A busy collection of bits

Two things I should have mentioned weeks ago:

The Spoken Word Series' new sponsor, The Theater Company, his hosting an afternoon of planned and open-mic performance as part of Monroe Arts Center's May Open Studio Day Sunday. Siobhan Barry and Scott Summers will join me in presenting the literary side of the arts spectrum, and we'll be joined on the schedule by some of the great musical talent that works the Hudson County area (and beyond!). Scott and I will be unveiling a new project called Voices from History where we showcase voices from times in history that you don't find in contemporary poetry all that often. We think it's worth a visit; check out the TTC website for the schedule, or just arrive at 1 and spend the day with us.

I have a poem in the last issue of Redheaded Stepchild - one I'm particularly proud of because it's quite a departure for me. It derives from a scene from Fred McBagonluri's Dusk Recitals; writing about an image that originated in someone else's mind and is completely outside my experience is quite atypical for me. I'm quite proud of the poem when you're there, make sure you read the rest of the issue, especially A True Princess Bruises; it's always gratifying for me to appear alongside poets whose work and counsel has guided me, and Jeannine Gailey's poems take you to a place you think you know but still surprise you.

And here's one thing I don't know that I'm supposed to mention, but I'm too jazzed not to: there's a rumor going around that Alex and Janel have invited some special guests to sit in with them during the release show for their new collection "You Won't Be Alone", and that one of these guests may be packing an accordion. You should go even if there's no accordion. But there may be one. Maybe.

A Few Words From My Mother

Traditional Mother's Day poems, like most poems written for Hallmarkian holidays, tend toward sweetness, and since I don't (think I) do that very well, I'll not contribute to the buffet here (for some occasion poems, check out the last week at yourdailypoem.com or David Young's "Mother's Day" at poets.org). A rare alignment of circumstances gave me a couple uninterrupted hours with my mother this weekend, which we spent mostly by talking about events from long ago - some well known and raised for reliving, some that I knew less well. It's interesting to revisit events for which I have some memory of as an 8- or 12- or 17-year old through the filter of being a father now, and to hear my mother describe these events to me as a peer, without the softening or misdirection that sometimes infiltrates the parent-child relationship.

Some of the events we relived made their way into poems 20 years ago, some more recently; I've mentioned in this space that the older I get the righter my father becomes, and gaining a little context makes me want to return to that material and treat it a bit differently. And of course, there are the poems about my father as young man, whose subjects I know only from what my mother has told me. Lord knows he wasn't about to talk about them.

So though I've written more about my father than my mother - because ours was the more complicated relationship, and because I tried to write my way through the months after his death. But I suppose in a way those poems about Dad were almost as much about the shared experience with my mother as they were about my memory of my father.

Which reminds me of a quote; I don't know where exactly I first heard this, but Google turns it up intact and similarly attributed in enough places that I think it must be accurate. And after watching my daughter compose a poem for my wife, I'm convinced that whether it's accurate or not, it's true:

"My mother is a poem I'll never be able to write, though everything I write is a poem to my mother." Sharon Doubiago

Happy Mother's Day.

On Easter Sunday, a poem might also be....

This is a story about a poem.

For the past few years, I have taught 7th grade CCD (religious education) in my church. I began teaching it for the reason I think many intellectual smorgasbordists* would: I wanted to get to know my own faith and beliefs better. Part of that is self-interest, being at the time in my life when one tends to do a lot of recursive examination; part is practical, as my kids are approaching the ages when their questioning (well, more their insistence upon answers) will begin to strip my ability to answer unless I maintain myself better than I'd been.

With a very few exceptions, I've found my students' questions to be relentless, unembarrassedly personal, and ruthlessly fair and honest. One of the more common questions I get from the kids is whether or not I believe the particular miracle we just discussed actually happened (surrounded by 3 minutes of what they would do if confronted by such unbelieveability). The subject of miracles is a tough one to broach with a 12/13-year old - their world is complicated and indefinable enough without the burden of believing in an otherworldly power. But -- unlike the persona I adopt in my poems -- I always tell them the truth. Which starts with my grandmother.

What faith have comes, ultimately, from my grandmother. In the whole of my life, hers was the strongest faith I have ever encountered. Not the loudest, not the most obvious, but the strongest. I was well into my 20s before I started to learn about the hardships Nana had faced in her life, hardships which might have caused another person to adjust their disposition toward the cynical. But Nana's was definitely an Easter faith; she believed that no one would ever be burdened with more than they could handle, and that renewal and restoration was waiting for you if you could manage your burden just a little longer.

Which is why Nana continues to show up in my poems, and why I feel pretty strongly about those poems. I'm not objective about them and I don't pretend to be. But there was one particular disappointing episode in her life that I've always felt was perfect for a recollective poem, one that ought to be presented in sepia tones, it's so much a peek at the past. I've been writing and rewriting it for years, never quite sure what to do next with it, or whether to call it done. But I've thought for a while I had handled it well enough to let my peers have a look.

A short while ago, I learned of John Newmark's online journal Generations of Poetry, a new (this year) literary effort in support of the geneablogging (online genealogy) community. It seemed a logical place for this poem I've wanted so much to take out of the folio and expose to the light. It takes place (mostly) in 1937, and it has a lot to do with the records we keep about our families. I won't tell you more; you can read it for yourself.

Today. Easter Sunday.

Now I don't know if that means anything. It's presumptuous to think that the cascade of coincidences that led to the appearance of Grand Canyon, 1937 on Easter is anything more than just that. And don't mistake me for anything other than a (slightly sentimental) realist. I know enough about statistics to know that if you flip a coin 50 times every day, one day you'll get TAILS 50 flips in a row. I know enough about people and their faith to know that a divine hand is frequently and perhaps foolishly seen in things those people are desperate to make sense of.

But.

I will have a new group of 7th graders in September. And sometime before Halloween they will ask me if I believe in miracles. As I do every year, I'll tell them I don't know. Then maybe I'll tell them this story and ask what they believe.

If you are celebrating it today, I wish you a joyful Easter.

* relentlessly curious on a surprisingly far-flung set of areas of interest.

Truth Is Not the Caramel Center

Pulled again this week into the old conversation: Truth in poetry. Answering the question "Wow, did that really happen?" Whether to show my mother what I write*.

It's that same question again and again: whether it's reasonable to expect a person reading a poem not to place the poet into the person of the speaker, or just to assume it's all true. I haven't found a way to convince people that it's really not, and I'm not just talking about novices or non-poets, but also about people who have a reasonable claim at being writing hobbyists.

I usually try to bring the visual arts into this discussion, ask whether people look at paintings and ask if the scene really happened. It usually doesn't work, but I think I finally hit on the way to connect this comparison. I think it's probably true that visual artists prepare a sketch or use (pencil/light) guidelines when producing a piece of art suitable for hanging; these are the equivalent of truth to the poet. They may get you into the piece, but they're not there when you're done, though their shape may be visible.

The problem, I think, is the old opinion of poetry as therapy, not as craft. I'm not saying there isn't therapeutic or cathartic poetry, or music, or painting, but that it's silly to think it all is catharsis. Even established writers talk to me about poems "needing to be written". Do we think of screenplays in that light? Novels? Some, to be sure, but we don't start with their truthfulness as the assumption. I don't think we do, anyway.

And that, I'm afraid, goes back to how poetry is taught. It's either dry and dead or first-person pathos. That's one reason I like to follow the Poetry Out Loud competition; giving voice to other's work breaks wide open the idea that the poem must be a confessional or observational moment.

Truth is not the element that makes the poem essential or beautiful; it is not the reward. It's not even essential to the poem. It's just another way into the moment. No, I don't think the conversation's over, or that I'm winning many people over, but I intend to keep trying.



* - Not all of it. Sorry, Mom.

A night out with words

Had an unexpected opportunity to catch Lyn Lifshin (prolific poet and teacher) and Michael Mirolla (writer and editor of Guernica Editions) at the Montclair Public Library tonight - a delightful reading. Michael opened and read poems from several books, then closed with a story that was twice a gift. The first gift was his discovery that he'd brought the piece at all. It turns out he was unable to bring his books with him for reasons I'll leave him to work out with the folks responsible, and he happened to have a hardcopy of the story from his files. The second manifestation of gift happened when I approached him after the reading and mentioned I'd enjoyed the story and thought I could find an eager audience for it at home, and he opened his briefcase and handed me the story - proving to me again that the rule is true talent generally shows true generosity.

I hadn't seen Lifshin read in about 15 years and she was exactly the same as I remember her. Picked up her new book, All the Poets Who Have Touched Me, which she read a bit from. It's a fun collection in which she addresses her relationships with many other poets and she insists that some of it is true! As is the rule (at least with me; don't know about you), I tried out something new in the open, which forced me to put the pen to paper. My iGoogle counter has been yelling at me again - 89 days since I completed a poem - and it was great to finally click the reset button. \

And.... just heard tonight that Generations of Poetry, an online journal with a genealogy focus, has accepted a poem; more on that when it appears.

Hope your tax season is going well!

.... And, We're Back.

What's the expression? March comes in like a lion, tears into all your stuff like it's been dipped in zebra gravy then poops all over the debris? Well, it's something like that.

Wild, wild month. Not the least contribution to the craziness came from preparing for and delivering a talk this month title "Poetry in Praise: Tools for Praying" to a (predominantly) non-writing audience. This was part of an adult education program my church (along with 3 others) presents during Lent, and I'd received a clue from some of the planned participants that expecting participation in a writing exercise would be akin to calling for wax fruit to be juicy when bitten. Nonetheless I relied heavily on an introduction to poetry lesson that I've used in grammar school workshops before. It's an orientation that borrow shamelessly from material and advice from Elizabeth Lund and BJ Ward, and it went pretty well with this mature audience. I was determined to provide an element of discussion of craft even if I didn't expect much of the crowd to apply it in the room.

The highest praise came from someone who commented that they had signed up for the session of loyalty (to support me), but - and this is a direct quote - "actually enjoyed (her)self". I like to think that's part how I organized the lecture, part my entertaining style of presentation, and part the anthology of poems I present which, though all on Christian themes (obviously), ranged from Greeks writers circa 150AD to post-WWII Japanese writers, from the cloistered life of Thomas Merton to the busy life of the modern secular American.

And yes, I foisted a little of my own work upon them; you don't need to yank my guild card, fellow shameless self-promoters. I'll type up the anthology over the rest of this weekend.

Happy PoMo, BTW.

Overanalysis of a Marge Piercy Quote

Today's Literary Quote of the Day (courtesy dailyliteraryquote.com): The real writer is the one who really writes. Talent is an invention like phlogiston after the fact of fire. Work is its own cure. You have to like it better than being loved. - Marge Piercy.

This is a terribly rich quote. Let's take it a bit at at time.

The real writer is the one who really writes. - This seems obvious to most creative writers but let's parse if both ways and see what it means. Forwards: To be a real writer, one must really write. True; if you're more interested in the trappings of "being a writer" than in acquiring craft and producing quality output, I don't think you can claim to be a real writer. Backwards: If you really write, you are a real writer". This is a bit less obvious to me. If one defines "really writing" as "writing containing a progressive and expanding sense of craft and desire", I'm down with the definition. I suspect a prolific and widely-reaching writer like Piercy probably meant it that way, or something like it. I do not, however, accept the position that all creative writing hobbyists are "really writing"; many are occupying time with literary sameness.

Talent is an invention like phlogiston after the fact of fire. - A brilliant line, but I don't buy it. Perhaps this is the geek in me poking out, but consider the origin of the phlogiston: Before the isolation and discovery of oxygen, there was for a short time a theory that all flammable materials contained a substance - phlogiston - could be liberated by fire. Clearly, the theory was wrong; flammability is raw material, plus oxygen, plus ignition. Now, I believe completely that combustion is a great analog for writing. One must have fuel (interesting content), oxygen (your personal contribution of style, form, genre, etc.) and....

Work is its own cure. -- this is the real ignition. While I believe in inspiration, work is the real spark. It's what takes the fuel and the necessary environment and makes it come to life with meaningful heat.

So back to the phlogiston, I'd say the need for something to burn is a necessary input in writing, but that's not "talent". Talent is the combination of fuel and spark. However, I do believe that good writing is not understood by those who do not study it well; perhaps there's the implication of that belief in Piercy's use of an unlikely and incorrect theory in comparison.

You have to like it better than being loved. -- What's the old saw? "If you can imagine yourself being anything else, go be that, because you're not a writer." A poetic overstatement by Ms. Piercy, but true enough.

Interesting challenge, trying to define the "real writer" and "real writing". In a poetry spectrum that ranges from Silliman to Collins (and beyond them on both sides, to be sure), I don't think it's really possible to define "writer" to the complete satisfaction of the trade. But I think the analogy of the solitary builder of a nourishing fire (using the correct modern definition, that it is) is good place to start.