The Next Big Thing

For the purposes of relevant and full disclosure in sole relation to my own specific publication and not to be attributed beyond this author--

Amendment to the Title:

The Next Kind of Large Thing

Amendment to the Amendment of the Title:

 The Next Smallish As in Garden Gnome Sized Thing

Or just choose your own title for this:

 The Next Drop in The Ocean Thing

 The Next Hydrogen and Oxygen Particle Sized Thing Collected in the Rain Gutters All Across the World Thing

The Singular Glistening Salt Crystal Dangling On The Quivering Chin Begotten From One Watery Tear Whence the Eyes of the Forlorn Poet Thing.  

 Eh?

Ok.  We can start.  I apologize beforehand to those who I have already offended or who I will offend.  Or nevermind.  I think I should stop apologizing for my work now .

What is the working title of your book?

Axe in Hand

Question about the Question:  

What does “working” mean?  I mean… are you implying some titles are lazy and do not work, are you saying that some titles just sit around all day, forget to take showers, wear the same underwear for a week and spend too much time on the internet?? I think you’re implying that some titles are on welfare.  Well, screw you.  This question must be a part of an anti-democratic communist/socialist type of agenda. FYI my title works when it wants to work.  My title works when it is inspired to work.  Worry about your own title. Yeah, I hear your title “works” your title “gets around” your title has been rubbing up on all the other titles and can’t be trusted. 

Where did the idea come from for your book?

Q-tips: Instruments of Death

My thesis advisor and writing mentor R.H.W. Dillard and I would often go through our advisory sessions not talking about my writing—that seemed too much drudgery, and instead we began this game, a kind of mental challenge…the “Anything Can Be Used to Kill You” idea. My argument was: No, anything cannot be used to kill you as there are some objects that are utterly harmless.  So each time we’d meet I’d come up with a list of items that I thought could in no way cause harm. From a single feather to rubber-bands (too easy) to Q-tips and cotton-balls he always came up with some morbid story in which the item could be used to kill.

So, then I started thinking about what it means to be a weapon, and I figured fine, if anything can become a weapon to kill you then the opposite is true also, objects that kill can also save…and from there, well…

There was an Axe.  There was a hand. To make an axe you have to use an axe…and you have to have a hand to hold the axe to make the axe, see? So, yeah, in simple terms this metaphor means: You use what you have and it is perfectly fine to use members of my family in poems. (Is this destructive, is it a weapon or is it something that saves?) I don’t claim to know but for conscience’s sake I will hold to the latter.

Is this person about to kill you or chop down a tree for firewood?

  

Often, and I unapologetically confess here: I borrowed (hacked out) as many ideas, images, themes, words as I could from every poem or story I have ever read and internalized.  Yes, all things… from Oscar Wilde’s The SelfishGiant to Poe’s Annabel Lee.  There’s some hero mythology, a touch of Frost and a quarter of a pound of Pound, yes, Eliot (whatever I can be inspired by who I want to be inspired by) and a nod to Snyder’s Axe Handles and other Axe poems (dating back to the earliest) and of course there is the turtle, (Claudia Emerson) and physics (Michio Kaku) and a ballad, (Dolly Parton) because what’s poetry without music and science and a turtle?  I wanted a poem of a horse in there carrying secret acrostic messages, because who doesn’t love Chekov and Nabokov… but I just couldn’t make it fit. Also Bogan, Oliver, Olds, Wier…and too many contemporary poets to name. 

Well, wow, that all seems way too complicated and likely a bunch of bullshit.  No one cares about that.  This explains the germination, the origins of, but it is never just one thing and most likely really it is just one thing, the one thing I have neglected to remember and mention. Isn’t this annoying?  I think I've just embodied the reason so many people hate poetry.

 Okay.  How’s this?  Ignore the above.

Life is really hard sometimes. Sometimes life sucks.  I would rather life be joyful. I would rather it have meaning. I would rather find some spots of humor in the darkness. I believe Poetry can be funny and serious at the same time especially when you attempt to answer the question:  What makes life suck less? Words can be a weapon, yes, but words can save too.  At least that’s my hopeful opinion.

What genre does your book fall under?

Boil on the Butt of the Literary World
(a.k.a. Poetry)

What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

This book is fairly schizophrenic. It's rather a mess.  I can’t imagine Axe in Hand as a movie unless it was something like Pink Floyd’s The Wall, with appropriate psychotic stimulants applied, or What Dreams May Come with Robin Williams plus a dash of Attack of the Killer Tomatoes and a dollop of the Night of the Lupine.

 Or perhaps My Little Pony visits One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, or no, more like Scooby Doo and the Mystery Crew take on the Ghost of Lizzie Borden.  There are poems with insects as the main characters, and poems with missing body parts as the “character” so I guess we could go the direction of The Fly.

However, in between the morbid gathering of “Freak Shows” I have included many personal poems about my children and family so I’ll just pick their characters: 

• Halee, the oldest, would be Batman: Absolutely not the Val Kilmer one though.
• Ashley, the second oldest, would be Michelle Pfeiffer: early Grease 2 version.  Or Xena, the warrior princess.  She’s fairly intimidating when she’s angry.
•  Ben, the middle child, would be Carl from the Walking Dead, or Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory. 
• Analee, the second youngest, would totally be Buffy the Vampire slayer.  Or a Care Bear.
• Matt the youngest would be a muppet.  I mean that it a good way.  I think muppets are awesome. 
•  So I’d probably be like one too, Oscar the Grouch maybe though I’d rather be Glenda the Good Witch because I always really dug her big fluffy gown.
• My Dad would be a cowboy-- any cowboy.  
• My husband would be Gerald Butler.  Hello? 300? Irish Accent? No, really...

Nevermind. Here's Michael Fass-whatever...who cares.  Much better than Butler.  (P.S. You're Welcome.)

What was I saying? Umm. Huh? Oh yeah, characters:

• My Mom would be a cross between Mrs. Trelawney of Hogwarts and Sinead O’Conner, who I know is not a character or actress but it’s my world so I do what I want.
• My brother would be Sisyphus.  Because he is.
• My sister would be the moon.  Because she is.
• My grandmothers would be the paper and the ink, because they are.

What is the one sentence synopsis of your book?

There are, in this our strange universe of entropy, on this speck on which we live, so many seemingly unrelated moments and yet some of the events that seem to occur at random (yes some just are random) but sometimes, when you look long enough and get really lucky there is a pattern that reveals itself in these fractals of repeating sounds and images, snowflakes against the windshield of a car, or like the chorus of a song---the ring around the roses pocket full of posies that you learned as a child that you never can forget, the meaning behind the thing…the I am here…why the hell am I here…the why have so many people just checked out of this world early, the why do I have to watch my own children suffer because of that, the plucked petals of he loves me he loves me not…

wait.

 Never mind. That’s getting way out of hand and too complicated again.  One sentence, okay, here:

It’s about life and death and shit and not always in that order.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

I hate this question.  

Not that it’s a bad question or more or less interesting than any other question I just don’t like thinking about it or remembering the process of it any more than I try to recall or enjoy sharing memories of the exact moment in labor one of my children crowned…sorry about the visual and the cliche' of comparing the writing process to the birthing process but with five kids I get a pass on that and you probably get it now, right?

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

I can't remember where I stole this picture from.  Sorry.  If it's yours let me know and I'll give you credit for it.

What else about your book might pique a reader’s interest?

Poetry is air. Or…Poetry is breath.  You need air to breathe and you need to breathe to live.  So it logically follows that you need to buy and read this book so you don’t die of asphyxiation (I spelled that right on the first try.  You might not be impressed but I just surprised the hell out of myself.)

In short: You will DIE if you do not read poetry.  Believe it.  Poetry is not dead.  You are.  If you don't read it. Poetry, (good poetry I mean) and specifically this book: Axe in Hand, of course. 

So, do you want to live or not?

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

It was published around this time last year, NYQ Books.  I’d never self-publish a poetry collection.  I’m just not that good.  

Okay, so the way this works is first of all Thank you, wonderful, amazingly talented soul-sistah, Kelli Allen for tagging me for this (bet you regret it now huh?)

Next up for "The Next Big Thing"  TAG you are IT: C.L. Bledsoe who writes so many reviews for others I thought he should review himself.  Amy Glynn Greacen who does not yet have a book published but she has a manuscript and a ton of awards, has been in Best New Poets so many times you can't really call her "new" anymore, and why some fools have passed her up I do not know.  I'm thinking this should be her year.  Also this next lady is SO smart and personable and a "cross between Yeats and a seasoned moonshiner:" Elizabeth Leigh Hadaway...come on down!  Mara Eve Robbins, what's up?

Part Three: "Not here/Not here the darkness, in this twittering world.” – T.S. Eliot

“We live in a world where bad stories are told, stories that teach us life doesn’t mean anything and that humanity has no great purpose. It’s a good calling, then, to speak a better story. How brightly a better story shines. How easily the world looks to it in wonder. How grateful we are to hear these stories, and how happy it makes us to repeat them.”

– Donald Miller, Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life


Spanish vowels make my tongue feel fat. There’s an inflection in the present tense which makes the sounds of “eeyah” and “endo” trip across my lips. Still, the first sentence that I said (which I actually formed and understood before speaking) gave me a feeling of utter elation and accomplishment. I’ve learned more and retained more from my attempt to communicate with my Spanish speaking friend than I have in all the classes I’ve taken. I learned my friend is from Nicaragua (De donde es usted?) and when she told me where she was from the only word I knew to use to ask about her homeland was “Verde?” Although I didn’t understand every word of what she was communicating, I understood the desperation, the trials, as she replied “No Verde,” and then mimicked trying to pump water from a spout as she explained “Ninguna lluvia. Ninguna agua.” (no rain, no water) por seis meses (for six months). “Aqui es moi verde.”

In preceding essays I’ve tried to tackle the task of explaining the value of words, our purpose for using them and specifically, in poetry, why it is so important we understand the worth of words in communicating. The first sentence I was able to formulate in reply to a question in espanol that didn’t sound like it was coming from a 2 year old was,

“Tengo gusto de manzanas verdes con la sal.”

That’s what poetry should be, a question or reply, a conversation, an attempt at understanding, waking people up to a new experience, forming a shared encounter, a connection which promotes empathy, coming to an understanding with the reader concerning the often confusing foreign languages of the inner psyche, or soul.

From T.S. Eliot, four quartets:

II. East Coker V.

Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate,
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate - but there is no competition -
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.

I’ve noticed a lot of contemporary American poetry seems to get caught up in the expression of the individual, there is nothing wrong with that, however it seems that many writers write to validate themselves as “writers” rather than to validate the human experience. They forget about the soul. I’m using that word when I might mean psyche or self, but “soul” has a deeper historical significance. Let me put that another way, we only ever lose ourselves in what we put on a page, if we attempt to find ourselves there I think the ultimate end is insanity. Maybe that’s hyperbolic, but what are we trying to communicate, and why?

I used to get really annoyed when in a workshop or writing course I would hear statements like,
“But, what does this MEAN?”

My reply was always “Why does a poem have to “mean” anything? Can’t it just be?”

After several years of struggling with this, heck I don’t know what my poems mean until after I write them, I figured out that my annoyance wasn’t so much with the intention of the question but with the word “meaning.”

A poem can express emotion or reveal a truth to the subconscious mind and the “meaning” may not be clear on an intellectual level but on an instinctive gut level there’s communication which occurs. (If the reader allows it.) The question above I think would be better phrased as “What is your intention, what are you trying to communicate and why?” As the intention of a poet can only be guessed at, it requires a certain amount of faith from readers that the intention of the author isn’t just to confuse you, or to make themselves sound smart (although sometimes, yes, I think some poets get caught up in this and some good indicators of getting lost on the page are oblique references to mythology, or in other words name dropping a greek God here and there.) When done well, it works, when used to fluff up the poem…it doesn’t. How can you tell the difference? Intent.

But back to Eliot, before I get lost on the page here—
Four Quartets again,

IV Little Gidding I.
You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
Or carry report. You are here to kneel
Where prayer has been valid.

Oh so often I’m confronted with statistics about publishing and numbers related to gender issues. I read articles continually berating MFA programs and the academia, or the opposite-- I hear or read negative things said about blogs or online poetry workshops. That’s all bullshit, folks.

I’ve been thinking about turtles. Sea turtles. There’s one type of sea turtle that comes to the beach (the same beach they’ve been coming to for a millennium) and they come alone, sporadically, laying their eggs. When the eggs hatch and the little turtles start to scoot across the sand they are easy mark for the predators, most don’t make it.

The other type of sea turtle comes in a hoard, thousands upon thousands descend upon their beach (the same beach they’ve been coming to for a millennium) at the same time. The nests are all laid at the same time, the baby turtles all hatch at the same time. Millions of scooting turtles surge to the sea, a wave of turtle-ness. In this case, the predators are so overwhelmed the survival rate is multiplied a thousand times more than the above.

If you haven’t gotten the parallel I am making about the writing world and the many poets today (considering how in previous posts I compared poets to ducks, well…now here, we’re turtles.) Let me spell it out for you: It is a GOOD thing to have so many people writing poetry, speaking poetry, interested in poetry. It doesn’t matter if it’s slam poetry, formal poetry, academic poetry, nautical poetry, poetry about oranges or apple pie, good poetry, bad poetry, whatever. There will be survivors. No one knows what is coming next. I can’t watch the news about Japan without feeling sick. I’m not an apocalyptic type of gal, but I do think words will be the salt which preserves humanity (are you following me here, from turtles to salt?) Or maybe not the salt, but time capsules buried in the sand to emerge one day, like those sea turtles…so we might live on, no matter what comes next.

Oh, Eliot says it better than I do: (Quartets again, II)

We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.

My only hope for poetry is the statement above “In my end is my beginning”, my fear for it the same-- in the future, may this never be said of us:

III The Dry Salvages II.
We had the experience but missed the meaning

Part Two: "Not here/Not here the darkness, in this twittering world.” – T.S. Eliot

Words. It occurred to me that in using words to determine the value of words I’ve created quite an impossible fix for myself, one which will be difficult to find my way out of. What are words, exactly? I’m no linguist so I can’t use that kind of terminology to determine their value. Here, these words are no more than pixel bits, lines and loops, dark dotted shapes and shadows of thought illuminated on the face of a plasma screen. I do not know how this plasma screen works. I don’t even know what the plasma consists of, yet I can push some buttons on my keypad and by some force completely foreign to me, the things I think become the words I type and these sentences you now can read.

Reality demands that I acknowledge the fact that words themselves are pretty worthless—

marks on a page, blips on a screen. You can’t smell them, taste them or touch them. I have heard it said many times and have read in several places that “words are food” and “poetry is bread” (for i.e. See Mary Oliver’s Poetry Handbook, which I quoted from in an essay I wrote for NYQ issue 65). They are not. I once thought this was true, but words actually have no nutritional value. You won’t find a calorie count on the back of any book. Words can not sustain a body. You can make a sandwich out of bread. You can spread peanut butter on bread. Try spreading peanut butter on a word. It’s not going to work very well.

So what makes them valuable?

And, at what point does a word obtain its value? Is it in the mind, in the way we construct meaning, how we think in words and images? Does a word only obtain value when it is spoken, or do words become something of value only when they are commoditized or written down? Perhaps (and it may be obvious to some) it is not so much words themselves which have value or not, but what determines their value is the use of them in communication, their role as the nuts and bolts of language
.
So now let's consider what it is about the nuts and bolts in the machinery of language which gives words their value--

A few days ago I was sitting and crocheting at my son’s baseball practice when an elderly Latino woman approached me. This is the second year her grandson and my son have been on the same baseball team, and although I’d smiled at her and said hello each time I saw her, it was clear from watching her interactions with her grandson that she was not very fluent in English and so we never really had a chance to strike up a conversation beyond “hello.” She stood over me and pointed to my sad attempt at a scarf and said a word in Spanish, then used her hands to mimic the act of knitting.
I smiled, and shrugged my shoulders to indicate I wasn’t sure what she was asking.

“Crochet?” I asked.

“Crochet?” She repeated.

When she repeated the Spanish word for crochet she made the motions with her hands again so I attempted to repeat the word back to her. Her face brightened and she giggled as if I’d told her a funny joke, or maybe my pronunciation was so awful that I said a dirty word and didn’t know it. She sat down right next to me, and my Spanish is very bad, but I did remember this at least:

“Hola’ me llamo Melanie, como te llamo?”

Her smile widened even further as she told me her name and then I think she asked me if I spoke Spanish.

“Porquita, me espaniol es muy mal.” I answered.

“My English, too, very bad. We help each, you, me?” She asked.

“Sure!” I replied, “Si!”

I tried to find a way to communicate with her, scanning my mind for what little Spanish I could remember, knowing somewhere rattling around behind a door with very rusty hinges there had to be a word or two I could use. Ding! Te gusta? Me gusta? Found two.

“Te gusta baseball? What is baseball in espaniol?” I asked.

“Baseball.” She answered.

“Yes baseball, in espaniol?”

“Baseball is baseball.”

“Baseball is baseball?”

“Si.”

Ah ha!! “Okay! Baseball is baseball! Te gusta baseball?” I repeated

“No, no me gusta, me encante baseball.” She replied, crossing her arms over her chest as if she were giving herself a hug.

“You love baseball?”

“Love? Encante is Love?” She asked.

“Si, encante, love. You love baseball?”

“I love baseball, si” she replied.





The next fifteen minutes I found out her English is much better than my Spanish. She asked me if I studied Spanish in school, I managed to pick out a few words I knew: escribe, libro, la professora, escula. It was humbling to become such a handicapped communicator, forced to use words that a two year old would use. We went over body parts, eye-oho, nose- narisa, mouth- boka, hands- manos. It was wonderful, miraculous even, how simple it was to form a connection…just the naming of body parts enabled us to relate to each other in a way that would not have been possible without the use of words. We giggled like fools as I kept mixing up the body parts, calling fingers hands and hands fingers. Near the end of our conversation she held her shoulder and grimaced dramatically, I did not understand a word in the sentence she spoke to me then but I understood quite clearly that she was telling me her shoulder was troubling her.

Language is more than words, obviously, but without words we simply do not have the tools to survive in this world. Words may not have nutritional value for the body, but at the end of our conversation my new amigo patted her hand over her heart and told me,

“Thank you. Is good— for here.”

I imagine the first spark in the first man (or woman’s) skull when a mark in the dirt or an etching on a rock wall became a symbol of something else. Evolution happened when man began using tools, yes, but this moment, to me, is the true mark of evolution—when man desired to share his thoughts and feelings using the tools of language, words, to project his thinking outside of himself.

Words are what make us human, and it is the way in which we use those words which proves if we are or are not.

But how does this relate to poetry, and what value it has beyond commodity?



Stay tuned for part 3 (Sea turtles and Eliot forthcoming)

Here's a preview of where we will be going on the next leg in this journey: (Thanks to the delightful Richard Bausch for giving me permission to use his quote.  He credits Conrad for the premise.)

"Every really good story, no matter how short or how long, carries something of its justification for being and all its attendant parts in every single line. It is a unified created work of word art and that is why it is so difficult to do. So let go of expecting it ever to get easier. It won't. Just get on with it. Be willing to stumble all over yourself trying to be splendid."

Part One: "Not here/Not here the darkness, in this twittering world.” – T.S. Eliot

Thanks to C.E. Chaffin for introducing this quote to me.

I saw a picture the other day. It was a picture of an eagle feasting on a mallard. It was gruesome. The mallard’s body was shredded into a mass of blood and feathers. In the eagle’s beak, held by a tenuous bright red thread of flesh, was the only intact part of the duck remaining— its iridescent green head. And its eye, focused on the camera, the eye—that eye was clear and bright. It was beautiful. It was horrible. It was life. It was death.

It was poetry.

Recently I’ve enjoyed a conversation concerning “value” in relation to words and more specifically, poetry. For the purpose of this essay, the picture I described may serve as a somewhat obvious visual metaphor for the mass marketing mentality in the publishing world. There are those who eat, there are those who get eaten. No? Simple fact of life. Knowing this, who is crazy enough to suppose they want to be a writer, especially a writer of poetry? If poets are anything in this scenario, poets are the ducks. So, the question is, are the only roles available to us in the landscape of modern publishing those of predator or prey? I’ll come back to this later.

First of all I don’t suppose to tackle the entire publishing market right now. No way. No how. I’d like to focus this first part on “value” as it relates to the process of writing and the publishing of writing, particularly, again…the value of writing and publishing poetry. Let me throw some facts at you:
According to http://www.bowkerinfo.com/bowker/IndustryStats2010.pdf

11,766 poetry/drama books were published in 2009. That’s up 105% since 2002.*[i]

What to do with all this poetry? More is less and less is still too much?

To quote a friend and fellow poet, Steve Bunch, “Poetry has become a commodity--not as lucrative as hog bellies, mind you, but a commodity nonetheless--and the more of it that gets produced, the cheaper it becomes.”

Others share Steve’s view, claiming that there is just too much poetry out there. In “The New Math of Poetry” published in The Chronicle of Higher Education, David Alpaugh tells us: 

"Len Fulton, editor of Dustbooks, which publishes the International Directory of Little Magazines and Small Presses, estimates the total number of literary journals publishing poetry 50 years ago as 300 to 400. Today the online writers' resource Duotrope's Digest lists more than 2,000 "current markets that accept poetry," with the number growing at a rate of more than one new journal per day in the past six months. Some of these journals publish 100 poems per issue, others just a dozen. If we proceed cautiously and assume an average of 50 poems per publication per year, more than 100,000 poems will be published in 2010."

Are we about to be crushed under the weight of all these words? Perhaps the answer is the culling process of contests. Surely a sifting of chaff from wheat occurs there, no? Alpaugh continues his monolithic math equation:

 "Fifty years ago, the Yale Younger Poets was the only poetry-book contest in America. If this year's 330-plus contests continue to grow at the rate of just a half-dozen new ones per year, more than 50,000 prize-winning volumes will have been published by the end of this century. Add the hundreds of non-prize-winning chapbooks and collections with similar growth rates, and poetry books will easily top 100,000 by 2100."

Wait a minute. 100,000 poetry books by 2100??!! That’s assuming the ancient astronaut aliens don’t return to take over the planet, or that the meteors supposed to collide with the earth in 2012, leaving remnants of humanity huddling over open fires in caves and using a chisel and stone to write with, instead will glide right by us.

See, Aplaugh is actually being hopeful here!


Eh-hem…moving on. Or moving back, to regard the picture of the eagle and mallard again. Here’s a quote from Raymond Hammond, editor of The New York Quarterly,

“Contests and reading fees within the writing community are nothing more than a form of cannibalism.”

Oh, this just gets worse and worse, not even predator/prey, eagle vs. mallard, but ducks eating ducks??? Say it ain’t so!


You remember those funny signs you would read when you went swimming in the summer.


It seems as if Poetry may have become the P in the publishing pool. Realistically speaking, who cares about poetry besides the poets who are writing it? And do the poets writing poetry only care about their own publishing prowess, what more to the mallard/eagle scenario is there? Duck/duck/goose?


Should the gatekeepers be more selective?  How important are words? Do the value of words and poems directly relate to how often those words are read or how well they are understood?


I’ll tackle these questions and more as I continue to, um, dive (oh the horror, the horror, she's punning now)  into the “value” of poetry.

Stay Tuned for Part 2 of “Not Here/Not here the darkness, in this twittering world”

---

[i] Now here we have “poetry” lumped in with “drama” and I’m honestly not too certain why they are lumped together, but we might assume “drama” to mean plays and the like. I do not have data concerning the percentage of increase in published plays, however, looking at the production aspect, there does not seem to be a boom in the world of theatre in terms of extra productions via broad-way or local venues that I have noticed, (admittedly I’m no expert on this.) Still, the growth in this statistic seems more likely to directly relate to the increase of small presses and published poetry books and chapbooks. As I don’t have direct data concerning this issue, I’m going to just go ahead and run with that assumption and if I’m wrong…well, then I’m wrong.

Received/Reviewed Poetry Books 2010

http://www.amazon.com/Wrecking-Ball-Other-Urban-Haiku/dp/0984411828

Wrecking Ball and Other Urban Haiku, Barry George, Accent’s Publishing SPALDING SERIES
Barry George’s collection honors the ancient tradition of Haiku with careful attention to form. The form lends a tangible feeling of weight to each word and yet the imagery turns and turns again from dense and earth-bound to diaphanous and spacious (quite an achievement for 17 syllables, tiny little 5-7-5 moras). Each haiku in this collection is a work of art set like a painting on the page. In many places George twists the tradition away from its roots in nature to use modern visualizations of average people in everyday life. He creates characters which reflect the universality of living, not to recreate the haiku form, but, I believe, to give homage to the past while drawing it forth into a relevant and vibrant future. Each haiku is gift, a portrait of modern life and the vitality and energy of one of the earliest forms of poetry, syllabics, which has remained vibrant through the ages, is beautifully reflected in these meticulously polished jewels.

*A note on the Spalding Collection, these books are beautifully printed and put together by hand which adds a personal element to each edition not found in many of the larger presses. The interior design is zen-like. Kudos to Accent’s Publishing for valuing the art of bookbinding as well as the crafting of poetry.



http://www.amazon.com/Across-Grid-Streets-Quincy-Lehr/dp/0955534631

Across the Grid of Streets, Quincy Lehr, Seven Towers Publishing
I’ll start by saying I am not of big fan of neo-formalism. I’m not a fan of long poems that rhyme written after, oh, the 18th century because it seemed to me rhyme itself was a cliché’ and historically speaking, formal poetry had been used, not to capture life, truth or history but to encapsulate stories which promoted whatever political agenda (usually misogynistic in tone and patriarchal in topic) was relevant to whatever ruling cast paid the pipers (so to speak.) But okay, then. Where did that chip on my shoulder come from? I don’t know. Anyhow, I got over it. Lehr's talent with story telling draws the reader in and the pacing in his book is equal parts Wordsworth and Wilde, on crack maybe, but I mean that in a good way. Lehr also tackles the urban landscape bringing us face to face with the utter isolation of a singular vision caught up in multiple agonies. Cancer and death are topics delved with raw and unflinching clarity. These are not your momma’s lyrical love poems but the well honed lyricism I surprisingly found fitting to the topics and actually framed them in such a way which made the investment in reading worthwhile.


http://www.amazon.com/Venison-Thorpe-Moeckel/dp/0981968716/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1293700291&sr=1-1

Venison: A Poem, Thorpe Moeckel, Etrusian Press
A book length poem? In couplets no less--what was he thinking!? That’s what I thought when I began reading Venison, doubtful one poem could be sustained through an entire manuscript. Well, I was wrong and pleasantly surprised. Moeckel’s Venison engages in sustainability and substance, not to mention sustenance. On the other hand, let’s mention sustenance. The poem (book) is part reverently meditative, part treatise on the natural order of life and death, predator and prey, part recipe on authentic living. There are sometimes delightful, sometimes humorous, sometimes disturbing revelations which parallel the common activities of preparing food and feeding one’s family. A fascinating journey from hoof to table, from the forests to the kitchen, from regret to gratitude with a tender reckoning of the grace and responsibility involved in each life we come in contact with.  Probably one of the most unique poetry books I've ever read.


http://www.amazon.com/Bright-Felon-Autobiography-Cities-Wesleyan/dp/081956916X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1293700421&sr=1-1

Bright Felon, Kazim Ali, Wesleyan Press
I’m not often stunned, but Bright Felon, an autobiography, stuns me. Not because the topic is a difficult one but because of the rare glimpse of torment which is balanced somehow by the ability to express that torment. Heart-wrenching, yes, but there is also beauty, yes there is much beauty here in the approach to the subject matter and in the honest, unflinching look at self in relation to tradition and what happens to the self when all the constructs of tradition began to crumble. A journey into self-acceptance, it isn’t quite clear if the journey is completed as at the end of the book Ali leaves us with the haunting missives:

             Will I find myself or fine myself stopped in the street for stumbling for
             not living in a place, not being bound anywhere to a family,
             nation, or god...

             Are you Muslim or will you love.

             I will not answer.

Declaring himself separate and orphan, isolated and set adrift, there is still a hopeful tone (which I found remarkable) in the concluding two lines:
           
            Fathered by sound I am.

            Kind mother your kin.

Bright Felon is not your normal autobiography, prose and poetry crafted with precision and passion make this book a must read.


http://www.amazon.com/Cold-Wind-Idaho-Lawrence-Matsuda/dp/0982636407/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1293700508&sr=1-1

A Cold Wind From Idaho, Lawrence Matsuda, Black Lawrence Press
I’m going to gush on this one, but I’ll try hard to restrain myself and be all professional and what not. I grew up in Idaho, was taught the state history in fifth grade. We learned about the abandoned sliver mines, Lewis and Clark, Sacagawea, the Snake River and the commerce of farming; we learned Boise was the capital and the Mormon trail brought several settlers up from Utah. What I did not learn, what I knew absolutely nothing about until receiving this remarkable book was this: Mindoka. A dark secret in my home state that no one talked about. How did I not know about Mindoka??? I didn’t. It makes me feel ashamed, for myself for not knowing and for the community, the government for creating the tragedy and the schools for not even mentioning it as part of the state’s history. Mindoka was one of ten Japanese concentration camps in America during World War II. Matsuda revisits the site of his family’s captivity and reclaims his past. The poems in this book stitch together a family history which creates an epic, or an epistle of timeless importance. Matsuda delves into difficult topics, poverty, isolation, discrimination, family tragedy, with touching humor, sadness, and an elegant brushstroke of poeticism, redemption through language in a very literal sense.

Mid-November

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

”It’s Red Berry Day!” the children said to me

when I asked why. I didn’t know they would forget

the reason they avoided the holly tree

where they had buried their pet.

When I asked, “Why?” I didn’t know they would forget

how they feared the holly tree would die,

where they had buried their pet.

The fear faded as the years went by.

How they feared the holly tree would die,

its roots stabbing deep into the rabbit’s skull,

the fear faded as the years went by.

They gathered holly berries by the bucket full,

its roots stabbing deep into the rabbit’s skull,

and scattered them on our trampoline.

They gathered holly berries by the bucket full,

the dirt scoured the rabbit’s bones clean,

and scattered them on our trampoline.

The reason? They avoided the holly tree,

the dirt scoured the rabbit’s bones clean.

“It’s Red Berry Day!” the children said to me.

This is part two of a poem/story sequence that I've been putting together for Flocoimo.  Read more about Floyd County Imagination Month and see what some wonderful writers and artists are doing here:  Ad Hominem

and here: Jacksonville Center for the Arts

Here's the first part of the story:

My Children Picked the Berries from The Hollytree Bush

They saved the rabbit from the creepy cat,

Then brought it home in hopes that I might tend

The wounds, and help it heal. Though I knew that

A promise would not change how this could end.

It was too small, so they chose a strong name

A name which would repair, a name to mend

The broken bones, and heal what would be lame.

It seemed to work at first. Leonadis,

 Destined to be the King of Rabbits, fame

Of his miraculous life, his near miss

With death, would spread to all of the warrens!

Each night they sent him to sleep with a kiss,

Then said a prayer that he might hop again.

And though we loved the best we could, one day

We found him cold and still, and then— and then

Photography and Poems by John Sweet

John Sweet 2009

one for j


wake up heavy with the
idea of suicide on some bright
blue july morning and
                  then what?

you need to look in all
directions here

you need to consider hope
                                      vs
      the possibility of hope

your children as a
form of salvation

   salvation as a concept that
                                    might
actually have some meaning

 

ash wilderness
 

the edges of cities
where the bodies are buried

the sides of hills and
the scrubland on either side of
the highways

and it matters that i love you
but not enough

it makes its own grey logic
that the killers need
to be killed

ask any parent
how old their child
would've been and then
look at their hands when
they answer

look at your own

use them to dig out
whatever space you can find
between anger and despair

a forest


growing up quietly,
invisibly,
or this is what you thought

growing up without limitations
and then dying

write your name
         backwards
in the book of crows

hang a cross in
front of every mirror

religion, yes, and then
superstition
and then genocide

all acts
are acts of greed

all apologies are
acts of violence

baby just lies there bleeding
and all you can do
is keep saying i’m sorry

 the village, on fire


my youngest son crying over
the idea of my death and i
have no idea how we’ve
arrived at this point

i have no more reasons
to hate my own father

feel nothing but fear when
i consider the future

five years and then ten and
then twenty tied down by
the need for money.
               for shelter,
               for food,
               for money again

day one in the
age of addiction

white sun in a silver sky

houseful of broken windows,
of leaking pipes and
unread books

my youngest son in tears,
which is suddenly
the source of all pain

              notes on finding religion


We were silent while the
boat sank. I think I’ve
mentioned this. Land in the
distance off to the west, blinding
sunlight, and it wasn’t
enough just to be in love

and it never is

and we never were

and the boat was sinking

miro was dead

Couldn’t understand why none
of the things I had spent my
believing in never really
mattered in the end.

  

on the occasion of giving up completely


wake up after the rain in
the same place you’ve always known
and wait to feel clean

time is not your friend here

you are only loved by those
who get something in return

think about your father here
and then think about
the emptiness he left behind

is it smaller than you expected?

can it be cupped gently
in bleeding hands?

listen

fear is a given in
any equation

the next storm is already forming
just over the horizon

doesn’t take a genius to see
we’re all fucked,
but it feels so good sometimes
to just sit back and
close your eyes 

© John Sweet, 2010

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