Category: Whole Life of the Poet (Page 13 of 18)

Frustrations of Genres / Poetry News

May 12, 2015 / Big Bang Poetry / 0 Comments

The Problem Children of Poetry

I'm in kind of void of postings because I'm on the cusp of a review of New Mexico poetry anthologies, a new new poll and a new list. None of those are ready yet so I suppose this is a good time to talk about the frustration of genres.

My first book of poems struggled for over 20 years to find publication. Although I would read the poems in workshops and at conferences and receive unbelievably positive feedback, something was wrong.

I say that because the level of positive response only confused me in light of the fact that I couldn't get this book any traction. A former editor of Graywolf Press even raved to my face about the poems at a Colrain conference eons ago. But contests and publishers were not interested. Twenty years of contest fees add up to that fact.

Was it the way I read them? I suck at readings so that definitely was not the case.

Meanwhile, a few years ago Graywolf itself published a book of science poems by Tracy K. Smith called Life on Mars, a book that went on to win a Pulitzer Prize. My book was titled almost the same thing in one of its incarnations. In fact my 1997 thesis at Sarah Lawrence might be named something like that.

But my poems are different thank Smiths, our Mars subject aside. My poems are about the idea of U.S. manifest destiny as it pertains to our dream of colonizing Mars. Sounds like science fiction doesn't it and what literary publisher would like to publish anything slightly tainted with the stamp of SciFi. Answer: none.

Science fiction publishers didn’t appreciate the book either. Because it wasn't science fiction.

Thank God, technology in my lifetime has allowed me to pull my own project to fruition (self-publish) and move on with my life.

I'm only reminded of all this because last week USA Today published a story about how Elon Musk plans Seattle office for Mars colonization. The poems in Why Photographer’s Commit Suicide are based on Michael Collins’ book about similar plans to colonize Mars.

I now worry that my second book will suffer the same tragic fate. It’s another mashup book only this time its a mashup of Buddhism and cowboy stories. Cowboy stories. Oh dear. Sounds like cowboy poetry. Another literary poetry problem child. Such a throwback. Although they're not cowboy poems!

Poetry in the News

Philip Levine who explored the working lives of American people. (The Independent)

Should the poet laureate have to write about the royal birth? (The Guardian)

William Faulkner Makes Us Wonder: What's So Great About Poetry, Anyhow? (NPR)

Palm Tree and the Poetry of M.S. Merwin (The New Yorker)

Yeats’ 150^th Birthday Parties (The Guardian)

British punk poet Dr. John Cooper Clarke hits U.S. at last (SF Examiner)

Arthur Sze Finalist for Pulitzer Prize (Albuquerque Journal)

Documents confirm fascists murdered Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca (World Socialist Web Site)

From the archive, 27 April 1915: Editorial: A Poet’s Death; The death of Rupert Brooke leaves us with a miserable sense of waste and futility, yet it is impossible to withhold even the most precious personalities (The Guardian)

Alissa Quart, The Money Poet (The New Yorker)

Hard Times for Poets: Quotes and Stories to Keep You Going

April 28, 2015 / Big Bang Poetry / 0 Comments

Some quotes to keep you hanging in there as a writer when you feel like giving up!

“It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.” – Confucius

“Fall down seven times, get up eight!” – Japanese Proverb

“The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away many small stones.” – Confucius again!

And some more ridiculous reviews:

“The final blowup of what was once a remarkable, if minor, talent.”

– Clifton Fadiman, The New Yorker on Absolom, Absolum! by William Faulkner, 1936

“…a book of the season only…”

– New York Herald Tribune

“The Great Gatsby falls into the class of negligible novels”
– Springfield Republican on The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1925

“Monsieur Flaubert is not a writer.”

– La Figaro on Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert 1857

From Bill Henderson's Rotten Reviews

The Biology of Narcissism and Mindfulness and What It Means For Poets

March 22, 2015 / Big Bang Poetry / 0 Comments

Poetry writing is a field where everyone is on a mad mission to distinguish themselves from everybody else. The popular complaint among poets is that everybody writes but nobody reads. It’s true that reading someone else’s writing is a compassionate act and not too many writers are on a mission of compassion. They're on a mission of self-esteem. It's exhausting and Kristin Neff is a scientist who has given a Ted Talk on compassion versus self-esteem. She talks about how the self-esteem movement has contributed to the narcissism epidemic and how this contributes to bullying in various populations and the great American fear of being average.

You see the self-esteem drama everywhere: on TV advertising, interacting with drivers on the street, in awful news stories. I see it in MFA ads for poetry programs. In fact, there's a new game in town: tapping into a student's ego to lure them into the program. In Poets & Writers issue January/February 2015 there's an add full of published books with a blank space reading, “The Place for our Next Book is Here” (meaning you!) and in APR's last issue there is an ad stating “Before you write your success story, you have to find your voice.” It's all about your success story! Wow.

These are topics I cover in Writing in the Age of Narcissism. For years, advertising has been banking on our narcissistic tendencies, our self-obsession and our desire for fame and to consider ourselves above average.

View the Ted Talk: The Space Between Self Esteem and Self Compassion: Kristin Neff at TEDx Centennial Park Women

More quotes on the topic:

And I'm not the only poet talking about this. Bianca Stone (daughter of Ruth Stone) says, “I’ve always been drawn to science, especially neuroscience. I feel that poets look at the world so differently because of something to do with the way their brains are wired." Bianca Stone, Poets & Writers, January/February 2015

In his essay "Casting Stones" on the Mary Kay Letourneau story called Charles D’Ambrosio talks about the “reflective rush to judge” and “threadbare or disingenuous language which failed to allow for the possibility that [the case] was both simpler and more complex than they were prepared to understand or admit…My felling was, first you sympathize, then you judge – that’s a complex human response. You sympathize first, and until that happens, you don’t understand anything.” Quoted in Poets & Writers, November/December 2014

Read more quotes about writing and narcissism here: http://www.marymccray.com/writing-in-the-age-of-narcissism.html#writers

Inspired by this, I've decided to embrace my average-ness. I’m an average working writer. And that’s okay. In fact, that’s pretty respectable.

It’s That Time of Year: World Poetry Day, National Poetry Month

March 22, 2015 / Big Bang Poetry / 0 Comments

It's spring and poems are in the air!

The Poetry Month poster for 2015 is out from the Academy of American Poets. I've already hung mine (which I received as a member but you can request a free one here) on my office wall and have already received comments about it from artists in the office who walk by and recognize the work of Roz Chast. She illustrated a Mark Strand poem.

Which reminds me that April is also the month for the NaPoWriMo 30 poems in 30 days challenge. This will be my third year participating in this very exhausting gauntlet of poetry writing.

Every year I say I'm going to use the site's prompts and every year I'm itching to work on some other idea. I was going to try to do 30 "addresses" inspired by Kenneth Koch's book New Addresses which I read last year on my eReader.

But since I've been working at CNM and studying both user architecture and design and mindfulness and its cognitive science, I've decided on doing a project that melds both the Wikipedia list of cognitive biases and mindfulness practices. The project is called "31 Poems of Suffering."

Poems will be posted, as usual, daily on Hello Poetry. You can view poems from past year's challenges here, too: http://hellopoetry.com/mary-mccray/

News about World Poetry Day: http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/21/living/feat-world-poetry-day/ (CNN)

Poetry in College Courses; the Poetry of Mindfulness

March 1, 2015 / Big Bang Poetry / 0 Comments

I love to see poem used to illustrate non-literary concepts in academic papers. I blogged about this in 2012, Using Poems for Research Projects.

So I'm thrilled to be in a CNM course on Mindfulness where our teacher, Beth Giebus-Chavez, opens each class with a poem that describes a concept where learning that week. It's awesome! The poems get at the topic from another angle, or a substrata that the academic papers, videos and mp3s, discussions and journalings can't reach. The poems are not only examples of mindfulness but they are the very practice of mindfulness.

Here are the poems we've covered so far:

In one of the live lectures on Mindfulness, we also covered this poem, "Autobiography in Five Short Chapters" By Portia Nelson.

News and Affirmations

February 7, 2015 / Big Bang Poetry / 0 Comments

Poet News

Neruda is back in the news with investigations on his possible poisoning.

The Hindu does a short piece on protests poetry.

The Huffington Post has a story on Rupi Kaur, "The Poet Every Woman Needs to Read.

A tale of two Iranian poets: "Iran has long been one of the few countries where poetry enjoys mass popularity. So, it came as no surprise that the death earlier this week of the poet Moshfeq Kashani was treated as a major event with a special message from Supreme Guide Ali Khamenei paying tribute to the poet and miles of coverage in the official media. Kashani collapsed and died during a ceremony honoring another poet in Tehran…At the same time, however, the same authorities that heaped praise on the 89-year-old Kashani were determined to prevent any attempt at marking the first anniversary of the execution of another poet, the much younger Hashem Shaabani, who was sentenced to death by hanging on a charge of “waging war on God”.

The New York Times obituary of poet Rod McKuen.

In local news…

I've added new quotes on writing strategies and narcissism to my book page for Writing in the Age of Narcissism.

Poet Affirmations

We haven't done these in a while. These are all by poet Mark Nepo and these quotes can help guide us all through ways of seeing and intellectualizing what we write about:

"Live loud enough in your heart
and there is no need to speak."

"Birds don’t need ornithologists to fly."

"If you can’t see what you’re looking for, see what’s there."

"Before fixing what you’re looking at, check what you’re looking through."

"No amount of thinking can stop thinking."

Writing in the Age of Narcissism

January 19, 2015 / Big Bang Poetry / 0 Comments

The narcissism epidemic has spread around the world and has tainted the attitudes and impulses of writers and all artists. This situation affects our futures and our fortunes. In my new eBook, Writing in the Age of Narcissism, I talk about strategies of literary criticism as they enable narcissism, as well as possible solutions to counter-act destructive tactics in writing and reviewing.

I've just created a dedicated page for the eBook to showcase an ongoing list of quotes from other writers about the topics of writing strategies and narcissism.

Kindle $1.99 Buy
PDF, ePub, Sony $1.99 Buy

Or sign up for my quarterly newsletter and receive a free copy. Just provide a valid email when you sign up.

My New eBook is Available

January 17, 2015 / Big Bang Poetry / 0 Comments

My new eBook on Trementina Books is now available. Writing in the Age of Narcissism is available for Kindle, ePub, PDF, Sony readers.

If you’re a poet or writer in any other form or genre, you’ve probably witnessed many modern, uncivilized behaviors from fellow students, writers and academic colleagues—their public relations gestures, their catty reviews and essays, and their often uncivil career moves. Like actors, visual artists and politicians, cut-throat pirate maneuverings have become the new normal. It’s what occurs whenever there are more people practicing an art than any particular economy can support.

The difference with writers is their ability to develop highly conceptualized, rationalizations in order to prove their worth and ideals. This isn’t a new phenomenon, but it has reached a critical mass in meaningless attempts to pull focus in a society obsessed with the show-biz spotlight.

This essay traces how the narcissism epidemic affects writers, including our gestures of post-modernism and irony, and proposes an alternative way to be a more positive writer, critic and reader.

Kindle $1.99 Buy
PDF, ePub, Sony $1.99 Buy

Or sign up for my quarterly newsletter and receive a free copy. Just provide a valid email when you sign up.

Self Publishing Report from Smashwords, Expensive MFAs, Word Crimes

January 12, 2015 / Big Bang Poetry / 0 Comments

I've been following Mark Coker’s publishing predictions for a few years now. He's just come out with his 2015 points. I like that he studies his data for these things and that he updates his predictions as the data changes. He doesn't have an ideological agenda. Well, he might, but he's willing to adjust his assessments, for instance he predicts screen reading increases might slow down this year.

Last year he was still promoting the power of making books free to raise your profile. This year, with traditional publishers finally getting wise, the idea of free might lose some steam.

Check out all 12 predictions.

In 2008, College Crunch listed Poetry as the number one most expensive and useless degree in America.

And they provide a depressingly sad-sack example.

I found that link over the holiday break going through my email. I found a few old fad links I'd missed over the years, like this video from Weird Al. If you’re a word-nerd, his "Word Crimes" video is for you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Gv0H-vPoDc

Article Watch: Tenses, Confessionals, Narcissisms, MFA-Alternatives

November 16, 2014 / Big Bang Poetry / 0 Comments

The November 2014 issue of The Atlantic has a good article called "Passive Resistance" written by Steven Pinker about how "the active voice isn't always the best choice.

American Poetry Review Sept/Oct 2014 has an article by Jason Schneiderman on the friendship between Agha Shahid Ali and James Merrill and talks about Merill's ouija board book-length poem "The Changing Light at Sandover." This poem is not included in his collected works, by the way. In the same issue there's an essay about the grotesque in poetry by Anna Journey. There's also a special suppplement of poems and commenorations on Stephen Berg, one by David Rivard and one by Edward Hirsch.

And finally the issue has a good overview of the most famous confessional poems and how their writers use pronouns and a retrospective of Pete Seeger.

Poets & Writers Sept/Oct 2014 Issue

This issue has interviews with both Edward Hirsch and Louise Glück. Hirsch says:

"I think to have poetry, you need to have all kinds of different poets. We need poets to write playful, funny poems, poets who write light verse; I don't think we should neglect that. But should that be the defining feature of your poetry? Is that how you want your poetry to be remembered? I guess that's up to people in the culture. But it's also true that we live in a very superficial culture. We live in a culture that's driven by entertainment, by celebrities, so there's plenty in the culture to distract us and lighten us up. People who turn to poetry, I don't think y're looking for something gloomy, but I do think they're looking for something deeper than the superficial exxperiences you get in the culture every day."

Also, three poets discuss keeping a journal. There's a great essay on narcissism and entitlement by Steve Almond and an article on the Savvy Self-Publisher and another one on MFA alternatives that talks about classes in urban areas outside of the college system:

The combination of innovative pedagogy, lower costs, and a focus on the craft of writing can make private writing workshops an attractive alternative to traditional MFA programs.

Just as happened with iTunes, Air B&B and Uber, the high cost and low-return (and greed of executives at the top) of bloated organizations will be driving customers to startup alternatives.

You can check your local library for older issues of these magazines.