Monthly Archives: June 2018

9 posts

Rules for Writers: A Baker’s Dozen

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bake

Here are some suggested daily habits for writers. It’s OK if they are broken because that’s what resolutions in habits’ clothing are meant to suffer! Still, let us amuse ourselves as if rules are hard and fast:

If you have little or no discipline around technology, keep a writing notebook. Buy the best damned notebook and pen / pencil you can find so the feeling is “right” every time. Then write every time.
If you have some semblance of discipline around technology, when you log on to the computer, click the WORD icon to write before you click the BROWSER icon to see who emailed you or replied to or liked or retweeted you on social media.
In fact, be anti-social media. Social media might work (some) for the business side of writing, but it does little if anything for the writing side of writing.
Listening to music as you write is OK, but only if it doesn’t distract. Distraction = singing to the words of a song while you’re writing your own personal epic. For me, classical works. Songs with lyrics do not.
Drinks like coffee while writing, good. Drinks like beer, wine, or hard alcohol, bad. Food for thought, good. Food for love handles, bad.
If you have a burning idea, kindle that new fire first. Otherwise…
Always reread what you wrote the day before so you can revise it under fresh eyes. Did you know you grow a fresh pair of eyes each night when you sleep? This idea is revisionist like much of history these days, but it’s true, Virginia: Revisionist eyes are a writer’s best friend (sorry, pooch).
Reread your work aloud. Good writing, be it poetry or prose, sings. It is music. It is long and short. It is repetition that doesn’t sound repetitive, but rather like a refrain.
Reread again and again (and again) across the days. Those fresh eyes are an opinionated lot like Congress. Hopefully they can accomplish more, but the point is, revision is more marathon than dash. You may change a word back and forth 23 times. It doesn’t mean you’re indecisive; it means you’re doing your job.
When you think you’re finally done, think again.
If you’ve ever cringed at a work of yours that was published, hang it up over your computer or writing notebook as a reminder of #10.
Remember that rules work and don’t work, depending on you. The French loved Jerry Lewis. The Americans, not so much. In either case, comedy survived because different criteria work in different ways. So write. Reread. Revise. Repeat without lathering or rinsing. And only after you love, love, love what you wrote after 30 musical rereadings aloud across 30 musical days aloud, submit.
Finally, submit to a market you’d be proud to see your name attached to. If printed, hold a copy of the journal or magazine. If online, view a copy. If you’re not wild about the editor’s choices, pass. If you object to the size of the font, pass. If you love both the look and the company you’ll keep, go.

Leviathan (Or, My Summer Reading List)

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There’s an old saying, now out of style in our “Supersize me!” society,” that goes like this: “My eyes were bigger than my stomach.” It means the food looked damn good, so you ordered (bought, cooked, helped yourself to) all of it and then couldn’t finish it.

The equivalent for readers? “My summer reading ambitions were bigger than my allotted time.” In other words, you say to yourself (or to anyone paid to listen, like your spouse): “Yes! Summer! More time! More vacation! I am going to read so much more than I never had time to get around to in the fall and the winter and the spring!”

Then, alas, Ecclesiastes kicks in. “To everything there is a season: turn, turn, turn.” (Wait! Is that Ecclesiastes or a 60s pop song?) Whatever. You get the idea. You’re on Book #8 of 21 and suddenly bump into that wall called September. Hello!

With that in mind, as promised, here is my summer reading ambitions set out by genre, starting, of course, with poetry.

POETRY

Head Off & Split by Nikky Finney With lots of awards, this book is the one I am presently reading. So far, lots of black history (hey, it’s Rosa Parks!). Some people are allergic to political poetry. And some people say there is a lapse of decorum in hounding Trump staff in public, too. Then again, some people forget there is a lapse in democracy thanks to Trump and his delightful staff lording it over the public by ruling to their base and for the good of their base alone. So I think I’ll give it a fair shot, politics or no.

Blind Huber by Nick Flynn What? A book about a beehive, with a guide loosely based on an 18th-century French beekeeper? When do I get to the ninth level? Is the Queen Bee Lucifer? How hot can a hive bee (sic)? It’s questions like this that will keep me buzzing along, methinks.

Praise by Robert Haas Haas is a household word, but this book goes back to the 70s (as do I), a time when he was just another poet throwing around complimentary words that would turn into a poetry collection. Why did I choose it? There’s a lot left to praise in life, most of it in the natural world, far far away from the front page. I’ll have what he’s having, Sir.

The Master Letters by Lucie Brock-Broido The first blurb on the back, from Herbert Leibowitz, starts so: “Reading The Master Letters is like watching Phiippe Petit walk a tightrope across the space between the two World Trade Center towers without a safety net underneath.” If that line doesn’t enrich the poverty of imagination and hindsight, what does? The book itself is based on three mysterious letters from Emily Dickinson to someone she called “Dear Master.” The Dame of Amherst not only wrote a lot, she inspired a lot.

Lighthead by Terrance Hayes This collection is by the guy who is on the cover of the new Poets & Writers magazine. Its an article that basically promotes his new book, so I will read one of his old books instead. Maybe it will lead me to the new book. Maybe I will someday be on the cover of P & W myself (forget The Rolling Stone). And maybe Ron Charles will drop an offhand, single line about my second book into some column or film clip before the summer ends. That’s a lot of “maybe’s,” but hope wasn’t the last thing out of Pandora’s box (and onto Obama’s posters) for nothing!

Sinners Welcome by Mary Karr The second poem in this collection, “Revelations in the Key of K,” is one I challenge my 8th graders with each year. I think I’ve written about that poem, too. At least I THINK I have. At this point, I’ve written so much, I no longer know what I’ve chosen to write on and what I’ve chosen to pass on. Anyway, if the rest of the book is like her K-centric poem, I’ll be a happy summer camper.

black cat bone by John Burnside This is a British poet. The Brits (and Irish) have been kind to me, publishing a half dozen or so of my poems. The least I can do is read one of their poets this summer. John, you are the man, plus I love love love the cover, which is a scene from Pieter Brueghel’s Return of the Hunters. The Elder rules!

Like a Beggar by Ellen Bass I read a few Ellen Bass poems in Poetry magazine and liked them. I said, “I’ve got to read me some more Ellen Bass poesies.” This is the most recent (though it is four years old) outing for her, so let’s hope the samples match the Whitman as a whole! (Sampler joke, don’t you know.)

Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl by Diane Seuss Sometimes you go for books for the cover. Sometimes for the title. This one would be titular. Plus I dig Diane’s author pic. She looks serious and poetic in a way that means business. (And did you know the title is a shout-out to Rembrandt? Me, either. I’ll share titular honors, then, dividing them evenly between Diane and… and… does Rembrandt even have a first name?)

FICTION

Pig Earth by John Berger My first teaching mentor was bananas for John Berger, swearing I HAD to read John Berger, sooner rather than later. Well, I never did. So I hope, first teacher mentor, that you will forgive my later and let “Better later than never at all” in your front door. He’s knocking sheepishly. And his book is set in the French Alps, mountains that happened to fit into my bucket list.

True Grit by Charles Portis Yeah, I know. A John Wayne movie from way back, but I’ve never seen it, and I’ve always seen this book praised as a dark horse, and I like dark horses, and this book sits lonely on my classroom library shelf each school year, scoffed by 8th graders to the last one. Will I have time? Will I like it? Stand by… “grit” is big stuff these days. Let’s see if it’s true, then.

Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill It’s a physically small book. It numbers only 177 pages. The font is fairly large. Looks like a novella trying to slip under the wire into novel territory, in other words. Plus Jenny appears to be a hipster. Plus Keats and Kafka (Revelations from the Key of K, maybe?) make kameos. Plus that misspelling was a bad joke.

The Train by Georges Simenon I promised Hemingway, who was forever reading Simenon books in A Moveable Feast, that I would read a Simenon myself someday. Is someday here? I could’ve sworn I saw it on the calendar in one of those July or August squares. Plus I heart trains. And loathe highways clogged with gas-guzzling, texting drivers and, of course, 18-wheelers that look like large coffins on the move and hungry. So The Train is it!

Transit by Rachel Cusk I just finished the first in the trilogy, The Outline, and, after some annoyance, it won me over. So for ha-ha’s, today I threw in Transit and wondered if my eyes were bigger than my reading stomach. News (and stomach ache) at 11.

ESSAYS

The Destiny Thief by Richard Russo I think I read a novel by this bestseller sort long ago, but I was beguiled by the New York Times write-up because the book’s subtitle is “Essays on Writing, Writers, and Life.” Well, hell. Those are three of my favorite things! What could go wrong? (Please see quote from first blurb on the back cover of The Master Letters for Exhibit A.)

How To Write an Autobiographical Novel by Alexander Chee I like this guy’s last name, only I wish it were spelled the Chinese way: Qi. I’m always trying to get my qi flowing, my qi in line, my qi to show me the way (with the help of an acupuncturist, of course). One of the essays is called “The Writing Life” (do you see a trend?) and others “100 Things About Writing a Novel” and “On Becoming an American Writer.” I love simple answers about things like becoming an American writer of renown. They never work, but, as Friend Hemingway once said: “Isn’t it pretty to think so?”

BIOGRAPHY

Grant by Ron Chernow I read this guy’s book, Hamilton, before Broadway got its hands on it and ruined everything by singing. (You should know that, as a kid, I was brought to a play where, some 15 minutes in, the actors started singing, and I famously asked my parents, “Why are they ruining everything by singing?”). I actually received this as a Christmas gift but decided to hold off until summer. Maybe this was an error. Maybe it is the tsunami that would wipe out a summer reading list. Maybe I will hold off until September.

Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane by Andrew Graham-Dixon See above, under “Behemoths That Would Swallow Summer Reading Lists, Moby Dick-like.” Caravaggio has always interested me, though, and maybe if I start, I’ll be unable to stop. With curses like that, who needs blessings?

TEACHING

Beyond Literary Analysis by Allison Marchetti and Rebekah O’Dell Have you ever tried to teach literary analysis? I would say it’s like herding ants, but that would be a cliché. Maybe Marchetti and O’Dell know something I don’t, even after 25 years of teaching. In any event, this goes on the back end of summer, closer to a day that shall not be named (and I don’t mean Lord Voldemort Day, either).

180 Days: Two Teachers and the Quest to Engage and Empower Adolescents by Kelly Gallagher Have you ever tried engaging and empowering every adolescent you are entrusted with teaching–especially when it’s reading and writing you must teach? I would say it’s like herding crows, but that would be cliché.

That’s all, folks. And if you made it this far and the summer’s not over, you deserve an atto-girl or atto-boy yourself! As far as the reading pile goes, though, need I say, “Pray for me?” And need I also say, “We should all have such problems?”

I’m not even going to count how many books this list comes to. That would be bad luck, and who needs bad luck when looking at a TBR pile with such good vibes?

First Poem, Last Poem, Lasting Poems

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The bookends of a poetry collection: the first poem and the last. Hook the reader, the Dalai Lama once said. Finish with a bang, the Muses once sang.

So as I finally say goodbye to Tracy K. Smith’s Life on Mars, move on tomorrow to my Summer To-Be-Read Pile (post coming soon to a site near you!), let’s remember Tracy by reading her first poem and her last in this collection… the lasting poems. First the first:

“Weather in Space” by Tracy K. Smith

Is God being or pure force? The wind

Or what commands it? When our lives slow

And we can hold all that we love, it sprawls

In our laps like a gangly doll. When the storm

Kicks up and nothing is ours, we go chasing

After all we’re certain to lose, so alive–

Faces radiant with panic.

And then the last:

“US & CO.” by Tracy K. Smith

We are here for what amounts to a few hours,

a day at most.

We feel around making sense of the terrain,

our own new limbs,

Bumping up against a herd of bodies

until one becomes home.

Moments sweep past. The grass bends

then learns again to stand.

First and last better be lasting, though the filling carries the day, of course. Still, if you’re going to finish a poetry book, a lasting poem with a lasting line helps in the resonance department.

“The grass bends / then learns to stand again” lasts in so many ways. What is life but bending? And if you think learning again to stand is easy, you’re living a different life than the rest of us. One on the red planet, maybe.

(End of Life on Mars entries, star date 25 June, Year of Our Lord 2018, 2:55 p.m.)

Ghazals as Elegies: Ask Not for Whom the Word Tolls…

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Summer solstice. Midsummer’s Night. A hard day’s night into the longest day of the year. Last day of school. First day of summer reading. All this, and still living on Mars with Tracy K. Smith.

Part Two of Smith’s Pulitzer poetry collection, Life on Mars, consists of elegies of various kinds in honor of her father. One of them is a ghazal, a poetic form pronounced the way you eat your food on Thanksgiving (“guzzle”) and not the way I’d like to say it (“ga-ZAL”).

As poetic forms go, a ghazal is fairly simple. Couplets, couplets, couplets, with the last word of the second lines all following the leaders ending the first couplet’s two lines. OK, if it’s so simple, why haven’t I written one? The reason is as simple as the form: I’m leery of the effect created by all that repetition. It’s one of those forms that looks easy but can look amateurish in the wrong hands. Kind of like prose writers who imitate Hemingway (God spare us all).

The poems in this part of the book, eight in number, are bookended by ones with titles. The other six lack one. It’s a conceit that doesn’t seem conceited. Writing about death lovingly will do that to a poem. Here is Smith’s title-less ghazal about her dad:

What does the storm set free? Spirits stripped of flesh on their slow walk.
The poor in cities learn: when there is no place to lie down, walk.

At night, the streets are minefields. Only sirens drown out the cries.
If you’re being followed, hang on to yourself and run — no — walk.

I wandered through evenings of lit windows, laughter inside walls.
The sole steps amid streetlamps, errant stars. Nothing else below walked.

When we believed in the underworld, we buried fortunes for our dead.
Low country of dogs and servants, where ghosts in gold-stitched robes walk.

Old loves turn up in dreams, still livid at every slight. Show them out.
This bed is full. Our limbs tangle in sleep, but our shadows walk.

Perhaps one day it will be enough to live a few seasons and return to ash.
No children to carry our names. No grief. Life will be a brief, hollow walk.

My father won’t lie still, though his legs are buried in trousers and socks.
But where does all he knew — and all he must now know — walk?

The word “minefield” appears in this poem, and it’s a great way of describing the obstacles of simplicity. Lines approximately the same length. End lines. And that word, like the gong of a clock, appearing predictably again and again, only becoming successful if, like a clock’s ticking, it is noticed but not.

I like how Smith sneaks in some sound devices, some rhymes, and most important of all, some memorable lines. I especially like “Life will be a brief, hollow walk.” Sounds like a cheerful epigram, but then you say, “Wait a minute….” For me, it also echoes Yeats’ lines in “Never Give All the Heart“: “For everything that’s lovely / is but a brief, dreamy, kind delight.”

A kind and dreamy delight, yes. Yet brief and hollow. That’s life. That’s the loss of a loved one. All in couplets guzzled down as if to slake a mysterious thirst.

Life on Mars — Given the News, Maybe Better Than Life on Earth

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While I wait for my summer reading books to coalesce from library orders and online book orders, I must first worry about the library books. Interlibrary loan, the 8th Wonder of the World, has its disadvantages like everything else. It all depends on the library. And the book.

As Exhibit A, I give you Tracy K. Smith’s Pulitzer Prize-winning collection, Life on Mars. Its loan period is only two weeks. Its allowable renewals is only once. This for a six-year-old book (that’s right, if the collection were a little girl, it would be in first grade by now).

That means this one must be read ipso fasto. Which means it’s “summer reading” but not really summer reading because I’m trying to summer read it before the first day of summer — all before I begin my summer-reading pile.

But me? Complain? Life is good. I know because I read it on a T-shirt yesterday. (We can learn so much from T-shirts. And bumper stickers. And our wives.) Wait a minute. Where was I? Ah. Life on Mars.

The book contains 35 poems. Number two, provided below, is entitled with a term science fiction readers don’t like. It’s not cool to says “sci-fi,” I guess. Just like “San Fran” for San Francisco. Tacky. Nerdy. Proves you’re not one of them, whoever they may be.

Anyway, it’s a look at the future, where there are no incarceration centers where children are held as hostages (read: “bargaining chips”) while U.S. Presidents call it “the law” (translation: small fry for a big wall Mexico won’t pay for, and smart Americans won’t, either):

Sci-Fi

by Tracy K. Smith

There will be no edges, but curves.

Clean lines pointing only forward.

History, with its hard spine & dog-eared

Corners, will be replaced with nuance,

Just like the dinosaurs gave way

To mounds and mounds of ice.

Women will still be women, but

The distinction will be empty. Sex,

Having outlived every threat, will gratify

Only the mind, which is where it will exist.

For kicks, we’ll dance for ourselves

Before mirrors studded with golden bulbs.

The oldest among us will recognize that glow—

But the word sun will have been re-assigned

To the Standard Uranium-Neutralizing device

Found in households and nursing homes.

And yes, we’ll live to be much older, thanks

To popular consensus. Weightless, unhinged,

Eons from even our own moon, we’ll drift

In the haze of space, which will be, once

And for all, scrutable and safe.

The first noticeable thing about Smith’s poetry is her capitalization of lines. It’s old school, but it bothers a lot of people. I’m not one of them, but just so you know. You may some day share a poem and hear, “Is there a reason you capitalize every line like that?” to which I can only reply, “Is there a reason you wear your hair like that?” (Actually, I would never say such a thing, but you get the gist.)

To me, this is a list poem. “Long live the list poem!” A poet who lost his grocery list once said that. Or his “Honey do” list.

I like how history becomes concrete in the form of a book “with its hard spine & dog-eared / Corners.” (Oh, yes. Some people who read your poems will also ask, “Why do you use ampersands and not the word ‘and’?” Tracey K. Smith does NOT get asked this, however. I guess a Pulitzer is the equivalent of bulletproof vests & Kryptonite combined.)

I like, too, how we’ll “live to be much older, thanks / To popular consensus.” Not that’s a democracy.

Re: the one-line finish after a steady menu of couplets. Yep. You’ll be called on it (“you” not being Tracy K. Smith) if you try it and seek feedback. Such final lines can certainly be used as a method of emphasis in a poem, but the cynical sorts will label it “precious” and demand that you find the line a mate.

Everybody, double up. Couplets everywhere! You! Where do you think you’re going? (At this point, a very young — say, six-year-old — poetic license is apprehended and incarcerated. Someone shouts it’s the law. And that’s not “Sci-Fi,” people. It’s on the front page of your newspaper. In America. Home of the free and the motto, “Don’t Trump on Me!”)

Book Lists & Piles, Done With Style

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books

So you’ve got a book list. Congratulations and don’t we all. It’s like having an idea. Pretty cheap, as tricks go, but it’s all too abstract. What really counts is something entirely more concrete: a book pile. Now we’re talking. Now we’re cooking with gas. Now we’ve got something we can stack six ways to Sunday and push over five ways to Friday.

Goodreads has a “Want To Read” shelf its participants can use. It’s a rather useless tool when abused, and abused it is. Any book a reader finds in the least interesting gets clicked onto the dreaded “Want To Read” shelf until, soon enough, it numbers first in the hundreds and then in the thousands.

Abstract, I tell you. Nothingness. A joke no one’s laughing at. (And assuredly something authors like me put no capital in, as “Want To Read” is about as far from “Just Purchased on Amazon” as Poughkeepsie is from Kathmandu.)

But where were we? Ah, yes. Lists and piles. This is the time of year, my friends. The time of year when newspapers publish their lovely “Summer Reading Lists.” But really, who needs a newspaper for news like this? We’re all quite capable of making a can-do list of our own literary desires, thank you. What does some reporter know (other than where to buy a good sandwich down around the corner from the office)?

My summer reading list got a jump start yesterday by taking pile form. It’s a bit premature, yes. I still have five days of work to go, yes. But close enough. Like horse shoes and hand grenades.

Meaning? I now have nine books, which have made like Proteus and transformed from abstract list to concrete pile. I can look at them. I can touch them. I can knock them over without offending them. (Readers get such cheap jollies.)

Better still, I can determine which to read first and arrange them in TBR (To Be Read) order. I can pile them horizontally or stand them on their feet on a shelf (straighten that spine, young book!). I can read first pages of all nine as if each is coming before a king to make its lovely plea and state its wily case.

And best of all? I can plot what books to ADD in the next five days. Are nine books enough, after all, to last all of July and August? It is to laugh. And a rhetorical question in the best way.

Next post: What books are IN my TBR pile, plus how they’re getting along in such close quarters. Hint: Seven of them are poetry books. Can you tell what one of my summer resolutions is?

Random Thoughts, June Edition

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As we approach the first day of summer, a.k.a. Midsummer’s Night, a.k.a. the summer solstice, a.k.a. the last day of school for certain poet/teachers, I can’t help but think how weird it is for early bird types like me who retire before 9. As you might imagine, going to bed is tougher when light is still framing the window blinds.
Speaking of early and birds, the most annoying ornithological sound to hear through your open window at 4:37 a.m. is the cheap-sounding cheep of the English sparrow, a non-native bird brought to our country by some British chap with revenge on his mind (Washington, Boston Tea Parties, and all that revolting stuff).
I’d like to meet and talk to Canadian poet Anne Carson. Do you think that can be arranged after Herr Trump pissed off our formerly friendly neighbors to the north?
(And dear Canada: It’s not us, honest. It’s him. It. Whatever history will wind up calling this man-child in the never-promised land.)
Anyway, back to Carson: Meeting and talking with “famous” people garners no guarantees. I once chatted with a famous book editor from a major U.S. newspaper for an hour. Everything seemed great until I tried to friend him on both Goodreads (where he said yes) and Twitter (where he ignored) afterwards. That’s when I learned about Twitter’s “friends vs. followers” logarithms. If you’re famous, you want it grossly lopsided: few friends, billions of followers. It proves how important you are. It also proves that you need proof about how important you are. Which proves, like so much else in life, that “vanity of vanities, all is vanity.” (Thank you, King James.)
I am no longer on Twitter, it goes without saying, because I didn’t major in logarithms.
Or Facebook, if you’re taking notes (and Facebook sure is).
But I’m still on good ol’ Goodreads, despite a few policies there which drive me crazy and make me consider giving it the Twitter slash Facebook treatment, sooner rather than later
I’ve been thinking a lot about Bobby Kennedy no thanks to the 50th anniversary of his assassination, and watched the hour-long documentary, A Ripple of Hope, about his speech in Indianapolis on the night of Martin Luther King’s murder.
In that speech, Kennedy quoted Aeschylus, of all people, to the restive crowd. Specifically these words from Agamemnon:

Drop, drop—in our sleep, upon the heart
sorrow falls, memory’s pain,
and to us, though against our very will,
even in our own despite,
comes wisdom
by the awful grace of God.

Bobby knew that you can always trust in the intelligence of the people. Many pols today think you can always play on the ignorance and superstitions of the people. These would be the paltry pols who put party first, country second.
“My kingdom for a statesman!” Shakespeare, I think.
Death is a thing of late. I’m reading The Ghost Writer. And why? Only because Philip Roth just died and death generates sales. Talk about a bummer for authors!
Then came the suicides of Kate Spade (I didn’t know the name) and Anthony Bourdain (I did know it), giving me the itch to read Kitchen Confidential and watch some television show I’d never heard of called Parts Unknown.
I’m working on my summer reading list and am wondering about poets I should be reading. It’s a fun kind of wonder. A slow cooker kind of wonder.
Short Poem of the Day from William Carlos Williams, something called “Silence”:

Under a low sky —
this quiet morning
of red and
yellow leaves —

a bird disturbs
no more than one twig
of the green leaved
peach tree

Old WCW loved his colors, no? Here we get three in eight short lines, plus a couple of dashes purchased at Emily Dickinson’s General Store, plus a little sound device with that “bird disturbs” stuff (must be an English sparrow).
All while running around making house calls as a doctor, yet!
Williams the doctor and Stevens the insurance executive. There go all of our excuses, I guess.
Call me foolhardy, but my next house will not include a microwave oven.
Or a lawn with that suburban scourge, grass.
It will have bookshelves, though. For storage, clean sight lines, and not being able to let go….

In Plain Sight: A Review of Plainwater by Anne Carson

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When you enjoy a new-to-you author this much, you just hope you haven’t made the mistake of choosing her best book to read first. And though Plainwater is a flavorful mix of essays and poetry, it really amounts to poetry, whether in traditional lines and stanzas or hidden in paragraph form. The lady has a word with ways, as they say.

The book opens modestly enough with “Mimnermos: The Brainsex Paintings,” which is an interview between the author and a 7th-century B.C. poet (but of course!). The moral of the story? If you like an ancient poet, make like a ventriloquist and give him a new voice.

After this comes “Short Talks,” the perfect thing for these short-attention-span times. Most of these entries are a mere paragraph long, with titles like “On Trout,” “On Disappointments in Music,” “On Ovid,” “On Parmenides,” “On Waterproofing,” “On the Mona Lisa,” “On Sylvia Plath,” and “On Reading.” Sweet and short, the shortest of the lot is “On Gertrude Stein About 9:30,” which goes like so: “How curious. I had no idea! Today has ended.”

Section 3, “Canicula di Anna,” is full-fledged poetry–44 pages of a phenomenology conference in Perugia, Italy. If you have no idea what phenomenology is and how on earth (much less Italy) it would merit a conference, know that it is, according to both Merriam and Webster, “the study of the development of human consciousness and self-awareness as a preface to or a part of philosophy.”

As they say in Canada: “Oh.”

“The Life of Towns,” Part 4, is similar to “Short Talks” except it is written as short poems. The beyond-curious thing about these guys is that every line in every poem starts with a capital letter and ends with a period–even when it’s not a sentence. Exhibit B (“A” being busy):

“Luck Town” by Anne Carson

Digging a hole.
To bury his child alive.
So that he could buy food for his aged mother.
One day.
A man struck gold.

Once you get used to the quirky periods (that must be ignored) and to the fact that Carson has forced you to slow down and read her poems slowly, you’re safe at the plate.

Finally, the book wraps up with a travelogue of sorts called “The Anthropology of Water.” It’s about Anne and a boyfriend doing the Simon & Garfunkel thing (“Yes, we’ve all gone to look for America…”). It’s like snooping in a poet’s diary, this section, and you not only get an idea about camping (of all things), but learn about the psychology of man and woman in close quarters (pup tents, sleeping bags, cars, etc.) and the communion one feels with nature, even under times of stress.

My favorite line in this section, running away (like the dish and spoon)? Easy. It’s two lines under the heading Friday 4:00 a.m. Not swimming.: “Staring. The lake lies like a silver tongue in a black mouth.”

Let me stare at that line again. If it’s 4 a.m. as I do so, even better. And if I’m in a cabin right on a lake, better still. Deep inhale. Slow exhale.

Throughout all of these sections, Carson explores her fraught relationship with her father. Yep. He’s another one of those strict, man-of-few-words types who bears a daughter-of-many-words and has trouble showing his love.

What is it with men who have trouble showing their love? In its way, the theme of this lovely book.

Plainwater Anne Carson

Less Said Is Best Said

poetry poetry books reading poetry

One of the jobs of poetry is understatement. Hemingway, over in his fiction writings, would call it the “iceberg theory.” You see 10% of the ice, and infer 90% of the Titanic. End of story (and, it so happens, ship).

One good example of this is a poem from George Bilgere’s latest book, Blood Pages, almost but not quite dedicated to me. “The Nod” is a mere 11 lines of simple complication. Bilgere doesn’t give it to you, but you get it. Here’s a look-see at the poem:

The Nod
by George Bilgere

So Gerald, the mailman, comes up the sidewalk
and gives me this little nod, not unfriendly,
but not exactly friendly, and I of course
am aware that the slaves were sold like cattle
in the public square, and I nod back.

It’s a complicated thing, this nod.
The world’s foremost experts
grow tongue-tied trying to explain,
so I’m not even going to try.

I’m just saying we nodded at each other
and Gerald handed me my mail.

As Naomi once said to “Roger That!”: This ain’t a poem about the mail. But how do you write about race? For people like Kevin Young and Tracy K. Smith, no problem. But from the white perspective, it’s a trickier line to walk. Little things loom large. The lateness of the historic day throws longer shadows. A nod, then, can speak to greater divides.

I would try to explain it, but I’d grow tongue-tied, and as any reader of this blog can tell you, that’s not my natural state. Massachusetts is.

So I leave it with you, and bid you good day. With a nod….