Poets & Cloggers Unite!

I hate being persnickety about details. I really do. But this article from Time Magazine has been sticking in my craw since I read it this weekend.

The stupid thing is that it is a good article. It's interesting and illuminates a big debate among poets and educators -- where does poetry belong, with the people or with the elite? See, it's about the Ruth Lily grant that the Poetry Foundation received. With this grant, the Poetry Foundation named John Barr, a poet and banker as the author painstakingly points out, as president. And now Barr is starting programs to help bring the poetry back to the people. All great news, in my book. As I often tell my students, if everyone read poetry, the world will be a better place.

So what's my problem? The author of the article, Lev Grossman, opens the article with several annoying and offensive stereotypes about poetry and poets. For instance...

1. "Money and poetry rarely have much to do with each other, especially in such a stunningly large quantity. Suddenly the small staff of Poetry was swimming in cash--it's the literary equivalent of the Beverly Hillbillies."

I can imagine the fish out of water TV sitcom now. The poet with flushing toilets and real writer neighbors.

2. "Poetry is the spinach in America's media diet: good for you, occasionally baked into other, tastier dishes (like the cameo that W.H. Auden's Funeral Blues made in Four Weddings and a Funeral) but rarely consumed on its own. In the hierarchy of cultural pursuits it sits somewhere just below classical music and just above clogging."

Seriously, clogging? In my informal and highly unscientific research, when you Google clogging, you get 4,890,000 hits. When you Google poetry, 145,000,000. And 108,000,000 for classical music, by the way.

3. "Poems became less like high-end pop songs and more like math problems to be solved. They turned into the property of snobs and professors."

I think we can aspire to being more than classy troubadours or bitter and troubled rock stars, while still retaining our level of intellectualism. In fact, I think it is more offensive to the public to say that because poetry became more intellectual, it became less popular. Surely, this is one of the reasons, but certainly not the only one.


So there's just a smattering of the things that bothered me. Taken out of context. I totally understood that this was exaggeration for emphasis because Mr. Grossman was making a point. I should take a breath and have a sense of humor. But, his language stings a bit, especially since he is contributing to the stereotypes that he is describing, by using this type of hyperbole.

Anyone Need a Job?

In Minneapolis, we have a pretty amazing non-profit literary center called The Loft. It's run in a beautiful, spacious meeting hall called "Open Book" and it provides many services for starving (and working writers.) For beginning writers, The Loft offers the opportunity to take classes with accomplished writers and make connections with other writers. For intermediate or advanced writers, the organization gives scholarships, mentorships, and brings "famous" writers from around the world to provide instruction and guidance.

It was just announced on Friday that the director of The Loft, Linda Myers, is stepping down. The organization is beginning a search to replace the Ms. Myers, who has been director since 1994. She helped to orchestrate The Loft's partnership with Minnesota Public Radio and Star Tribune to create a statewide reading club called Talking Volumes. (I saw Robert Bly as part of of Talking Volumes five years ago, when he came out with The Night Abraham Called to the Stars.) She also has been a vibrant leader for a growing organization that serves a diverse literary community. I think her presence will be sorely missed.

Lyric Eye vs. Lyric I

After the debate on autobiographical truth in poetry in the comment section of my last post, I decided to do a little research. In graduate school, we debated the difference between the use of the "lyric I" and the "lyric eye." Both use the first person narrative in poetry, but they use it in two completely different ways.

For me, the lyric I entails the use of the I in an autobiographical, almost confessional sense. I think of the way I teach the poem "Daddy" by Sylvia Plath, when I think of the lyric I. In our literature book, there is a quote by Plath stating that the poem is about a girl who had an Electra complex and learned that her father was a Nazi, which complicated matters. Beneath that, the editors provide a brief biographical background on Plath's family. Otto Plath, her father, was never a Nazi, though he was German.

When I teach this poem, I always tell my students to discount what Plath says about the poem herself. From what we know about Plath's life and artistic intentions, this poem is rooted in a lot of truth. She did have Daddy issues. This is one of the last poems that she wrote in her life and she was grappling with her adoration of Fascist men. ("Everyone woman adores a Fascist/ The boot in the face, the brute/Brute heart of a Brute like you.") So, I'm a hypocrite when I teach. I say my poetry isn't necessarily true, but this one definitely is. But I believe that I base my criticism in good research.

Then, there's the lyric eye. For me, this encapsulates the use of I in a pseudo-biographical sense or a completely fictional sense. For instance, the work of Ai or Patricia Smith. Both of these women use the persona and multiple persona in their books to illuminate an experience for the reader that they have never had. They capture the scariness in the daily world, the horror and the terror. (Dogfaceboy, for her Poetry Thursday offering, entitled "Enough" does this really well, too.) While it is pretty clear that the I in these poems is not the author, they are using the I to create true experience, in an emotional sense.

Then, of course, there is the blurry lines between all of this. As readers and writers, we have to decide where we fall on this sticky subject. Many, and most, believe that playing with journalistic truth is the right and the duty of poets. Not everyone believes that, however. Ted Kooser, our poet laureate, writes about this issue:

"Perhaps I am hopelessly old-fashioned. Perhaps I should accept
the possibility that what the poet says happened really didn't
happen at all, but I'm going to have to make a painful adjustment
in the way I read poetry and honor poets. I grew up believing
a lyric poet was a person who wrote down his or her observations,
taken from life. I have always trusted the "I" of Walt Whitman as
he dresses the wounds of fallen soldiers; I trust Mary Oliver to tell
me what birds she saw as she walked through a marsh; I trust
Stanley Kunitz when he describes two snakes entwined in a tree."
-- Taken from this article.

While I often use the lyric I and the lyric eye interchangeably in my work, but I have to acknowledge the truth in Kooser's statements. I do believe, deep down, in the I as author perspective in poetry, due to its rich history in our literature.

Bourgeois Poets Unite!

This essay in the NY Times Book Review section is fantastic! Jim Harrison reflects on Karl Shapiro's book Bourgeois Poet. This book deals with the struggling life of the poet-professor, the holy grail profession in the land of academic poets. For me, this article couldn't have come at a better time. Just when I'm contemplating what to do with my career, I read Harrison's quote:

"You will most likely get the back of the muse’s hand whether you have a chair at Harvard or are pumping septic tanks in Missouri."

Just the type of encouragement I need at the time I needed it.

Goodbye Politics!

Today is a sad day for alternative newspaper journalism. Steve Perry, editor of the Minneapolis/St. Paul City Pages, is leaving his post after 13 years. He left this letter on the City Pages blog today.

In between the lines of this gracious exit letter lies a political struggle with the City Pages' parent company Village Voice Media. Steve Perry is cut from the old school journalistic cloth; he's a severe leftist political commentator who uses his paper as an outlet for his political slant. Meanwhile, the parent company is looking for a more apolitical tone for their papers. Steve Perry doesn't fit into the new vision of the company, a vision where diversity is squelched and homogeneity reigns supreme.

Over my coming of age in Minneapolis, after leaving L.A. as a teen, weaned on LA Weekly I have come to rely on City Pages for it's current, rousing, and yes, liberal, news journalism. I am hoping that another one of our weekly freebies takes the City Pages' place as a leader in lefty news reporting in this die-hard lefty town.

In Memoriam 2006

As I was writing this morning and eating my breakfast, I was listening to the Good Morning America weekend newscast. For the majority of the broadcast, they have been paying tribute to those famous figures who have died in 2006. Pretty typical for the last day of the year. However, as they continued to honor those we lost this year, I was surprised by the lack of writers on the list. Unless you count Robert Altman or Aaron Spelling as writers.

So, I began to search for the memorial list for writers. I tried Poets & Writers and Publisher's Weekly, to no avail. I tried a basic Google search, and only came up with individuals. Then, I began to dig deeper. While there are no definitive comprehensive lists of only writers who died, I am thankful to the Dead People's Server for their lists of all celebrities who died and including several writers.

Here is my list, not close to comprehensive, of writers who I admire that have passed away this year:

Octavia Butler -- sci-fi novelist
Stanislaw Lem -- sci-fi novelist
Wendy Wasserstein -- playwright

Betty Friedan -- feminist icon and writer

Mickey Spillane -- noir novelist

William Styron -- novelist
Stanley Kunitz -- amazing poet, pick up his book now!

Robert Creeley -- Black Mountain poet

Muriel Spark -- novelist

Donald Hall -- poet

Perhaps next year a larger news source will honor the literary writers who have died, not just the creators of soap operas.

Deborah Keenan, working writer

My master's thesis advisor, Deboroah Keenan, is a model for working poets. She is fond of telling her student's that during the writing of her first book, she was pregnant with her first child and that the process is very similar. She is a full professor at Hamline University in St. Paul, MN and tirelessly mentors dozens of young poets through the creation of their first books. Even two years of after my own graduation, she still emails me to make sure that I'm still writing while working.

Despite all that extra work, she still is able to publish beautiful, tender, and funny books about every 2-3 years. She also created a poetry collective, Laurel Poetry Collective, that publishes their members books, using alot of the craft publishing techniques.

So, I feel that I must mentiont that the Star Tribune gave a postitive capsule review to her new book and everyone should go out and buy it today.

My Favorite Writer... This Week

When my mother was in town for Thanksgiving, she lent me the book Garlic and Sapphires by Ruth Reichl. Reichl is a food critic who initially gained fame as an LA Times food critic and then, the jackpot, the New York Times food critic.

I read her book, a memoir about her times as the food critic for the NYC paper, in about a week flat. (Which, for me working my job, is a speed record.) The book is funny, insightful, touching and, of course, passionate about food. As soon as I finished reading it, I ran to my local library and picked up Tender at the Bone, the memoir of her childhood and young adulthood.

TATB is fascinating, because it tracks one woman's obsession and passion throughout her formative years. She uncovers the early memories that lead her to learn to cook, and the hesitant, almost instinctive choices she made as a teenager and college student that drove her towards her life.

One of my student's lent me her very first book, Mmmm: A Festiary which she self-produced when she was a struggling hippie in New York. It was hilarious in a 70's art foodie sort of way. She enlisted her friends as models to create ironic pictures of different foods. It endeared me to her even more.

I must say that Reichl's books made me want to quit my job, travel to exotic places, eat the food, and call it a career. However, Reichl in her current life manages to be a publishing author and an editor of a high profile magazine, Gourmet. Oh, and a mother and wife. So, I either hate her or I want to be her. I haven't decided yet.