Help...

This may sound like a strange request but I'm looking for a few good poets. Okay, really I'm wanting really good poets - awesome poets...

I'm simply looking for a few poets that perhaps I've not had exposure to that are worthy of a read.  I'm open to suggestions. Please leave your recommendations in the comments. Thanks!

More on Rejection

#links

When I think of rejection two things initially come to my mind... a child showing something to a parent, a teacher or some other adult that they are particularly wanting to share and being quickly dismissed. The other image that comes to my mind is s new salesperson at a sales meeting being told by a more experienced pro that being rejected in a sales pitch is just a part of the numbers. You must be rejected a certain amount of time before you make a sale.  

There seems like a very expansive divide between these two images. For starters there is no positive outcome for the rejected child. On the other hand, if you buy the goods (the argument the sales pro is making) at the sales meeting then you come to see that as unpleasant as it may be to hear no, it is an essential part of success. Yes, even the best Realtor, the top auto dealership, the biggest publishers are going to face rejection.  

Kelli Agodon who has a litany of publication credits, awards, grants won, etc. address her recent rejection blues in a both light hearted (she rarely fails to amuse moi) and yet thoughtful blog post earlier today. I don't know any writer, poet, or artist of any kind that doesn't relish accolades. Conversely, a rejection slip to a writer can be a very personal thing because it is often the cost of putting yourself out there. I've been through my share of slumps. After a flurry of acceptances one year I went the whole next year and then some with one rejection letter after another. It can feed doubt in yourself, in the very endeavor you have been undertaking.  

Kelli has reminded me something I really should be constantly aware of. In some of these dry spells I have actually reached points where I've asked myself why I even do this... why don't I just quit right now? So far when each of these negative thoughts have entered my mind I have in fact issued my own rejection and refused to quit. Is it the prize we write for or is it to flush out something on paper that takes guts? Is it publication credits or the birth of our art on a page?

I'm pretty sure I will sometime in the future swear off writing again - and yet very likely keep on keeping on. I think it's just something writers do. They don't have a choice.

Project Poetry

Stephen Burt of the Poetry Foundation writes that “Project Runway," a popular cable TV show, holds lessons for poetry critics. Burt is not alone. Ron Silliman who has been writing on poetry for years thinks the show does a better job of showing creative people “being creative” than any television show ever. While such a view is subjective, there are few people who follow the creative cultural influences around us more closely than Silliman. Read his blog for a few months and you will see he isn’t missing much that goes on.

So on a morning drive into the city, my wife and daughter in tow, the subject turns to the idea of a poetry version of the popular show. I’m doing my best impersonation of Tim Gunn, the advisor who periodically checks in with the designers to offer kudos or a bit of cautionary advice as the case may be. “Ah, what have we got going on here, a Sestina; nice job. The envoi really works!” Shannon is not exactly feeling the excitement. “What, we are going to watch, segments of people hunched over paper with a pen?” Cathy joins in the discussion, “What would they be working towards, a chap-book?” I counter, “No, it has to be better than that, a book contract with someone like Faber & Faber or Farrar Straus & Giroux. I explain the cameras can follow the poets out into the world on outings… a gallery, a music performance, a scenic stroll or urban bustle and the poet would be talking about what they are seeing and feeling – then back to their journals and laptops for rewrite after rewrite. I think they are starting to see this and Cathy says, “Oh the best part would be the emotional drama when one poet is cut from the show.” Shannon counters, “No, no… the enormous joy and relief of the family getting rid of… err, I mean seeing the poet off to compete!” I quietly think, they are so not getting this.”

I don't doubt-

At the age of 18 all young poets are sure they will be dead at 21 - of old age. ~Marguerite Young

Food for the Imagination

 At the left is a maple flavored coffee drink that I indulged in while back  at a poetry reading/book signing event. I think maple has to be my favorite flavor.  I should have been born in New Hampshire or some other northeastern state.  I'd have my own maple tree tapped and would lie under it and let it drip into my mouth. Okay, it wouldn't do anything foe my diabetes, but it would sure improve my disposition.

I broke down yesterday and ordered a copy of Letters of Ted Hughes (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, edited by Christopher Reid.  Since I have an extensive collection of books on Hughes and Plath, it would only be fitting that I add this to my collection. There is however a larger reason to the purchase. I find the journals and correspondence of poets to be fascinating. I've managed to read all or most of several such works. Sexton, Lowell, Ginsberg Letters, and Plath's Letters Home as well as Journals. The Poets Notebook which has excerpts of the journals musings of some 26 poets. I always think know more about a poet and what goes on in there mind should enhance our appreciation for their work. Of course I'm not sure that I can prove anything in particular by reading and studying such writings, but it is interesting to allow one to draw broader conclusions at times based on the expanded knowledge of a poet that comes with reading their letters or journals. These conclusions may or may not have much validity, but the speculation feeds the creative imagination of one's own brain.  And oh how I love to feed the imagination.

Technorati Tags: Ted Hughes Letters,journals,correspondence,poets,imagination

Victoria Chang Brings Her Poetry to Kansas City

In a reading before an appreciative crowd at the Central Branch of the Kansas City Public Library, Thursday night, California poet Victoria Chang shared poems from Her books, Circle and Salvinia Molesta.

Chang was the lead off guest of Park University's 2008-2009 Ethnic Voices Poetry Series. Her voice often on the dark side but not disparagingly so, offers a credible balance to a whole host of story lines including that of family history, the business world, relationships and more. While soft spoken, Victoria is quite accomplished with empowering words to their fullest.

It was another excellent Library Poetry Reading experience. The Central Branch Library has established quite a reputation now for poetry readings. The only downer for the night was the local bookseller Rainy Day Books which was advertised as being present was a no show. Instead a small handful of Victoria's book were swooped up right away and many wanting autographed copies were left in the cold.

And I still made it home in time for the debate. Wahoo!

Technorati Tags: Victoria Chang,Rainey Day Books,Park University,Kansas City Public Library

You May Be A Closet Poet If...

Be careful those of you besmirching poets... some of you may be closet poets yourself.

You could be a closet poet:

• If you use a circle to dot your i
• If when sitting erect your head lobs slightly to it's right
• If you suddenly stop your sentences before the end of a line and continue on the line below
• If you personify your ball glove or other objects you hold near and dear to you
• If things that befuddle others makes perfect sense to you
• If the absence of punctuation can be found at times in what you write
• If you write words or sentences in disjointed cursive letters
• If you've ever found yourself sitting in a dark closet alone and enjoyed it
• If you secretly wish to be called by the name Wadsworth, Emily, ee, Sylvia or Pablo

Michael A. Wells © 2008

Around and about

A few worthy mentions...

Mark your calendar for next Tuesday, June 17, 7:00pm for a reading at The Johnson County Central Resource Library / 87th Street and Farley in Overland Park. Poet Maryfrances Wagner celebrates the publication of her new book Light Subtracts Itself. Joining her will be Poet Laureate of Kansas, Denise Low.

I just got news that Kim Addonizio has two books coming out in 2009 from Norton Publishing. Ordinary Genius, which is a book on writing, will be out in February, and later in the year, a book of poems, Lucifer At The Starlite. How exciting! Kim is one of my favorites.

Looking for interactive writing prompts? There are prompts for all kind of writing and all ages at Writing Fix. Yes, there are poetry prompts too!

Scalping Poetry Tickets

mood: upbeat
listening to: nothing


The Super Bowl is in the history books. So you went to bed last night with a smile on your face, or a frown depending on who you were rooting for and you have a dream. In the dream people were scalping tickets to a poetry reading. But wait, it isn't a dream!

The fastest sellout in the 20 year history of Seattle Arts & Literature has occurred for Poet Mary Oliver's appearance Monday at Benaroya Hall (2,500 seating capacity) in Seattle. People have been searching Craigslist for tickets - where Roland Crane of Tacoma, finally nabbed on for the price of $100.

If you think this is a fluke, Oliver's appearance in Portland on Tuesday is also sparking a ticket frenzy. And yes, the 2,700-seat Schnitzer Concert Hall for Portland Arts & Lectures has already sold out.

Someone evidently has forgotten to tell those North westerners that poetry is dead.

Poets and Evolution of Language

For me, poetry, more than any other form of literature has brought to the forefront a greater awareness of the dependence of language upon external factors. This underscores a dynamic of human communications that surprisingly make language subservient to both pictorial and emotional whims, and adds a layer of complexity that amazingly is evolutionary in nature.

Since poetry is generally regarded as the best words in the best order, such focus on word economy greater exposes each word to scrutiny, thus providing greater focus upon meaning. Individual words stand out far more in poetry than say fiction or essay or any other written communication endeavor.

It is amazing to me how the centenaries of language evolution must have progressed as man sought to find common quotients in expression. The transference from cryptic drawings to word sounds and the vastness of vocabulary expansion seems to me nothing short of phenomenal. There can be no mistaking this was an evolutionary process and it seems to me somewhat odd to think that even today this evolution is still in process right under our noses.

Is not the very articulation of metaphorical usage pushing the envelope of language? It seems to me the answer is yes, and in that context poets have a significant role to play in moving and shaking the language of our culture. The question I have, is which side of the curve are poets more often on? Are we ahead of the curve pulling language, or are we behind the curve pushing the cultural change of language as the read them in society today?

Giving Up - a memoir

I've finished reading Giving Up - The Last Days of Sylvia Plath by Jillian Becker. This small memoir now joins the dozens of biographical books and essays I have read about Sylvia and Ted.

This book is quite small. It need not be extensive because Jillian's contact with Sylvia was indeed short and the book only relates to that short period of days prior to Sylvia's death, when she sought refuge for her children from her distressed state with Jillian and Gerry Becker.

Much of what I read is merely another historical account of those days. As far as new perspective, it provides little, but perhaps a tad closer look Sylvia from a first hand perspective.

The most interesting things are:

• Jillian's assessment that Dido Merwin truly could not stand Sylvia but was quite fond of Ted and saw him as an equal in stature to his husband Bill. This is not surprising, as the tone of this is set in the Anne Stevenson book "Better Fame." I suppose it was nice hearing someone else say what I believed I has surly not mistaken in reading Stevenson's biographical account.
• Jillian's view that Sylvia had perhaps lost her passion for poetry at the end. This based on the fact that she was critical of Sylvia's last poems and thought them to be doggerel rhythms that seemed to stamp on the grave of poetry. She may not have liked Sylvia's poems, but the ones on question are among Sylvia's most powerful and passionate works. Once she was finished with them, perhaps she might have been drained emotionally, but It is hard for me to consider them a sign of a loss of passion. They are full of it!
• Jillian Becker expressions about her own emotional response to Sylvia's life and death are expressed in heartfelt terms. She truly was in a unique position those final days, and some have perhaps suggested that she and Gerry (as well as others) could have and should have done more to save her. Her response to these suggestions is very reasonable. They may have kept Sylvia alive a few extra days, but they did not have the power to change the many external issues that added to Sylvia's issues. Jillian herself describes herself as a poet (though a humble one by the company she kept) and one addicted to poetry. She says she grew out of that addiction due at least in part to the painful involvement in the lives of poets. (Ted, Sylvia, Assia & her husband - perhaps others with which she was acquainted with)
• It was noted that Sylvia left no suicide note. Not new information, but she reminded readers that the final poems she left would have been painfully clear to Ted if no one else.
• The issue Jillian took with Ted's poem Dreamers, which she calls sickeningly anti-Semitic and the explanation she offered.
• The fact that while Jillian and Gerry were present at Sylvia's funeral, there is no mention of the mystery man (mentioned in other accounts) in her account of those in attendance.
• Taking issue with Sylvia's iconic stature by the feminist movement.

These are what I found most notable among pages (roughly 75) of the short memoir which is now a part of extensive Plath biographical reads.

The short list

"Society honors its living conformists and its dead troublemakers." -Mignon McLaughlin

Oh my God! How true is that?!!

Anyway, I've thought about the poet I'd pick to spend the day tagging along with (see my earlier post) and it's a tough call. I am narrowing it down... Ok, honestly I kept adding to the list as often as I whittled it. It was like two steps forward and one back. But this is where I am at now...

• W.S. Merwin
• Sharon Olds
• Donald Hall
• Cecilia Woloch
• John Ashbery
• Kim Addonizio
• Denise Dehamel

There is a lot of variety between these poets, and there is something about each that makes them and or there work fascinating enough to believe that one could learn a lot from them if you had the opportunity to follow, observe, and ask questions of them through a day of watching them work. Now, the trick would be to decide upon just one of them. Oh, and not add any more to the list in the meantime.

Fall Colors

Autumn poetry is a dime a dozen. It is prolific I suppose because there are such quick and sharp changes in the images right before our eyes. It's easy material, but that is what makes autumn so hard to do well.
KATHLEEN JOHNSON writes in The Kansas City Star about poetry in the fall season, Midwestern autumn makes poetry resonate.

Johnson selects a few poets who have done autumn well. Marge Piercy, Sylvia Plath, Philip Miller (formerly from Kansas City), Clement Hoyt, and Ted Kooser. [click here]

A Dog's World

Deep in thought Barry rests upon my lap while I snap this picture. The thoughts... maybe when is he going to feed me, how long do I have to sit here and amuse him, or perhaps he was reworking the lines of a poem in his head. Yeah, I'm sure that must be it.

Worked on a new personal website this weekend. Hopefully it will be up before long.

Got some writing accomplished as well. Nothing sent off. Sill hope to get a few more poems off before the month ends need to sit down and see what I've still got available at the moment.

Watched the World Series games without much satisfaction. The post season over now it is truly into the saddest time of the year. Of course spring comes and with it perhaps a better season for my favorite team.

Spent some time contemplating Eliot's assertion that poets live "...in what is not merely the present, but the present moment of the past" and what this means both to awareness and of course poems that we create. Maybe that's what Barry had going on in his head too. Hee-he.

The Legacy of Sylvia

It was 75 years ago today (27 October 1932) that Sylvia Plath was born to Otto Emil Plath and Aurelia Schober Plath in Boston, Massachusetts.

The 75 year figure seem almost unreal to me considering how significant and fresh her poetry remains today. Perhaps it is the manner in which the feminist movement attached itself to her life, death and poetry itself that has made her seem yet a contemporary figure even 44 years after her early death.

Her legacy is often debated. Was her story and poetry hijacked by the feminist movement or did she intend her work to be an early voice for feminism? Would she have escaped her tragic death if not for her split with Ted? How would her poetry stand today on its own merit without the notorious suicide in her London flat?

So many questions, so much speculation, but the fact remains that her work is that of a powerful voice in American literature and I cannot but help believe had she lived a normal lifespan she would have produced more work and that even without the attention brought to her in death, her writing would have found its way to the surface and surely have been recognized for what it was.

Her poetry today has admirers and detractors and in both instances I think it is the same powerful and edgy voice that contributes to both positions. Isn't that the thing about good poetry... how it brings out the feeling that get you right in your gut? That passion, be it positive or negative? Unquestionably she is among the great writers of our time, male or female.

Separating the Art from the Artist... or can we?

A New York Times article [Poetry Prize Sets Off Resignations at Society] details a controversy that has grown within the Poetry Society of America, but it seems to me it has raised even larger questions for the world of arts and literature, questions which I have not formulated a view as of yet.

The issue within the PSA centers around an award, the Frost Medal, which has been awarded to the poet John Hollander. The worthiness of Hollander's poetry itself is not in question, but a statement made by Hollander referring to referred to West African, Mexican and Central American as “cultures without literatures," and an interviewer on NPR who had paraphrased him as saying, “there isn’t much quality work coming from nonwhite poets today.”

Should such remarks be taken into consideration by the PSA or any organization seeking to honor a poet, writer or artist of any kind? Or, should the artistic work they produce be the soul basis for such recognition? The Hollander incident is of course not an isolated incident of controversy among poets. Ezra Pound for example is widely know for his anti-Semitism. Should that fact detract from the literary appreciation of his work? Can we appreciate great works of art and literature without bestowing accolades and honors upon the artists themselves?

No, I still don't have and answer to these questions, and I am sure this is not likely to be the last time this issue arises.

words

Tuesday & the times they are a changing...

• At the center of each poem is a mystery - Mark Strand on poetry [here]
• Poet's Choice - Robert Strand examines a James Hoch poem [here]
• Poems analysed in search of clues to suicide [here]
• Poets on Prozac: Mental Illness Treatment and the Creative Process - [here]
• Songwriter and protest icon embraced and taught in British schools as poetry - [here]
  
  

Last Day of Survey On Rewrites

Today is the last opportunity to participate in the survey of poets on their revision practices. See the left sidebar and take the survey if you have not already. There are about 12 hours left till it closes. Thanks!

Monday Blues...

It's Monday and and of course I wish it wasn't. Of course next week I have Labor Day to look forward to. But that is then and this is now. I hate that it's Monday. (sigh)

• This month, another poetic voice was lost with the passing of poet and short-story writer Grace Paley. The 84 year old Paley was also a prominent political voice in the '60s and '70's in pro-peace and anti-nuclear rallies.

• Poetry Hut turned 4 years old this past weekend.

• News this morning.... Alberto Gonzalez is resigning. Nice start. He still needs to be prosecuted along with a host of others in the Bush administration.

Online NewsHour: Essay | Poet's Work Honors Native Spirit | August 23, 2007 | PBS

Online NewsHour: Essay Poet's Work Honors Native Spirit August 23, 2007 PBS: "Joy Harjo Reflects on the 'Spirit of Poetry' Born into the Muscogee Creek Nation in Oklahoma, Joy Harjo's poetry, song and saxophone music honor the Native American spirit."