Yearly Archives: 2018

132 posts

Wanna Buy an Overpriced Book?

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Book prices are a funny thing, except to your wallet. Alcoholics may suffer from cirrhosis of the liver; bibliophiles’ wallets and pocketbooks may suffer from cirrhosis of book purchases.

Where do pricing decisions come from? My first book, 98 pages of poetry, goes for $15.95 retail, which is publish-speak for $16, thank you (consider gas prices at $181.9 cents a gallon… where does the 9/10ths of a penny come from?). And my second book, 105 pages of poetry, logs in at a straight-up $17.

High? Probably. But anyone who’s browsed the poetry section in a bookstore (two shelves, hidden in a corner near the water cooler and the rest rooms) knows that poetry books run high. Why that is, I cannot say. Don’t poetry sales have enough going against them? (Rhetorical question)

But I come not to wonder about retail prices on books that earn royalties (a petty day’s pay for authors), I come to wonder about scurrilous pricing by third parties bent on cashing in—not only on book buyers, but on authors, too.

As Exhibit A, I give you this website offering my book, Lost Sherpa of Happiness, for a mere $119.86.

That’s right. You can buy a new book from Amazon for $17, but this site provides a better deal—a mark-up of some $103. Who would spend such a sum? God knows, but it apparently happens, else this practice would not be so widespread. Right?

The psychology could be that some people, without looking, think a book is rare or out-of-print. Or maybe they think it’s a special copy. Or maybe they buy from the first website they find in a Duck-Duck-Go (who uses Google anymore?) search. Or maybe they are confused. Rich and confused, a combination beloved by swindlers.

Whatever the reason, if anyone buys my book at that price, I will get a royalty payment of nothing, nada, zilch, while the mysterious seller will take home over $100 for my work (and yes, writing is work).

Is this stealing? In my dictionary it is. But others might use the euphemisms “capitalism” or the “free (haha) market,” maybe, or the “American way,” perhaps.

This practice is most visible on Amazon itself, where every book is available both new and used from “other sellers,” who tack on $3.99 (translation: $4) shipping. If you scroll down Amazon’s listings here you will see that my book, for example, runs as high as $49.06 (bargain hunters take note!).

Heck, my wares can even be had at Everyman’s favorite store, Walmart! At a $1.80 mark-up, yet. And hurry! As Wally (Mart) kindly warns you on the site, there are “ONLY 5 LEFT!” (Not to worry, I have more than 5 available, not only at a better price but signed.)

Explorations on the web will even turn up sellers both exotic (South Africa!) and far-flung (Europa!). Yep. This book is, as they say, IN DEMAND. In some cases, I may see a pittance royalty (more aptly called “pauperty”), and in other cases, I will see nothing but the back of the Artful Dodger making off with both the cost of the book and the mark-up.

But such are the prices of authorship and fame. It’s the law of supply and demand, I tell you. The fewer copies of a poetry book there are and the higher the demand, the more the price will go up. And up. And up.

And if you think no fool will purchase a book at that price and at that cost to the author, think again. Donald Trump is the President* of the United States. Think of purchases as votes. Think of asterisks as saying it all.

See what I mean?

We Hold These Truths To Be Self-Evident…Once You Read Them

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One of the most famous lines in Thomas Jefferson’s start-the-presses Declaration of Independence is “We hold these truths to be self-evident.”

OK, let’s not get political and note any ironies about what follows (“…that all men are created equal”) because you know and I know that inequality is as big in the Age of Trump as it was in the Age of TJ (a slaveowner himself).

Instead, let’s consider the role of truth in poetry. Truths are as important to good poets as they are to enlightened philosophers. If a reader reads your poem and has an aha moment that goes something like this: “Yes! I recognize that truth, and I loved the new way you uncovered it!” then you are onto something. Something we call the essence of good poetry (like gold cobbled from mongrel minerals, a rarity that will delight more than alchemists).

I just finished reading Ellen Bass’s collection, Like a Beggar. It includes a batch of Pablo Neruda-like odes, which are a lot more fun that Ancient Greek-like odes. Here’s an example of a “little truth” that Bass uncovers in her own creative way.

It’s called “Ode to Invisibility,” and it touches on the way older people become more and more “invisible” in a youth-worshiping world because… because what do they matter, anyhow?

If you’re older, you can read it and say, “Aha, I recognize this feeling!” and if you’re younger, you can read it and say, “Oh, yeah. Old people? I think I’ve noticed a few in the past two years….”

Ode to Invisibility
by Ellen Bass

O loveliness. O lucky beauty.
I wanted it and I couldn’t bear it.
When I was a girl, before self-serve gas,
as the attendant leaned over my windshield,
I didn’t know where to look.
I could feel his damp rag rubbing the glass
between us. Or walking from the subway,
even in my work boots and woolen babushka,
all those slouched men plastered to the brick walls
around the South End of Boston—
I could feel them quicken, their mouths
opening like baby birds. I was too beautiful.
and never beautiful enough.
Ironing my frizzy hair on the kitchen table.
All the dark and bright creams to sculpt my cheekbones,
musk dotted on my hot pulses,
and that pink angora bikini that itched like desire
as I laid myself down under the gold of a key we didn’t yet fear.
Hello, my pretty. Your ankles were elegant,
your breasts such splendor
men were blinded by their solar flare.
These days, I’m more like my dog,
who doesn’t peruse himself in the mirror,
doesn’t notice the gray at his temples, though I think
it makes him look a little like Cary Grant in Charade.
I can trot along the shallow surf of Delray Beach
in my mother-in-law’s oversize swimsuit,
metallic bronze and stretched-out so it bulges like ginger root.
On one side, that raucous ocean surging and plunging,
on the other, the bathers gleaming with lotions and oils.
I can be a friend to them all, even the magnificent young,
their bodies fluid as the curl of a wave.
I can wander up to any gilded boy, touch
his gaudy biceps, lean in confidentially. I’m invisible
as a star at noon, a grain of clear sand.
It’s a grand time of life: not so close to the end
that I can’t walk for miles along the pulpy shore,
and not so far away that I can’t bear
the splendid ugliness of this disguise.

The poem turns nicely on the line “These days, I’m more like my dog” and really gets down to the self-evident (but hard to express) truth with the line “I’m invisible / as a star at noon, a grain of clear sand.”

The good news? For women who once had to endure wolf whistles from men on city streets, invisibility is a blessing. But also a harbinger.

Just thank god that you can still walk miles along the pulpy shore, Ellen tells us. It’s a consolation, and consolation, they say, was the penultimate thing out of Pandora’s box.

Random Thoughts: July Edition

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Summer vacation giveth and summer vacation taketh away. Yes, there is more time for reading, which is why you carried that extra piece of luggage to paradise, but there are also more family and friends buzzing about, sometimes visitors for a day (or two) and sometimes visitors for a week (or two).
Company and reading are like oil and water, taxes and savings, Trump and intelligence. Mismatches all around.
I am presently reading a book called Advice for Future Corpses by Sallie Tisdale. I get comments from people who see me reading it or see it lying around. “Light reading, I see,” they say sarcastically. Or, “Great beach read you have there!”
I guess I’m a future corpse and they’re not. Which is the book’s point entirely. Or one of them.
I’ve been looking at markets for poetry and reacquainting myself with the forgotten fact that many poetry markets are centered at colleges and universities. In other words, the reading periods there are closed until (surprise!) September.
And really, do we have to say “September” at a time like this (read: July)?
The Fourth of July is behind us and, as is the new trend, private fireworks (now legal in this state, for instance) continued all the way till midnight or thereabouts. I wrote a prose poem about this last year. It’s a bit sarcastic. Tongue in cheek, maybe.
But I love my country as much as the next guy! Especially when it’s quiet.
(Both the country and the next guy, I mean.)
Because I often get new ideas for new poems and especially specific lines for new poems, I’m trying to carry a little notebook about (and if you’re thinking “Use your cellphone, fool,” recall that I don’t own one). Trouble is, the notebook in my pocket seems to work like kryptonite against new ideas. Remember the notebook, and my mind goes blankety-blank. Forget it, and the Muses begin warming up in the orchestra pit (with smirks on their nine faces).
It’s 63 degrees Fahrenheit this morning with a forecast for the high 70s today. No need for air conditioning. This is why Maine was invented, thank Odin. It is the antidote to air conditioning.
As my poetry book (to go with my prose book), I’m reading Like a Beggar by Ellen Bass. I like her stuff. A lot. And the great thing about the poetry world is how huge it is, and how often you can discover a “new-to-you” poet who you like. A lot.
Thank you, Ellen.
Usually I pick out one classic I’ve never read to tackle over the summer. This year, though, I’m going biography (also tome-like in size). I have one on Grant (U.S.) and one on Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi da). How’s that for variety? But I can only pick one. We’ll see if I’m in an American or Florentine mood come August.
PBS is having a nationwide reading group and now asking everyone to vote from a list of 100 books. It’s a hilarious mix of genres and styles, from 100-page YA books to Moby-Dick and Don Quixote (two books, it so happens, that I have read on past “must-read-a-classic” summers). To what purpose, this vote? To show how inclusive PBS is?
Everyone has classics they have never read and insist they must before they become a future corpse. For me, the biggest “must finish” is James Joyce’s Ulysses. If Hemingway can do it, so can I. (So there, Ernie.)
And then there are classics we just don’t give a damn about reading. Ever. No matter how much other readers crow about them. For me this includes anything by Virginia Wolff, Henry James, William Faulkner, and many, many Victorian novelists (whose books, in fairness, I will consider as doorstops on windy days).
Oh, if only readers (and non-) would purchase my books as doorstops! (Um, screen doors only, please. Or maybe mouse-hole doors, considering how light they are — the mouse doors, not my books.)
Meaning: the subject matter of my poems is not “light” like this blog entry. Oh, no. Some poems even muse about death. Which implies future corpses. Again.
What was it Ben Franklin once said? Ah, yes. “In this world, nothing can be said to be certain except future corpses and taxes.”
Other sure things in life (missed by Ben)? People willing to take your picture if you ask them to while out and about in public. In my case, it’s my wife’s phone. Because my wife cares about pictures (it’s in the job description under “wife,” I think). And everyone, it seems, loves to play Good Samaritan with a camera So quick. So easy. So kind.
Ask any writer who submits regularly. Checking Submittable for updates is like watching grass grow.
I wish it were like watching weeds grow. Results would come much faster.
Keep summer reading, friends! And summer writing! And staying un-corpselike!

A Word or Two From the Dept. of Speculation

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Defined as a novel, Jenny Offill’s Dept. of Speculation proves just how protean and flexible that word can be. It includes a story of sorts, but it is told not in paragraphs so much as unindented blurbs.

The author, a college writing teacher, shares a few quotes related to writing and life (but I repeat myself). I copied a few here just to have. And share, if you like. They mean different things to different people, which is the strength of a good quote, I guess.

F. Scott Fitzgerald: “Once the phial was full—here is the bottle it came in. Hold on, there’s a drop left there…No, it was just the way the light fell.”

(Oh so bittersweet, that. And oh so F. Scott.)

Simone Weil: “Attention without object is a supreme form of prayer.”

(And attention with object equals a chance to make something of yourself. It won’t happen by rote, apparently.)

Arabic Proverb: “One insect is enough to fell a country.”

(Makes me think of locusts. In what was the land of milk and honey. But you don’t need to go back to Biblical ties for one insect to wreak havoc. Or, more likely, one chemical company. Like Monsanto. Which I think was swallowed by Bayer. Which means you best buy aspirin to swallow elsewhere.)

Stefan Zweig: “It was quite difficult to reach Rilke. He had no house, no address where one could find him, no steady lodging or office. He was always on his way through the world and no one, not even he himself, knew in advance which direction it would take.”

(Reminds me of North American Indians, who had no concept of property. Earth was everyone’s property. Maybe Rilke was channeling his inner Indian.)

John Berryman: “Let all flowers wither like a party.”

(Similes can remain pretty, even after the flowers die.)

Rainer Maria Rilke: “I want to be with those who know secret things or else alone.”

(But how do you know if they know a secret thing? It is a secret, after all. Explains why Rilke and I so value being alone.)

Rainer Maria Rilke: “Surely all art is the result of one’s having been in danger, of having gone through an experience all the way to the end, to where no one can go any further.”

(Dear Writers Writing Every Day: Please don’t forget to leave your desks and live. This message from your Muse, who lives much like a North America Indian did.)

Franz Kafka: “I write to close my eyes.”

(I read for that same purpose. Many present-day writers put me there, and a few yesterday writers, too.)

John Keats: “No such thing as the world becoming an easy place to save your soul in.”

(It only seems easy, the world. The difficulty will come in saving your soul on the other side. By then it may be reaped and sold.)

Thank you, Jenny! And thank you, quotes! I wish any Americanos reading this a Happy Fourth. My Fourth-of-July wish is the the Electoral College President will put down his binkie (tweeting device) and read Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence instead. Then the Constitution. Both short. Both more substantive than Fox & Friends, too.

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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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?