Hot Off the Presses! New Issue of PI!

Hello, Poetry Folk,

If it hasn’t arrived at your door already, the latest issue of PI is on its way. This new issue features Chilean translations and art as well as chapbooks by Paul Celan, Bob Hicok, and others!  Be on the lookout!

Lisa Grove

Teaching Writers

The New Yorker’s summer fiction issue is out, and it includes a longish—it seems as if every article in the New Yorker has to be a page or two too long—commentary by Louis Menaud entitled “Show or Tell: should creative writing be taught?”  I know.  This is an old, tired conversation, but it’s also impossible to avoid if you’re a writer, which means either you most likely have, will have, or will strongly consider having an MFA or you’re dead-set against the whole idea.  Menaud hits up all of the usual talking points: can writing be taught?  What damage do these programs inflict through “the impress of an institutional experience?”  Have they enriched or impoverished our literature?  Beyond all of that, I was struck by the way he conflates fiction, poetry, and creative-writing instruction.

Menaud opens by declaring: “Creative-writing programs are designed on the theory that students who have never published a poem can teach other students who have never published a poem how to write a publishable poem.”  Then he ties the piece off with an anecdote about his own experiences writing and workshopping poetry in college.  Despite these bookends, Menaud has little, if anything at all, to say about creative-writing programs and the teaching of poetry.  In fact, the essay centers on Mark McGurl’s book The Program Era, and its argument about “creative-writing programs and American fiction.”  Menaud, and apparently McGurl, provides a number of insights on the subject, but I couldn’t shake the essay’s implication that creative-writing programs that teach fiction and those that teach poetry are one and the same.

I’ve actually gone through (don’t ask) two creative writing programs, one specializing in poetry and another in fiction, and found the two experiences different in numerous ways.  All creative writing programs emphasize the workshop, and this format proves ideal for poetry, where 12-15 students may spend 20-30 minutes discussing a single poem.  This enables a kind of focus, line by line or even word by word, that can’t exist in a fiction workshop, where students bring in 10-15 page short stories or even novel chapters.  In addition, poetry, with its rich tradition of formal modes, allows for a wide breadth of exercises that focus solely on craft; for example, a poetry workshop may require students to write a petrarchan sonnet or a villanelle.  By comparison, the exercises in fiction workshops inevitably teach craft in broader terms, dealing with “setting” or “character development.”  Finally, much of what I valued in my MFA didn’t involve workshopping my poems. It involved mentorship, community, and reading lots and lots of poetry—both by my peers and others.

All writers learn through imitation; fiction writers imitate other fiction writers and poets imitate other poets. So, in order to imitate successfully, young writers need to find models that can inspire and instruct.  This is much harder for a young poet in our society, where poetry exists only at the margins of the margins; a creative writer leads an isolated life, but the poet’s isolation is more severe (as demonstrated by the emphasis in Menaud’s essay).  In this regard, the creative-writing program proves an invaluable aid to poets, offering a vital social space where they can immerse themselves in reading and writing poetry and, for lack of better words, “being a poet.”

by Martin Woodside

May Readings

April may be National Poetry Month, but the San Diego scene seems to be heating up in early May.  The Fred Moramarco Reading Series continues on May 1st at 7:oo pm at the Ink Spot. This go-around features poets Chris Baron and B. H. Boston, along with members of the Poetry International editorial staff. The event is free and open to the public. Refreshments and indelible poetry will be served. Please come and support your local community of writers!  Here’s a bit more information about the featured readers:

B. H. Boston received his B. A. in English from Fresno State University and his M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of California at Irvine. His work has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. He was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2006. A book of his poems, Only the Living, was published by Helix House Press.  By All Lights, a new collection of his poems, is forthcoming from Tebot Bach. He is currently managing editor and poetry editor of Poetry International.

Chris Baron holds an MFA in poetry from SDSU.  He holds it tightly (so he can remember to write) because he is also a professor in the English Department at San Diego City College, where he is the director of the Writing Center.  Chris has been published widely in poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction, in literary journals, magazines, and anthologies.  He lives with his wife and children somewhere in East County where there is no surf, and is the opposite of New York City where he grew up.

Heather Eudy and Francisco Bustos, two other former SDSU MFAers, have organized Southwestern College’s diverse Spring Literary Festival, which runs from May 6th-May 8th on the Southwestern campus.  The festival includes poets Lori Davis and Terry Hertzler reading at 10 am on the 8th followed by a Baja-Border bilingual reading featuring the poetry of Aída Méndez (read by Alejandro Rodríguez Ruiz Velasco), José Lobo, Juan José Luna, Juan Martínez, and Enrique Trejo.  For more, contact Francisco (fbustos@swccd.edu) or Heather ( heudy@swccd.edu) directly.

(poets) on poetry criticism

Why don’t more people ready poetry?  It’s because poetry critics aren’t doing their job—at least that’s what Matthew Zapruder would have us believe.  His essay on the subject calls for new “ways of talking about poetry” and offers fine readings of poems by Brenda Hillman and Rae Armantrout that serve to point out the flaws in many of the current modes employed by poetry critics. That’s all very good.  Still, I can’t get past this bold claim:

“Today, in American poetry, very few critics take it upon themselves to examine the choices poets make in poems, and what effect those choices might have upon a reader. As a consequence, very few people love contemporary American poetry.”

Really?  Zapruder goes on to explain that: “Readers, sophisticated and beginner, need critics to explain why and how poets are using language for these different purposes, and what those purposes might be.”  Furthermore, it’s the critic’s duty to reveal “how the piece of art works, what choices the artist has made, and how that might affect a reader. Only then can the reader grow to meet work that is unfamiliar, that he or she does not yet have the capacity to love.”

That’s a bit much.  Again, I’m all for poetry critics practicing their trade a bit more rigorously, but would those efforts really lead to some broad revival of interest in American poetry?  Let’s pause for a minute to consider who writes and reads poetry criticism.   Zapruder compares poetry critics to art critics, opining that “the public generally accepts paintings that derange our ordinary ideas of how things should look” and citing our acceptance of abstract art, specifically Picasso and Rothko, as proof that critics make a difference.  Of course, Picasso and Rothko are canonized painters not artists working on (or beyond) the fringe of audience expectations.  Acceptance of their work wasn’t just the work of a few good art critics, but rather successive generations of art critics mediated by art historians, museum curators, and, most importantly, the public.  People got used to abstract painting, but that’s only because they made an effort to get used to it.  A more suitable comparison would focus on the post-modernist art populating the galleries of Soho.  If Zapruder dropped by those galleries on a Thursday night, he’d see plenty of art that is working to “derange our ordinary ideas.”  He’d also find that this art doesn’t have a mainstream audience. Most of the crowd would undoubtedly be artists just as most of the people responding to Zapruder’s essay are all poets (guilty!).  In other words, poets read poetry criticism, and that’s about it.  Better poetry criticism may enrich these readers, but it would do little to grow the poetry audience.

The other analogy Zapruder offers is more telling.  In it, he describes a high school friend who gave him a copy of the Velvet Underground’s White Light/White Heat (an album I also discovered in high school and grew to love) and how he played it over and over until it “made glorious sense.”  Tellingly, this anecdote has nothing to do with the quality of music criticism.  Zapruder was put on to the album by word of mouth and driven to listen to it repeatedly until it all clicked.  What drove him? I can’t say, but I’ve had similar experiences, and those were driven by a powerful curiosity to discover new music, a curiosity built on the belief that new music would have something to offer me.  Where did that belief come from?  Not from music critics.  It came from being exposed to good music—if I had to thank an institution, I supposed it would be college radio (in my case WFMU)—and the poetry world should expect no different.  If America’s poetry audience experiences significant growth, it’ll be on account of better poets

by Martin Woodside

Poet Laureates

I haven’t spent much time thinking about Poet Laureates, but then I read this from the BBC.  The article handicaps the race for the new British Poet Laureate, focusing on likely winners Simon Armitage and Carol Ann Duffy.  I’m interested to see who wins but more interested in the question of whether any one should want to win.  Andrew Motion, who’s ending a decade long tenure as UK Poet Laureate, has complained that the prestigious post gave him writer’s block and is a “thankless task”—though he later insisted his words were misinterpreted.  The article goes on to cite a poem by Benjamin Zepaniah slamming the position: “Don’t take my word, go check the verse / Cause every laureate gets worse.”

That got me thinking about Laureateship over on this side of the pond. The Bush presidency brought us four laureates, Billy Collins, Louise Glück.  Ted Kooser,  and Charles Simic, and the job sounds stressful.  Imagine having to write poems for weighty occasions like 9/11 or, on the flip side, penning verse for Prince William’s 21st Birthday—maybe not “thankless,” but yikes.  I mean, judge for yourself.  Here’s the first stanza of Motion’s Prince William poem, which purports to combine rap with elements of the sonnet:

“Better stand back
Here’s an age attack,
But the second in line
Is dealing with it fine.”

Ouch.  Based on that snippet, Zepaniah’s right on. It’s enough to make a good leftist wonder if W.’s selection of Collins, Glück, Kooser, and Simic wasn’t part of an evil plot to finally destroy American poetry once and for all.  On a more serious note, it makes me wonder how much the position effects a poet’s work (not to mention mental health). Does every laureate really get worse? Billy Collins served two terms, followed by a stint as New York’s Poet Laureate, perhaps best remembered by his 9/11 memorial “The Names.” The quality of the poem is debatable—though, last line aside, I find a quiet strength beneath the deceptively treacly surface—but just imagine the pressure of having to write that and read it before Congress; a bad case of writer’s block sounds very plausible.  Of course, Collins put out She Was Just Seventeen in 2006 and Ballistics in 2008, so he’s actually grown more prolific.  Has he gotten worse?  I’ll leave that question open.

by Martin Woodside

Poetry + News=Poetry News

Is rap poetry?

This is another one of those tiresome arguments I’ve had too often–and decided there wasn’t much new or useful to say on the subject. Adam Bradley has shown me the error of my ways (one of the errors pertaining to some of my ways).  In his new book, Rhymes With Reason, Bradley makes an argument that rap has helped re-establish rhythm in everyday speech.  This reminded me of an earlier post by Renee about the compatibility of older poetic forms with the modern spoken word.  Do rap lyrics hold the key to more natural, accessible poetic forms?  You can check out an excerpt from Bradley’s book  here.

At The Huffington Post, there’s a call for poems that “you turn to when you need cheering up;” someone posted Yeats’s “The Second Coming.”  Yikes.  At any rate,  there’s already a long list of responses, suggesting that there really are people out there who read poetry.

by Martin Woodside

More on pieces, wholes.

After reading Martin’s post and thinking about the individual poem vs. the body of work, I attended a photography exhibition. It was a good example of this paradigm. As a collection, hung together collage-style in one large room of a gallery, I thought the photographs had some interest. Collectively, they created a mood, and one seemed tied to another in style and theme. But when a friend mentioned she was selecting one to keep, as a gift from the artist, I tried to consider the individual images apart from the collection, and each fell flat. Out of context, they looked amateurish, a little too dramatic. Does this mean one would need the entire collection, or at least a handful, on the living room wall?

Ideally, the power of each individual image would contribute to the power of the whole. In the analogous process of building a chapbook or book of poems, this can mean that each poem contributes to a narrative (I think of Addonizio’s Jimmy and Rita), or meditates on a theme (like Gluck’s Wild Iris.). The whole can also, of course, be less overt, like any number of good examples. In the best cases, the individual poems serve both on their own, and to hold up the structure of the book. And if the structure is strong, does it allow for some weakness in its members? Do the stronger poems carry weaker poems, do they average out?

It sounds obvious, but editing is vital to the process of building a book. Visual artists, especially photographers like the one with whom I happen to cohabitate, look at editing as a vigorous, intensive process, on equal footing with the creation and printing of the images. Because so many images are created, the selection of what goes into and what gets left out of a body of work requires a disciplined eye. I find it useful, as a poet, to examine that process, and even to picture my poems hung up in a big gallery, side by side. What kind of atmosphere would they create? Would they draw people into that room, and then keep them there?

by Renee Lorion

The Singles Artist

As a card carrying music nerd, I’ve engaged in tedious late night conversations centered around burning issues such as “The Stones vs. The Beatles, (the true hipster aims off center, perhaps the Kinks),”analog vs. digital, (explaining why I collect so much vinyl, most of which was recorded digitally anyhow), and “the single vs. the album.”  Okay, this last one may appeal only to my brother and me, but there was a clear shift in American popular music from recording and releasing great songs to recording and releasing great albums.  This division has some correspondence in the modern poetry world as well, with a growing division between artists who can put together good poems and those who can put together good books of poems.  I was starting to hash all this out when I read David Orr’s New York Times polemic on the dearth of the “great” poet.    The article offers few insights on the tired trope of “greatness” in poetry—is it just me or does the Times publish a different version of this same article annually?—but it did help me connect a few dots regarding “singles” poets and “album” poets, so here goes.

Orr explains that, to most, Greatness “implies scale, and a great poet is a big sensibility writing about big things in a big way.”  He concludes, in an allusion to Elizabeth Bishop; “It’s risky, then, to write poems about the tiny objects on your desk.”  And this caught my eye because, of course, most poets write about these “tiny objects—“ and understandably so.  For the most part, the only people who read poetry are poets; consequently, modern poetry gets written to a smaller scale, aiming to master small elegances and stressing the perfection of craft.  This same attention to elegance and craft may have lead poets to find new ways of “writing about big things in a big way” which could explain why emphasis has shifted from writing great books to putting together great books of poems.   After all, a poet’s gotta eat, and poets eat by working as teachers.  And University hiring committees want to see publications, and the potential for future publications—in other words, books.

I’m not saying this is a bad thing just that it marks a shift in how we create and receive poetry (and if you have to go there, how we might measure “Greatness”).  In fact, I don’t think it’s a bad thing at all.  Looking at my disparate poems and finding ways to structure them into a coherent whole has become one of my favorite parts of “writing” poetry.  I gravitate to books like Catherine Barnett’s Into Perfect Spheres Such Holes Are Pierced, where the brief lyrics are strung together into a powerful narrative on loss and mourning that eclipses any of the individual poems, and these books are more and more often the norm.

I do wonder what happens to others, though, to poets who can write good poems but can’t put them together into good manuscripts.  Are they lesser poets?  What’s their place in, as I’ve heard Marilyn Chin call it, “the Pobiz?”  I think of Barry Ballard.  If you own a literary magazine, any one, from any time in the last ten years, there’s a 50% chance a Barry Ballard poem is in there.  The man’s that prolific, and he’s often quite good.  I don’t mean to imply that he hasn’t published books either because he has: numerous chapbooks and one full-length book, Green Tombs to Jupiter.  Still, he’s known more for his poems than his books, especially his work with the sonnet, and there are plenty more like him.  Should this poet be nudged to the back of the stage?  Should all poets be nudged to the back of the stage?  All right.  That’s more than enough.

by Martin Woodside.

Here’s a Barry Ballard poem, from Poetry International #11 which you can find here.

Six Thousand Prayers

In another solar system, there’s an unknown
family burying one of its children,
in a ritual of sky-like halftones
we can only imagine.  And the end
of their light, their sorrow, only reaches
us after their grieving has already
taken place, a star of prayers among the speechless
dying six thousand they say we can see

with our naked eye.  And even the parents
dead before they could plead with us that their
child deserved a life, already their words
nothing but the soft bleeding dust of red
hydrogen, their fear not even creasing
our rituals of despair, our blue atmosphere.

-

2009 Poetry International Prize

This year’s contest is officially open.  The winner bags a $1,000 and publication in Poetry International The deadline is April 15, 2009.  Note the following for your submission:

Provide your contact information & titles of all poems submitted, on the title page. Author name and information should appear only on the title page. No handwritten entries, please. Please make your entry easy to read — no illustrations, fancy fonts or decorative borders. Simultaneous Submission Allowed. Please contact us if we need to withdraw your poem(s) because they have been accepted elsewhere. Poems translated from other languages are not eligible, unless you wrote both the original poem and the translation. A Note to Previous Poetry International Prize Contestants. You are welcome to enter this year’s contest, whether or not you won a prize in the previous year.  For more, check here.

Last year, Sasha Parmasad won for her lovely poem, “Memory of Sugarcane-worker Off Duty.”  That poem will be appear in our upcoming double-issue, Poetry International 13/14.  Also in that issue, we’ll feature a chapbook of new Paul Celan translations from David Young.  Here’s a preview.

Off With the Adjectives!

I was taught that in developing one’s voice a poet should master the use of verbs and then move on to adjectives.  I was curious then to come across this.  In it, Jabal al-Lughat suggests (kind of) that we get rid of adjectives altogether.

This is lingustics talk, so the reading may seem a bit ponderous, but it hooked me.  How would our language change if we got rid of adjectives?  More importantly, how would our poetry change?  I decided to experiment with Walt Whitman’s “I hear America singing.”  Below is the full text of Walt Whitman’s poem  followed by a Lughatian alteration of the poem.

I hear America singing

I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,
Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong,
The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,
The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work,
The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand
singing on the steamboat deck,
The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he stands,
The wood-cutter’s song, the ploughboy’s on his way in the morning, or
at noon intermission or at sundown,
The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of
the girl sewing or washing,
Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else,
The day what belongs to the day—at night the party of young fellows,
robust, friendly,
Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.

by Walt Whitman

Now, here’s what happens when I mucked around with the adjectives in the poem.  Whitman purists, avert thy eyes!

I Hear America sing

I hear America sing, the carols vary, I hear
The mechanics, each one sings blithely, strongly, as it should be.
The carpenter sings as he measures his plank or beam,
The mason sings as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work,
The boatmen sings what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand
sings on the deck of the steamboat
The shoemaker sings as he sits on his bench, the hatter sings as he stands,
The song of the wood-cutter, of the ploughboy in morning, or
As noon recesses or at sundown,
The mother delicious-sings, or the wife, she is young at work, or of
the girl who sews and washes
Each sings what belongs to him or her and to none else,
The day what belongs to the day—at night the party of young fellows,
sings robust, friendly,
Sings with their mouths opened, sings melodious, strong.

So, what did I learn?  Don’t mess with Walt Whitman.  I wouldn’t even throw up this butchered version of the poem if it didn’t (hopefully) serve a scientific purpose.  To that end, I was struck by how judiciously Whitman uses adjectives, specifically the sort that Al-Lughat wonders about.  The participial “singing” is a thematic constant, and there are obviously prepositional phrases, “of young fellows,” and predicative adjectives, “she is young.”  However, Whitman is careful in his use of adjectives from the “separate class” Al-Lughat singles out in his post.  Of the places where he does use them, “steamboat deck” stands out as functional.  Both “noon intermission” and “delicious singing” are striking and unusual.  That leaves “varied carols,” “young wife,” and “young fellows,” also “robust, friendly,” all of which seem slighter in effect.  Of course they work here, but that’s because Whitman uses these kinds of adjectives sparingly.  Many poets could benefit from this practice, trimming the adjective “fat” from their poems for a line that is leaner and more muscular.

by Martin Woodside