My submission stats for February are up at Poetry Has Value, so check it out along with all the other wonderful words from my fellow PHV bloggers.
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PHV: January Stats
My submission stats for January are up at Poetry Has Value, so check it out along with all the other wonderful words from my fellow PHV bloggers.
Sharing the Love
It’s not uncommon for lists of writing advice to pop on my Facebook and/or twitter feed. I follow a lot of writers and they have much wisdom to share. This week’s offering came in a list from Sherman Alexie via Tin House.
Alexie’s poem, Avian Nights, is one of my all time favorites:
The starlings mourn for three nights and three days.
They fly away, only to carry back
Insects like talismans, as if to say
They could bring back the dead with bird magic.
I have a slight obsession with birds and I find Starlings particularly interesting. I wrote a poem, aptly titled Starling, that appeared in The New Plains Review and was recorded by the lovely Katie Woodzick.
Anyway. Back to the Alexie’s list of advice.
There’s a lot of solid common sense mixed with wry humor. For instance, #10: Don’t google search yourself, followed closely by #9: When you’ve finished Google searching yourself, don’t do it again. But when I got to #1 I felt myself nodding and muttering, “yes, I need to do that more:
When you read a piece of writing that you admire, send a note of thanks to the author. Be effusive with your praise. Writing is a lonely business. Do your best to make it a little less lonely.
I read a lot of poetry online and often I find myself saving links or printing poems or sharing the piece on the seemingly endless number of social media platforms that I’m currently trying to juggle (I caved the other day and created a tumblr page. I know. I’ve got a problem). But what I don’t always do is reach out to the author through email or Facebook or Twitter and tell them how much I loved their poem(s).
My students and I talk a lot about community as it relates to writing, especially in the context of a workshop. I tell them the importance of being honest and candid in their critiques and feedback to their fellow writers. Writing is extremely personal. Every time a student brings a draft of a poem or a short story or an essay to class, they are bringing a piece of themselves, so while it is important to be candid, it is also important to be kind and respectful.
It’s also vital to praise a piece of writing that knocks the wind right out of you.
I’m not big into New Year’s resolutions and seeing how it’s February, I’m a bit late to the party anyway, but February is the month of love, so what better time to up my efforts and take Alexie’s advice?
One of the best parts of social media and the internet in general is that I have access to so much brilliant work, and guys, there is a lot of brilliant work out there, so the next time you read a poem you love, let the poet know. Writing doesn’t have to be a lonely business.
Poetry Has Value
I’m embarking on a new venture starting this month over at Poetry Has Value (PHV) If you have not checked out Jessica Piazza’s excellent project, please take some time to read through her posts and familiarize yourself with her journey over the past year.
Jessica poses the question: What is your poetry worth?
As you can tell from the blog, there are a lot of possible answers to that question.
Where do I come in?
Well, thanks to Jessica’s idea to expand the project in 2016, I’ll be adding my stats (along with many other poets from all walks of life) and ideas to the mix. I plan to track venues where I send my poetry (individual poems and a chapbook manuscript), rejections and acceptances, fees I’ve paid to submit and any payment I’ve received for my work. In the spirit of being a good literary citizen, I also plan to track how I heard about a publication.
I’ll be sharing this information via monthly posts on the PHV blog.
My intro post is up, so please check it out along with all other brave poets who are contributing their voices to this discussion. It’s an important one.
Ekphrastic Poem in Progress
I’m in a serious relationship with a painting. It’s very one sided. I go to the Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA) at least once a month to visit. My “visit” consists of me riding the escalator up to the third floor, walking past the guest services desk, through the sliding glass doors and cutting a direct path to the Robert H. and Ina M. Mohlman Gallery. In the second room of the gallery, on the far wall hangs my love. I sit down on one of the padded benches (thoughtfully provided by the IMA) and well, I stare. Sometimes I take notes, but most of the time I just look. Visiting time can vary, but today I stayed for about an hour.
The object of my affection? Two Sisters by George Lemmen.
I’ve wanted to write a poem about this painting since the very first time I saw it. I bought a print for my home and I have a postcard version hanging on the wall of my office at school. Yes, I’m a little obsessive. Anyway. The poem. I’ve written several drafts. They’re floating around in my different journals and it was only a few months ago that I felt I could finally sit down and try to commit some sort of structured draft to the page. As is the case with a lot of my poems, I wrote the draft, messed with it for about a week and then left it alone for a month.
Today, a cold, blustery January day, I realized that I didn’t have anywhere I really needed to be, so I took myself over to the museum, pulled out my old draft and started scribbling.
It’s the dark haired girl, Berthe, that I find fascinating. In fact, she trumps everything else in the painting for me. The younger sister, Jenny seems small, inconsequential and not nearly as interesting, which is perhaps odd given that she’s in the forefront of the portrait. The fact that Jenny looks directly toward you while Berthe averts her eyes is especially intriguing because it is because of her looking away that we can’t stop looking at her. Or at least I can’t.
I was first introduced to ekphrastic writing as an undergraduate in my first poetry workshop. I loved the idea immediately and my first subject was this piece by Diego Rivera:
According to the Academy of American poets and the introduction they offer concerning ekphrasis, John Hollander wrote in his book, Gazer’s Spirit, that there are a number of ways to approach this type of poem ““include addressing the image, making it speak, speaking of it interpretively, meditating upon the moment of viewing it, and so forth.” The poem I’m working on regrading Two Sisters is a mix of of address and meditation, which seems to be the approach that gravitate towards. When I introduce ekphrasis to my students, I always start by showing them a variety of examples and I think that’s one of the many reasons I’m drawn to this type of poetry. The possibilities are seemingly endless.
A personal favorite of mine is Starry Night by Anne Sexton. The painting in question is of course, The Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh and the opening stanza reads:
The town does not exist
except where one black-haired tree slips
up like a drowned woman into the hot sky.
The town is silent. The night boils with eleven stars.
Oh starry starry night! This is how I want to die.
Another favorite is Landscape With the Fall of Icarus by William Carlos Williams after Pieter Bruegel’sLandscape with the Fall of Icarus:
From the poem:
unsignificantly
off the coast
there was
a splash quite unnoticed
this was
Icarus drowning
I particularly like discussing this poem/painting combination in my creative writing classes because it always takes my students a minute to find Icarus in Bruegel’s landscape and then when they do it’s always like they’ve won the lottery. I suppose this illuminates an added benefit of teaching ekphrasis, which is that in addition to exposure to a new set of poems, you’re also learning about art, which is an area I’ve always been interested in as a writer. I never took an art history course in college (a fact that surprises me more and more as I get older) but I feel like ekphrasis provides a wonderful entry point for newcomers. In fact, a successful poem, whether ekphrastic or otherwise, elevates its subject into a new space, sharing something with the reader that they had not considered before. Going back to Sexton’s “The Starry Night,” many of my students remark that they never thought of the painting as “ominous” or “physical” but Sexton’s poem offers a new perspective.
As an extension of this idea, when I get to the ekphrastic unit in my classes, I usually arrange for a trip to the IMA. They usually love getting into the galleries and writing poems of their own. I’m always amazed at how many of them live in the city but have never been to the museum.
While I was visiting my painting, I became aware, for probably the first time, that I am not the only one fascinated by Berthe. In the time that I sat, perched on my bench watching, several patrons stepped close to the painting. One couple stepped so close that the cord of their earbuds brushed perilously close to the frame. They whispered, they looked, but their eyes always centered on Berthe.
Because, really, where else would you look?
Time never stops, but does it end?
January 11th, 2016 and it finally snowed in Indianapolis. I could hear the snow blowing off the trees when I got up to feed Cam at 5 this morning, and it was while I was scrolling through my phone, baby resting against my chest, eyes closed, eating in slow measured swallows that I learned David Bowie died.
I remembered Tracy K. Smith’s poem, Don’t You Wonder, this morning while prepping for my intro poetry class that meets this afternoon. The title of this post comes from third stanza of the second section, and I plan on bringing copies to class today.
I’m also starting a new little project this semester where I share a poem a week outside my office door. I’ve tied it into the course work for two of my classes, but I really just wanted to share poems with people, because that’s the best part of my job.
Pittsburgh Poetry Houses
I’m always intrigued and inspired by people who think outside the box in terms of how to distribute poetry to a larger audience, so I was really excited when I learned about the Pittsburgh Poetry Houses project.
My family moved to Erie, PA when I was about eight years old, and when I graduated from high school, I attended Allegheny College, which is a mere 45 minutes down the road in Meadville, PA. My husband is from the South Hills and I my sister currently lives on the South side of Pittsburgh, so we visit the city several times a year.
This is all to say that I was thrilled to receive notification that one of my poems (a 30/30 poem no less!) was accepted for publication through this fantastic project. More details to come soon, but what a great way to kick of 2016.
Poetry Summer Reading List Book #4: A Sweeter Water
Book: A Sweeter Water
Poet: Sara Henning
Publisher/Date: Lavender Ink, 2013
Why I bought the book: I got the chance to hear Sara Henning speak at AWP as part of the panel The Bigness of the Small Poem (Sandy Marchetti was also a member of this panel) and after hearing her talk about her own work and then read some of it, I wanted to buy her book. She also spent some time during the panel talking about the poem “Song” by Brigit Pegeen Kelly, which is a favorite of mine.
What I admire about this collection: There were two things that struck me the most about A Sweeter Water. I greatly admire the way that Sara writes about women and being a woman and all things female. I spend a lot of time in my own poetry examining myself as a woman and I write a lot about other women in my life, and I often struggle to find authenticity in the subject matter. I don’t want to come off as patronizing or overly sentimental or cliched, so the middle section of A Sweeter Water where there are poems titled “How to Make Babies,” “First Striptease,” “First Kiss,” “Girls Like Us” & “How to Pray Like a Girl” (just to name a few) really resonated with me. I think what drove it home for me was that I wanted to share these poems and share them with my students and my sister and my mother and my best friend. They’re beautiful and sexy and heartbreaking and full of grit.
The other part of the collection that struck me was that Sara really knows how to end a poem. This is something I struggle with constantly, so as I started to read my way through the book, I took notice of the fact that I was constantly feeling a punch in the gut every time I finished a poem. The endings linger in your mind, which I think is what want them to do.
Favorite lines: “Memory, a roof with sheeted tin, is a mosaic of insulation, bends under the weight” (15). “…their tight jeans, stomach sunk/below where sharp hipbones/as though a bit of their souls were meant/to cradle there” (49). “We all enter the world/as no one’s drunk angel, drunk on pain, expecting to be loved” (55). “Asters that never knowing the dirt by feel, learn to root in the wind” (34).
Favorite poems: “Birthday,” “How We Love,” “Three Themes On Rescue,” “As Though the Stars Could Keep Us,” “Eros,” “The Last Dahlia” & “How to Pray Like A Girl.”
Links: Here is a link to the Brigit Pegeen Kelly poem I mentioned above. There’s a note regarding this poem at the end of A Sweeter Water concerning Sara’s poem “Three Themes on Rescue.”
A Sweeter Water is also full of dahlias, which are beautiful, elegant flowers. I’ve wanted to grow some of my own for years, but last summer I was finally able to nurse some into full bloom:
Previous: Streaming by Allison Adelle Hedge Coke
Next: The Well Speaks of Its Own Poison by Maggie Smith-Beehler
Poetry Summer Reading List Book #3: Streaming
Book: Streaming
Poet: Allison Adelle Hedge Coke
Publisher/Date: Coffee House Press, 2014
Why I bought the book: Wandering around the book fair at AWP, I was perusing the Coffee House Press table and the cover of this book caught my eye because it’s gorgeous. When I picked up the book, i opened it to the poem “Drunk Butterflies” and then I turned around and bought the book.
What I admire about this collection: The poems in Streaming sprawl. They are large and ambitious and full of breath. There is just so much space and that space is full of layers upon layers of language. These are poems that are about the intersection between family and history and the environment. I greatly admire Allison Adelle Hedge Coke’s ability to tackle large social and cultural issues in poems in a way that is still deeply lyrical and lovely. These poems you should linger over on your porch in the morning with a cup of coffee.
Favorite lines: “In this world we lose/the ones who give the most” (28). “Wrapping shyness with wing, undercover, under/folding blanket over love” (11). “Sandhill cranes rise into spiraled kettles; their mares purring chortling kettling/vortex siege/sedge herd” (18).
Favorite poems: “Drunk Butterflies,” “Platte Mares,” Heroes,” “Pando/Pando,” “Story,” “Campos,” “Hatchlings,” “Carcass.”
Previous: Confluence by Sandra Marchetti
Next: A Sweeter Water by Sara Henning
Female Celebrities I Admire
I feel like as a culture we spend a lot of time focusing on the negative when it comes to celebrities. This could be an entire blog on its own, but over Christmas my mom and I were sitting in her kitchen talking about what a train wreck Lindsay Lohan has made out of her life/career and I thought, “what about all the women in movies, music, television, and cyber space that are not train wrecks?” I’m not saying the women below will win a Noble Peace Prize or that they’re not flawed (who isn’t?) but I enjoy them for their art, their commentary, their fashion sense and their overall celebrity coolness.
I read Tina Fey’s Bossypants about a year ago and you should read it too. I laughed and laughed. Mean Girls is the only Lindsay Lohan I have seen or will ever see and it still makes me laugh. Tina Fey is funny, smart and rocks her glasses. She’s going to host the Golden Globes this year with Amy Poehler and I will watch only because of her. I loved her acceptance speech when she won the Mark Twain Prize and I appreciated her humor at the recent Kennedy Center Awards ceremony. Funny, genuinely funny, is awesome.
OK, not be shallow, but first, do you see this woman? Do you see her? OK, now that that’s out of the way…I liked The Devil Wears Prada and as soon as I stop being a wimp, I will go see Les Mis. I like that Anne Hathaway refused to discuss her “wardrobe malfunction” or her “drastic weight loss” on the Today Show. I like how she made fun of herself on the Daily Show and was clearly embarrassed when John Stewart complimented her talent. I like that she loves her new hair cut. I like that she is well spoken and smart and a has a killer wardrobe. I like that she seems like a real human being.
I have had a love affair going with Maggie Smith ever since I saw her in Evil Under the Sun, which was made in 1982 (a year after I was born). I’ve rediscovered my love of her in My House in Umbria and Gosford Park. I was thrilled when she agreed to be Professor McGonagall in Harry Potter and she has the best lines in Downton Abbey. To paraphrase a comment from Julian Fellows, creator of Gosford Park and Downton Abbey, Maggie Smith is the only actress that can make you love and hate a character all at the same time. Brilliant.
A good friend of mine burned me the first Norah Jones album while we were in college. I listened to it about 150 times in a row. Come Away With Me is one of my favorite albums and the title song is just beautiful. I love her voice and how she’s always working on a new an interesting project.
My sister turned me onto Florence & The Machine and the first album, Lungs, is one of my favorites. Her voice is powerful and glorious and her songs are ethereal and lyrical. Favorite tracks? #1, 7, 9 &12.
This may be one that many people disagree with me about, but this is my list, so too bad. I like Jillian Michaels because she’s tough and I like tough. I have two of her work out dvds and they are hard but awesome. I have not watched The Biggest Loser since she left, but now she’s back, so I may tune in. I like that she’s in your face but also fair. I like that she adopted two children and is a working mom. She doesn’t take any crap. Nice.
Emma Watson is classy. Emma Watson is smart. Emma Watson is pretty. Emma Watson is stylish. Emma Watson is English. Emma Watson was Hermione Granger. What’s not to like? What I like most about Emma Watson is her promise. She’s talented and young, so I hope to see her in so many more roles in the future.
Brianna Pike 