poems

9 posts

You’re Not Getting Older; They’re Getting Younger

poetry

adroit

I once wrote a poem (it’s lying around here somewhere) about how young some of these doctors I’ve seen are getting. Do they really know what the hell they’re doing? I wondered. For some reason, I prefer seeing white-haired-but-healthy-looking sorts behind a scalpel. Behind a jet airliner’s controls, too.

But part of the Isaac Newton “for every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction” logic of the universe is that any society getting older is by necessity also getting younger. I mean, philosophy courses that start with syllogisms were the death of me, but this much I know.

One great example of this phenomenon is a newish poetry site called The Adroit Journal. Check out its ancient editor-in-chief. Move over, Methuselah! I sent some poems to this journal because I admired the poems already published there. Only after I clicked the “submit” button did I stumble upon the link to Adroit’s poetry readers.

Look again. Not a white-haired-but-healthy-looking sort in the line-up. Just healthy-looking. And very young-looking. The average age must be, what… 23 or less?

To me, this is a good thing for poetry. A very good thing. Some readers out there consider our fair outpost a bit too exotic for its own good. You know, poetry as precious kingdom. One ruled by a clique in a tower with its own rules.

Something tells me Adroit’s poetry readers have little use for rules and even less for ivory-towered kingdoms. They just know what they like and publish it.

The moral of this story? The world is not getting older; it’s getting younger. And that includes The Poetry World. Thank God and other deities…

Talking with the Buddha of Poetry (Part 2)

poetry

buddha2

Q: Do you see any return in popularity to form poetry?

A: It’s impossible to say. Certainly there are proponents and practitioners. Some poets are of a mathematical mind, which surprises many readers but shouldn’t. Meter and rhyme bring different skills to the table. Read the masters who fill poetry anthologies. While you may find variations on a theme (Shakespearean vs. Petrarchan sonnets, for example), it’s nothing like now where any 14-line poem is knighted as “sonnet.” It takes a free-verse imagination to call every orange an apple. (Laughs) Why can’t a 14-line poem just be a 14-line poem? Must it be a “sonnet” no matter what? Can we not love it by any other name, to coin Shakespeare?

Q: Wait. Was that an answer?

A: Not really. I must be running for higher office.

Q: Speaking of, what do you think of political poetry?

A: Again, we come to semantics. What do you mean by political? If it’s to change a reader’s view, even on the simplest concept, it can said to be political. Definitions of argument writing or persuasive writing are also problematic. It can be said that writing designed to inform or to entertain is at the same time making an argument, because knowledge from information has the power to change the reader’s perception. Ditto humor. It can be a form of ethos, finding humor in unexpected places, inspiring respect and appreciation. So yes, both overtly and covertly, politics has a place in poetry, but it need not be as obvious and painful as an “Ode to Donald Trump’s Hippocampus.”

Q: Are there any out-of-bounds topics for poetry, then?

A: I hope not, though there might be topics in poor taste or ill-advised topics. The non-poetry reading public has this notion that poetry chiefly concerns itself with love and nature. It is essential, then, that poems be written about most everything and anything (including love and nature, of course). As the prophet says in Ecclesiastes, there is nothing new under the sun anyway, so we might as well look for variations on a theme of everything. There’s no choice but…

Q: Do you read the Bible?

A: The King James Version is poetry, no? How many titles and allusions have come from this great book? It’s a shame some public schools avoid it in the name of church and state boundaries. The Bible can be taught as literature, too. In fact, it is essential if readers are to understand the many allusions made to it in their reading of literature. Unfamiliarity with the Bible and Greek mythology, to name two, has hurt modern readers’ ability to fully understand what they’re reading. The shift to quick and passive entertainment in general (TV, Internet, video games, et.) has hurt reading, vocabulary acquisition, and therefore comprehension in general. As citizens of the world, we suffer a great loss because of this. But now I’m answering questions I wasn’t asked.

Q: Do you support the Poet Laureate movement, wherein you have Poet Laureates to individual states, towns, etc.?

A: (Laughs) Oh, yes. Every marketing gambit you can make, by all means. Poetry on subways, on sidewalks, on walls, in newspapers and magazines, on NASCAR racers’ helmets, etc. It has a place as much as America’s much-beloved advertisements for goods. Get poetry out of the margins, the shadows. It is a sun-loving organism. Only at high noon in full sun will it shed the stereotypes that have grown like moss upon it.

Q: Which are?

A: That it is frighteningly esoteric. That it is an insiders’ game. That it is for a highbrow club of snobs in smoking jackets. That it is only good if people are left scratching their heads, going, “Huh?”

Q: So what can poetry do to help itself?

A: Be. Laugh. Breathe. And if there be pretenders in love with the concept of old stereotypes, let them have their private country clubs. Open your poetry to the public and find like-minded poets. There are plenty out there and, like anything else, numbers will only make them stronger.

Q: Thank you!

Talking with the Buddha of Poetry (Part 1)

poetry

buddha

I had a chance to visit an oft-published (now there’s an infrequent modifier) poet of late, a calm and reasonable man who sipped Kusmi tea (French? Russian?) and tossed bon mots (French!) with gentle abandon. As a newly-published, newly-perplexed acolyte, I had plenty of questions. He didn’t lack for opinions. Here are a few:

Q: I don’t want to go all chicken-and-egg on you, but which should it be–write for yourself or write for prospective readers?

A: It is a non-question. You write for yourself and, if it speaks to the human condition that is in you, it will speak to the human condition that is in your readers. We are all unique, yet the same. Life flourishes on shady banks of paradox and irony.

Q: Why is the reading of poetry declining?

A: Is it? Poetry hides in fiction. It has even infiltrated non-fiction, or what we sometimes call “creative non-fiction,” perhaps. I don’t see it declining so much as assimilating.

Q: But poetry packaged and sold as poetry in books. The sales are dismal. The readership is anemic.

A: With few exceptions, it is as it always has been. Veneration of poetry is also cultural, more prevalent in some countries and languages than others. Schools have done poetry no favors, either. In some cases, poets themselves are guilty of self-inflicted wounds.

Q: Meaning?

A: Meaning when people compare a poem to “modern art” in a scoffing tone, they feel the work is purposely impenetrable and meaningless. If it is so obtuse it can mean anything to any reader, it becomes the punch line to a joke in the public eye. If it is a secret shared by an elect few, it becomes the poetic equivalent of the 1%.

Q: Some argue that poetry, both writing it and reading it, is too precious for its own good. Your thoughts?

A: Labeling is too precious for its own good.

Q: Why do you write?

A: Expression is by nature imperfect, and just as man is driven by the desire to know, to destroy all mystery with his curiosity, the poet is driven by the desire to capture nameless feelings in writing that has a name. It can never be, really, but the desire to make it be is what makes writing worthwhile, beautiful, and human.

Q: Do you reread your own work?

A: (laughs) If not me, who? I read my work aloud to myself, a separate me. Of course, I read other poets’ work aloud, too. I must nurture my ears as much as my eyes.

…to be continued

You Won’t Find This Quiz on Goodreads*

Goodreads poetry The Indifferent World

*But if you did and took it, you’d probably be in first place thanks to this sneak preview.

Nota bene: This quiz is for experts–that is, anyone who has ever read a poem (ANY poem, even “Roses Are Red–Still”). Having read The Indifferent World itself is not a requirement. It only helps a little, I promise. So go ahead. Impress yourself!

What is this poetry collection about, anyway?

___ Non-GMO Corn Flakes
___ John Calvin, predestination, and midnight Skip-Bo games in Plymouth
___ our world
___ nobody knows

What does “indifferent” mean, anyway?

___ quiet, shy
___ perspicacious
___ shrinking
___ Who cares?

How many rhyming poems will I find in this book, anyway?

___ one
___ eleven
___ twenty-one
___ none, which makes it more fun

In an earlier Goodreads life, the author went by what pseudonym, anyway?

___ Bwana
___ Newengland
___ Talleyrand
___ Alfred E. Newman

What lake is pictured on the cover of The Indifferent World, anyway?

___ Lago Maggiore (Frederick Henry’s favorite in A FAREWELL TO ARMS)
___ Lake Tahoe (Mark Twain’s favorite in ROUGHING IT)
___ Lake Victoria (Queen Victoria’s favorite in Africa)
___ Lake Anon (Anon Ymous’s favorite in Goodreads quizzes)

What is the author’s favorite infinitive, anyway?

___ to eat
___ to sleep
___ perchance to dream
___ to craft

After writing a novel (unpublished), a collection of vignettes (unpublished), and numerous short stories (unpublished), why did this author choose to write poems at such a very late age, anyway?

___ It was free (verse).
___ He was out of options.
___ He met a Muse on Facebook.
___ It was the only genre to take the “un-” out of “published.”

The first poem in this collection is about what pressing social issue, anyway?

___ A hunter choosing to shoot a deer.
___ A hunter choosing NOT to shoot a deer.
___ A hunter choosing to watch “Bambi” or “Old Yeller” on Wednesday night.
___ We’re going to build a wall.

According to GR reviewer Alex, poetry is WHAT, anyway?

___ “…sublime” (as opposed to sub-lemon)
___ “…supreme among the arts.”
___ “…like an onion left in the root cellar too long.”
___ “…dumb.”

How difficult was it to create ten questions about a 98-page poetry collection containing 80 poems, one that POETRY magazine said nothing about and THE NEW YORKER chimed in with “We’ll second that!” anyway?

___ very
___ very
___ very
___ all of the above

Answer key:

Do you really need one?

WHAT IT MEANS:

None Correct: Now that’s indifferent (then again, who cares?)

1-2 Correct: You know, infinitive! A verb with to in front of it….

3-4 Correct: Poetry. You’ve heard of it, right?

5-6 Correct: It was the sub-lemon that threw you, right?

7-8 Correct: Very, very, very (all of the above) good!

9 Correct: Call Mr. T! You’re on the A-Team!

10 Correct: You know me better than I know me. Drop me a line, why don’t you. I’m still trying to find myself and California’s a long way aways.

Ekphrastic Poetry (of a Sort)

poetry The Indifferent World

november

“Ekphrasis” is a Greek word meaning “description.” In poetry, it conjures a poem describing a painting or sculpture. Using the adjective form, we get “ekphrastic poetry,” and although I have not written about a painting or a sculpture, I have written about a photograph.

Is this “ekphrastic poetry”? Durned if I know. I suppose strict interpretation sorts will say, “Sorry, but no,” but strict interpretation sorts aren’t allowed on my lawn, so I’ll take credit for one ekphrastic poem even though it’s shy about announcing itself as such.

It is “Provide, Provide” (thank you, Robert Frost), and what I love about the photograph (besides its inspirational value) is its symbolism. It shows an old Maine farmhouse in November. The perimeter of the concrete foundations are skirted with rectangular bales of hay. Nearby is a wood shed filled neatly with cut wood. Photograph or no, you can almost smell the scent of the wood, the shavings, the cold November air.

And the old man who has authored it? Been doing it all his life. Taught by his father, no doubt. All business. Old New England. Taciturn, but seemingly saying, “Bring it on, Old Man Winter!” (And Old Man Winter never disappoints.)

Here’s what became of the photograph when it took on an alter ego in words:

Provide, Provide

Clem buttresses that old house
with bales of hay against the foundation,
rivets metal roofing over buckled
tar paper, and feeds his splitter, revealing
the striated blond bellies of halved maple
logs and spewing the fine dust of sweet
wood into his khaki-confettied hair.
As if he sat at Job’s knee as a child,
that old man stacks his wood into a cord,
builds a square meal for his winter stove,
and doesn’t glance up once at the leaden
bottoms of November’s indifferent clouds.

— Ken Craft, The Indifferent World (Future Cycle Press, 2016)

Like Frost, I’m a fan of the fall. Summer heat and humidity are OK in small doses, but the cool-to-damned-cold autumn? I never tire of it. Stark realism, thank you. The world without pretensions or make-up (I’m talking after the leaf show, folks). A season custom designed for the Protestant work ethic if ever there was one. No room for old slackers.

And then there is Clem and his splitter. The wonderful look and texture of cut wood. The stacking into a new design (order as beauty). The concomitant feeling of satisfaction and fatigue.

Oh, yes. And the ant ascendant. Grasshoppers and their cellphones are long vanquished from the scene.

Providence (sans Rhode Island) at its best!

Playing Favorites with Your Own Poems

Goodreads poetry publishing

weathercock

As any parent knows, you don’t play favorites among your kids. You can HAVE a favorite, of course, but you take that scandalous secret to your grave. If you have a toothpick of common sense, that is.

For your children, circumspection is clearly called for, but what about your poems? Publish a book and people will inevitably ask, “So, which one is your favorite poem in the entire collection?” Sharing this knowledge will lead people to flip to that page and read that poem, so you hedge. What if they don’t like what you have crowned “the best” and think it’s so-so? They will assume the rest of the book is so much poetically-licensed garbage (see Jersey Turnpike, Exit 157), that’s what.

OK. Maybe I exaggerate. Slightly. In fact, although I’d rather know what my readers’ favorite poems are (which I don’t ask because it presumes they’ve read the book cover-to-cover–a healthy presumption), I will admit here that I do have favorites (plural, thank you). Having more than one is safer (the old “safety in numbers” adage). One of them is the second poem in the collection, “Barnstorming the Universe,” which first appeared in the Spring 2015 issue of Off the Coast, that estimable poetry journal from Maine.

Why do I like this poem so much? It’s playful. And it harbors a story (but then, most poems do, kind of like the “surprise inside” you expect from a box of Cracker Jacks). Here’s the poem. Ostensibly it’s about an old leaning barn in Maine. Ostensibly.

“Barnstorming the Universe”

The big barn must have landed
overnight, the jolt of its descent
crippling one side so the whole
structure leans south. The white
paint, curly from reentry, looks
foolish as a washed cat.
The roof, too, shows evidence
of atmospheric stress, the mottled
landscape of its green top—tar
paper from missing shingles
probably scattered from Pittsburgh
to Poughkeepsie—having the look
of some moody old bass lurking
in the shallows, scales flaked and
grated at the speed of light.
Incredibly, atop the cupola, a rusted
and outraged weathercock still claws
the ridge. His wattle and comb hang
sideways, one eye searching for
intergalactic beetles, black-backed
fugitives from Andromeda or the
Crab Nebula. A sliding door is ajar,
exhaling the stench of stardust,
of Saturnine ring particulate, of dead
Martians matted on rotted hay.
In the side window, a single shard
of glass clings to the sash. If only
the barn could speak of the yawning
silences, of the teeming nothingness
that peered inside as it hurtled
its way home to this Maine field.

–Ken Craft, The Indifferent World (Future Cycle Press, 2016)

In the summer, I run 5-8 miles most every morning, and when I do, I pass this barn on the top of Mayberry Hill. It is, in fact, nowhere near as bad as this poem says it is, but the roof! The roof was the image that inspired this poem. Some shingles are there and others are missing, giving it a mottled green and black look and reminding me of the scales on an old fish that has been through the wars. Atop that roof is a tilting weathercock which no longer abides by orders, the wind’s or God’s.

From those two visuals, I imagined a leaning, disheveled barn that landed overnight in the middle of a Maine field–a barn that had witnessed things that NASA’s astronauts had not even seen.

Barns with a history like that belong on the endangered structures list. I don’t care what condition they’re in. Thus we get the shingles “scattered from Pittsburgh/to Poughkeepsie,” the “rusted/and outraged weathercock” clawing the ridge, and–my favorite–the “stench of stardust,/of Saturnine ring particulate, of dead/Martians matted on rotted hay.”

If you’ve ever wondered how runners pass the time as they jog along country roads, wonder no more! Their bodies may be on automatic pilot, but their minds? God only knows. Some planet the Starship Enterprise sailed past, maybe. All the poet has to do is make his entry in the Captain’s log when he gets home and downs his chocolate milk. Sometimes that leads to favorite poems, even.

Just don’t tell anyone. Because it’s only one of them. Honest.

Reading Your Book Like Mom Would

poetry

50s family

Is publishing poetry with references to family hazardous to your health? In a weak moment, I decided to test the theory by reading the proof of my poetry collection (I still remain bookless–where’s Dan-O when you need him?) with my mom’s possible reactions in mind.

Bad, meet move!

Like most of us, I know my mother all too well. Of course I hope she responds to the book positively, but reading from her vantage point changed everything. I noticed stuff I never noticed before, using her eyes, and I can already hear her reaction: “Oh, Kenny!” (for only Mom still calls me “Kenny”). “Why are all these poems about death?”

“Uh, they are? Not all. Just some,” I might argue. But mothers get to define “some” in their own ways.

“Some?” she’ll ask with the patented incredulous look. “Where’s my cheerful little boy?”

“Ma, death is one of literature’s great muses. Don’t you ever wonder where you’re going to go? It’s the stuff of so many myths in so many cultures!”

“Have you been skipping Mass again?”

“Think of Orpheus. Persephone. All those trip to Hades to figure out what happens. And what about the Divine Comedy? Nine circle of Hell, Ma. Nine!”

“That would be Irene’s book group get-togethers, but I don’t see…”

“Don’t you realize that guys like Homer and Faulkner and Joyce wrote about it? It even came for the archbishop in that Willa Cather novel!”

“Willa who?”

“Death Comes for the Archbishop, Ma.”

She’ll grimace, I know. “That’s fine and for the church to settle, but we don’t have time for death, and I told my friends about this book because I was so proud. Now what are they going to think? They’re going to think, ‘What a depressing boy she raised!’ Where’s your sense of humor. Can’t you write something cheerful? A poem about jelly beans or something.”

“There are cheerful poems in there, Ma. Honest. And I don’t write for the Easter bunny. Here. Let me show you some pages with upbeat poems.”

“It’s OK, dear. I browsed through already.”

“What? You didn’t read them all?”

“Most all,” she’ll say. Mothers get to define “most” and “all” too, you see.

And so it goes. And so I am amazed. Deep analysis sometimes reveals new layers of poetry, but who knew reading with the eyes of a mother does, too? And how did the New Critics miss this?

Weekend Update: I have no clue how my alleged books are arriving: United Parcel? Fed Ex? Good ole United States Postal Service? The latter was the last hope of the weekend, however, as the noonish mailman has come and gone leaving only bills and other clichés in the box.

So there’s a downside to weekends after all. Maybe Monday? Stay tuned!

Tracking My Book Frontiersman-Like

poetry

Today I bumped into an excited colleague. “Hey, I got your book yesterday. So exciting! I’m just bummed I forgot to bring it in for you to sign!”

“My book? You held a copy of my book? In your hands?”

Her smile shifted a little. “Ye-e-es,” she said slowly. “You know: The Indifferent World? Some 80 poems or so?”

I had to shake my head to clear it. “Uh, no. Not to worry. It’s just… I haven’t seen my book. Er. Other than pretty online pictures, I mean.”

“What? How?” She reached out and touched my sleeve. My sleeve appreciated it.

“You see, my wife got carried away and ordered a gross of the things. Maybe she thinks our families are bigger than they are. Maybe she thinks we’re Mormon or good Catholics or something. So I’m afraid the size of this delivery is slowing it down. You know how delivery services are allergic to bulk.”

She laughed. “Ah, well, maybe this weekend.” The bell rang. Kids streamed into the hallway. “Gotta go!” she said. “Maybe I’ll read a few this weekend!”

So cool and casual. So happy. So has-my-book-harbored-in-her-house-and-shows-it.

I decided then and there. I’m going Natty Bumppo. Or Dan’l Boone, maybe. I put on my coonskin hat (wait… Davy Crockett, is it?) and decided to track this baby down, frontiersman-like. It’s unfair, after all, that people are holding my book before I get to. It’s like having a baby, seeing it whisked away, then hearing stories of nurses passing it around to coo at. Surely this is against the Geneva Convention or something! The Articles of Confederation? How about the Federalist Papers? I was against them when I was in school.

I got to work: On the computer, I saw that my book delivery had cleared Amish Country. As you’ll recall from yesterday, it was last seen there with a big GODOT stamp on it. Some twisted Amish-type thought it’d be funny to give it the horse and buggy treatment or something.

But now it was in Knickerbocker, NY. That’s one state away from Massachusetts! I had half a mind to drive the Mass Pike myself, Boston to Stockbridge (a reverse James Taylor). But no… deep breaths…stay calm. I already know what’s in this book. Every blessed poem. So what’s the big deal? What’s the rush?

Bottom line: I’m distracting myself. And as UPS hasn’t swung by yet, wondering maybe if Big Brown will put me out of my misery. This is Friday, after all! Genesis of the weekend! Give me reason to celebrate, people! Stop being so… INDIFFERENT!

(Stay tuned.)

Waiting for Godot

poetry

amish

The first days of being a published author have been, as you might expect, strange and wonderful yet mundane. Strangest has been my decision to share news about the book before I even had it in my hands. Many ordered it ipso fasto and, thanks to the Amazonian Gods, got it, too.

This creates the unusual situation where readers have a physical copy of the book before author does. Mine? They’re en route. Wending their way through Amish country, maybe. Stopping to smell the roses (poems do that, damn them). So I’m waiting. Waiting for a box stamped Godot.

The wonderful part? How kind and generous people have been with their congratulations and offers to read the book. Which is more than a little nerve racking. Yes, many poems are autobiographical and thus personal. But many others are designed to be read through the medium of a “speaker”–even a fictional first-person speaker sometimes. So it will be interesting to see what people think.

One friend said she really didn’t “get” poetry. I said welcome to the club. I don’t “get” all the poems I read, either. And one thing I’ve learned from my students over the years is that sometimes readers “get” things that writers never intend, which is great! Once I wrote a poem for a lesson in class and kids dug up symbolism I never even planted. Still, I enjoyed the harvest. It’s what I love best about poetry.

So, yes. Everyday life goes on. The “woke up, got out of bed, dragged a comb across my head…” thing. But it’s both the same and not the same. Same me, just more trips to the mailbox….