Monthly Archives: February 2020

9 posts

Who WAS That Masked Poet?

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zorro

Poetry journals that read work anonymously are a distinct minority. The $23,496 question is: Why?

Shouldn’t all editors read work anonymously? Shouldn’t all poems be read and judged on their own merits vs. the merits of a well-known (or well-connected) name that might offer a journal some cachet?

An anecdote I’ve shared in the past bears repeating here. I have subscribed to Poetry magazine for a few years now. In the back, where a list of contributors is found, the editors place an asterisk to denote a first-time appearance in the august (Latin for “top-paying”) magazine.

No doubt the purpose is to prove how diverse the editorial selections are, but for me the asterisks lead to quite different conclusions (and a very different reindeer game). I read each poem in the issue, one at a time, and then guess whether its author is a Poetry newbie (asterisk) or a Poetry veteran (no asterisk).

Granted, the game doesn’t work in the case of very well-known poets like, say, Rae Armantrout, Christian Wiman, or Mary Jo Bang, so let’s throw those and those like them out of the pool. Other than that, though, I seem to have developed a sixth sense about “newbies vs. veterans” based on how much I enjoyed the poem.

You guessed it. If I find a poem stronger, I guess “newbie” and flip back to find, 9 times out of 10, an asterisk (bingo!). And if I  find the poem a tad tortured or lame or smelling of the academic oil, I guess “veteran,” flip back again and, more often than not, see no asterisk (score!).

My conclusion? Newbies have to be stronger to gain admission at the august gate, whereas veterans can be slightly weaker because, well, their names push them across the finish line. As for the established poets, they sometimes don’t work as hard (or perhaps experiment more) because they can.

Don’t misunderstand me. I fully realize that talented poets would continue to have success in publishing their work even if an anonymous-only policy was adopted by the industry as a whole—just not as much success.

Image with me, then, that Poetry and all the majority of other journals adopted this “look at the poems, not the names” policy. Some of these “iffy” poems by established poets might earn boiler-plate rejections (a throwback of sorts for them, which might actually be healthy), leaving more bandwidth for new blood—up and coming poets who’ve been working the mines to good effect.

To me, that’s reason enough. But for now, all I can do is vote with my submissions by sending as much new work as possible to journals that have adopted the anonymous method of reading.

John and Jane Doe? Are you in this with me?

 

Writing (vs. Fighting) Like Cats and Dogs

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I have oft written of dog poems because I am a dog guy. That’s why I disapprove of such crazy commandments as the 11th, “Thou shalt not write a poem about dogs.”

But what about cats? As I have little patience for their kind, I feel more sympathetic toward “no cat” rules. After all, cat pics clutter Internet feeds cholesterol clogged King Henry VIII’s arteries. Said pics can be found in the dictionary under “clichés” as opposed to “cute.”

Still, I’d be foolish and inconsistent to rule in dogs’ favor while wishing cats their tenth lives. And so it is that I advise writers who love one or the other or both to go forth and multiply your creative efforts (the 12th Commandment).

No less a poet than Marge Piercy did so (see below and meet me at the bend):

 

A Republic of Cats
Marge Piercy

Nobody rules. They all
take turns. I can never
tell who will chase who
playing war over the couch

and chairs, round and
round again until suddenly
they stop as if a whistle
blew in their heads.

Five of them, aged fifteen
to two. Who will curl
together making one cushion
of patchwork fur? Who

will painstakingly lick
a friend, washing and
cuddling. Who will growl
at their friend of last hour?

The one rule is where each
sleeps at night, their spot
in the bed and with whom.
It is written in bone.

 

Writing about pets starts with scientific observation. With that data, the writer turns to more creatively figurative ideas and goes for it. The writer must! Dogs and cats are too well known not to.

For me, all credit in this poem goes to the start (“Nobody rules.”) and the end (“It is written in bone.”). Hook the reader from the start, less you lose that impatient-as-all-get-out customer (and think of it—no two words better capture “cat-dom” than those).

Then comes the end. Your poem depends on a final flourish. Something memorable. Something with panache. If sleeping spots are as important to cats as lunchroom table spots are to middle schoolers, then say it in style: The rule “is written in bone.”

Now go watch your cats and dogs with a notebook, why don’t you. Take notes. Then make like clumsy Moses and break some commandments.

Random Wisdom for Writers: Part Two

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pencil

Here are a few more gleanings from Chuck Palahniuk’s estimable “writer advice” book, Consider This. Yesterday’s post featured the first group of ideas that might make you better at the trade. Today, the final set. Enjoy!

  • “If you can identify the archetype your story depicts, you can more effectively fulfill the unconscious expectations of your reader.” — CP
  • Readers relate when authors tell what’s known as an “awful truth.” Imperfect characters making mistakes are a reader’s delight. For one, the reader feels, “I’m not alone,” and for two, the reader feels, “Better him than me. What a train wreck! I can’t take my eyes off this!”
  • Or, as CP puts it: “People love to see others suffer and lose.” (If it helps, think politics, 2020.)
  • “Great problems, not clever solutions, make great fiction.” — Ira Levin
  • Know the difference between a story’s horizontal and its vertical. “Horizontal” = sequence of plot points, whereas “vertical” = pausing to deepen risk and tension because it is a key scene worthy of extra details and action. Too much of one (particularly horizontal) over the other will lose your readers’ interest.
  • Your plot should have a metaphorical (or sometimes real) “clock” or “gun” that readers are aware of. These may disappear, but readers should, in the back of their minds, be worried about time running out or the threat of some weapon. There are many variations, but these “plot drivers” keep the writer honest and the reader on her toes. Think James Bond movies.
  • For tension, use unconventional conjunctions sometimes for a whitewater-rushing effect that carries the reader through a particularly suspenseful scene.
  • Tension can also be harnessed through the use of an object the author recycles throughout the plot. When it reappears, the reader says, “A-ha!” or becomes nervous and wary, or begins to sleuth a bit to figure matters out. Reappearing objects are tension devices.
  • Avoid tennis-match dialogue.
  • “Never resolve a threat until you raise a larger one.” — Ursula K. LeGuin
  • Do not use dialogue to further the plot.
  • No dreams! Ever.
  • “You don’t write to make friends.” — Joy Williams
  • To mix things up in a novel, change the setting. Take your characters on a “second-act road trip.”
  • Use joy and humor as occasional relief when the going gets rough or the plot gets particularly frightening or suspenseful.
  • It is OK to depict questionable behavior in a book. Just don’t endorse or condemn it. This is the reader’s task.
  • “Any time you deny a possibility, you create it at the same time.” — CP
  • “If you can’t be happy washing dishes, you can’t be happy.” — CP
  • One troika of character types frequently used by writers: a.) the character who follows orders, is shy and agreeable, is an all-around good boy or girl; b.) the rebel who bullies, breaks rules, brags; c.) the quiet, thoughtful one who often acts as narrator observing the conflict of the first two.
  • Do not let death resolve your story. Who do you think you are — Shakespeare?
  • Reject humdrum, believable material in favor of the actual wonders surrounding you in this world. This comes under the category of truth being stranger than fiction, so make those truths PART of your fiction.

 

Of course, there’s a lot of fleshing out of these ideas with examples from many books, so if the list piques your interest, pick up a copy of Palahniuk’s book.

Oh. And get yourself in a writer’s workshop group. Although Ken Kesey said, “All workshops suck at some point,” they do force you to write when it’s your turn to make copies and get critiqued.

Plus you learn from the writers around you—both better ones and worse ones.

Random Wisdom for Writers

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chuck

When it comes to reading how-to books on writing, I always make sure the author is a success him- or herself before diving in. If it’s an unknown, you’re left to ask, “If this chump knows so much about writing the world’s great novels, why isn’t he doing it himself?”

Chuck Palahniuk’s book, Consider This, certainly fills the bill, though highbrows might sniff because he writes for the masses more than posterity. I’ve read only Fight Club, but I knew  he was prolific, so I picked it up and began reading.

When I read books like this, I like to highlight random pieces of advice or quotes. This book offers a rich trove and so might be worth your while. Granted, it focuses on novel and short story writing, but writing advice is writing advice, and there is always cross-pollination when it comes to effectively working among the genres.

Here’s a sampling:

  • There are three types of communication: description, instruction, exclamation (through onomatopoeia).
  • Little voice trumps big voice. “Little voice” refers to moment by moment events, facts, objective information. “Big voice” refers to musing, meaning, a character’s subjective take. Keep big-voice philosophizing to a minimum.
  • “Action carries its own authority” — Thom Jones
  • Use physical action as a form of attribution.
  • Use actions and gestures that go against the words a character says. The contrast can speak volumes.
  • “Dialogue is your weakest story-telling tool.” — C.P.
  • Keep a journal of people’s sayings, tics, gestures. Embed them in your writing.
  • Use lists now and then to break up the action. Readers love lists, for some reason.
  • Make up rules like little kids do when they play games. Home base. Poison patch. Time limits. Requirements. Exceptions. Author Barry Hannah says, “Readers love that shit.”
  • Put your dialogue in quotes, use attribution (readers skip over “he says, she says,” so don’t worry about variations so much), and embed gestures with the attribution.
  • Avoid Latin words, abstractions, received text.
  • If you get the small stuff right and use it up front, you can get away from some pretty crazy stuff after the fact because you’ve bought the readers’ confidence (or impressed the hell out of them).
  • Use your own magical aphorism early on and win the readers’ hearts. Think Ben Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanac. It sold like hot cakes.
  • Answer these questions about your protagonist before you start: “Who’s telling this? Where are they telling it? Why are they telling it?”
  • Do not write to be liked. Write to be remembered.
  • Write from within character. Instead of writing “He was 6 feet, 6 inches tall,” a character might say, “He was too tall to kiss.”
  • Write via the characters’ experiences and descriptions.
  • Don’t be afraid to be outlandish, provocative, challenging.
  • Subvert the readers’ expectations. They’ll love you for it.
  • “No two people ever walk into the same room,” said Katherine Dunn. Think of that the next time you describe a room or tackle any setting, especially with point of view in mind.
  • Answer these questions before beginning or continuing your writing project: “What strategy has your character chosen for success in life?” What education/experiences does he bring? Will he be able to adopt to a new strategy or dream?”
  • “Going on the body” means describing through the five senses. Make your readers experience the senses your characters do.

 

Of course, Palahniuk expands on all of this and makes it much more entertaining with anecdotes, but some of this gives you an idea of wisdom he’s gleaned from the writers’ workshops he’s attended and from writers he’s met along the way.

My next post will offer Part Two of CP’s pearls of wisdom.

Is That All There Is?

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Being a successful writer may not be the Shangri-La would-be writers think it is. In his fast-paced, anecdotal writer advice book, Consider This: Moments in My Writing Life after Which Everything Was Different, Chuck Palahniuk warns that true success depends on putting a new book out every year. Feed your demanding readers, in other words—or else.

Then he goes into a long story about Stephen King at a signing where the horror master suffered a bloody callus on his signing finger. He was getting bits of blood on the books he was autographing and asked a handler to fetch him some bandages.

No way, the fan behind the guy whose book was presently being signed shouted. He wanted the King’s ink and blood, too!

Turns out, so did the others in the serpentine line behind these two. Seemed everybody wanted that famous blood, thinking it would make their keepsake books not only better keeps but more valuable sakes. Thus, to avoid a mini-riot, the Master of Horror had to endure his own horror show of sorts, signing on in pain.

You guessed it, in Palahniuk’s book, book tours come off as decidedly less romantic than wannabe writers suppose, to the point where many stories have you muttering, “Is that all there is?”

If those words sound familiar, it’s because Peggy Lee sang the song in 1969.

It could be a theme song for writers. The thought came to mind this past week when I received a rejection from a small book publisher.

Think of it: You send five poems to a poetry journal with a reading fee of $3. Ten months later, you get a rejection and say, after the long wait, “Is that all there is?”

The book rejection seemed seven times worse. It cost $20 for the privilege of being read, but you know and I know that some editor reading a book of poetry knows within the first 5-10 poems whether she wants it or not, even if, in fairness, many poetry collections feature a whole that speaks volumes about their parts.

But, no. In this case it was, “Thanks for the 20 bucks, pal!” And for what? This publisher sent me a one-sentence (!) boiler plate rejection note, almost assuredly after having never read the manuscript in full.

Feedback, even in general terms? None whatsover. That would require I full reading. Instead, it was take the money in run, in broad daylight.

Is that all there is?

Even “success” brings this nagging question around. Got a book accepted and published? As a newbie, you get ridiculous delusions of grandeur. The book tours Palahniuk referred to. The huge sales sure to come. The inevitable demand for another book from your adoring legions.

Truth is, for 99% of writers, it’ll be but a few sales, and most of those to kind friends and family.

Is that all there is?

Palahniuk even shares stories of well-known writers like Ken Kesey doing readings for, wait for it, TWO readers, followed by none whatsoever at a second locale. That and readings where there three dozen people, but they only bought a sum total of three books.

Three.

One could well picture Kesey channeling Peggy Lee as he shuffled back to his hotel room, saying: Is that all there is?

Ah, well. There’s always the song for consolation. If you listen to it, the mood Peggy creates seems perfect for writers and poets who are learning the hard way. Success comes in many shades and, quite often, isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

Alas.

Talk, Talk, Talk: Famous or Not

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Some beginning poets are too wary, I think. Too conservative. They don’t want to try new forms, sentences or lack of sentences, stanza types, subject matter, et and cetera, because they want to stay within what they believe to be universally accepted lines, the equivalent of using training wheels while they learn to bike.

Truth is, there’s little you can’t try as an aspiring poet. Today’s poem features two techniques that newbies might consider “filler” or “against the rules”: dialogue (even lots of it) and/or quotes.

Whether you use quotation marks or not (and it’s your choice), entire poems can be dialogue or monologue (think Shakespeare, think soliloquies). Quotes, sayings, or aphorisms are also fair game, as long as you embed the source.

If the talk or conversation is interesting to you as a writer, then it should be interesting to readers as well. Ditto to the way you weave personal meaning around familiar or not-so-familiar sayings, be they from famous people (e.g. Lorca, below) or anonymous sources (e.g. a well-known proverb from a particular country).

The key is contextualizing. As a poet, you build a particular situation (the unique) and fold it into the broader context of something you overheard, created, or researched (the familiar). This means you can use either talk (and any prose writer will tell you readers love it) or favorite quotes from favorite writers as a lens through which to better see a scenario of your own making.

Here, Malena Mörling provides a narrative about a wake. She goes against expectation (sadness) to feature an instance where a wake brought joy. More important for poets learning the craft, however, is how 6 of the poem’s 19 lines—almost a full third—are not the words of Mörling but of Lorca.

Idea-wise, this might provide fodder for your own poetry. Have a favorite saying or quote, a touchstone you come back to or repeat to yourself often? No doubt there’s a reason for that, and no doubt that reason is rooted in experience. That combination is poetry waiting to happen! As an exemplar, I give you “A Wake”:

 

A Wake
Malena Mörling

I called Michael and he told me he just got home from a
wake. “Oh, I am sorry,” I said. “No, no,” he said, “it was
the best wake I have ever been to. The funeral home was
as warm and as cozy as anyone’s living room. We had the
greatest time. My friend looked wonderful, much better
dead than alive. He wore his red and green Hawaiian
shirt. He was the most handsome corpse I’d ever seen.
They did such a good job! His daughter was there and
a lot of old friends I had not seen in years. You know,
he drank himself to death. He’d been on and off the
wagon for years, but for some reason this is what he
ended up doing.” As my friend kept talking, I thought
of Lorca and what he wrote about death and Spain: “A
dead man in Spain is more alive as a dead man than any-
place else in the world” and “Everywhere else, death is
an end. Death comes, and they draw the curtains. Not
in Spain. In Spain they open them. Many Spaniards live
indoors until the day they die and are taken out into the
sunlight.”

Growing Reading Fees Cause for Concern

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costs

Submittable has a filter called “No Fee” but, for whatever reason, using it does not totally eliminate journals levying fees. And lately, there has been increasing cause for worry on the reading-fee front.

It used to be fairly standard that reading fees would be either $2 or, more typically, $3. I wrote about this in greater depth in a 2018 blog entry based on a Poets & Writers article. This piece detailed the profits a poetry journal stood to make at such rates.

Before I go on, let’s review a key paragraph from that entry. It uses an interview with Alaska Quarterly Review editor Ronald Spatz to help illustrate where the money goes:

Submittable charges magazines an annual subscription fee, then takes a cut of the proceeds when writers pony up for a hearing. Let’s stick with the AQR example: “Those administrative fees can add up to a small but attractive revenue stream for perennially cash-strapped literary magazines. At AQR, Spatz paid $757 for the journal’s annual Submittable subscription and retained $1.86 of each $3 payment from writers using the system, with the remainder going back to Submittable.  With 1,190 submissions, the revenue from fees more than paid for the journal’s Submittable subscription in just the one month submissions were open. Had AQR kept the online portal open for a full year, Spatz says, ‘we would be getting lots of revenue, which we need, but the thing is, that would be unethical [because the journal doesn’t have the staff to handle the added submissions].’”

(If you’re interested, here’s a link to the entire blog entry.)

Yesterday I experimented on Submittable by eliminating the “No Fee” filter entirely to see what kind of numbers would pop up and how much they had changed since 2018. Turns out, they’ve changed quite a bit.

It seems that the standard $2 to $3 rate is becoming less standard. In many cases, poets will now see rates of $4, $5, and even more. There are also nickel-and-dime variations such as $4.20, $4.50, and $4.97 (all together now: “Huh?”).

This is a worrisome development, considering that journals make over 50% profit on each fee Submittable collects from a writer. Note in the excerpt I provided above how Alaska Quarterly Review editor Ronald Spatz admits that opening their one-month submission window from a single month to an entire year “would be getting lots of revenue,” which AQR (and every literary journal) needs, but that it would also be “unethical” because the journal’s resources would not be capable of handling the flood of submissions they would receive.

What I saw yesterday in my unfiltered markets search was concerning in multiple ways. For one, what if a particular journal is not quite as ethical as most because the money flow is too sweet to pass up? I mean, rejecting submissions is just too easy. Are there safeguards against this?

And what of these new developments that prey on eager writers who often endure six months to a year of waiting for responses, making them particularly vulnerable? Now we’re seeing journals that are offer “quick responses” within a week, a few days, or even 24 hours. This, of course, for a higher fee.

For instance, I saw one asking for $10 in exchange for a response within a week. Again, this is all too easy to do with a boilerplate rejection note and jumps the journal’s profits (not to mention Submittable’s) handsomely.

Also on the uptick is pay-for-feedback. Prices for feedback go even higher, but there are no guarantees on either the amount of feedback or the quality of the feedback. And again, if the journal’s resources are sorely tested by the transom (and most are), wouldn’t it follow logically that the feedback, in many cases, would be brief, generic, and/or of a cut-and-paste variety, given that similar critiques can often be used for many poets?

It would, I think, which is why I advise writers to be more wary than ever about the mounting costs of their impatience. Stick with reputable fee-based journals that you trust or, better yet, avoid fee-based markets altogether.

Why? Because the quantitative costs of entry fees, contest fees, rapid-response fees, and feedback fees can lead wannabe writers (especially newer writers still heavy on the “wannabe” part) to financial ruin. In a hurry. And that’s just not right, even in these times when “right” is decidedly out of fashion.

About That Darkness Before Dawn…

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Maybe I like the poem because it’s not everything-is-beautiful á la William Wordsworth. Maybe I like it because everything was decidedly not beautiful when it first appeared in Poetry magazine during 2020, the Year of Covid and Trump’s lack of leadership under pressure (not that you need to apply pressure to see his tremendous lackings).

In that sense, poet Maggie Smith has it right. She pulls no punches. She acknowledges no sacred cows. Hell, she’s even willing to step into the ring against light. That’s like taking on family, bluebirds, and apple pie all at once.

But, hey. Someone has to write these counter-poems. Dark will have its day (and I don’t mean the night) and, in fact, is having its day in world events right now. Behold:

 

How Dark the Beginning
Maggie Smith

All we ever talk of is light—
let there be light, there was light then,

good light—but what I consider
dawn is darker than all that.

So many hours between the day
receding and what we recognize

as morning, the sun cresting
like a wave that won’t break

over us—as if light were protective,
as if no hearts were flayed,

no bodies broken on a day
like today. In any film,

the sunrise tells us everything
will be all right. Danger wouldn’t

dare show up now, dragging
its shadow across the screen.

We talk so much of light, please
let me speak on behalf

of the good dark. Let us
talk more of how dark

the beginning of a day is.

 

I guess the poem’s value depends on the lens you view it through. I have no idea if Smith meant this literally and literally only, but many readers (including this one) can see light vs. dark in a figurative sense as well.

Thus, one of my favorite lines from the Bible: “Through a glass darkly.” These days, I see a lot in this world “through a glass darkly” because a lot of things are sinister in a déjà vu, 1930s kind of way.

Of course, you can put your head in the sand and avoid all that, brightening up your own life, but then you stand accused of contributing to the dark forces by removing your own resistance from various causes for good.

For me, then, Smith’s poem speaks to things that have crawled out of dark sewers into the light of day. They are the new normal, and they are decidedly encouraged by each other and by their new freedom to operate in the light of day.

That may be far from Smith’s intent, but the reader-writer compact tells us that both have equal roles, as long as within reason.

Reasonably yours,
Me

Epistolary Poetry: Secrets and Epiphanies

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An old issue of Poetry offers an interesting poem by Jessica Greenbaum, one that holds up to rereading because, well, it requires as much.

It is unusual in a few respects. For one, it is written as an epistolary poem with the salutation, simply enough, as the title. Two, it is one very long sentence, loaded to the gunwales with introductory phrases and clauses, breathless almost. And three, it has a turn and gets somewhere—a conclusion, a change, though the reader has to work to figure out the relationship between the speaker and the titular Charlene. The other challenge is positioning the exact moment in time the poem is written.

Me, I like working for meaning. Simple poems are nice, but sometimes the exercise of rereading (as in Anne Frank’s Diary, which makes a cameo in the poem itself) offers its own rewards. The fifth reading won’t be the same as the first, in other words, and all the introductory clutter will move more smoothly because you, the reader, will become more adept at reading them the way they should be read.

 

Jessica Greenbaum

Charlene,

one night, leaving your son’s makeshift bedroom in the loft
of the barn, in that first house I knew you in,
crunching through January’s snow back into your kitchen,
past dinner’s left-out dessert plates, then past the fireplace whose embers
still chittered like the chatting old sisters on the bus
I had taken here the day before, north, for eleven and a half hours—
a trip during which I sometimes crocheted what became
a rather long scarf for your son—then up the stairs past your bedroom,
to the guest room, up to the gables with its sloped ceiling
where waited the bed’s patchwork quilts, a painted comb, the lamp
you left on for me, and for some reason lost to time
a copy of Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl near enough—
maybe on a low bookshelf outside the room?—near enough
for me to choose it, and once under the covers I was awake
from start to finish with Dear Kitty again, with the Epilogue, again,
though I felt I was reading it for the first time, or more like
I was a tree to which a bird returns and this time sees
the branch on which it will make its nest, and so I understood—
because being told of your death I want to parse all I have learned from you—
I understood we were to have some experiences many times in our lives
if we were lucky, but we would live them each time differently,
which seems obvious now, but then I was sixteen and didn’t know,
I didn’t know that each experience wasn’t just the first of identical ones to
come,
like a rack of same dresses, and for that reason I thought
the mother of men I loved would all be like you, and all their sons
as kind as he, and that the journey between barn and house on a winter
night
would always show a spray of constellations that would connect
all I was feeling with the goodness of the earth, also turning.

 

After reading this, you might try writing poem as old-fashioned snail-mail letter yourself. If it is written to a person whose life has made an impact on yours—and if it is driven by the engines of emotion, especially—you might find a poem you can work with.

Dear Reader,

What’s to lose in trying?

Sincerely,
Me