Have Words Will Travel

Last night I took the train into the city to attend the Poets Forum reading put on by the Academy of American Poets.  It was the kickoff event for their big poetry weekend in NYC (most of which I’ll be attending and will report on here.)  They had all the current Chancellors reading, except Rita Dove who couldn’t be there.  Disappointing not to have seen her, but WOW, the poets who were there were outstanding.  The exciting part for me was seeing a few legends (Gary Snyder, C.K. Williams), as well as a couple of personal poetry idols (Sharon Olds and Robert Pinsky.)

A few observations:

• C.K. Williams wore a bright orange shirt with a red tie.  Very attention-getting!  He pulled it off, I must say.
• C.K. Williams also blew me away with the exquisitely executed musicality of his reading.  As my former mentor David Wagoner would say, “The ear was at work.”  Heh.
• Gary Snyder looked exactly like his photographs.  And was wearing brightly-colored stripey socks.  And an orange shirt.  Orange shirts must be all the rage among older gentlemen poets these days.
• Robert Pinsky gets an absolutely delighted look on his face when he likes what he’s hearing.
• Sharon Olds is the kindest, sweetest, and funniest woman ever.  I adore her.  Also, she read a poem called “Douchebag Ode” and brought the house down.

After the reading, I was able to speak with Sharon Olds for a moment and have her sign my book.  Despite my determination to be cool, I was a stammering dork.  Oh well.  She was very nice about me stumbling over my words as if I just learned to speak yesterday.  I also had a moment with Robert Pinsky (and was slightly less of an idiot), with whom I spoke to about Slate.  I love that he records each poet reading to post on the website with the poems.  He said he was happy to hear that because the poetry in Slate doesn’t get many hits and they keep threatening to cut it.  What a tragedy!  If you love poetry and want to see it out in the world where regular people can read it, I urge you to bookmark the Slate poetry page and click often.  At least once a week, will you?  Not only is the poetry there very often amazing, but it’s worth doing for the cause.

Pinsky also signed his book for me.  He used my favorite pen, which I received as a gift from my family when I graduated with my MFA.  I will never wash it again!  (Ha.)

Last night I attended the last of four Red Hen Press readings in New York, and it was outstanding.  (I went to the first reading as well–Friday night at KGB Bar–which was also wonderful.)  Being relatively new in town, I hadn’t yet been to the venue, The Cornelia Street Cafe, but it was charming.  I will definitely be back — they have stuff going on there every night, much of which is poetry-related or jazz, another favorite genre of mine, so it’s well worth the travel time for me.

All of the readers were excellent, but the one who stood out the most was Laure-Anne Boesselaar.  She knocked my socks off with the single, long poem she read, the name of which escapes me, but it was a poem that wove together a train ride to New Jersey from NYC and the speaker’s early childhood in a convent school and how much she longed for her mother.  The poem spoke to me in so many ways.  I believe it’s from her most recent book A New Hunger, which you can bet I’ll be acquiring posthaste.  I have the feeling I’m going to be very touched and inspired by her work.

Today’s a big day — I will be officially graduating and becoming a Master of Fine Arts.  I feel a little like when someone asks you on your birthday “How does it feel to be ___ ?”  It doesn’t feel any different.  I mean, I feel much differently than I did when I first started this program and needed so much guidance and teaching, but I don’t feel any different than I did yesterday, and I doubt there will be any difference tomorrow, either.  Well, maybe a little relief.  And sadness.

Our commencement speaker is Marvin Bell, which is terrific.  He’s been teaching during the afternoon sessions during the residency (as he has every summer residency since I’ve been around) and he’s so funny and very kind and smart.  Also, I’ve made a complete ass out of myself in front of him twice now, at previous residencies when forced to read the humiliatingly painful results of a writing exercise, but yesterday I vindicated myself by writing a decent poem from this year’s exercise and reading it.  A nice way to end the teacher/student relationship.  The first time it happened, though, he very kindly sent me an email that said, “I don’t think of them so much as bad poems as poems that are on their way to something.  Besides, you should see some of the crap I’ve written.”  I will admit, I printed that one out and it lives on the bulletin board above my desk.  More encouraging words were never spoken (or written), I don’t think.

So, Whitman makes for a very poor workout soundtrack. I think I lasted about 30 seconds before switching to something a little higher-energy. Heh.

AND, I just turned in my final assignment, the Trethewey review, which is a piece of work I’m quite proud of. And now? Time to celebrate.

I’m sure no one will be surprised to hear that I love it when my kids do a poetry unit in school each year. I get all excited, wanting to know who they’re studying, what poems they like most, and I especially love it when they have to write poems of their own. At this point, they still take my advice on revisions (and I try very hard not to inflict myself on their poetic visions and stick entirely to matters of craft) and my younger son is a natural poet, which thrills me.

Both my boys are doing poetry right now, one in 7th grade, and the other in 9th. The 7th grader is extremely opinionated about poetry and is determined to be published by this time next year. He writes well and is passionate about certain poems, his favorites being Poe’s “The Raven” and “Loveliest of Trees” by A.E. Houseman. The latter, he has memorized and uses to torment his brother by reciting it at inappropriate moments.

My older son, who is fifteen, recently had to choose six poems to analyze from a long list, and I was curious to see what he would choose. His list included “O Captain! My Captain!” by Walt Whitman, “I Heard A Fly Buzz” by Emily Dickinson, “The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower” by Dylan Thomas, Adrienne Rich’s “Prospective Immigrants Please Note,” Frost’s “The Road Not Taken,” and Jarrell’s “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner.” I was interested in these selections and excitedly asked him to tell me what made him choose those in particular.

He said, “Actually, I couldn’t really tell the difference between any of them, so I just randomly picked six.”

Oh.

Just today, April 29, 2008, I discovered podcasts. Don’t get me wrong — I knew podcasts existed long before today, but I didn’t really get them. I didn’t understand why I would want one. My life is busy enough, so why would I go to all the trouble of downloading some program on my iPod to listen to? I don’t even make time to watch TV, let alone listen to things.

But then I heard on NPR on the way to pick up my daughter from school that they were going to have a show about a new Elizabeth Bishop collection that was being put together (or had been put together–I missed some of the details.) I was interested and knew I wouldn’t be in the car when the show was on, and in the car is the only time I actually listen to things. So I went on the NPR site to see if I could figure out this newfangled podcast dealio and download the program. Heh. An hour and a half later, my iPod was overflowing its waistband with poetry podcasts. Everything from Poetry Magazine to NPR/PoetryFoundation to Houghton Mifflin and more. There was WAY more than I could even download. I literally don’t have enough space on my iPhone (which I’m using as an iPod these days because I’m an admitted Apple/Mac whore.)

So the first podcast I listened to was on the subject of Sylvia Plath’s poem “Fever 103.” Not only was there a great discussion of the poem, virtually line-by-line, but they had an audio recording of Plath herself reading it the year she died. Oh. My. God. I hate to be a cliche, but I got literal chills. (In case you were curious, Sylvia Plath sounds exactly like Gwyneth Paltrow, partial English accent and all.) All I can say is WOW. And that little nugget of gold will be living on my iPhone forever and ever. You know, for when I’m feeling all dark and angsty.

If I wasn’t really the last person on earth to have discovered the joys of podcasts and someone reading this hasn’t seen the light, I urge you to go to iTunes as quickly as your nimble fingers will take you and search under Podcasts for some of the poetry programming. If nothing else, get the Sylvia Plath podcast and listen to her hair-raising reading. It’s on iTunes under: Arts->Literature->NPR->alt.NPR Poetry Off the Shelf.