Weekly Updates: Dickinson's Letters, Pigafetta, Collages

56º ~ glorious sunshine, a few pleasing clouds wafting, the leaves that remain moved gently by a small breeze

For those keeping score, I started the week off well, keeping up my 2 hours in the morning.  I've slowly inched the alarm clock back a bit each week, so that I'm able to be at the desk before I'm needed on campus.  C. has been amazing at accommodating this new shift in the schedule.  (Another thankfulness: a spouse who understands the writing life.)  The urge to write new poems is creeping along in my veins nicely.  I may even have stumbled across a new obsession as I drafted a poem Tuesday morning.  I don't want to say anything more about it yet, lest I scare it away.

I will say that what prompted me to the draft was reading Joe Hall's Pigafetta Is My Wife (Black Ocean, 2010).  Based on the recommendation of a dear poet-friend, I picked up this book over a year ago, but just got to it.  This poet-friend raved about the book and how much it had changed her writing life.  While I found a lot to admire in the book, I was sad that it didn't have quite the same powerful effect on me.  Hall's book is a loosely crafted braid, part historical poems from the voice of Pigafetta, Magellan's chronicler and one of only 18 sailors who survived the trip, and part contemporary love letter. 

I confess that I loved the historical poems exposing colonization the most and had trouble shifting gears from time to time, although I think this is more my failing than any misstep on the part of Hall.  The poems are filled with images ripe and succulent, images that are strung together in a fragmented syntax that conveys just how difficult it is for the speaker to put into words his struggle.

In one section of the long poem "Knife & Mirror," Hall writes:

On one island, the Captain gave the gift of chains
More often, he preferred the rough equivalent
knives & mirrors

jumping back from their own startled expressions--
artillery shaking the coast

After I'd read the book through, I went back and collected words for a rough word bank in my journal, my poor lonely journal left untended for so long.  Very quickly the words began suggesting lines to me and arrows/circles soon linked groupings all over the page.  It felt great to shift to drafting full lines and eventually to what became something that resembles a full poem.  For that, I am indebted to Hall.

All week, I've also been reading from Emily Dickinson: Selected Letters (Belknap Press, Harvard U P, 1986).  I've had this book for ages but no longer remember if it was once assigned in undergrad or in  a grad school class or if I picked it up on my own.  In the past, I read mostly from the letters to T. W. Higginson and of course, I've combed over the three master letters endlessly.  Now, though, I feel compelled to read from the beginning.

The first few letters come from a young E.D., just 12 years old, and I couldn't quite turn off my composition instructor brain as I read run-on after run-on after run-on.  Already in the poems, I see the woman and poet Dickinson would become, obsessed with nature, struggling with a body prone to ailments, and questioning the strict religious society that surrounded her.  What was more surprising was to read the hints of loneliness, low self-esteem, and social doubt.  In my mind, she is a giant and her poems so self-assured & steady (even when questioning), it is sad to realize that she felt many of the same things I felt at that age and still feel today more than I'd care to admit.

~~~~~

Finally, I did some collage work yesterday and here is one of the results. It might be a little hard to tell, but I've moved into a 3-D phase, raising some images off the page with "risers" made out of old mat board.

Weekly Updates: Election Fever, Big Rock Reading, Submissions, & Acceptance

71º ~ a cold front moving across the northwest section of the state, solid gray skies, gusts, and leaves falling like snow ~ after a solid week of amazing fall weather we will downshift to cold & rain for a few days

one of my collages

This week began with a bit of a frenzy of submissions.  After having a pile of folders on my desk for the past two months, a pile from which I would pick and choose poems and journals, I decided it was time to get ALL of the sickly speaker poems out into the world.  So I matched up the remaining poems with some journals and put the rest of the folders away.  Love a clean slate / clean desk. 

Then, there was the election.  Like many Americans, I sat up as late as I could (and that's not as late as I used to be able to) to watch the results come in.  I am happy with the results nationally, but disappointed in Arkansas, which seems determined to cling to a Republican platform with which I disagree.   While we have a democratic governor for now, our state legislature is now in complete Republican control for the first time since the late 1800s.  While President Obama leads the charge for health care, education, and forward-thinking / equality-based job creation, I'm fearful of what will happen here, especially for those first two categories. 

It turns out that staying up late is not so good for productivity.  Wednesday and Thursday required all of my focus to keep doing what I need to do as an instructor, with no time for writing/poetry.  The reward for this was Friday's installment of the Big Rock Reading Series.  We hosted Kathleen Heil and J. Camp Brown, both MFA candidates at the University of Arkansas.  When I created the series, I marked off November as a time to host a grad student reading, and now with the addition of the program at UCA, it looks like we might expand our pool.  We had the reading at 10:00 a.m., which made me a bit nervous.  It turns out, we had 60+ folks show up, nearly all students.  Three instructors brought their students (including me).  This made me happy because for many of our students getting back to campus in the evening is a hardship due to jobs or family responsibilities. 

As for Kathleen and Josh, well, they rocked the house.  And after the reading, I got to take them to Vino's for pizza and not only talk about Fayetteville but also offer advice as they face the nerve-wracking future that is graduating from a grad program in a dismal job market.  I've got my fingers double crossed for all the writers up on the hill about to head out into the world.

Yesterday, saw me sending out The Girlhood Book of Prairie Myths and taking that big leap off the high board with Fevers of Unknown Origin as well.  Once that was done, it meant that every single poem available for submission was out at one journal or another and both books were out there as well.  Ack!  This morning, I was rewarded with an acceptance from a journal waiting in my inbox.  Wahoooooo!  At the moment, I have high hopes for all things poetry and have recovered from the sting of the NEA rejection (finding out that a good poet-friend received one of the fellowships went a long way to soothing my wound).

Later today, we have an editorial meeting for Heron Tree to work through more submissions.  If you haven't sent us anything, remember that we read through Dec. 1. 

Weekly Updates: Fairly Random & Disappointing

58º ~ after a weird run of days in the 80s, settling back into our amazing & beautiful fall weather, a gentle line of t-storms brought down a cold front last night, bright, clear sun

So, after my post on Tuesday morning, things pretty much went downhill this week.  It was a combination of misadventure and feeling low. 

C. was home from school all week with the pink eye, contracted from one of his students no doubt.  Teaching, the job that keeps on giving.  While I avoided conjunctivitis, I just ended up feeling achy, grouchy, and exhausted, coming home from teaching and sleeping each afternoon for several hours and then sleeping each night as well.  (Yes, I KNOW I am lucky beyond words to have a job with this kind of flexibility...it makes up for it when I'm grading non-stop.)  Normally, if I even dare take a 20-minute nap, my whole night's sleep is off.  My body may have been fighting something off, but I think my mind was also worn down by the mid-semester blues. 

On Friday, I received that lovely NEA email so many of us received: "sorry, try again in 2 years."  I was more able to keep the rejection in perspective this year, given all the misery left in Hurricane Sandy's wake, but it still hurts.  FB was extremely helpful as I felt less alone in the disappointment.

Speaking of destruction in the northeast.  I tried to get on the Poetry Society of American's website today and no luck.  Their address is Gramercy Park, NYC, so I'm wondering if they sustained damage as well.  Sending positive vibes to everyone in the path and especially those still without power.

Yesterday, I did summon the courage to send out The Girlhood Book of Prairie Myths to three more publishers.  Today, I spent an hour sorting through poems from the fever book that are available for submission to journals.  I ended up sending out only one packet, but I'm good with that.  This whole process has been so different from the past.  I've never had the whole collection of poems written while sending out individual poems.  It brings a different light to the revisions I make, and I feel like the manuscript as a whole will be the stronger for it.  I'm hoping to start sending that mss. out in January.

In good news, that extra hour of sleep last night was reviving, and I think having more light in the morning may help me bounce back from the blahs. 

Here's to a better week ahead!

H. Sandy, Inventing Constellations, and a Sickly Speaker Poem at Thrush

44º ~ a quick snap in the air these past two mornings, bright sun, calm winds, and dry, highs mid-60s


First and foremost, as a weather bug, I'm sending all my sympathies to those who have felt the winds and rains and surge and snows of Sandy.  I heard on The Weather Channel last night that in 1821 another hurricane made landfall over New Jersey/New York and caused much the same destruction, albeit to a much smaller population.  I know that it is easy to feel like the forecasters are over-promoting worst case scenarios in the days leading up to events such as this, but I am so thankful they are there, saving as many lives as they can.  Coming from tornado territory, where there might only be a moment's notice and a small portion of geography assaulted, I'm thankful there is so much lead time on hurricanes, even as I'm saddened by the huge path of destruction.

It's a good time to give to the Red Cross if you've got anything left to give.

~~~~~

On a brighter note, yesterday's mail brought my signed copy of good poet-friend Al Maginnes' new book Inventing Constellations (Cherry Grove, 2012).  I was lucky to this book in manuscript form awhile back and let me tell you, it's wonderful.  Al and I share several similarities.  We are both graduates of the MFA program at the University of Arkansas (although several years apart) and we both write poems that may seem at first to be "quiet" or "muted," but that lend themselves to longer, deeper readings.  In contrast, Al is a fan of the longer poem.  He has the strength to sustain his speaker and the situation of the poem over many lines and often over multiple pages.  This is the type of poetry that invites introspection and reflection; no flash in the pan here. 

At the heart of Inventing Constellations is a speaker, close to Al himself, entering fatherhood in late middle-age and confronting all the issues of parenthood alongside his own mortality.  Amidst those poems of fatherhood are poems of science and music, poems of politics and existentialism.  These are poems that observe the world in minute detail and draw on larger truths through the minutia of daily life. 

I've become fond of listing titles in these mini-responses, and here are few from Al.

The Consolation of Endless Universes
Parenthood as Correspondence Course
A Gravity More Forceful
Parenthood as Bad Theology
The Moon as Absence and Desire
The Mute Amnesia of Birds
Asking the Dead to Leave
Prayer for the Imponderables

The opening poem in the collection, "The Definitions," is a collection of prose segments exploring the nature of family and announcing that the speaker has become a father through adoption, which adds yet another layer to the woven fabric of parenthood presented in the book.  Here is one of my favorite excerpts.

A family is a boomtown, the only nest of light for miles, its laws
evolving with each new development.  Shifts work around the clock
saloons never close and the streets fill with stories that mean
nothing to anyone who doesn't live here.

And here is the beginning of "Parenthood as Bad Theology."

I am becoming the sermon I promised
..........I would never deliver, a sackclothed shadow,

caricature wielding the finger of admonition.
..........Smoky entreaties, curly wisps of logic
no cartographer could unwind...


~~~~~

Finally, all thanks to Helen Vitoria for the good work she is doing over at Thrush.  In the November issue, you'll find one of the earliest sickly speaker poems, "You Taught Me Devastation." For those of you interested in the drafting process, here's a link to the day I set down the first draft. (RIP, Lou-Lou, my little muse-kitty.)  The beginning is quite different from where the poem ended up, but that's the work of drafting.  The whole drafting process is so mysterious.  Here are two scans of my journal from the day this poem began.  (Thank the stars for revision!)

Weekly Updates: Predicting the Storm, Hosting Padma Viswanathn, Fellowship Applications, and Reading Submissions

59º ~ a near perfect fall weekend, alas marred by another Razorback loss in War Memorial Stadium (the world is surely turning upside down)


Over the last few days, as with most of the nation, we here at the desk of the Kangaroo have been following the path of Hurricane Sandy and anticipating her merger with the two winter storms over the northeast.  All jokes of my name aside, I'm hoping everyone out east is prepared for the worst even as I'm hoping y'all see the least.

~~~~~

My week of poetry was upended a bit by some work related business and the fact that the Big Rock Reading Series hosted Padma Viswanathan on Thursday night.  Because I'm a bit of an energy wimp, I've learned that I need to sleep in on the morning of the readings (on days when I don't teach), so that I can be "on" that evening.  While this means losing poetry time, it makes life much more bearable for the day after a reading. 

I'm thrilled to report that we had another wonderful evening.  Padma read two stories, "Transitory Cities" and "The Barber Lover," which is an excerpt from her novel The Toss of a Lemon.  We had an audience of 75 people, again with about an 80%/20% split of PTC folks and members of the community.  Based on both the verbal comments after the reading and the written comments on the survey, the audience connected with the stories and with Padma and folks were grateful for her appearance.  If you ever get the chance to hear her read, I highly encourage it!

~~~~~

This morning, I caught up on the loose ends cluttering my desk and was reminded of a fellowship deadline that is right around the corner.  When I began working on it, I thought I'd just take care of one or two bits of the whole and then finish the rest this week, but something overtook me and I spent three hours at the computer, eventually hitting "submit" for the whole thing.  Asking for money is always hard for me, as I know it is for others, but I have to remind myself that the work we do as writers is valuable yet undervalued.  Fellowships are a chance to make up that imbalance.  So, I did my best, tried to be as open and clear about my needs and off it went. 

The good thing is that by the time they make the announcement, I'll have forgotten that I sent it in, which always helps deaden the disappointment.  Of course, like most poets in America, I'm waiting to hear from the NEA...that one fellowship I'm never capable of forgetting for long.  (If anyone has already received word, please put me out of my misery!)

~~~~~

Finally, I wanted to say a few words about Heron Tree.  Many thanks to all of you who have sent encouraging notes about this new poetry journal.  I'm thrilled to be co-editing it with two dear friends.  I know many of you have submitted, and we are grateful for that!  *For those of you who have already submitted, we are notifying as we go.  We appreciate everyone's patience!

As we set out on the journey, my co-editors and I talked a lot about how we wanted the process of selecting poems to work and about being open to revising that process if we needed to.  We decided to attempt to read the poems blind, and so far that is working.  I confess, it takes the pressure off if/when I'm reading poems submitted by a poet-friend. 

One of the techniques we have developed along the way is the "pause list." As we read our packets independently of each other, we note down the ID number of any poem that makes us pause, any poem that we might even barely consider publishing.  These numbers get sent in emails that the others don't open until they've sent their pause list.  Then, when we have our editorial meetings, we only talk about those poems with pauses, even if the poem only received one pause note.  This helps because before the editorial meeting, we can each read through the poems noted in the list and really focus on just those poems, preparing our yay or nay or maybe votes.

I have to say that accepting poems is a huge rush.  When we arrive at that YES, I get a bit giddy and let out a little 'wahoo.'

As this has all unfolded, I'm grateful that I'm working with two other people who are sharp readers of poetry and good friends.  They keep me on my toes and ensure that I don't become so carried away with the beautiful language or images of a poem that I fail to check for a solid foundation underneath.  They remind me that in a joint effort we are working on a collaborative aesthetic.  This is not MY journal, and I think I know now that I wouldn't want to be an editor of one...too much pressure.

~~~~~

This next week looks a bit more conducive to poetry making, although the material needing to be graded floats there, ever at the surface, ever renewing itself.  At least this week there will be Halloween candy to carry me through!

Weekly Updates: A Hotel Lobby at the Edge of the World, Submissions, and a Dry Spell

77º ~ rising humidity, thin cloud cover, little to no wind, yellow leaves drifting groundward


A week without poetry events and no papers to grade meant a lot of rest here at the Kangaroo.  I've changed around my routine a bit to focus on poetry in the mornings.  How many times must I learn this lesson?  The focus and brainpower required for poetry is different than that for teaching and going about my daily responsibilities.  It must be seen to first, as my few weekday posts prove.

~~~~~

I spent the first part of the week sending out the weather/myth/fairy tale manuscript and being more thankful than ever for electronic submissions.  It simply saves so much time and paper.  I do know that those on the receiving end may print out submissions so I'm not really saving trees, but I'm hopeful that as we go along and people read more and more on the screen that they will be comfortable doing first reads electronically, at least.  (When I read the first few packets for Heron Tree, I printed out each poem; however, I quickly realized that I didn't need the paper version.  Instead, I read them on my iPad with an annotation program...PDFpen...for taking notes.  Long live the Ents and their trees!)

~~~~~

I'm starting to feel the effects of my dry spell, in terms of drafting new poems.  For the moment, I am a poet without a subject.  The sickly speaker manuscript feels sealed off and done; however, I'm in a bind.  I really think that the weather book needs to come out first because the sickly speaker is such a different beast, and the weather book is really an extension of the motifs in Blood Almanac.  I suppose I do not have the luxury of thinking along these lines and I should be sending both books out at once.  Dilemmas!

Still, I feel adrift and have begun to notice my absence from the journal.  If history is any indication, I'll soon find myself with lines (bad ones) bubbling up and wanting to be written down.  For the first time, I'm trying to be patient through the silent times and let the poems return of their own free will.

~~~~~

This week, along with Terry Wright's chapbooks, I've been digesting Adam Clay's A Hotel Lobby at the Edge of the World (Milkweed Editions, 2012).  A few weeks back, you might recall, I drove up to Fayetteville to see/hear Adam read.  He and I were at Fayetteville together in the MFA Program, and he's someone whose work I've always admired.  His first book, The Wash, is another one of my favorites.

In Hotel Lobby, Adam weaves a song of longing and uncertainty, but not about love or relationships; instead, these poems are about the ineffable nature of time, language, and memory.  These are ethereal poems weighed down by the objects of the world.

Here are a few titles:

Fragment for an Avoided Disaster
On the Momentum of Memory
For Your Eyelash Anchored to the Sky
As Complete as a Thought Can Be
Thought for a Stalled World
A Memory, Forgotten at the End of a Season
Myth Left in Memory
Reaching for a Lexicon, an Apple No Longer Shining

As I read this book, I couldn't help but think of my tiny, immature grasp on language theory, on signifier and signified.  I don't really think I know enough to use these terms correctly, but it seems to me these poems cover the same ground, questioning the act and power of naming both the concrete world around us and the abstract thoughts in our heads.  There are trains and bricks and rivers and wind, storms, and weather and none of these "reveal / that you are filled with the need / to document something" ("A Memory, Forgotten at the End of a Season").  In "Maybe Motion Will Save Us All," the speaker opens the newspaper "to see how the symbols add up / and where they lead" only to "find nothing."

There is a battle going on within the speaker of these poems, one that feels familiar to me, the battle of the life of the mind versus the life of the body.  The speaker struggles to capture in language the true nature of the world.  In section 14 of "As Complete as a Thought Can Be," he states, "I am beginning / to think a fragment / is as complete as a thought can be."

However, lest you think there are no things in these poems, I'll leave you with my favorite lines from "For the Driftwood I Once Loved."

.......When I think of voice, it is the South
I think of again and again, how the South shed

its rustic laugh for a noble one, how it shed its laugh for streetcar
.......sounds and Memphis weeds in an Arkansas field.

..............Downward sloaping sidewalk.  Hesitation wounds
in the sky.  A crabapple for each one.  A cherry blossom

.......in her teeth.  I am listening to my throat click.  I am hearing
..............a ghost long gone.

What I'm Reading: Two Chapbooks by Terry Wright

58º ~ wind advisory in place for most of the region today but calm for now, storms passed through overnight


I've probably mentioned Terry Wright here before.  He's the Grand Poobah of Poetry over at the University of Central Arkansas, having built the foundation over several decades for what is now the newly launched MFA program there.  After I read at the reception for the program, Terry sent me his two latest chapbooks:  Fractal Cut-Ups (Kattywompus Press, 2012) and Graphs (Kairos Editions, 2011).

In Fractal Cut-Ups Terry creates mash-ups to create a series of prose poems.  In each poem, two texts are fed through a virtual cut-up machine and mashed together multiple times.  The result according to Terry in the Notes section are poems that "are semi-found but consciously collaged."  The book contains 22 poems, followed by an extensive Notes section that first lists the two texts used to produce each poem and then "provide[s] mish-mash annotation: part aboveboard end note academic documentation, part gossip and paranoia and truthiness culled from the Web, part avowedly confessional secrets and sound bites from the author."  Each poem, then, lives again in a new way.

Throughout, the idea of fractal properties (self-similarity, theoretical infinity, and chaos theory) provide the underpinning for the book.

Here's an example from the start of "Invasion of the Action Painters."

Letting the world canvas dry to a Just War results in objectness.  The weapon of de Kooning was martyrdom.  The painter, a perceived threat, necessitates subconscious military action.  Only the artist, a sole superpower, envisages proactivity using tangible manifestations.  Attack creations are soon outspoken in every region, and dialogues with adversaries drip on statelessness horizons.

The Notes tell us that the two texts are a "Wikipedia entry on 'action painting'" and a "Wikipedia entry on 'the Bush Doctrine.'"  Did I mention that Terry is decidedly political in his work as well?  

In Graphs Terry works with another mathematical principle, the use of graphs to "abstractly represent a set of objects," according to the Notes section of this chapbook.  Instead of a mathematical, numerical grid, Terry provides "prose diagrams."  There are eight poems here and the same hefty Notes section as the previous book, this time where Terry lets us in on his thinking behind certain phrases in each poem.

Here's an example from the start of "Garbage Graph."

How apropos.  The chorus returns like another holiday.  The family's coming for festival. They're bringing Dionysus, god of wine -- and theater.  There's a cop out in the wings.  The bell rings announcing locker searches.

The Notes tell us that the "chorus" refers to "the bird girls in the musical Seussical -- if the show had been staged on a landfill" and "festival" is "[m]ore like Landru's fete from Star Trek's 'The Return of the Archons' than like Burning Man."  The note for this poem is easily twice the length of the poem itself and rather than over-explaining the poem, it morphs into something different altogether.

Terry's poems in these two collections eschew the traditional ideas of poetry and take us in a new direction of pop culture and political stances.  They contain the best of both comedy and tragedy, and they never take themselves too seriously.  Every time I read something of Terry's I remember that it's a big ol' poetry world and there is room for all the varied voices.

**If you are interested in the idea of a word mash-up, just Google "virtual cut-up machine" and numerous links will pop up.

Unexpected Post: A VIDA Moment

59º ~ mornings deliciously cool, open-windowed sleep
**This post began on Tuesday morning.  I finished it this morning (Wednesday).  Similar conditions.

This morning (Tuesday) I ran across the blog post "Mommy, Where Do Poems Come From?" on Bark. It is attributed to Casey, who I think must be Casey Patrick from the contributors list.  I like Bark a lot as a blog because it offers quite a few different views on writing and the writing life, often from young and emerging writers.

As I started to read Casey's post, I was only half-skimming, liking the new presentation of an old question.  It's hip; it's funny.  But then, gradually, I realized that all of the quotes chosen for the piece came from men, white men (or at least Western men...was Homer white?... who represent the CANON in all of its old standards). This made me wonder, where are the women?  the people of color? the non-Euro-American writers?  And this brought to mind, the VIDA count, the project that takes a look at the diversity or lack of diversity (specifically as to gender) in publishing today.

It seems to me that this post on where poems come from is exactly the kind of thing that demonstrates why the VIDA count matters. Presented as it is, it is hard not to see a clear patriarchal line in literature.  But perhaps I think about these things too much.  I went to an undergrad college where the English department was immersed in cultural diversity and worked actively to break the canon wide open (thank you Mara, Madhu, Mike, Ozzie, Janet, and so many more).  My grad school...not so much.

Reader, let me confess, I feel a bit of fear in writing this.  I'm sure I'm opening myself up to some caustic comments.  Important fact: I do not dispute Casey's right to be inspired by whomever inspires her, be it man or woman, Western or Eastern, religious or atheist, etc.  However, I was curious about her choices.  They seem to display a writing life steeped in the traditionally male canon and that worries me, if it is true. 

Here are a few of my own collected quotes on where poems come from.  I offer them up in conversation with the list on Casey's post, rather than in confrontation to it. 

Emily Dickinson:
"I had a terror -- since September -- I could tell none -- and so I sing, as the Boy does by the Burying Ground -- because I am afraid"
from a letter to T.W. Higginson, 25 April 1862

Lucille Clifton:
"Poetry for me is not an intellectual exercise. I really think that—to understand my poetry—I don’t think approaching it simply intellectually will help. It has to be a balance, I think, between intellect and intuition. For me, there is a kind of intuitive feeling for the language, for what wishes to be said."

Mary Oliver:
Poetry is "the wish to demonstrate a joie."

Quincy Troupe:
"All you’ve got are words and space and silence. You’re pulling these words out of this void."

Virginia Woolf:
"The first--killing the Angel in the House--I think I solved. She died. But the second, telling the truth about my own experiences as a body, I do not think I solved. I doubt that any woman has solved it yet."

I do notice that some of these do not fit easily into the "Poetry is..." framework.  That interests me as well.  Now, I have a need to do more research on this.  I hope the conversation will continue (and I'm thickening my skin for any caustic comments). 

Weekly Update: The Road to Happiness, The Museum of Americana, and a Shout Out

70º ~ a brief return to the 80s for the weekend with a bit of rain here and there, all in all pleasant days, windows are open


Of my mighty list of literary events in the area that I mentioned last weekend, I only made it to one.  The energies spread quite thin at this point in the semester, and by Friday I came down with a fever/cold, meaning I missed the launch of UALR's latest issue of their lit mag, Equinox.  Next time, y'all!

~~~~~

On Thursday night, I did get to attend the reception for two major Arkansas literary awards: The Booker Worthen Literary Prize and the Porter Fund Literary Prize.  For those U of A grads out there, the Porter Fund was established in 1984 to honor Dr. Ben Kimpel; however, he specified that the prize be named for his mother, Gladys Crane Kimpel Porter.  The Porter Prize goes to an Arkansas writer who has accomplished a substantial and impressive body of work.  The Booker Worthen is a prize established in 1999 to honor William Booker Worthen, who was a longtime supporter of the Central Arkansas Library System.  That prize goes to the best book published by an author residing in the CALS service area at the time of publication.  A book is eligible for selection for up to three years after its release.

On Thursday, David Welky received the 14th annual Booker Worthen Prize for his book The Thousand-Year Flood: The Ohio-Mississippi Disaster of 1937 and Margaret Jones Bolsterli received the 28th annual Porter Prize for her body of nonfiction work, including her most recent book During Wind and Rain: The Jones Family Farm in the Arkansas Delta 1848 - 2006. 

~~~~~

Shout out to Ms. Jobe, who was working at the event Thursday night and representing the first class of grad students in the UCA Arkansas Writers Workshop.  I met Jobe in August at my reading and was delighted to see her again.  She let me know that she and her peers have been reading the blog, so a huge THANK YOU to y'all!  Along with this shout out comes a request.  If you have any questions or curiosities about the writing world that you'd like me to address on the blog, please leave a comment or send me an email!

(Jobe: apologies if this isn't how you spell your name!) 

~~~~~

This week, fellow poet-friend Justin Hamm and his posse of amazing editors launched the museum of Americana, a new online journal of prose, poetry, and art.  According to its mission statement, the editors hope the journal "revives or repurposes the old, the dying, the forgotten, or the almost entirely unknown aspects of Americana. It is published purely out of fascination with the big, weird, wildly contradictory collage that is our nation’s cultural history."

There is some seriously great poetry there, including poems by poet-friends Kathleen Kirk and Karen Weyant, and some awesome art.  I haven't had a chance to dig into the prose yet, but I'm sure it will rise to the same level. 

~~~~~

Finally, we come to the book I read this week: Johnathon Williams' The Road to Happiness, recently published by Antilever Press.  On top of the poems, the reader gets an amazing introduction written by stellar poet and fellow U of A MFAer, Katrina Vendenberg.  Readers from last week will know that I attended a reading in Fayetteville recently and got to hear Johnathon knock a few of these poems out of the park.  I'm thrilled that he will be reading for the Big Rock Reading Series in April!

To understand my reaction to this book, you must know something about me personally.  I am addicted to true country music.  Let me be clear.  I do not mean that fluff that plays on the standard radio stations.  I mean the dark, soul-exposing music written by the great singer/songwriters stretching back to Johnny Cash & June Carter Cash and reaching up to Lucinda William, Gillian Welch, and Marie Gauthier.  Johnathon's book left me feeling wrung out and laid bare in the way of those musicians and their songs.

This is a book that tells the truth about the speaker's life growing up a country boy near Mena, AR, always on the edge of poverty and never far from the reach of religion.  These are poems so firmly rooted in place that there is no question about their authenticity.  We follow the speaker as he reaches adulthood, marries as is expected, and buries his father, all the while questioning his life and yearning for something more, something bigger.

If you like your poems laced through with the dust and grit picked up and hurled by the wind, or brazenly honest about the real work of marriage and parenthood, or packed full of the debris accumulated on a family farm as the speaker tries to educate himself up out of a life on the edge of prosperity, then this is the book for you.  Here are a few titles to tempt you.

"Trespassing in My Childhood Home"
"Soliloquy to the Peephole of Apartment 9"
"White Trash Ghazal"
"Head of Household"
"Pentecostal Girls"
"Notes on the Zombie Apocalypse"
"The Christian Motorcycle Association Arrives for Its Annual Rally Outside Mena, AR"

I'll leave you with a little bit from "Camping in the Ouachita National Forest."

Midnight, and my father's God can't see
in the dark.  Coyotes do unto others
by the tinctures of blood, their panting

like the whispered chansons of saints.
Nightcrawlers know a kind of scripture
driven to air on the ballasting dew.

Weekly Update: Natalie Diaz' When My Brother Was an Aztec and More

50º ~ light grayish skies, a small breeze knocking about in the branches, precursors to fall


Another intense week under the belt of the semester, nearing the snug fit of midterms before we let loose and move to the next notch as we fatten toward finals.

This week, I fulfilled my goal again and read one book, this time a book of poetry.  I will be forever indebted to Traci Brimhall for sending me a copy of Natalie Diaz' When My Brother Was an Aztec (Copper Canyon, 2012).  This is a stout book, weighing in at 102 pages of solid poems, many of them at least a solid page in length, but more often two or three pages.  This is Diaz' first collection and it knocked me out.  She writes of the modern day Native American experience in the southwest, and the book brought out echoes of Sherman Alexie, Joy Harjo, Wendy Rose, Simon Ortiz, and so many others. 

In the collection, the speaker traverses the dangerous territory of not only being a minority but also being a minority on the rez.  Her brother has succumbed to a meth addiction, after serving in Iraq, and his addiction tears the family apart. And while the brother haunts the entire book, Diaz does not allow that to become the sole focus.  Her speaker lives a full life as sister, daughter, woman, and lover.  Woven throughout the poems are both tribal traditions and references to Western figures. 

This may end up being my favorite book from 2012, as I've dog-eared so many pages, the top corner of the book bulges. Here's just a taste of what Diaz has to offer from "Abecedarian Requiring Further Examination of Anglikan Seraphym Subjugation of a Wild Indian Rezervation."

Angels don't come to the reservation.
Bats, maybe, or owls, boxy mottled things.
Coyotes, too.  They all mean the same thing--
death.  And death
eats angels, I guess, because I haven't seen an angel
fly through this valley ever.
Gabriel?  Never heard of him.  Know a guy named Gabe though--

As anyone who has ever tried to write one knows, pulling off an abecedarian with lines that flow smoothly the one into the other without calling undue attention to the form is hard to do.  Diaz knocks it out of the park.  The rest of the collection is expertly crafted and the lines sing, all the time drilling straight down into the heart, the meat of the matter.

~~~~~

In more poetry news, last night I drove up to Fayetteville to attend one of Matt Henriksen's Burning Chair Readings.  This one featured Johnathon Williams, Jessica Baran, Keith Newton, and Adam Clay.  Adam and I were at the U of A together, and it was wonderful to be able to hear him read in that magical city again.  I loved Adam's first book, The Wash, and have been eagerly waiting for his second book, The Hotel Lobby at the Edge of the World, out this year from Milkweed.  Also, Johnathon is slated to come down to PTC in April for the Big Rock Reading Series to read from his book, The Road to Happiness, so the trip doubled as a chance to get a preview of what's to come.  Can't wait to hear him read again. 

~~~~~

This coming week is going to be slammed, and I've got three night time literary events on the calendar!  Oh me, oh my, oh!  Tuesday night is the launch party for Escape Velocity, a collection of Charles Portis writings edited by Little Rock's own Jay Jennings, and Thursday night is the awards ceremony for Arkansas' two major literary awards the Porter Prize and the Booker Worthen Prize.  Finally, on Friday night UALR's literary magazine, Equinox, holds their launch party.  Whew.  I'm going to try to make as many of these as I can, but make no promises, given the burgeoning to-do list at PTC. 

~~~~~

In the meantime, the work of reading submissions has begun at Heron Tree, adding a whole new texture to my poetry life.  These are busy days, but I couldn't be happier!

Weekly Update: We the Animals & the P&W Calendar

72º ~ an overcast fall day, bird calls sounding through the open window drowned out by a plane, chances of rain & storms hovering to the north & west


This week, I redoubled my effort to find some time for poetry, which for me means, turning off the TV in the evening and refocusing, if I'm able.  Case in point, on Thursday night I fell asleep at 6:15 and nearly missed the first episode of the new season of The Big Bang Theory.  For this show, I will sacrifice my poetry time, but for few others.  The falling asleep should prove that the week had caught me by the heels.  Friday was a bit of a slug fest, but I did cut off the work day early and recharge.

This doubling down on my writing life resulted in two things.

1.  I read a book, yep, that's right, an entire book.  I picked up Justin Torres' We the Animals at the Arkansas Literary Festival back in April.  Having heard him read, I knew that this book would ignite in my hands when I opened the covers.  The novel follows the coming of age of an unnamed protagonist, a biracial boy discovering his sexuality in a rural town in New York.  He is the son of a Puerto Rican father and a white mother, and he understands very early that his homosexual desires will not be met with acceptance within his family, a family in which domestic violence and poverty rule.  The novel progresses from the time the boy is six until he enters his teens and is told in loosely connected, short, lyric chapters.  Still, the character developed is full and rich, the setting expertly used to support the larger themes.  It's a quick read, but one I know I will return to soon, to more fully understand just how Justin Torres pulls it all off.

2. I tried to catch up on my po-biz reading, which means reading the Sept/Oct issue of Poets & Writers.  I had started it a few weeks ago and then set it aside.  Like most people, I think, I might not read every article in P&W, but the ones that grab me tend to hold on and offer up something valuable.  In this case, the articles on VIDA, plans to create the American Writers Museum, 20th-Century American Poetry, and the in depth look at Natash Trethewey all offered up worthwhile efforts; however, it was the personal essay by Brenda Shaughnessy and Craig Morgan Teicher that kept me reading last night even as I was flagging & tired.  What a powerful account of a two-poet marriage and life as a writer with a child with special needs. 

As I read farther into the issue, I was actually happy to be able to by-pass the MFA section entirely.  While I think the idea of rankings and articles about whether or not writing can be taught are interesting, I've simply moved past them for now.  I know where I stand.  1) MFA/PhD/MA with creative emphasis...all worthy pursuits IF the students are made completely aware that those coveted wood-paneled offices & tweed jacket teaching jobs are few and far between.  2) Yes, most beginning writers can benefit from mentors. 3) No, a degree is not necessary to become a fabulous writer; it's just one way of buying time to write and perhaps gets some guidance along the way.

This led me to the DEADLINES section, and for the first time in my life, the P&W calendar saved me from missing a deadline.  I keep a rather extensive spreadsheet of book contests and reading periods; however, I nearly missed submitting The Girlhood Book of Prairie Myths to a contest this year.  This contest alternates every other year and the deadline is tomorrow.  I missed it b/c I hadn't submitted last year.

Luckily, the book contest allows electronic submission, so I spent this morning creating my submission file and loading up a new fee on my credit card.  Here's a hearty bon voyage to the poems and a hoping that in the coming week I find more time for the writing life.

Weekly Update: Concocting, Paginating, & Annotating the Poetry Manuscript

70º ~ fall graces us, even days of brief heat are enjoyed, recent rains revived the trees and lawns, praise be


Remember this, dear readers?

This was the status of the sickly speaker's manuscript when last I posted about it.  In early August, I had spent much of the summer living with the poems in this state and finagling the order of pages, finally striking on the idea of using two appendices: one for the general order poems and one for the definition poems.  When I had tried to intersperse these with the voice of the sickly speaker, she refused, although I had originally conceived those poems as "breaks" for the reader.  Once I got them set up in the appendices, I struck on the idea of annotating the manuscript.  Alas, the school days began and the sickly speaker grew quiet, perhaps also because she had made her escape.

Today, after having several great conversations about the mss. with Traci Brimhall, who was in town Thursday - Friday, I woke once more with the sickly speaker's voice in my head.  This time she was poking at me to re-read the collection straight through to check the order again, and then to try out this annotation idea.

While the pages are no longer taped up on the bookshelves as shown above, I was able to see that one poem needed to be moved up a slot.  I also went back to the vexing question of the ampersand. I found myself putting the ampersands back in at the insistence of the sickly speaker.  However, there is a method to my madness.  She uses the ampersands when joining two nouns, two verbs, or two adjectives.  In a compound sentence or longer description, not so much. 

When I had the poems in place and the tweaking done, I printed things out, eager to see if the annotation would work.  I laid out the appendices and quickly figured out that I wouldn't want to footnote "whitecoat" every time I'd used it in the sickly speaker poems, just to point to "11 General Orders of a Whitecoat" in Appendix A.  So, I decided I would find the first usage of the word and annotate that.  (This all came about because I was worried the readers would arrive at the end of the sickly speaker's story and skip the appendices or find them cumbersome.  This way, the reader is directed to the appendices throughout the collection, hopefully making it more organic but without disrupting the sickly speaker's story.)

Now, I have the manuscript all prettified, with title pages, an acknowledgments page, and a table of contents, plus the dreaded page numbers.  I think I've finally ingrained in my memory the process for getting the page numbers to show up for the body of the book, but not the front matter.  In Microsoft Word, it's all about creating a section break at the end of the front matter and before the text begins.  Then, when formatting the footer/header, be sure the cursor is in the footer/header for the body of the text and open the formatting palette.  Then, insert the page numbers and click off (empty) the box for "Link to Previous" so that the two sections aren't connected. Also, click on the "format page numbers" icon and tell it to start at page 1.  Voila!

All praises to Word that the footnote feature is much easier to use!

I'm still mostly focused on the weather book, now called The Girlhood Book of Prairie Myths, but I also don't feel like the sickly speaker has anything else to say.  Oh my, I'm once again a poet without a subject.  Wonder what will pop to the surface next?

Weekly Update: The Rain Returns

71º ~ the rains began Friday afternoon around 5:00 p.m. and doused us all night long and on/off Saturday, today remains gray, cool, and wet without the showers ~ we rejoice the return of more sensible temperatures, even if the rain is too late to save the farmer's from the drought


Classes are well underway, and this past week I felt like I might have my semester sea legs back beneath me. Why, on Wednesday afternoon, I wasn't even exhausted yet! 

This coming week is going to be poets, poets, poets!  I'm so excited.

First, we have Marck L. Beggs, an Arkansas poet and singer/songwriter who will be appearing at the Big Rock Reading Series (curated by yours truly).  I heard Marck read seven or eight years ago, but I haven't heard him perform any of his music, so I'm doubly thrilled for Tuesday night.  If you are in Central Arkansas, we hope you'll stop by! (6:00 p.m. Tuesday, PTC's Main Campus, Campus Center, 2nd floor)

Then, the wonderful & amazing Traci Brimhall will be in town for a reading at UALR Thursday evening (6:00 in the Donaghey Student Center, Room D).  On Friday, Traci is going to make an appearance in my creative writing class at PTC before heading over to Hendrix College to do a reading and shop talk with the students there.  I'll be her chauffeur on Friday, which means I get to hear her read THREE times.  Wahooooooooooo!

Traci Brimhall

In the meantime, I've been learning the ropes of co-editing a journal and reading the first sets of submissions to Heron Tree.  Remember, we take submissions through December 1, so if you haven't sent anything our way yet, you know what to do!  Check out our guidelines here.

Finally, a bit of good news.  Two more of the sickly speaker poems have found a home.  Endless thanks to Patty Paine and the good folks at diode for their support.  I'm super excited about this acceptance because the first of the dictionary definition poems has found a home.  I'll keep you posted for when they hit the web.

Sadly, no time for submissions today, since I need to hit the school work to prepare for the big week of poetry, which will take me away from some of my other duties.  Still, I'm feeling pretty good about the new work load (school, poetry, house/spouse/pets), except for the fact that I have so little time to be on the blogs!

Weekly Update: The Prairie & The Fever

80º ~ sweet relief on the back side of a storm, wicked & wild, on Friday night ~ 4 limbs down in the backyard, nothing damaged


The prediction held true for the past week.  No time for poetry Monday - Friday, or at least no time for poetry outside the classroom.  I confess that I assign Sylvia Plath's "Daddy" every semester just so I can read/perform it.  Reason #492 that I love my job.

Still, I've found time for peace and poetry this weekend. 

Saturday was devoted to The Girlhood Book of Prairie Myths, that new title for the weather manuscript, which now includes the prairie fairy tales.  I spent the morning reading the entire book once again, probing for weaknesses and tweaking where needed, and then preparing submissions for three publishers.  It's wonderful to be able to have renewed energy for this group of poems, but I'm slimming down the number of places I'll submit.  In part this is a time concern; in part this is a financial concern.  I can see that I'll be ready to submit the fever book in the spring, and, sadly, most poetry manuscript submissions require a reading fee.

I've said this before, and I'll say it again, as long as a press is on the up and up and uses my fee to publish books I enjoy, I'll submit to them.  However, I will not go into debt to do so.  If that means it takes longer for my manuscript to find the right home, so be it.  Even with a full-time job, the money only goes so far.

Today (Sunday) has been given over to the sickly speaker and her fever poems.  I'm glad I'm not rushing to send the manuscript out, given the fact that as I've been working hard at getting more of the individual poems out there, I continue to find mushy spots in the poems that need to be addressed.

This morning, I sent one group of poems out to a non-simultaneous submission journal.  As I stated last week, this is a bit of a new focus for me.  I have a poet-friend who once said "well, I never simultaneously submit," and I remember being stunned by this and confused.  If one doesn't SS, then one must wait and wait and wait for the response from each individual journal before moving on.  Now, I'm beginning to see that this can be a good thing when the calendar is filled to the brim with other responsibilities.  It is much less daunting to sit down and prepare one group of poems for one journal than it is to have to sort through five - ten journals and re-read all of their guidelines.

That being said, I also tackled a packet for a SS-accepting journal this morning.  This journal just sent me a rejection on Sept. 1; however, the poetry editor included a wonderful note about the poems.  Because he did so, I replied with a "thank you for taking the time" email and we had a brief exchange.  I asked about submitting again, and he encouraged me to do so.  Not wanting to let the folks on the staff at the journal forget me, I had their folder on the top of my pile this weekend.

The pile: In the past, I would make a stack of my poem folders (those able to be submitted) and a stack of my journal folders (those accepting submissions).  Then, I would create groups of poems and journals and spend roughly two days sending things out into the world.  If I didn't finish and the pile remained on my desk, it would bother me and bother me until I finished.  Now, the pile seems to be ever-present, growing and shrinking as I have time to do the work.

This crazy life continues to remind me that we are all works-in-progress.  So be it.

Weekly Updates: Summer Refuses

99º ~ feels like 110º with the heat index included = dew point at 74º ~ grab your oxygen tanks friends & neighbors


Happy Labor Day to all.  Summer here in central Arkansas refuses to let go its fierce grip, at least through the next five days. 

It looks like this blog will now become a weekly.  The build up of responsibilities at school, while not anything majorly different than in the past, have tipped the needle from the balancing point I'd established last year.  One of the benefits of being at an institution for seven years is gaining responsibilities within the department that require just a bit more time and effort.  I'm happy to serve as I believe, adamantly, in our mission.  (Who would have thought I'd find such a home in a community college when I was full of dreams of teaching in a small, liberal arts undergraduate college?)

My classes are off to great starts.  I've got Comp I, Creative Writing I, and Intro to Poetry on the books this semester, and I'm impressed with the energy showing in all the classes so far.  My creative writing class did the human knot exercise on Friday, which is always a blast.  If you don't know this ice breaker, here's a great link to explain more.  Basically, the students stand in a circle, shoulder to shoulder and reach out and clasp hands with strangers (different folks for each hand).  Then, working as a team, shifting under and over and around each other, they have to undo the knot and return to the circle WITHOUT BREAKING THEIR GRIPS.  Yep, they have to get up close and sweaty with each other.  This forces them to know each others' names (we had done name ice breakers both Wednesday and before the knot on Friday), and they get to laugh quite a bit with each other.  It's also a great indicator of how different personalities will play in workshop.

This is an exercise I highly recommend for any and all workshop type classes.  It's hard to feel shy once you've had your face in someone else's armpit!


~~~~~

While most of the work week is taken up by classes & departmental duties, and the first part of the weekend was spent with family, I had some time this morning to turn to my own poems.  On the top of my list lately has been submissions.  I'm woefully behind in getting my work out there.  In the past, I've had a more steady flow of writing, revising, submitting, writing, revising, submitting, &etc.  Since I devoted so much time this past summer to the sickly speaker, I find myself with an unusual amount of material that needs to get out into the world. 

This turns out to be a good thing, as I'm not sure how much drafting time I'll have during the school year. 

In the past six months, I've broken from an old pattern regarding submissions.  I used to focus solely on simultaneous submission journals.  I still believe in these wholeheartedly, especially for emerging writers.  In the way back time, I would submit one packet of five poems to ten different SS-accepting journals.  In more recent years, as I discovered more success, I'd whittled that down to five poems to five different journals, to save time on withdrawal notifications.  This is not to say I had a 100% success rate anywhere, only my acceptances did get better, resulting in more WD emails & letters. 

Now, I'm focusing more on those "no simultaneous submission" journals.  These tend to be the higher tier places, although some of the highest still take SS subs. 

In any case, I managed to get two submissions "out the door" this morning.  That's the electronic door now, thank the stars!  If not accepting SS subs, at least I can save time and postage by submitting electronically. 

Still, I've got a huge stack of sickly speaker poems lined up for those wonderful SS-accepting journals.  Hopefully, I'll have enough steam some evenings this week to shepherd them out into the world as well.

~~~~~

In between getting poems ready to submit (and yes, still finding tiny areas to nip & tuck / revise), I've been exchanging emails with my co-editors at Heron Tree.  We are now officially open for business!  Wahoooooooo!

I know some of you have already submitted, and thank you for that!  If you are a poet, please send us some of your best work anytime between now and 1 Dec.  Our guidelines are here.  We do accept simultaneous submissions, given swift notification if poems are accepted elsewhere.

I know that reading submissions and discussing those poems with my co-editors will eat up some of my poetry time.  I'm fine with that.  I've long wanted to become involved in putting out a journal, so this is a bit of a dream come true.  Still, it will be another contributing factor in fewer blog posts.  When weighing the priorities of my writing time, it's clear that writing, revising, and submitting comes first.  Then, all the rest.

Even though I'll be here less frequently, I am ever thankful to those of you who read!  You help keep me motivated, and you keep me honest about the life of a working poet.