Summer Reading

This is way too ambitious--50 books. I'm a slow reader. But I'm going to do my best. This is an odd amalgamation of books on my shelves that I've never gotten around to reading, books that have been recommended to me, a little poetry homework, and embarrassing gaps in my poetry background. I'm not listing any fiction, but hopefully will have time for a novel or two at some point. Here it is:

Poetry

Complete Works:

Walt Whitman

Emily Dickinson

Lorine Niedecker

Arthur Rimbaud

Wallace Stevens

Anne Sexton

John Keats

Thom Gunn

Dylan Thomas

Robert Frost

Selected Poems:

Percy Bryce Shelley

Donald Justice

Denise Levertov

Midnight Voices, Deborah Ager

Theories of Falling, Sandra Beasley

Manna Sifting, Garrett Brown

My Last Duchess & Other Poems, Robert Browning

Raefton Georgics, Garin Cychol

Furious Lullaby, Oliver De La Paz

Practical Gods, Carl Dennis

Then, Suddenly, Lynn Emanuel

Keep This Forever, Mark Halliday

Birthday Letters, Ted Hughes

Intaglio, Ariana-Sophia Kartsonis

Hallelujah Blackout, Alex Lemon

Undersong, Audre Lorde

Cadaver Dogs, Rebecca Loudon

The Lion Bridge: Selected Poems 1972-1995, Michael Palmer

Torched Verse Ends, Steven Schroeder

The Darkness Around Us is Deep, William Stafford

Ohio Violence, Alison Stine

The Rented Violin, Karen Whaley

Self-Portrait With Crayon, Alison Benis White

Steal Away, C.D. Wright

The World of Ten Thousand Things, Charles Wright

Easter 1917 and Other Poems, W.B. Yeats

The Second Person, C. Dale Young

Strike Anywhere, Dean Young

Poetics

The Life of Poetry, Muriel Rukeyser

How Does a Poem Mean, John Ciardi and Miller Williams

A Poetry Handbook, Mary Oliver

A Poet’s Guide to Poetry, Mary Kinzie

Non-Fiction

Unbearable Weight, Susan Bordo and Leslie Heywood

Gum Dipped, Joyce Dyer

Desire in Language, Julia Kristeva

Limbo: Blue Collar Roots, White Collar Dreams, Alfred Lubrano

Capital, Karl Marx (maybe)

The Noonday Demon, Andrew Solomon

Why I Am a Catholic, Garry Willis

*

On a slightly different note, I need to compile a list of poetry books published in the last two years for my intro to poetry course (obviously I'm not going to be able to list all of them...). I'm going to have my students write book reviews for their midterm project. Do you have a book I should add to the list?

What I'm Reading - #1

As promised, here's a brief look at what I'm reading this week.

Just Because:

Pink, Daniel H., A Whole New Mind, Riverhead Books, 2005.

Pink claims that “Right-brainers” will be the most sought-after and successful employees in what he calls the Conceptual Age (which follows the information age). MFAs will be the new MBAs, he says, and empathy, creativity, and “joyfulness” are some of the key skills we all need to brush up on to stay competitive. I'm only about 60 pages in--I'll let you know if he comes up with anything useful.

For Class:

Moxley, Jennifer, The Sense Record, Edge, 2002.

My first impression of The Sense Record was that despite some really powerful, beautiful poems, the collection as a whole wasn’t for me. Many poems seemed to be overly expository, others too theoretical for my taste. After class discussion last night though, I realized that I missed a lot of what Moxley was setting out to do because my background in poetry just isn’t strong enough. Some of the criticism was helpful (see below), but I will be coming back to this collection after I’ve brushed up on my American poetry pre-1980.* Moxley makes allusions to Wordsworth and Whitman that flew right over my head, and now that I know they’re there, I may be able to take a little more away from what I’ve read. Also in this collection: ars poetica, feminism, critique of the academy, etc., Language poetry meets lyric poetry (?)... I'm feeling terribly inarticulate here, and know I'm not giving this book a fair shake. I'll be reading it again and revising my notes, hopefully before the end of the semester.

Bartlett, Lee, "What is 'Language Poetry'?" Critical Inquiry 12, 1986.

Language poetry is a reaction to/critique of "the workshop poem" and the "organizing I" in confessional poetry, yadda, yadda, yadda. Here's what I don't get: why can't we all just write the kind of poetry we want to write?

To be fair, what I did find interesting/instructive is the emphasis on deconstruction, text "as a play of subtexts," and the importance of signification and sound.

Also interesting: what I thought was Language Poetry is not Language Poetry, although I'm still not sure what is.

Burt, Stephen, “The Elliptical Poets,” American Letters and Commentary, 1999 (?).

In this short essay, Burt identifies a school of poetry that follows Language poetry and is characterized by “Fragmentation, jumpiness, audacity, performance, grammatical oddity, rebellion, voice, [and] some measure of closure.” Some poets he names to this school are Ann Carson, C.D. Wright, Liam Rector, Mark Levine, Lucie Brock-Broido, among others. Rather than paraphrasing, I’ll just quote his conclusion, which ties things up nicely:

[Elliptical poets] want to convey both metaphysical challenge and recognizable, seen and tasted, detail. Ellipticists reject: poems written in order to demonstrate theories; scene-painting, and prettiness as its own end; slogans; authenticity and wholeheartedness; mysticism; straight-up narrative; and extended abstraction […]. Elliptical poets are uneasy about (less often, hostile to) inherited elites and privileges, but they are not populists, and won’t write down to, or connect the dots for, their readers; their difficulty conveys respect.

I also read, but won't bore you with summaries of:

• Oren Izenberg's "Language Poetry and Collective Life"
• Marjorie Perloff's "After Language Poetry: Innovation and its Theoretical Discontents"
• OEI's special "After Language Poetry" issue, with short essays by poets including Moxley, Peter Gizzi, Kenneth Goldsmith, and others

*Yes, I know. It's shameful that I am only well versed in contemporary poetry. I focused heavily on fiction as an undergrad and am trying to make up for it little-by-little. That's why I'm getting a PhD.

Good morning, 2008 (and some thoughts on poetics)

I guess it isn't really morning any more, but I'm still in my pj's, drinking coffee, so it's morning here. In my little world.

I've been thinking a lot about change these last few days because my life is in transition. I'm not a student anymore, but maybe I will be again soon. Between now and March, when the PhD gods tell me my fate, I'm treading water. I don't get to make many decisions right now, except what to do with my time while I wait. One thing I'm going to try to do: wallow less, live more. I like to spout off about how "comfortable" I am being alone, how "happy" solitude makes me, but last night I realized that those are just a couple of new brick walls I use to make myself feel better that there aren't more people in my life (in the real world...perhaps this is why I blog so often) or that I don't spend more time with the people who are.

Another thing I'd like to do: stop using this blog as a journal. Stop whining at the cyberworld. I started this blog because I wanted to be part of a community of writers, so I need to try to get back to that. Becoming part of the discussion. Reading and reflecting and reviewing. Confession: I don't read lit mags very often. I feel horribly guilty about this, especially when I ask the editors of those lit mags to read my work. I read the stuff that comes into my hands easily--passed on from Mary, or my classmates, or free copies picked up at book fairs (I read more online journals, but still, not enough). I prefer to read books...but as a poet who does not have a book, I'd like for people to read what I write, so I should be doing the same for others. Plus, now that I'm a BOR editor, I'm sitting on both sides of the fence. So lit mags. I promise I will read more lit mags.

Well...we all mean well on New Year's Day, but that rarely lasts, does it? I'll be back here whining in a week. But in the meantime, some thoughts on Written in Water, Written in Stone.

I'm not very good with dates/historical movements, etc., so forgive me if I get things wrong. It seems most of these essays were written long before they were published (the preface says they were printed between 1976 and 1996, but at least a few had 1971 printed below the author's name and many "felt" older) and because of that, I sometimes felt excluded from the discussion. This was partly because I didn't fully understand the historical context, partly because some essays were written so early in the women's lib movement that authors were still discussing "women's writing" as something alltogether different from "Poetry." I've always been confused by feminism (see my posts from last Febuary), but reading these essays helped me to see how, if I were born in 1960 instead of 1980, my perspective would be different.

At any rate, many, many of the male poets included in this collection became all the same guy to me: A stodgy little old man who likes to make his girl students cry, (Yes, there is a teacher (or two) in my past who helped shape this perception.) and he was yelling at me all through this book. Telling me that I don't know enough to even put pen to paper, that every interpertation I have of a given poem is wrong, and that as long as my poems are written in free verse, they are useless, temporary, and ultimately forgettable. Perhaps I'm being harsh, but there were several articles belittling the advent of free-verse, the laziness of beginning writers, and claiming that writers "today" (10-20 years ago) don't have any idea what was written before WWII. I may be exaggerating a bit, but that is the overall message I came away with. Pretty unfortunate considering where I'm at in my life and in my writing.

On the up side, there was a lot of good advice tucked in between these rants against young poets (and MFAs--I finally got to read the Donald Hall McPoem essay, and it's pretty scary). I came away thinking about lines and line breaks, stanzas, the shape of my poems, in a way that I hadn't before, as the same poets who complain about free verse discuss musicality and rhythm and what a line of poetry should represent. Many complained that contemporary poetry is nothing more than prose with line breaks (and haven't I said the same about my work?) and encouraged writers to bring music back into poetry. That's a good thing, I think, and something that I need to work on. Although I'm still not sure how to articulate it, much less do it.

Many essays also talked about personal experience and confessional poetry--a debate I know a little more about. This is the best explanation I've ever come across, from Louis Simpson's "Reflections on Narrative Poetry":

"Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath, among others, were said to be confessional poets--that is, to be writing directly about their lives. But [...] the incidents they relate have been shaped so as to make a point. The protagonist is seen as on a stage. In confessional poetry, on the other hand, there is no drama. The drama is not in the poem but outside it, in a life we cannot share."

So, personal expereince + drama = good narrative poetry? Maybe an oversimplification, but it works for me.

Final thoughts: A good book, although frustrating at times. Helpful in looking at poetry as a growing, changing, evolving artform; like gawky pictures from your teenage years, a little hard to look at, but if you're careful and patient, there are a lot of lessons to learn. And here is my favorite moment. This is from Robert Francis' "Four Pot Shots at Poetry."

It Really Isn't

It isn't expensive to be a poet. A pencil and a piece of paper are all the equipment needed to get started. Homer managed with less.

A pencil or pen and a few pieces of paper. Then an envelope or two and some postage stamps.

[...]

You may fancy writing in an Italian villa or a French chateau, but the poems you write there will be no more immortal than those written in your bedroom at home.

Nor do you need very much of the most precious of all items, time. Odds and ends will do. Evenings, early mornings, noon hours. Sundays, holidays, and when you sprain your ankle.

It's quite otherwise with a painter. Paints, brushes, and canvases cost money, and a painter can't very well paint in his bedroom. [...]

No, if a poet can support himself he can support his poetry. If he can keep himself fed, his poems won't starve.

So, when you come right down to the brass tacks, a poet doesn't really need the aid, assistance, subsidy, and support that munificent philanthropy stands ready to grant him. In this, isn't he lucky?

More good news

I'm also going to have work (multiple poems!) in the winter issue of FRiGG. That makes my acceptance to rejection ratio since returning from Arizona 1:1. That, my friends, is my best ratio yet.

Even more exciting is that they're taking one of my favorite poems, one that has been read by no less than 17 different editors with at least 2 of them writing "almost" notes. Needless to say, I'm feeling pretty darn good right now. If there was any wine in this apartment, I'd be opening a bottle to celebrate. Unfortunately all that's here is bud light and that doesn't feel like much of a celebration to me.

I spent aaaalllll day today working on my AZ homework assignment - 10 new pages. I finished the requirement and realized I didn't even scratch the surface of all the notes and journal entries I made while traveling. I would love to continue dumping the contents of my brain on to paper, unfortunately, a girl has to sleep every now and then. Also, I have poems for both classes to revise this week because both portfolios are due within the next seven days. That leaves 3 weeks of summer to write more new stuff.

I'm dreading/anxiously anticipating the revision process because I don't normally produce drafts quite this quickly, which means the drafts are probably less polished than I'm used to. It will be interesting to see how it goes.

Okay, kids. I think it's time for me to wrap things up.

I haven't unpacked anything yet. Nor have I done any laundry. I may be going to class tomorrow in an entirley inappropriate outfit. (Nothing like dress pants and a graphic tee, right? Or a wool skirt and tank top?)

Poetry Homework

A few things I'm doing this weekend in hopes that my thesis will rock:

• Reading Ordering the Storm from Cleveland University Press, edited by Susan Grimm, who happens to be in my workshop this summer. A couple quotes I love: 1.) What kind of response do I want the reader to have when they've finished my book, given all possible demographics? Ideally, I hope my reader will be revitalized by the end of the process, gratified, or profoundly moved. I want my reader to perhaps feel the need to linger and savor, or to simply sit with me for a thoughtful length of silence. I want to have touched them, across space and time. I want them to taste my youth and enjoy my sassiness. I want them to be excited by my concerns and ideas. I want them to bemoan my losses and my trials. I want them to sample all life as it has defined me. I want them to have moved through my flesh. Wanda Coleman 2.) [a book] printed while the composition is still warm, reflects one blossoming consciousness, wayward and purposeful, playful, but fully intended[...]you rearrange, fiddle; spread them out on the kitchen floor[...]If this is your first 'kitchen cabinet' your job's even harder, since the poems buttering the tile are the ones that taught you how to write. Philip Brady
• Trying to take what I've read, and every other bit of advice I've heard about ordering a manuscript, and trying to apply it to my own ms. It seems a bit too early for me, but CP insists he cannot read my thesis unless it is in order. When I printed it out back in May, I put the poems in semi-chronological order, but after sitting with that for a while, I realized it was a terrible idea. Now I'm at square one and having lots of trouble.
• Reading bits of The Catechism of the Catholic Church and seriously considering the possibility of going to mass tomorrow. Other than weddings and funerals, I haven't been to mass in about 4 years. I won't get into my weird theological hang-ups, but I will say that I looove mass even if I'm not sure I believe what the church teaches. But this list is supposed to be about poetry homework, right? Well, it is. Because I've been thinking a lot about ceremony and poetry, and what is more ceremonial than mass?
• Reading Charles Simic's Selected Poems 1963-1983 with an eye towards evocation. Do I know what that means? Not exactly. But again, CP said to.
• Studying the list (I forget where it came from) of words all high school grads should know, b/c apparently I am behind. A few words I still don't know: abjure, fiduciary, gamete, gerrymander, obsequious, tautology
• Revising the poems I've turned in so far this summer
• Writing (hopefully) 3 new drafts so I don't have to worry about it while I'm getting ready for Bisbee
• Rereading Leilani Hall's Swimming the Witch and trying to figure out why it isn't jarring to hop from family poem to 17th century witch trial poem to 1970's volcano eruption poem back to family poem...because I feel like when I switch between time periods or subject matter, it is.

Well, I think that's about enough to do, don't you? Meanwhile, I'm making dinner for my sister and brother-in-law tomorrow because they have been making Sunday dinner for years and I want to return the favor. Plus, it's supposed to be +90 tomorrow and they don't have A/C.

Who has time for a social life? People pick on me because I don't go out very often, but seriously, this list sounds way more gratifying than, say, drinking 8 beers and throwing up in the woods like I did last weekend.

Integrating Research

Last year, I discovered that my grandfather (who had a shady past of bank robbing and possible mob connections) and the rest of my family were great fodder for poetry. I come from immigrants--I don't think anyone I'm related to was in the US before 1900--and I think there's a great wealth of poetic "stuff" (for lack of a better word) in my poor, old-world, non-English speaking ancestors trying to make a life in Pittsburg and Cleveland for the last 100 years. However, as I started trying to write these poems, I realized I just don't know enough. My family is pretty tight-lipped about our history, so I'm going on bits of stories and rumors. So, it seems research is the next logical step.

Unfortunately, I find myself caught up in other things--really tough classes last spring, trying to be a good teacher now--that have prohibited me from doing that research. So I've turned my family series into a series of childhood poems. I like the childhood poems, but I want very badly to go back to my original impetus.

Earlier this week, I decided to do a search on the Ohio State Penitentiary, where my grandfather lived from 1946-1956. Holy crap, does that place have a sordid and sad history! Riots, over crowding and deplorable conditions...most during the time when my grandfather was there (at it's worst, the prison held somewhere around 5000 inmates, and this was in 1955). Also, in the 1860's, it was a POW camp, and in 1930, there was a fire that killed hundreds of inmates and guards. Ghosts, perhaps? This is exactly what I was hoping to find. Yet, now, as I try to put a poem together in my head (I haven't gotten to paper/keyboard yet) I have no idea how I will combine what I've read with what I know and remember about my grandfather. I'd have no problem writing a research paper...but how does one go about writing a research poem?