Ken Craft

718 posts

Finding Yourself (in Another’s Writing)

coast

One of the many small pleasures in writing is discovering just how much we all think alike. In my upcoming book, a poem I wrote (scheduled to appear in an upcoming issue of Roanoke Review) focuses on a discussion between my wife and me about what to do with our cremains (that’s “cremated remains” to laymen). The poem is humorous because, once all is said and done (well-done, as it’s a very high temperature), death is humorous. In its dark way, I mean.

Off and on, I’ve been poking through Rae Armantrout’s new collection, Partly. In it, she has a poem that treats on the same topic–a married couple planning for the big (and I do mean “big”) after. It did my heart good to flatter myself (because nobody else will) with the aside, “Great minds think alike!”

Here’s Armantrout’s poem, “Around,” for your reading pleasure:

Time is pleased
to draw itself

out,

permit itself
pendulous loops,

to allow them
meaning,

this meaning

as it goes

along.

Chuck and I are pleased
to have found a spot
where my ashes can be scattered.
It looks like a construction site
now
but it’s adjacent
to a breathtaking, rocky coast.
Chuck sees places
where he might snorkel.
We’re being shown through
by a sort of realtor.
We’re interested but can’t get her
to fix the price.

“The future
is all around us.”

It’s a place,

anyplace
where we don’t exist.

Funny, no? And poignant in its way, for if there’s one thing we cannot abide, it’s “not existing.” The last time I tried that, I can’t tell you how bored I was.

Our Yawning Need for Boredom

poetry

yawn

What is it with people’s fear of being alone (as in, not only by yourself but without any technological binkies like a cellphone)? A famous study by a team of psychologists stated that “two-thirds of men and a quarter of women would rather self-administer electric shocks than sit alone with their thoughts for 15 minutes,” which leads one to the question: What on earth could their thoughts look like that they’d prefer self-torture?

In the June Atlantic, Jude Stewart takes a quick look at many of studies surrounding “boredom” and being alone in her article “Make Time for Boredom: The Surprising Benefits of Stultification.” To a writer, the short piece is both surprising and not-so-surprising.

First the not-so-surprising: Stewart’s conclusion is that boredom is an accomplice to creativity. “By encouraging contemplation and daydreaming, it can spur creativity,” she writes.

(Editor’s Note: Whoa. News flash! You’re more creative when you’re alone!?)

Here’s the surprising part: boredom, defined as “the aversive experience of wanting, but being unable, to engage in satisfying activity” is linked to such behavior issues as “mindless snacking, binge-drinking, risky sex, and problem gambling” (all the equivalent of self-administered electric shocks, I guess). What the article misses is the human element. Boredom cannot exist unless people who don’t know what to do with themselves let it exist.

Here’s where artists come into the picture like cavalry riding over the hill. Artists embrace what others might call “boredom” because the conditions necessary for “boredom” to take root are the same as those necessary to create art, whether it’s a poem, a novel, a musical composition, a painting, or a sculpture.

To put it a better way: Bored people are lonely. Creative people are alone. But both are breathing the same air.

Truth be told, I can think of nothing better than an approaching weekend where I have nothing planned — no social engagements, no domestic tasks, no nothing. Why? Because it means I can both feed the well (by reading) and draw from it (by writing).

If that be one man’s (or many’s) idea of boredom, bring it on. Some of my best work has been thanks to the beautiful gifts of boring silence and boring nothingness.

Call Your Mother. Tell Her About the Animal Crackers.

poetry publishing

rain

Waking to the sounds of rain on a Sunday morning is one of life’s gifts. The wrapping paper is the roof and walls of your house. Of course, in my case, I shed the coziness right away as I don rain gear to walk the dog. His thick black coat pearls up with drops. He’ll shed them inside, near a wall preferably.

I drink a cup of coffee, listen to Gregorian chant, write a new poem. A new poem is a gift, too, only with a smaller gift box inside, meaning the present is more mystery, mouth closed, secret intact.

Sudden first drafts are seeds. The farmer sews them knowing that some will sprout, others will grow heavy with rain and rot in the soil. Some will reach fruition, others will be cut down by wind, deer, disease. The creative process is organic. No amount of pesticide will help.

My poem “Self-Portrait” appeared on Poppy Road Review this week. I call poems like this snapshots. There are countless snapshots when it comes to any self-portrait. This is just one part of me in few words: The good intentions part of me. The lost resolutions part of me. The concrete trophies of guilt part of me.

It is Mother’s Day. I will drive to the grocery store first, call my mother and tell her about the rain later. The crisp sound of paper bags filled with food, their symmetry in the back seat for the ride home, like well-behaved children, can send me back. And make me sad. But that is the essence of nostalgia, a heady drug indeed.

Rest assured, I won’t say to my mother when I call, “Remember our trips to the grocery store, when you sat me in front of the carriage and gave me the small, stringed carton of Animal Crackers? And the single piece of baloney from the man at the deli! I’d bite eyes, nose, and smile into it before finishing it off!”

Or maybe I will say it.

Happy Sunday. Happy Mother’s Day. Happy small, under-appreciated gifts.

The Messy Politics of Line Breaks

poetry writing

plums

You can always tell a poetry expert (notice I didn’t say “snob”). They’re the ones who can go on and on about line breaks. I listen with one ear for a while, then yawn and say, “Pass the peanut butter and enjambment, would you?”

Theories on line breaks in free verse poetry are just that–theories. Here are some of the principles I’ve heard, some of them as “suggestions” and others as “hard and fast rules”:

end lines with important words
begin lines with important words
end lines with nouns and verbs
begin lines with nouns and verbs
special dispensation: end lines with important modifiers (if any modifier can graduate to such a level)
never end a line with an article or a conjunction
never begin a line with an article or a conjunction
use line breaks to build suspense
mix up long lines and short lines for visual appeal
mix up lines and sentences
use more end-stopped lines than peanut butter and enjambment
use Fluff
use line breaks as punctuation
use line breaks as signals for pauses and silence
use line breaks to guide a newbie who’s reading your poem aloud for the first time
use line breaks to make your poem more powerful

Charles Simic famously said, “The line is Buddha; the sentence is Socrates.” This is one of those profound lines that could be deep and could be shallow, similar to “The fox knows many things; the hedgehog knows one BIG thing.”

I wonder who’s better at line breaks–the fox or the hedgehog?

This is all by way of saying that no one quite knows what works and what doesn’t when it comes to line breaks. Still, you can listen to many a sage on the topic. Here’s Edward Hirsch from his book A Poet’s Glossary:

“[The line] creates its own visual and verbal impact; it declares its self-sufficiency. Paul Claudel called the fundamental line ‘an idea isolated by blank space.’ I would call it ‘words isolated by blank space,’ because the words can go beyond the idea, they can plunge deeper than thought. Adam Zagajewski says, ‘Tragedy and joy collide in every line…’

“An autonomous line in a poem makes sense on its own, even if it is a fragment or an incomplete sentence. It is end-stopped and completes a thought. An enjambed line carries the meaning over from one line to the next. Whether end-stopped or enjambed, however, the line in a poem moves horizontally, but the rhythm and sense also drive it vertically, and the meaning continues to accrue as the poem develops and unfolds…”

As an example of enjambment’s awesome powers, Hirsch quotes a William Carlos Williams poem, “To a Poor Old Woman,” about a woman taking sensuous delight in eating a plum:

They taste good to her.
They taste good
to her. They taste
good to her

Hirsch comments: “Each line break emphasizes something different (that the plums taste good to her; that they taste good; that they taste) and the lineation is a signpost to the meaning.”

Never mind that plums cannot taste anything (at least in a transitive sense). They can only be tasted. Still, this explanation does provide some guidance, as does poet James Tate’s take on the whole deal. Tate said, “When people start talking about enjambment and line endings, I always shut them up. This is not something to talk about, this is a private matter. It’s up to the poet.”

And I hope that clarifies matters. Me? My head hurts. I’m off to eat a plum…

Exploring Your Inner Ignorance

poetry writing

city

Advice givers (and their numbers are legion) often say, “Write what you know,” as if that would never occur to us. Of course we write what we know! What they don’t say is that it is also good practice to wander out of your comfort zone, to “go deep” into those dark areas we previously considered “ignorance” by writing what we “don’t” know.

One interesting way to explore your inner ignorance is to check out poetry journal calls for thematic issues. It used to be, when I saw guidelines with rigid thematic guidelines, I’d quickly take a pass and move on to the next “general submissions” market.

Mistake, turns out.

For example, let’s say you come across a magazine that wants to publish an issue devoted to the theme of monsters. “Monsters,” you say? “What is this, Marvel Comics? I’m a poet, for heaven’s sake!”

Calm yourself, Mr. Poet Laureate. Remember that your lack of interest in and knowledge of monsters might actually be the kick in the creative pants you need. You might tackle something you don’t know and, out of the blue (or any available color), have a eureka moment.

Poetry editors love expansive interpretations of thematic topics, so pull that poetic license out of your wallet and write about monsters that don’t have green skin or one eye: the monster called rush-hour traffic among horn-blowers, the monster called pain in your body (its cave), the monster called your mother-in-law in the kitchen on Thanksgiving.

Why so literal, in other words?

Sometimes your ignorance is more informed than you think, too. Recently, I found a market that focused on the environment but lamented it had been receiving too many poems about birds and beaches and magnolia bushes. It was interested in more urban environmental poetry, for a change.

My knee-jerk reaction? I’ve never lived in a city (well, not since I was two) and have no experience with urban living, so why would I abandon the security blanket of “write what you know” and write about cities?

But before I moved on, I thought again. Deep in the darkest alleys of my urban ignorance, there was a light. When I was a kid, my mother would take me to Hartford to visit my great-grandparents in an apartment building that was so different from my suburban home that I found it fascinating.

I wound up writing the first draft of that poem in a burst. I was amazed at the number of memories I had boxed up in the basement of my so-called ignorance and lack of experience. Details about that cluttered apartment, inside and out, came rushing to the fore, ready for service.

Presently I am revising this poem and hoping to gussy it up for market. It serves as a lesson, too: The narrow confines of themes can often liberate a writer, whether it is to look at a topic in new ways (the monster of only writing what you know, for example) or to find that perceived ignorance (of city living, for example) is just that–mere perception.

Stop. Think. Go deep using themes as inspiration. It might just shake things up and lead to new, productive places.

Fake Muses: Drugs, Alcohol, & Insomnia

poetry writing

hungover

I can’t tell you how many people associate artistic genius with substance abuse. History, they say, proves their point. Romantic poets (e.g. Coleridge) on opium. Not-so-romantic poets (e.g. Bukowski) on booze. And writers of all stripes (e.g. Poe) on most everything, some of which land you in a Baltimore gutter for good (“Nevermore…”.)

For some reason, when it comes to writing, insomnia gets the same benefit of the doubt as heavy drinking and other alternate states (e.g. New Jersey). Surely the insomniacs who can’t sleep must be writing a lot. Good writing, too. Ethereal writing, On-fumes writing. Almost-out-of-gas writing.

Yes and no. Being up in the thin hours of the night may open up a whole new savannah of time for writing, but under what conditions? Each night I fall asleep with ease. My insomnia profile is of the mid-night wake-up variety. Thus, after, say, four or five hours of sleep, I wake up and my body thinks it’s refreshed and ready to go. Lying in bed to beg more hours of shut-eye does no good. Counting sheep does no good. Even counting iambic beats to Shakespearean sonnets does no good.

So I get up, often writing to pass the hours. It may increase production, but the quality is suspect. Around two hours after fleeing the bed, my energy begins to sap like maple syrup in March. Drip, drip… drip. Suddenly I crave sleep again. Trouble is, it’s time to go to work. And that can make for a long day.

Drinkers (of which I am not one) know that alcohol giveth and alcohol taketh away. You get your buzz and own the world (well, rent it for an hour, maybe), and then it comes back to collect. Too much alcohol messes up sleep, makes a Benedict Arnold of your stomach, fords a D-Day in your head. Have fun writing under those conditions.

So don’t romanticize or misrepresent the role of substance or sleep abuse in the name of creativity. Like the Wizard of Oz, it’s more smoke and mirrors than reality. Paying attention to that man behind the curtain, you realize that the best writing occurs when you treat your body like a temple. A well-rested temple.

My Book Cover, My Self

poetry

cormac

Book covers should be the most enjoyable part of the process for an author whose manuscript is on its way to publication. Should be. I say this because most of us don’t have access to Chip Kidd., designer of Cormac McCarthy book covers among hundreds of others.

“Chip!” I want to say. “Over here! Chip in, why don’t you? My book-soon-to-be needs a cool cover, and while I have a million equally cool ideas, I don’t have the know-how. The resources. The cachet and style. That’s where you come in, Chip. Chip? Chip? Are you there…?”

A few years ago, in an effort to improve my classroom library’s nonfiction shelf (anemic at the time), I bought Kidd’s YA book, Go: A Kidd’s Guide to Graphic Design. It’s a neat trick, actually, learning something that should be simple, but isn’t, by purchasing a young adult primer on the matter. Chip spells it out, and I nod my head.

Thus it is that I picked up ideas on form, typography, content, and concept. I learned that I prefer horizontal tricks to vertical, dark covers to light, image cropping to repetition and patterns, simplicity to complexity, and cool colors to warm.

Does that say as much about me as Myers and Briggs? My Book Cover, My Self. Sounds like a sound personality test, in its way.

It’s true, after all, that we are suckers for beautiful covers–books we like to be seen carrying around. It’s also true that we are loath to carry around an ugly book. So much for “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” We can and we will and we do. It’s a free country, after all, so there.

Bottom line: As the due date for final decisions approaches, we want our book covers to be cool more than anything in the world. A cover people will be proud to tote about, even if they don’t read it (this is poetry, after all, and only fellow poets read poetry, and not many of them can afford poetry books).

Lucky for me, I have time yet. A few months to play with the possibilities. For now, all I can tell you is that it will be a dark horizontal simply cropped cover in cool colors.

What could be YA-simpler?

Poetry in an Age of Anxiety

poetry

nuke

Yesterday, while reading the Sunday New York Times, I came across this article called “America’s New ‘Anxiety’ Disorder”, which alluded to the title of W.H. Auden’s poem, “The Age of Anxiety,” in its first paragraph. Terrorism, the threat of nuclear war, the rise of authoritarian governments and nationalism–these do, indeed, make for a potent brew of angst in today’s world.

It reminded me of Margaret Atwood’s poem, “It Is Dangerous to Read Newspapers,” wherein she implies that reading and knowledge alone are enough to make one complicit. It goes like so:

It Is Dangerous to Read Newspapers – Margaret Atwood

While I was building neat
castles in the sandbox,
the hasty pits were
filling with bulldozed corpsesand as I walked to the school
washed and combed, my feet
stepping on the cracks in the cement
detonated red bombs.Now I am grownup
and literate, and I sit in my chair
as quietly as a fuse

and the jungles are flaming, the under-
brush is charged with soldiers,
the names on the difficult
maps go up in smoke.

I am the cause, I am a stockpile of chemical
toys, my body
is a deadly gadget,
I reach out in love, my hands are guns,
my good intentions are completely lethal.

Even my
passive eyes transmute
everything I look at to the pocked
black and white of a war photo,
how
can I stop myself

It is dangerous to read newspapers.

Each time I hit a key
on my electric typewriter,
speaking of peaceful trees

another village explodes.

Maybe there’s a bit of “it’s always me” to that poem, our inbred inclination to take on guilt. Or maybe it’s just the frustration that freezes us–the way our helplessness against the world’s ongoing narrative turns us into acquiescent bystanders who rationalize our inability to be agencies of change.

In times like this, you turn to Charles Simic, a man who knows something about war-torn states and growing up in an age of anxiety. In his childhood, anxiety meant bombs raining down on his hometown of Belgrade. It meant flight, chance, the sheer luck of survival. Because of that upbringing during WWII, the darker side of mankind would become an undertone in many of his works.

In the poem “Those Who Clean After,” for instance, one wonders if reading a poem can be as unsettling as reading any newspaper, which brings to the fore the question of whether “dangerous” is good for us or not. See what I mean here:

Those Who Clean After (for Robert Bly)-Charles Simic

Evil things are being done in our name.

Someone scrubs the blood,

As we look away,

Getting the cell ready for another day.

I can’t make out their faces,

Only bucket and mops

Being carried down stone steps

Into the dark basement.

How quietly they hose the floor,

Unfurl the musty old rags

To wipe the hooks on the ceiling.

I hear only the sounds of summer night,

The leaves worried as always

By that nameless something

Which may be lurking out there

Where we used to keep the chickens.

My Rejection Note, Their Marketing Tool

poetry

Writers attract rejection via the inbox like electricity draws dust via static cling. It’s just part of the game. Sometimes, though, Emperor Nero publications add thumbs-down insult to injury, salt to wound, in- to dignity, when they use rejections as marketing opportunities. You know. Something like this:

Dear Writer:

Thanks for submitting your work to Poems R Us, where the acceptance rate is 1.487 %. After careful (of a sort..) consideration, we have decided that your poems are not the right fit for us — a size 13 extra-wide trying to wedge into a size 8 narrow, to be exact — but wish you the best of luck in finding this a home elsewhere (read: a publication nowhere near as prestigious and cutting-edge as ours).

If you haven’t already, you might consider giving Poems R Us‘s current issue a look HERE. Our archives of great poetry written by great poets can be found HERE. Please like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter HERE and HERE. Share the link to our website with your friends, virtual, real, and make-believe. Remember, we are home to the very best poetry appearing both in print and on the Internet.

Best,

Peter L’Editor
Poems R Us (But Not U)

Later, you begin to receive e-mails at the rate of two a week from this same periodical trumpeting this issue, that contest, these “insider” writers. Eventually, due to excessive swelling of the inbox, you’re forced to click UNSUBSCRIBE and wonder if invitations to submit are more likely invitations to add to mailing lists, to reading-fee coffers, and to overall data fodder.

That said, you must remain an optimist of the first order. Looking at the bright side — it’s nice to feel wanted, even if it’s you and not your work. And it kind of makes you feel like part of the greater poetry community, no? Kind of.

Ah, well. In the words of the prophet: Keep believing, keep writing, and keep trusting that more doors will open if you do.

Joe Queenan Loves Books. Poets? Not So Much.

poetry

joe queenan

I just finished a round-trip to South Carolina, traveling my favorite way–on a train where I can read to the rumble of tracks in that glorious Amtrak invention known as the quiet car (all *$%& cellphones SILENCED, thank you). After wrapping up the complete Jack Gilbert poetry collection, I turned to a light read in the form of Joe Queenan’s One for the Books, wherein Joe throws elbows and opinions on all things bookish.

This book has more italics than Maine has mosquitoes. That’s because Queenan cites so many book titles, all italicized. And although it is a book lover’s bonanza, there are, alas, few if any poetry books mentioned. Like many bibliophiles, Queenan is happily addicted to reading and books. Just not reading poetry and poetry books. Quelle surprise!

In one amusing section, Queenan is grousing about speakers at libraries. Listen in:

“Library events scare me, as they provide refuge for local historians, fabulists, tellers of tall tales, historical reenactors, and even dream weavers. Not to mention the single most feared creature on the planet: the self-published poet.”

Sorry, team. I laughed. I’m sure traditionally-published poets like me aren’t many levels above the woeful self-published ones in JQ’s eyes, but ha-ha and que sera, sera! If you can’t laugh at yourself, you can’t laugh, non?

Queenan loathes book clubs, too. When friends asked him to join one, JQ writes, “I left town for about six weeks, disconnected my phone, stopped answering e-mails, and told people that I had a weird retinal pigmentation disease that made it impossible for me to read books. Especially books like The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.”

From there, Queenan goes on to belittle those ubiquitous “Questions for Discussion” found at the end of many books these days. It is the editors’ and publishers’ hope that you, gentle readers, will select their book as the next “book club selection of the month” so that everyone will buy a copy. These questions just make life that much easier for you.

With one book out and one on the way (if December can be considered “on the way”), I wondered why I didn’t think of this ruse before. So easy! Perhaps the second edition of my debut effort can include an amendment for Book Clubs in the back? It might look something like so:

The Indifferent World

In the poem, “Barnstorming the Universe,” Craft discusses a space-traveling barn that crashes in the middle of a Maine field, mid-July. Do you believe barn landings should have a central location like Cape Canaveral, or is the meteor-like randomness of their crashes half the fun? Discuss.
“Astapova Station” describes Leo Tolstoy’s final flight from death, which ended at a train station with wife Sofya (and a “Honey, do” list) hot in pursuit. How important is Czarist Russia’s lousy train service to this poem’s denouement? Who do you sympathize with more–Team Leo or Team Sofya?
This book includes two poems about a large-animal veterinarian in Vermont treating a horse in “Tonsillectomy” and a cow in “Young Brain in the Dairy Barn.” Are bloody operations in a barn appropriate material for poetry? Would Li-Po approve? What about the Lake Poets?

Yes. Discussion Questions for Poetry-Reading Book Clubs. The sort of thing that might move poetry book sales from double digits to, say, a mighty three. (Not many books of poetry challenge the mighty comma, which is only forced into action once your sales cross No Poet’s Land, a. k. a. terrain over 1,000).

In any event, I am an omnivorous reader (maybe more so than Joe), so despite the dearth of poetry collection titles, many fiction and non-fiction recommendations were garnered while reading this book. Also many rereads (Queenan calls Dubliners the single best collection of short stories ever, for instance, so I said to myself on the train, “Hmn. Long time no Dubliners. Time to move it up on the the list. Done!”)

Overall, a few laughs and a lot of book titles added to the borrow-or-buy list. Not bad, eh? Now I just need to find a paperback called One for the Poetry Books. One that sniffs its nose at fiction and talks all poetry all the time.