Poetry Book Club for April

I am very pleased to announce that Deborah Keenan's Willow Room, Green Door has been selected for our April Poetry Book Club book.

Deborah has been a fixture in the Twin Cities literary scene for many years, and she fosters younger poets' talents through her work at Hamline University's Master of Fine Arts program and the Loft Literary Center. She's also a founding member of the Laurel Poetry Collective. Obviously, I'm biased, because I am a former student of Deborah's and I have a lot of admiration for her talent and generosity.

I'll post the conversation post on Monday, April 7. Until then, happy reading!

New Matthea Harvey Review

Over at Poetry Foundation, Jeannine Hall Gailey just posted a fantastic interview with Matthea Harvey. If you want to know about some of Harvey's artistic influences, check it out!

The Home Team Wins the Girl Super Bowl

According to this article in the LA Times, Minnesotans are just like Europeans. Well, sort of. We both cleaned up at the Oscars! It wasn't particularly surprising, given the quality of their respective movies, but Minnesota natives Diablo Cody won Best Original Screenplay for cutest-movie-ever Juno, and Joel and Ethan Cohen won Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Director and Best Picture for scary-and-brilliant No Country for Old Men.

I wonder if they had hotdish at their respective victory parties....

The Review I Wish I Wrote

David Orr has written a truly lovely review of Matthea Harvey's Modern Life, last month's PBC selection. I think he captures the strengths, flaws, and spirit of Harvey's book perfectly. This is truly the kind of review a writer would murder another writer for, or some other dastardly deed.

Belated Kudos

My mentor from graduate school, Deborah Keenan, was nominated for Minnesota Book Award this year for her book Willow Room, Green Door. Keenan is an accomplished poet and teacher, with eight books to her name. (My favorite is Happiness.) It is long overdue that Deborah is recognized for her amazing poetry!

Buy her book today!

Backlog

I've been busy, as you probably know. But that's no excuse for the backlog of posts that I planned on posting these past weeks. So, here is a lame attempt to catch up.

I have several articles I've published recently that I haven't shared with you, including an interview with Kirsten Dierking, author of Northern Oracle (pg of the PDF); a review of Kevin Kling's The Dog Says How (also pg 4); and a review of Matthea Harvey's Modern Life.

Whew! I feel better, now that I've caught up.

I will write an actual post sometime this weekend. It may contain something about poetry.

When Poetry Critics Attack!

According to this New York Times article, the recent transcription of Robert Frost's Notebooks is being contested by two critics.

Apparently, the editor of the notebooks couldn't read Frost's handwriting correctly, and one critic found over 100 errors in his work. The editor assumed that Frost was misspelling some words intentionally and let the misspellings stand. The critics dispute the readings and insist that Frost was correctly spelling different words.

So, was Frost a bad speller or is the editor a bad decipher-er? Discuss amongst yourselves.

Coming soon... The Attack of the Illegible Handwriting!

When Your Calendar Sends You Road Signs

From my Poetry Speaks Page-a-Day Calendar, for January 15:

"Any work of art makes one very simple demand on anyone who genuinely wants to get in touch with it. And that is to stop. You've got to stop what you're doing, what you're thinking, and what you're expecting and just be there for the poem no matter how long it takes."

-- W.S. Merwin

My first thought when I saw this, while checking emails and voicemail messages simultaneously: maybe I'm not stopping enough. After all, this was yesterday's quote.

The Close Reading of Sadomasochistic Poets

I just started reading Break, Blow, Burn by Camille Paglia, and I am already in love with it. Paglia is just one of those personalities that you love and hate, like the smart and pretty best friend who gets all the attention, and you want to just despise her, but you can't. Because she's pretty and brilliant. Whenever I read Paglia's prose, I'm prone to fits of envy and laughing.

Here are two examples.

From the introduction: "During the past quarter century, humanistic principles and honest practical criticism could reliably more be found among low-paid adjuncts faithfully teaching service courses at community colleges than among the vain, showy professoriat of the elite schools."

As a former adjunct wage slave and someone who probably will never rise to the level of professoriat... Amen!

And from her explication of "Daddy," which I flipped to first, naturally: "If Plath has no literary successors, she certainly has her peers -- but they are in popular music. I nominate Sylvia Plath as the first female rocker. ... The nihilistic wipeout of the last line of "Daddy" is also in the fractious rock spirit: it parallels the smashing or burning of guitars by the Yardbirds, the Who, Jimi Hendrix, the peak of expressiveness being a destruction of the instrument -- in the case of the poet herself."

I mean, can't you imagine it? Plath on a stage, burning her guitar? I'm sure I'll be quoting liberally from this book in the next few weeks. So, if I start mentioning Freudian phallic imagery and sadomasochism, you know now why.


Post Script: I typed in Google Images "Rockstar Poet" to find a picture to go along with this, and found this website. I also found this site, when typing in Camille Paglia.

I give up. No pictures for this post.

Poems, from A to Z

I'm reading Matthea Harvey's Modern Life, in preparation for our Poetry Book Club discussion at the end of the month. So far, I am enjoying her slightly surreal take on the world.

One of the aspects of her book that intrigues me is her use of abecedarian (alphabetical) poems. Her series of poems, "The Future of Terror," use alphabetical lists of words embedded in the text to flesh out the descriptions. Most of the poems go from the letter "g" to the letter "s" or "t". It's a brilliant technique, because she stretches towards a unique vocabulary. In the poem I linked here, we get everything from garden gnomes to napoleons.

When I think of alphabet poems, I always think of the more formal style. Christina Rossetti's "An Alphabet", is emblematic of that style. Intended for children, it contains still hidden philosophical gems like, "I am I—who will say I am not I?" The beauty of the abecedarian poem is the way it forces the poet to fill in words, and surprise ourselves in the process.

Similar to my surprise and joy at Natasha Trethewey's mirror image poem, Myth, this new take on the alphabetical poem may inspire to write some actual poetry yet.

I hope you're enjoying Modern Life as much as I am!

Thinking About New Hampshire in a Different Way

Why do I love the New York Times? Because, today, they published an excellent editorial from Donald Hall about voting. Sort of. It was really about the weather in New Hampshire and the snowfalls of his childhood. Sort of. It was really really about the noise that has been invading his state for a year and a half, the noise that is unnatural and will be leaving in 24 hours. It's about how he's craving the silence in his state. Sort of. It's about all of these things.

What I love most about this editorial is not the sentiment. It's kind of typical --a childhood recollection, a smattering of quiet political observations, a longing for the political process to be about community, and a communion with nature. Some of these are already Hall's tropes. But it's the fact that in 2008, we can be on the eve of an important primary, and the Times gives space to see what Donald Hall can say to us that makes us think about it in a different way. That's the power of poetry. So, go read him pontificate.

Edgar and Annie, Sitting...

..on my desk. Edgar Allen Poe and Annabel Lee were a Christmas gift and now they're watching me type. I was so excited when I got them on Monday, that I kept telling people how Annie sleeps in a sepulchre by the sea. Yes, I know they're just dolls. But, I hope they come out with more in this series. Below is Poe's poem, which inspired the dolls and my inner dorkiness this past week.

Annabel Lee

It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of ANNABEL LEE;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea;
But we loved with a love that was more than love-
I and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsman came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me-
Yes!- that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we-
Of many far wiser than we-
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling- my darling- my life and my bride,
In the sepulchre there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.

Poetry Book Club: Interview with Tao Lin

I was very fortunate to be able to interview Tao Lin via Gmail last week, in preparation for our PBC discussion of his book of poetry, you are a little bit happier than i am. Below is the interview. Enjoy!

What or who are your main influences on your poetry?

My main influences for the poetry book you read are the people I wrote about in the book, the "you" in many of the poems. I am interested in all those people, the things they've said or done, and I think about them when I'm alone and not thinking about myself.


How would you describe your dominant aesthetic in writing poetry? Do you have primarily visual goals, thematic goals, oral/aural goals, or a combination?

My dominant aesthetic in writing poetry is that I try to write what I want to read. It changes a lot, what I want to read. There are a lot of things I don't want to read though, that doesn't change as much. I don't want to read poetry that will make a 12-year-old feel stupid. I don't want to read poetry that will make someone who works at Kmart and has never read poetry feel stupid. I don't want to read poetry that has the power to make anyone feel stupid.


Your poetry is quite a leap forward from the "establishment" type of poetry, thematically and aesthetically. You can tell that you are a member of our generation, when you read your work. How does this affect you commercially?

That was a funny question, I stared at it reading with a neutral facial expression and then laughed a little at the end. I don't think it has been "exploited" yet at all that the poetry book you read could be marketed as a "voice of a generation" or something book. If someone involved in the book had the ambition or something to do that I think it could sell a lot of copies and a lot of teenagers and college kids would read it. If MTV released the book I think they could sell a lot of copies. Still, it has sold a lot of copies I think for poetry. I think it has sold something like 1200 copies or something, and it seems to be selling more now than when it came out.

I think the "establishment" type of poetry you talk about is also written by "members of our generation." I mean 24-year-olds are not all writing poetry that is like the poetry in my poetry book. So it is not a generational thing I think. I don't think anything at all is a generational thing. There is a percentage of humans that thinks a certain way, like 2% are really alienated, 18% appreciate humans that are really alienated, and 80% appreciate sports, or something, and those numbers stay constant maybe no matter what year you were born in. Generational things may change those numbers a little but not much. These numbers are not based on any facts.


I found myself thinking a lot about all the personification in your poems. Food thanks you for eating it, literary magazines beg you to buy them. How do these characters occur to you?

I think it first occurred to me either through my mom, dad, reading Joy Williams, or my friend who does that a lot, talks about inanimate things like they have feelings and thoughts. When I was five or something if I saw a stuffed animal with its face covered by another stuffed animal's ass or something I would move the stuffed animal so its face would not be covered. Then I would feel better. Thinking like this makes me feel better because it makes life less significant. If a stuffed animal endures like 5000 days of having its face crushed by a box or something then I can endure not getting text messaged back by someone I like. A stuffed animal sits there, it doesn't move, what if it's alive and conscious but just really enlightened, and so chooses to go against consciousness and therefore not have to "deal with" existential despair, the "burden" of having to choose in a universe that does not tell us what to choose? This is comforting to me and exciting.


I'm also really interested in your book's overall tone. The language seems very ironic, a kind of wry sense of humor. Do you find yourself ever wanting to commit to some flowery, purplish prose? How do you marry the tone to your subject matter?

My story-collection, BED, has "flowery, purplish prose," I think. It is still "ironic" and "wry" though. I don't know how I marry the tone to my subject matter. I usually want to write in a tone that is not angry, bitter, or desperate. I feel desperation and anger and bitterness but I feel them for like 5 minutes. Most of the time I feel something else. That is the tone I try to write in for most of my things. For me to get the tone like that it takes a lot of editing.

It is like when I went fishing with my family when I was small. One day a hammerhead shark jumped out of the water and ate half of a bluefish that someone caught. That only happened once. It isn't how it always is. To get like how it usually is when someone goes fishing I would need to go fishing with my family like one hundred days in a row.


You use a lot of references to the business of writing in your poetry: book awards, rejections, literary agents, et al. Some poets ban this type of subject from their writing, as if it doesn't exist. Why did you first start including it in your writing?

I think maybe 5% of the words in the book reference the business of writing. I didn't think any more about "why I should include it" than about why I should include the word "the" or "and" or something. So if I included it it was probably because it was something I wanted to read. Because I try to write what I want to read.

In college in a writing workshop one person said I was post-modern. I think they said that because I included "Washington Square Park" in one of my stories or something. I asked them what they meant by post-modern. I asked if they could name some authors and they couldn't and then they said Dave Eggers.


You write fiction, poetry, and a blog and you publish in all three forms. What's your process like? When do you sleep?

If I am not working the next day I go to sleep around 6 a.m. That is my natural time for feeling sleepy I think. On Christmas I tried to sleep the entire day because the library was closed and everything else was also closed. I dislike holidays. I slept from 8:30 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. on Christmas. Then I planned that I would just not sleep that night and go to the library at 7 a.m. when it opened and then go to work at 10 p.m. I work in a restaurant.

My process for poetry is I usually have a file of poetry and I work on it if I feel like doing poetry. Then I save the file and email it to myself. For my next novel I have a file it's in and I usually have it open and work on it every day mostly. 95% of the time on the novel is spent working on parts I've already worked on many times before, I change some words or try moving the words in the sentences around or try moving the sentences around or deleting a word or a sentence. Then for the other 5% of the time I will write more, add to the novel, or I will look at the entire novel and think about if I want to delete large sections or move some things around.

For my blog I will be on Gmail chat and say something to someone. Then I will say, "I should blog that." Then the other person will say, "You should." Then I try it. If it's stupid I save it as a draft, if it is exciting I publish it.


You have a couple of epic length poems in your book. How does the writing and revision process differ between poems like "i am unemployed" and "i want to pour orange juice on my face"?

I dislike the longest poem, the one about poodles. I worked on that poem the most out of any of the other poems in the book. It doesn't fit the tone of the book I don't think.

For "i want to pour orange juice on my face" I wrote it and then deleted words that I could delete and still have it have the same meaning. For "i am unemployed" I think I did the same thing. The one I worked on a lot was the really long one that has poodles i it. For that one I had it in a file and I worked on it every day for like 20 days or something.


A lot of your poems seem to center around these "i want" fantasies? Do you keep track of all the weird and mundane things you want or do you have a larger process?

I just thought about what I wanted and typed it. There is always something I want. Sometimes I say I don't want anything but that's being ironic most of the time I think. Really I am saying "I wish I didn't want anything." So if I want to write a poem about what I want I just think about my brain and what it wants and I type that.

How Can I Hate It?

Last night, my husband and I saw the new movie Juno at the suburban mega-movie-opolos. It has been so long since I've seen a movie during an actual date night time, that I've forgotten what it's like to watch a movie with a crowd. Despite my imminent claustrophobia and introvertedness, I've got to say that the movie is awesome. The story of a young, slightly hip and slightly alienated girl and her pregnancy is hilarious, endearing, touching, cool, snarky, and very very Minnesotan. In fact, the entire packed-house crowd was laughing and snorting together. Creepy, yet fun.

Of course, I am slightly envious of the screenwriter, Diablo Cody. I don't know about the rest of the universe, but in Minneapolis, the local-girl-done-good story has been played out. She moved up from stripping at Minneapolis strip club to blogging, writing briefly for our local indie newspaper, then a memoir, then this movie and ultimate Hollywood darling status. She even has a new column in Entertainment Weekly. But that's okay -- she's talented. I'm not that jealous.

I will do my best not to spoil the movie for you, but there is a very sweet and weird love story in the movie, as well as an authenticly screwed up female lead, and a brilliant supporting cast. Allison Janey and J.K. Simmons are convincingly Minnesotan, with their deadpan support of their pregnant daughter and their oddly distant yet loving relationship with each other. If you need a date movie, and want to support a Minnesota import, go see the movie.

Poetry Book Club Interview Opportunity

Over the weekend, I emailed Tao Lin, author of this month's Poetry Book Club Selection you are a little happier than i am. He has generously agreed to engage in an email interview! This is an excellent opportunity to hear directly about his process, inspirations, experience writing the book, or pretty much anything we want to know.

I will be developing some questions to send to him later this week, but I wanted to check with the rest of you guys. If you have any questions for Tao Lin, please leave a comment at this post or email me at 9to5poet at gmail dot com. There is also still time to get in on the PBC action, since his book isn't due until December 31!

A Not-Too-Precious Novel About Poetry

When I was bookless at the beginning of this week, a dire circumstance in my life, my husband strongly urged me to read Carol Muske Dukes' latest book, Channeling Mark Twain. He had read it for school and we had gone to see her read at his school, and I just didn't feel like reading it. I liked her reading/interview, but I was resistant, probably because it was a semi-autobiographical novel about her youth as a poet. I was afraid it was going to be self-indulgent and pretentious, and as a younger poet, I was concerned that it would hit too close to home.

I was incredibly mistaken. I mean, there are points when I did want to smack the narrator for her naivete, but it was authentic and accurate. And you don't really read the book for the narrator, but for her experiences. Muske Dukes centers the story around her experience teaching poetry and Rikers Island penitentiary, during the seventies. She eventually created a successful writing in prison workshop called Writing Without Walls, which extended for several years.

The novel follows several inmates as they learn to express their experiences through poetry. In fact, each chapter is divided by poems from the inmates (although actually written by Muske Dukes herself). Through this conceit, the author creates an argument for writing poetry in order to chronicle and decipher one's life. The argument is political, as the inmates are in some ways products of their poverty, gender, and race. But it is also personal, as these are women trying to define themselves on their own terms. The narrator herself is able to interpret her life as she slowly composes a poem throughout the course of the book. The book also provides an interesting insight into the art and practice of writing poetry, in all of struggles and moments of clarity.

The book is a fluid and easy read and I would strongly urge anyone interested in the life of poetry to give it a try. I burned through it in less than a week, and now sadly, I'm bookless again.

A Crafty Challenge

My husband has decided to start a reading challenge on his blog, The Soulless Machine Review. I think it's pretty brilliant and I am going to join.

It's called The Art of Series Challenge. He is challenging people to join him in reading books from "The Art of" Series, published by Graywolf Press. (You may recall that I fell in love with Donald Revell's Art of Attention a while back.) The series explores issues of craft in poetry and prose, and each book is written by a famous writer, like Revell.

Although most reading challenges take a year, this challenge may take longer, because some books are unpublished as of now. As each book is "due," a discussion post will go up, so that members can compare notes.

Here is the current reading schedule, as posted on my husband's blog:

Out Now:
The Art of Attention: A Poet's Eye by Donald Revell (Read by Feb. 28, 2008)
The Art of Subtext: Beyond Plot by Charles Baxter (Read by April. 30, 2008)

Out Dec 26, 2007:
The Art of the Poetic Line by James Longenbach (Read by June. 30, 2008)
The Art of Time in Memoir: Then, Again by Sven Birkerts (Read by Aug. 30, 2008)

Planed but not Published Yet:
The Art of Narrative by Howard Norman
The Art of Time in Fiction by Joan Silber
The Art of Description by Mark Doty
The Art of Endings by Amy Bloom

If any of these books are as good as Revell's, members are in for a treat.

How Many Have You Read?

The New York Times released its list of the 100 Notable Books of the Year. From this list, I've read one book. Maybe I'm a little behind.

Out of the 100 books listed, 4 were poetry. Since I've only read the mega-best seller on the list, I can't truly complain. But it would be nice to see more than 4% poetry.

Here are the poetry books that they highlighted, with links to their New York Times reviews.

THE COLLECTED POEMS, 1956-1998. By Zbigniew Herbert. Translated by Alissa Valles.
NEXT LIFE. By Rae Armantrout.
SELECTED POEMS. By Derek Walcott. Edited by Edward Baugh.
TIME AND MATERIALS: Poems, 1997-2005. By Robert Hass.

Looks like I need to do some book shopping, as if I needed an excuse.

Minnesota Poetry

This week, I just finished reading Kirsten Dierking's second book, Northern Oracle. The book is lovely, spare, and very Minnesotan, in a good way.

The book is framed in two ways. Most importantly, she is exploring her Sami ancestry, so she uses quotes from the Sami poet Nils-Aslak Valkeapaa as epigraphs for each section. These quotes inform the reading of the entire section. The second framing device is a tacit relationship with nature.

Her four sections move from a deep relationship with nature outward to the material world and back again. The Animist and Fragile Organics, the first two sections, are rooted in natural imagery, weather, animals, plants. The third section, "Unstable," speaks to the experiences after 9/11 and how the country (and the narrator) have changed. The final section, The Path Homeward, speaks to the narrator's home life and how she integrates pain, change, tragedy and personal nature.

I like two things about this book. Often there are some poets who seem to stretch for vocabulary, to awe you with their understanding of Really Big Words. Dierking is not from that school of thought. In fact, she uses the common simple words really well, pulling on their physical resonances to craft her images. Secondly, this book feels very Minnesotan. By that, I mean there is a conflicted relationship with nature within an semi-urban environment that seems very appropriate to the subject matter. Sometimes, us Minnesotans like to write about how tough we are in relationship to weather and how lucky we are to have these extreme conditions. Dierking shows the beauty in nature and how integrated it is into our modern lives. This is so hard to do without sounding folksy or fake.

I think this book needs a second reading and after a few months, maybe when winter sets in, I'll revisit it. However, my first impression is that I love it and that it should be read. So go buy it!

If You Claim the Name of Poet...

...you should run to the bookstore to buy Donald Revell's book, The Art of Attention. As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I picked this up at the Twin Cities Book Festival, a lollapalooza of local presses. I thought it looked interesting. I just finished the first section and I am floored by how good it is.

In this book, Revell examines the lyric eye, probably the most important quality of a modern poet. He contrasts the poetry of cleverness or wit against the poetry of rapture and focus, favoring the later. In Revell's view, a poem is a tangible product of our fierce attention to the world, rather than our shaping of the world. We don't invent the world when we write, we notice it in its glory. The poetry of attention as he calls is it is intimate, peaceful, unagressive and watchful. As he says, "the poet reads the world with writing."

This is pretty revelatory writing. I find myself underlining every third sentence. When I read it back now to isolate a few quotes, his sentences are so intertwined that I cannot excerpt it to give a good representation of its breadth and depth. Needless to say, if you write poetry or want to write poetry, this is the book to read.