New York Times Link Added

Is poetry a field? A profession? An art? Just what the hell is going on here?

Oh, that's right. I forgot about the New York Times. There's now a link to their articles on poetry--it's on the side of the page.

Congratulations to Terrance Hayes--there's a positive review (by Stephen Burt) of his latest, Lighthead.
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Four Poems from APR

I know it seems like post-city today. It is. I'm posting with abandon.

So, from the "why-didn't-I-get-to-this-sooner" department:

Go read the four poems up at the latest issue of APR. They're superb, and they are Jean Valentine's "The just-born rabbits", Matthew Lippman's "Marriage Pants" (hilarious), Stephen Dunn's "Promiscuity", and Robert Bly's "Nirmala's Music."

Great poems for spring. My brain leaks with joy.
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Rainy Days, and Now It's Raining Couplets.

It's been raining quite a bit here in the Philadelphia region. Here are "A Dozen Rainy-Day Couplets" by Kilian O'Donnell. Enjoy. And as always, thanks to Poetry Daily.
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Iambic Pentameter T-shirt

Had to show you this.








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Serendipity

I woke up yesterday morning feeling like I was stuck in a sit-up. It was like someone had put a belt around my chest and pulled like hell.

The muscles were knotted so hard that my ribs ached and standing up hurt.

My wife heard me gasping in the living room. She came down and rubbed my back and within a few minutes I could take breaths without much stabbing pain. Without much. It was a light stabbing.

She went back to bed. Something inside me told me to walk it off. I went for a walk.

It was 7AM. Gray skies. A light drizzle stuck to the world like water beading on a spider web. I took small steps on the sidewalk. I chose the flat streets. I thought to myself, "This is how I will walk when I am old." I am 35.

I heard the rapid knocks of a woodpecker and the caw of a crow. A few houses down, I stepped over a small pesticide caution sign: the word "pesticide" and the "prohibited" symbol placed over a baby and a dog. I was happy to reach the neighborhood park.

And there was the woodpecker. On the largest tree in the park--an oak--he looked for a good place to peck. For those of you who don't know what this looks like, let me explain. The woodpecker walks on trees the way anyone might walk down the sidewalk. He could be casual, he could be determined, but either way, it's simply one foot in front of the other.

What blows the mind is this: along that tree trunk the woodpecker goes sideways, left, right, up, down--it doesn't matter to the woodpecker. Other birds need branches to perch on. F that, says the woodpecker. I'm going to walk headfirst down the side of this tree. When the trunk leans over, I'm going to keep on walking--Yes, I'm now upside down. Suck it, hairless mammal.

It's a rough neighborhood.

The pain had mostly passed. I waited for the woodpecker to rap his face against the trunk, but he turned around and walked up into the higher branches out of sight. I turned and walked away in a remarkably plain fashion. The pain gone, I headed for home.

It's amazing what the body knows. Was it a yearning for endorphins? Cool air? A light workout to the diaphragm as I walked? Something to better circulate the blood? All I heard was, "take a walk."

This morning, the muscles are clenched again. Pained breathing. A belt around my chest. A light stabbing. Different advice this time: Drink some water.

I should go take another walk. What I really want is the woodpecker, the crow, rain misting onto my sweatshirt.
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The Post Where I Rave About My Writing Workshop

Let me begin earlier in the story.

Since last September I have been writing feverishly. My wife and I settled into a nice place with enough room for an office, and enough space for peace and quiet from the outside world. It's been an incredibly productive couple of months for me (haven't written this much since grad school). But I'm not just producing, I'm focusing, shaping, planning, more than ever before, and it's thanks to my writing workshop.

Over the past few months, Beth, Genevieve, and Josh have provided me with perhaps the best insight and advice I've ever received. Jammed poems flow again. Underdeveloped poems put on some weight and take on a swagger. That which is broken is repaired. The manuscript I'm working on is taking shape.

I know that not all workshops are great fits for everyone. I can't make this a post about how everyone should go join a workshop. There are some workshops that are just going to suck. See Don Colburn's poem "In the Workshop After I Read My Poem Aloud" for a comic look at this.

However, there may be a recipe for a workshop that's as productive as the one I'm in.

First, our goals are similar--we can pool wisdom and resources as we work toward those goals.

Our commitment is similar. Every week we show up and get the job done.

We pull our weight (okay, I'm always a few hours late with my submissions).

We support each other. Encouragement and advice come in equal parts, and as I mentioned before, we share resources, insights, and knowledge.

We trust each other. There are different styles at work here--and different genres too--but we trust each other to be intelligent, open-minded, careful readers. Furthermore, I'm taking risks that I wasn't willing to take before because I trust that my readers are there to help my work, push my work, and support me emotionally as I take risks.

On a side note: are we friends? Well, yes. We don't walk arm-in-arm down the sidewalk marveling at the blossoms, but we like and respect each other. In other words, I don't know if we're "I'll-help-you-move-the-body" friends, but some boxes of books? No problem. Is this an important ingredient? It might be.

Back to the ingredients. We're small. Yup, there's no way around this. We're not a movement, not a school, not a factory: we're a workshop.

Finally, this workshop "works" because all of the members would be fussing over their own writing even without the workshop. I moved, and I began writing daily. And, on my own, I was planning and shaping and focusing, but I wanted more. By the time the workshop began two months later, I was anxious for some feedback. I won't lie, the workshop keeps me writing when I don't feel motivated (once or twice over the past few months, and that's another great thing about workshops) but if we all lacked the individual drive this workshop would fall apart.

So to my gang, the band, the workshop, the cougars, the wildcats, the wolverines, whatever we're we're calling ourselves this week. My friends, thank you.
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The post where I rave about the Mad Poets Society

Last night, I had the pleasure of meeting Autumn Konopka, host of the Milkboy Acoustic Cafe Multi-Genre Series. Thursday nights are poetry nights at the Milkboy Coffeehouse in Bryn Mawr, and last night the audience was thoroughly entertained by Minna Duchovnay and John Yamrus. Duchovnay read contemplative poems with rich natural scenes (plus a few translations of a 16th century poet's musings on kissing--fun stuff), and Yamrus had the crowd laughing quite a few times with his sharp views on (just to name a few subjects) life, death, dogs and poetry. The open mike was short and sweet--Konopka runs a well-organized reading--and we voted anonymously for our favorite.

I am so glad I was there last night. So glad. You see this reading is one of a dozen venues where the Mad Poets Society holds readings and events. Under the direction of Eileen M. D'Angelo, the Mad Poets Society energizes poetry across the region. I went to see some live poetry, and I left high on the idea that poetry was alive and well--in my neighborhood. I felt like I was a student in Pittsburgh in the late 90s--where the poetry scene was so big, there seemed to be a reading--somewhere in the city--almost every night. It's true. It was wild. Last night, the feeling returned. Basically I realized that while the thirty plus colleges and universities in this area certainly keep poetry alive, the Mad Poets Society keeps poetry well. This underground power plant pumps juice into readings all across the area. Poetry for the people. God bless 'em.
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Hello to AWP in Denver

I just wanted to send good wishes to everyone I know at the AWP conference in Denver. If you get a chance, check out the round-table discussion on flash fiction on Friday at 10:30 in Room 303 of the Convention Center, Street Level. Professor Randall Brown, Director of the MFA program at Rosemont College is part of the panel. The saturnalia books table at the bookfair has some great titles. A few folks from Drexel are also at the conference. Please show some love to all of them, especially the folks representin' the Painted Bride Quarterly.
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Considering the Value of Negative Capability

Helping beginning poets to understand Keats's idea of "negative capability" seems to be a standard part of poetry instruction now, and thank god for that. To understand negative capability--to strive for this--means being able to do some things important to being a human being, not just a poet.

In Writing Poems (a damn fine book and topic for another post) two pages are spent on the topic. This might not seem like much, but for a book on poetry instruction, this is some good ink. These two pages seem to be enough to convey to beginning poets the idea that if they want to become better poets, in much of their work, as they work, they need to be able to remove preconceptions, assumptions, and judgments--especially if they want that work to move audiences.

And that's the kicker--negative capability means nothing to a beginning poet unless that beginning poet really wants to use language to connect to a larger world. When a poet empties out the self, the poet becomes a void which the world can enter. Poems written in this state are poems in which the speaker is open to the world, open enough to allow the whole world in, allow readers in. There's abundant generosity and empathy at work in negative capability. If poets aren't willing to develop those skills, they won't fully inhabit the power of a good poem, let alone a great poem.

They may still write some good poems--poems that cheer the tavern patrons, some funny poems, some political poems, perhaps even some poems capable of conveying complicated emotions--but those poems will be like windowless cells: completely contained spaces designed to trap meaning inside. There will be visitors who will stop by, visitors who "get it," but most of the world will be forever shut out.

It's scary and difficult to practice this skill. Everything about society--our religions, our studies, our survival--is based on interpretation and evaluation. We must know what things mean. Things must have a point. There has to be a system, a method, a logic. Why tell a story unless there is a lesson to be learned, unless there's a point, unless we know right from wrong and good from bad?

I'm supposed to let go of all that?

Yes. Yes. Yes.
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