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

What Barnes & Noble is Choking On

December 10, 2012 / Big Bang Poetry / 0 Comments

Bah humbug but this is why I hate shopping at Christmas time. Bad retail stores.

I tried to keep things simple this year and buy everybody books. Unfortunately I live in Santa Fe. Our one chain bookstore, Borders, went out of business last year. Barnes and Noble did not come in to replace them. We are left with 3-4 very tiny independent bookstores. I love independent bookstores and I'm glad they're back. I often shop there, but they have a limited selection. Often, I'm still driven to online bookstores to get certain titles out here in Santa Fe.

I had a list of 10 books it would take a big store to fill. So my husband and I drove over an hour to get to our nearest Barnes & Noble in Albuquerque. Barnes and Noble only had one book on my list, ONE! And these weren't obscure books. They were Anne Perry mysteries my mom wanted, a Mad Magazine book my nephew wanted, teen fantasy. In the late 1990s I would have been overwhelmed with selections. But Friday night I spent over an hour trying to hunt down anything to give as alternatives and left completely frustrated.

Big bookstores are constantly complaining they have no room for all the books published today. Even non-fiction and novels get a short lifespan on big bookstore shelves. If they don't sell in a few weeks, they're sent packing.

But that isn't the whole story. My husband and I took an inventory of the real estate in the Albuquerque Barnes and Noble. Large sections were taken up by:

The deserted coffee shop
The deserted kids playground upstairs
The large section of crap gifts (bookmarks, book lights, journals, etc.)
The obligatory B&N section consisting of five aisles of discount books and books Barnes and Noble produces. And even the selection here has gotten crappier over the years (you can only give a sushi-making kit to your best friend so many times).

In this store, the real estate for actual normal books was, we figured, little over half the entire floor. I told my story to five people. Bar none, they all said to me, "why don't you just get what you want on Amazon?" Why indeed did I even bother going to Barnes and Noble?

My Very First Book Blurb Review

November 18, 2012 / Big Bang Poetry / 0 Comments

Honestly, I was feeling kind of down the day Tom Crawford offered me my first book blurb. Wow, like Dinah Washington says in the song, what a difference a praise makes.

"What a surprise! Poetry that rightly deserves the
praise, by which I mean poetry that makes you forget you're reading poetry. How
refreshing. For far too many American poets, their poems are a glitter of
self-consciousness–the facile of the MFA crowd. This new collection by Mary
McCray should earn her a wide readership with its outer space leaps of
invention. Her ribald sense of humor. Grit. Originality. "

–Tom Crawford, Author of The Names of Birds, Wu Wei, and The Temple on Monday

Are You a Joiner?

September 26, 2012 / Big Bang Poetry / 0 Comments

Are you a joiner? Are you a member of prestigious (or even lowbrow) organizations because you like to engage in structured social activities? Somehow I doubt it…because you're a poet. For you networking is probably painful and you stick to your small, solid cliques.

I myself tend to be somewhat of a hermit, although I have had a very love-hate relationship with thematic clubs over the years. I always want to join but then never enjoy having joined.

It all started when I was 7 years old and had consumed every bit of text on the back of my Cher album Cherished (Warner Bros., 1977). There I read about the Cher fan club. A sense of belonging…finally? The promise of a community? Nah, who needs it! I wanted the official pin, the official fan club wallet card, the official welcome letter and all the official political-esque paraphernalia involved in membersip to such an esteemed organization as Cher's friends.

I filled out the pink form and begged my mother to send in the required $5 entry fee. If she ever did, no welcome packet ever arrived. I was haunted by this over the years and eventually had to buy the original old fan club kit for $40 on eBay decades later (the very cool poster to the left came with it). No Cher fan club since has stayed in business. Their materials tend to be lame and plagued with grammatical errors.

So I switched over to the very nerdy Barry Manilow fan club in my tweens. Finally, the wallet card, the secret newsletter, the secret merchandise catalog! I wrote about my ten-year experience with this club in the webzine Ape Culture ("I Was a Teenage Barry Manilow Fan"). From the BMIFC (Barry Manilow International Fanclub) I learned that someday I wanted to grow up and attend conventions. Think tanks! Name badges! Seminars! Hotel trysts! This secret dream would lead to some frustrating experiences as a staff member of the Cher Convention (from 2000-2008) where I worked as games coordinator, registrar and sometime MC.

This year I decided to make an effort to connect with poets beyond my old Sarah Lawrence clique (we used to meet every week in Bronxville back in the 1990s). I decided to start with a subscription to Poetry Flash (the LA poetry newsletter). I paid $12 almost a year ago and have yet to receive anything. They have also ignored six emails and Facebook inquiries about my missing issues and advertising opportunities. Rip. Off.

Last week I bit the bullet and joined the two big poetry societies. Academy of American Poets costs $35 for a basic membership and all I got was a green membership card with the following May Swenson quote on the back: "Poetry is not philosophy; poetry makes things be, right now." That well-placed semi-colon is worth part of the price of membership. Someday I should also receive my two issues of American Poet and my National Poetry Month poster. I also get discounts to the online store of books and recordings and discounts to New York events and readings.

I joined the Science Fiction Poetry Association as well because my first book of poems is a tad science-fictiony. I have no idea what my $25 membership will provide in terms of swag. Fingers crossed.

But it will be hard to beat the welcome I got with Poetry Society of America. When I lived in New York City, it was the PSA outreach that I loved the best, including Poetry in Motion (poetry posters in the subway trains). I have my very own train poster. With my $45 membership I get a lot: a letter on card stock with a membership card, a bookmark, a purple pin that says "Poetry/I, too, like it," a packet of four very colorful poems on postcards and 20% off one of five poetry journals (APR, The Believer, Boston Review, Fence and Washington Square Review…I'm going to pick APR/American Poetry Review).

Let the socializing begin.

Should I keep my membership cards in my wallet? In case I get hit by a bus, people should know I support the arts, right? People should know I'm a poet and therefore somewhat of a loner and this plethora of poetry-club-memberships entitles me to immediate friendships with any poet-EMTs.

Making Fun of Celebrity Poems

September 20, 2012 / Big Bang Poetry / 0 Comments

In graduate school it was one of our more sinister pastimes to mock celebrity poems. Part envy, part smug critique, it all started with folk singer Jewel when she published A Night without Armor in 1998. Here's a sample:

I Miss Your Touch

I miss your touch
all taciturn
like the slow migration of birds
nesting momentarily
upon my breast
then lifting
silver and quick–
sabotaging the landscape
with their absence

my skin silent without
their song
a thirsty pool of patient flesh

She gets the juicy word taciturn in there but then leaves it alone to defend itself against the word all. Amazingly, people are still making fun of Jewel poems these many years later…like this piece from Funny or Die: Was This Poem Written by Jewel or Charles Manson: http://www.funnyordie.com/articles/3e2e0d2765/was-this-poem-written-by-jewel-or-charles-manson?playlist=featured_pictures_and_words

To be honest, I never read her entire book. But that didn't stop me from buying Beau Sia's spoof in 1998, A Night Without Armor II. It's well-maintained inanity. Some examples:

love poem

I want
you
now.

do not think
about this.

we are in love.

if we die
tonight,
we
might as well
be having
the greatest sex
of our lives.

with each other of course.

I don't suppose raindrops

only one girl I kissed
did not love the rain

they were all still crazy
though.

that's why
poems about the rain
work so well
on a woman's thighs.

we all aspire to learn
more
about clouds.

After Sia's book, I sought out celebrity poetry. I waited a long time for the score of getting Suzanne Somers' 1974 book Touch Me off eBay. The book has no table of contents or even page numbers and there are 23 poems broken across 4 or 5 sections. Every other poem is also facing a black and white, soft-focus photo of Somers looking peaceful or contemplative. Poems are titled "Organic Girl" and "Houseplants" and "Last Night it Was Right." Some examples:

Lies

I have lied to you
    A thousand times
Reshaped the truth
     To keep you close
     And avoid hurting you.
But I always lied with words.

Last night I lied to you
    In silence
    With my hands, my mouth, my caress
The worst lie of all.
    And now I know something is over.
    Because before
I only lied with words.

No!

I don't give you time
    Because you're a cliche
    I meet a thousand times a day.
There's no need to talk.
    I know you're handsome
    And successful
    And extremely good in bed.
But really there's nothing to say,
Only a kind of game to play.
    Only a tedious cliche
    I meet a thousand times a day.
And I always forget your name.

Ouch!

The absolute worst was in Jimmy Stewart's book, Jimmy Stewart and His Poems from 1989. I found this at a garage sale and couldn't resist the self-satisfied stare of Stewart from the book cover. It's a mere four poems covering 31 pages, each poem prefaced with long passages explaining the context of each poem. Indulgent much? Some examples:

from The Aberdares!

The North Pole's rather chilly.
Those who've been there all will tell
There's lots of snow and lots of ice
And lots of wind as well.

An iceberg's really never warm
And takes a while to melt.
A snowball's not the hottest thing
That I have ever felt.

from I'm a Movie Camera

I'm a movie camera. Instamatic is my name.
I'm Eastman's latest model,
Super 8's my claim to fame.
I was on a shelf in Westwood
when an actor purchased me
And took me home to 918 in Hills the Beverly.

from Beau

He never came to me when I would call
Unless I had a tennis ball,
Or he felt like it,
But mostly he didn't come at all…

Discipline was not his bag
But when you were with him things sure didn't drag.
He'd dig up a rosebush just to spite me,
And when I'd grab him, he'd turn to bite me.

Bite me indeed.

I know what you're thinking and no: there is no indication on the cover or inside that these were written for children.

But I'm done goofing on bad poetry. I've decided it's a psychological sink hole. You feel superior for a little while but then you end up feeling inferior deep down where you don't want to admit it. Who am I to begrudge another person's poetic journey? Snob it up at your own risk, I say. You might be reincarnated as someone who dresses up in kabuki makeup and writes such things as "Lick it up."

Besides, there are amazing celebrity "poems" out there. Many poets were once transformed by Bob Dylan or now Lucinda Williams. Joni Mitchell changed the way I write. "The Last Time I Saw Richard" is one of the few "poems" I've ever memorized. And Leonard Cohen…wow. What these writers can do is make up for a lot of dreck in the world, some of it most likely mine in all those petty previous lives.