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Reinventing the Life of a Poet in the Modern World

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Albert Goldbarth

GoldbarthAlbert Goldbarth has been one of my favorite poets for years. He's written and published a prolific amount of poetry over the years and I keep adding to my bookshelf year by year. Sometimes you have almost enough for free Super Saver Shipping on Amazon and an Albert Goldbarth book of poetry will put you over the top.

Ten years ago, one of my teachers, David Rivard, recommended Goldbarth to me with the book Heaven and Earth: A Cosmology. Rivard thought I would relate to those poems about space and science. I carried that book across the country and back, finally loaning it to a man I was dating from Belfast. I never got it back. So I bought another copy. Here's a good sample from the book, a poem called, "The Sciences Sing a Lullabye."

One of my favorite poems is from the book Saving Lives and was featured on Poetry Daily years ago, a poem called "Library." It's an amazing, un-paraphrasable poem. Check it out.

However, my all-time favorite Goldbarth poem (so far) is from the book Beyond, a 44-page opus called "The Two Domains." Well worth the price of the book, a funny smart ghost story.

Right now I'm reading To Be Read in 500 Years. Goldbarth can be dense and complicated but the payoff of insight is well worth your brain sweat.

I've only seen Albert Goldbarth once–on a craft panel at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books in LA about four years ago. For someone sitting on a craft panel, he was completely reluctant to talk about craft. Thank God Mark Doty was there to fill in the holes. Goldbarth's dismissals of crafting questions that day was even reported on by the LA Times in the article "Albert Goldbarth taps his inner Jagger."

More about Mark Doty, another of my favorites, next week.

An Old Book About Hart Crane

CraneBack to the Highlands University Library in Las Vegas, New Mexico…I returned my two Emily Dickinson books (both turned out to be very good…more on that in Friday's Moment of Craft) and found an old book about Hart Crane, Hart Crane, The Life of an American Poet by Philip Horton from 1937, written about 5 years after Hart Crane died.

I know nothing about Hart Crane. Nada. I only know he died in 1932 because I googled him last night. And he supposedly committed suicide by jumping off a boat. I knew that scandalous fact.

But why did he do it?

I'm sure this book will be the education on Hart Crane I need. Except for the fact the book was written in 1937 and the author uses phrases such as "holding forth."

Top 10 Things to Do When Participating in an Open Poetry Reading

Gollum-bookGollum at a poetry reading, left.

I know poetry readings seem very communal and the audience very much an understanding environment that will embrace your shabby or shabby-chic poetry-reading performance; you want to be casual, play it off the cuff and be organic, go to the drum circle and improvise.

But here's the thing: the audience has already seen so much of that, it's become a cliche. They now want to pull their hair out.

Poetry is a performance at the end of the day and many poets are bad at performance because a. they're not comfortable in their own body (that's why they spend so much time in their heads) or b. they're too comfortable in their own body (virtual exhibitionists taking hostages).

I created a check-list for poets in preparation for an open mic reading…and left out the obvious discourtesies, like don't read fiction at a poetry reading or hijack the mic by reading for ten minutes. If you want readers to form a positive opinion of the poet and the poetry, keep two things in mind: be generous and be courteous.

  1. Dress for Success: that means don't dress like a homeless person, even if you are unfortunately homeless. Borrow something unobtrusive-looking. On the other hand, don't try to look like a Vogue spread. If people are distracted contemplating your wardrobe (good or bad), they can't focus on the words coming out of your mouth.
  2. Don't forget to pack: bring your reading glasses (if you need them) and your poems.
  3. Rehearse: you don't need to memorize your poem, but practice reading with a friend ahead of time. You'll come across like a smooth cat if you do this, fully in command of your beautiful words.
  4. Listen to other readers…with your full attention: it's a karmic rule, you get what you give. So start giving. Listen to all the other readers. If you don't, they have no reason or obligation to listen to you. And if you think you can listen while multi-tasking, maybe you can–but it still looks like you're not listening and that makes everyone around you feel uncomfortable. This is bad energy to bring to a reading. Besides, if you're too busy to single-task-listen at a poetry reading, you're too busy to read at one.
  5. Open your voice to your audience: don't condescend to them by reading your poems in a precious style, full of pregnant pauses. Don't deliver the last line as if it's the greatest line ever written. Be friendly. It attracts readers to your poems and to you.
  6. Open your heart to your audience: like the great-sage-of-self-help Oprah says, be aware of the energy you bring into a room. If you come to the mic with aloofness or arrogance or bitterness, you will only attract that energy back to you.
  7. Pay attention to the room dynamic: practice taking the pulse of the audience by looking around at their faces before you read. Are they "up" and laughing? Are they bored, quiet and fidgety? If there are 10 or more poets scheduled for that reading, shorten your set by reading only one poem. Or by not reading a five-page poem. It's tempting to want to read more but after one poem, the audience has formed an impression of you. And they know they have a marathon of other readers behind you. They will start to shut down if you read too long. Just come back on another open-mic night and read again. Less is more in public relations. Repetition over time is good.
  8. Don't preamble-ramble: if you are the main event of a poetry reading, you can be like Gollum and ramble on; otherwise, less is more. The preamble actually upstages the poem. Sometimes poets who are insecure about their poem will try to buttress it up with a preamble for this very reason. Don't sell your poem short this way. Feel free to plug your book or blog or say a line or two. But no more.
  9. Pick a poem with an inclusive theme: ask friends to locate one of your poems they respond to the best. Don't be self-absorbed. Readings are events for communicating universal ideas, experiences and feelings. My husband has a theater background and has been to hundreds of open music, stand-up and one-man show performances. He says the ones that fail always fail because the content is too self-reflective and not inclusive to the audience. 
  10. Don't forget to bow: thank the audience at the top of your reading or at the end, just like they have given you a gift. Because they have. And smile! 

The good thing about open readings, as opposed to poetry slams, is that they offer a safe place for poets to read their work without Night-at-the-Apollo-style heckling. Poets need to be in the moment as much at a reading, paying attention fully and poetically, as they are are when they are at home contemplating the intricacies of their poems.

Some very funny lists of cartoons spoofing poetry readings:

The Poems on Mars Project: Using Poems for Research Projects

FuturepoetryreadersLook at them. Students. They look so happy and studious. The great thing about students is they still read; and I believe they are poetry's last salvation.

We've already discussed how poets don’t buy poetry. I was recently discussing this issue with Rosemary on a LinkedIn group.

We talked about how self defeating it was for poets to be frugal in their purchases of poetry books. I've come to believe poets are a bad market for poetry. From a marketing perspective, writers of poetry are not prolific consumers. Unfortunately, this shapes (as Rosemary mentioned) the quality of their poetry. It sadly shapes the entire poetry market as well.

But it is what it is. One thing I mentioned earlier was tagging. If book buyers searching on Amazon can find books on topics they want to read about, even if those topics are found in poetry books, this might result in a purchase of poetry from a non-poetry lover.

This Monday at a poetry reading, I heard some very raw, personal poems from a man with Parkinson's disease. If a book of poetry on the subject of Parkinson's was found online by another sufferer, a family caretaker, or a student doing research on the subject from the fields of social work, medicine or psychology—they might buy that book.

Students in particular would find poetry a valuable resource in their research projects. Poetry could serve research projects in helping students shape and outline their ideas by:

  1. Providing unique quotations to open research papers;
  2. Offering first-hand testimonials on difficult topics: researchers often need testimonials to support their ideas and poems from cancer survivors, abuse survivors, immigrants, (topics are endless), all provide freely-given, undiluted, honest accounts of their experiences;
  3. Framing their topics in a new, often metaphorical, way.

By using poetry as a research tool, many students could be exposed to poetry who normally would not see the use of it. And some of those students might get hooked on verse for life.

Talk to teachers about using poetry for research.

It is our action item to advertise poetry beyond poets and literature readers. Can you think of any other groups of readers who might need poetry?

Monday Poetry News Roundup

Poetry headlines in the news

Publishing News

Calls for Submissions

Uselessness of Words

SmallcanyonJust when you get to talkin' about the utility of your work, the uselessness of words makes itself known unto you.

I spent the better part of last week at Bryce Canyon in Utah. Sometimes you just need to put the proverbial pen down and go see something magestic.

Canyons do magestic pretty well; and they do it all without a single word.

Besides, this gave me an opportunity to take yet another photo of myself Reading Poetry to Animals and Things that Don't Care.

In this case, I'm reading poems to the vermilion hoodoos (the Paiute thought these were folks who had been turned into stone). I just hope it wasn't some epic poems about western expansion that turned them into unfeeling columns of hardness.

Seriously, hoodoos have been here for millions of years and they've heard it all. Their indifference is sobering.

Moment of Craft Fridays: Listmaking and Utility

HecklistThe Poetry Checklist

This week I found a few interesting checklists online for writing poems. Now I don't know any poets who actually use checklists to write or read poems, but I took a look anyway (maybe they'd be good for a friend or relative struggling through a literature class).

This first one is a checklist primarily for explication of poems: http://www.longwoodshakespeare.org/handouts/explication.pdf
However, it's so temping to want to read this list as a poet and feel you need to keep all these balls in the air when writing each poem. Which is crippling.

Better to focus on one or two skills at a time and let those seep under your skin and then move on, skill by skill. Then, one fine day, all skills will pull together for a masterpiece. It's inevitable, right?

Next, the Practical Poet has posted a checklist for Haiku: https://sites.google.com/site/graceguts/essays/practical-poet-creating-a-haiku-checklist

And here is yet another list formatted in an unattractive table:
http://www.huntel.net/rsweetland/literature/genre/poetry/checklistEvaluate.html

In some kind of freudian slip, I saved the checklist graphic for this post as "hecklist." But I don't want to heckle these checklists. I'm an obsessive list-maker myself. There are good things to draw from such orderliness and making your own lists here and there will be useful in organizing our thoughts. And a good thought is the gold at the top of anybody's checklist. Writing is only as good as your thinking. We always forget that. You can't string together a well-crafted poem without well-crafted thinking.

So if list-making scratches that hamster-on-the-wheel-in-your-head, it's a good thing.

Does your poem have utility?

In fact, I found the last item on all these lists to be the most worthy of consideration and reconsideration. Nobody talks about it much but it really is the most crucial force in determining a poem that succeeds with readers and a poem that doesn't:

Does it have ideas people can use?

Be honest. Does you poem have ideas people can use?

The Faces of Poets in Santa Fe

Last night I attended a reading in Santa Fe for Red Mountain Press, a micro-press focusing on poetry and memoirs of poets. The reading took place at my neighborhood performance space and was very well organized (poets introduced each other in a smooth-moving chain) and all was very pleasant except for the loudly hissing speakers.

TalpertMarc Talpert read from his book Altogether Ernest, a book written from the point-of-view of a 14-year old boy.
http://marc-talbert.com

 Raby  Elizabeth Raby read a very funny passage from an upcoming memoir tentatively titled Ransomed Voices from the Emily Dickinson quote,
"Silence is all we dread. There's ransom in a voice."
http://vacpoetry.org/raby.htm

Gary Worth Moody read from his book Hazards of Grace. His poems included one about his father's death and about suffragette Inez Milholland. http://garyworthmoody.com

LeveringDonald Levering read some poems from an upcoming book and included topics about summertime repaving of roads, a few odes to the elements and a poem about the Sardine Queen's Ball.
http://www.donaldlevering.com/

LeeWayne Lee read some funny poems from his book Doggerel & Caterwauls including one about friends, one about rapatronic photography, and a funny new "found" psalm about baseball.
http://www.wayneleepoet.com/

RobyncovelliRobyn Covelli read poems of a kind of unique surreal
clarity, including one called "Define What is Broken"
and one about Pagosa Springs in Colorado.

GardnerSusan Gardner ended the night with her delicate presentation of some new poems about the fires of New Mexico and another titled "Physics of the Iris."
http://susangardner.org/

 

To find their books: http://redmountainpress.us/

The Many Faces of Adrienne Rich

FierceAdrienne Rich died in March at the age of 82. I had only one opportunity to meet her at the Geraldine Dodge Poetry Festival in New Jersey in the late 1990s. After Rich's reading in the big tent, I stood in line to get my only book of hers, An Atlas of the Difficult World, Poems 1988-1991, signed. She greeted every reader with a friendly smile, until she reached me. I got that stern-lipped cold stare you see to the left. It's as if she didn't approve of me at all. It's as if she knew I hadn't even read the book yet. I came away a little unsettled and my friends laughed about how pissy she looked signing my book. That incident never endeared me to her.

Then Shorthairwas the fact that I was a Riot Grrrl sort of feminist (that is to say third wave) and Rich was a second wave feminist. The 3rd wave girls have always butted heads with the 2nd wave women. Even our insistence on self-referring as girls irked those 2nd wavers.

Then there were those poems of hers we read in poetry class, the ones I could never quite get under my skin, like "Diving Into the Wreck." In a recent class we read "Blue Rock", "Edges," "Poetry: I," "Poetry: II, Chicago," "Poetry: III," and "To a Poet." I have nary a check mark near the title of any of them. Even their dry titles cause my nethers to feel a bit dehydrated.

It might at first seem extraordinary how Rich's "look" morphed over the years in these photographs. But those thin stern lips always identify her, even when she's smiling.

RichyoungwithhariToday I'm re-evaluating. 

I have to say the divide between the 2nd and 3rd wavers has somewhat died down now. We're beginning to see our mothers and daughters without so much rebellion, resentment and misunderstanding.

And I realize deep down that Adrienne Rich's sourpuss face that day probably had more to do with a lifetime of frustration against those who disapproved of not only her sexuality but her literary campaigns on behalf of her sexuality, the trauma left by the gunshot suicide of her economist husband back in 1970, or the constant rheumatoid arthritis she suffered all her adult life, complications of which finally ended it.

And this week I finally found an Adrienne Rich poem I liked…in the Emily Dickinson book, The Mind of the Poet, I just picked up at the Highlands library. The poem is simple titled "E." in Gelpi's book but later Rich must have changed the title to "I Am in Danger—Sir—"

The last stanza:

and in your halfcracked way you chose
silence for entertainment
chose to have it out at last
on your own premises.

WhiOlderch speaks not only to Dickinson herself but to the way all feminists choose to have it out at last on their own premises.

Read the full Emily Dickinson tribute here: http://www.english.upenn.edu/~cavitch/pdf-library/Rich_IAmInDangerSir.pdf

Read the New York Times profile of Adrienne Rich ("a poet of towering reputation and towering rage") when she died:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/29/books/adrienne-rich-feminist-poet-and-author-dies-at-82.html?pagewanted=all

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