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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Where Oh Where. . . Third and Last Post

I've been having conversations with several friends and colleagues and I've come to the conclusion that there is no right answer to the question of where I should send my work--the answer (as it always seems to be) is...

it depends.

It depends on whether or not I care about where I'm published, or if I want to be a apart of a certain journal's mission, or who else was published by a certain journal, it depends on how long I feel like waiting, it depends on whether I want to shoot for journals at the tippy-top, or journals that I frequently see listed on the acknowledgments page in books, etc. Hell, then there are the journals that, well, I just like the cut of their jib.

Yes, I don't know what that means.

The point is, researching journals, is only part of the problem--oddly, the smaller part. The bigger part is thinking about your work as a whole: realizing what's complete (or not), and realizing that your manuscript is complete (or not). Square that shit away, then submit like hell.

And to that end, I recommend newpages.

One great result of all this thinking about poetry and talking to friends about poetry, was that I was turned on to NewPages.com--thanks Henri. NewPages is a great resource for finding out about literary magazines, independent publishers, and independent bookstores--and hell, it's just fun to scroll through all of those pages about literary magazines and see who's out there. . .

Where Oh Where. . .Continued

Okay, here's a short list. More journals (and reasons why), soon.

AGNI
32 Poems
APR
Artful Dodge
Caketrain
Florida Review
Gettysburg Review
Many Mountains Moving
Painted Bride Quarterly
Prairie Schooner
Philadelphia Stories
River Styx
Sun Magazine
Tampa Review
Weave
Westbranch

Where Oh Where. . .

What are the journals that should that matter to a poet who is sending out poems from a first book? I could ask what are the journals that matter, and I think it would be a similar list, but I want to be strategic about this process. To keep inundating Poetry and The New Yorker with my brilliance will get old for me--and I'm sure it won't make the poor readers there any happier either. Will I, at some point, figure out how to get into Poetry? Sure, but hinging a first book on poems appearing there is just stupid.

I guess this question could also be... "If I care about my craft, if I feel like I'm doing things in my poetry that are interesting, graceful, fun, noteworthy, perhaps even innovative, something I want noticed by those I respect, where do I send my work?

I've torn apart my MFA manuscript and I'm rethinking the whole damn thing. I mean this as no slight to my committee who invested hours into reading my drafts. I mean this as no slight to my former self who, according to my crude calculations put 160-200 hours into it. (Hmm. Perhaps I should have put 400-440 hours into it?) The point is: it's just not working, as a project, any more for me. I don't want to send it out and hope that some press, some where will publish it. The concepts and practices guiding the creation of that book have become refined in the four years since I've graduated; I'm calmer now, less spastic about the creation/revision/assemblage of poems. I can see those spasms at work in that book, and they undercut what I wanted to do/what I want to do. So, there's a new manuscript underway now--not to jinx anything--and as it comes together I wonder where I should start sending the poems that, now, I'm more certain will be a part of it.

This manuscript is probably about six to seven months from being in the final stages, but several of its poems are complete. So, the next post will discuss some possible journals; I like reading the Gettysburg Review, The Sun Magazine, and Witness (though I haven't read it since it moved)--and 32 Poems, is that enough? Probably not. I'll address first book prizes and awards in a future post.

Let's Be Paris

What a great line. Here's "Disgust" from Elizabeth Scanlon. So where is this smart funny poem? Well, it's in the latest issue of Ploughshares--the one edited by Tony Hoagland. Of course.

Persuasion

I'm concerned that Americans are no longer being taught about persuasion--what it is, how to see through it, etc.--at several points in their lives. I remember being taught about persuasive rhetorical strategies in elementary school, middle school, high school, and again in college (and I went to public school). Is it still like this for America's students? The PR agency Weber Shandwick has been running ads (thanks to Mom-101 for knowing the agency) for the corn syrup lobby for almost a year now, telling us that we shouldn't avoid the industrial garbage* known as high fructose corn syrup (Freeman's blog has links to the commercials). And, every afternoon on the El for the past six months, I've ben staring at Miracle Whip billboards that scream, "We Are Miracle Whip and We Will Not Tone It Down!" I'm not lying (see above). You can thank the mcgarybowen firm. I've seen both of these campaigns for a year now, and I thought everyone realized them for the massive failures that they are.

But, they are still around. So perhaps the campaigns are some type of insider joke--some way that the hip folks at the agencies could take some money from the corporate clients and get a good laugh--maybe even place a few wagers on how the ads would go over with America. David Cross has a good bit about a company that sells eggs using screaming electric guitars and lines like "These aren't your grandmother's eggs!!!!" These aren't stupid people at these firms. Perhaps some of them even know the Cross bit I reference.

Yes, the people at these firms are smart people. And they know what it took me too long to recognize: it's easy to manipulate large audiences if one carefully constructs the message and method of delivery. Miracle whip not boring? Corn syrup good for the body? How many 20-somethings can claim that they were formally instructed in the field of rhetoric multiple times in their educational careers?  That's why it's so easy.

*contains Mercury, folks! Yum!

Mutter Museum Calendar

I just ordered the 2010 calendar from the Mutter Museum. I put it up over the weekend and it's bizarre and wonderful. The images are taken by professional photographers who get access to the collection of the museum of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia. The 2009 calendar had an image by William Wegman (no, his dog was not chewing on one of the bones). When I'm feeling stuck, these curious and well-composed images make for good inspiration. Here's the link to the Mutter Museum Store.

Breaking In

Over the weekend, I locked myself out of my house. The only way back in was to break something. Lucky for me, I left the garage open. So, after going down the list of options (windows, locks, doors, door frames), I decided upon the wall between the back of my garage and the powder room. Snow shovels can be remarkably sharp and drywall remarkably brittle. After a few minutes of hacking, I climbed through the hole. Hello, toilet. I never thought I would see you from this angle. I stood in the small bathroom. I looked out into the kitchen and dining room. Through the locked windows, the sun had entered. A cloud of dust and insulation moved slowly in the currents. It sparkled in the light.

Vera Pavlova

Here's some beautiful compression--every word matters in these poems (translations from Russian).

ABOPABOW returns from its leave

with a link to a great poem by Stacie Cassarino. ABOPABOW took a leave as the holidays came. I'm back, and so are the posts. So, if you haven't read "Spoon to the Sky" yet, make your trip on over to Poetry Daily and check it out. Cassarino has written a great poem that captures both the chill and the warmth of isolation (weird, yes; but trust me, there is warmth here) in one's life (self-imposed and otherwise). She's also used carefully placed unstressed syllables and consonant sounds to craft lines that feel like breathing in the winter chill--look at those h's and w's.