Sunday, December 16, 2007
Diane Middlebrook - Poet & biographer dies of cancer
Diane Middlebrook - perhaps best known for her book, Anne Sexton- a biography, died this weekend of cancer. Middlebrook was 68 and had taught in the English department at Stanford. She is also the author of Her Husband: Hughes and Plath, a Marriage a 2003 best selling biography.
Friday, December 14, 2007
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Journal smatterings
- perception grows elongated/hangs around crowds/making the kinds of impressions/teenagers do to one another/looking to make points/with the opposite sex
- Intonation offered up for what?/ears- or simply a regurgitation
- nights of elastic boredom/ripple with salty waves/of complacency we suck on/there is a satisfying feeling /like a dog gets licking your face
- you showered the long day away/I gave you a bath robe/the belt hung limp
Gamers will 'w00t' over word of the year - Internet- msnbc.com
Gamers will 'w00t' over word of the year - Internet- msnbc.com: " Expect cheers among hardcore online game enthusiasts when they learn Merriam-Webster's Word of the Year. Or, more accurately, expect them to 'w00t.' 'W00t,' a hybrid of letters and numbers used by gamers as an exclamation of happiness, topped all other terms in the Springfield dictionary publisher's online poll for the word that best sums up 2007."
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Duende & the Bag We Drag Around
Getting back to duende, The Poet’s Companion by Kim Addonizio and Dorianne Laux has a chapter in it called The Shadow. In it they relate what the psychologist Carl Jung describes as our pleasant self with which we identify and our hidden self which we try to deny or reject altogether.
They go on to correlate this to what the poet Robert Bly refers to as the shadow. Our shadow is presumably a long beg we drag behind us throughout life. As we learn what others / society doesn’t like, we start “bag stuffing” or discarding into the bag what we do not wish others to see. By the time we are adults there is just this thin slice of us visible and the rest we’ve stashed in the bag we drag around.
Addonizio and Laux have pieced this altogether with Lorca’s duende (see yesterday’s post) and it is certainly easy to see where this other part of us comes from. Without committing anything to a page, one can see how our lives alone reflect this conflict. If we can dip into this bag as we write, our writing can reveal a part of us that offers a genuine picture of humanity that we do not normally identify with, yet, is very real.
I know from personal experience how hard it is to get away from self censorship. If we subconsciously withhold a grater part of ourselves in day to day life, how easy can it be to peel back the cover and let light expose that which we work so hard to deny.
My challenge is to go to that bag when I write and try my best to reach into it like I were drawing a letter while playing scrabble and just accept what comes out to incorporate it into my poetry.
They go on to correlate this to what the poet Robert Bly refers to as the shadow. Our shadow is presumably a long beg we drag behind us throughout life. As we learn what others / society doesn’t like, we start “bag stuffing” or discarding into the bag what we do not wish others to see. By the time we are adults there is just this thin slice of us visible and the rest we’ve stashed in the bag we drag around.
Addonizio and Laux have pieced this altogether with Lorca’s duende (see yesterday’s post) and it is certainly easy to see where this other part of us comes from. Without committing anything to a page, one can see how our lives alone reflect this conflict. If we can dip into this bag as we write, our writing can reveal a part of us that offers a genuine picture of humanity that we do not normally identify with, yet, is very real.
I know from personal experience how hard it is to get away from self censorship. If we subconsciously withhold a grater part of ourselves in day to day life, how easy can it be to peel back the cover and let light expose that which we work so hard to deny.
My challenge is to go to that bag when I write and try my best to reach into it like I were drawing a letter while playing scrabble and just accept what comes out to incorporate it into my poetry.
Monday, December 10, 2007
Finding duende
I've been reading some material from several sources on the subject of duende. I find myself transfixed the concept of this sort of anti-muse. It's amusing that so much time and energy is focused on us finding the inspiration of our muse and yet there is beneath the surface this vast iceberg of subconsciousness that we as poets so often abnegate.
I've spoken here in the past about how so often the really striking poetry rises out of conflict. This is something Donald Hall has written about in essay. In Edward Hirsch's the demon and the angel - Searching for the Source of Artistic Inspiration he talks about the emergence of the duende philosophy I believe first introduced by the Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca in a 1930 lecture. There are a variety of other poets and philosophers who speak of this same mysterious force deep within human nature. I am finding the shared view of numerous poets on this subject to be a significant part of my learning curve as it relates to poetics.
In both my own writing and in the works of other poets that I especially enjoy reading, I like to see and feel dissonance. That contrasting conflict that arises when we write from inspiration on one hand, and allow ourselves the uncensored deep rooted mysterious part of our self to come out and play in our work. It is when these two forces - internal and external are present that I believe the best writing often occurs.
Enough on this subject tonight... but I will take it up again tomorrow.
I've spoken here in the past about how so often the really striking poetry rises out of conflict. This is something Donald Hall has written about in essay. In Edward Hirsch's the demon and the angel - Searching for the Source of Artistic Inspiration he talks about the emergence of the duende philosophy I believe first introduced by the Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca in a 1930 lecture. There are a variety of other poets and philosophers who speak of this same mysterious force deep within human nature. I am finding the shared view of numerous poets on this subject to be a significant part of my learning curve as it relates to poetics.
In both my own writing and in the works of other poets that I especially enjoy reading, I like to see and feel dissonance. That contrasting conflict that arises when we write from inspiration on one hand, and allow ourselves the uncensored deep rooted mysterious part of our self to come out and play in our work. It is when these two forces - internal and external are present that I believe the best writing often occurs.
Enough on this subject tonight... but I will take it up again tomorrow.
Sunday, December 09, 2007
A Little Poetry News to Chew On
Wendy Cope is not amused to find her work spread about the Internet... The British poet is a strict advocate of copyright protection. [ story]
In Janet's World the poetry is contemporary issues and extremely accessible - though not likely to win any awards. [ story ]
Tiny chapbooks that combine art, literature and design [ story ]
The story of on of Philip Larkin's (1922-85) greatest narrative poems, "The Explosion"which offers thoughts on the process of poetry.
Saturday, December 08, 2007
Poetry's PR chick in New Zealand
Michele Leggott is the new poet laureate for New Zealand, but Leggott's husband "rudely fell about laughing" when he heard that his wife had been picked. [story]
Friday, December 07, 2007
If you are looking for a real treat this Friday...
I recommend going to qarrtsiluni online literary magazine for the poem by Dana Guthrie Martin - titled: And the Crickets Outside the Window. Click here
Thursday, December 06, 2007
A poet & his companion...
It's cold here tonight. Snow came to the Kansas City area today. Driving home tonight was treacherous.
To the left you see my little tuckered out buddy that was banished to the room with the poet at work for tormenting one of the cats. Sort of like sending him to Siberia I guess.
He's a good boy most of the time... but he has his weak moments. But don't we all?
Worked on some rewrites tonight and also sent off three poems in search of homes. I feel compelled to find these orphans homes for the holiday.
Wednesday, December 05, 2007
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?
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?
Monday, December 03, 2007
The past twelve months....
Three rejections today... Que Sera, Sera.
On that note, a survey of my past 12 month activity....
- Pending responses: 11
- Submissions sent last 12 months: 40
- Submissions sent this month: 2
- Acceptance ratio: 15.79 %
Affirmation: I will do more over the next 12 months!
Monday Rat Race Starts
Saw this on Ivy's blog.... cool huh? Poetry Library
Quote for today....
Quote for today....
I will show you fear in a handful of dust. ~ T.S. Eliot
Sunday, December 02, 2007
Poetry in the News - Sunday Night
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