Choices

Bright Star isn't playing near me. I'm going to see Avatar instead. From Ebert.com: "There is still at least one man in Hollywood who knows how to spend $250 million..." And Freeman's review is here.

Happy Birthday to the Blog

ABOPABOW was a month old last week. I think this is a good sign. Here are two "Best of 2009" lists that I'm looking forward to getting a crack at. The first was published in the San Fransisco Chronicle and updated here, at Dean Rader's blog. This second list is one of dozens posted over at the No Tells (associated with the poetry website NoTell Motel).

I've also added Five Points (great journal) to the list of links.

Lynn Wagner

just won the Slapering Hol Press Chapbook Competition for 2009 with her chapbook No Blues This Racous Song. Excerpts aren't available yet, but I've read other work by her (here's a sample. . .and another), and I'm ordering this.

Check this out

Sandy Tseng's "Sediment" was just published in October. "Sediment" is a Stahlecker Series Selection from Four Way Books. Lynn Emanuel reviews it here.

River Styx

This journal has just been added to the link list on the right. It's as old as me. I think that's cool. Is that weird to say about a journal? So sue me. Anyway, issue 79 has a poem by David Wagoner. Issue 76-77 features recipes. Jim Daniels's beans. Diane Wakowski's tart. Mmmm--but you have to order it.

All I Want for Christmas. . .

Best New Poets 2009 is the new guy in town (2009 is only its fifth year), and BNP publishes poets who don't have books yet. This series should become a powerful annual event.

Best American Poetry 2009, Editor David Lehman's annual look at American poetry. The classic series. This year's guest editor is David Wagoner.

Reading...

Just before the weekend began, I re-read Lynn Emanuel's Then, Suddenly-- (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1999) and I have been thinking about it all weekend. What Emanuel does here is create a collection of poems that feels like a lyrical story about the making of a book. And while that might generate a few eye rolls from the "Can-we-please-avoid-meta?" crowd, it's not what they think. Then, Suddenly-- may be a book about a book, but it's not about game-playing, and the book doesn't trade emotion for insight. In the poems I meet the "things" of a book: the writer, the reader (myself?), the title; I meet many of the concepts without which the idea of "book" becomes empty. And, in the midst of these meetings, I feel present in the creation of what I hold. It's a feeling I've not encountered in poetry before. I enjoy it. What I am trying to say is that when I first read Then, Suddenly--, soon after it came out, all I allowed myself to see was Emanuel's wit at handling the writing about writing (here "wit" can stand for intelligence or intelligent humor). Now, after re-reading Then, Suddenly-- I realize that her book is not just full of wit, but also of purpose and risk. It is these three elements that make the book so successful. It is risky to write about writing. But Emanuel takes that risk. And what's purposeful here? Well, it's not that Emanuel is purposeful, or that the book is purposeful; it's the way in which the book is purposefully elaborate. As I read, I realize I am not just reading a book of poetry that sets out to be a book about a book. I am reading a book that sets out to help me--poem by poem--construct the book, construct the author, construct myself, and to construct (at least for me) construction itself. Perhaps that's why Walt Whitman and Getrude Stein appear in here. These days, as I work on my own collection, I will pay attention to that triad operating so smoothly in Emanuel's book: wit, risk, and purpose.

Henri Cole (an interview with Christopher Lydon)

Speaking of Merrill... "When I write a poem, I hope to be in conversation with Merrill, who hopes to be in conversation with Cavafy or Whitman, and it goes back and back to Horace. But I guess I am also aware of the need to push all of that out of my head and just write the poem that I want to write."

And, as for qualities in a poem..."There has to be a commitment to emotional truth, and there has to be a little concerto of consonants and vowels. Most people do one or the other. Getting them together is essential."
-from the interview

Thanks to Christopher Lydon and the Huffington Post, I just listened to this delicious interview with Henri Cole. Lydon asks good questions and allows Cole to share much. Throughout the interview, Cole reads from his latest collection, Blackbird and Wolf (2007). Here are some of Cole's poems "My Weed" at 8:05, "Oil and Steel" at 10:10, "Embers at 13:30, "Dune" at the 18:50 mark, "Pig" at 29:09, and "Asleep in Jesus at Rest" at 31:30.

The World, the Weirdness, the Wonder, the Wow.

Oh, this poem is joy to read. There's something creepy and beautiful about it's vivid, imagistic declarations. I am partial to the images of french toast as prepared with an eye dropper (an influence from Jhonen Vasquez's _Invader Zim_?) and to that moment of clarity that can hit one while in the back seat of a car driving around Pittsburgh--but that's me. Each sentence creates a world. Go forth. Enjoy.
Mathias Svalina's "Creation Myth."

Poetry News

The Poetry Foundation and Poetry Daily both have news sections. I've added them to the blog's link sections. They're updated frequently--enjoy. The headlines are pulled from small and large sources and sometimes I discover some interesting things: here's an article about Cate Marvin and her residency at James Merrill's home.

God Bless

How nice it must be to see the world so clearly--so sharply--especially around Christmas.

An email forwarded to me recently suggested that I (and I guess my family and friends) should cripple the ACLU by sending them massive amounts of Christmas Cards.

Get it?

It's because the ACLU hates Christmas, or as the end of the email claims, perhaps it's because: "the ACLU, (the American Civil Liberties Union) is the one suing the U.S. Government to take God, Christmas or anything Christian away from us. They represent the atheists and others in this war. Help put Christ back in Christmas!"

The truth is things are more complicated. While the ACLU works to maintain a separation of Church and State, the ACLU also protects the rights of Christians to worship. Thanks to the ACLU, this Christian can now preach in prison.

Why do I teach writing? Is it possible to even the score against this flood of simplistic , us-vs-them thinking in our populace these days?

MFA Program Rankings

Poets and Writers has generously shared Seth Abramson's article, "The Top Fifty MFA Programs in the United States: A Comprehensive Guide" at its site. This four page article is actually just an excerpt--the full text appears in the Nov/Dec 2009 newsstand issue. I feel that rankings can make artists and academics uncomfortable, but there's enough reason and humility to this project that I respect what Abramson executed here.

"By and large, students find that their experiences are circumscribed by entirely unforeseeable circumstances: They befriend a fellow writer; they unexpectedly discover a mentor; they come to live in a town or city that, previously foreign, becomes as dear to them as home. No ranking ought to pretend to establish the absolute truth about program quality, and in keeping with that maxim the rankings that follow have no such pretensions."

Of course, with that said, here are the rankings:
1-50 (three programs at spot #50) 53-132.

For explanations, background, and general wisdom, again, read the article.

Robin Ekiss

I've been considering these poems all morning. Poetry Daily posted "Android Clarinetist," and from Ekiss's site: "The Past is Another Country" and a link to "The Question of My Mother" at the Poetry website. Her first book, The Mansion of Happiness, is out from VQR press.