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Looking through The High Window

poetry publishing

The High Window, a new (as of March 2016) home for poetry, has appeared in the UK under the editorial guidance of David Cooke, Anthony Costello, and Natalie Rees. In addition to poetry, each quarterly issue of the e-zine will include an editorial, an essay, translations, and a review.

I’m pleased to be a part of Issue #3 of The High Window. The poem, “Happiness Bound,” was fun to write because of the word play, the stream-of-consciousness approach, and the quirky repetition. Some readers see it as an ode to happiness, others as a lament about unhappiness. All power to the reader, I say!

You can read “Happiness Bound” by following the link, clicking my name, and/or just scrolling down.

Dionysus or Apollo? Your choice, really. The inspiration for the work started with an essay by Tony Hoagland about the influences of these strange, godly bedfellows. Reading it inspired me to lighten up and let loose, to have fun with language, and to not always play conservative.

To see that kind of writing rewarded by the High Window editors is both refreshing and gratifying. I hope you’ll check out Issue #3!

What Are We Waiting For?

poetry publishing

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After careful consideration–wait for it!–I’ve decided that waiting is bad for me. Why am I always waiting? And why am I sometimes unaware of what exactly I’m waiting for?

As a poet, my waiting habit has been fed and nurtured. I write a first draft, second, third, and on up the abacus of practice until my poem looks like a many segmented caterpillar inching toward the promised land. Then I put it aside. Time will help, I insist.

Coming back to it weeks later, I slice it down to inchworm size. That bad. How did I miss it? And when is this great idea going to reach final fruition? Wait for it! I tell myself.

Often I send poems out to willing markets in batches of five or so. Then, instead of moving on to new work, I get lazy and wait. Surely today, I say a few weeks later. So I look at Submittable and see “Received” has changed to “In-Progress.” My waiting intensifies, though logic tells me one label is as meaningless as the other and the wait for “In-Progress” could be as long or longer than “Received.”

But that’s the essence of waiting.

Once I thought getting a book published was the final answer to waiting. I finished a manuscript, sent it out to multiple homes, and instead of starting another, waited for it. When the big event occurred and I was rewarded with acceptance, I felt all the waiting had been rewarded.

Alas, after the initial publishing euphoria, I just went back to waiting. But for what? For my book to be discovered, maybe. But by whom? God knows. And works in mysterious ways.

Speaking of, my waiting had almost evolved into a form of worship. I didn’t seem to realize that all this waiting amounted to time lost and days drained. I forgot that God numbers the days. It’s His bad habit. We all deserve one.

Some day, after another bout of great news, I’ll be asking myself, “Was this worth the wait? Is this any different? Is this the one?”

I’m almost sure the answer will be “no.” In the words of the prophet (Bono): “But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for….”

And never will.

Resolution without the excuse of a new year: I’m going to get busy. Busy so I don’t notice all this furtive waiting I’m secretly engaged in. You know. The waiting I’m supposedly giving up as of today.

(End of post. I’ve got to check my e-mail. I’m waiting for something big. Because surely this is the day….)

The Hazards of Thinking Too Much

poetry

red leaf

My mother-in-law famously said that the brain is a marvelous thing. It is also a pain in the ass. In fact, I often yearn for the days comma good old when I was a kid and didn’t think too much. Thinking too much, like the Internet, is both marvelous and horrible.

The fancy word for this is “metacognition” or “thinking about your thinking.” My metacognition is a moody son of a gun. It hyperventilates—especially when I’m feeling blue—and the last week of summer is a famously blue stretch of days. Indigo becomes “indigone” in a hurry.

My brain says stuff like this: “What of your great plans for summer, huh? What of THAT? Have you SEEN what’s left to this forever thing called July and August?” Hoo, boy. The brain is a task master. A drill sergeant. A guilt driver for the slave conscious.

And true enough, all my summer writing goals have not been met. But hey, as the song goes, I’m only human, and humans are famously designed to let themselves down.

So once more to the lake, this time to hear the dirge of summer. I know better than to read the E.B. White essay, “Once More to the Lake” in the coming week because the ending is a killer and it resonates wider and louder with each added year.

No, instead I will try to finish the 500-page book I’m meandering through. And I will earbud in the sad but hypnotic strains of Arvo Pärt’s “Fratres” as I look out at the water, but it’s only a beautiful sort of misery I’ll be indulging in, part of an ancient and known ritual by now, a benedictions to something sweet but fleeting.

What remains to be seen is how the last-week blues affects my writing. Sometimes all of the introspection and moodiness produces words. And other times it gets selfish, blocking the muse, getting hungry for words (which it will not share) itself.

There’s no denying the inevitable. Or stopping the tides. Or quelling the wind that blows calendar pages from the poorly-glued seam.

Or the thinking that all of this inspires. Meta-melancholic thinking.

Eating Poetic Fruit–and Words

poetry word choice

index

Simplicity. In poetry, it’s tough to embrace and get away with. You read something as simple as Galway Kinnell’s “Blackberry Eating” and say, “How easy. I can do that!”

And then you try.

It’s like those foolhardy fiction writers who make the terrible mistake of imitating Ernest Hemingway. Seems simple enough. Only the emulating stylists wind up producing something akin to Frankenstein’s monster playing violin. Badly.

As writing inspiration, simple poems can be deceiving. They sometimes scatter common writers’ “Thou shalt not’s” to the wind, too. For instance, “Thou shalt not overindulge in adjectives.” Here we have a 14-line (sonnet-like) poem that serves up not one, two, or three, but FOUR adjectives in Line 2 alone.

Explanation? Simple. Eating is a sensory experience. A reader needs adjectives to fully digest it.

For me, “Blackberry Eating” recalls the simple joys of William Carlos Williams’ “This Is Just To Say,” wherein WCW helps himself to “delicious,” “sweet,” and “cold” plums in the icebox:

“This is Just to Say” by William Carlos Williams

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the iceboxand which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

Summer’s on the wane. Harvest time continues. Time to pick some fruit (your choice) and release yourself to juicy simplicity. To whet your appetite, here’s Kinnell’s love letter to blackberries and words:

“Blackberry Eating” by Galway Kinnell

I love to go out in late September
among the fat, overripe, icy, black blackberries
to eat blackberries for breakfast,
the stalks very prickly, a penalty
they earn for knowing the black art
of blackberry-making; and as I stand among them
lifting the stalks to my mouth, the ripest berries
fall almost unbidden to my tongue,
as words sometimes do, certain peculiar words
like strengths or squinched,
many-lettered, one-syllabled lumps,
which I squeeze, squinch open, and splurge well
in the silent, startled, icy, black language
of blackberry — eating in late September.

Garrison Keillor Reads One of My Poems

poetry The Indifferent World

index

In the “Things I Never Thought I’d Write” Department, we have this: Today Garrison Keillor read one of my poems on his nationally-syndicated program, The Writer’s Almanac. Yep. The very same Writer’s Almanac I’ve listened to on the radio and read on-line countless times.

The poem, “Snapper,” tells the simple story of a snapping turtle that labored up a sandy hill on our property to lay her eggs. My son and I witnessed the event, and it came to a bad end.

For the eggs.

Luckily, I can’t say the same for the creative process. Watching the turtle inspired the poem, which in turn was selected for reading on TWA. And no one reads poems like Garrison reads poems. It was an honor listening to him wrap his voice around my words!

And the thought of him reading with a copy of my first book of poems, The Indifferent World, in his hands? Let’s put it this way. It didn’t leave me indifferent.

As Andy Warhol never said, “Two minutes and ten seconds of fame is better than none at all!”

Dignity for the Aging, the Sick, the Dead

poetry

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My wife and I are of such an age where we are rapidly losing friends and family members who grew up in the generation before us. Likewise, we spend much time visiting members of this generation in declining health, some in assisted living, some in nursing homes, some in hospitals.

It is a sad truth of life that proud and private people have no choice but to surrender their pride and their privacy once they are in some way debilitated and in need of full-time medical attention. Sometimes the professional help is just that–professional, caring, wonderful. And other times, sadly, it’s just a job.

As my last send-off post to Zbigniew Herbert, whose Collected Poems 1956-1998 (translator Alissa Valles) I finished today, I’ll share a tender poem he wrote on just that subject. It is called “Shame,” and in it, Herbert links his love for the ancient Greeks (Antigone) with the basic humanity and respect for the body she symbolizes:

Shame

When I was very ill shame abandoned me
willingly I bared for alien hands surrendered to alien eyes
the poor mystery of my body

They invaded me brutally increasing the humiliation

My professor of forensic medicine the old Mancewicz
fishing a suicide’s remains from a pool of formaldehyde
bent over him as if he wished to ask him for his pardon
then with a deft movement he opened the proud thorax
the basilica of the breath fell silent

delicately almost tenderly

So–faithful to the dead respectful of ash–I understand
the wrath of the Greek princess her stubborn resistance
she was right–a brother deserved a dignified burial

a shroud of earth carefully drawn
over the eyes

Advice for a Poetry Reading

poetry

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Inside of two weeks before my first poetry reading, I often solicit advice from experienced poets who have read many times at many venues. Part of me asks about myself and the poems I should choose. The other part asks about the crowd. Or maybe “the crowd” (accent on quotation marks). What I’ve heard so far:

It’s possible no one will show up. (Do you read to no one if “it” arrives and fills the assembled seats with its nothingness? Does a tree in a forest primeval make a sound if it falls beyond human ears? Discuss. At the mic. Or possibly the mike.)
Crowds can be fidgety. Remember that as you decide on poems for the reading.
Have fun.
Start and end with stronger poems.
Mix types of poems–funny, sad, long, short, reflective, assertive. Repeat and contrast, repeat and contrast.
Introduce each poem with a brief anecdote. Accent on brief.
Have fun.
Don’t read too fast. In fact, you should think you’re reading a bit too slow. That will be about the right pace.
Project and enunciate.
Practice reading your poems beforehand. Not a little. A lot. Especially if you’re a tyro.
Have fun.
If you sell copies of your book (or even a single copy of your book) afterwards, give thanks. It’s gravy. Don’t expect dozens of listeners to beat a path to your signing table.
If you’re featured with another reader, give her/him the option of going first or second.
If your fellow featured reader is the hottest poet since the King James Bible writers, call in sick.
Are we having fun yet?

Indifference–a Most Unexpected Angle

poetry The Indifferent World

index

In my last post, I shared a Czeslaw Milosz poem that seems to have echoes in many other works by many other poets. Anyone who has studied or simply read deeply of literature and mythology knows that writers’ fascination with life and death leads to thoughts of the world’s curious indifference to us.

Yes, we are subjective animals, especially when it comes to our favorite topic–ourselves. The world, however, is an objective entity. It rolls on. Whether we are sick or healthy, sad or happy, dead or alive, means nothing to it.

How, the subjective and reflective human asks, can something so beautiful (the world) remain so indifferent (uncaring), especially to someone as sensitive and thoughtful as me, myself, and I?

The theme of indifference not only preoccupied a set of poems I wrote, it also led me to unexpected places, one being a man I knew little (OK, nothing) about–a 16th-century Spanish soldier fascinated with courtly love and tales of brave knights (Don Quixote, anyone?). This Don became famous for other reasons. He became a saint in the Roman Catholic Church, a man called St. Ignatius of Loyola, now famous for founding the Jesuits.

The quixotic Ignatius turned the word “indifference” on its uncaring head. He saw it as a noble trait, one we all should seek.

What, you ask? Why be uncaring sorts when we’ve been taught otherwise since childhood? Because Ignatius meant that we should be “indifferent to all created things.” Good and bad, lovely and horrid, admirable and reprehensible.” Steel yourself and accept, in other words. This is your objective world in all its horror and glory.

This new interpretation of the word fascinates because it goes to our human weak point. Our subjectivity. Our love of self. Its precept is simple: We shouldn’t care if we are healthy or sick, enjoying ourselves or suffering, because whatever occurs is God’s will.

If you distrust matters religious, you can simply see it as fate or a case of Doris Day-like que sera sera. In which case, indifference looks almost like the Stoic’s shield. You are admired because you are indifferent to what life brings to you. You do not for a minute consider yourself special or deserving or the exception to everyone else’s rules.

In that case, being labeled “indifferent” becomes a red badge of courage. It is the defeat of selfishness and ego. And you thought word denotations were simple and well-behaved!

Have an indifferent day. If you dare.

A Poem about Translating Poems

poetry

index

Reading Zbigniew Herbert’s Collected Poems 1956-1998, I came across a poem that touches on a tough topic: translating poetry. Ironically, Herbert’s poem is translated, Polish to English, so it’s a level of weird on top of weird reading the poem.

What I like about Herbert is his combination of erudition and humor. Such a great pair! Interested in translation issues? Erudition? Humor, maybe? Give a listen:

On Translating Poetry
by Zbigniew Herbert

Like a clumsy bumblebee
he alights on a flower
bending the fragile stem
he elbows his way
through rows of petals
like pages of a dictionary
he wants in
where the fragrance and sweetness are
and though he has a cold
and can’t taste anything
he pushes on
until he bumps his head
against the yellow pistil

and that’s as far as he gets
it’s too hard
to push through the calyx
into the root
so the bee takes off again
he emerges swaggering
loudly humming:
I was in there
and those
who don’t take his word for it
can take a look at his nose
yellow with pollen

— translated by Alissa Valles

Amazon.com: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

poetry

amazon

When you utter the word “amazon” as in “dot com,” you get varied reactions. Many consumers love the behemoth for its convenience and price. They are loud in their praise and often in their clicks-to-cart. Many others are “closet amazon” fans. They talk the good talk about supporting small independent booksellers, but if they want a specific book (and they do) at the best price available (and they do), they order it from the privacy of their amazon-prime homes.

Of course, amazon is more than just books now. It hawks just about dot-com everything. And if you get into a problem with a delivery like I did a few weeks back, you get the best horrible customer service correspondence in the world. Long letters in need of an editor. Cookie-cutter apologies that sound as sincere and as empty of humanity as a Donald Trump rally.

In fact, when my 2-day delivery never showed up and I asked why, amazon customer service assured me it would arrive on Day 3. Then Day 4. Would you believe Day 5? Uh, no. So the amazon solution was this: To show they care and to assuage my alarm, they offered me a one-month extension of our amazon prime membership (retail value: $8.43).

I replied, “Button up your shirt because your heart’s falling out!” but they didn’t get the idiom and probably considered me an idiot. A brief glimpse of human irritation slipped out when the long-winded response (an amazon staple) included a reference to concern about my “precious time.” Sarcasm dot com. Even amazon customer service reps in need of an editor and a Strunk & White lesson on succinct writing are subject to it.

Which brings me to Barnes & Noble, the step-child in the behemoth bookselling world. I did the usual irate customer act and took my business elsewhere, elsewhere meaning Barnes & Ignoble. My amazon grudge order will arrive in a week or so, depending on pony changes (they ship Pony Express, apparently).

Still, these days, you can’t take behemoth booksellers for granted, just like you can’t take successful deliveries for granted. In an article in the New Republic, culture news editor Alex Shephard writes that the impending demise of B&N will hurt writers. No, not the rich-get-richer writers referenced in my last post. The little guys (includes 99.3% of poets). The rising stars. The literary outsiders. Here’s Shephard on what will happen if B&N goes the way of Borders:

“…Big-name authors, like Malcolm Gladwell or James Patterson, will probably be fine. So too will writers who specialize in romance, science fiction, manga, and commercial fiction—genres with devoted audiences, who have already gravitated to Amazon’s low prices. But Barnes & Noble is essential to publishers of literary fiction—the so-called “serious” works that get nominated for Pulitzers and National Book Awards. Without the initial orders Barnes & Noble places, and the visibility its shelves provide, breakout hits by relative unknowns—books like Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See or Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven—will suffer.

In a world without Barnes & Noble, risk-averse publishers will double down on celebrity authors and surefire hits. Literary writers without proven sales records will have difficulty getting published, as will young, debut novelists. The most literary of novels will be shunted to smaller publishers. Some will probably never be published at all. And rigorous nonfiction books, which often require extensive research and travel, will have a tough time finding a publisher with the capital to fund such efforts.

The irony of the age of cultural abundance is that it still relies on old filters and distribution channels to highlight significant works. Barnes & Noble and corporate publishers still have enormous strides to make in fully reflecting America’s rich diversity. But without them, the kinds of books that challenge us, that spark intellectual debates, that push society to be better, will start to disappear. Without Barnes & Noble, we’ll be adrift in a sea of pulp.” (The full article can be read here.)

Bad. Ugly, even. But amazon will just keep keeping on.

So maybe, in addition to supporting the little independent booksellers when you’re in their brick-and-mortar neighborhood, you can support one of the big guys on the ropes while you’re at it. For writers like us, the trickle-down economics of a Barnes & Noble implosion might just be the beginning of the end, also known as the end-of-publishing days.