Received a good news email from Patty Paine at diode this morning. She’s accepted four poems for the fall issue. (Thanks, Patty!) It’s a great way to kick off the Spring Break. Of course, there were two rejections in the regular mail to balance me out…as always.
Today I began what looks to be a longish journey with the anthology When She Named Fire edited by fellow Arkansan, Andrea Hollander Budy. I must confess that I don’t normally read the preface in an anthology, preferring instead to leap into the work, but because of a personal/professional connection of the email variety with Budy, I decided to start there. I’m glad I did.
Budy begins her preface with a question of poetry’s necessity and then mentions the 1973 anthology No More Masks. With that my mind went rocketing down memory lane. No More Masks was crucial to my beginnings as a poet. I found a used copy of it sometime in the late 80’s, at the local library book sale, I think, just as I began my undergraduate degree in English. When I brought it to a conference with my advisor, she told me she had a copy as well, and I felt that first rush of being connected to someone else through poetry. No More Masks is a collection of poetry by American women, as is Budy’s anthology. It is often hard for me to articulate, especially to male poet friends, the lack of lineage that I felt as a beginning female poet, when almost every poet I had been presented with in school was a DWG (dead white guy). I do not mean to knock the work of those amazing men, of course. Only, in thinking back, Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath, and maybe Elizabeth Barrett Browning are the only poets I can remember reading in high school. And their work was somewhat sensationalized: Dickinson, the recluse; Plath, the suicide; and Browning, the wife of a major poet.
But I digress, Budy’s preface goes on to state that the book contains “461 poems by 96 women, the youngest born in 1976, the oldest in 1925.” Budy then discusses her aesthetic, the necessity of both music and story within the poems she chose. Towards the end of the preface, she writes: “[Poetry] reminds us how to live and how to cope with life’s difficulties by stirring us in the places where what we feel and know but cannot express nevertheless exists. It provides one of life’s few defenses against inevitable grief and intolerable, unfathomable disaster.”
As I flipped through the table of contents, many, many of the names were familiar to me, yet I’ve already been delighted to discover several poets new to me, and I’m still in the B’s. (After much jumping around, I finally decided to just start on page one and go from there.) I find though, that I need to take the poems slowly and to pause often to let each writer’s voice ring out from the chorus gathered here. I cannot wait to listen to the voice that waits on the next page.
Spring is in the process here, which means a return to reading poetry on the back deck, albeit a blustery back deck today. I ended up reading lines of poetry as seen through the tips of my hair as it whipped across my glasses. Still 73 degrees is nothing to laugh at in March.
This month’s copy of Poetry brings with it the usual hit or miss for me. I’ve been following the blogs on negative reviews this week and then found Jason Guriel’s thoughts on the subject in his preface to his reviews. An idea that began to gather density while I was at AWP has been gaining mass this week. I’m sure it’s not a stunner to anyone who knows me: I am not a critic.
This used to bother me. I suppose, somewhere in the MFA gaining process I formed the idea that it wasn’t enough to write poetry, that I also needed to be a critic. I really can’t put my finger on why I decided this. In any case, I’m clearer now on what/who I want to be, and that is a poet who reads poetry and shares what she likes with others in a conversational and informal way. So be it.
Back to Poetry: The hits for me this month are: Leslie Williams’ poems “Fox in the Landscape” and “In Me as the Swans” along with Dave Lucas’ “Lines for Winter” and Katy Didden’s “At Chartres.” I also loved the notebook entry from Fanny Howe, which turns out to be un-summarizable.
The copy of New Orleans Review 34.2 is from my pile of AWP books and journals. I started reading it on the plane and stumbled across the poem “First the Bats, Then the Stars” by colleague and friend, Angie Macri. Today the poems that leapt out were Kevin Prufer’s “Late Empires,” the seven poems of Nicky Beer in the Poetry Feature, Jennifer Whitaker’s “Father as Map of the World” and “Father as Barred Owl,” and Stefanie Wortman’s “The Transparent Fabulist.”
A great morning of reading under the belt, I’m now waiting for the Cubs/Brewers pre-season game that is supposed to air on WGN. 30 days, 4 hours, 29 minutes until Opening Day 2009!
Excellent news for poet-friend Allison Joseph. Her sixth full-length book of poems My Father’s Kites will be published by Steel Toe Books! Congratulations, Allison! Check out the link for a sample poem that will knock your socks off.
Also in the new book news, I just received my copy of Andrea Hollander Budy’s anthology: When She Named Fire: An Anthology of Contemporary Poetry by American Women. I am simply awed by the list of contributors and can hardly wait for Saturday when I can dive in with my whole mind’s attention. On first glance, one thing I like about the format is that each author’s bio (and a photo) is included with the poems…saves me from flipping to the back. A minor thing, I know. Watch for a posting on my reading response.
I’ve long enjoyed individual poems by Lisa Russ Spaar as I’ve come across them in journals. In fact, my journey to her new book, Satin Cash, began by reading “Cricket” somewhere online, although I can’t remember where. Then, on my way to AWP I read a review of the book that made me want to read the collection. Once at the conference, I met up with good friend Tara Bray, whose new book Mistaken for Song is just out from Persea, also Spaar’s publisher for Satin Cash. While at Tara’s signing at the bookfair, I swooped up a copy of Spaar’s book as well, and I have not been disappointed.
The title of the book comes from Emily Dickinson: “I pay — in Satin Cash — / You did not state — your price –.” One of the things I love about Spaar’s work is her amazing use of syntax and her surprising diction, both highly reminiscent of Dickinson for me. Spaar is an agile writer; her lines are so well-crafted that the reader falls under the spell of the poem without noticing the guiding hand of the poet…a sure sign of success. Her subject matter is univeral: love, loss, nature, seasons, birds, life, death, etc., yet each poem sees this subject matter through a new prism. I could not stop underlining for the life of me.
Here are some examples.
from “‘To do That to Birds'”
In the family orchard,
all bruised blossom & bee-sting
among the practical effects —
machinery, mouth shushed
in the pesticidal cloud
of Southern Jersey — I believed
I must be fugitive forever, …
from “Yule”
A hedgetop explodes into wrens
as I pass, winged funereal wreathings
plying the wassail spank of sundown.
from “Home”
When I said to my love, I am afraid,
I do not know where is my home,
a casket opened in me, limitless
as the abyss to which all words attach:
Spaar is definitely a poet I’ll be reading and re-reading. I would especially like to get her earlier books and read to discover how she has evolved over the course of her career thus far.
20 poetry books that made me fall in love with poetry (or that made me continue loving it).
These are in no particular order.
Rose – Li-Young Lee
She Had Some Horses – Joy Harjo
The Complete Poems – Elizabeth Bishop
The Book of Light – Lucille Clifton
Full Woman, Fleshly Apple, Hot Moon – Pablo Neruda
American Primitive – Mary Oliver
Country Music – Charles Wright
The Master Letters – Lucie Brock-Broido
And Her Soul Out of Nothing – Olena Kalytiak Davis
Elegy – Larry Levis
Asylum – Quan Barry
The Portable Walt Whitman
The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke
Glass, Irony, and God – Anne Carson
Fabulae – Joy Katz
Salvation Blues – Rodney Jones
Ariel – Sylvia Plath
Opened Ground – Seamus Heaney
Grace Notes – Rita Dove
The Complete Poems – Emily Dickinson
There are many more recent books that come to mind, but I want to wait and see what kind of staying power these new collections have for me. Perhaps I’ll return to this list in 5 years and see what pops to the surface
In looking at these titles, I see the faces of my past teachers and friends who introduced me to these books, creating the connections that form a web around my bookshelf. I also remember the random discoveries in bookstores in unfamiliar cities.
This week, the local paper (The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette) ran several articles on the financial affairs of The Oxford American. If you do not know this publication, please check it out. It is a wonderful magazine devoted to “writing and art from or about the South.”
I’d link you to the articles, but the Dem-Gazette only allows subscribers to view articles for free. Everybody else has to pay. Here’s a shorter version I found on Business Week.
Many of you know the history. The magazine was founded in the early nineties by John Grisham in Oxford, MS. Since then it has had an uphill battle to stay in print, nearly folding several times. A few years ago, the magazine moved to Conway, AR, to be housed at the University of Central Arkansas. At the time, this was seen as a good bet to stabilize the magazine. However, last year, an employee allegedly embezzled over $100,000 from the magazine. While she was arrested, she has yet to stand trial.
In the meantime, apparently, the IRS had not been paid. Yesterday, the paper ran a story stating that the magazine owed a lump sum to the IRS that, if paid, might threaten another financial collapse. Today, the good news, a generous donor from Arkansas (a UCA alum) has pledged $100,000 to help the magazine out, specifically with the taxes owed the IRS.
Woo Hoo!!!! Yay for the anonymous donor!
All that being said, the history of the OA certainly lends itself to believing in curses, but what do I know, I’m a Cubs fan.
Today, my 17 lbs. of books arrived from AWP. The package arrived badly beaten. It had clearly split open at some point on its journey from Chi-town to Little Rock. When I took the scissors to the box to pry loose the journals and books, I didn’t even have to cut cardboard…just the tape they’d used to seal it all back together. I send my blessing to whichever UPS employee made sure I got all my books (I think?) and with little to no damage to my new acquisitions!
Attending the bookfair this year, I saw more tables housing online journals, big signs with the title of the journal and then a laptop for viewing, lots of handouts, buttons, bookmarks, etc. It set me wondering how the bookfair will change as the media of choice becomes more electronic. Will it be like the big computer conventions with the miles and miles of electric cables duct taped to the floor?
Now, there was no indication that the standard printed journal is on the way out. In fact, there seemed to be just as many sample copies available as ever, and I celebrate that. However, I also celebrate the way online journals have of spreading through the ether and providing me with instant access to the writing. Five years ago, I was hugely resistant to the idea of the e-book, and I’ll admit that I love the smell of a book as well as its weight in my hands. Yet, today, I also like the weirdly connected internet space that provides more chance in who or what I might stumble onto. Perhaps this is because so many of the online journals have learned to use the technology to their advantage where readability and navigation are concerned. Perhaps this is because of my giant iMac screen that makes reading just about anything a pleasure.