brings us back to the premise: Is a well-versed citizen abreast of the news and hopefully active in doing something about it antithetical to a creatively inspired artist? Not necessarily. Let’s not forget our old friend satire (it once lived in pens but is amenable to keyboards, too). Read some Voltaire. Sip some Mark Twain. These guys had little use for the powers-that-be and their timeless greed for power and money. They showed it through sharp, critical humor, relying on the pen in a world enamored of the sword.

One outlet I can recommend to activist artists is Rattle‘s Poet’s Respond feature. Every week, they set a Friday midnight (Pacific time) deadline for poems paired to something in the news.

Better yet? They’ll pay for it. Better yet than better yet? You’ll get a response by Sunday. That’s right: a 48-hour turnaround on poetry submissions. For writers, this is akin to partings of the Red Sea (only in this case, it’s the “Read Sea”).

What’s not to like? To arms, citizen poets! You can have your news cake and write it, too!

Breaking the Rules

humor poetry reading poetry

Rules for writing, poetry or otherwise, are as plentiful as mosquitoes during a wet July. One such dictum, come down from Moses, it would appear, is never to use clichés. For one, you’ll have to remember how to get an accent aigu on the screen. And for another, you’ll be considered a lazy writer using lazy phrases in a lazy way.

Unless, of course, you want to break the rules. Purposely. With panache. Isn’t that what rules are for? Breakage? Run-arounds? Clears and dig-unders?

Surely that’s what the poet Ronald Wallace had in mind when he composed the following ode (of sorts) to clichés:

Blessings

occur.
Some days I find myself
putting my foot in
the same stream twice;
leading a horse to water
and making him drink.
I have a clue.
I can see the forest
for the trees.

All around me people
are making silk purses
out of sows’ ears,
getting blood from turnips,
building Rome in a day.
There’s a business
like show business.
There’s something new
under the sun.

Some days misery
no longer loves company;
it puts itself out of its.
There’s rest for the weary.
There’s turning back.
There are guarantees.
I can be serious.
I can mean that.
You can quite
put your finger on it.

Some days I know
I am long for this world.
I can go home again.
And when I go
I can
take it with me.

And take it with him, Wallace did, fashioning success from mistakes connected elephant trunk to elephant tail, start to finish.

What a great lesson. Creativity über alles once more (even when you have to remember how to get an umlaut on the screen).

Phrases and Clauses and Words, Oh My!

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Syntax. It sounds like a levy the government collects on bad habits: smoking, drinking, voting for radical leftwing socialists who care more about people than corporations.

But, no. Syntax, accord to Merriam, Webster, and their Indian maiden friend Sacagawea, is “a: the way in which linguistic elements (such as words) are put together to form constituents (such as phrases or clauses), b: the part of grammar dealing with this.”

And though we might frequently forget the meaning of syntax, we all use it each time we put pen to paper or key to screen. Voila! With our eyes closed and our throat humming “Camptown Races,” we produce not only phrases but clauses (take that, Santa)! Who says actions speak louder than words? Try syntax without them!

Anyway, all this throat clearing is by way of introducing a short Ron Padgett poem inspired by (wait for it…) syntax! You heard me. Grammar. A topic as dry as drought-time wheat. Further proof that anything can inspire poetry, in the right hands choreographed by the right brain. To wit:

Syntactical Structures
Ron Padgett

It was as if
while I was driving down a one-lane dirt road
with tall pines on both sides
the landscape had a syntax
similar to that of our language
and as I moved along
a long sentence was being spoken
on the right and another on the left
and I thought
Maybe the landscape
can understand what I say too.
Ahead was a farmhouse
with children playing near the road
so I slowed down
and waved to them.
They were young enough
to smile and wave back.

You might think a poetry prompt called “syntax” would be a nonstarter, but you would be wrong. Why? Because you probably forgot about the metaphors jangling around in your satchel. See how quickly (Line 4) Padgett takes syntax and fashions from it a landscape.

Landscape as a prompt, you say? Easy peasy. And just like that, Padgett’s off to the races with 17 lines ending with a lighthearted take on kids and innocence in a world distrustful of both.

Not bad for a day’s syntaxing, wouldn’t you say?

Epiphany Enclosed

poetry reading poetry

Thanks to James Joyce, the word epiphany has been co-opted from the church by the world of literature. In A Poet’s Glossary, Edward Hirsch says this about the word:

“From a Greek word meaning ‘to appear.’ An epiphany is a sudden spiritual manifestation, a luminous or visionary moment. Epiphany means the manifestation of a god or spirit in the body, and thus the Christian epiphany is literally the manifestation of Christ to the Magi. James Joyce (1882-1941) secularized the term so that it came to mean a sudden manifestation of spiritual meaning, an unexpected revelation of truth in the commonplace, a psychological and literary mode of perception. It disrupts the ordinary, a moment out of time.”

Poets are well-versed (heh) in epiphanies. They consider it an essential part of their toolbox. The a-ha moment, after all, is often the spark to a poem and catnip for the Muse.

But what if the epiphany doesn’t come from within? What if it comes compliments of another person, someone who knows better, someone hellbent on overcoming our stubbornness or ignorance?

Ah, yes. That, too, is the stuff of poetry. For Exhibit A, I give you the always dependable Seamus Heaney:

The Skylight
by Seamus Heaney

You were the one for skylights. I opposed
Cutting into the seasoned tongue-and-groove
Of pitch pine. I liked it low and closed,
Its claustrophobic, nest-up-in-the-roof
Effect. I liked the snuff-dry feeling,
The perfect, trunk-lid fit of the old ceiling.
Under there, it was all hutch and hatch.
The blue slates kept the heat like midnight thatch.

But when the slates came off, extravagant
Sky entered and held surprise wide open.
For days I felt like an inhabitant
Of that house where the man sick of the palsy
Was lowered through the roof, had his sins forgiven,
Was healed, took up his bed and walked away.

Saying Goodbye to Your Books

humor poetry

books

Books are family, some extended and some immediate, but if you are a writing bibliophile like me, your bookshelves are groaning and your day of reckoning is nigh.

Marie Kondo aside (thank you), Judgment Day usually comes in the form of a move, specifically a variety known as the Downsizing Move. While my wife does battle with the dragons known as clothes and sentimental junk (read: stuff saved for the kids, who will not want it), I take arms against books—a thought previously unheard of.

While looking over my shelves, all manner of questions come to the fore. Why do I still have this book? Will I ever read this book? Will I ever reread this book? Even, how on earth did this book get here?

What’s more, I’ve learned a lot about myself. Let me count the reasons why I’ve collected books over the years:

The books are a history of me. That’s right. I find myself remembering when I got the book, why I got the book, how I got the book. Donating or selling these books will be like tearing a chapter out of my own book—my life’s history, a.k.a. The Story of Me.
The books haven’t been read yet. OK, fair enough, but is the desire still there? In confronting myself with this question, I often have to be honest and say no. Why did I buy it, then? Mood purchases. Phase purchases. Impulse purchases. Whatever it might be, I have to face this question and be honest if I hope to give it the old heave-ho.
The books speak of time and place. Oh, man, I loved that trip to Miami Beach! The one where I read Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises by the pool. And what about the strange week’s vacation at Old Orchard Beach, the one where I read that little-known “beach read” called The Charterhouse of Palma? Man, did I love those books, almost in a sentimental, geographic kind of way! How can I part with them now? Wouldn’t it be like a divorce between time and place?
The books are pretty. They’ve long been evicted from the already-cluttered coffee table, and they’re so big they lie on their big sides, but these coffee table books look first rate because, well, they’ve only been opened once—the day I got them. How can I part with such masterpieces in mint condition? What kind of cruel tyrant am I, anyway? And what about those cute little Penguin paperbacks with their black spines, each calling out the name of a beloved author from Russia’s Golden Age (Turgenev! Tolstoy! Lermontov!)?
The books might be worth money. It’s incredible how many first editions I have on these hallowed shelves. What? Donate riches to the library book sale? No doubt they’d be plucked from the pile by some savvy overseer of sales who will sell them for personal profit! So I search on eBay and discover, verily, that the same first edition as I now hold in my hand sells for a range of prices: $5 to $599. Welcome to eBay, Online Field of Dreams! (And how does one do eBay, anyway? Doesn’t it involve buying stock in the United States Postal Service?)
The book was a gift. What? Donate a book that Aunt Mae gave to me for my 12th birthday? But, but… What if Aunt Mae, in her dotage, visits us for Christmas next year and asks how often I’ve reread that Tom Sawyer she bought me? What if she takes a moment to scour the bookshelves for its place of honor, then casually quips, “Ken, I can’t seem to find that copy of Tom Sawyer I gave you when you were a lad. Can you give me a hand here?”
The books will come back to haunt me. I often wonder about future me, reaching for a book that has always been there. You know, the initial confusion while I’m having trouble finding it, searching on high shelves and low only to discover that Nefarious Me (Past Tense) has dumped it in the name of downsizing or, worse still, the trendy (at the time) name of Marie Kondo. It will seem like I’ve downsized my heart (see Grinch comma green) and not my home!

True, some books will make the cut, and no book should wind up in a cardboard box of the new, smaller home’s basement, but still, these Days of Biblio Reckoning are terrible things. They do not spark joy so much as rebellion. They spark an uncivil war within the conflicted, bookish heart!

“To Enchant Someone Meaninglessly…”

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Reviews. Yesterday I mentioned how they can draw you in, make you want to click to cart on amazon dot glom, run to your local bookstore, or — if your biblio-habits are bankrupting you — enter a hold on your interlibrary loan system.

This happened with Chelsey Minnis’ new book Baby, I Don’t Care, which I could not secure due to all the holds. So I reserved instead Poemland, an older book with no holds. And no holds barred.

As a poet, it’s always interesting to read a wide swath of different voices and styles, and boy, howdy, is Minnis’ voice and style different. In Poemland, she elopes with the ellipsis. The exclamation point doesn’t scare her, either! And the single-space thing is for more conventional types. (Check the mirror, friends!)

Although the poems are not named, they are spread out between black divider pages, so I’ll take that construct as a “poem, ” Minis-style, and give you a sample from Poemland here. Have fun! (I think that’s the point, Jeeves.)

I want to sit very calmly with my bangs curled…

But my pet monster has bitten my hand!

Life makes me sad.

So sad that I walk down the street etc.

When I read poems I don’t like them…

But I like them like pouf-roses…

I like them like gilt saws…

And I like them like dark brown ram shearling!…

To enchant someone meaninglessly…

Is like getting insulted and kissed by your riding instructor…

This is when your hair sticks to your lipstick and it is so cuckoo…

You close the bedroom-dividing curtain…

Gold smudges…and a gemstone powered engine!…

A great devalued thing is a plain life…

But I like it like a venus-fly-trap pried open with tweezers…

I like to live a hard life but I know I shouldn’t do it…

I should live an easy life or I am a fool!

The sea-crabs try to cling onto anything.

The crab fishermen don’t even want all the crab…they want

money…

Even though their mustaches are covered with ice…

If you are a person you can also be someone’s goat…

I can tell you all about it for free…

I can long remember a nastie thing…

If it is well done..

This is a present of tiny pretty scissors…

Which you must use to cut your beast hair…

I am a vile baby…

Look, death, I have so much delicious vulture food within my

chest cavity…

I look to the left and right with my eyes and then I swing the sharp

thing…

As you rise out of a cloud on a mechanized contraption…

If you open your mouth to start to complain I will fill it with

whipped cream…

There is a floating sadness nearby…

Don’t try to walk away from a little girl like me!

This is a recollection of flopped happiness…

And it is a fistfight in the rain under a held umbrella…

There is a way to smoke your cigarette and look out the window

but you’ll never get enough of it.

Chasing Today’s Hot Property

poetry

Typically, this is how it goes down: You read a review of a new poetry book (say, Chelsey Minnis’ Baby, I Don’t Care), and it intrigues you. Going on interlibrary loan, you find the book, place it on “hold,” and see you are hold number #23 on 2 books in the system.

So you get in line. If you were in England Comma Jolly Olde, you’d get in queue, but in the Very Unjolly (These Days) Estatos Disunitos, you get in line with the other 99%.

Then it dawns upon you, sun and all. This poet has written previous books (say, Poemland). So you search and find one of them on the library site’s digital catalogue and, of course, there are zero holds on it even though it is the same poet of the moment.

poemland

This is because the old book is yesterday’s news, and if there’s one thing people cannot abide, it is old news (and people).

Canaries are one thing. They read old news lining the bottom of their cages. Ditto puppies, who are traditionally trained to leak old news on the floor. Before they learn to take it outside, I mean.

Anyway, happily, the voice of the searchable poet is the same in the old book as it is in the new book’s excerpts. And if you read enough of the old books, eventually your hold on the new book will inch up the line and you will be notified that it’s ready and waiting on your beloved public library’s “reserved shelf.”

Only then you’re on to something else. Some other poet. Your interest in the old “gotta read” has waned.

Why, you wonder, is interest always waning? It’s like the interest on your savings account at the bank, which has waned to 0.86 APY.

Whatever APY means.

Pantoums: Easier Said Than Done

poetry

As most of you know, poetry, supposedly dying (see Ben Lerner’s The Hatred of Poetry for all the news unfit to print) has inched its way into The New York Times Magazine on Sundays.

This week Rita Dove selected a form I haven’t seen in a while, the pantoum. As Dove explains, it hails from Malaysian oral tradition and seems easy, but isn’t. The easier part is the ABAB rhyme scheme. The more difficult part is the shifting: “Lines 2 and 4 of each quatrain become Lines 1 and 3 in the next stanza.” Hoo, boy. Like working on a 500-piece puzzle some rainy Sunday, that.

As with haiku, it is much easier to write bad pantoums than good ones. It is also a type of writing that appeals to some poets who like a challenge (example: Allison Joseph, pictured) and repels others (example: Ken Craft, seen here hiding from pantoums), who like to control their challenges, thank you.

Here’s the poem Dove offered up this week as an excellent example of the pantoum form. If you want to read Dove’s introduction as well, take a jump down this rabbit hole.

Flirtation
By Allison Joseph

I like my tights electric blue,
my shoes of patent leather.
This dance I dance is meant for you —
I move quick as new weather.

My shoes of patent leather
shine brighter than my skin.
I move, quick as new weather,
to shed the dress I’m in.

Shining brighter than my skin,
my eyes, they say it all.
I’ll shed the dress I’m in,
let summer fabric fall.

My eyes, they see it all.
They see what’s false, what’s true.
Let summer fabric fall.
I know what we can do.

I know what’s false, what’s true.
I dance the dance that’s meant for you.
Show me what you can do.
You like my tights, electric blue.