What I'm Reading: Pathogenesis

I picked up Pathogenesis by Peggy Munson at AWP at the Switchback Books table. I wasn't familiar with either the poet or the press, but I'm glad I stopped when the little square of a book caught my eye. (The book measures 6" x 6" and feels great in the hand.)

The core of the book emerges from Munson's life experiences suffering from Chronic Fatigue Immune Dysfunction Syndrome (CFIDS), a disease I must admit I was unfamiliar with until I read the book. The book is grounded in the poet's body, a body in pain, a body in constant battle. This could easily have become they type of book that keeps me reading just by the sheer unusualness of the subject matter, and yet the poems rise above the subject matter into art.

Munson's ear is finely tuned. She makes great leaps with word choice and syntax. The poems almost spring from the page there is so much energy entrapped within. The book ends with the title poem, a long sequence of ten sections. Here are some favorite lines.

From "Pathogenesis" Section II:
"I imagine the desert landscape: nuclear waste sold to Indian reservations,
bomb tests, thievery of the vastness. And think: whose daughter imploded here,

which star metastasized as she wished upon her body, hand flat on chest?"

From "Pathogenesis" Section VI:
".... Still, the wolf incisors put the red in fairy tales, and blood spills / over childhood myths of fairness."

From "Pathogenesis" Section IX:
"I have grown as permeable as a night of rotting irises, // my blood-brain barrier a colander for all the poisoned green."

What I'm Reading: Lucky Wreck

It happened the way I'm sure publishers hope it will happen. I went to a panel at AWP and heard Ada Limón read from her forthcoming book Sharks in the Rivers (Milkweed, 2010). During the reading, I fell a little bit in love with her, the way readings can make that happen. Later, wandering the book fair, I found her name on a book and bought it. Lucky Wreck, which won the 2005 Autumn House Poetry Prize, has been on the top of the stack since I got back and now, blessed be to summer, I have time to read.

One of the things I admire about this book is Limón's straight-forward voice, no punches pulled but still with a lyricism that draws me in. There are the usual wide-ranging human themes and little moments of hard-earned wisdom offered up as just that...take them for what they are worth, take them or not.

Of course, being from a prairie state, which means being from a place defined by wind, how could I not love a book whose first line is "We solved the problem of the wind" (from "First Lunch with Relative Stranger Mister You")?

Section Three, "The Spider Web" is an amazing crown of sonnets that just blew me away. The ability to sustain the formal elements and link the seven sonnets so intricately is mirrored in the extended metaphor of a spider working a web throughout. Some lines that stuck with me:

from sonnet 2
"As a child I remember knowing how to float
When sober was the wind and my body, the boat."

from sonnet 3
"It's not God, I tell you. It's my mother,
Though there is little difference between the two.
I'm convinced that together they're planning a coup."

from sonnet 7
"If I had my choice, I'd have a boat of my own,
The sails would be my skin, the bow my bones."

Driven

The return to the world of writing begins. Thanks to a good writing friend who agreed to exchange some prompts/assignments with me on Sunday, ideas, images, and words started coalescing in my brain. This morning I was driven from bed a half hour early as the next few lines to something I'd started the night before sprang into my head.

Then, a long day involving lots of errands and then sanding and priming (interior) to prepare for more painting tomorrow. Now, my body is tired, but once again, without willing it, my brain had been mulling over the new poem and I had to sit down and work on it some more.

After a long period of not writing, it is reassuring to feel the wheels turning once more.

More Good News

Last night I received another "good news" email, this time from Copper Nickel. Jake Adam York and Anisetta Valdez, poetry editors, wrote to accept all four of the poems I had submitted. Previous readers will know that I greatly admire this journal and the people who work on it, so it was truly humbling to find out that they had taken the entire submission.

By some wonderful twist of fate, my last three acceptances have been for entire submission packets (or what was left after withdrawing a poem). Typically, I have placed one poem at a time, and when someone has taken two, I've been through the roof. Two years ago, Crab Orchard took three and I nearly floated away from delight. Now, after a particularly rough spring, filled with doubting, to receive this bounty of confidence boosting news is such a gift. Many thanks to all the tireless editors and readers at all the journals out there who provide that vital link between writer and audience.

Good News While Traveling

While I was out of town this weekend, I received a "good news" email from J. P. Dancing Bear of the American Poetry Journal. He took three poems for a future issue! One of these poems has been around the block a few times and underwent a serious revision before this last round of submissions. I've always believed in the poem, but it took a seriously long time (two years) to find its true form. It really is gratifying to see the work pay off.

Many thanks to J. P. Dancing Bear and the other fine people over at APJ!

Happily, happily, I'm running low on poems that are submission ready and I'm eager to get to work on the new drift of drafts.

Poetry Timeout

Yes, this blog is meant for Poetry, but sometimes Baseball interrupts.

It happens every year. At some point, the ivy at Wrigley greens into full-blown Spring and I miss it. Ryan Theriot just hit a double off the wall and I did my yearly double-take. When did that happen? Just proves how mind-consuming the end of the semester becomes.

On a happy note, I turned in my last set of grades at 11:00 this morning. After some family business this weekend, I'm back on track with my writing time. I can feel the poems building.

Until then...

Budy poem on Verse Daily

Check out Andrea Hollander Budy's poem on today's Verse Daily. I love the first line: "Her voice has too much jewelry in it."

Enjoy!

No Poems, Just this Dream Fragment

Driving down a two-lane highway in the country in the rain, everything lush and green, I realized I was going the wrong way and needed to turn around. I turned left into a rough driveway and saw a gray horse ahead. Not wanting to scare it, I stopped and began backing up to turn around. The horse suddenly surged forward, thundered onto the hood of my car, (a sound I can still hear) and launched itself into the passenger seat through the windshield, where the glass had mysteriously disappeared. Flailing hooves and the knowledge that the horse was definitely angry and threatening forced me awake.

Stats

I'd let the rejections pile up on the desk over the last few weeks, so today I recorded everything and in the process did some good revision work (the usual outcome of rejections). Revising individual poems led me to revising Glacial Elegies. All of my fall book submission have come back negative, but I had come to expect that. The manuscript I sent out in the spring and continue to work on now is a tighter version of what I sent in the fall. I imagine it will tighten up even more before the next round as well. I don't seem to be able to stop tinkering (and couldn't with the first book either).

As I was revising, I got nervous about the number of poems in the manuscript that are written in couplets. I really can't explain where the nerves came from, or why I zeroed in on the couplets, but I did. I do remember Jim Whitehead once pointing out that all of my poems at the time were written in columns of three- or four-beat lines. This lack of range displeased Jim, and I've been overly conscious of relying on one formal structure too much ever since then, I guess. However, I know many poets who spend their entire careers writing within a certain formal frame. If the poems are written well should it matter? Do you worry about getting stuck in a rut?

So, this being baseball season (go Cubs!), I turned to the numbers. Currently, there are 54 poems in Glacial Elegies. Here's the form & theory breakdown:

Single stanza: 5
Couplets: 12
Tercets: 8
Quatrains: 5
Regular stanzas of other lengths: 3
Sonnet-like: 4
Triolets: 2
Regular pattern (i.e. couplet, tercet, couplet, etc.): 8
Varied lines & stanzas: 7

If this provides any deep insights to anyone, please let me know.

In the Mail Today

Contributor copies of GRIST Issue 2. The issue contains several old friends, not the least of whom is the cover artist, Mark Cherry. I have always loved "Wedding Day," the painting on the cover of the journal, and now I have my own replica. Yay! It was a great surprise to tear open the packaging and see a familiar image there waiting for me. Inside, I find two poet friends as well, Adam Clay and Al Maginnes. The list of contributors is awesome, and I can't wait to dive into the issue! I'm glad to count Charlotte Pence, the editor, as a new acquaintance, although we missed a "live" meeting at AWP. And, thanks again to Joshua Robbins, the poetry editor, for taking one of my poems.

Also in the mail, a new issue of Gulf Coast. Always a treat.

Those of you who interact with me on a regular basis know I've been going through a bit of a funk when it comes to writing and poetry. I've experienced downtime in the past, and I do buy into the thinking that downtime can be good, a natural recharging of the batteries and all that. However, this time has been different. I have felt lost and empty about not only writing but also about reading. It has been a struggle and it has been scary. What am I if not a writer? What would my life be like if I just stopped? (It recently dawned on me that I could, you know, just stop. No more worrying about it; I could just go on being a teacher and general citizen of the world.)

Slowly, in the last few days, I've felt a slight awakening. I won't say too much, lest the freeze return, but at least now, there is hope.

Pictures from the Arkansas Lit Festival

Allison Joseph













Allison Joseph













Andrea Hollander Budy














Geoff Brock













Marck Beggs

Arkansas Literary Festival

This weekend is the Arkansas Literary Festival, and yesterday, I went to two fabulous poetry panels. Here's the info on the panels:

POETRY PANEL I with Andrea Hollander Budy, Ann Fisher-Wirth and Allison Joseph. All three poets are featured in the anthology When She Named Fire. Moderated by Andrea Hollander Budy.

POETRY PANEL II with Marck L. Beggs, Geoff Brock and Suzann Steele Saltzman. Explore poetry, multicultural training methods, translations and more through three very different poets' words. Moderated by Marck L. Beggs.

I've known and admired the work of Marck Beggs and Geoff Brock, as well as Andrea Hollander Budy and Allison Joseph, and I was pleased to be introduced to the work of Suzann Steele Saltzman and Ann Fisher-Wirth. It was also great to see the room packed for both events. We were in the new Arkansas Studies Institute building in the River Market. Very cool.

It's Impressive When

a journal is so good I can't stop reading and re-reading BOTH the prose and the poetry, let alone looking at the art. That's where I am with Copper Nickel. It's been my bedtime reading companion for the last week or so. I picked up a couple of issues at AWP, and I'm currently reading Issue 11. The story "Throw Him in the Water" by Matthew Kirkpatrick was so engaging and haunting that I keep replaying it in my head, days later. The next night, I read "Limo" by Cate Witter, another fresh and interesting voice, this time reframing the theme of loss in an indirect light, exposing a facet I hadn't considered before. There are so many poems that deserve notice in the issue that I'm not going to single any one out. Just trust me that you NEED to read this journal. I love the large size that allows the poems to play out on the page as they need to, either with tight/concise lines or sprawling/crawling ones.

One thing that draws me to this journal is its publication policy. Here is the blurb from the website:
Unlike traditional campus literary journals, Copper Nickel publishes work by student authors and by professional authors. Selection is competitive, and more like a national literary journal's editorial process than a traditional campus literary magazine's. The idea is that the best student work is worthy of publication in the best journals, so we created one of those "best" journals so our students could have the best showing possible. Copper Nickel is recognized as a national literary journal, but unlike other national journals our staff is 96% undergraduate students.

One last note, the staff is sponsoring a subscription drive for National Poetry Month. See the info on the website linked above.

Happy reading!

Pictures from Friday

The ATU English Dept website now has pictures and a blurb about my reading on Friday. Check it out here.

Thank You, Arkansas Tech

I spent a wonderful day on the Arkansas Tech University campus yesterday. Many thanks to the English Department for hosting me in their kick off to National Poetry Month. Special thanks go out to Dr. Ritchie, Paul Lake, Dr. Brucker, and Wanda Choate. During the day, I visited Mr. Lake's Intro to Poetry class as well as his Intro to Creative Writing class. I did get the chance I was hoping for to interact with the students and answer some great questions. During lunch, I met a wonderful senior who is about to embark on her pursuit of an MFA, and I wish her all the best in that adventure. The audience for my reading was a pleasant mix of students, faculty, and members of the community. A very big thank you to everyone who chose to come and listen to my poetry on a beautiful, sunny, spring Friday evening. I was charmed by you all!