Have Words Will Travel

Alrighty, then.  My one commenter [*cough cough*] encouraged me to go ahead and submit to the contest because a chapbook is a Good and Holy thing, and since she kicked my butt in Word Twist on Facebook, and is therefore smarter than I (or less paralyzed under pressure), I decided to take her advice. (Shout out to LC!) Chapbook-manuscript-assemblage has commenced.  It is exciting.  And daunting.  I’ve spent the entire semester studying the various ways that poets organize their manuscripts, as well as what effect said organization has on the flow, arc, and/or emotional impact of the aforementioned manuscripts, and I managed to apply the knowledge gleaned to my thesis, but a chapbook is a whole other monster.  (It must be run-on sentence day.)

In other news, today I got a copyright agreement from Poet Lore, as well as a galley proof.  My first ever galley proof!  Does it make me utterly green and dorky that I was completely thrilled and did a little dance?  (And once again — don’t answer that.  Ha.)

Today my email inbox was full of calls for poems, manuscripts, and so on.  Contests here, contests there, contests contests everywhere.  I don’t like to enter contests because they typically cost money and I feel like my chances of winning are slim.  Not because I don’t think I have work worth publishing, but because it seems like the world is glutted with MFA grads with great poems all entering contests.  I mean, how can one even compete anymore?  And sometimes it just seems so arbitrary.  And exhausting.

However, I saw a contest today that I thought about entering.  I have no idea why.  Call it a gut feeling.  It’s for a chapbook, though, up to 26 pages.  The question is…is it even worth it?  I mean, does a chapbook mean anything anymore?  Will publishers of full-length manuscripts even care?  Will it put me any closer to my goal of publishing a full-length book of poetry?  Certainly, the chapbook would encompass my very best 26 pages, which would also then be contained later within a full-length book manuscript.  Is that kosher?  I have to assume so, just as people publish single poems all over the place and then include them in books.

And then the big question:  am I totally over-thinking this?  (I’m guessing the answer might be yes.)  Advice (or even assvice) welcomed.

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 haven’t posted in a few days, but not for lack of poetry. I’ve actually been super busy finishing up the semester. As of Friday, I will have completed all my requirements to graduate. Woooo! The thesis is actually done and on its way to my advisor, but that was the easy part. Not that it was actually, easy. I don’t mean to sound flip, because two years of intense work went into it, but I don’t find writing poems to be psychologically wrenching the way writing reviews and critical essays is. And there is a review between me and the end of the semester, so I’m pecking away at it this week. I have to pull out all my tricks to get it done without too much agony — such as writing a page, then rewarding myself with an hour of reading or something. I know, suck it up and write the thing already!

I will say that the book I chose to review is actually a great pleasure, so that’s positive. I’m reviewing Natasha Trethewey’s Native Guard, which won the Pulitzer, and it is a stunning book. I’m going to have a hard time finding anything critical to say. Actually, I take that back — I do have one suggestion that I think would have improved it, which has to do with the ordering of the poems and the division into sections, but you know it’s all so subjective anyway.

I must be off now to run a couple of miles on the treadmill (writing does involve a large amount of time sitting on one’s posterior, after all) but I’ve downloaded the first part of Whitman’s Leaves of Grass to listen to on my iPhone while I run. I’ll report back as to whether it helps or hinders.

This week I’ve been putting the final touches on my thesis manuscript, which is due next week. Yesterday I filled out my application to graduate, which requested a blurb on what the thesis is actually about. Although most of my poems fit in 3 or 4 definite thematic sections, there are by necessity a few random ones, and coming up with an over-arching theme that touches on everything wasn’t something I’d really done. In fact, I didn’t think I even had an over-arching theme.

Interestingly, I ended up finding one fairly easily. I’m not sure if that’s because I’m an expert BS’er or because it really existed in my subconscious all along. I like to think it’s the latter. And once I’d found it, I realized that my title was all wrong. And then when I changed my title to reflect the Big Theme, I realized that the final section needed to be completely re-ordered. The good news is that I figured all of this out before submitting it for review.

If you’re curious, the title is Uncertain Balance.

And the blurb?

Uncertain Balance is a four-section collection of primarily narrative poetry exploring themes of imbalance and displacement in terms of physical location, atmosphere, and the emotions that stem from the loneliest and most challenging moments we face in our lives. The collection focuses specifically on the displacements of childhood within family transitions, in the transition to adulthood and parenthood, as well as the cultural displacements and discoveries of the adoption process, for both biological and adoptive parents, as well as the child herself.

Riveting, no? (Ha. Don’t answer that.)

I reckon once the thesis is done and I start working with the manuscript as an actual book instead of a thesis, things will change somewhat. In fact, an entire section will be coming out, which will make the narrative arc and overall theme much clearer.  (And with any luck, publishable.)

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.

As most of us poets & writers do, I occasionally need a prompt to get going on something new. I have several books that I go to for writing prompts, but sometimes I come up with one on my own.

Lately I’ve been struggling with a Scrabble addiction, specifically Scrabulous on Facebook. I’ve had 7 games going at once, and thank God some of my partners go long periods of time before taking their turns or else I might not get anything done. But something occurred to me while looking at the board after finishing one of my games. What about doing a poem prompt where you choose ten or twelve words that were used in a Scrabulous game, and then create a poem around them? The board I was looking at had some really good words on it, and even if one or two of them might have been a little abstract, one could use them as placeholders for more concrete substitutions upon revision.

I haven’t had any problems coming up with poems lately, but I think I’m going to try this exercise anyway, especially since I tend to write poems that are strongly narrative. Breaking out of my usual writing patterns helps me make greater imagistic and metaphorical leaps, and that’s always a Good Thing.

I love to hear if anyone takes a stab at this prompt, too. Let me know how it worked.

Three days ago I asked you to keep your fingers crossed for my submission to Poet Lore. Tonight I got home and there was an e-mail in my inbox from them, saying that they are taking one of the poems I’d submitted for their Fall 2008 issue. It’s been a fairly craptacular day, so the acceptance was particularly welcome news.

And thank you for crossing your obviously magical fingers!

To continue yesterday’s discussion of podcasts, this morning I found that a good podcast makes running on the treadmill ever so much more enjoyable. This morning was especially good, with a podcast from alt.NPR: Poetry Off the Shelf. They featured the site From the Fishouse: An Audio Archive of Emerging Poets.

For one thing, what a fantastic idea. They record emerging poets reading their own work, and then post the recordings on their site. They have dozens. Maybe hundreds? It’s remarkable and one could lose hours and hours listening to the poems.

What made the podcast so super-fantastic, though, was that they played a recording of a poet named Tyehimba Jess reading his poem, “leadbelly vs. lomax at the modern language association conference, 1934.” I was interested immediately because, coincidentally, I had just read a whole article in last week’s New Yorker about how people went around recording folk music back in the 20’s and 30’s and some of those artists, such as Leadbelly, went on to become famous. In the article, it mentioned Leadbelly being asked to wear prison stripes for public appearances to exploit the fact that he was an ex-con, thereby making him more interesting to the music consumer. It was a fascinating article, and then there I was on the treadmill listening to this random podcast with a poem by someone I’ve never heard of about that very subject. Not only that, but the poem is amazing. Amaaaaazing. It’s pretty cool to read, with interesting formatting of parallel dialogue–one side representing Leadbelly’s words and the other, Lomax’s. But when the poet reads it, first the one side, then the other, then both together (with the help of another person), it is incredible. You can hear it here. Go listen. I’ll bet anything that at the end, you can’t help but say, “Wow!” out loud.

And if you like it as much as I think you will, you might want to make a little donation to Fishouse. They strike me as a resource well worth supporting.

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.