Thom Dawkins

On the Subject of Beauty, Truth, and the Unconcealed Being

2012-01-27T09:17:00.002-05:00

I had a thought yesterday, which you may (or may not) find interesting. I then had a series of thoughts following that may or may not interest you. Regardless, you're getting all of it.

The initial thought was had while driving to the Hinkson Trail: In order for me to take people seriously, in order for me to find them to be engaged and "deep" thinkers, they have to have thoroughly asked the questions of Beauty and Truth, and they have to know where they stand on both.

Unfortunately, in the few minutes it took me to reach my destination, I realized that I DON'T KNOW WHAT MY THOUGHTS ON TRUTH AND BEAUTY ARE OR SHOULD BE.

Then I got to the the trail and started my run.

My first thought was to consider Keats. Beauty is Truth, Truth is Beauty, and that's all we need to know and all there is to know. Fair enough,but even though Beauty can be a thoughtful and nuanced reaction to the surface of things, Beauty must necessarily be based on a merely superficial relationship.

Fortunately, I've also recently remembered some things I've read of Heidegger, (the idea comes from Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes, or The Origin of a Work of Art), namely that artwork "unconceals" Being or "that which is." In other words, the Being that we beings question is revealed through this process of unconcealing.

From here, (keep in mind I'm running through the picturesque Missouri trails through this entire conversation with my self - or should I say Self?), I began to equate Keats's TRUTH with Heidegger's BEING. It occurred to me then that Truth and Beauty cannot be equated in any way, just as Beauty and Being cannot be equated. Yes, it is true that they live in relationship to one another. To be more specific, our recognition of Beauty is the beginning of a process that unconceals ( or sheds light upon) Truth/Being.

[Still with me? The better thoughts are coming, I promise.]

Back to Literature, I began to think about my Idols, and who among them stood on which side of this argument. First, there was Keats. who naively equated Beauty and Truth, but Keats is well-recognized as a poet from the lower-class of society reaching toward the ideal of the Poet, meaning that his poetry (ornate as it tends to be) was an attempt as much to realize a social position as it was to realize an aesthetic. So, while Keats is a good starting point, his poems ultimately leave us wanting.

I also thought quite a bit of Herman Melville and Moby Dick, whose philosophy is based in some part on Edmund Burke's thoughts on the Beautiful and the Sublime. Burke separates the two, but his thoughts on the Terrible Sublime are useful. (According to Wikipedia, "In short, the Beautiful, according to Burke, is what is well-formed and aesthetically pleasing, whereas the Sublime is what has the power to compel and destroy us. The preference for the Sublime over the Beautiful was to mark the transition from the Neoclassical to the Romantic era." This might be why we can thoroughly enjoy Mozart but we reach a fully developed catharsis in Beethoven) In many ways, Moby Dick is one man's attempt to find a relationship with his Being, which he recognizes as that which will ultimately destroy him. (There's an argument to be thrown in here about Freudian concepts of Thanatos and the Death-Drive as well.)

[Don't worry - we're reaching the end soon - just hang in there.]

Now, I love Melville, and I like where Burke was going, but I don't think it's ultimately any more useful than Keats saying that Beauty is the be-all and end-all of our existence. I also have to admit that, at this moment, I only have a limited engagement with Heidegger, so I can't go forward without further research. Taking all this is a collective, though, I think I've found a useful way forward, both creatively and academically, and it all begins with Rilke.

In Rainer Maria Rilke's Duino Elegies, (reportedly written after hearing the winds wail as he walked near the cliffs by Duino castle), the speaker cries out, "Jeder Engel ist schrecklich," or, "Every angel is terrifying." The beginning of any joy, for Rilke, is a terrifying, terrible experience. In other words, the thought of Beauty is just as destructive as Burke's idea of the Sublime. In other words, this is precisely what I've felt for quite some time reading these lines, although I needed to move through several iterations of this thought to once again arrive at these lines with some understanding. In some sense, the reading of the Duino Elegies was the beginning of my terror, the beginning of my joyousness, and the beginning of the process that would serve to unconceal and shed light upon my own sense of Being.

So where does that leave me now? For one, it keeps the search for an understanding of Being close at hand. Perhaps more importantly, it makes a search for Beauty not only enjoyable but also terrifyingly useful, which can only lead to a greater engagement with the world around me, with art, with poetry, with music, etc.

Finally, it leads me back to the first lines of Rilke's Elegies, to begin again, shedding light upon the things I thought I already knew.

Weekly Spotlight: Kate Northrop

2011-11-08T08:50:00.003-05:00

Several years ago, I began an obsession withFrom the Fishouse, a web-based audio archive that ultimately became a publishedanthology. It was through that site (and through the Fishouse anthologypublished later) that I first came to hear Kate Northrop’s poems. In fact, Iheard her before I read her – and so I was presented with the sound and theaural shape of the poem before I ever saw them on the page.

Several weeks ago, a colleague of mine atColumbia College, (the brilliant and dynamic Christina Ingoglia), brought in Northropfor a reading, and I remembered why and how I came to love her poems. Thedeceptive simplicity – the haunting, almost-but-not-quite embodied voice – theclarity of the images. It was a subtle reading with a clear voice and genuinedepth. In other words, it was the way that you want to first meet a poet, orthe way that you want to be reminded of just how good a poem can be.

I picked up a copy of Northrop’s Clean, the latest collection of poemsfrom Persea Books. (Persea is also the publisher of the Fishouse anthology, andother Fishouse poets, and so one of my favorite presses.) What I love aboutthis book – what I’m struck by – is that the same presence one gets from thesepoems is starkly and absolutely set down on the page. Each line feels carefullymeasured without being overworked. That clear attention to the line brings thathaunting presence to the poems that I first enjoyed in hearing them. Thenagain, haunting could be the wrong word altogether. How do you describe a poemthat seems other-worldly while being based so obviously born from the quotidianand canny?

Northrop read a long poem at the College thatsits in the middle of her latest collection, the dual-voiced “Detail.” Itreminds of Samuel Beckett’s “Play,” in which three characters (seemingly insome kind of purgatory) are constantly rambling through the details of theirlives. In Northrop’s “Detail,” the two voices are not purgatorial, but they aretalking past one another. In the end, the effect is such that the reader feelsbrought into the private sphere of two voices running parallel, and thus, neverconnecting. It strikes me how much this poem is like the way we communicate inour personal and social lives, always talking, always making meaning, alwayswanting to be heard and understood.

There are poems in this collection, like “Stray,”in which all of the action seems imagined, and yet the poet’s imagination seemsmore real – more available – than anything in the world of the actual. Theeponymous animal in this poem never really appears, but a personality and a struggleis given to a thing that is only evidenced in its paw prints. The same goes fora missing cat in another poem, where the reader is first lost with the poet ina field, where the headlights of a parked car “ride over trees’ leaves /Without seeing or meeting them.” It could be said that the liminal quality ofNorthrop’s poems is always in tension with her ability to give us the mostprecise image, and that is what keeps me coming back to them.

NEW Weekly Spotlight: Austin Segrest

2011-10-24T10:20:00.002-04:00

It’s been awhile since I’ve consistently posted to this blog, but I’ve been surrounded by so much good poetry (and so many fine poets) lately, that I realized I needed to get back to my small corner of cultural commentary.

In just the last few weeks, I’ve been attending readings by a slew of great poets, both those locally bound and those of the traveling sort: Austin Segrest, Melissa “Rangeroo” Range, good friend Jim Coppoc, a favorite Fishouse poet Kate Northrop, as well as a book launch for Mark McKee’s first full-length collection have all filled up my nights. The madness doesn’t end there. There’s a reading tonight by MU prof and poet Aliki Barnstone, and I’m personally reading on November 3rd. (Stay tuned for details.)

I’m ambitiously planning to give everyone their fair share of space here on this blog, but I have to start somewhere. This weekend, the Columbia Daily Tribune ran a feature article on Austin Segrest, so the decision was made for me in advance.

Austin was one of the first folks we met when we moved to town, so I knew him as a person before I knew him as a poet. (I suppose that’s not exactly true – when poets meet, they always meet as poets, even when they try their best to do otherwise.) The recent feature article pictures Segrest as a contemporary deeply immersed in the Classics, which is absolutely on-the-mark.

From my (now several) good conversations with Austin about his poetry, what has always impressed me has been his willingness to break through the boundaries of his own style. At the September 29th reading at the Get Lost Bookshop, (given with Melissa Range, who will appear as a subject here soon-ish), I blurted to Austin across the bookshelves that his reading reminded me of an “ultra-talkin’ Robert Frost.” What I meant was that there was a subtle formalism to his poems; there’s also the dark Frost-ian (?) turn that keeps the real or discovered subject of Segrest’s poems just at fingertip’s reach.

Turns out I wasn’t far from the mark. Since Segrest is well-versed in the classics and in what used to be called the “canonical,” he struck out by reading some of the Ultra-Talk poets, including Mark Halliday. Reading any combination of poets can give you a good background in what you want to write for yourself, but what most impresses me about Segrest’s work is his willingness to look for the less-obvious opposites of whatever he had been working on at the time.

In the end, Austin’s poems hold nearly tangible (and certainly empathy-ready) narratives that benefit from his consciously looser appropriation of older forms. There’s also a genuinely sly sense of humor to his work that keeps you guessing when he ultimately delivers his knock-out revelations.

You can find some of Austin Segrest’s poems by a quick search of his name. He’s also the current poetry editor of the Missouri Review and a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Missouri. You might want to seek out some of his blog posts from the Review; his prose is curiously informative. Read one or two, and you’ll know what I mean.

Contibutor's Advice to a Young Poet

2011-07-14T16:56:00.002-04:00

If you head over to Caliban Online, you'll find a new poem of mine in their latest edition of the journal. Somewhere in the back pages, you'll also find a kind of artist's statement from all the contributors. They call it "Contributor's Advice," and I think it's about the coolest idea I've seen in awhile.

You should be heading over to Caliban right now to find the poem, but I thought I'd post my advice below. Enjoy, and feel free to leave comments!

In "Why I Am Not a Painter," O'Hara tells us about his painter friend who begins a project by painting a can of sardines and ends with a painting called SARDINES with no sardines painted into it. Well, that's not true, precisely. The sardines are very much in the painting, only under the surface, which may have been a more meaningful place for them to have been in the first place.

I've never ended a poem the way I intended; the process of the poem is what interests me more than the product (on most days). Yet, there are always those moments, those quick glimpses of recognizable insight, when your brain fools you into thinking that you've just discovered the world's last great image. The body goes numb, time freezes, the universe begins to hush...

...and then you take it to the writing desk and realize it's bunk. But it's not bunk; it's just SARDINES, and you have to find a way to hide it in the poem. That way, you'll be the only one who knows that you're a genius, and that's the way it should be for a poet.

Post - MFA Blues, or the Further Adventures of Writer’s Block

2011-06-21T13:58:00.000-04:00

Lately, there’s been a silence, not a terrible one and not a peaceful one, but a silence nonetheless.

There’s an excitement, a feeling of endless possibility after the completion of a writing degree. First, there’s all the build-up of compiling, writing, and revising the thesis. Then, there’s the immediate relief at having to not worry about writing a poem for awhile. It’s a wonderful feeling with the sense that now you can rest because a whole world of poetry is before you.

One day, sometime later, you pick up a pen and realize you have nothing to say. Every poem seems to be about the need to pay the telephone bill, or at best, some symbolic representation of the emptiness that now fills your days.

There is no worse time to be a writer than the time that follows your official, institutionalized recognition of your days as a writer.

I think I’ve been pretty lucky, blessed even, with the opportunities given to me post-MFA. I get to write and publish reviews on a regular basis, I teach poetry workshops and help college students with their academic writing, and I’ll be teaching classes of my own once fall begins. Still, there’s an ever-present silence hanging over my days, reminding me that at the moment, no one expects anything from me. Strange, but the lack of expectation has been all but maddening.

As you know from prior nostalgias and blog posts, I’ve been turning to German Lieder and 19th century music for inspiration. The audible silence is filled, but I don’t receive the world and its brilliances like I once did. I’m not easily surprised, and thus, I rarely find myself having a revelation. At least, I say, I can listen to something worthwhile as I wait for transcendence.

I always like to end on a positive note, but ambiguity might be all that I can manage today.

I was listening to Richard Strauss’s Vier Letzte Lieder (Four Last Songs) today, which were the final pieces he effectively wrote before his death. There are a couple lines that moved me in the final song: “O weiter, stiller Friede! / So tief im Abendrot.” (O wide, tranquil peace / So deep in the ruddiness of evening!) The song goes on to question the nature of death, but I stayed in those lines with my own questions…

What do we wish for in silence, other than stillness?

And what work must we do, what questions must we answer, to free our silences from anxiety?

Writer's Block and the Mystery of the German Language

2011-06-14T21:42:00.003-04:00

Confession:

In the last several months, I haven't completed a single poem. During National Poetry Month, I wrote at least one "poem" every day for thirty days. When I went back for revisions, I think I was able to salvage a total of ten lines. Since then, I've become somewhat frustrated with the day-after-day disappointment of never quite getting it right. So, as has been the suggestion of many, I've turned to a language that's not my own, to revel in something freshly mysterious for awhile. If you can't write in your own language, try translating another, the maxim goes. Supposedly, the cure to confusion for a poet is more confusion...

...which leads me to the emotional center of this post: my long, complicated relationship with the German language.

A long time ago, in a distant corner of my life, I spoke a little German. I remember distinctly having a detailed conversation with an older man in an Apfelwein Kellerei somewhere in Germany. (Ok, not too distinctly...that Apfelwein stuff is dangerously tasty.) But as time goes on, and as most German minors do, I lost the language. I picked it up and dropped it more than...well, insert some poor (and possibly offensive) analogy here...

German came back to me at what I now realize was an incredibly intimate, transformative time in my life. After college, in my early twenties, I was working at a sandwich shop, despising my situation, and wondering what I was going to do next...to pay the rent, to force myself to be temporarily content, etc. (I know times have changed and college graduates are rarely faced with the same predicament.) One day, I shared a shift with a guy who turned out to be a composer, who was looking for a place to live, and I needed to find a new roommate.

I know the story seems like it's taken a weird turn for the worst, (maybe it has), but what happened is that this co-worker became one of the great friendships of my life, and among other great things, introduced me to German Lieder.

Now, some angered youth listen to punk. Some hip-hop. Some garage rock or blues. For me, lost and lonely in my early twenties, I turned to the German art song with its deep sense of unrequited love, spiritually humanistic worldview, and the folksy quality of an ordinary life becoming something epic and grand. In other words, it was both the disease and the cure for the young, yearning Romantic lost behind the counter of the sandwich shop.

Decorum prevents further discussion, but those were among some of my wildest days, and the German art-song soundtracked it all. And honestly, this entire post was meant to describe that feeling of youthful debauchery mixed with the soul-supporting strength of Romanticism...and I fall short once again.

I've been trying to write that feeling, to speak it for almost a decade now, and I still can't find the words.

Yet, every spring, I seem to turn back to these songs. Schumann's "Liederkreis" and "Dichterliebe" still carry the most weight. So much so, that now, as the nostalgic days of spring swing 'round again, I find myself listening to the Lieder from morning until night...trying to understand what drives the poet in me forward. Some divine yearning beats in me, some evil doubt plagues me, and somewhere caught between is my desire to understand the mystery.

So we come full-circle. I've been waking up to study German every morning, and when I miserably fail to translate a piece by Goethe or Rilke, somehow I revel in that feeling of abandoned understanding...as if the confusion were the prize, as if the mystery were enough to justify the attempt...

...as if someday, I'll be able to tell you why it means so much to me to continue.

National Poetry Month and Other Highlights

2011-05-03T10:30:00.003-04:00

Lots of good things to share, and I especially have to cover the greatness that was National Poetry Month.

First and most excitingly, I was accepted into the 2011 Black Forest Writing Seminar in Freiburg, Germany. For those who know me well, you likely know that Freiburg was my home base when I traveled as an undergrad through Germany, France, and Switzerland. The Black Forest holds a special place in my heart, of course, but the seminar is even more exciting. If I can figure out the funds to get me there, I will have a full two weeks to study with the brilliant and charming poet/memoirist Sandra Beasley! If you don’t know Sandra’s work, you should: Check out her site at Chicks Dig Poetry or at www.sandrabeasley.com.

Speaking of poets I admire, I had the great opportunity to sit down for a chat with another hybrid poet/writer, Scott Cairns. To say that Scott is a gracious and generous spirit is an understatement. I’ve been reading his poems for awhile, but I’ve also just recently gotten into his non-fiction, including The End of Suffering and Short Trip to the Edge. He has a new poem out in Poetry, as well. Definitely check out "First Storm and Thereafter."

On to National Poetry Month!

I had this crazy idea, (after seeing Gabrielle Calvocoressi mention something similar on Facebook), that I would write a poem-a-day throughout the month of April. On a whim, I threw a query on to Facebook myself to see if anyone else was interested, and my wall exploded. Lots of folks wanted in on the fun! When the dust cleared, there were four folks who really hunkered down and wrote (I still can’t believe it) 30 or more poems in one month. That’s over 120 drafts of poems in 30 days…incredible!

By the way, for a limited time only, you can view the thirty drafts I put together for the project on this blog. I may take them down eventually as some of the drafts will get revised into real poems and sent off for publication.

So…much gratitude and praise to Jim Coppoc and Jen McClung Coppoc (who were already heroes of mine), and especially to Becky Mertz, who helped me dream up the logistics of the crazy venture. (For more on the Coppocs, see one of my older posts.)

Finally, I had my first real experience with the Columbia writing community this month. I hosted/led a weekly poetry workshop at the Columbia library. I met likely more than 30 budding poets and writers, and we had a strong group come back week after week. If you’re in Columbia now, and you’re reading this, stay tuned for more details. This is something we’d all love to keep going!

That’s all the news from here…for now. Keep writing, keep thinking, keep talking!

Recent Reviews

2010-12-13T22:46:00.006-05:00

In the past year, I have published a few reviews of my favorite poets and writers, and I thought that I would mention them here.

Puerto del Sol will be publishing my review of Kate Zambreno's O Fallen Angel, a modern triptych inspired in part by Mrs. Dalloway. Check out the latest issue here.

One of my favorite independent publishers, Alice James Books, is publishing a lot of great work at the moment. (I'm reading Nicole Cooley's Milk Dress right now from AJB.) I reviewed the inimitable Chad Sweeney's latest full-length collection, Parable of Hide and Seek, and was happy to see that I've been quoted in a recent press release.

A long time ago, in a poetry journal far away, I also reviewed Sandra Beasley's I Was the Jukebox. The full review can be found on The Cafe Review site.

A Balance of Stories

2010-08-04T10:10:00.002-04:00

Step 1: Visit http://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story.html

Step 2: Rethink how we teach and learn literature

In a recent workshop with Peter Oresick, students used the Vintage World Anthology as a resource, a book which spans several generations of poets from the international community. Setting aside problems of translation and cultural difference, we were to look at the poems and take them for granted, just as we do with our homegrown writers and poets. We still found poems that we thought were unsuccessful, but we gave them all equal attention.

In her TED talk, Chimamanda Adichie tells us that a single story (i.e. hearing only one side of a story) can set up a horribly blinded perspective of a people, a culture, or a location. This has me thinking about our pedagogies, and how many ways we can teach students. Students with different capabilities. Students with different backgrounds.

Students with their own stories.

There's a large part of me that thinks that American poetry has become to relativistic, too watered-down, not criticized enough. I wonder now if those of us who feel this way are focusing too much on the quality of a single story when we should be focusing on the quantity of all the stories. Rather than being concerned with whether a poem is good enough (for that abstract, faceless entity known as the publishing industry), perhaps we should ALSO focus on whether a poem tells a new story from an as-yet-unheard voice.

It would be one step to learning more about our communities, wherever they are in the world.

The Most Talented Couple in Iowa

2010-08-03T08:54:00.003-04:00

The Chatham Low-Res MFA program is in town for their summer residency, and I tagged along for the first night of the festivities. Along the way, I met two of the featured guests: Songwriter (and Chatham MFA grad) Jen McClung and her poet/musician husband Jim Coppoc. (Jen and Jim live in Iowa now, but they met at a Chatham reading. Isn't that reason alone to get to more poetry events??)

Several years ago, if my exclusive club of readers don't know this already, I spent a little over two years in Nashville. During that time, after taking in both the best and worst of those who considered themselves "songwriters," I developed a special sensitivity to anything less than the best among them. I'm now overly critical of any live music I see, much to the dismay of anyone who accompanies me to a show.

With that disclaimer behind me, let me say that Jen McClung's songs are the real deal. I've been listening to her cd all morning, (in fact it's blaring from the stereo as I type), and what strikes me more than the quality of the songs themselves, (which are both interesting and excellent... reminiscent of Dar Williams at times, but still original), is how strong McClung was as a solo performer. The album has its fair share of harmonies and supporting sonic background, but Jen had a way of filling out an entire song with just a guitar and her voice. The vocals were forceful (not forced) at times, then atmosphere-thin at others. And it was that passing through the melody with so much sensitivity and understanding of her own songs that really made it a joy to watch and experience.

Her lyrics, too, speak to a life well-examined but given back in simple terms. A favorite chorus to a song that had me grooving and shaking my head in admiration:

I love, I love the way you say my name

and if that weren't enough

you came to me, you came to me

in the middle of the night.

Jen's husband, Jim Coppoc, rides the fine line between performance and poetry, though of course those are never mutually exclusive entities. Coppoc gave a full reading of his chapbook, Manhattan Beatitude, 1997, written after the death of Allen Ginsberg and a period of personal unrest.

I'll be honest: I was blown away. Coppoc has the kind of inviting-yet-overwhelming presence that grabs a room full of people and holds them close to the stage. I can imagine these poems spoken from a lectern in an auditorium or from a corner in a house party. The poems of Beatitude shift between the quasi-religious, Ginsbergian chanting (Think of the Holy Holy Holy being replaced by a Blessed Be) and a keen eye that knows the details of its New York surroundings. In other words, Coppoc is a poet whose example we need to follow, one who finds something enduringly sacred in street culture and in personal history . Coppoc is a poet whose redemption stems from a deep understanding of place, people, and the commonalities found between strangers.

I told Jim that I almost wish that I could switch to the Low-Residency program just to have him as a teacher. If it weren't for the wonderful mentors I've met in my program, I might actually consider switching over.

Jim Coppoc makes his living through some murky but evolving balance of poetry, pedagogy, playwriting and performance. He teaches in the Department of English and the American Indian Studies Program at Iowa State University, and in the low-residency MFA in Writing program at Chatham University in Pittsburgh. Current and forthcoming books include Blood, Sex & Prayer (Fractal Edge Press); Bearing the Pall (One Small Bird Press); Reliquary (Fractal Edge Press); Manhattan Beatitude, 1997 (One Small Bird Press); Tribal Ways of Knowing and Being: a Pedagogy Reader (Mammoth Publications); Second Run, Volume I(Second Run Press); and Council Fires: a Digital Sourcebook for American Indian Studies (National Social Science Press).

Jen McClung

Because she’s a Pushcart Prize nominated poet and English teacher by day, Jen McClung puts lyricism first. But as a long-time musician and the daughter of a working steel guitar player, Jen also knows that it takes more than just good lyrics to make a great song.
Jen grew up in a place and at a time when girl-with-guitar singer/songwriters were really just coming into their own. At seventeen, she was offered a development contract with a major record label (we won’t drop their name here, but let’s just say the initials are WB). Jen faced a choice—ride the wave to pop stardom, risking the loss of identity and artistic freedom along the way, or stick with her own fiercely independent style, making her own road to the top. Jen chose the road less traveled by. Now, more than a decade later, Jen has built a fan following, released two albums, and toured the country—all without giving up any part of who she is or what she brings to the music world she loves.
The release of her second album, Over and Over, finds Jen living in Ames, Iowa and teaching at Iowa State University. She’s made her way in the world as poet, artist and musician, and she’s pushing forward with this and other projects all the time. Over and Over has taken Jen to many cities already—among them Atlanta, New York, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Des Moines and LA—but the tour continues. To find out how to bring Jen to your town, to learn more about her work, or just to listen to a couple free samples, stop by www.jenmcclung.com.

Read more:http://www.myspace.com/jenmcclung#ixzz0vYCS7MTc

Sandra Beasley Advances the Ringtone

2010-07-29T08:40:00.002-04:00

This entry is entirely purloined from elsewhere. For the full, original interview, visit: http://verylikeawhale.wordpress.com/2010/07/20/ten-questions-on-poets-technology-sandra-beasley/

Ten Questions on Poets & Technology – Sandra Beasley

July 20, 2010 at 9:42 pm (ten questions 4)

The internet, Facebook, Twitter, blogs, websites, iPad, iPod, podcasts, digital video and who knows what else. What do they all mean for the poet qua poet? For Poetry? Is it still pretty much where the Gutenberg press left it? Is Poetry technology-proof? In our fearless ongoing quest to exploit other people’s wisdom on poetry-related subjects, we are posing ten questions to a group of illustrious contemporary poets on this topic. This week’s responder is Sandra Beasley.

1. Characterize your general attitude as a poet towards technology.

I attended a high school for science, and there really was a time when I’d have chosen an afternoon of noodling around in Pascal code over fumbling my way through a sonnet. So I don’t have any inherent resistance to technology, nor do I have any attachment to older writing modes. I’ll draft using whatever is handy—email body, sheet of notepaper, Word document, napkin, blog post. I’m a pragmatist; I don’t fetishize the latest edition or software.

But I’ll admit reticence in using icons of technology in my poems. I love using the vocabularies of chemistry, biology, and physics, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a cell-phone in I Was the Jukebox. In Theories of Falling one poem equates “the click of our million keyboards” to “the sound American souls make as they collide.” Though I don’t know how I could have gotten at the idea without referencing computers, it still nags at me. Why? I don’t know. My worry can’t be becoming dated, given my poems name-check Pringles and Log Flumes.

2. Do you use Facebook in your capacity as a poet? If so, how, and what are its upsides and downsides? If not, why not?

I use Facebook status updates, so sometimes that implicitly promotes an upcoming reading—or gives me an opportunity to congratulate another writer. But I don’t do much with events or notes or memes. I certainly don’t expect people to track my career via Facebook.

Honestly, I’m not crazy about the commingling of personal and professional communities in such an overly articulated space. When I first signed up it was for the sake of sharing photos with old school friends. As it happened one University of Virginia friend was also a poet, which opened the floodgates. Now I receive a steady stream of messages asking me to subscribe to a journal, buy a book, or somehow make it to a reading on the opposite coast, often a dozen messages per day. It’s the equivalent of poetry spam.

Sometimes a reader reaches out, which is lovely—I don’t take that for granted. But I wish they’d use email instead, since that’s a medium where I can organize and archive correspondences. Facebook’s messaging system is dreadful.

3. Do you use Twitter in your capacity as a poet? If so, how, and what are its upsides and downsides? If not, why not?

I don’t Tweet. I don’t follow feeds. I don’t know how to create hashtags. 140 characters: no great threat to one’s attention, right? But think of little birds, each scraping the tip of an outstretched wing-feather along the face of the mountain. Soon the whole damn rock is worn away.

4. What other technologies – including blogs, websites and podcasts – do you employ in your capacity as a poet? Explain how, and the upsides and downsides of each. If none, explain why.

My website and blog are primary entry points into my work. That’s how I promote my readings, make connections to new work and interviews, and in the case of the blog gossip, complain, and share my undying love for the music of Josh Ritter. The balance between the time I devote to each site shifts periodically. Right now I’m anxious to do some overhauling of the website, so I’m looking forward of getting back into the groove of HTML and template tweaking. I have not been posting blog posts because the matter of my life over the past few months has been, well, kind of dramatic and private and mine to keep. (And when not all those things, ridiculously paced by travel.)

I’m loyal to the blog though. People have been so responsive, and many new readers seem to have come to my work through Chicks Dig Poetry. So–unlike many of those who started up blogs around the same time, I suspect–I’m not trying to figure out my exit strategy just yet. But I may switch the focus over to the machinations of the nonfiction publishing world for a year, as I get ready for my memoir (Don’t Kill the Birthday Girl) to make its way into the world next fall.

I don’t do podcasts of my own simply because I don’t have the flair for the technology, but I have taken part in more than a few. I think a well-edited and concise show that mixes readings and smart talk about poetry can be a tremendous thing.

5. What do you dislike most about how other poets use technology?

Sometimes I worry we—and I count myself guilty here—offer up too much explanatory clutter around the full texts of poems in online postings. One of the most remarkable things about the Internet is its unlimited vertical space. Because of technical constraints, it used to be that reviews, interviews, and critical essays would excerpt a poem to illustrate a point; now whole poem texts are regularly plopped in. I hate to think that the first time someone encounters a poem of mine might be in immediate juxtaposition to a critical or narrative explanation of its function. The reader should have some time to form his own theory first, in a neutral reading space.

6. What do you like most about how other poets use technology?

I’m drawn to times when poets use hyperlinking to create a constellation of creative sources and resources they care about. That constellation may go on display in a website with multiple authors (HTMLGIANT, The Rumpus), a blog that seems mimetic of an individual personality (Ron Silliman, C. Dale Young), or even just one single sprawling online essay or post that makes a cultural argument. It’s not that only poets do this, but I love that poets are among those who do, and that I have this way of encountering them as three-dimensional personalities in the two-dimensional space of a computer screen.

7. Technology is enabling poets today to take poetry off the page in ways that were previously inconceivable. Either comment on this pieceby Tom Knoyves or provide a link to and comments on a different piece of work that uses technology to take the poem off the page.

Can poetry be taken off the page, entirely? Or does a “poem,” at that point, cease to honor some of the core components of poetic craft versus the craft of the visual and dramatic arts? It’s great to present poetry in innovative ways, whether YouTube video-poems or dynamic performance, but at the end of the day I want the anchor of text on a page, whether that page is cotton rag or PDF file. Yes, poetry began as an oral tradition, but that’s just playing devil’s advocate; when we study our Homer nowadays, a written text is considered key to contemporary comprehension.

A poem should feature language, shaped with intent by the author—in terms of conception or lineation—and gesturing toward a larger tradition. That’s the bare minimum, before considering the manipulation of sound and figuration of image, which I consider central pleasures of poetry. I enjoy Knoyves piece, but I’d call it a clever video assemblage with a few particularly lyrical juxtapositions. I wouldn’t call it a poem unless cued to do so by this prompt.

Jeez, I sound so harsh and conservative. Sorry about that. But if I don’t stick up for what I believe constitutes a poem, what good am I?

8. Do you use technology as an integral element of your poetry? If so, how? If not, why not?

I am drawn to reading poetry in front of a live audience, and being able to respond or edit organically based on their intellectual attentions, energy, and willingness to laugh. I can’t take pleasure in being reliant on a pre-recorded musical track, a laptop—or even a power source—to bring a poem alive. Things can and will go wrong in such scenarios. I’m staying unplugged.

9. What has technology done for or to Poetry?

As a reader, I am grateful for the ever-increasing number of texts that can be accessed on the virtual page—whether in the case of seeing new work in online journals, or affirming a line from something I once had memorized, or passing the work of a favorite poet along to someone else. While sitting at an office desk, I can just as easily steal three minutes for poetry as for a round of Minesweeper or the latest celebrity gossip. Technology has made poetry a more immediate art.

There are some who will jump on me for not making all my poems available online, given I’m championing the idea above. Actually, the full text of I Was the Jukebox can be found on Norton’s site; it just can’t be copied and pasted, or printed. If its poems as portable texts you’re looking for, about half my poems have been printed or reprinted in online journals. It’s true that I haven’t centralized access through a set of links or a PDF on a site of mine. But so what? I believe in the book as the primary body for a collection, and I want to support my publishers (who have supported me) by letting them be the sole purveyor of that body. I don’t suspect this will satisfy Mr. Knott, which is too bad (I like his work), but so it goes.

Before I leave the topic entirely, I want to recognize that technology has also put previously isolated or self-segregated pockets of poets in conversation with each other. As a writer, I appreciate that the web lets me create a community of peers outside my immediate geography and lifestyle. A poet in Alaska comes to the virtual table; a poet with physical impairment responds as quickly as any able-bodied participant; the poet-mom with only one free hour a day—some ungodly hour, 3 or 4 AM—still contributes to a discussion.

10. What should Poetry do with or about technology that it has not yet done?

There’s got to be more poetic cell phone sounds out there—let’s get our best voices at work on the problem. What we need is the Edgar Allan Poe ring of bells, bells, bells. Perhaps the vibrate mode that echoes the buzz of a fly when it dies. And who doesn’t want a ding announcing that yes, your text message is slouching toward Bethlehem?

Sandra Beasley won the 2009 Barnard Women Poets Prize for I Was the Jukebox, selected by Joy Harjo (W.W. Norton, 2010). Her first collection,Theories of Falling, won the 2007 New Issues Poetry Prize judged by Marie Howe. Her poetry has appeared in Poetry, Slate, and The Believer, and was chosen for The Best American Poetry 2010.

Other honors include the 2010 University of Mississippi Summer Poet in Residence position, a DCCAH Individual Artist Fellowship, the Friends of Literature Prize from the Poetry Foundation, and the Maureen Egen Exchange Award from Poets & Writers. She has received fellowships to the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Millay Colony, VCCA, and Vermont Studio Center.

Beasley lives in Washington, D.C., where she serves on the Board of the Writer’s Center. Her nonfiction has been featured in the Washington Post Magazineand she is working on Don’t Kill the Birthday Girl: Tales From an Allergic Life, forthcoming from Crown.

Poetry's response to BP

2010-06-15T10:45:00.002-04:00

Here are two examples of how poets are responding to world catastrophe. It's always been my conviction that poets are, or at least should be, the first conscience of their generation. Here are two examples of how it may be done:

The "Poems of Pollution and Protest" podcast (how's that for alliteration):
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/journal/audioitem.html?id=2284

Poets for Living Waters
http://poetsgulfcoast.wordpress.com/

Larry Levis (int. by David Wojahn)

2010-06-09T08:46:00.002-04:00

I just read these passages in The Gazer Within last night. If like me you are intrigued by the ways in which poetry and other art forms are (or are not) similar and complementary, this may be of interest. These are also great discussions of process, line choice, and the work of poetry:

Wojahn:

How do you sit down to begin a poem?

Levis:

Well, I begin by listening to music. I make a pot of coffee, I might have a drink, and I put on something, usually jazz, but sometimes rock ‘n’ roll, sometimes classical. It is important to listen to the best performers –Perlman, Gould, Stern, et cetera. And I listen for awhile and I doodle for a while; sometimes I draw pictures. Usually everything begins with a letter, with a syllable: often it’s the “k” sound, I don’t know why. Must be infantile. Donald Hall says sounds in poetry satisfy infantile pleasures; I’m probably saying “caca” all the time. But I’ll leave that diagnosis to Erikson or Piaget. Just a sound, a little phrase, that you might want to translate over into something else, to take it from that into words, into a musical phrase. And that’s harder to get into English, since we have an inflected language. It’s a language that seems to me less musical than Spanish, for example … I begin to get a few lines and then the whole thing begins to form. Then I’ll cross out things that seem coarse, bad, overly conceptual, convoluted; but I do try to get a first draft at one sitting. Then I spend a week or two tracking down the alternatives. That’s what’s really fun, of course: just going and seeing where it goes.

Wojahn:

One very distinctive aspect of your work is a quirky use of punctuation. Dave Jauss calls it a “preponderance of punctuation.” There are a lot of internal caesuras in the line that are the result of commas that aren’t grammatically necessary, a lot of dashes, that sort of thing. What is the purpose of these techniques?

Levis:

A lot of times I think the caesura is done for dramatic effect. I’m not disparaging that as a term—you know, I think dramatic effect is important in art. When you see ballet dancers move across a floor, you are aware of sudden stops, caesuras or pauses in the body that don’t seem quite natural and yet on second thought they seem to be very artful. That line of them going across a floor becomes something more sensuous than it was before by virtue of stopping, of moving very quickly and then suddenly slowing things down as if there’s as much pleasure and sensuousness in slowing down, in stopping and then going on, as there would be in simply moving very rapidly. I think that’s something I had in mind—conceiving the line as a kind of body moving through time and space on the page. I was not thinking of that consciously, just feeling it, feeling that capacity to hurl forward and then, suddenly, quickly and briefly stop. So much has to do with music, you know. The particular music you’re hearing.

Beethoven, the Canon, and the Shifting Sublime

2010-06-07T08:24:00.004-04:00

I went to yesterday's Pittsburgh Symphony matinée performance of Beethoven's 9th. Normally, I would feel overwhelmed for days with the sublimity and overall scope of the piece, but that's not as true this time. To be sure, Manfred Honeck's PSO is an able organization, and it was perhaps the best performance I've heard. But there was something missing this time.

I keep thinking back to college and the couple of years following, when I was really just discovering literature, music, and art for the first time. (Of course, if you would have asked the precocious younger version of me, I would probably have told you that I was an expert in all fields. Ugh.) All the "major" pieces were overwhelming and exciting: The 9th Symphony, Kind of Blue, Moby Dick, The Sonnets to Orpheus, Franz Marc's unimaginable animals. There was a power there, a new knowledge that was to be both admired and feared. And yet now, just a few short years later, I see all of that grandeur as one more possibility. One more idea among many in the universe. One set of lucky circumstances in the midst of chaos.

I've been reading the prose collection of Larry Levis, a remarkable poet who died quite early at the age of forty-nine. In one of the pieces, he talks about a poet-friend who died at twenty-five. There is something tragic about looking back through that trajectory, seeing the unlived possibilities of an advanced age. But that's probably not the whole story. We all die at a young age by the standards of an expanding universe, but there is something to be said for the small moments of glorious recognition in the world.

I suppose what I'm saying is that Beethoven or Rilke might not have the same sway over me as they used to do, but it only means that I have to strengthen my search for the smaller sublime moments. The world is astonishing, and it takes a lot of difficult work to be constantly overwhelmed by it.

Gist St. w/ Jeff Thomson

2010-06-05T10:55:00.005-04:00

A great reading last night at the always remarkable Gist Street Reading Series. First of all, to paraphrase one of the readers, where else in the world would people stand out in the rain for 30 minutes waiting to get inside? It's the only series I've attended where food, drink, and fun are as much a part of the evening as the writers themselves.

The second reading was really a great performance, given by Scott McClanahan. I'm including both writers' bios below, but I really wanted to highlight Jeff Thomson in this post.

I first met Jeff about ten years ago as a college student, when Penelope Pelizzon brought him into a workshop (I think I had to sneak into the advanced class), and for some reason his personality and his deep concern for the craft of writing really stuck with me. At the time, I was reading his first sequence, The Halo Brace, which still holds up in terms of its distinct sensual imagery, formal dexterity, and a keen eye set to places and particularity.

I mention that first book because, even as wonderful as Halo Brace was, Jeff's newer poetry is just stronger in every category. Birdwatching in Wartime is intellectually complex, but it still keeps Jeff's quirky side intact. And, I know this is weird to say, but I love Jeff's consonants.

I better explain that one...

While Thomson's poems aren't formal per se, they are astoundingly attentive to language. One of the things I most admire about good poetry is the way that you can feel the language on the page almost as clearly as if you were hearing it in person. That's the feeling I get reading this book. An example, from the title poem:

The rain comes and the sound

of water hitting water raises

an ovation, the canal pocky

with applause. We move up river,

hoods up, heads down, the boat

ottering through the trees.

There is a lot that can be accomplished within the sounds of language, but not every poet is interested in seeing what's possible. Jeff teases every bit of sound out of his lines, and I think it benefits both the rhythm and the depth of the poem overall. And the sound of that one word, pocky, which means nothing and yet makes a profound statement out of "water hitting water"... Another great bit of language, by the way, almost onomatopoeic...Well that's just good writin'.

I could say much more, but check out Birdwatching in Wartime, and DEFINITELY look Jeff's Fishouse installment . The advice he gives to young poets there is about as good a piece of mentoring as you can get.

Scott McClanahan is the author of Stories (published by Six Galleries Press). His other works include Stories II, Hillbilly and the Nightmares, Stories and Revelations, The Sarah Book (Vol. 3 of McClanahan's Lives) and Crapalachia (all forthcoming). He is co-partner of the company Holler Presents (www.hollerpresents.com), which has produced such films as Preacher Man, Spring, 1386, The Education of Bertie Mae McClanahan, and Lil Audrey's Last Day at School.

Jeffrey Thomson is the author of four books of poems, includingBirdwatching in Wartime (Carnegie Mellon 2009). He has also published an anthology of emerging poets, From the Fishouse: An Anthology of Poems the Sing, Rhyme, Resound, Syncopate, Alliterate, and Just Plain Sound Great, co-edited with Camille Dungy and Matt O'Donnell (Persea Books, 2009). He has won fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Pennsylvania Arts Commission, and, most recently, was named the 2008 Individual Arts Fellow in the Literary Arts by the Maine Arts Commission. He is an associate professor of creative writing at the University of Maine Farmington. www.jeffreythomson.com

Post-trip Entry, Flight to Atlanta (5/16/10)

2010-05-25T11:50:00.000-04:00

May 16, 2010 (Regarding 5/5/10)

2010-05-25T11:49:00.000-04:00

May 15, 2010 (Regarding 5/14/10)

2010-05-25T11:48:00.000-04:00

In this series of blogposts, I will be sharing transcriptions from a recent field seminar in Louisiana. In the interest of full-disclosure, these are my PERSONAL journals and not reflections on recent disasters. My thoughts often turned to the effects of Katrina and the BP oil spill, and I have much to say on the matter. Feel free to email me at thomdawkins@gmail.com for further discussion.

As for the BP disaster, I would recommend taking a look at the “Save Our Gulf” campaign headed up by the Waterkeeper Alliance. Their website can be found at http://www.waterkeeper.org/.

Another morning down on Bayou Teche. Sunrise must be earlier than expected, as I saw mostly daylight at 6am. There was some deep pink and purple left on the horizon. I must have been sitting very still: When I turned to go, one of the cats was staring at me, apparently having inched closer not thinking I was there.

Last night I talked to my fiancée and tried to explain this place to her. I tried describing the process of watching Greg [Guirard] pull immense cypress branches (axe-cut and possibly knocked down 250 years ago) out of the Atchafalaya, and the cutting process at Monsieur Rebert’s sawmill. I tried to express what it means to work a little, to get dirty and feel for once like I’m doing something useful. I tried to tell her what it’s like to smell like woodsmoke and sawdust, to have the dirt caked into the crook of your arm and on the back of your neck. I tried to express all of this, but I couldn’t quite find the words.

When I was very young, I would tool around in the garage with my father, which doubled as his woodshop. I saw him turn wood on a lathe into lamps and bowls, ivory and tree nuts into jewelry. The late, the band saw, the carpenter’s glue. When I was young, we’d cut down trees together and dig ditches to put in pipelines. For me, it wasn’t necessary work. It was fun for awhile before I’d get bored.

But the smell of cherry and pine never leaves you. The tree resin stuck to our hands, the sting of wood dust in a freshly cut wound, and the subsequent tears that would force you out of the woodshop and back to mother’s care.

I feel as if I’ve been genuinely changed by this place, and I’m afraid to leave. I’m afraid that I will go back to living the live I’d always lived. I’m afraid that it will be the same as when I was a small child, and I would cut myself in the woodshop and cry, signaling that it was time to leave my father and go back to the watchful eyes of my mother. I’m afraid of losing something true and wild. Then again, I couldn’t live this life. I’m not Cajun, and this isn’t my world. I am an effete poet with sudden streaks of masculinity. I am stuck in city life, forced to get my exercise not by hauling wood but by running on a treadmill and using a purple bench for chest presses.

There has always been this struggle for manhood inside me, but see now that it’s for want of a connection to place.

It’s amazing to me how much even this journal has been about internal exploration, and how much it’s been connected to past events. I guess I can’t help it, but at least I’m beginning to learn the names of things. I’m learning how the natural world works. And I’m learning that the physical world always has some intrigue to it if you pay enough attention.

-------------------------------------------

I forgot to apply bug spray this morning, and I was chased into the cabins quickly by itching limbs, hands, and feet. Looking now out of a window in a room that looks like it was once a porch, I’m hearing the same bird and traffic noises. At least the traffic is only a low hum. I wish I could place the bird calls, but perhaps I’ll learn those as well someday.

I keep thinking about how life here seems so much more familiar to me here than it did in New Orleans. And I’m thinking about how the word “culture” used to mean symphonies and theater and now (to me that is) it means Boudin sausage and catfish lines.

I don’t’ know where I’m going with any of this. Thinking back to my expectations of this trip, I thought the time in the Atchafalaya would be the most uncomfortable. But the friendliness of the folks here, the stories that Greg and Roy have told, their humor, and the absolute connection to the land and water you can’t help but feel here, are all signs that I’m more comfortable in Louisiana than I’ve been anywhere…and for a long time.

I haven’t thought much (consciously) about how this will affect me as a poet, but it seems clear enough now. I’ve struggled so much in these journals to add the sensory detail, the physical experience, because I’ve never done that before. My first responsibility as a poet now will be to make sure that my daily experience is filled with the attempt to describe my surroundings. I’m hoping that by doing so, I will be able to reflect upon my experience here and be able to find some more descriptive way of telling this story.

May 14, 2010 (Regarding 5/13/10)

2010-05-25T11:47:00.002-04:00

May 13, 2010 (Regarding 5/12/10)

2010-05-25T11:47:00.001-04:00

May 12, 2010 (Regarding 5/11/10)

2010-05-25T11:46:00.000-04:00

May 11, 2010 (Regarding (5/10/10)

2010-05-25T11:45:00.002-04:00

May 10, 2010 (Regarding 5/9/10)

2010-05-25T11:45:00.001-04:00

March 9, 2010 (Regarding 5/8/10)

2010-05-25T11:44:00.000-04:00

In this series of blogposts, I will be sharing transcriptions from a recent field seminar in Louisiana. In the interest of full-disclosure, these are my PERSONAL journals and not reflections on recent disasters. My thoughts often turned to the effects of Katrina and the BP oil spill, and I have much to say on the matter. Feel free to email me at thomdawkins@gmail.com for further discussion.

As for the BP disaster, I would recommend taking a look at the “Save Our Gulf” campaign headed up by the Waterkeeper Alliance. Their website can be found at http://www.waterkeeper.org/.

I think a lot of us still have John Biguenet’s talk in mind, for various reasons I’m sure. Part of what inspired me was seeing how varied Biguenet’s writing happened to be, while it all seemed to serve the same purpose. [Biguenet is a trained poet, is known best for his fiction, has had some great success with his recent dramatic works, and reported for the New York Times after Katrina.] There are human issues involved in his journalism, as well as his fictional dramatic works. And since the flood, much of it is about how people in New Orleans have learned to cope with disaster.

Sidenote:
Biguenet’s talk gave me a deeper respect for Sheryl St. Germain’s work, seeing that the two are accomplishing similar things.

What seems to have inspired most of us is this notion of the geographical biography. A lot of us were drawn to Chatham because of its focus on place and the environment. For me, it was an opportunity to really learn about these issues for the first time. And for the first time, I’m building a framework for thought that will allow me to learn. This has actually been troublesome for me in the classroom thus far, as I’ve felt like I was reading around environmental issues, rather than diving right into them. I’ve felt the same way reading favorite poets like Gary Snyder and Bob Hass, whose work I’ve sometimes had to understand in only a general sense.

In our trek uptown in the street car, I was thinking a lot about place. Pam and I were having a conversation that partially dealt with the different places we’ve lived. We were also discussing religious and family backgrounds, and this all shaped how I viewed uptown from the street car window. I wondered who might be living in these beautiful Victorians with the grandiose schools and churches nearby. I thought of Nashville where I lived on Music Row: two blocks from wealth in one direction, two blocks from poverty in another, and just a few blocks from a church deliberately built on the outskirts of the projects.

I’m thinking now of working in Pittsburgh, customizing service projects for business groups. For them, it was a photo opportunity. For me, it was a chance to get into the various neighborhoods, including our projects in East Liberty and Garfield Heights. What is it that frightens people to confront poverty, pushing it to the back corners of a city?

Mostly I’ve been thinking about my hometown, quite different from Biguenet’s New Orleans. Where he sees himself as part of a flat and horizontal landscape filled with water, I see myself as part of a vertical and rounded series of the hills, where the water cuts through the valleys. For the sake of both my identity and my mental health, I’ve had to attach myself to the verticality of the hills, or else I would have to accept the provincialism of the valleys. I once shared an early memory with a therapist about lying in bed between my parents and having visions of the Virgin Mary on the ceiling. He told me that I was trying to escape vertically what I couldn’t control horizontally. And when Biguenet talked about the story of “Rising Water” [the first play of Biguenet’s in a trilogy about Katrina’s aftermath] he described the first act as horizontal (as in memory) and the second act as vertical (as in dreams).

As we went uptown, we first went to the riverside, which I’m now thinking of as the most horizontal of my realities. I wrote before of its maternal properties, and I assume that also has to do with a sort of memory, maybe something from the Collective Unconscious, where our entire being wants to connect with the version of the Self that preceded birth. On a more pragmatic level, the horizontal nature of memory might push us toward our childhood, and to make sense of that age, sometimes we have to make sense of a life lived in a preceding generation.

Our day also took us to Audubon Park and the lagoon, full of egrets, swans, ducks and mallards. In the same city, above the water of the lagoon, I was drawn toward the egrets turning their long necks into questions marks before stretching them skyward.

Somewhere between the vertical and the horizontal, I’ve decided to find out which direction I’d like to head. After bugging Pam and Katherine with question after question, I decided I need to start building a collection of field guides and travel books. And I can’t wait to take the course on travel writing. It may be a brand new direction for my creativity to go, or it may be the way I finally make sense of all these memories and dreams.

May 8, 2010 (Regarding 5/17/10)

2010-05-25T11:43:00.000-04:00

May 7, 2010 (Regarding 5/6/10)

2010-05-25T11:42:00.002-04:00

In this series of blogposts, I will be sharing transcriptions from a recent field seminar in Louisiana. In the interest of full-disclosure, these are my PERSONAL journals and not reflections on recent disasters. My thoughts often turned to the effects of Katrina and the BP oil spill, and I have much to say on the matter. Feel free to email me at thomdawkins@gmail.com for further discussion.

As for the BP disaster, I would recommend taking a look at the “Save Our Gulf” campaign headed up by the Waterkeeper Alliance. Their website can be found at http://www.waterkeeper.org/.

Sometimes the truth feels more like fiction. And yesterday, taking the post-Katrina New Orleans tour seemed more like a fictional tragedy than a place of real disaster.

I don’t know at which point of evolution we discovered the ability, but I do know at some point we were able to pretend that we will live forever in health and harmony. So when we’re confronted with something that runs counter to that notion, somehow we dismiss it as irrelevant.

All day, all through the tour and long afterward, I found it impossible to believe that this much devastation could occur in one place. And I wanted to believe it. I wanted to see first-hand what had happened here, I wanted to internalize it, and I wanted to take that story with me. But I can’t do that. I have no way of making any sense of it, and no way to tell the story.

Right now, I’m sitting in the courtyard of the New Orleans Guest House surrounded by oleander, whose flowers fall all around us and bring touches of pink to the gray and white deck. The oleander, every part of it, is poisonous.

Death is a fascinating curiosity to me, in the most literal sense. Like cemeteries, where all of a person’s life is summarized either by or on some piece of stone. Or the old houses of New Orleans’ French Quarter, which has seen many pass families through them but stand as entities unto themselves. St. Louis Cathedral in Jackson Square has outlasted not only more than one Louis, but millions of visitors and churchgoers. These things stand in as reminders of what was once found there.

There is nothing to remind us of the people who lived in the Lower 9th Ward. Their houses were swept away, along with any stories we might tell about them. Even if you were curious, there is nothing here to support your fascination.

After lunch, I went looking for the Jazz Museum in the Old Mint building, close to the French Market. A security guard told me the exhibit was closed, but there was still a free exhibit on the DEA. I decided against it (wonder why) and walked back to the Jazz and Heritage Center on Rampart, also seemed to be closed. Out of options for the time being, I went looking for a paper, knowing that Kermit Ruffins was probably playing Vaughan’s and I should at least find out for sure. On the corner of St. Peter and Royal, coming out of a grocery, I came upon a seven piece band (plus vocalist) playing there. Finally, I’d found some good New Orleans music! The group called themselves Tuba Skinny, and talking to them later, I found out that they’d all met playing on the street. The group played a mix of jazz, blues, and gospel.

In other words, they were inhabiting a long history of New Orleans music, and I found myself caught in a moment of pure enjoyment. As the hot afternoon sun turned the street to greens and blues and my skin to a pinkish red, I listened to the band play a great version of “Just a Closer Walk with Thee”. Nothing fancy, just that controlled-yet-loose feeling of hope and pleading that the song requires. The song was a favorite of my grandmother, who passed when I was still very young. But when they kicked into the chorus, and the vocalist sauntered into it with that sort of Billie Holiday ease, I thought more about the marching band I played in when I was young. Every year at Memorial Day, the Johnny Murphy Marching Band played in the Leechburg parade, then hopped on the back of a flat-bed truck that took us up to the nearby cemetery. There the older guys (some over 70, a couple junior high or high school kids, but no one else under 50) would play their versions of “Just a Closer Walk” and “When the Saints Go Marching In.” It was their version of a Pennsylvania jazz funeral.

Afterward, we would go back in the truck to a local social club, drink blush wine, eat spaghetti with a deep red Bolognese tomato sauce and steak with grilled peppers and onions, and many of the musicians would play old songs (American and Italian) for the rest of the afternoon. I’ve always regretted that I never joined into the impromptu sessions, or even the tunes played in the cemetery, but I was afraid to play anything if it didn’t show up on the page. Even the musical unknown must have been too much to bear then, and even then I was obsessed with perfection.

My earliest memories aren’t really memories. They’re just stories I’ve heard about me and my grandmother. What I’ve gathered, though, is that she served as a sort of buffer between myself and my parents. Mom would yell and Granny would hug me.

When I hear “Closer Walk,” I think of that marching band. Except this time, when I am thinking of my Granny. And when I hear the lines, “I am weak, but thou art strong,” I think of her too, who was my protector for the first four years of life.

The Mississippi might be the Old Man River, but I still think of all great waters as being maternal. Sitting by its banks, I feel some solace, even though our mothers have caused us so much grief and sadness in both the past and present, and even though the woman who served as my protector has long since passed. Or perhaps that’s why precisely why the water has taken on the role of the comforting mother.

There’s a song that begins “Banks of the river run through my hometown,” and the memory of that song, and my associations of listening to friends play it while we lived in Nashville, reminds me that even the mere mention of water brings us back to a feeling of home. But sometimes that feeling is only a remembrance of what we’ve lost.

At night, I went with friends to see Kermit Ruffins at Vaughan’s in Bywater, a sort of local hero (given his guest appearances on Treme) who has recently gotten some national attention. In fact, some pretty famous rock musicians (the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s) were sitting in among us clearly enjoying the music. (After the fact, I also realized that Coco Robicheaux was there…) If you were watching the gig, you wouldn’t be able to believe that this might have been a group of people seriously affected by the flood.

Walking out of the bar, the house next door had the spray-painted, tell-tale signs of the flood: The National Guard had been here, something had happened here, and as much as we’d like to forget, too many people died because some other folks didn’t do the right thing.

Sometimes water is the grandmother that holds you in her arms. Sometimes it’s the mother you wish you could forget.

May 6, 2010 (Regarding 5/5/10)

2010-05-25T11:42:00.001-04:00

In this series of blogposts, I will be sharing transcriptions from a recent field seminar in Louisiana. In the interest of full-disclosure, these are my PERSONAL journals and not reflections on recent disasters. My thoughts often turned to the effects of Katrina and the BP oil spill, and I have much to say on the matter. Feel free to email me at thomdawkins@gmail.com for further discussion.

As for the BP disaster, I would recommend taking a look at the “Save Our Gulf” campaign headed up by the Waterkeeper Alliance. Their website can be found at http://www.waterkeeper.org/.

Our first full day began at the Mardi Gras Museum, located in the Presbytere next to St. Louis Cathedral (outside of Jackson Square, close to the Potalba apartments…) What struck me most about the exhibits was how ordinary people put together such an extra-ordinary event. Somewhere in the exhibit, the phrase “Leave Your Everyday Selves Behind” appeared, and to an outsider, it would make sense that people might want to do so. One video showed one of the Mardi Gras Indians decked out in full regalia, ducking back into a house that looked like it was barely holding together. But his whole family was involved in sewing the costume through the course of a year. And the exhibit on Cajun Mardi Gras was less physically stunning but equally fascinating. It reminded me again of the difference between the sacred and the profane, except in some senses, the profane becomes the sacred. When there is a reversal of roles, the true nature of things appears. I know there’s some connection to the festival of Twelfth Night, which obviously appears in Shakespeare’s play of the same name, It seems to be a time when opposites are true and everything is possible.

After Muffaletas at Central Grocery, the majority of the day was spent with our tour guide Robert Vreeland. As I’m looking back over my notes for the day, it’s difficult to find any real story arc to the day. I suppose the point to be taken away from the day is how much the city has been shaped by different hands holding the keys to the city. In coming to the trip, I read the history of the city repeatedly, but it was not actually an opportunity to visualize what this meant for the people living here. Through Robert’s tour, I’ve discovered the architecture of the French Quarter is actually Spanish, since they were in control of the area after the last fire. You can see the difference between more recent architecture and the houses built at an earlier point, even by simple things like the iron work on a gallery or balcony (the name depends on whether the style is American or French). You can see the difference between bricks made from the Mississippi and bricks made from Lake Pontchartrain.

After the tour, I was walking around the Quarter for awhile, and for a brief moment, it felt like a world was opening to me. I felt as if we were moving into the history of the place. But before too long, that world started closing back in again, and I was brought back to feeling like I was standing on the wrong side of an impassable wall. How equally encouraging and discouraging it can be to feel one’s self incorporating new material but not really finding a use for it. And this is what travel has always done for me: I feel myself experiencing the world in some new way, but I don’t yet have the language to describe it. And without a usable language, I can’t find a way to think about the experience with any utility. This must be why travel feels so liminal. Almost all of the information we’ve receiving is immediately becoming a part of your unconscious. And that must be why travel has only been important to me after the fact. Only in returning do I find the means to incorporate the new knowledge in a way that unlocks that material.

If could guess what will be remembered, it will be something of how culture persists (as opposed to merely existing).

I’m thinking now of my family and how my life has been based around escaping the culture of my childhood. One other possible use for travel in my life seems to have been discovering how other peoples have dealt with incorporating their culture, and perhaps more than that, what other possibilities for culture exist in the world.

In the tourism and travel industries, there is always talk about finding a true, genuine, or authentic experience. We’re obsessed with our identities, and we’re especially obsessed with not wanting to be an outsider. We don’t ever want to be called a tourist, even though that’s precisely what we are: A group of people touring another culture as outsiders. Recognizing that doesn’t privilege us or demean us. It simply speaks to accurately describe what it is that we’ve set out to do. What seems more important is what we do after the travel experience.

Over time, I’ve learned to discern what may be genuine. A better way to say it is that I’ve found a way to intuit what feels like genuine experience, which is only to say that I’ve become more aware of what resonates with me personally. This is true as much with travel as it is with poetry or even personal interactions.

What feels true in the French Quarter is not that so many cultures co-exist, but that so many cultures live on top of one another. What may be true of the architecture for one house should not be expected of the house next door. The same goes for the people living in those houses. We have a way as tourists of wanting to find the essence of a place, but this is really only useful in finding some means of description. It’s just like language itself, where we need to break someone else’s language down to its phonemes in order to begin to understand what’s being said. In experiencing a place and culture, we can’t expect this sort of elemental way of understanding to be how we exist here, only how we can begin to interpret.

May 5, 2010 (Regarding 5/4/10)

2010-05-25T11:41:00.000-04:00

In this series of blogposts, I will be sharing transcriptions from a recent field seminar in Louisiana. In the interest of full-disclosure, these are my PERSONAL journals and not reflections on recent disasters. My thoughts often turned to the effects of Katrina and the BP oil spill, and I have much to say on the matter. Feel free to email me at thomdawkins@gmail.com for further discussion.

As for the BP disaster, I would recommend taking a look at the “Save Our Gulf” campaign headed up by the Waterkeeper Alliance. Their website can be found at http://www.waterkeeper.org/.

The first day in New Orleans (5/4/10) was sort of what one hopes for on the first travel day. There was the requisite standing around at the rental car station that always carries that extra sense of anticipation, and there was a hot shower waiting in a possibly Victorian house when we arrived. The New Orleans Guest House (by the corner of Ursuline and Rampart) was described by many colleagues as “Pepto Bismol Pink”, and that’s probably a fair assessment. My room seems to be themed with society women and their dogs: Beyond several prints, there is also a several feet high state of a blonde woman in evening wear with two dogs of Russian breed on a leash.

The evening began with a bit of a walking tour around the French Quarter…wait, I should mention the arrival…

Coming into the airport, I notice the swamps right away. It felt as if we were flying over them for several minutes, after seeing Lake Pontchartrain from the window. At that height, the lake was astonishingly large, but completely unmenacing. There was something peaceful about the trip into the airport, but also something mysterious. The swamp waters were dark but alive, as if keeping a secret and being energized by the risk.

Back to the Quarter:

Much of the walking was simply a good orientation for me, allowing me to get my bearings. Necessary, as I tend to walk a lot to get to know a place. The smell was immediate, even off Bourbon Street, where piss and stale alcohol mixed with savory hints of what I expect was the seasoning from boiling crawfish, along with the unmistakable sweetness of Confederate Jasmine. (The head shops and tourist traps in the Quarter also tend to burn a jasmine-like incense, but you can always tell the difference.) Along Bourbon, we entered into the stuff of stories that I never quite believed. A bare ass jiggling from a doorstep, while a woman calls, “You know you want it” (to which a friend exclaimed that they must also be mind-readers), signs for the barely legal and rarely dressed, sex shows and striptease. I felt a sort of childlike wonder at being presented with sexuality in its most raw forms, and yet there was an immediate shame at realizing that I enjoyed the sight. Such is sex to the lapsed Catholic, the mixing of the beautiful and the horrible, something both sacred and profane.

We ended at Felix’s for dinner, where I ate what may have been my first Louisiana oysters, in what I assume is the local way of eating. Sprinkle lemon, mist Tabasco-horseradish-ketchup, and put the whole mess on a saltine cracker. In the past, I’ve only eaten oysters with a dash of lemon and Tabasco, and I wondered if I would be doing the oysters a disservice by eating them this way. But even with my penchant for spicier food, and thus heavy doses of horseradish and Tabasco, the oyster was still front and center. Not briny or gamey as I’d come to expect, (and enjoy, honestly), but subtle and meaty. Really incomparable to anything I’ve tasted before. The two varieties of heat made it that much better: With the oyster, the Tabasco hits first, that sharp prick on the tongue, and the horseradish comes in behind it, opening up the sinuses through the nose to the temples, and the slow burn of the Tabasco comes back, so that you can feel both sensations at once, and the oyster is there the whole time, as a cooling, delicious reminder of itself.

The rest of the evening was sort of unremarkable from a travel perspective, although it has to be labeled under the “still necessary” category. Most of my colleagues and I spent the evening walking up and down Bourbon St, which we tired of very quickly. We decided to end the evening on Frenchman St, at the Apple Barrel and then at the Spotted Cat. The Spotted Cat was a better music experience, as there was a dance band playing jazz and swing-era tunes. [I later saw them on the street: The Smoking Time Jazz Club.] We also met a man who told us that he was interviewed at Jazz Fest about meeting Howlin’ Wolf, but his story didn’t quite hold up.

My “first day” officially ended with a call to my fiancée that went to about 5:30am EST. Important for two reasons: 1) She doesn’t seem to mind our disparate schedules, and 2) I haven’t yet moved beyond the feeling of living in two places at once. Every departure needs a return. Every return is a departure.

May 4, 2010: Air Tran Flight 993 to Atlanta, 10:58 AM

2010-05-25T11:36:00.000-04:00

Summer Vacation

2010-04-27T08:23:00.003-04:00

Apologies first of all for the lack of posts recently. I've just finished a semester's work, and I'm getting read to head off to New Orleans for a couple weeks.

As I try to find my summer groove, (which is actually a lot like spring - autumn - winter groove sans term papers), I've been delving into a reading list started a couple of years ago. I've started with Christian Wiman's Ambition and Survival, a prose book by the poet known primarily for his editorship at Poetry magazine but whose verse has a respectable history as well.

Wiman covers just about everything in this list of prose pieces including what it means to be a poet writing prose and/or a critic writing poetry. What surprised me the most about the collection is...well, how to say it....What surprised me is that Wiman is sort of a bad-ass who has traveled the world and lived in more than 40 cities in a span of 15 years. Not the sort of thing you would expect to hear from the head honcho of Poetry.

The revelation here, I suppose, is that everyone has a past, even if it surprises us or fails to connect with our idea of the person. But that's not really a revelation at all, and we all know that we all work out from a past into a future.

Wiman has a great passage in the essay "The Limit" that I wanted to share. Even though it stems from Wiman's youth in Texas, (in a story where his best friend shoots his own father in the face), Wiman offers us something that I believe speaks universally, at least to the writerly folks among us:

At some point I stopped talking about my family's past and began reinventing it, occasionally in what I wrote, but mostly just for myself, accumulating facts like little stones which I would smooth and polish with the waters of imagination. I chose them very carefully, I realize now, nothing so big that it might dam up the flow, nothing too ugly and jagged to be worn down into the form I had in mind. Psychoanalysis is "Creating a story that you can live with," I have been told, and perhaps that's what I was doing, though in truth I think I wanted less a story I could live with than one I could live without, less a past to inhabit than some recreated place I could walk finally, definitively away from.

The Canda Verses

2010-04-19T21:10:00.003-04:00

Two of my very good friends (the poets Andrew Purcell and Chris Tandlmayer) publish a website that I thought would be intriguing for a lot of you.

The Canda Verses is a collection of notebook excerpts and recorded ideas that "may become incorporated into more fully-developed work...or may simply spur new fragments in a recursive process."

This is a really interesting experiment in which all creative ideas involved are intellectual public property. I've used the site many times to get writing when I'm stumped for subject matter, and it's led to some great products.

Check them out at http://thecandaverses.wordpress.com/ .

Happy Birthday, Margaret Bashaar!

2010-04-16T08:56:00.001-04:00

In honor of our poet-friend's birthday, here's a link to her poem "Barefoot and Listening" at Pedestal Magazine (complete with audio recording):

http://www.thepedestalmagazine.com/gallery.php?item=2570

Advice for Young Poets: Jeff Thomson

2010-04-15T12:41:00.003-04:00

On a university chatboard, some of the younger writers were asking about revision, which got me thinking about how we learn to work. Most of a poem is in the foreground: It's not what you're drafting, and it's not how you revise, it's how you see the world and what you have to say about it. Before you starting writing ANY poem, you've probably been thinking about it for longer than you can imagine.

I shared this Fishouse link with my younger colleagues. It helped shape my understanding of the poet's life, and I think it's a lot of really great advice:

http://fishouse.org/archives/jeffrey_thomson/jeffrey_thomson_qa_with_advice_to_young_poets.shtml

Poem of the Day: "New York" by Valzhyna Mort

2010-04-13T05:36:00.003-04:00

I have a feeling that I'll be writing more about Mort here in the future. I'm just finding out about her, and she's the most overwhelmingly engaging reader I've seen. Here's a quieter reading of her poem "New York", as part of the Poetry Foundation's animated series:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jl1I9etFRMQ&feature=related

New York

BY VALZHYNA MORT

new york, madame,

is a monument to a city

it is

TA-DA

a gigantic pike

whose scales

bristled up stunned

and what used to be just smoke

found a fire that gave it birth

champagne foam

melted into metal

glass rivers

flowing upwards

and things you won't tell to a priest

you reveal to a cabdriver

even time is sold out

when to the public's "wow" and "shhh"

out of a black top hat

a tailed magician

is pulling new york out

by the ears of skyscrapers

(reprinted without permission from www.poetryfoundation.org, and www.youtube.com)

Poet of the Day: Cathy Park Hong

2010-04-12T07:05:00.002-04:00

At the Jubilat reading in Denver, along with Dara Weir, I saw a really interesting poet that I wanted to recognize here. Cathy Park Hong teaches at Sarah Lawrence, lives in Brooklyn, and her most recent book is Dance Dance Revolution (W.W. Norton, '07).

Cathy read from a new project, in which she is imagining three "boom towns". If you pick up a copy of the April '10 edition of Poetry, you'll find a couple installments along with an interview describing the process.

What I love about these poems is that the poet seems to be stretching herself in every way possible, and she's doing so through a variety of literary restrictions. First of all, in one section she is pursuing the already-tired trope of the Western, which she attempts to give a new vitality. She is also restricting herself in the forms of the poems, (e.g. in "Ballad in A", the poet is writing a reverse lipogram, utlilizing the letter "A" in every word of the poem).

The poet also seems to want to stretch intellectually. While these poems are a practice in form, they are also rethinking how we approach common stories. Bringing a gat to a old West shootout, for example, or even simply throwing together cultures unrecognized in the genre.

AWP Blog: (My) Day Three

2010-04-11T02:28:00.003-04:00

4/10/10

Last day of the conference, and my first (mostly) non-dizzy day in Denver. While I think I've finally been climatized, and I can utter more than 3 sentences without taking a hard breath, I think I'm getting sick. C'est la AWP.

I saw that Dara Weir was reading this morning, so I headed over to the Jubilat 10th anniversary reading. I've honestly never heard of the journal, but now I'm glad that I found them. This morning's session was full of incredibily original, surprising, and inventive work. If you don't know, and I didn't, Jubilat publishes some great voices like Heather McHugh and Anne Carson alongside similarly innovative (yet sometimes unknown) poets, along with archival materials like passages from Goethe, Rabelais, or Whitman. Weir was just as quirky as you think she'd be in person, but she was very gracious when I met her afterward. I don't think I copied the poets' names down correctly, so I can't mention all of them. I will just say, subscribe to Jubilat. I will be soon.

If you read Poetry magazine, or if you received a nerdily excited email from me lately, you probably know about the new Ecco Anthology of International Poetry put together by Susan Harris and Ilya Kaminsky. One of the most powerful readings of the entire conference came from Valzhyna Mort, who although she was very funny and charming, gave a strikingly and forcefully rebellious reading. Also, Ilya Kaminsky is a hoot.

And finally, to wrap up the conference, a reading by Bob Hass. I'd been excited all day...ok...for many months leading up to this conference, and the day started off strangely by Hass' wife Brenda Hillman walking up to me at the Chatham booth at the Bookfair looking for Sheryl St. Germain. I'm a great fan of Hillman as well as Hass, and it was a real treat to have her shake my hand and ask my name.

I guess what I'm saying is that I'm continually suprised by how amazing everyone has been at this conference, and if you're annoyed by my constant name-dropping...can you blame me?? I'm such a fan of so many of these poets, and meeting so many of them for the first time feels like Poetry Fantasy Camp. I've been buzzing all weekend.

Anywhiles...Bob Hass might be the reason I take poetry seriously. A few years ago, I found his "Meditations at Lagunitas" in an Anthology without really knowing his name or his work. It turns out that I had actually read some of his poems before and selections from his great prose collection 20th Century Pleasures, but I had somehow tucked them away in memory. When I read this poem, or possibly re-read it, it made sense of everything for me: My interest in the music of poetry, my love of liminality and metaphysical questions, desire, and the luminosity of numinosity. It made sense of my years of searching and of my seemingly ill-conceived trek to divinity school.

Fast forward to tonight when I am shaking the hand of Bob Hass. The reading was similarly life-changing. What I love about all of Hass' work is that it makes even simple language complicated, in the way that it brings out the metaphysical undercurrent in all the things we take for granted. Just a small example: In his poem "Consciousness", he refers to the eponymous subject by comparing it to a knock-knock joke, which recognizes itself as the echo of an echo of an echo. And that really is only one example of millions in his work. Hass was introduced tonight as someone with a fierce attention to detail, not only in his work but in the way he looks at the world in each moment. In other words, he's the poet's poet.

I'm sure I'll soon have much more to say either about AWP directly or about whatever might arise from the experience. It's true that I've already chosen my path, I know that I'm a poet, but these few short days have been absolute justification for me. I know that my path is the right path, and I know I'm walking it with good people all around me. This is my ideal community.

AWP Blog: (My) Day Two

2010-04-11T02:05:00.003-04:00

4/9/10

Already this conference has proven that Pittsburgh has a strong presence in the poetry community. My day began today with a session that ended up including several locals, including Jan Beatty, Aaron Smith, and Stacey Waite. Along with Dorianne Laux and Sharon Doubiago, the local contingent read from some of their more explicit work. (It was a panel based on sex and censorship after all.) None other than Alicia Ostriker was seated behind me, who said something along the lines of, "Everyone should write like Jan", and it's true. As Jan said, you have to write about what makes you uncomfortable so that you're not only indicting others, but indicting yourself as well. Strong readings all around, but Stacey was a powerful surprise, and some of my favorite lines came from Doubiago ("To be a man is to be unjust" and "So great is his love he wants all women".)

As should be obvious, almost every session I attended was a reading of some kind, and there's good reason: I wanted to used my first AWP experience as an opportunity to hear as many voices as possible. One of the great poetry collectives, Fishouse, gave me one such opportunity. Jeff Thomson acted as a sort of moderator and read as well, with some excellent performances. I've been following Jeff since I took part in a workshop/lecture of his when he was still in Pittsburgh, and his newest book Birdwatching in Wartime is a must-read. Erika Meitner was also a favorite, as I've been following her around the internet for the past couple of years. I think everyone should run out and grab the Fishouse anthology ASAP, or at least head to Fishouse.org. There are so many great recordings there by so many amazingly talented emerging poets. These are indispensable resources for the up-and-coming writer.

The evening ended with a reading by Gary Snyder and Anne Waldman, two poets I've never seen in person, and a real study in contrasts. Waldman was her usual energetically rambly chanting self, and although I can't say she's my favorite poet, her eccentricities are a marvel. And of course Snyder...First of all, who knew he was so damn short? But even given his small stature, the legend behind the man is immense, as are his wit, wisdom, and talent. I ended up meeting both of them in the Hyatt lobby, and I'll tell you, there is no stranger sight than Gary Snyder wearing a tie, drinking white wine from a large glass, in the Hyatt regency...and being a good thirty feet shorter than you expected him to be.

AWP Blog: (My) Day One

2010-04-09T09:13:00.002-04:00

Greetings, all! And an excited hello from Denver, home of the 2010 AWP Conference!

First of all, if you a first-timer like me or have yet to attend, AWP feels like a giant homecoming. Within minutes of getting into the hotel, I ran into one of my favorite poets from West Virginia, RJ Gibson. After lunch, I ran into Aaron Smith, my other favorite WV poet. Okay, there's only two, and maybe that's not surprising. But realizing that no matter where you go you already recognize people is a wonderful feeling. And it's a feeling that I've quested after for a long time. Long story short, AWP is a justification for me that I'm in my own ideal community.

I didn't really get to any events until about 4:30, where the Poetry Society of America was celebrating their centennial with readings by Cyrus Cassells, B.H. Fairchild, Kimiko Hahn, Joy Harjo, Jean Valentine (who is being feted individually later today), Diane Wakoski, Gary Young, and Matthew Zapruder.

All of the poets were moving in their own way, and to be honest, it was just a great way to start my conference experience. Fairchild talked briefly about how the PSA helped him late in his career, saying "Donald Hall said, 'If you choose to write poetry, you should expect nothing.' And I'd been expecting nothing for a long time. I was pretty much out of breath by then." He also thanked Alice James books (more on them later) before reading the long poem "Body and Soul" about men who could have been professional athletes, but lost their best years to World War II. Simple, striking, and wise.

Kimiko Hahn was a surprise, reading poems from -Toxic Flora-, a collection based on the Science section of the NY Times. She was also one of several poets who gave tribute to Lucille Clifton, whose presently was obviously and sadly missed.

Joy Hargo followed, and what can I say? She's a startling presence in American poetry, and her poems of self-discovery and tradition are continually remarkable. She also called attention to Clifton, saying that she was "a real poet, a mystic with a sense of humor, a sort of rudder to all this." In retrospect, I don't know how limited or large "all this" would be, but I get it.

Gary Young and Matthew Zapruder might have been the highlights for me in this reading. Young is wry and sprightly, and his short meditations are surprisingly thoughtful. I'll be looking into his book -Pleasure- after the conference. Zapruder...man...he's a character. Simple, just-sideways glances of the world that make the quirky and strange both visible and honest. His poems always left me a bit ambivalent before, but seeing him read, I have a much better sense of what he's attempting...and accomplishing. We live in a strange world, and there's something to be learned in all of it.

After a nice walk through the 16th street mall, my fiancée and I headed to a reading given by Alice James (told you I'd come back to them) and Four Way Books. We were invited by Chad Sweeney, whom you might remember from an earlier post. (He gave a fantastic dual-reading with his wife Jennifer K. Sweeney in Pittsburgh at the Hungry Sphinx series. There seemed to be an odd Pittsburgh connection, as several poets mentioned Pittsburgh and we even ran into one of our favorite now-local poets, Jenny Johnson.)

The whole event was inspiring, and the quality of work was all respectable. Particular highlights were Joanna Fuhrman (sorta quirky but insightful poems about dinner parties and eccentricity), Frank Giampietro (hilarious yet subtly strong poems), Meg Kearney (who gave brilliant and profound insight into the subject of a woman's first experience with fellatio), Mihaela Moscaliuc (a seemingly Romanian born poet with really lovely lines and a big heart), and of course Sweeney, whose readings are always entertaining and whose poems always beg for ten or twenty more goings-over.

I'll be blogging again soon, as it's a big couple of days here. I'm off to see Jan Beatty, Aaron Smith, (and Bruce Weigl, and Dorianne Laux) in the first session, then who knows what to follow. Gary Snyder is reading tonight, and that will be a treat of a lifetime.

So long for now from Denver!
--Thom

A Day in the Life of the Poet

2010-03-29T12:29:00.003-04:00

I've been trying to get a writing schedule going for awhile, and I can't help but let life get in the way of things. Last night, I finally did something about it.

Trying to build a life around writing doesn't mean you have to give up the rest of your life. And I'm finding out that you don't have to prioritize either. Your writing (or whatever you do artistically) can be just as important to you as your loved ones, your health, and whatever else you do to fill your day.

Thanks to the help of Google Calendars, I now have a prescribed schedule for each day of the week. Here's today's as an example:

5:45am -- Wake up

6:00am -- Meditate

6:30am -- Writing

7:30am -- Free time with the fiancée

8:30am -- Writing

11:00am -- Workout/lunch (today was 30 minutes of yoga)

12:00pm -- Study (This could be time that I prep for classes, or outside reading)

2:00pm -- Work (I keep office hours for my position at the university)

And that's it.

At 5pm every day, or thereabouts, I have the rest of the evening to do with as I please. There will be some nights that are taken up by events, some nights that I will be obligated to attend a class or workshop, some where I decide to do some more reading or writing, and some that will simply be more time to relax.

And yet, every day, I will have exercised, meditated, written, and studied. That sounds like a pretty great way to live, if I have to say so myself.

Gerald Stern Blows Me a Kiss, and Other Poems

2010-03-28T00:32:00.002-04:00

Tonight, I had the honor of reading at a fundraiser for students headed to AWP. I read with some old friends, but mostly, I was hearing some great voices for the first time. Kayla Sargeson, my favorite local badass (and a really fine poet), kicked off the reading with a striking new sequence, written as responses to some of her favorite poets. My good friend Laura read as well, offering some really strong new readings of her poems. And while there was a lot of great poetry, slam, and spoken word, I have to say that my biggest surprise of the evening was the poet Jenny Johnson.

Johnson is a transplant from Charlottesville, and I am really blown away by the work I've heard from her. I won't attempt to describe her poems, as I'll only do them injustice. Okay, I'll try...Johnson's poems were intimate without being confessional, measured and deliberate without being overly precise, rhythmical without being monotonous, and her language overall was somehow continually surprising. I really think I could have heard her read all night. Alas, for the 10 minute readings schedule.

I really was humbled being in the midst of so much great poetry tonight, even as a I received a good response to my latest sequence. (Perhaps more on the sequence in a later post.) That reminds me...

I had another humbling moment of a different kind this week in meeting one of our greatest living poets, Gerald Stern, who read at Pitt Greensburg on Thursday. I won't review or discuss the reading. If you're interested, it was similar in style and content to the one that Fishouse recently recorded. After the reading, I got to talk to him for a few moments, being introduced by a former student of his/current professor of mine. In saying my goodbyes and thank-yous, Stern reached a flat right hand to his lips and blew me a kiss. In all honesty, it may be the first and last time I ever see the man in person, and that parting will stay with me for a very long time.

Some nights...

2010-02-26T00:05:00.002-05:00

...I wish more people wanted to talk about poetry,

or linguistics,

or deconstructionism,

or questions of purpose,

or questions of arbitrariness,

or Platonism,

or neo-Platonism,

or the Buddha,

or just dactylic hexameter,

or the human voice,

or the unheard sound in the inner ear,

or nihilism,

or depth psychology,

or Freudian slips,

or narration,

or stories of any kind,

or anything at all.

Jennifer K. Sweeney / Chad Sweeney at Sphinx Cafe

2010-02-18T08:08:00.002-05:00

Two nights ago, Monsieur Matthieu Pierce reminded me that I have been neglecting the blog as of late. This one is for Matt, and more on him later.

The occasion for our meeting two nights ago was a reading given by Jennifer K. Sweeney and Chad Sweeney in the Hungry Sphinx series. (Shameless plug: It's a fantastic reading series given every Tuesday at the Sphinx Cafe in Oakland. Good friends Laura Davis and Arlan Hess recently read, and I will be reading on March 16th with Teresa Petro-Micchelli).

As I am in the midst of my busiest week in recorded history, I'll keep it short: This was one of the strongest readings I've seen in a long time. Jennifer and Chad are very different poets, but they are a hell of a force combined. Chad's poems are great and serious on the page, eye-opening meditations mixed with narratives, and always with unexpected results. Jennifer is a poet with an eye so keen that she seems to slip inside visible detail, as if illuminating a world both separate from and involving the visible world.

In short, it was everything you want from a reading: A poetic ass-kicking in which you feel absolutely diminished by what you've heard, and so walk away knowing that you have a lot more work to do. (See also: James Wright lying in a hammock, or Rilke looking at archaic torsos.)

I'm also excited by a lot of the poetry happening right now in Pittsburgh. Kayla Sargeson and Jan Beatty have a great series going with the Hungry Sphinx, Matthieu Pierce and Laura Davis and Arlan Hess and Teresa Petro-Micchelli and so many others are offering distinctive new voices, and there is always something incredible happening.

Speaking of incredible things...don't forget to come to the Sphinx on March 16th to see me read, and to Remedy in Lawrenceville on March 3rd for Weave Magazine's launch of Issue 3!!

Not Only in New Orleans / Music in Memoriam

2010-01-26T08:09:00.002-05:00

In late Spring of this year, I'll be headed to New Orleans for a field seminar. We had our first meeting of the seminar group last night where, along with information about the trip, a mix cd of Louisiana music was passed out.

I've been listening to the cd all morning (Basin Street Blues is slipping down the hallway from the front room at the moment), and I can't help but be deeply moved by it.

Yesterday morning around this time I got a call telling me that a good friend's father had passed, and within a couple hours, I heard that a cousin in my fiancee's family had also died. I've never met the cousin, and I only met my friend's dad once. (If you knew the man, you'd know that one meeting was enough. He was a presence.) But I've been going through the stages of deep sadness, denial, anger, and more sadness ever since.

From the front room comes clarinetist Michael White in a tribute to George Lewis...and with it comes a memory...

Every Memorial Day, I would play in the local parade with a bunch of old (mostly Italian) musicians. We would play the parade, then hop in the back of a flat bed and head up to the cemetery where "Bee", a clarinetist and brother of my trumpet teacher Murph, would lead everyone in a New Orleans jazz style rendition of "Just a Closer Walk with Thee". Then we would file back into the truck, head back down the hill to a lunch of steak, pasta, and lots of wine. And the musicians would trade songs and stories for the rest of the day.

Sometimes music can be a pick-me-up. It keeps you from getting too low. Keeps the joy in your toes. Makes you want to move and get over the bad days.

And sometimes music has to have a little of the despondent in it. As the bass drum hits on my stereo, and the rollicking piano, and the brass line, I can't help but think of Walt and Nick dead this week, or Bee and Murph now several years gone. And I can't help but think of those whom we will soon lose.

There's an old tune that asks, "Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans", and honestly I don't. Not yet. But I think I'm starting to get an idea.

Poetic Failures

2010-01-20T08:09:00.002-05:00

I have never seen myself as a Confessional poet, but lately my struggle to harbor the intimate details of my life has not been successful. I think it's the feeling of honesty that comes with a confession that has forced it out of me. And truly, a good poem should be nothing but honest.

The desire to tamp down my secret-telling was bolstered by a recent reading of an excerpt from Foucault's History of Sexuality. Clearly we live in a culture severely influenced by the need to confess one's sins, sometime publicly, but there's something about changing the discourse that appeals to me. If a poem is to be honest, then I as the medium by which the poem comes to be must be honest. And if I must be honest, then I have to be aware of my blind spots. And if that's so, then I need to do the work that forces me to be aware of my shortsightedness.

To my mind, the coming-to-be of a poem should not be a complicated process. One should not have to wrestle with one's demons to simply write a poem. (Jacob, unhand that Angel!) But I've read enough young poets to understand that we can't just sit down and flop out whatever's dangling from our mind.

Interestingly enough, I set down to this blog post thinking about how I need to beef up my vocabulary, work on my scansion and meter, and work on the technical areas of my poems. I guess the post is a case in point: The problem of content stands as my greatest fear and challenge.

A Letter Found in My Email Box

2009-12-12T05:10:00.002-05:00

Hey Cxxx:

I've been thinking of you a lot, especially on the long bus ride to work this morning, and pondering what words I could offer to someone wanting to go deeper into writing. More than that, I've been wondering what words I could give to you specifically, as I can't begin to imagine the heartache that you've gone through recently, and I'm very sorry that you have had to endure such tragedies.

There's a Bob Hass poem that's been important to me lately, Meditations at Lagunitas, that begins: "All the new thinking is about loss. / In this it resembles all the old thinking", and that strikes me as an apt description of what writers do. The truest and most genuine impulse in the world seems to stem from the recognition that the one universal experience is the losing of people and things that are dear to us. I like to think that the first impulse of the artist is to make sense of that loss, and the second impulse is to try to find some meaning in it. And that's where we tend to get hung up -- I know that there was a time in my life where I expected to find an answer, or at least attempted to make sadness and tragedy into something useful. While I suppose that's possible, I think art, and literature specifically, offer something a bit different.

When I say that I consider myself a writer or a poet, I don't do so as a means of telling people what it is that I produce. I say it as a signal to how I choose to view the world. To be an artist is to make the choice to pay closer attention to the details of life. A favorite poet of mine, Jeffrey Thomson, says that to be a poet you have to pay attention to the way the world looks, to the way people talk, what gestures people make, pay attention to the names of things. That struck a chord with me because it meant that I had to pay less attention to myself and start to look outside into the world. Over time, I've found that by doing so I've learned much more about myself than I ever could in solitude. To paraphrase Rilke, you have to live the questions because one day, without realizing it, you will have lived into the answer. The world is consistently and immensely intriguing. Every person has a different voice and a different way of moving. Every bird, animal, fish, rock and tree are just the same.

I'm doing my best to not sound cliche, but that's not an easy thing to do. (Anytime a poet tells you to go look at a rock or a tree, you'd be right to cringe just a little). The decision to write is a tough one, and it takes some of us years to discover just how important it is to us. (It took me seven years to finally apply to an MFA program). In fact, I would say that the process of seeing and hearing things in new ways (i.e. the process of writing) is the most vital thing in my life. It has given me meaning when I expected none, and it has made me question when I thought I had found the answers.

I would simply say, Go write. Put it down in whatever form gets it out the most freely. The first step is to not worry about what it's going to look like. My process looks like this: In "paying attention to the details", I try to take as many notes throughout the day as I can, noting any interesting details that strike me. Sometime later, I put those notes in front of me and I sit down at my typewriter and start banging out whatever comes to mind, literally trying to write as unconsciously as possible. Essentially, I'm getting all the shit out of the way. (A good maxim: "Your first thought is your worst thought"). At that point, I look for a few words or a phrase that looks like it could be the beginning of something. I look up the various meanings of the words, I brainstorm what those things could mean and what they mean in context to one another, and then I start trying to put it some form of a poem. It's taken me years to "complete" a poem, but that's not the point. The process by which that poem comes to be is more important than anything you can produce.

After that, be open to sharing with friends and colleagues. I think Sxxx, Bxxx and I would be happy to read and respond to that first shitty thought or the most lovely, polished final product. (As a friend of mine says, "the polished turd".)

I hope that helps and I hope you don't take this as being too pretentious. It's hard not to sound that way, but writing is the least pretentious thing a person can do. Some of my favorite people are poets because they're the most honest and because they work to take nothing for granted.

Give my love and best wishes to Bxxx and Sxxx. I miss them both dearly.

Pax,
Thom

This is Not a Review

2009-10-06T08:45:00.002-04:00

Last night I attended a lecture by a traveling fiction writer. If you’re really interested, you can probably figure out who it is I’m talking about with a quick Google search, but I think I will refrain from officially naming names here on the blog. While I will definitely be critiquing performances and events here from time to time, and will likely offer future negative reviews, I think it would be unfair to do so this time around. In the interest of full disclosure, I have never read the work of the writer, and now have no interest in doing so.

For the entirety of the reading, the writer read from her notes. In fact, I believe even her thank you’s and acceptance of applause was scripted. The rest of the lecture wasn’t really any better. She spent the entire time telling other people’s stories, and quoting other writers who had something funny or smart to say about the given subject.

It all just made me wish for something more real…whatever that means.

On the way to the reading, I talked to a colleague about coming from an uneducated family, and how we were probably predisposed to be sensitive to the writer’s coming from a dissimilar educational background. The self-deprecation and acerbic wit simply comes off as more sour than sweet. Even so, the humor seemed affected, and it always seemed as if she were telling someone else’s story.

Several times throughout the lecture, I thought “I’d really like to hear a Springsteen song right now”. I needed something heartfelt, something that felt lived and honest. (Sure, Bruce never went on that killing spree in Nebraska, but he knows what it means to be restless in America.) This is not to put down fiction in favor of songwriting (or poetry), but it is to put down this particular writer for not giving a sense of the Life Lived.

And…I’ll admit, I lost focus pretty early on, and drifted in and out of attention for most of the lecture. And when that happens, I tend to start watching people in the crowd, to see their reactions. (Some notes: A friend of mine fell asleep in another section, many were shifting uncomfortably in their seats, and one young woman was blowing bubbles with her bubble gum.)

That being said…

Through the reading, I noticed one young woman a couple rows in front of me, who had a similar sitting posture to my own (i.e. we were very similar in the outward showing of our respective genders). And it began a tangential string of thoughts where I considered how much more was being lived right there in the lecture hall seats. How it takes a physical, emotional and societal struggle to sit comfortably in one’s seat in public...

This discussion may end up in a later post, as I’ve been thinking a lot about what has determined sex and gender in my own life, and how that’s been affected by environment. Some questions I’ve had: How much is language determined by place? How much of sex/gender is determined by language? And specifically—How much has my natural tendency for love and acceptance been affected by my own early development in a struggling steel town. How do words like “provincial” and “shut down” affect the way that we learn to love and embrace other human beings?

Long story short, that's one author I can scratch off the "to be read later" list.

Vivaldi and Cardenes -- Pgh Symphony 10/03/09

2009-10-04T11:34:00.003-04:00

Greetings folks:

Last night, the Symphony was led by Concertmaster Andres Cardenes. The program consisted of Poulenc's "Sinfonietta", Tchaikovsky's "Variations on a Rococo Theme" with Anne Martindale Williams and finally Vivaldi's "Four Seasons".

I won't say much about the Poulenc because I'm not sure I can say much about it. The piece was a bit unnerving for me, and a bit strange as an opening piece. Being slightly better than a casual listener of serious music, I always prefer something like a light overture to begin a program, and this was a bit of a shock. Most of the piece, and especially the first and last movements, are based on short phrases that never really seem to resolve. I will say, however, that the third movement, the Andante Cantabile, was absolutely gorgeous and probably saved the piece for me. It was a bit like seeing an early Picasso--you realize that Poulenc has the ability to pull off these lush, long phrases, and it makes you reconsider what he's doing with the other sections. Overall, the piece really was a lot of fun.

The Tchaikovsky, I have to admit, was not as great as I had expected. Ms. Martindale Williams made a couple audibly obvious mistakes, and I was a bit disappointed overall. I heard from a cellist friend once that Martindale Williams told her to "stop playing like a girl". I still have no idea what that means, but having heard that, I expected something more forceful. Instead, some of the phrasing was understated and a bit timid, and her tone was strangely muddy.

This was opening weekend and Heinz Hall was packed, but it probably would have been anyway, considering the performance of the Four Seasons. It's a popular work, and it brings symphony goers of all types to the Hall. And I doubt anyone would have anything but the highest praise for last night's performance.

This is my second time hearing Andres Cardenes heading up the Four Seasons, and I'm blown away every time. In his hands, Vivaldi becomes something more than just a programmatic fancy. It becomes something musically interesting and sensually exciting. From the first movement of the Spring concerto, you realize that this is an entirely different reading. First of all, it was much quicker, and there were no pauses left in between phrases. In a strange way, this seemed to bring more of the musicality out, as it wasn't relying on the programmatic tricks that help the audience "see" the music. Moreover, the attention goes not only to the solo violin (Cardenes) but to the ensemble as a whole. Frankly, watching Cardenes lead the small ensemble is like watching a really intuitive jazz combo. They play off of one another so well, and no part is left hidden. What was really exciting was the attention we were allowed to pay to the low strings and harpsichord. The music sounded full and complex, which it was intended to be.

My favorite moment in the Four Seasons came in the 2nd movement of Winter, which is actually one of my favorite movements in music - period. As the accompanying poem suggests, "to pass the days of calm and contentment by the fireside / while the rain outside drenches one hundred others", the listener is brought into a scene of warmly sentimental domesticity. In this rendering though, the pizzicato strings are right up front, forcing you to listen through the "rain" to the warm and lovely melody. If this were a camera shot, rather than a still shot of the interior of the home, we are pulled from the outside of the house, through the rain, through the window, to the warm fireside.

And again, the music was primary. Cardenes' violin was almost heartbreaking in its beauty, and almost maddening in its frenzy.

The Myth of Content Choice

2009-09-29T22:26:00.003-04:00

Tonight, one of my professors brought up a question that has been plaguing me since I began writing: Do you choose the content (of a poem), or does the content choose you?

When I first started writing, I was in love with the process of writing itself. Like a lot of young poets, it was the first sense of self-expression and exploration, and frankly, poets just seemed like cool people to emulate. I worshiped the Beats and the Romantics, and for too many years, I tried to live a life that I thought would be interesting when it ended up as poetry. After awhile, adventure turns to debauchery, and you're left wanting something more.

Now, as I hope that I'm maturing as both a person and as a poet, what ends up in the poem doesn't seem quite as obvious. We've been reading a lot of Gjertrud Schnackenberg in this particular course, and it occurs to me how little action is taking place in her poems: a woman looks at a snow globe, a young girl knits while her father reads the dictionary, a woman sits in a room holding a raccoon paw. But these are brilliant meditations, formally strong and complex, that feel like much more is happening than the few facts we are given.

I'd like to let go and let the "content choose me", but I'm not sure what that looks like just yet. Sure, I get ideas from time to time, make some interesting connections...but should it lead to a poem? And what, for that matter, should be the stuff that leads to a poem or piece of writing anyway?

Beatty / Ochester Reading

2009-09-23T07:11:00.000-04:00

Chatham University hosted Jan Beatty and Ed Ochester last night in the Welker Room, two poets deeply rooted in Pittsburgh poetry.

This reading was deeply engaging on several fronts. First, I have never heard Beatty read before, and I have certainly never heard these poets read together. However, while I was still in college, Ed Ochester visited Jan Beatty for one of his several appearances on her radio program, Prosody. Long story short, I wore the tape of the program out. One poem in particular, "Cooking in Key West", still comes back to me on a consistent basis.

I don't know anything.
I'm just learning how to see and to hear.
I want to find a way to say and believe: live,
don't be afraid until you have to be.
When you're dead you'll forget everything.

As in most Ochester poems, "Cooking in Key West" offers a colloquial humor, but this is one of the few poems where the poet is deliberately self-aware and extremely direct. It seems the essence of an Ochester poem.

One of the things I love about Ochester is that he is so rooted in Western Pennsylvania, but he also appears to be rooted everywhere, in every age. He read some new poems, apparently written over the summer, that poked fun at Pittsburgh sports mania, New Jersey, and even the poetically fascist mythology of Nero. Ochester is a humble man with a keen eye and a big heart, and it all comes through in his readings.

The big surprise for me in this reading was Jan Beatty. I have obviously heard her radio program many, many times, and I have been aware of her poetry for some time as well. There is a great rhythm to her work on the page, and I wasn't sure if it would come out in the reading. Not only was her pacing excellent, but Beatty comes off as extremely sincere and warm in her reading, without seeming vulnerable or put-on. Beatty's strength...is her strength. There's a very "tough" voice that comes through in her poems, but they also allow the poet to let down her guard slightly.

I tell her how he talks phenomenology to me:
how consciousness is everything, how important it is
to suspend assertions of existence independent of consciousness,
which I take to mean, he’s afraid of living.

Ochester and Beatty took turns reading, which ended up working surprisingly well, given the varying levels of tone and content in their respective work. Overall, a great night to be a poet in Pittsburgh.

Jan Beatty is the author of Red Sugar, the host of Prosody (a program celebrating local writers on WYEP), and the director of the creative writing program at Carlow University, where she runs the Madwomen in the Attic writing workshops.

Ed Ochester directed the writing program at the University of Pittsburgh for nearly twenty years and has served as the general editor of the Pitt Poetry Series since 1979. He is the author of Republic of Lies and Unreconstructed, a new and Selected. (On a personal note, Ochester currently lives in Armstrong County, very near to where I have spent most of my life.)