Yearly Archives: 2022

26 posts

Reincarnation & Other Savings (Redux)

Ken Craft my poems poetry books Reincarnation & Other Stimulants

On September 4th, I wondered out loud about Amazon’s pricing policies vis-a-vis my most recent book. While the first two books remained at suggested retail, Reincarnation & Other Stimulants had somehow been enrolled in one of Amazon’s “Huh?” pricing schemes. Back then, it had sunk to 22% off. But then it bounced back up in price as September gained momentum. And now? Now it is trending down again, as if the Princes of Price are passing away a rainy day.

Seriously. I checked this morning and they’ve got it down 39% , where it’s enjoying (for how long, who knows) another life at $11.22,far below it’s suggested of $18.50.

How does this make a poet feel? Conflicted. On the one hand, I feel like I have no control (a typical, Amazonian-type affliction). On the other, I feel it might draw a few bargain-hunters, causing more people to read my work (a feeling every poet can relate to).

Who knows, however, how long it will last? In real life, the sun rises in the East and sets in the West. On Planet Amazon? The price is more fickle than any sun I know. Meantime, I’ll continue to watch the prices various reincarnations.

*********************************************************************** Original Post (Sept. 4, 2022) below******************

Far be it for me to explain Amazon dot all-is-calm (in the Ridiculous Profits and Not Paying Much in the Way of Taxes World), but recently they’ve cut the price of my latest book, Reincarnation & Other Stimulants, by 22%. I would add that they offer “free shipping,” but that’s only if you are yet another member of Prime Nation (I am not a citizen but, like Ponyboy and Dally, prefer to be an Outsider).

Better still, I have cut the price of the remaining books I have on hand for readings, which pretty much haven’t happened due to that funny thing that happened on the way to the forum called “Covid-19” (you may have heard of it).

Not to be outdone by Amazon (even though I am past my Prime and still paying my unfair share of taxes), I’m offering what’s left of my stockpile of Reincarnation for $12 (that’s 35% by my sketchy math) with free shipping as well if you’re living within the States. Not only that, these books will be signed, meaning they may someday be worth something… or not. All you have to do is click BOOKS on the upper right hand corner of this screen and, voila (minus an accent aigu or grave or some such), you are there on the “Add to Cart” page.

It doesn’t hurt to mention that I have a few of my two earlier books available, too. These are on sale as well — while supplies lasts, anyway. What can I say? Christmas in September? Black Friday every day? Whatever marketing coinage (“Pennies a day, Mr. or Mrs. or Miss Customer”) works!

If you do choose to support your local (if you live in Maine) or far-flung (if you don’t) poet, all appreciation goes to you. Like small independent bookstores, up and coming (read: not household names yet) writers need your support more than our friends at Amazon, Barnes, & Ignoble. It keeps sites like this available. It also keeps me writing more poems.

Cheers, and thanks in advance if you choose to support poetry. I’m almost sure you’ll like some — maybe even a lot — of the poems that will come your way, Snail Mail Express.

The Art of Writing a Poem’s First Lines

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In his book The Poetry Home Repair Manual, Ted Kooser writes, “The titles and first few lines of your poem represent the hand you extend in friendship toward your reader. They’re the first exposure he or she has, and you want to make a good impression. You also want to swiftly and gracefully draw your reader in.

“Too often it seems as if, in the poet’s first few lines, he or she is writing toward the poem, including information that is really not essential but is there because it was a part of the event that triggered the poem. It’s the background story, and it may not be necessary for us to know it to appreciate the poem.”

Taking Ted at his word, you can spend days working on your opening lines alone. That’s the good news. The bad news is, you may still have a problem. Ted adds, “One caution, though: We can spend so much effort on our opening lines that sometimes they turn out to be the best part of the poem. We polish and polish and polish them until the rest of the poem feels weak by contrast.”

Beginnings and endings. It doesn’t matter the genre, they tend to bedevil writers more than any middle ground. How do we get the reader’s attention? How do we quickly establish a voice? As for the ending, there has to be something about it–some exclamation point, some brilliant turn of phrase, something unexpectedly delightful.

Is that asking too much?

To put opening lines to the Kooser-standards test, I randomly pulled ten poetry books from my shelf, then randomly opened to a page. Here are ten openings (first four lines). Which ones would YOU say best follow the Kooser rules?

Of memory, the unhappy man’s home. / How to guess time of night by listening to one’s own heartbeat. / Why we can’t see the end of our nose. / On the obscurity of words and clarity of things.
Brooklyn’s too cold tonight / & all my friends are three years away. / My mother said I could be anything / I wanted–but I chose to live.
Here is a coast; here is a harbor; / here, after a meager diet of horizon, is some scenery: / impractically shaped and–who knows?–self-pitying mountains, / sad and harsh beneath their frivolous greenery
Stress of his anger set me back / To musing over time and space. / The apple branches dripping black / Divided light across his face.
Our talk, our books / riled the shore like bullheads / at the roots of the luscious / large water lily
He climbed to the top / of one of those million white pines / set out across the emptying pastures / of the fifties — some program to enrich the rich
Into the mute and blue- / green marble mailbox my dust deserves to go, / though not for that which I’m going. / I deserve to go, and not alone,
In those days you could buy a pagan baby for five dollars, / the whole class saved up. And when you bought it / you could name it Joseph, Mary, or Theresa, the class took a vote. / But on the day I brought in the five dollars”
Then my mind goes back to the summer rental, / the stairs down into the earth — I descend them / and turn, and pass the washing machine, and go / into the bedroom, one wall the solid
Jaspar, feldspar, quartzite, agate, granite, sandstone, slate. / Some can be rounded, some not. / Some can be flaked, some not. / A person, too, holds her lines of possible fracture.

Granted, I did not seek out the best of these books, I just opened them and planted a finger on a poem. It so happens, of the 10 I picked in this manner, I could only recall one.

So, which is your favorite? Which did you prefer? If you’re looking for titles and authors, they are below. Any surprises?

“Late-Night Chat” by Charles Simic
“Thanksgiving 2006” by Ocean Vuong
“Arrival at Santos” by Elizabeth Bishop
“The Revelation” by James Wright
“Club 26” by Lorine Niedecker
“Fergus Falling” by Galway Kinnell
“Ode While Awaiting Execution” by Thomas Lux
“Buying the Baby” by Marie Howe
“Sea-Level Elegy” by Sharon Olds
“Jaspar, Feldspar, Quartzite” by Jane Hirshfield

The Poetry Home Repair Manual Ted Kooser

What’s in a Name? More Than You’d Think.

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Lead-off batters. In baseball, they’re the table setters. The speed. The possibility and the hope facing a first pitch.

In a poetry collection, the first poem is no small matter, either. St. Billy of Collins says it is damn near everything when it comes to the Department of Importance (a branch of the Department of Interior, I think). All at once, the first poem sets the tone, the tenor, and the expectations for the anxious reader.

As Exhibit A, let’s look at Ada Limón’s collection, The Carrying. How does it begin, you ask? Softly, softly:

A Name
by Ada Limón

When Eve walked among
the animals and named them—
nightingale, red-shouldered hawk,
fiddler crab, fallow deer—
I wonder if she ever wanted
them to speak back, looked into
their wide wonderful eyes and
whispered, Name me, name me.

What strikes me about this opener is how unassuming it is. Limón has a penchant for lists, and we get one—emphasized between dashes, yet—right out of the gate. For themes, short poems do wonders. It’s like catching a whiff of something in the October air and trying to identify it. Is it identity? The female experience? How about nature, then?

Yes, yes, and yes.

The last line is almost childlike. “Name me! Name me!” It has an “I want to play, too!” slant to it.

Beyond that, simplicity all around. A few alliterative flourishes (fiddler crab / fallow deer, wide / wonderful / whispered), but hardly the poetic arsenal.

As for the line-break nazis, they’ll have to read it and weep: among, into, and all anchor lines in most unspectacular fashion. Most poets would park those at the beginning of the next line, but Limón seems little concerned with this “chicken or egg” game wherein the last word (no, the first word!) of each line is deemed supreme. In my view, it’s the poet’s prerogative. Period.

In any event, we can always look to the title for importance. Names are precious commodities. We have but one to protect and nurture, and it’s net worth beats any bank’s bottom line. How will we be named? How much control will be have over what comes to mind when people hear our name? And how much innocence does that name harbor, anyway? Is it (gulp!) an original sin waiting to happen?

Only Eden knows. And that snake, the lovely page, if the first poem does its job and tempts us to the second. And third. And so forth.

Quiet Poems. Desperate Poems.

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“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” Thoreau. And the epigraph to my first book of poetry.

I will forever associate Thoreau’s quote with Sherwood Anderson’s collection of short stories, Winesburg, Ohio. Anderson called his characters “grotesques,” but I thought that a little strong. To me they were just “people,” because, frankly, by Anderson’s ledger, we’d all be grotesques.

Quiet desperation is what pushes me to write, to make sense of things, and I love best poems that speak to Thoreau’s great truth. In George Bilgere’s book, Blood Pages, I came across one:

Schwinn
by George Bilgere

One day my mother astonished me
by getting astride my bike,
the heavy old balloon-tired Schwinn
I used for my afternoon paper route,
and pedaling away down the street,

skirt flying, hair blown back,
a girl again in the wind and speed
that had nothing to do
with pulling double shifts at the hospital,
or cooking meatloaf, or sewing up my jeans,

the old bike carrying her away
from my father dead of booze,
and her own nightly bottle
of red wine in front of the news.

She flew down the road so far
I could barely see her,
then slowly pedaled back to me,
and stepped off the bike, my mom again.

It’s the perfect quiet desperation poem, the kind I like to write myself. For one brief, shining moment, the narrator’s mother, infinitely sad and trapped by life’s circumstances as so many adults are, is a little girl again, hair blowing and skirt flying in the wind, hopes and dreams still ahead of her.

Briefly, the boy loses sight of his mother, as if she has escaped maybe, as if her pursuit of happiness has ended with an actual capture.

But that is the stuff of Hollywood and fairy tales. In life? People pedal back slowly. They step off their what-was-I-thinking bikes. They are moms and dads again. Quietly. Desperately.

The Poetry of One Brief, Shining Moment

poetry poetry prompts reading poetry

Ours is a God of Irony. I often invoke this fact when people confront me about my illogical fear of flying, especially if they know I love roller coasters.

“Wait a minute,” they say. “You won’t get on the safest form of transportation known to man, the airplane, but you will get into a car to drive all over hell and gone. And on top of that, you strap yourself into roller coasters each summer? Freakin’ roller coasters?”

OK, OK. Point made. And if I die in a car or roller coaster accident, the God of Irony will chalk another one up (with an omnipotent chuckle because, in this world, you take laughs where you can get them).

These thoughts dawned on me as I read Ginger Murchison’s poem “Roller Coaster.” Why? Because the average roller coaster ride lasts 112 seconds, which means, as a writer, you have less than two minutes to absorb all the sensory shocks your body is subjected to by the experience, followed by all the time you want to think about it and craft a poem.

In that sense, the roller coaster ride is an apt metaphor for writing. Many instructors suggest you “explode the moment” or “zoom in” and describe an event that lasts only minutes or less.

Why? Because less experienced writers get trapped by “dawn-to-dusk” writing or, worse, “Monday-to-Sunday” writing or, worse still, “How-I-Misspent-My-Summer-Vacation” writing.

No, no, no. If you squeeze yourself into a teeny-tiny clown car, you will be subjected to an overload of sensory details and figurative language ideas to describe the cramped experience.

In the case of poetry inspiration, however, it will be brief experience alone, not a brief (and very scary, if clowns are in there) automobile experience you’ll be writing about.

I’ll leave you with Murchison’s example and my own encouragement to write about a brief, shining moment from your life. Think about all those sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and experiences of touch. Think about what everything’s like. And make it a metaphor for life, if you want to show off (and you do). Good luck!

Roller Coaster
Ginger Murchison

It starts with the climbing in,
nerved-up enough
for that defiance
of gravity, the slow-grind
rackety-clack one-inch cog
at a time—the mystery of machinery,
the sane and safe weightedness
of stiff-starched values,
wondering if there were
sins we’d committed
since our last confession, then
at the top, out on the edge,
beyond the solid-ground world
parents live in, test life,
theirs and our own, up where
we are a hole in the sky,
wholly abandoned in the eyes-
shut, heart-stopped drop,
like lawlessness on falling’s
crisp speed, the first curve, a blur,
the world’s suddenness,
metal, air and a prayer
half-mouthed, spun,
flung into another plunge,
a curve swerving,
a tiny boat in a tempest—
and isn’t this how we want
to live, live higher up,
hungry to leave the ground,
flinging sparks, the lights brighter,
the dark darker, bodies at war
with mere air, but still obedient
to the tracks laid down
to keep us on track.

"Roller Coaster" Ginger Murchison

Wild Bob Hicok Takes On “This Clumsy Living”

poetry books

On the Acknowledgment page of his collection This Clumsy Living, poet Bob Hicok writes, “I’d also like to thank Gregory Fraser, Thomas Gardner, Austin Hummell, and Matthew Zapruder for reading different incarnations of this manuscript. You fools.”

Two thoughts: Humor, first and foremost, and an indication of the wry and insightful stuff Hicok writes. And this: how often do I read of successful manuscripts having not one but multiple readers providing feedback to sharpen the final product? One undeniable advantage, I’d say, to academia (for teachers) and MFA programs (for students).

Here’s an example of Hicok’s associative wordplay:

Duh

My father is silent and distant.

The moon is up though sometimes

to the side which is also called

over there. Coffee is better brewed

than eaten straight from the can.

When someone is dying

we should unpack the clever phrase

I am sorry. Wrenches

the wrong size should be distracted

until the right bolt arrives.

Inside your head is a map

of your house and inside that map

is where you actually live.

People doing jumping jacks

look like they’re trying

to start a fire by rubbing

the sticks of their body

together. Vague nomenclature

is not the correct response

to thank you. It’s surprising

that pencils and erasers get along

as well as they do. When dogs meet

it’s the scent gland not anus

they sniff. There’s the conviction

in every head that someone else

is happy. This is why we drool

from jets at green rectangles

of earth, why when we kiss

we push hard to reach the pillow

of the tongue. If we swapped

mistakes they might fit neatly

and with purpose into our lives.

I’ll lend you the day I locked

my keys in my mouth

if you give me the night

you got drunk and bought

a round of flowers for the house.

Whatever my father wants me

to know he tells my mother

who tells me. This reminds me

that if I put my ear to the ground

I’ll hear the stampede

of dirt no cowboy can keep

from rolling over my head one day.

The title gives Hicok license to go wherever he wants (which he does) in this stream of seemingly unrelated consciousness until, of course, he returns to his father at the end of the poem. Meanwhile, the reader is treated to a list poem that shows off his cleverness.

Hicok can do serious, too, as he does in this college-related poem:

ROTC

A bugle wakes the sky as boys hold hands over their hearts

and aim their eyes at a flag giving wind the only stars

it will ever touch.

trying to take off made of human flesh and crewcuts.

My new envelopes taste of peppermint.

I will write and ask their mothers to send the blankeys

their sons went to bed with and held soft to their faces.

They will find in their attics the photo albums and baby shoes

that are the beginning of pacifism.

On weekends, the cadets wear clothes like the rest of us

wear and drink too much with the rest of us and scream

from the back of moving cars like everyone I know

is screaming and the Museum of Fire is burning down

and when they march on Monday, I think we’re being attacked

by leather shoes and hangovers.

The Museum of Ashes opens next week.

In their fatigues, the practice generals

look like shrubbery moving around campus and I’ve painted

my face over my face so hiding is what I do naturally.

When one of the cadets turns out not to be alive anymore

in Iraq because of how rude bullets are, they lower the flag

half way and speak of avenging blood, a name is chiseled

into stone, which is how the stone is moving

to the other side of town, piece by piece by name.

Little shadows live inside the names.

I’ve been trying to think of something more intimate

than the grave, possibly getting in there with the body

or carrying it around on my shoulders and stinking

of a perfume I like to call “What’s Our Hurry?”

Like the shadows living inside names chiseled in stone, this is a darker brand of commentary on war games on campus that come home to roost in foreign countries stealing otherwise long lives from young men. You can see some of the stream of consciousness bubbling in the narrative, too. Licked envelopes tasting of peppermint. Practice generals resembling shrubbery moving about campus. In retrospect, sad.

This 2007 outing was my first Hicok. Its generosity and unexpected semantics ensures it won’t be my last.

Of Wu Wei, Idylls, and Other Escapes

my poems poetry The Indifferent World

Idyll. It’s one of my favorite words, bringing to mind, as it does, a perfect and simple world, pre-industrialization, pre-technology. Heading out to the country always sounds like good advice, like the perfect escape, like Huck Finn lighting out for the territories at the end of his book.

Then there’s its homophone, idle. Yes. When we find our rural idyll, let’s be idle, shall we? The Taoists and ancient Chinese poets would approve. It’s the concept of wu wei, or doing nothing. Non-action as purposeful goal.

All this comes to mind when preparing for a wedding, when a gathering is to occur at your home, when the grounds and the house itself must be “prepared.” At some point, in all the madness leading up to the big day, you begin to yearn for the simplicity of an idyll, an escape to the country. Wu wei, if you please.

These are the thoughts that drove the creation of my poem, “Idyll.” The narrator’s escape? A Breughel painting, where peasants are at rest from their simple work, looks quaintly beautiful (Tolstoy would approve).

Idyll by Ken Craft

Each day brings the wedding closer.
Clapboard and trim painters.
Window washers, florists, a house
under siege.

I wish
I were a Breughel peasant
far away, under a sky pricked and paled
by August sun.

Scythes whistle. Sweat-soaked muslin
kisses our backs. Kerchiefed
maidens swing in rhythm, while a rick
wagon with wheat-strained ribs
waits in back. Swaddling its shade.
Its cool, corked jugs.

Let us stop here
and rest, limbs splayed
with the sweetness
of fatigue. Let us drink this wine.
Open these wicker baskets.
Find the airy white hearts
of crust-cased loaves with our thumbs.

Hemingway on Good Poetry: “There Won’t Be a Hell of a Lot”

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Sure, Ernest Hemingway was no poet, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t read poets or lack opinions on poetry in general. While reading the third volume of The Letters of Ernest Hemingway (Cambridge University Press), I came across this amusing aside written in a letter to Ernest Walsh on 15 January 1926:

“And finally I don’t think that good writing or good poetry has anything to do with our age at all — makes no bloody difference…

“To me it’s not a question of Keats and Shelley having been great and we having changed since then and needing another kind of greatness. I could never read Swinburne, Keats or Shelley. I tried it when I was a kid and simply felt embarrassed by their elaborate falseness. But of real poetry, true poetry, there has always been, rymed (sic) and unrymed (sic), a very little in all ages and all countries —. That’s another large statement. I don’t know about all countries etc. All I can say is that I believe there has always been good poetry and with a little luck there will always be a little. But there won’t be a hell of a lot.”

What, exactly, are examples of good poetry to the 26-year-old Hemingway? In the same letter, he cites “Andy” (as he calls him) Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress” and a couple of poems by the much-revered poet, Anonymous: “O Western Wind, When Wilt Thou Blow” and “I Heard Twa Corbies” (“twa” being anonymous for “two”).

And what can you, gentle reader, take from Hemingway’s frank talk on a trade he didn’t traffic in? That it’s cool to not like revered big shots like Keats and Shelley if their writing does nothing for you. But it’s not cool to make generalizations about poetry as a whole. For every reader from every age, there’s something out there that appeals. You just have to beat the bushes to see what comes out.

Who knows? Maybe a corbie or twa.

Funeral for a Poem

Ken Craft poetry poetry books updates on a free-verse life

Sometimes you meet poems in the strangest ways. I learned of C. P. Cavafy’s poem, “Ithaka” while reading about Jaqueline Kennedy-Onasiss’s funeral. The poem was read at the service by her longtime companion, Maurice Tempelsman.

Some don’t know that Mrs. Kennedy was a great champion of poetry and even wrote her own (read “Sea Joy” in the photo above). Her daughter, Caroline, would grow up to be an admirer of the genre as well, helping to put together a collection that is now out of print but garners high marks on book review sites.

I’ve since explored a lot of Cavafy’s work, but nothing seems to strike me the way this poem does. Using Homer’s Odyssey, the extended metaphor works perfectly. We are all headed toward our own separate Ithakas, and none of us is terribly intent on arriving at our home port. This poem captures the essence of that thought. “If not the journey, what?” it seems to say.

Below is the translation by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard as seen in C. P. Cavafy/Collected Poems, (Princeton University Press, 1992):

ITHAKA by C.P. Cavafy

As you set out for Ithaka

hope the voyage is a long one,

full of adventure, full of discovery.

Laistrygonians and Cyclops,

angry Poseidon — don’t be afraid of them:

you’ll never find things like that on your way

as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,

as long as a rare excitement

stirs your spirit and your body.

Laistrygonians and Cyclops,

wild Poseidon — you won’t encounter them

unless you bring them along inside your soul,

unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope the voyage is a long one.

May there be many a summer morning when,

with what pleasure, what joy,

you come into harbors seen for the first time;

may you stop at Phoenician trading stations

to buy fine things,

mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,

sensual perfume of every kind —

as many sensual perfumes as you can,

and may you visit many Egyptian cities

to gather stores of knowledge from their scholars.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.

Arriving there is what you are destined for.

But do not hurry the journey at all.

Better if it lasts for years,

so you are old by the time you reach the island,

wealthy with all you have gained on the way,

not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.

Without her, you would not have set out.

She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.

Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,

you will have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

The Sorrow of Horses

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As a kid reading Jonathan Swift’s classic, Gulliver’s Travels, I marveled not so much at the Lilliputians as at the Houyhnhnms, that society of horses blessed with reason—a society far above the Yahoos, Swift’s derisive name for humankind.

It all came back to me as I read Ross Gay’s wonderful poem, “becoming a horse,” in Tracy K. Smith’s collection, American Journal: Fifty Poems for Our Time.

It contained lovely ideas, such as the poet becoming “a snatch of grass in the thing’s maw” or “a fly tasting its ear.” It contained lovely concepts, such as the poet coming to know the world as a horse knows it: “the sorrow of a brook creasing a field,” “the small song in my chest,” “the slow honest tongue.” All that from the simple act of “putting my heart to the horse’s.”

Empathy. The world through another’s eyes—even another creature’s eyes. More than anything, it teaches us the sorrow of being human. Don’t believe me? See for yourself:

becoming a horse
by Ross Gay

It was dragging my hands along its belly,
loosing the bit and wiping the spit
from its mouth made me
a snatch of grass in the thing’s maw,
a fly tasting its ear. It was
touching my nose to his made me know
the clover’s bloom, my wet eye to his
made me know the long field’s secrets.
But it was putting my heart to the horse’s that made me know
the sorrow of horses. The sorrow
of a brook creasing a field. The maggot
turning in its corpse. Made me
forsake my thumbs for the sheen of unshod hooves.
And in this way drop my torches.
And in this way drop my knives.
Feel the small song in my chest
swell and my coat glisten and twitch.
And my face grow long.
And these words cast off, at last,
for the slow honest tongue of horses.

As a writer, you might try it yourself: becoming a dog, a red fox, an owl—whatever stirs the wonder and sadness in you. It is an exercise in empathy and beauty.