Filling the Beaker

This weekend I'm sneaking away to a secret writing hideout with my secret writing friends. We will of course be writing secrets since that's what creative writing is all about--twining up the knotty boutonniere of story, that lace veil, that pair of handcuffs, that broom that sweeps the chaff away. We've been going to our secret island for a very long time. (I might have written the first letter of invitation in Wordstar--that long ago.)

Sometimes I have a project, sometimes I float around and swim illegally off the bird sanctuary. Or go into town to eat ice cream or drive past the house with the long long lawn falling away towards the lake. I always pay attention and get up before everyone else and make coffee. Maybe the best times are when everyone is around the kitchen table (on some very uncomfortable chairs) joking and exchanging book recommendations and talking about the work. (I just attended a terrific reading at lunch today which gave me two new directions for poems.)

But I'm also taking a course through Coursera--a MOOC (I feel so high tech saying that although I've already forgotten what it means). Modern and Contemporary Poetry--beginning with Dickinson and Whitman again, every beginning new. I'm getting a new notebook out of the drawer--red. I hesitated about this. When would I find the time? But there's so many places to squeeze ideas into the day. First poem to read: "I Dwell In Possibility," a prophecy of anticipation or hope.

If My Head Were a Cauliflower

I think I'm getting my veg metaphors confused. But I've already written the cabbage head poem and I never boxed (re: cauliflower ear). I thought cauliflower because of its segmentation--so many sections that can be broken apart.

The beginning of the semester feels a little like that. Unwinding the cellophane, driving the knife through the head, pulling off the leaves, piling parts in the pot to boil.

Segment of planning.
Segment of syllabus and page numbers.
Segment for speed reading and photocopy list.
Segment where all assignments-to-be crowd up and then string apart to their fundamental properties.
Segment of sending out poems/book/chap (now the season is upon us again).
Segment of last minute gardening needs.
Segment of writing anew (but maybe that was the leaves)

Flying the Sonnet Flag?

This summer I've been doing a lot of revisions. Some of it is work that I'm just making, some of it the avalanche of poems from my poem-a-day experiment. I've noticed that shorter poems--12 lines, 13 lines, 15 lines, I'm thinking I could make that a sonnet. Why?

Of course, I know it's because it will indicate that I understand traditional forms, that I embrace traditional forms, that I'm informed. It will give me the appearance of propriety--proper poem-ness. When did I start to care about that?

Can I say that there are certain ways I think the poem should not be groomed? And maybe this is one of them. It's the shape of the poem's throat I should be wondering about, the utterance unspooling from that mysterious dark interior, what I coax (co-ax like a threat?) like an animal out of a cave. (And suddenly it rushes you.)

One of the ways I work as a poet is through refusal. I began in free verse. I refused early lukewarm estimations of my work. I refuse my own bad writing. I refuse writers block. I refuse the low rung of the ladder I'm standing on. I'm thinking I should refuse this, too.  

This is not the same as setting out to write a sonnet or a crown of sonnets, or a ghazal (which is the form that interests me the most right now). Shapeliness is an important element in poetry. But should a poem be trimmed to an expectation unrelated to its being?

Pep Talk Now That It's Summer and I Have More Time

It's summer, but there's no real writing going on. Would it be helpful if I listed my difficulties? I feel scattered generally in that living paycheck to paycheck way but I mean my  thinking. I can only plan until the next short term fulfillment or task. I'm hiccuping instead of breathing. I'm continually getting snagged instead of skimming a surface lightly. Is it my age? Is it my impending birthday giving me a surface roil? Is it the sweating? Is it the influence of my job and how I flick through computer sites to distract myself/calm myself down? I have thought this before--that my job makes me think less well.

What's odd about my unwriting is that when I break through the skin of the poem and start fiddling with organs (OK--too many murder mystery books obviously), things seem to go well. So breaking through the skin continually. A better metaphor-- putting my head underwater where everything looks flaring and dreamy and I have to hold my breath. Dive deep.

Should I have a prompt chosen every week just in case? Should I keep an image notebook? This immediately appeals to me. It would be as if I'd be doing sketches. OK. Find suitable notebook. Look up mosaics online today and see how interested I am in that possible poem.

Learning to breathe underwater again.

In Defense (of Parentheses)

Because I seem to be turning back to the parentheses (which I don't seem to use when writing prose stanzas), I thought I'd look back at my remarks on ( ) at the time of my thesis:

In Defense (of Parentheses)

 

            What is the objection to the parentheses? That it interrupts the clean flow of the narrative or the sentence or the movement in the poem? That it’s a gimmick rather than useful? That it is a shoddy substitute for what the poem should be doing like an exclamation mark where words alone aren’t equaling intensity?

            Against these three points, I would argue first that it is always my intention to interrupt, that I’m against the idea of one line or narrative because life is shivery and multiple and refracting.

I think of the parentheses working with the line in a kind of point/counterpoint way—they are very necessary. The parentheses do not always work the same exactly, but they are always OTHER in relationship to the particular moment of the poem. It’s not just the information that is contained by the parentheses—which might be reminder, caution, correction, added detail, commentary, but the change in pressure, or relief of tone and/or intensity; the sense of pause from the main line, therefore functioning as white space; the introduction of a different, suppressed speaker (although this is rare); the opposition of dictions for a pleasurable contrast, the opportunity to ease a transition.

            If I use “What I Might Be with Wings” (p. 20) as an example, I could say the first parentheses in line 3-4 is a reminder as far as information goes, but it also yanks the reader away from the tendency to the ecstatic that the poem is doing in the main line. The second in line 5-6 is the second in a series of 3 jokey kind of statements, but in terms of information is the most sensory of the three. The third parentheses in line 9 is again very sensory and also sound-oriented and seems to be pushing back toward the ecstatic where the main line is not. The 4^th and 5^th instances which occur next to each other in the 10^th line are offering alternate choices in terms of information but also indicating by the blocky stoppedness of their placement in the middle of the line, the turmoil of the main line of the poem.

            When an exclamation point or a capitalized word is employed because of a failure of intensity or interest, it has a single job, kind of like an adverb, to pump up the volume of the spindly word-display. I hope I’ve demonstrated clearly that the parentheses is much more multi-faceted in use and transcends a single aspect of poetry, being useful in terms of at least space, sound, meaning, and tone.

            The parentheses makes the poem appear more approachable—pulling the reader closer as if to say “for your ears only”—as well as making it more meaningful and complex. It replicates that push/pull tendency the poems develop around ecstasy.

Why I'm Not Writing Much Right Now

Sorry if I've been distant.

Right now I'm in the throes of planning a writing conference and executing that plan. (The conference is June 1st.) Rooms, food, parking, presenters, attendees, high school scholarships, publicity, give-aways, book fair, manuscript consultations, brochure handouts, cancelling table order, adding mid-morning coffee, buy mid-afternoon cookies, schedule, budget, wait for a key hand-off, arrange for someone to introduce the presenters, smile a lot next Saturday, tasks for the grads, copy handouts, consider buying white board markers, what about the AC, can we turn the fountain on, who can take photos?

Summer time when the writing is easy(-ier)

Every year I do this kind of computation with the same anticipation and longing I used to employ making lists before going on family vacations.

1. Figure out when I will be done grading.
2. Identify date fall semester begins.
3. Count up how many weeks are to be all about writing.
4. Lop one week off at the beginning (dissipating exhaustion).
5. Lop one week off at the end (intense phase of fall semester prep).
6. Count what's left =12 weeks (sounds pretty wonderful).
7. Make a list of books I'd like to read/annotate/buy--poetry, poetics, how-to, serious fiction.
8. List what I'd like to accomplish:

• Book ms. out (should I give it a once-over to make sure there's no horrifying weakness, no creeping gauzy semi-invisible wounds?)
• Poems out (what a wonderful thing summer submissions are)
• Poem ideas I've already had (list)
• Write, write, write.
• Gauge series I'm working on to see how to/if to expand (I'm pretty sure could use at least 2-4 more)
• Cock my eye at the poem-a-days. What do I want to do with them? I recall thinking that some could be put together. Maybe I should think fragment.
• Begin working on a new project. (I recently asked someone what they were working on and they had a wonderful historical person to bounce poems off of.)  I have a note that says "this kind of long dialogue of poems" which sounds like a series to me.
• I'd like to think about myself as a writer apart from what I am actually writing. Maybe thinking about placement or trajectory or brilliance (as if I were some kind of astronomical sign).

I find that writing is a lot like gardening. There's a seasonal quality to it. And when working fiercely (always my goal) there's time spent on the standing work and time on the kneeling.