I recently received a few contributor copies of Barn Owl Review #2 (Thanks, Mary Biddinger!). My poem "They're coming to get us" appears in the issue (on page 16) along with a lot of other great poetry, fiction, and essays.

In fact, quite a few poets with ties to Poetic Asides appeared in this issue. April PAD Challenge guest judges Seth Abramson, Edward Byrne, and J.P. Dancing Bear are published in this issue. Bear, of course, was also recently interviewed on the blog (click here to read the interview). And another interview subject, Nin Andrews, also appears in this issue of Barn Owl Review (click here to read my interview with Nin).

It's always cool to get a publication credit (whether online or in print), but there's something extra cool about holding a journal and knowing your poem is in it. And since I'm so connected to Ohio, I really appreciate the Ohiotica in the Contributors' Notes (not to mention the ad for Clampco: Worldwide Clamping Specialists).

To check out more about Barn Owl Review, go to www.barnowlreview.com.

It's not every day that I get an opportunity to interview a former poet laureate. So when I was afforded the chance to read Patricia Fargnoli's Duties of the Spirit (Tupelo Press), I jumped at the chance to interview the former New Hampshire Poet Laureate (her term ended earlier this year).

Though Fargnoli is a retired psychotherapist, she just published her first collection of poems Necessary Light (Utah State University Press) in 1999. And has made her presence felt in the poetry community in a very short period of time with another full-length collection and chapbook in the same 10-year span. Oh yeah, Fargnoli is also in the final stages of publishing another collection with Tupelo Press.

Here's one of my favorites (I have many) from Duties of the Spirit:

The Undeniable Pressure of Existence

I saw the fox running by the side of the road
past the turned-away brick faces of the condominiums
past the Citco gas station with its line of cars and trucks
and he ran, limping, gaunt, matted dull haired
past Jim's Pizza, past the Wash-O-Mat
past the Thai Garden, his sides heaving like bellows
and he kept running to where the interstate
crossed the state road and he reached it and ran on
under the underpass and beyond it past the perfect
rows of split-levels, their identical driveways
their brookless and forestless yards,
and from my moving car, I watched him,
helpless to do anything to help him, certain he was beyond
any aid, any desire to save him, and he ran loping on,
far out of his element, sick, panting, starving,
his eyes fixed on some point ahead of him,
some possible salvation
in all this hopelessness, that only only he could see.

*****

What are you currently up to?

On March 22, I finished my 3 1/2-year term as New Hampshire's Poet Laureate.   And my new book, Then, Something, which is due to be published in fall by Tupelo Press, is at the publishers and soon to go into production.  We've already decided on the cover.  I've also recently finished work with two private tutorial students...all of which should mean that I could rest a while, and, hopefully, turn my energies toward writing new work. But March's calendar is full of readings I want to attend and lunches with poet/friends and teaching my private class.  And April's only a little freer.  The last week in April and the beginning of May I'm going to The Dorset Writer's Colony in Vermont for a week  (and would go longer if I didn't have a cat and no one for him to live with in my absence).  In June, I'm teaching at an Elderhostel for a week, and leading an Ekphrasis workshop in July and a workshop for Teachers in August.  In between, I'm giving a couple of readings....and will be working at proofreading my manuscript for the press...and writing a reader's guide. Whew!  Would you believe I've been "retired" for 10 years now?

You've just recently finished up a stint as New Hampshire's Poet Laureate. What were your duties? Were you able to accomplish everything you wanted?

As poet laureate, I had no official duties.  Some poet laureates do a little or nothing; some do a lot. I like that what I did was left entirely up to me so that I could use the skills and interests I have in the way I wanted to.  I'd decided from the outset that I wanted to do something for children, something for libraries and something for New Hampshire poets.  And I'm proud that I accomplished all three. With the support of the NH State Library, The Writer's Project and the NH Council on the Arts, I was able to recruit 43 poet-volunteers from around the state, and to organize a "Children's Poetry Day in the Libraries Day" the first April after I was elected. The Governor issued a proclamation proclaiming April 14th as statewide "Children's Poetry Day;"  and each volunteer put on a program for children in a library near him/her.  We published articles in almost every regional magazine promoting the importance of poetry in children's lives and served about 350 children and parents on that day.

I also initiated (again with the help of Art Council personnel) a "New Hampshire Poets Showcase" link to the Arts Council website.  Every two weeks we featured a new NH poet with a poem, bio, photo, links and a paragraph about how their poem came to be. 

I also did readings and workshops around the state and attended civil functions occasionally. And I delivered a poem at the Governor's Inauguration.

When I look back at what I accomplished I'm amazed that I could do it.  I had reservations about accepting the position in the beginning because of some chronic health problems that have limited my mobility and energy.  But I'm glad I didn't turn it down; the position was life-enriching. I made many friends and have some wonderful memories.

When and why did you begin publishing poetry?

I began writing and studying poetry seriously when I was in my mid-30's in a graduate class with Brendan Galvin at Central CT State University.  Along with 7 other women who became my close friends (and are to this day), I took the class for several years.  My first poems were published in Tendril (which has been gone for years) and Poet Lore.  In fact, Brendan sent out my work to Tendril without telling me and when, one of the poems was accepted, he called me from his vacationing on Cape Cod to give me the news.

I was hooked.  I've always loved poetry and had written it earlier...publishing in the high school newspaper etc., but I knew nothing then about contemporary poetry and the only two poets' names I was familiar with were Sylvia Plath and Robert Lowell.  However, it was many years later, when I was 62, that I published my first book, Necessary Light, after Mary Oliver chose it as the May Swenson Award winner.

The "why" is harder to explain.  Besides the love of poetry, there's the challenge of getting what can't be easily said into words; the thrill of connecting in a deep way to readers,  the adrenaline rush when you open an acceptance letter and the way writing a poem can somehow make sense of your life.

Do you have any method to where and when you submit your poems?

Hmmm.  I usually submit about 3 times a year....in late September,  January, and maybe June (to those journals that accept summer submissions).  But this isn't rigid and if I have some poems I want to send out and have the time, I'll send them.  I have a list of journals I'd like to have my poems in...a rather long list.  Over the years, I've subscribed to many of them and I know what kind of work they take.  I believe strongly that poets shouldn't be expecting editors to publish them if they, themselves, aren't supporting the work of presses, literary journals, and other poets.

I only occasionally do simultaneous submissions because it's hard to keep track of them. But I do them more lately because I am 71 and time is passing far too quickly...I can't afford to wait a year to hear results anymore...especially since the competition is so fierce and rejection so frequent.  And when I do submit simultaneously, I don't send to more than 3 journals at a time, or to journals that don't accept them.   But other than that, I have no specific method.

Duties of the Spirit (Tupelo Press) won the Jane Kenyon Poetry Book Award and your first collection Necessary Light (Utah State University Press) won the May Swenson Book Award. What do you think makes a good collection?

Oh Robert, it is so, so subjective!  I've several times been a judge or early-round judge of a book competition so I've read hundreds of manuscripts and I can tell what impresses me....though it probably would be different for someone else.  At the top of my list is "Vision."   I mean that the book presents the poet's unique way of looking at the world....some fragment of the whole.  And the poems must "matter" and, when taken together, seem like a cohesive whole (even though there may be single poems that are different from most of the others)....I don't have patience with the superficial or pretentious language that reveals nothing when you look under it.  I look for depth.  Craft matters to me greatly. And once I gave top prize to a book (a novel in verse) mainly because I fell in love with the "voice" of the protagonist. (He was an ironic everyman.) Of course, the craft was impeccable too.

What do you look for in a good poem?

Depth, beauty, spirit, craft, sound, humanity.  Sometimes fracturing and remaking of reality, so that I as a reader can see a thing newly. Some news to help me understand my own life and its meaning.

In Duties of the Spirit, you deal with nature and aging--even confronting death. These topics are big and well-traveled, yet you make them your own. I'm sure part of your success comes back to revision. So, how much time do you commit to revision? And how do you know a poem is done?

Revision is, for me, the process by which a poem comes into being. My early drafts are terrible.  I often overwrite pushing myself past all the voices in my head that say "Ugh" just in order to get words onto the page where they can be worked at.  I then will do maybe 3 or 4 quick revisions and put it away for at least a few days.  Then I work at it again.  If I can get it into what begins to feel to me like a poem and I'm as far as I can go, I'll bring it to one of my workshops (there are 2; one of them is online). That usually results in another revision. I have what I call my "WP file,"  which stands for "Working Poems."   The revised draft (if I'm still not satisfied which is usually the case) goes into that file...and periodically, I'll pull it up and work some more.

In later drafts, often, I'm picking at single words, or perhaps upping the ante on a phrase that feels flat...or experimenting with shifting the order around or changing line-breaks...that kind of thing.  I've often worked this way on a poem for years before I'm satisfied...if I ever am. And even when I send out a poem, I'll later revise it... or even after it's published.  I don't know when a poem is done....it's mostly just let go.

I think of revision as being like a sculptor with a block of marble.  The poet chips and chips away at the poem until the real poem (hopefully) emerges from the block of words.

Who (or what) have you been reading recently?

I read poetry every day...and not just a little. I have 7 bookcases (3 of them tall ones) in my 2 room apartment and they are all filled with books of poetry. I spend more on poetry than I do on anything else except food and rent.  Currently on my bedstand (which means I'm reading them) are: Robert Hass Time and Materials (which I'm reading for the second time); Mary Oliver's New Evidence; Louise Gluck's Averno (also reading for the 2nd time); Borges This Craft of Verse; Rebecca Seiferle, Bitters; BAP, Charles Wright, ed;  Henri Coles, Blackbird and Wolf; Charles Bennett's How to Make a Woman Out of Water; Ruth Stone's What Love Comes to; The Making of A Sonnet, Edward Hirsch and Eavan Boland; Dante's Divine Comedy; and the current issues of several journals: The Georgia Review, Shenandoah,The Harvard Review and The American Poetry Journal.

On order are Ann Fisher-Wirth's Carta Marina and Jack Gilbert's new book (which I've forgotten the name of).

If you could offer only one piece of advice to your fellow poets, what would it be?

Read, read, read, and support other poets, publishers and the poetry community.

*****

To learn more about Patricia Fargnoli, check out her website at www.patriciafargnoli.com.

Gregory K. Pincus wanted to share the following announcement from his blog about April: http://gottabook.blogspot.com/2009/03/announcing-30-poets30-days.html

Basically, he's going to post a previously unpublished poem by a different children's poet each day in April, including poets like Jack Prelutsky, Jane Yolen, Nikki Giovanni, and many more.

Should be fun reading for all ages!

So I'm excited that some of our April PAD Challenge participants will have a chance to be featured in a well-designed eBook. The purpose of this project is not to exclude participants but to shine light on some of the very good poetry that happens on this blog in April. If you were here last year, you know what I mean.

Well, here's how the April PAD Challenge eBook is going to work. I'm going to make the deadline for consideration at midnight on April 30 (whether you're posting a poem to Day 1, Day 30, or sometime between). At that point, I'm going to go through each day (possibly with the help of my amazingly awesome wife and poet, Tammy) and select a Top 5 for each day.

(Note: As you know, a Top 5 in poetry is very, very subjective. And if this year is anything like last year, there is bound to be a ton of great poems each and every day. So please don't have any bruised feelings if you're not in this group.)

So, I choose a Top 5 each day. 5 poems per day X 30 days = 150 poems, right? But only the Top 50 poems during the month will appear in the eBook. And this is how we'll narrow it down:

* I'll be passing a group of Top 5 poems for each day to a guest judge (list below). That guest judge will pick a favorite from the Top 5 list to be the top of the day. So that'll take care of 30 of the 50 poems.

* I'll then pick out 20 from the 120 remaining poems. That'll get us to 50 poems.

Last year, more than 400 poets submitted more than 4,000 poems. So I definitely want y'all to know just how exceptional these 50 poems poems will be. And that those who are selected should feel proud, and those who aren't should feel just as good about themselves.

Apart from making it into the eBook, all those who complete the April PAD Challenge this year should receive a certificate of completion and badge for their websites/blogs (as we did last year). Plus, you should be able to make plenty of new friends (as we did last year).

So, here's the very distinguished list of judges (who are all volunteering their time and effort to the cause for free):

* Seth Abramson
* Sandra Beasley
* Shaindel Beers
* Mary Biddinger
* Jericho Brown
* Edward Byrne
* Sage Cohen
* J.P. Dancing Bear
* Jim Daniels
* Mark Doty
* Annie Finch
* Nick Flynn
* Jeannine Hall Gailey
* Guy LeCharles Gonzalez
* Vince Gotera
* S.A. Griffin
* Tom C. Hunley
* Collin Kelley
* Amy King
* Dorianne Laux
* Alex Lemon
* Reb Livingston
* Diane Lockward
* Marilyn Nelson
* Aimee Nezhukumatathil
* Chad Prevost
* Don Share
* Martha Silano
* Patricia Smith
* Anne Tardos

If I were running a literary journal, I would be overwhelmed with joy to have these fine poets published within my pages. To have them volunteering their time to help us out here is a great honor. (And if you want to learn more about them, just click on their names above.)

I won't be revealing which days they're going to judge (even to the judges themselves) until after the April 30 midnight deadline. I have several reasons for this--not least among them that I want poets to focus on writing a poem-a-day in April (as opposed to writing only on particular days). Hey, I'll be writing every day; you should, too, right?

Anyway, I'm super excited, and I hope you are as well.

Soooo... What was that special updated news about the April PAD Challenge I was hinting at during yesterday's prompt? What got me all excited? Well...

My awesome writing community leader here at F+W has given the green light on making an eBook anthology for the top 50 poems from the April PAD Challenge. This eBook will be designed by our F+W design team and will be made available for free to anyone and everyone. Isn't that awesome?!?

The eBook will include 50 poems (30 poems will be the top poem from each day's prompt; the other 20 poems will be the best of the rest). And yes, I don't mean to say that the 50 poems in the eBook will literally be the best, since that's super subjective, but it will be 50 excellent poems from the many, many, many that are part of the challenge.

But wait! Could it get even better?

This morning, pondering making the announcement of the eBook, I thought, Hey! I wonder if I could gather some guest judges to judge each day's top poem. Hmm...

Soooo, long-story short: I've already lined up 10 guest judges with 20 more to come. As soon as I have all 30 judges (for 30 days) confirmed, I'll send around another update that lists them.

I didn't think I could be even more excited about this year's challenge than last year's, but... Wow!

We'll still be offering the certificate and badge to people who complete the 30-day challenge. And I'll send around complete rules when we get even closer to April, but I just wanted to share the awesomely amazing news!

Jericho Brown worked as the speechwriter for the Mayor of New Orleans before receiving his Ph.D. in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Houston. He also holds an M.F.A. from the University of New Orleans and a B.A. from Dillard University, and he has served as poetry editor at Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts. His poems have appeared in Callaloo, The Iowa Review, jubilat, New England Review, and Prairie Schooner. The recipient of the Bunting Fellowship at Harvard University, a Cave Canem Fellowship, and two travel fellowships to the Krakow Poetry Seminar in Poland, Brown is currently an Assistant Professor of English at the University of San Diego where he teaches creative writing.  Western Michigan University's New Issues Poetry & Prose published his first book, Please.

Brown's name has been flying around quite a bit recently--with multiple poets either praising his collection Please (New Issues) or e-mailing me directly to ask if I'd interview him. That's not typical. So, I hunted him down, and he took some time out of his busy schedule to let me interview him.

His collection Please was a great read from the very beginning. He even names the first section Repeat, which is funny, because I felt like repeating the experience of reading the beginning once I finished the end. But I'll let his words do the talking--this being one of my favorite pieces in the collection:

Why I Cannot Leave You

You bring home the food. I'm your hungry man,
Captive damsel dragged by the hair from her favorite
Streetlight to the trap of your tower, hollow icebox,
No magnets with things-to-do. No rules. It wouldn't
Be fair--you bring home the food--you can't read
Or write. I pace, check the window for my hunter. You
Bring home food and toss it onto the card table.
My teeth barely miss my fingertips--I rip
Into the bag. You like to kiss me, my mouth
Packed with the faintest franchise you could find, animal
Blood at each lip. Say carnivore, and I kiss back. I eat
My meat rare. You bare your sharpest grin. Bum
I say I love, you're my place to stay. We're against the law.
No one keeps me big as you. Fatten me, sweet ogre.
Get me some meat. Bring home food. Feed.

*****

What are you currently up to?

I'm trying to get a hold of any footage I can that shows news anchors Max Robinson and Jessica Savitch in action.  I'm working on a few poems about and in the voices of the two of them as well as poems based on scriptures from the Bible.  The second book is tentatively titled The New Testament, and I just learned that I got a Bunting Fellowship which should give me plenty of time for writing.  

I'm grateful that I've been traveling a lot in order to give readings.  I now get to meet really interesting people from all over the nation who love good poetry.  Also, I try to make sure I have enough reading material to keep me busy on planes.

Other than that, I go to the gym a lot.  I eat a lot.  I talk with friends over the phone a lot.  I teach a lot and read a lot in preparation for teaching.  I usually go clubbing when I get the chance because I like flirting and dancing.

Please is your debut collection of poems. How long did you go about getting them together and published?

The oldest drafts of some poems in Please were written in 2000, and I wrote them when I first attended the Cave Canem workshop/retreat for African American poets.  Some poems were first drafted 2007, the same year New Issues asked to publish the book. 

But seven years seems dishonest when I think of how I'm prone to reading and thinking more than to writing.  In the last eight years of my life, there were times I couldn't stop writing. Over a short period of weeks, I'd have many drafts of very different things and begin to think I may be quite literally possessed. Once, I actually had a car accident trying to get some scribbling done while driving. These periods were thrilling for me, but during them, I felt vulnerable in a way I have a hard time characterizing.

At other times, for periods as long as two years within the last eight, I didn't write at all. I couldn't even think to revise. This is, of course, painful and scary in a very different way. Today, I think I managed to get through these silences because I was much more interested in figuring how to write poems than I was in how to write a book. I had no goal other than the poem itself and could almost satisfy my yearnings to write by reading and discovering other poets. 

The voices are strong in Please. Is there a type of sound or voice (or both) you go for in your writing?

I think of writing, first, as a process of listening and, second, as a process of embodying.  I don't know that I "go for" anything in particular because I try and leave as much as I can to instinct, intuition, and reflex—even in the final stages of revision. 

For me, poems usually begin with a line from which I do some vocal repeating and pushing in order to generate other lines.  The lines that follow the first one often mimic the sound or make what seems to me some sort of counter-sound based on the first one.  Then, because I'm so interested in both music and voice, I find myself trying to figure the personality of the sounds as I am composing.  At some point in the writing of a first draft, I start to take on the characteristics of the voice that is asking to be channeled.  An example of this might be something as simple as punching the computer if the voice is pissed to the point of violence. 

You have a very nice website. Did you put it together, or did your publisher? Also, how helpful do you think having a website is in spreading the word about your writing?

Thanks, Robert.  Jerichobrown.com is the brainchild of Nick Walker, one of my undergraduate students at the University of San Diego.  He's an amazing poet, and he writes wonderful fiction too.  Nick and I argued for more than a semester.  He insisted that the website would be necessary, and I kept reassuring him that I had enough to do without thinking about ways to publicize my book and spending mounds of money to do it. 

At any rate, Nick started making moves without me being aware of it, and the next thing I knew he had come in contact with Arlene Valdes, a very talented web designer who was looking to build a portfolio for her business.  The portfolio would include a few clients for whom she'd create sites for one-tenth of what I imagine she charges now.  Nick and Arlene made all the decisions and did all the work.  My only job was to provide them with what I had already gathered for New Issues: a bio, the blurbs, the dates for readings, and of course, a few poems.

I don't think having a website hurts, but Buddha never had one, and the word spread pretty decently about things he had to say. 

Your bio mentions that you previously worked as a speechwriter for the Mayor of New Orleans. What was that job like? And did your experience as a speechwriter help with your poetry?

I served the City of New Orleans for four years working for Mayor Marc H. Morial, who is now President and CEO of the National Urban League.  He's an amazing leader who made his love for that city absolutely contagious.  He is also a major role model for me as my fraternity brother and the man willing to take a chance on me and give me my first job right out of college.  (The word "give" is supremely important here, considering the desperate shape I was in.)

A speechwriter goes into each speech knowing the message and figuring the best way to communicate the message as he goes.  A poet figures ways of communicating and wonders if he has a message.  I prefer the latter because it gives me a chance to question beliefs that I myself hold dear.  There is no room for such questions when working to drive a message home.

While researching you online, I noticed people commenting positively on your readings. Do you have any special reading tips for other poets?

Slow down.

Who are you currently reading?

Today, I read Versed by Rae Armantrout, some Gwendolyn Brooks, a few poems online by Rodney Jack and Wayne Johns, some George Oppen, some C.S. Lewis, a little bit from Barbara Walters'memoir Audition, and the Bible.   

If you could pass on only one piece of advice to other poets, what would it be?

Make love.

*****

To learn more about Jericho, go to www.jerichobrown.com.

To learn more about his publisher, go to www.wmich.edu/~newissue/.

Grisel Y. Acosta has shared some more of her experience at AWP in Chicago: http://writetoright.blogspot.com/2009/02/awp-or-zombie-fest.html

Looks like there was plenty of room for surprises at the event.

*****

Also, I see that the Poetic Asides Chapbook Champion, Shann Palmer, has self-published and is selling copies of her winning chapbook: "Change." If you want to check it out, go to: http://shannpalmer.blogspot.com/2009/02/buy-my-change-chapbook.html

I'm sure Shann would appreciate your support!

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

*****

Jacqueline Cartier, media relations with NPR, shared the following link with me earlier this week: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=100619363

It's a poetry slam for Valentine's Day! Check out the link to hear some cool poems.

*****

The Poetry Foundation lists more than 1,200 love poems here: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/tool.poem.cat.2.1.html?id=7

If you need a Valentine's Day idea, you can always e-mail a favorite poem from this link to that extra special person.

*****

Here's another Valentine's Day idea: Why not write a love poem for the one you love? I did so last Valentine's Day, and now I'm married to her. To check out that poem, go here: http://blog.writersdigest.com/poeticasides/Will+You+Be+My+Valentine.aspx

I'm not saying you'll get married if you write a love poem, but it doesn't hurt, eh?

Since I'm a man of routines, here's my Valentine's Day poem for this year:

You
-For Tammy Brewer

found me in airports. You found me
in bookstores. You found me on the
streets of Manhattan. I made you
mix CDs. We listened as we
drove to Yellow Springs, to Helen.
We fell in love as we wandered
along nature trails and city
streets--both walking at the same pace,
letting the others run past us.

For a few years now, I've been aware of J.P. Dancing Bear's work--from seeing his name floating around in literary journals. It wasn't until we became friends on Facebook (a year or so ago) that I knew he was the editor of American Poetry Journal and Dream Horse Press, as well as host of "Out of Our Minds" (a weekly poetry program on public radio station KKUP). Dancing Bear is also the author of What Language (Slipstream), Billy Last Crow (Turning Point), Gacela of Narcissus City (Main Street Rag), and--most recently--Conflicted Light (Salmon Poetry).

Here's a favorite poem of mine from Conflicted Light:

Auricle

I heard the humming engine
of a heart smaller than an anvil;
in the hummingbird's forest
my ear was mistaken for a flower--
I should be complimented
for the brief moment before
the taste of my ear canal
will forever mark the thin tongue.
The hunger that was whispered
to me, woke me from a dream:

I was the drum in the redwoods,
the tongue of green prophesies,
the anvil of summer hunger,
awakened to the canopy songs
that had lain in the linens of leaves
I called my stomach. Now I hear
the hammer's rumor of sparks
on the anvil and can taste fear.
Now I realize I worked for years
in the coded silence of a paper heart.

*****

What are you currently up to?

Well, I tend to keep fairly busy most of the time.  Right now, I'm working on getting Bruce Cohen's book, Disloyal Yo-Yo, published.  I'm also putting the final touches on my next book, Inner Cities of Gulls, which will come out by Salmon Poetry next year.  I just went through and revised my other manuscript for submission to a few contests. I've been writing two other manuscript/projects, Birthday Notes and Dancing to Orphee's Radio. Then there's reading for the Dream Horse Press and the APJ.  

You're the editor of American Poetry Journal and Dream Horse Press; you host the "Out of Our Minds" radio show on KKUP; and you’re constantly getting your own writing published widely. How do you manage to wear so many poetic hats at once?

I try not to think about how much work there is to do. I try to remain focused on whatever the task is at hand, get it done and move on. I think it also helps that I normally don't require as much sleep as most people do.  I've been a 4.5 to 6 hour sleeper since I was a kid—used to drive my parents crazy that I would stay awake until 2 sometimes 3 in the morning.  And for the longest time, my writing time was between midnight and 2 a.m., but I've learned to write whenever the mood takes me.  Dream Horse requires and APJ require that I set aside whole portions of a day to work on them.  I like to work at least 4 to 8 hours straight on either.  

Your recent collection, Conflicted Light, was released by an Irish publisher (Salmon Poetry). How did that come about?

I think Jessie Lendennie (the owner of Salmon Poetry) and I were on a large group mailing list together at one point. I tend to lurk, but I will chime in when I think I have something to offer on a topic that hasn't already been expressed.  I had piped up about something and about a day later I got a message from Jessie saying she'd read my work and really liked it.  I had been a fan of Salmon Poetry (I've got several titles on my shelves) for quite some time, and well… the rest just fell into place.

What do you feel makes a great collection of poems?

I think there are any number of things that work to make a great collection of poems.  If you are asking me to step out of my Dream Horse Press editor's hat, then I would say that a great collection of poems is one in which every page is something to be savored. That you read the first poem and it is like a fine and delicate morsel of food. You want to take your time and enjoy it. You know just from that first poem that you are in for a gourmet meal. You do not want to rush to the next page, you may want to read one or two poems a day.  And reread them. And then again.

If I'm wearing my Dream Horse Press editor's hat… I like to look for collections that hold together as a larger poem. I also enjoy crafted poems that clearly show the writer's knowledge and skill without taking away from the poem at all.  In other words, I think there should be something in the poems for a second and third reading that make those just as enjoyable as the first reading. 

On a poem-by-poem level, what is the typical life of one of your poems—from idea to publication?

I tend to work in projects or manuscripts first.  So a project comes to me sometimes as a couple of poems that I can see go together, or I will sometimes challenge myself in some way, creating a set of rules that I have to follow. I don't have one set way of writing a poem, sometimes it's a line that comes to me, sometimes it's an idea or a thought I begin exploring, sometimes it's an image, and sometimes it's a voice. I will usually play with it in my head for several days. Rolling it back and forth, adding to and taking away from it until I feel there's a core something there.

Then I will write it down, usually the first draft will take about an hour. I will then read it aloud and edit it until I think it "sounds" right. Then I have a few friends whom I might "try it out" on. I'll get feedback and "try" to incorporate that back into the poem.  Then I'll set the poem aside.  I will generally write about three quarters to four fifths of a manuscript (or when I know there's only a few months left) before I start sending poems from that project.  

I do this for a number of reasons: One, it gives me distance from the first poems I wrote in the series, so I can stand back and look at them and decide if they are ready, or edit them to the point of being ready; Two, I will not get discouraged about the entire project if the poems are rejected, and therefore question whether I should continue working on the project; Three, the editing and submission functions, I find, are distractions from the actual creative action, so I don't like to do that until later in the project. If a poem is accepted, I may want to tinker with it a little more, nothing too big, a word or a phrase at most. If a poem is rejected, I will go back and review it, read it aloud several times, possibly revise it, and send it out again. At the point where about a quarter to half of the manuscript has been published, I will begin sending that out.

The exception to this rule has been my Birthday Notes project on Facebook.  The rules I set out for myself is that the poems have to be written using an application available to me when I go to the person having a birthday that day's wall, I will also put them together and publish them on my Notes/Wall page, and I write a prose poem there on their wall and it has to be done on that day. Since it's all done on the spur of the moment, it's a different kind of writing. I have to make a decision and run with it right away. Sometimes there's been as many as nine of them to write, and you just can't deliberate choices and ideas.

How important do you feel community is to a poet?

I have mixed feelings about it. Online, I tend to enjoy being "connected" to writers all over the planet. We have fun, and I think some of us are playful. I also enjoy playing word games with other writers. And touching base with them. 

The physically local writing communities really depend on where you are and who you fall in with. I think it also depends on the types of personalities that are part of the formal organization. I remember back in the late nineties a group of us used to get together, go to readings, put together potluck gatherings and had a lot of fun doing it. It was all done in the spirit of openness and we were trying to reach across political, group or community lines. The events were very informal and fun.  I've been part of more formalized organizations and it frankly wasn't my cup of tea. 

I appreciate those kinds of groups when they are done right, and one of them I think that does a good job is Poetry Santa Cruz, they present or sponsor a couple of readings a month (usually at least one with a writer who is visiting the area), and are involved in fostering a strong poetry community.

However, I tend to be better with the online community because I can work in being a part of them to compliment my schedule, I cannot necessarily do this with the physical ones.

Who are you currently reading?

Eesh.  This is not an easy answer for me because I am constantly reading. And I could answer this with any number of parameters. So first, I'll split out the dead writers and list them (in no particular order) first: James Wright, Federico Garcia Lorca, Robert Frost, John Berryman, Larry Levis, John Logan, Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, Lynda Hull, W. H. Auden, Neruda, Paul Celan, and Reginald Shepherd (if you ask me tomorrow, I'd probably have a different list depending on memory).  

I tend to read a lot of magazines (both online and printed) and there are certain names that I will naturally gravitate to and read first, and I would say the same holds true if I'm in a bookstore and I see their name on the spine of a book (and I am going to limit this list to authors with more than one book published): Nance van Winckel, Natasha Saje, Mary Ruefle, Roddy Lumsden, Kathleen Jamie, Ralph Angel, Jack Gilbert, Mary Jo Bang, Carolyn Forche, Tony Barnstone, Willis Barnstone, Jim Powell, Dorianne Laux, Margret Gibson, Mary Oliver, John Ashbury, Paul Guest, Mark Doty, Sherman Alexie, Robert Bly (and again, these were off the top of my head, and I'm sure I would have a different list tomorrow). I will also add that I read and seek out any of the authors that I've published.  And just to round this off, if you are a friend of mine, naturally I'm going to read your poem if I see it.

I will also say that I like to read many different writers and have an ever-expanding list of favorites. I feel, that it is essential to keeping an open mind and to being a good editor.

If you could share only one piece of advice with other poets, what would it be?

Constantly push and challenge yourself to do new things and learn new things.  If you've never written a sonnet, then challenge yourself to writing a crown of sonnets. If you've never written anything other than formal verse, write a prose poem.  Breaking down things, understanding the craft behind them and rebuilding the way you write only makes you a stronger and better writer. Never, ever think you are "there"--always be on the journey.

*****

To learn more about J.P. Dancing Bear (including Dream Horse Press and American Poetry Journal), check out his website at http://home.comcast.net/~jpdancingbear/.

To learn more about Salmon Poetry, which published Conflicted Light, check out their website at www.salmonpoetry.com.

If you are, then would you be willing to share your experiences with the rest of the Poetic Asides audience who are not able to attend (or who cannot sit in on every event--because, let's face it, there are soooooo many of them)?

If you're interested, just email updates at any time between 2/11 and 2/15 (the day after the event is over) to robert.brewer@fwmedia.com with the subject line of "AWP Update".

Please include your name so that you can get full credit for sharing the information. (If you have a website or blog, please include a URL with your name as well.)

Examples of things you could report on include:

• Cool sessions you attend.
• Great deals happening at publisher booths.
• Parties you might be attending (or hosting).
• Anything else that's going on or that strikes you.

Since this is a "first" for Poetic Asides, I'm not sure how well this will work (if at all), but I think it would be neat for those who have not experienced AWP or who won't be able to experience this year or who will be attending different sessions, parties, etc.

Depending upon participation, I'll try making frequent updates.

I've been meaning to do my annual post on The Best American Poetry anthology for 2008 for some time now, but I keep not getting to it. So, here we go.

As usual, David Lehman is the series editor for this anthology, with Charles Wright as the guest editor. I've found that the poems in the anthology can vary greatly in style from guest editor to guest editor--and that's a good thing.

I haven't read the entire anthology yet, but the selections have been very good so far. Some of my favorite poets are included, and there are some new (to me) names in the bunch.

But the true value of this anthology is not the actual poetry, though that is a very nice bonus. The real value for other poets are the Contributors' Notes and Comments in the back of the book, where poets write about their poems, including what inspired their poems, forms they were using, etc.

That's why I always recommend purchasing a BAP every single year. There's the inspiration of great poems, but also so much insight into the crafting of the poetry.

First, it's Groundhog Day: Punxsutawney Phil (of PA) and Buckeye Chuck (of OH) have seen their shadows and forecast 6 more weeks of winter. General Beauregard Lee (of GA) did not, however, forecasting only 4 more weeks of winter. Of course, I find that funny, because as an Ohio transplant, I'm still waiting for winter to hit Georgia; so, how can there be 4 more weeks of it?

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Anyway, I know you're not reading this blog post to hear the state of Groundhog Day 2009; you want to know who won the first annual Poetic Asides Chapbook Challenge! (Woo-hoo!)

In November, many poets took part in this blog's November PAD Chapbook Challenge, in which I challenged poets to write a poem-a-day through the month of November around a specific theme. Then, I gave the poets all of December to revise and edit their material and put together a chapbook to be submitted by the beginning of January.

More than 50 submissions were received. My wife, Tammy, and I went through them and selected a winner and 3 honorable mentions. There were some great submissions, but we both knew and agreed upon the winner without any squabbling.

Here are the Honorable Mentions:

* "Pacing the Moon," by Sandy Green
* "One Boy, How Many Square Miles," by Taylor Graham
* "Hooks and Slaughterhouses," by Alana I. Capria

And the winner of the first ever Poetic Asides Chapbook Challenge is:

"Change," by Shann Palmer

Congratulations, Shann!

Her manuscript was one that Tammy and I both loved and agreed was the best separately. That is rare in a competition with so many good submissions, but I think it points to the great writing Shann was able to gather.

Also, it should be mentioned that she cut the manuscript down to its bare essentials. It was one of the shorter manuscripts at only 11 poems and pages long.

Hopefully, we can arrange to have Shann explain her manuscript in a future post. In the meantime, let me share one of the poems Tammy and I both enjoyed very much:

Adaptation

After all the laundry is done-
round edges folded to the right,
the soaps stacked, the tissue
turned and tucked, she can go

to the next room to begin again;
blinds open just below the latch,
vase to the left, books by the lamp-
so little time, so much disarray.

Don't suggest she see a doctor,
she doesn't wash her hands raw
or alphabetize the soup cans, she has
discovered order is its own reward,

his suits hug the closet, with those
magazines, those dirty magazines.

*****

Again, Shann, congratulations!

In trying to keep #5 on my 2009 resolutions list (to attend more poetry-related events), Tammy and I got out to a poetry book signing at Wordsmiths Books in Decatur, Georgia, Saturday afternoon. We were running late, but so was the event--so things worked out perfect.

Cherryl Floyd-Miller read poems from her recently released collection Exquisite Hearts (Salt Publishing). Tammy and I enjoyed Cherryl's performance and were impressed with her answers during a short Q&A session after the reading. (In fact, don't be surprised if I try and get her interviewed on the blog sometime in the future.)

It was nice to get out with Tammy and listen to a reading, but it was even better to meet Cherryl and Collin Kelley face-to-face (both were already Facebook friends).

And--IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT--it was Baby Will's first ever poetry event (at 5 weeks old). He seemed to enjoy the event, too.

...on a day when I speak of trying to rid abstraction from your poetry that Elizabeth Alexander's poem for the inauguration of Barack Obama would rely on abstraction. I'm not trying to say the poem was bad, because it moved me. It just figures is all--and it helps show that even the best and most basic rules of poetry can be broken depending upon your audience and occasion.

You can find text of the inaugural poem, "Praise Song for the Day," here: http://www.nowpublic.com/world/barack-obamas-inaugural-poem-praise-song-day-full-text

It took me a while to find a copy this afternoon, but there it is.

I loved the ending (which was about as abstract as you can get): "praise song for walking forward in that light."

"That light" is mentioned earlier in the poem as "Love that casts a widening pool of light."

This poem may not work for everyone, but, for me, it achieved the goal of every inauguration day, which is to bring everyone together in a peaceful transition of power from one president to the next.

Also, the timing of the poem being read was very nice. Alexander read her poem directly after Obama gave his inauguration speech.

Suzanne Frischkorn gets to lead off the 2009 poet interviews on Poetic Asides. (Woo-hoo! Yay! Hurrah!)

I enjoyed reading Frischkorn's most recent--and first full length--collection, Lit Windowpane (Main Street Rag Publishing Company), for many reasons. First, the poems are "spare," which is a fancy way of saying they are unassuming poems that pack a punch. Second, the poems seem to communicate with each other throughout--making the whole even stronger than it's individual parts, which are doing fine on their own (many of them published in publications, such as Diode, MARGIE, and No Tell Motel).

Here's a personal favorite of mine from Lit Windowpane:

Ruin

In the spider and on the web. On the branch
and in the pothole. Yellowed grass, wilted
fern, blackened growth. On the skeletal
stems of black-eyed Susans and in dawn's
stretch. The glint of street lights. The sibilant
mulberry behind blinds. Empty sky. Listen
to these old windows,
how they lend themselves to rattle.

What are you currently up to?

I’m putting together a new collection of poems, working on some essays and editing the New Haven issue of Locuspoint.

Mary Oliver describes your writing as "select and elegant," while James Hoch says your writing is "spare." I noticed it, too. Is that sparseness something you consciously do with your writing?

No, when I begin writing a poem I don’t plan how that poem will end, what shape it will take, or set out for a particular style. I let the poem lead me.

How many drafts do your poems tend to make? And, do you think your poems go through more or less drafts now than when you first started getting published?

I revise a lot when I'm working on a poem, but I've never counted individual drafts, I know it's many -- many, many drafts. My writing process doesn’t seem to have changed with publication.

Many reviews mention your focus on nature in Lit Windowpane, but a lot of that nature seems focused on the water. Is there a reason for this?

Water is definitely one of the unifying elements of the book. I once read that your childhood landscape will always be your landscape no matter where you live in adulthood. After writing Lit Windowpane, I realize that's true. Most of my early childhood was spent on Miami Beach, and for many years I lived a short walk from Long Island Sound. The poems in the book were written after I had moved inland. In hindsight of course it’s obvious that I miss being close to the water. 

Before Lit Windowpane, you published five chapbooks. What do you feel makes a good chapbook? 

My favorite chapbooks have a focused theme, either through image, style, form, or any of the numerous ways to create a sequence of poems. I’m partial to the chapbook in any case, including the chapbook without a theme that gives a sample of the poet’s work. The bibliophile in me loves the chapbook as an art object.

You have a nice website that includes information about you, your collections, and readings. What function do you think a website should serve for a poet?

Thank you. A website allows a poet to have a web presence that’s current, directs those interested in her/his work to points of interest, and includes contact information. Basically it should function as a marketing tool.

You've been published in several journals. How do you handle submitting and tracking your submissions?

I tend to either submit a lot or not at all, meaning I’ll go through regular periods of sending my work out and then find I need a break from the administrative side of poetry. My submission tracking system is rudimentary, it’s usually a word document that lists the name of the journal, poems submitted, the date of submission, and a note on whether the journal accepts simultaneous submissions or not.

Who are you currently reading?

Jean Valentine and Ralph Angel.

If you could pass on only one piece of advice to fellow poets, what would it be?

Read, read, read and read.

*****

To check out Suzanne's website, go to: http://www.suzannefrischkorn.net/

To check out Suzanne's publisher's website, go to: http://www.mainstreetrag.com/

*****

To learn how you, too, could possibly end up interviewed on this here blog, go to: http://blog.writersdigest.com/poeticasides/Call+For+Poets.aspx

For something kinda cool and really freaky, check out this piece from the NY Times blogs: http://ideas.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/09/dead-poets-animated-society/

Apparently, an animator by the name of Jim Clark has taken old photos of poets, such as Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, and brought them to life so that it appears the poets are reciting some of their best known poems.

(Tammy has once again shown why she's so cool. Today, she forwarded me the link to this little piece of news.)

Apparently, Barack Obama will be only the third president to invite a poet to speak at his inauguration--the other two presidents being Bill Clinton (1993 and 1997) and John F. Kennedy (1961). Obama has chosen Elizabeth Alexander.

Alexander will be the fourth poet to speak at a presidential inauguration, following up Miller Williams (1997), Maya Angelou (1993) and Robert Frost (1961). While people can agree or disagree with Obama's politics, I think everyone can appreciate Obama giving a nod to the importance and influence of poetry on the day of his inauguration.

Here's the article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/dec/18/obama-inauguration-alexander-poetry

*****

Also, for those interested in learning more about Alexander, including reading some of her poems, here is a link to her website: http://www.elizabethalexander.net/home.html.

The site includes poems, interviews, audio, events, and more.

As many of you know, I've had the pleasure of interviewing several poets over the past year. To make it easier to check them out, here they are (listed in alphabetical order):

Bill Abbott
Nin Andrews
Julianna Baggott
Sandra Beasley
Helene Cardona
John M. Fitzgerald
Sheema Kalbasi
John Korn
Dorianne Laux
Diane Lockward
Tom Lombardo
Denise Low
Joseph Mills
Valerie Nieman
Aimee Nezhukumatathil
Kevin Pilkington
Martha Silano
Anne Tardos
Jillian Weise

If you're already Twittering, you can now follow me at http://twitter.com/robertleebrewer.

If you're not already Twittering, you can go check it out at http://twitter.com. Blogging poets should definitely look into this interesting (and free) online tool that allows people to concisely post updates, links, etc., to their "followers." Once you set up an account, definitely feel encouraged to follow me.

*****

If you want to see how this relates to you as a poet, then check out this link from the World Class Poetry Blog at http://www.worldclasspoetryblog.com/23-things-poets-can-do-with-twitter/11/21/2008/. This post compiles 23 things poets can do with Twitter.

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And if you want other poets to follow you, feel free to share your Twitter profile URLs below in the comments.

I just checked my gmail this evening and saw that the most recent edition of DMQ Review is out, including a poem by yours truly. Just go to http://www.dmqreview.com/.

In addition to my poem, there is work by Chad Sweeney, Lana Hechtman Ayers, Claudia Burbank, Arlene Ang, Joan Fiset, Ellen Elder, Paul Fisher, Virginia Konchan, Fritz Ward, Robert McDonald, Rebecca Morgan Frank, and Mary Wang. Plus, the featured poet is Ellen Bass.

Cool stuff.

Today, Tammy and I enjoyed Thanksgiving with her son (my stepson), Reese, and her family here in Georgia. It was a great time, and I was able to meet a few relatives I'd still not met yet. In the afternoon, we dropped Reese off at his daddy's and didn't really have a plan for what to do afterward. So, we bought a newspaper and saw that Macy's was having a tree lighting ceremony in Atlanta.

We decided to go and made it over there a little more than an hour before the festivities were to begin, which also happened to be just in time, because that place was soon mobbed by thousands upon thousands of tree lighting fanatics. In fact, the event was filmed and will be (or was) aired in several cities and to all the U.S. military men and women (on Monday apparently).

Tony award-winning actress Heather Headley and singer-songwriter-poet Jewel performed, in addition to others. Tammy and I, of course, were mostly interested in seeing a tree lighting and getting some hot chocolate, but the performances and spectacle was pretty nice, too--especially with it being a free event (didn't even have to pay or fight for parking).

That white mass above the red bar up there is Jewel. I thought I'd include her here, since she's written a collection of poems. They're not my cup of tea, but I do like her music.

The tree atop Macy's was lit up during a dramatic part of "O Holy Night" sung by Headley. I love that song. And, as the song ended, an impressive firework display started up. If you're ever in Atlanta on Thanksgiving, I'd recommend checking this out.

This pic is a little grainy, but it shows Tammy and I at the event having a great time. Hope everyone had as awesome a Thanksgiving as we did.

In anticipation of the November PAD Challenge (which starts Saturday!), I threw out the above question to members of the Poetic Asides group on FaceBook: What makes a great chapbook?

Here's what some of them had to say:

An interesting mix of poems on the same theme, not always by the same writer but with visable threads which tie each piece together or take the reader on a journey, turning the page again and again.

Sue Forde

*****

I think that a great chapbook is written around a theme and its variations. That theme might be the subject, the place, the people in the poem, a primary metaphor.

The variations might even involve different forms, different rhythms--a different sense of momentum.

And the whole chapbook builds on an emotional arc (it may even build along a narrative arc, if that fits the theme).

Granted, neither of my chapbooks reflects that thinking, although parts of them do. But this is the way I'm writing and developing chapbooks now.

Joannie Stangeland

*****

A chapbook is a universe, and the poet is the solar designer. The planets and moons, no matter how far out, need to follow their own laws of gravity. From the quark to the gravitational force, it needs to make sense to the poet or editor, even if it remains a mystery for the audience.

Jesse Loren

*****

Consistency of vision: a motiff, a strong extended metaphor. Kinda like making a kick ass mix tape.

Scott Whitaker

*****

Here are some thoughts:

1.) Excellent writing, whether for poetry or prose; 2.) a good editor who knows how to place individual pieces together which work in harmony and add cohesiveness to the project; 3.) having an understanding the audience of the chapbook and knowing whether the intent is to entertain, inform, enlighten and/or give some cause for pause.

It helps to have a nice cover too, to initially attract an audience, but the work has to stand on its own once the cover is opened.

Rj Clarken

*****

A great chapbook: when the poems taken as a whole allow the book to function as the final poem of the collection. I think I'm plagarizing Robert Frost here.

Charlie Cote

*****

I think with a chapbook you should either go the route of trying for as much variety as possible, to show your full range. The danger with this can be the tendency towards being uneven.

The other option is to go the total opposite and have a unifying theme, build it so it is more like a concept album with each poem exploring facets of a larger idea. This runs the risk of going in the total opposite and having everything too samey.

I think sort the framework out and then kind of forget about it and just concentrate on the individual poems.

Paul Grimsley

*****

After having read dozens of chapbooks, and sent out numerous versions of chapbook manuscripts, some as sort of a variety pack, and some ordered so that there was a definitive narrative arc, I have determined that what works best and what most editors (and readers) seem to be looking for are collections that focus on a single theme.

Because they're small, they are easily read in one sitting, so a series of linked poems -- sonnets that explore the complicated relationship with the body, an abecedarian where each poem interrogates a single letter, a series of ekphrastic poems -- is a great way to go.

My chapbook Small Fruit Songs is a series of poems written on a single theme in a single form: fruit-related prose poems. Once I had the concept in place, I wrote the whole thing in under a week, and the first publisher I sent it to accepted it within just a couple of days.

Cati Porter

*****

A chapbook is an opportunity to focus, and every good chapbook I've read had a clear theme or stance, typically with an arc of development. As a small press publisher, I find that thematic development and careful arrangement is what makes a manuscript submission rise above, as opposed to the seemingly random compilation of a selection of one's poems.

In journalism, feature articles (as opposed to hard news) often hang on a "news peg," or something that connects the feature to current events in everyday life. It's a hook, and functions just like the musical hook in a pop song. As long as it remains intelligent and avoids excess gimmickry, I think the concept of chapbook should do the same.

Nancy Pagh won the 2008 Floating Bridge Press chapbook contest with her collection After, with each poem being written "after" a particular poet. Each spread starts with the epigraph on a left-hand page, with the poem on the right, so the idea is abundantly clear. That's the hook, the concept. In a way, it's like an invented bucket (or drawer) that readers can categorize the book into, thus making the book more accessible. The real substance is deeper, of course, and in Nancy's case it's the emotional sway that underpins the poems in their darkness and fearless grit.

The art of chapbooks, of course, is the limitless pursuit of different ways to create an original theme, a hook, a stance, finding the right balance between intrigue and challenge while avoiding facile or cliched gimmickry. A good chapbook not only has solid poems, but often has an idea behind their assembly that makes me wonder "Why didn't I think of that!"

Michael Dylan Welch

*****

A great chapbook excerpts the general aesthetic of the author, while allowing a little leeway for them to explore either something new, like style or form, or topical that might not fill a book. I would argue it's not a "teaser" or a "taste," rather, a chapbook is a complete and individual, shorter work that may appear, in whole or in parts, in a larger body of work later.

Todd Dillard

*****

I've just become Co-director of Flarestack Poets, a new incarnation of Flarestack Publishing which has a reputation for producing some of the best chapbooks (or pamphlets as we tend to call them in the UK) in Britain. Here's the statement we put together that explains what we think makes a great chapbook:

We're looking for poetry that dares outside current trends, even against the grain... collections that aren't bus queues or greatest hits albums from poets who are forging their own linguistic connections with the root-ball of experience.

Jacqui Rowe

*****

Content (especially poems or prose pieces that work together to form a whole) coupled with design. A chapbook should feel good in the palm of your hand, should look good sitting on the edge of your desk.

Corey Mesler

*****

This is an interesting question since I will soon be judging a chapbook contest for Rosemetal Press. I'm interested in reading your summary post to get some insights.

The challenge I faced in putting together my own chapbook manuscript (I Call This Flirting, Flume Press 04) was fighting against the brevity of the form. My first stabs at ordering the short-shorts (it's flash fiction, not poetry) made the book read like running water. You just zipped right through with no stopping points. In this way, the early drafts seemed neutral as a whole. I was trying too hard to make it "flow." It didn't work.

I decided to break it up into sections--putting in resting points as it were. The section break pages each quote a made-up fortune cookie fortune... The sections are thematic but not obviously so. After I did this, the chapbook seemed longer and fuller. I also frontloaded it with the most powerful work (in my opinion, of course) leading the chapbook.

Unlike a novel or a full-length collection of poetry or stories, I think with a chapbook you have less time to build momentum. So your challenge is to artificially create the kind of depth a reader experiences with a longer work. A chapbook invites an all-in-one-sitting reading so I guess that ups the reader expectation in a way...

When I love a chapbook, there's a kind of resonance and completion when I hit the last page. It makes me want to look the whole little book over again, amazed that it's so short but seems long. I want to think about it, and then pick and choose favorites as I reread--not in order--the second time.

Sherrie Flick

*****

A great chapbook, to me, connects in some kind of way. It doesn't have to be a theme, but something weaves them together. Maybe it can be a chapbook about, say, a relative, and all the poems mention that relative and it can be titled after that relative. Also, chapbooks should be short (like 10-20 pages) and consist of the BEST poems, no fillers. Not poems that can't stand on their own.

Melissa McEwen

*****

Stature: If it has the stature of a book, it is a great chapbook.

Sally Evans

I don't usually post interviews on back-to-back days, but I thought I'd make an exception in this case, because it might be the last interview posted until after November with this November PAD (poem-a-day) challenge coming up. And I'm just so excited to share Nin Andrews with anyone who hasn't read her work.

You see, there are poets who seek me out for interviews; there are poets who I seek for interviews; and then, there are cases where me and another poet just kind of bump into each other. In the case of Nin Andrews, I was definitely seeking her out after picking up (at random) one of her previous collections, Why They Grow Wings (Silverfish Review Press).

Since I'm an editor, I've always got more books than I can possibly read, but I was hooked from the first line of this--to me, anyway--previously unknown poet. After doing a little research, I learned she was not such an unknown quantity, in addition to learning--to my delight--that she recently released two other collections, Sleeping With Houdini (BOA Editions, Ltd.) and Dear Professor, Do You Live in a Vacuum? (Subito Press).

Here's a favorite of mine from Sleeping With Houdini:

Sleeping for Kafka

I heard on the radio this morning that prayers can heal. Experiments demonstrate that cancer patients who are prayed for, even by an anonymous person, have a better prognosis than those who receive no prayers.

A person can purchase prayers from Grace Church in Kansas by dialing 1-800-prayers. Visa and Mastercard are accepted.

I read that Kafka, a chronic insomniac, felt refreshed after watching his beloved sleep. Sometimes he invited her over, just to admire how she draped herself over his couch, wrapped in immaculate rest.

Some speculate it was the dreams of his beloved he wrote.

Thoughts like dreams drift from mind to mind. Some are heavy and sink to the ground or disappear under water where they grow like sea plants, while others are light and glide upwards like helium molecules.

When Jacob saw angels going up and down a ladder, they were merely tracing his thoughts.

Nietzsche said few people think their own thoughts. Instead they are thought. Many people are dreamt and prayed. They are like seashells inhabited by hermit crabs.

Most of us have no clue whose dream we are.

And with that, here is the interview:

What are you currently up to?

I'm working on two projects, one which I hope might become a New and Selected Orgasms. And another, which is a set of essays and longer prose poems that are very loosely linked by an economic theme.  Or money.  (I know it sounds boring, so I'm hoping that's not the case.)  I was always told as a child not to talk about sex, politics, or money, and I always do what I am told not to do.

I've read that you grew up on a farm. How do you feel your childhood shaped you as a poet?

As a child, I spent a lot of time at the barn with the horses, cows, cats, and chickens.  I also spent hours just staring at things—catching tadpoles, or watching ants pull crumbs or dead ants, or bees load up on pollen as they went from flower to flower.  We didn't have a TV or neighbors or other forms of distraction, so I spent a lot of my time daydreaming.  I think it's that empty space or time in my days I became used to as a kid that has shaped me most. It's the space I still need in order to write or solve problems or just stay sane.

In our correspondence, you mentioned that you've noticed a shift in your writing from more surreal work in your first collection (The Book of Orgasms) to more a storytelling style in your book due out next fall (Southern Comfort). Do you think there's a reasoning or natural progression behind moving from the surreal to storytelling?

I tend to do the opposite of what I am told.  Write what you know, my first teachers suggested.  But I have never been a big fan of reality.  Reality feels like sandpaper on my skin.  Sometimes I think I would love to escape the everyday world, and just move into the imagination forever.  Music, philosophy, dance, poetry, painting – they all help me do just that. Like good drugs, they offer an alternative to reality.  So initially I tried not to write my personal story.

But then, at a certain point, I started thinking about my childhood, and my children used to ask me about my past.  And I would tell them stories.  Stories about the time the one-armed man who worked on our farm shot a rabid fox. About the time the same man got drunk and let the heifers run loose on the freeway. About this crazy lady who came to the farm and taught me to see ghosts and read palms.  Or about a man called Toby who would walk up the dirt road on bare feet some days, and then go down to the mud pond to catch snapping turtles.  He said he caught them by feeling in the mud with his toes.

My children wanted me to tell these stories again and again, especially when I imitated the voices of the farmhands, my father, my mother, the crazy people, and the different animals and so on. They said I should write them down. But it's not easy for me to write about the farm. It's a bit like trying to break an ocean into drops.  And of course, I don't have an ability to see these pieces objectively.

From your first collection to your most recent, you've written a lot of your poems in the prose format. What do you like about the prose poem?

In the beginning, I wanted to write carefully crafted mini-tales.  And the prose poem is designed for that.  After a while I became interested in all the ways a prose poem can borrow from other forms.  So there are prose poems that are like fables, myths and parables, prose poems that are like interviews, love letters, fan letters, horoscopes, plays, advertisements, news reports, etc. There's so much versatility in the prose poem format.  And  great opportunities for humor.

Do you feel the structure of poems helps influence the content?

Yes. I think line breaks, for example, are content.  The same poem written with line breaks and without them—can have an entirely different effect.  And meaning. 

I think choosing a form is like choosing a design for a house. If  you have a big open space with skylights and a stage, that's one kind of experience.  If you build a large house with a bazillion tiny rooms, that's another experience.  

You mention that the poems in Dear Professor, Do You Live in a Vacuum? are inspired by actual comments, notes and questions from your husband's students. Where do you find that you draw the line between reality and fantasy in your own poetry?

In most of my writing, I try to keep reality off-kilter somehow. To offer at least a tiny escape from reality. I do this in different ways, depending on the book. In Dear Professor, I use humor to create that escape.

In the orgasm poems, I am sometimes taking a literal reality and making it surreal.  Or a philosophical discussion and putting it in an absurd context.  I have, for example, an interview with an orgasm.  That poem began when I saw the debate between Senator Bentsen and Senator Quayle.  When Bentsen said: Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine.  Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy, I imagined one orgasm saying to a fake orgasm, Orgasms are my friends. I know orgasms, and you?  You're no orgasm.

In the southern poems, I mix up the characters, recast a father as a farmhand, an uncle as a father, my friend's mother as my own mother, so that I can gain some objectivity. I want each poem to speak for itself, not for my experience.  A poem, I like to think, has its story to tell, its own truth.   

The poems in Sleeping With Houdini seem very tightly wound together. When you're putting together a collection, do you start with an idea and start writing the poems to complete that idea? Or do you write poems and then fill the gaps after you notice a pattern developing?

I will write on one subject for months at a time.  I end up with a heap of poems that cling to one another like static electricity.  It's a nightmare to try to organize my obsessions.  To try to make a pattern out of chaos.  It's a little like attempting to take tiny pieces of old fabric and sew them into a beautiful dress.

Who are you currently reading?

I was just reading Shirley Jackson.  She reminds me a little of my father, her dark sensibility.  And Mark Halliday's new collection, Keep This Forever, which is as brilliant and smart-assed as Halliday always is.  And The Lover by Duras, which is fabulous, of course.  It's interesting, now that I think about it.  All of these books are taking a bite out of my peace of mind.  But they are all teaching me things.

I've also been reading Rick Bursky's The Soup of Something Missing, a little collection I think everyone should read.  He's a poet I'm crazy about.  And Carol Maldow's The Widening, a book about sexual awakening.  She calls it a novel, but it's not. It reads like a memoir written in prose poems.  Each page is a chapter.  Each page is a beautiful prose poem.

If you had one piece of advice to share with other poets, what would it be?

I never follow advice, so I don't usually give any either. 

For me writing is a little like keeping the barn clean.  Every day I check over my work and see if there are any manure balls I need to remove. And every day there are.  For sure.  So I'm never surprised by a rejection.  And I'm always amazed by an acceptance.  That someone took something of mine, cow pies and all. So I'm grateful for even the tiniest forms of acceptance. 

Not that that's advice.  It's just the way I survive the poetry business side of being a poet.  And how I keep writing.

*****

* Check out Nin's blog at http://ninandrewswriter.blogspot.com/

* Click here for more information on Sleeping With Houdini

Poetry is often at its best when it's helping readers gain greater insights into life. In the case of After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events, edited by Tom Lombardo (Sante Lucia Books), poems have been chosen to help readers to recover from subjects such as war, abuse, addiction, death, and more. The anthology includes 115 poets from 15 nations, including Donald Hall, Thomas Lux, J.P. Dancing Bear, Annie Finch, Kevin Young, William Stafford, Mary Jo Bang, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Valerie Nieman, Rita Dove, and Jeffrey Levine.

Here's a poem by Lombardo himself that appears in the Recovery From Death of a Spouse section:

Daffodils

For weeks after Lana's funeral,
my mother cooked for me,
handled death's paperwork,
opened a door--
Look outside at your back yard.
Looking outward for the first time since burial
prayers, I saw daffodils blooming,
the ones that Lana and I had planted
in a sunken rectangular spot last Fall,
set against the bright, new green of Spring,
Easter white and careless yellow.

And with that, let's jump into the interview.

What are you currently up to?

In addition to my ongoing freelance medical editing, which pays my office rent, I am spending nearly all of my creative writing time on the marketing and promotion of After Shocks. I'm also in initial discussions with two authors and another publisher regarding potential next projects for Sante Lucia Books. Sorry to say, my own writing time has disappeared. I miss it, and I'll get back to it soon. I hope.

I also spend a lot of time with my two children, Lucy (12) and Sam (9). As a freelancer, I'm flexible enough to be Mr. Mom and pick them up after school each day, manage their afternoon activities and homework. My wife, Hope, has a real job, with a salary and benefits.

After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events is an anthology inspired by your experience as a widower. Could you speak a little about how this experience led to the anthology? Also, what do you hope this anthology is able to accomplish?

I've always hated that label "widower." I was so, so young when the label attached to me. I thought a widower should be in his 70s or 80s, some old guy walking with a cane, not a vigorous young man. I felt so out of place.

After my first wife, Lana, was killed in an auto accident on April 13, 1985, I found myself a widower in my early 30s, without peer among anyone I knew. Well-wishers offered condolences like this: "You’re young. You'll get over this." Or "You're too young, you'll never get over this."

I have spent the past two-plus decades coming to some understanding of my wife's death, my grief, and what recovery means in the context of my own life.

Reading poetry gave me solace during the early stages of my grief. I returned to some old favorites—Emily Dickinson, T.S. Eliot, e.e. cummings, Robert Frost—not a particularly soothing group, you might say, but for me, they were familiar from a time in my life when my life seemed more settled. The language, the music, the ghosts in the haunted house offered an escape from a life seemingly shattered—an escape from "if…then", "what if ", "how", "why" questions plaguing my nights, questions that had no answers.

1985 was also the year of publication of Douglas Dunn's Elegies (Faber & Faber), which won the Whitbread Book of the Year. Sometime along the way, a dear friend gave me a copy, brought back from England. Though the circumstances of Leslie Balfour Dunn's death were quite different, I felt Dunn's world embrace me.

Grief wrongs us so. I stand, and wait, and cry

For the absurd forgiveness, not knowing why.

A decade later, Donald Hall's book Without, poems covering the illness and death of his wife, the poet Jane Kenyon, touched me in the same way.

These two books moved me deeply as books of recovery. They seemed direct, straightforward, and honest in their stories, emotion, and language.

Many contemporary poets are writing about topics in recovery. Mary Jo Bang's Elegy relives her grief over the death of her son. Linda McCarriston wrote Eva-Mary about growing up abused, which won the National Book Award. Sharon Olds wrote collections about childhood abuse and alcoholism. Others: Carolyn Forche, Bruce Weigl, Tess Gallagher, Marie Howe. Each poet has focused upon a topic of his or her own experience. They all represent a chorus of voices in a growing sub-genre of recovery poetry. I used a poem from Ms. Bang in After Shocks. The others will be considered for the second edition, due out in a couple of years.

What this anthology intends to do is show that the poetry of recovery cuts across many boundaries. What this anthology intends to accomplish is to provide its readers with a source of comfort in the language of poets who've experienced life-shattering events and have come to some kind of acceptance.

There are "115 poets from 15 nations" anthologized in After Shocks. How did you go about getting all the permissions? I'm guessing it must've been quite an undertaking.

You've heard the simile "it's like herding cats." The permissions effort for After Shocks was more than an undertaking. It became a lifestyle for several months. It took a great deal of organization, diligence, and guts. There were so many different pieces. But once I organized it in my own mind, the rest was just the grunt work of getting it done.

There are essentially two levels of permissions. The first level is the permissions from well-known, top-level poets with large corporate publishers, e.g. Donald Hall and Thomas Lux at Houghton Mifflin or Rita Dove at W.W. Norton, or Carol Ann Duffy at Faber & Faber, etc. Many of those very well-known poets have signed their rights over to their publishers, and those publishers re-sell the reprint rights, generally splitting the proceeds with the poet. In these cases, permissions became a matter of finding the permissions editor at the publisher, writing a letter, negotiating a fee, signing the contracts, sending a check. The process is well-defined, straightforward, and the permissions folks at these large publishers are professionals. They are eager to book the revenue from reprinted poems, for which you and I and they know that there's a very small market. So, in my case, as a very small publisher, the big houses were very easy to negotiate with. It was either give me a price I can afford or I walk, and if I walk, they get nothing.

I lost only one poem out of scores in this top level group. Only one publisher would not negotiate downward to a fee I felt I could afford.

The second level is essentially everyone else. Many of the poets at this level may have national profiles, many of them are well-known regionally, many of them are already award-winners. But their publishers are smaller houses than those large corporate publishers above and may not retain the re-print rights so that the author retains the rights, or if the publisher does retain the rights, it does not charge for reprints, or gives the poet the authority to grant the re-print rights. The process in these cases varies so much that it's virtually ad hoc. My approach was this: I emailed these poets, asked if they owned the rights to the poems I had selected for After Shocks. If they said YES, I took them at their word, and asked them to email permission, which they did. If they referred me to their publishers, then I emailed their publishers, and in almost all cases, received reprint permission via email free of charge. Most of the small publishers were cooperative, generous, easy to work with. Also in this second level, there were several contributors who submitted unpublished poems, so the permissions for those were very simple. The poets granted permissions. This second level was completed all via email. The first level was done all on paper, with letters and contracts and the good ol' United States Postal Service.

I must mention a few publishers like Alice James Books and Tupelo Press and Iris Press who were quite generous by not charging reprint fees when I asked for several poems from several of their poets' books. Working with editors like April Ossmann at Alice James and Jeffrey Levine at Tupelo and Bob Cumming at Iris was a pleasure. They are first-class editors, and they appreciate spreading their good poetry around.

On the other hand, there were a few small presses and university presses who were simply buttheads, refusing to negotiate or treating me with arrogance because I was not Norton or they believed I might be naïve or foolish enough to pay them exorbitant reprint fees. In four cases, I told the poets that I would not use their poems in the anthology because their publishers were not cooperating or were charging too much. In two of those cases, the poet's involvement broke the logjam. In the other two cases (both of them university presses), I lost the poems because the university presses were quite rigid with their reprint structure and refused to negotiate even a penny. So, in the end, I walked, and they got nothing. I felt this as a defeat because in the end, it was the poets who lost, not After Shocks. I had plenty of great poems in hand.

There was one other negotiated oddity in permissions. One university press would not negotiate a reduced fee, and when I told the poet, she offered to pay the fee. I refused to go along, but she was adamant. I probably should not have given in, but I agreed to pay half the fee, which actually brought my cost down within a comfortable range. She paid the other half. I really liked this poem, and I really needed it to balance out a chapter, so my editorial needs may have trumped ethics. I'm not sure that I'd do that again. It seems a bit unfair for a poet to pay her own press to buy reprint rights to one of her own poems. I'm not sure what the ethics of that situation dictate. Maybe I'll write this question to the New York Times ethics column, eh?  As editor of Writer's Market, do you have an opinion on this?

All in all, the permissions work was time-consuming and tedious. But it was worth every drop of sweat.

Also, to put together an anthology such as this, you must do a lot of reading. What (or who) are some of your recent favorite reads?

During my reading and selection months, I was reading so much poetry I couldn't believe it. Morning, noon, and night poetry. I was dreaming about poems. But what a rewarding experience! I have met poets literally around the world.

In the U.S., Jericho Brown's just released collection, Please is excellent. He's a young, Cave Canem, emerging poet. Look out for this guy! I wouldn't have known of his new book had I not met him through the After Shocks submissions. He answered my call for submissions, placed on the Cave Canem web site, and we've kept in touch. Susan Meyers' collection Keep and Give Away, which won the South Carolina Book Award and the SIBA Book of the Year Award is also a great read and a fine example of the new poetry coming out in the South. Another book that caught my attention during my reading was Martha Collins' most recent one Blue Front, a book-length view of tragic events, with huge scope, set the microcosm of her family. Unfortunately, I couldn't excerpt it for After Shocks, though Ms. Collins did submit several other poems, of which I selected two. Another recent discovery is the poetry of Joseph Enzweiler, published by Iris Press of Oak Ridge, Tennessee. He's a poet who lives near Fairbanks, Alaska, works half the year as a carpenter and stone mason, then as the long Arctic winter descends, he holes up in his primitive log cabin in Goldstream Valley north of Fairbanks and writes poetry on an old Royal Typewriter all winter long.  And it's great stuff: deep, cold, brooding with insight! During selections, I read New Hampshire poet Pam Bernard's unpublished manuscript Blood Garden, a stunning real-time portrayal of her father's combat experience in World War I. Yes, WW ONE. He was an older father when Ms. Bernard was born. I selected a poem from the manuscript for After Shocks. Blood Garden is slated for publication by WordTech in 2010. Watch for it. It's another fine addition to the oeuvre of war poetry. I would also note Brian Turner's Here, Bullet (Alice James Book), which is by now quite well known, an excellent collection of war poetry informed by Turner's tour of duty in Iraq. One more—Isreali poet Rachel Tzvia Back's third collection On Ruins and Return, extraordinary, moving work steeped in the everyday activities of Israeli Jews and Arabs, living and dying side-by-side in Galilee.

There are four excellent collections from London publisher Ambit Books that I would call must-reads for any American poetry lover who would like to expand his/her reading into exciting new areas. This series is called Poets Here from Elsewhere and features four poets living in the U.K. who have left their homelands because of politics, persecution, or poverty. The books are Sir Winston Churchill Knew My Mother by Indian poet Satyendra Srivastava; Bells of Speech by Kurdish poet Nazand Begikhani, who fled Iraq after her brothers were killed in the chemical bombing of Halabja in 1988; memories of summers in brist near gradac and other poems by Bosnian poet Sonja Besford, who fled Bosnia after the civil war there, and A Day Within Days by Liu Hongbin, who was exiled from China when his poetry was posted around Tiananmen Square during the uprising there in 1989. All four of those books were written in English. I happened to be reading these four collections when I conceived After Shocks, and they opened the anthology's door to the world.

An excellent anthology that I came across during my reading, which I would highly recommend, again to expand beyond the normal reading a typical American reader usually gravitates toward: Six Basque Poets, published by Arc Publications in the U.K. It's phenomenal reading, with several excellent poets within, whom you would never, ever come across anywhere else. I found Bernardo Atxaga's poem "Death and the Zebras," and as I read it, felt shivers up and down my spine, and I knew I needed this poem as the final poem for After Shocks. The publisher, Arc Publications, was a nice discovery. It has several in its "Six Poets from…." series. Check out the web site. You won't be able to resist buying a couple.

Robert, I could go on and on. These are just a few of many, and I hate to call them out because there are others just as good. There are so many excellent poets out there whom I discovered during my reading, poets I never would have come across except for the submissions call. When you work on an anthology, you get exposed to many, many, MANY poets whom you'd never in your life expect to read. It's taught me to reach out further and further, open up to ALL poets, everywhere.

You're the founding editor-in-chief of Web MD, the world's most widely used health website, and you now work as a freelance medical editor. Does your background in medicine help inform your own writing or with compiling this anthology?

My own writing tends toward the body, the physical, sometimes even going inside the body to root around or look back out at the world from in there. My unpublished ms. has the working title The Body Functions. I'm not afraid to work with medical diction. I find there's a nice music to it when used in the right spot. I like to confront the diseases that break us down. I like to question the conventional wisdom. My approach, even in poems I've written about my first wife's death, uses stark clinical details. I feel that my 15 years of writing and editing health and medicine have given me some feeling for both the strength and fragility of this sack of bone and tissue we are blessed and cursed to live within. I think that experience colors about half of my published work, but there are other colors, tones, and moods in my work, too. I also was a scholarship college football player, and I've written some poems about all the concussions I suffered, kind of an interesting combination of medicine and athletics.

I'm certain my career as a medical editor informed the compilation of After Shocks. But there are no clinically descriptive poems in After Shocks. Where I believe it had an effect is that I have this sense of wonder when I look at us—human beings. I am attracted to poems that exhibit that same sense of wonder. We are truly a marvel. So fragile, yet so strong. The strength is not only physical. We possess a resilience within us that literally forces us to want to live. Of course, all forms of life possess this, don't they? Life wants to continue living, and life will alter itself to continue living. You can see this clearly in real time in viruses' behavior over their rapid generational evolution. Deadly viruses quickly evolve to lesser virulence so that they don't kill too many potential hosts, thus continuing their own source of livelihood. Once life takes root, it doesn't want to be uprooted. But we have something other life forms don't have…a big brain, the seat of a clever mind. Most of us use it to survive, no matter what horrors happen to us. Reading some of the poems in After Shocks makes me clearly understand that there truly are no limits to what we can survive. Just one chapter would illustrate this point: Recovery from Loss of Child. Reading the submissions for that chapter drove me to tears some days. I have children. I can't imagine the devastation of this loss. But these poets have survived what may be the worst loss of all. One of the forewords to After Shocks was written by therapist Nicholas Mazza, who lost his son in a car wreck. Dr. Mazza, who is editor of Journal of Poetry Therapy, writes: "Not a day goes by that I don't think of Chris or try to do something in remembrance of him…although there will always be an empty space on anything that I write, I remind myself that reflection can become remembrance, and this becomes a legacy for those who have gone before us. It is through poetry and story that we create meaning and form relationships."

Of course, a few of us are not equipped to survive, and those unfortunate ones choose to end their lives: facing illness, from grief, after abuse, fighting addiction. Who can blame them? It's hard and at times, can be hopeless. I've come to see that a life-shattering event has two outcomes: You either make it or you don't, and if you don't the alternative is the end of all hope. And a few of us go down that road. Fortunately, not that many. Most of us would rather continue living. Life wants to live. That's part of what I've learned as a medical editor.

So for After Shocks selections, I focused on that kernel of hope, that ray of recovery, that evidence that life wants to live. In some selections, it's in the air even as carnage surrounds the narrator. In others, it's years down the road from the event. But it's there, in each poem.

You self-published this book under Sante Lucia Books. Could you speak a little on why you decided to go this route? Also, do you plan on publishing more titles under this imprint in the future?

In one word, control. I'm glad I did it this way, because I was in total control the entire way. I had such a clear vision for what I wanted to do, had I gone with an established publisher, the publisher would have filtered my vision through its own. Compromises would have watered down my vision.

But I almost did go with a publisher. I came awfully close, and now, I know that it would have been exactly the wrong move. Publishers work more slowly than glaciers move. This anthology—388 pages, 152 poems, 115 poets, 15 nations—went from an idea to bound pages in 18 months. Triple that if a publisher is involved. Fugedaboudit!

There was a small, but well-respected, publishing house who had agreed to publish After Shocks. We reached a verbal agreement after a meeting on November 1, 2007, when I showed him an early draft of the manuscript. Then, I never heard back from that publisher again, even after repeated emails. He was so very enthusiastic, said a contract was coming. I've since heard a rumor that he has taken seriously ill or that his company may have taken seriously ill. He's elderly. Maybe he up and died? I mean, you think the worst when there's no communication.

When I didn't hear back, I moved ahead. I could not wait. I had a publishing date in mind, Autumn 2008, and I wanted to move quickly. 

I had already formed Sante Lucia Books as a dba of the company I have for my freelance medical editing work, so I was prepared from the outset to do this alone, and I will freely and openly admit, I'm glad I did. I love to have complete and total control. I would drive any other publisher nuts. This is MY idea, and MY book, and I wanted to do it exactly MY way. I am already an editor, and a darn good one, so why would I need an editor from a publisher looking over my shoulder? On the publishing side, I'm learning a few things along the way, and I contracted with Kevin Watson, publisher at Press 53 in Winston-Salem, NC, to work with me on the design, production, and printing. I have absorbed a lot of marketing over the years, having been the creative partner with some great marketing minds during my career, so I'm familiar with marketing and publicity, so I felt somewhat equipped to work those angles. Some things I'm learning as I go, and they tend to be the lowest, but most unnerving, details. For example, After Shocks, the book, weighs 1 lb. 6 oz, in its bubble wrapped envelope. Well, your postman will not take  anything heavier than 13 oz., because Homeland Security has deemed 13 oz. as the weight of a bomb that can bring down an airplane, according to my USPS carrier. What that means, in a practical sense, is that I must hand carry each and every book I mail to my post office in person, hand them over the counter, so they can be verified and stamped as "non-suspicious mail." And I discovered to my chagrin that not all postal clerks are trained to do that correctly, resulting in some copies bouncing back to me like rubber bombs, er balls. I feel like I'm a character in a Kafka novel when I carry these stacks of books to the PO. I can only carry two full boxes at a time without herniating a disc, so that means daily trips to the PO and waiting in line, which is one big, time consuming pain in the butt. Hey, would I avoid that with a big publisher taking over this anthology? You bet. But I still love it.

My imprint is named after my two children. Lucy, whose given name is Lucia, pronounced in the Italian way, loo-CHEE-ya, and Sam whose given name is Sante, pronounced in the Italian way, SAN-te. They didn't charge me a licensing fee, and for that I employ them as envelope labelers and stuffers, when they're not doing homework, playing hockey or tennis, or taking dance lessons, which seems like all the time. So, since the publication of After Shocks, I've been demoted from Editor to Mail Room Clerk!!! But I love it. I love having ALL the control over EVERYTHING. I embrace the mindless work of placing stamps and labels on envelopes. It's a nice break from reality.

Another publisher would have screwed this up somehow, taken two years longer, designed a lousy cover. I had, still have, a precise vision for this anthology, and I needed to execute that vision to the last dot on the page. For the good and the bad. Hey, there are three typos in the first printing, and those are completely my fault and have already been corrected in second printing. But any good that devolves from After Shocks, that's also my doing.

I wouldn't give up this much fun to a publisher for a million dollars. No way.

And, c'mon, realistically, is Norton or Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux or even Copper Canyon really going to want an anthology edited by someone not named Donald Hall or Louise Glück or Billy Collins or you-know-who-big-name in poetry? I'm not a twig from the Cambridge Tree.

Plans for the future for Sante Lucia Books? Yes. I have plans in the works. Yes. I will be publishing other titles in the future, but right now, I'd rather not discuss them in too much detail. I'm both superstitious and part Sicilian. If I don't jinx it by talking about it, then someone might steal the ideas. There may be a traditional collection or two in Sante Lucia Books' future. On the other hand, I have some intriguing ideas to explore vertical markets in poetry, which I don't believe have been explored by other publishers. My media experience tends to be non-traditional, outside-the-box work, so much of my planning for the future of Sante Lucia Books will be in this vein.

How have you gone about promoting this book?

I have this feeling that I am digging 10,000 holes. Most will be empty, but I will find gold at the bottom of three of them, and some others will have some loose change, lost and covered over by years of dirt.

Basically, I'm focusing marketing efforts on readings, personal appearances, and getting the book into the hands of every media outlet, editor, reviewer, producer that I can. I follow up on every single lead, every idea, every suggestion offered by anyone.

At the outset, I developed an extensive advertising plan and set aside a budget. However, I've scrapped that plan almost completely. Instead, I've spent the money on a book publicist, and a very good one, Marjory Wentworth. So far, it's working out well. Together, we've set up readings in Charleston, Charlotte, Atlanta, Boston. For the Charleston reading on September 18, Ms. Wentworth set up two live TV spots and an article in the Sunday arts section of the Charleston daily newspaper. The attendance at the reading was the largest for poetry ever at the library there. Eight After Shocks contributors from South Carolina read there. November 9 coming up: Charlotte. This has the makings of a very large reading. There will be 11 contributors reading. The local paper is planning an advance story. [note: I'll have more on this in a week or so…] We'll do the same for Atlanta on March 11, 2009, and Boston on May 2, 2009. We're looking to fill in the open dates with readings in other cities: SF/Portland/DC/NYC. We are scheduling readings where contributors tend to cluster in groups of 5 or more. I'm working with an agent in London to host a reading for the 10 British poets for sometime in 2009. I'll be heading a panel of contributors who will read their After Shocks work at the South Carolina Book Festival. I'm considering doing a panel at the AWP in Denver in 2010. There is a distinct marketing advantage to having 115 contributors. There are 115 potential sales people out there pulling for After Shocks. And they have been sending me some great ideas. And bless them all, they've been very willing to come to read whenever I've asked.

We've sent out a couple hundred books to reviewers and various media people. The results are just starting to materialize in coverage. Three newspaper articles so far. Those two TV appearances. I'll be doing an interview in November for Georgia Public Broadcasting, which will run twice, the second time right before the Atlanta reading. This, of course, is local, not national publicity, but it's a step in the right direction. Once into the NPR door, I hope to leverage to other NPR stations, and maybe, if lucky, to the national level. I have this gut feeling that After Shocks is just beginning to get some media traction. It's still early, as After Shocks has only been out for two months, but Ms. Wentworth and I have done everything we possibly could, and I feel that the results are just starting to come in.

I've been booked into 6 dates for readings/discussions at church-based recovery groups or adult Sunday schools (with book singings at the churches' bookstores), and this has been a surprising development. I'm going to push this as far as I can. I'll go to any church, temple, synagogue, or mosque that invites me, and I'm working to spread the word in that sphere. I'll need to tap into networks of pastors, ministers, priests, imams, and rabbis. I haven't yet cracked the code here, but I have a sense that religious institutions are going to become very important in the marketing effort. After Shocks is not a religious book by any means, but I'm hearing very strong reactions from clergy who've seen the book to its underlying theme of the resilience of the human spirit. These church-based readings/discussions take poetry out of the realm of the typical poetry audience and into the realm of people who might not read poetry that often, but might react to it emotionally as a spiritual experience. A strong selling point here, of course, is my own personal story. Ms. Wentworth has taught me to recognize the promotional value of that and to weave me and the book into one story. The National Association of Poetry Therapists has also been a strong supporter, using its email list to publicize readings.

Other publicity—you've graciously asked me to answer questions on this blog! Maybe there are other bloggers out there, too!

I may spring the money for an advertisement or two in the near future. I'm seriously considering a Poetry Daily sponsor box on its home page. The cost seems efficient for the reach. However, I'm not yet convinced that advertising results in sales. Readings, personal appearances, word-of-mouth definitely results in sales.

If you could pass on one piece of advice to poets, what would it be?

Keep at it. No matter what.

I rejected many good poems for After Shocks simply because there was insufficient space. I could have published a 500-page anthology. Editorial decisions do not necessarily reflect upon quality. Editors' preferences are as numerous as the stars. Keep searching the heavens for your star.

If you could pass on one piece of advice to people suffering from life shattering events, what would it be?

Recovery cannot be prescribed. There are no rubrics, no roadmaps, no matter how many books you read. Recovery is not bottled like cough medicine. I hesitate to give anyone direct advice on this, because events that shatter lives—death of a loved one, divorce, exile, acts of war, abuse, addiction, etc.—cause unquantifiable, huge amounts of stress and horror and doubt, especially right at the beginning. From my own experience and from a distance of 23 years, I can say that what helped me most is that I realized I had to embrace the pain, let it wash over me, invite it inside, make it a part of me. It's very difficult, but I've come to believe that the longer you fight it, the harder it's going to be to come to some sort of new balance. And recognize this: After such an event, you will never be the same person. That person who you were—is gone forever, so give up trying to get back to normal. Normal is going to be something new and different. Maybe not as good, but maybe better. But if you don't open up to it, the road is longer and more painful that it needs to be. I had expected to reach some closure at some point, but I have discovered that there is no closure. Not really. Recovery goes on forever. Recovery became part of my spirit, part of that new level of stasis, that new "normalcy." I'm 23 years out from the death of my first wife, and though I'm at peace with who I've become, I feel like I'm still recovering from that event. I still bear the mark of a widower. I have started a new marriage and we have two lovely children. I still think about Lana and experience grief in some form every day.

*****

For more information, check out www.poetryofrecovery.com.

Okay, we're getting closer to November, which for some writers of fiction means it's getting closer to NaNoWriMo time. (Btw, NaNoWriMo translates into National Novel Writing Month.) There are would be novelists lining up to attempt writing 50,000 words or more during the month of November. There's even a NaNoWriMo website you can visit to check out this phenomenon at www.nanowrimo.org.

Anyway, that's all fine and good for those who write fiction. But what are the poets who don't write fiction supposed to do during November? After all, their fiction writing pals are all busy cramming 50,000 words into their laptops and hard drives.

I'm thinking it might be a neat idea to try writing a poem a day in November with the view of trying to have the makings of a chapbook heading into December. If there's enough interest, I would challenge myself and others to write a poem-a-day (as we did in April). I'll provide a prompt-a-day as well to try and help get the poetic juices flowing each day, but you can decide to follow or ignore the prompt as you see fit. After all, our main goal would be to have 30ish poems at the end of the month that you can then try turning into a chapbook submission (or heck, I guess you could self-publish, if that's the route you want to take).

I can tell you now that I won't have the time to highlight poems (as I did in April). But if there's enough interest, I will definitely work to do the prompt and poem each day. So, if you're interested in taking part in such a challenge with me, please let me know in the comments below this post.

Recently, I asked members of my Poetic Asides group on Facebook to give me their take on the relationship of self-publishing and poetry. The response was so overwhelming that I couldn't include everything (and I apologize if your take was not included--or had to be edited), but I did get a lot.

If you feel like adding your own voice to the discussion, just leave a comment below.

Here's some of the great feedback:

As long as a person understands the differences between self-publishing and traditional publishing, and understands the pros and the cons, ie, the additional work involved for the poet, the responsiblity for self-promoting which needs to accompany the self-publishing, and choses the press with care, I believe there is nothing wrong with self-publishing. There is a history in literature of great poets having things to say and yet not having a publisher recognize them until after their death. For example, Emily Dickinson remained largely unpublished for the duration her life, yet still took the time to create booklets of her own poems, gathering them into groups, and hand sewing them together. If a writer feels that there is validity in their work and is willing to stand by it there is nothing wrong with chosing to self-publish even if it is only to feel a sense of completion so they may move on, to the next project.

Julia Ann Unruh

*****

Didn't Robert Creeley self-pub 10 chapbooks before he'd made any name for himself? It's a good idea, I think. If anything, the good ones serve as a sort of calling card, and it's a cheap enough route one could break even on sales well before selling out of a run.

Scott DeKatch

*****

With so few publishing houses and extended waiting periods, I think self-publishing might be a good option for many. Getting a good editor before publishing, however, might be a good idea. I'm all for it!

Helen Zisimatos

*****

Next to targeted non-fiction, I think poetry is the most logical work for self-publishing, especially for those who actively pursue readings, whether featured, open mics or poetry slams. The market for poetry in bookstores is miniscule, and the majority of presses aren't going to print more than 1,000 copies -- more likely 500 -- and have little wherewithal to actually promote them, so a self-published poet is going to have to do all of the legwork any way. Why not take on the easily calculated risks of production -- small initial print run + POD = minimal upfront cash layout -- and keep 100% of any profits made on hard-earned sales?

More thoughts on marketing here: http://loudpoet.com/2008/07/11/thrillerfest-buzz-your-book/

Guy LeCharles Gonzalez

*****

It all depends on what you want to do with your work and where you are as a writer. If you're just starting out and want something to sell/give away at readings and open mics, then make you own chapbook. If you want to be published by other people, self-publishing can be problematic, as many places won't accept previously published work.

The best route is to publish yourself within the context of publishing other people: ie, feature your work in the first issue of a journal or chapbook press, but then focus on other people.

Hugh Behm-Steinberg

*****

With Print-on-Demand so easy, relatively, self-publishing makes sense in some situations, outside the academic world. My husband and I spent a summer taking photographs of Langston Hughes sites in Lawrence and researching his boyhood years 1902-1915 in our hometown. We did not assume this to be a definitive scholarly book, but rather a chance to document information before it was lost. We self published the book, and to our deliglht, some scholars have made use of it. If we had rewritten it and worked with an academic press, it would have take 3-5 years!

I encourage writers of poetry to work within their communities, and when their work begins to overflow their town and region, then submit works to national markets. Self-published anthologies of regional work can be self published to good purpose.

Denise Low, Poet Laureate of Kansas (2007-2009)

*****

I've been hosting poetry in Las Vegas since 1999 and am fairly well-published in various journals, magazines, etc. Many of my friends have pressured me to produce a chapbook, but I have an odd stubborness about it. I feel as though if I self-publish, it's not legitimate; it's vain. Others would argue differently, but I don't think my work is valid unless someone else recognizes its publish-worthiness.

Danna Jae Nordin

*****

It seems there's a double standard out there among various media when it comes to self-publishing. For instance, why is it acceptable--and laudable, even--for bands to release their own albums and filmmakers to release their own films, but it's looked down upon for a writer to release their own work? This is especially the case in academic circles.

Some of my favorite reads were self-published: Al Burian's "Burn Collector," Aaron Cometbus's "Cometbus," among others. While there is a stigma attached to self-publishing outside of the underground, that doesn't inherently make the work good or bad, because the content is what counts.

Jason Jordan

*****

There is only one commercially legitimate way to self-publish your work and that is to learn the Book Arts (Binding, Macrotypography, etc.) and bind the books yourself. If you self-publish using one of the many 'services' for that purpose your work will still hold no water with publishers whatsoever. If you start your own small press, learn the trade, and establish an actual record of sales in differing demographics, then publishers will look at you in a legitamized light.

Drew Wiberg

*****

If there is no other way to get your stuff out, I don't see anything wrong with it. It might just be a way to be recognized as, after all, a lot of publishers don't seem to read. And even if they do, they want quick money, not quality.

Monique Caddy

*****

I teach undergraduates and at near the end of the course they have to memorize a poem and make a bookmark, broadside or chapbook of the poet they studied during the semester. They come up with the most beautiful and innovative broadsides I've ever seen using materials anyone can buy cheaply or scrounge up from around the house. I bring in examples from prior classes to show them how inexpensive it can be to get a poem out into the world. These aren't their own poems, but clearly that could be the next step.

With the economy closing in on us, poetry, an already marginalized, under-represented market (because there is not now and never was a big market for poetry books) will see a drop in sales. Barnes and Noble has already removed all poetry books from their shelves in an effort to cut back. They will re-order, but only titles that sell extremely well--Billy Collins, Mary Oliver, Sharon Olds, and major award winners. This leaves little room for the little guy or gal. So, in my mind, self-publishing, as well as self-distribution, may just be the wave of the future for poetry.

Small Presses may also find themselves going under during these tough economic times which means fewer contests, fewer venues for publication. Even poetry journals will surely stumble under the weight of the inflated dollar. As a result, we may see a surge in online publications. It's so cheap to make a broadside, a chapbook or even a full-length collection on computer. Something to note, even the Pushcart Prize is now accepting online publications for their yearly prize, and so these journals are becoming more accepted as legitimate. I think self-publication, as a result, is also finding and will continue to acquire more legitimacy.

This doesn't mean that there will be more good poetry out there. That's one of the legitimate gripes about self-publication. Just as anyone who fiddles with car engines and then decides to put up a sign and open shop is not necessarily a good mechanic. Just as there are good doctors and not so good doctors. The same holds true for those who write, maybe more so. But hey, there's already a glut of bad poetry on the market, legitimate prize-winning poetry.

The rush to publication is a problem with American poets who tend to view product above process, who seek recognition at the expense of excellence, who are self-satisfied rather than self-critical, and the worst, who spend more time writing and trying to get published than they spend reading and studying great poetry.

So, my advice, is to find people who are both strong advocates AND strong critics of your work and ask them: Am I ready to publish? Rule of thumb: You should have been working seriously at your craft for at least 10 years before you consider book publication. You should have at least 20 or 30 good magazine publications under your belt, along with a wealth of rejections. You should attend workshops, conferences, programs if money allows to garner feedback on your work. All the same holds true for self-publication. If you decide to self-publish, the rules haven't changed, just the venue.

We all know Walt Whitman believed enough in his work to self-publish and we're glad he did. He also rewrote and revised furiously. With self-publication--the time and expense of it--maybe more poets will think twice before flinging their poems out into the wine-dark sea.

Dorianne Laux

*****

I have never self-published but I did have contracts with two subsidy publishers...against both of whom I wound up in class action lawsuits. One publisher and her husband went to jail for cheating authors out of their money and not delivering on their promises. Those associations left a decidedly bad taste in my mouth and my pocketbook minus thousands of dollars.

That said, the first publisher did print thousands of my books (not the 10K as contracted though). I was able to parlay those books into a good career for myself (primarily on the web). Now, 60 small-press published books later, I can look back at that time as a learning experience. It taught me patience and humility. I have also tried to counsel newbie authors but I've found that's generally a waste of time. They are going to do what they are going to do and if what you suggest doesn't mesh with what they've decided to believe, you are wasting breath and effort. Some people can't be helped. They have to learn the hard way.

Would I self-publish? No, I don't believe I would. I would try every e-book route available first and use self-publishing as an absolute last resort. Would I subsidy publish again, suggest other writers do it? HELL, NO! The reason why is simple: at least with self-publishing you have some say in how and when and why you spend your money. With subsidy/vanity, you do not. You are at the mercy of just how honest that publisher is or isn't. There are too many reputable e-publishers out here who will look at your work and if it isn't good enough for them, chances are it won't be good enough for readers to buy. If even the poorest e-pub won't contract your work, it just might not be as great as you believe it to be. If you publish anyway and then place it before reviewers, be prepared to have a new one reamed for you.

Then there is the monetary to consider. For every $1.00 I make on my print books, I make $100.00 on downloads. The reason is simple: distribution via the internet. There is less overhead for the publisher and the royalty percentages are far greater than trying to get the books into brick and mortar stores. Your book never goes out of print and a reader can get it in the middle of the night during a snow storm while sitting in their jammies. That's a good incentive for some buyers. Most small pubs have very low prices on downloads but the NY boys are getting into the market with the inception of the Kindle et al and the prices are being traditionally hiked up to what the cost of a mass market paperback would be. That's highway robbery but hey! Anything the traffic will allow, eh?

As for poetry: I have been in a couple of anthologies and as a rule they just don't sell. I love poetry. I read poetry but I don't buy books of poetry. I can't see self-published poetry books fairing much better than those put out by publishers. In this day and age, people are moving away from the calmer, gentler forms of entertainment. We are not producing new generations of readers but rather generations of Xbox clones. That's a shame for there is so much solace in a well-crafted poem.

Charlee Compo

*****

On principle I'm against self-publishing, because it means skipping an important phase of a writer's work, i.e. submitting it to the appreciation of professional and expert readers. But there's the other side of the medal: most readers aren't interested in poetry, poetry books don't sell, and publishers generally don't invest their money in producing books without a financial return, so it's difficult for a poet to get published by a third part. The best way to work as a poet is, as we know well, submitting to specialized reviews or taking part in literary competitions.

This said, getting published rather than self-publishing doesn't mean more readers. If you're lucky, 100 will read what you write, maybe 15 will like it, and 5 will understand it.

Is self-publishing a good thing? Ezra Pound self-published his first book, and many great Italian poets did the same. Probably they had no other choice, but time is the best judge.

Valeria Di Clemente

Pescara, Italy

*****

There was a time when I would have said that self-publishing was a relatively harmless route. Now I would discourage any serious poet who asked me. My reasons? Glad you asked.

A. The ease with which it can now be done has really diminished the currency for all poets. I suppose vanity presses have always existed but now anybody can go to KINKOS and publish their own chapbook quickly and inexpensively. So in effect, being published proves next to nothing. Anyone can call themselves a poet and anyone can be published.

B. I regret having self-published some chapbooks because, despite the sense of self- accomplishment, and actually BECAUSE of it, I suspect I was less motivated to perfect my skills and hone my craft, instead of waiting till I was good enough to earn acceptance from an objective third part. I suppose a possible exception would be that if you'd been trying for a long time, and published in a lot of fairly prestigious journals, and a couple of TRUTHFUL, OBJECTIVE writers validated the value of your work, self-publishing might be OK.

C. A surprising number of presses holding first book and chapbook contests have made it clear that those who self-publish are not eligible. So according to those standards, you could create a chapbook and give 10 copies to friends at Christmas and they would not want you to enter.

Seems REALLY harsh but there it is. You would know even if they didn't.

Christopher Soden

*****

I would never self-publish a regular book of any kind (as opposed to a chapbook). Even if you opt for one of the companies that charges for set-up, then prints on demand, the expense is significant and the price you have to charge buyers for each book is much larger than if someone else with a press publishes it. A ibig issue, too, is marketing. Even poets who read regularly have a difficult time selling any quantiy of books. Poetry books, especially, are a difficult sell, unless the publisher has an agreement to sell to libraries, certain bookstores, or colleges.

I would self-publish a chapbook since I have a program that prints in book form. With a laser printer that goes on forever, the cost would be minimal. I say that I WOULD, but haven't done so. I've been fortunate enough to have offers for my first three chaps.

Pris Campbell

*****

One thing to consider is that some publications will not even consider running a review of anything that could be considered self-published.  I heard from a man this week who had published a book of fiction, but (he says) the publishers put little effort into publicizing his book.  He said he had decent sales without publicitiy, so he bought back the rights to the book and the remaining copies.  He was then told that doing so, technically, made his a self-published book now, therefore ineligible for "serious attention."

My experience in publishing poetry is slim, but I would think one should pursue all the avenues for publishing first. 

Nancy Posey

*****

I think small chaps are a great thing, when you have enough to sacrifice some. This is mainly a poet-to-poet world, so small inexpensive bait is a good thing. The quality and originality still has to be high, since this is a "showcase". The small chaps I really like have quirks and thoughts unique to that poet, so I try to do that also.  It's a souvenir.  A size mailable in a #10 envelope and a token price (free, or send back stamps in a bag?) is fun.

Jim Knowles

*****

Self-publishing is like a very large business card or portfolio. It's self-promotion which is personal-scale. You can participate in the gift economy to exchange small print-run (or photocopier-run) works without a big cost out lay. If you go thru a print on demand company, the overhead is still low.

One of the drawbacks is that if it is only you promoting you, the distribution networks and the onus to spread the material is all on your shoulders. If you work cooperatively with a group, channels can be shared. There's more credibility if a group says you are good than if you alone say you are worth the time to read. If you are published in magazines and thru other people's networks you are less in control of what goes to print but your works can be accessed by more people.

The other main drawback is that by self-publishing you may set the bar too low. You may (or might now) rush to publish before the work is polished enough. An editor or more experience or more time sitting with the work could give room for improvement. The gating of going through someone else can hold you in a purgatory that is useful for more refining time.

Pearl Pirie

*****

I, and several other poets I know, have self-published chapbooks.  I think that self-publishing works perfectly for chapbook-sized collections.  It allows the poet to gather his/her work in one place, or follow one theme without the need to fill 90 or so pages.  It allows the writer also to dip his/her foot into the world of "merchandising" your art--seeing what it feels like to have a larger number of readers looking specifically at your work--without having to submit to the intricacies of having someone else publish you.  

And, don't underestimate the psychological value of having a collection of work "published"--ie in book form, bound, ready to hand out or sell to anyone who will have it.  It all helps you to take yourself and your work more seriously.  So I believe it is a great first step on the road to publication.  

Of course, it is not a substitute for being published by an outside publisher, someone who doesn't already love you.  That not only has even greater psychological implications, but also catapults you into a community of writers who have also been published by that publisher.  

I have found this to be one of the greatest results of all of being published by bluechrome over here in the UK.  But self-publishing, especially for poets, is a great first step.

Sue Guiney

On September 22, I posted about a few sites that have poetry calendars in some prominent areas--mainly as a result of looking for events in my new home of Atlanta, Georgia. And many poets chimed in with other sites, in addition to my very, very short list.

Collected together, here are those for the U.S.:

• Atlanta, Georgia http://www.poetryatlanta.blogspot.com
• New York City http://www.poetz.com/calendar
• Chicago http://chicagopoetry.com
• Southern California http://www.poetix.net/calendar.htm
• Las Vegas www.localendar.com/public/VegasPoetry
• Texas http://texaspoetryevents.info/
• Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania http://www.poetz.com/pittsburgh/index.htm
• Boston, Massachusetts http://www.poetz.com/boston/
• Western Massachusetts and Connecticut www.poetrynewscalendar.com
• North Carolina http://ncpoetlaureate.blogspot.com/
• New Jersey http://old.pccc.edu/poetry/
• New Jersey, Part 2 http://njpoetspoetry.blogspot.com/
• Minnesota www.minnesotapoetry.com
• Kansas City (Kansas and Missouri) http://www.newletters.org/eventsReading.asp
• Philadelphia, Pennsylvania http://freecal.brownbearsw.com/PhillyPoetry

Here are ones from outside the States:

• Dublin, Ireland: http://www.poetryireland.ie/whats-on/
• Western Ireland http://theroadlesstraveledireland.com
• Ottawa, Canada http://www.bywords.ca
• Toronto, Canada http://www.patchysquirrel.ca/
• Alberta, Canada http://www.strollofpoets.com/index.php

Lately, there have been a lot of pieces on putting together poetry from other people's words (or imagining what others would say). Here are some I've noticed:

* There Once Was a Soccer Mom From Alaska... (Actually Alice Pope led me to this one. Thanks, Alice!)

* The Poetry of Sarah Palin

* We hereby nominate Al Davis as poet laureate of Oakland

*****

Also, as an extra, here are some poems actually by Barack Obama.

Recently, I had the good opportunity to interview Iranian born poet Sheema Kalbasi who is also a human rights activist and translator. She's also the director of Dialogue of Nations through Poetry, director of the Iranian Women Poetry Project, and co-director of the Other Voices International Project.

Her collection Echoes in Exile (PRA Publications) was a Best Books Award Finalist by USA Book News. In addition to her own poetry, she also translated an anthology of women poets from Middle Ages Persia to Present Day Iran titled Seven Valleys of Love (PRA Publications).

One of my favorite pieces from Echoes in Exile is:

Ivy Nights

Deep in the mouth,
Ivies have grown.
It is rather tricky
To claim her as mine
Now that I have given her to you.
Take good care of her.

And here is the interview:

What are you currently up to?

I am working on the Danish to English translation of a poem by Pia Tafdrup for the forthcoming print publication of the Other Voices International Project, a collection of poems edited by my friend and literary colleague, Roger Humes, and myself. The anthology is the work by a number of poets from our UNESCO endorsed "cyber-anthology" of world poetry which is located at www.othervoicespoetry.org

You were born in Tehran, Iran; you are a Danish citizen; and you currently live in Washington, DC. How has your sense of place affected your writing?

Often when I am asked this question I reply by quoting from Kahlil Gibran, the Lebanese poet and philosopher who writes: "He who does not prefer exile to slavery is not free by any measure of freedom, truth and duty." As a person who has been displaced on more than one occasion living and experiencing life in places with such differences in the legal, social, and political system has definitely influenced my writings.

As a Danish citizen I have experienced social discrimination, but this is far from what I experienced and observed in Iran. The country where I was born and raised in until the age of fourteen is ruled by a regime that has institutionalized gender apartheid; has mass murdered dissidents and members of religious minorities; has destroyed holy sites and cemeteries of people of "unrecognized faith"; has denied higher education and work to Bahaies; has executed people by brutal methods such as stoning; and has arbitrarily arrested and jailed hundreds of journalists, bloggers, and other activists. 

In the United States where I currently live, the rights of each individual are much more protected by the legal system than in any other country where I have lived. Surely, there are human rights abuses committed by the U.S. government from time to time, but those eventually always come to light. Abu Gharib is such an example.

In my writings I address these issues. I know what it is to be scared of falling bombs, as I know what it is to be paralyzed by fear. I experienced it at the age of 8 when several Iranian cities, including Tehran, were attacked by Iraqi missiles. The bombings killed some seventy elementary school students, and the air raid became the topic of one of my longer poems entitled "Let's Dance Cha, cha Oil," where I write: "The concentration of oil in my body is higher than Central Asia/And this makes it even more critical/To experience life/As a human with socialization goals/Because during the school hours/I and the other students had to learn/How to hide under the desks" (Echoes in Exile, P.R.A., 2006).

You are the director of the Iranian Women Project. What is the purpose of this project?

My mother's grave is in a new land far from where she was born, raised and worked. She was the first Iranian woman with whom I had contact, a lover of literature and willful creature who encouraged me to write as a child. I created this project to honor her memory so that she and other Iranian female poets living in Iran or elsewhere receive the international recognition they deserve.

You've worked as a translator. Do you feel the familiarity with multiple languages has enhanced your poetry writing?

Perhaps knowing several languages makes my poetry more inter-cultural and inter-textual without alienating or overshadowing my background both as an Iranian born, and a voyager. 

In Seven Valleys of Love, you translate the works of women poets "from Middle Ages Persia to present day Iran." Did you notice any threads tying the poems together throughout the ages?

The thread tying the poems together is the anthology’s historical overview.

Your English-language collection Echoes in Exile contains poems of loss and pain, but also poems of desire. What do you feel ties this collection together?

My experiences as an individual, a woman, a lover, a human rights activist, a mother, and an exile.

Do you have any sort of writing routine?

Yes. I have disciplined myself to write every day. Sometimes I start as early as 5 a.m.

Which poets are you currently reading?

I am reading Fahmida Riaz, a Pakistani feminist poet, and of course one of my all time favorites whose poetry I can never get enough of, the Iranian-Canadian poet and filmmaker Naanaam (Hossein Martin Fazeli). Your readers may want to familiarize themselves with this poet's writings and watch one of his latest films at http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=O02yAAmU3Ww.

If you could pass on one piece of advice to fellow poets, what would it be?

I don't like receiving advice when I haven't asked for any and don't see why other people, including poets, would be any different than me.

*****

For more information on Kalbasi, check out www.frontlist.org.

Okay, this question has been coming up a lot recently in the comments section of this blog: What counts as previously published? And, in relation to this blog, does posting a poem in the comments of this blog mean it's "published"?

Before I begin, I think it would be beneficial for you to read this post from former co-blogger and Poet's Market editor Nancy Breen about the whole publishing question in "Published is Published!"

For Individual Poems

Many editors consider anything published anywhere at any time under any circumstances as published. This can even include public readings. And if a publication specifies what they consider published in their guidelines, it would behoove a poet (or any writer really) to respect the editor's considerations.

With such editors, a poem posted anywhere counts as publication, whether it's posted in a public forum or blog, or even a private, password-protected location online. In such cases, poems posted on this blog would be considered "previously published." However, there are editors who take a slightly different view.

Some editors consider a poem unpublished if it only displays on a personal blog and/or is in a "draft" form in a forum or blog. That is, if your poem on Poetic Asides is only a rough draft and not the final version, it would not be considered "previously published." If editors do not specify what they consider previously published, there's a good chance they fall into this camp.

For Poetry Collections

Except for rare cases, most editors/publishers of poetry collections accept previously published poems as long as the collection itself has not been previously published. Actually, the fact that poems are previously published usually helps in getting the collection published. That said, do NOT try to use poems posted on a personal blog or public forum as a publishing credit. Such credits hold little weight, since there is usually no screening process, because eveyone can get published.

My main point here is that individual poems that are considered published by journals can still be considered unpublished as components of a poetry collection. And that even individual poems that are considered published are welcome in "original" collections of poems.

In fact, "new collections" can be made from selecting poems from previous full-length collections and chapbooks.

So, How Should Poets Proceed?

Armed with your knowledge of what is and is not considered published, you've just got to pick your battles and act accordingly. For instance, most of my poems are not published on my blog, because I want to have as many publishing options available to me as possible. I share drafts of these "unpublished" poems with close poet friends to solicit feedback for revisions.

The poems I post as parts of prompts, I consider "published," though I would not use it as a publishing credit if I tried including any of them in a collection, because I also consider my poems on this blog to be "vanity publication credits." I make an informed decision to write a poem a week just for the act of creation.

Considering how much money most published poets make anyway, I don't view this as such a bad decision. But every poet has to make this decision on their own.

So as part of my upcoming move from Southwest Ohio to Northwest Georgia, I've been interested in what the poetry scene is like in the Atlanta area. And lucky for me, there is a website dedicated to poetry events in the area.

The site is called Poetry Atlanta, Inc., and it was created by Dan Veach, editor of the Atlanta Review. If you're interested, check it out at http://www.poetryatlanta.blogspot.com.

So that got me wondering about other areas, and here's a short list of calendars from particular cities:

For NYC, there's the ultimate NYC poetry calendar by Marc Rubin at http://www.poetz.com/calendar.

For Chicago, there's C.J. Laity's http://chicagopoetry.com.

And then, there is the Poetix poetry calendar for Southern California at http://www.poetix.net/calendar.htm.

*****

If you have up-to-date poetry calendars from other areas, please share them with everyone in the comments below. Thanks!

This interview came about from an earlier interview with poet and actress Hélène Cardona. Sometime in June, Hélène mentioned that John M. FitzGerald's most recent collection, Telling Time by the Shadows (Turning Point), was actually a collection of secret love poems written by him to her.

"These are the poems John wrote when we first met," says Hélène. "We met at a reading he did at Beyond Baroque in Venice. After that we communicated through poetry, sending each other poems by mail or e-mail for the longest time before we even had a date. It's a very 18th century story."

Needless to say, I was definitely intrigued. John originally sent his poems to Hélène as "prayer poems," so as not to let on they were to her. Eventually, the secret broke, and they both went on to live happily ever after.

FitzGerald, a dual citizen of the United States and Ireland, has published in numerous journals and anthologies. Spring Water, a novel in verse, was a Turning Point Books prize selection in 2005. His other collections include The Mind, The Charter of Effects, Question Creation and The Zeroth Law. He recently completed his first novel, Primate, and turned it into a screenplay.

Here's a poem from Telling Time by the Shadows:

"Magus"

I would be one of the wanderers,
with heaven watching.
Observe, you reflections, I glance away.

Notice the wonder spring forth in ancientness,
steep the spell held in spices, hypnotized.
In dreams I descend twenty steps at a time,

am afraid how I'll land if I fly too high.
I try not to say I, and claim myself,
a sign of consciousness uncovering.

Who calls me, from such transience?
We will ourselves into vastness,
like children at graves,

a wind with just one chance to blow,
both toward and away from itself in surprise,
or life is waste.

There are shooting stars, then that which lingers,
even hovers like a hawk, a halo, a messenger.
None can bear looking straight into the sun.

We see it reflect off the ocean by day, the moon at night.
Imagine someone's sun fly away.
What must it search for, in its burning?

Galaxies witness it bursting through silence.
May it hover to the end in spite of where it finds itself.
Let innocence cling to the universe, swirling,

get high and go hungry, distill our minds
till we can't control what pours from inside,
and at heart remain addicts, ever humble.

And with that, let's get into the interview:

What are you currently up to?

I recently finished a new manuscript of poetry, The Zeroth Law. It's actually more of a cross between poetry and literary nonfiction that compares the beliefs of the world’s major religions to history, myth and science.

You're in a relationship with poet Hélène Cardona. So I'm wondering if you could share what it's like to be in a relationship with another poet?

Hélène is great. She is the love of my life and my best friend and a pleasure to be around. People say we're joined at the hip. I'm not so sure that being in a relationship with another poet is so different than being in a relationship with a person in any other occupation. You have to make time for both the vocational and creative aspects of life, while continuing to recognize the things that brought you together in the first place. I was used to being alone to write and it took some adjustment for me. But it helps that we have a lot of the same interests and can bounce things off of one another. And it helps that she is brilliant, too.

Your collection Telling Time by the Shadows is actually a collection of "secret" love poems you wrote to Cardona, which you called Prayer Poems at the time. Could you re-cap a little on how this developed, including when/how Cardona finally learned their actual purpose?

Yes. It's a collection of poems of love and longing. I first met Hélène when she approached me after a reading I did at Beyond Baroque, in Venice. She told me how great my poems were, and of course, I was immediately stunned by her presence. As time went on, we kept meeting again and again at local poetry events. We talked and exchanged poems.

But Hélène is an impressive person. I was always certain that it was only the poetry she was interested in, rather than me in a romantic sense. We began to meet and take very long walks along the beach, from Santa Monica to Malibu, almost daily. During these walks we would hardly speak at all. We would then each return to our separate homes, and send each other poems and letters by e-mail and post.

At that time, as it happened, I was working on what I then referred to as "The Prayer Poems." These were prayers in the traditional sense, that they were directed toward a deity. But in these poems, God is really a woman.

In your own opinion, what makes for a good "secret" love poem?

I think a good secret love poem is one that is universal. You cannot give yourself away completely. Hélène actually began to hope the poems were about her.

You work as an attorney, which I'm sure eats up a lot of time and can be psychologically draining. How do you balance your poetry with your day job?

I write every night. It's just a matter of habit. I wouldn't feel normal if I didn't do it.

Could you explain what inspired Spring Water (Turning Point), a novel in verse about the life of a serial killer?

When I was in law school, I read a number of cases in criminal law and criminal procedure, in which defendants being tried for murder raised the defense of insanity, stating that God, or the devil had told them to kill. But the case that stuck with me the most did not arise in the context of crimes, but in the context of wills and trusts. It was the infamous Tylenol case, to which we now owe the tamper-proof cap.

In this sad case, a newlywed couple was called on their honeymoon in Hawaii, and informed that the groom's brother had suddenly and unexpectedly died. The couple cut their honeymoon short, and returned for the funeral. After the ceremony, there was a reception held at the home of the deceased. Both the new husband and wife took the very same Tylenol, and died within an hour of one another. Since they both had wills leaving everything to the other, the issue was which one to enforce. The killer was never caught. That really stuck with me.

You have lived in England, Italy, and Santa Monica. I'm going to put you on the spot and ask which is your favorite place to live and why?

Santa Monica. I love it here. I was born here. But I'm also a citizen of Ireland. I lived England 2 years and couldn't wait to come home. But now I sort of miss it, and will make it a point to go back – for a visit. My mother's side of the family has a vineyard in Amorosi, near Naples. It's pretty great there too. But since you said "live," I'm sticking with Santa Monica, for now. Who knows, I might feel the need to move to Ireland, depending on who wins the election.

As a follow-up question, do you think travel helps with the poetic writing process?

I'm sure that anything outside the ordinary, everyday experience must help with the creative process. As beautiful as Santa Monica is, you can only write about the beach so many times before you bore yourself to television.

If you could share only one piece of advice with other poets, what would it be?

Read, read, read.

*****

Check out Turning Point Books at http://www.turningpointbooks.com.

Check out John's website at http://jmfitzgerald.com.

And finally, check out Cardona's website at http://www.helenecardona.com.

*****

Poetic Asides is loaded with great poet interviews. To view them all, go to: http://blog.writersdigest.com/poeticasides/CategoryView,category,Poet%20Interviews.aspx.

Okay, I've been in hiding recently because so many poets have been hounding me over who is the winner of the first ever fake bio contest on Poetic Asides. The great thing about this contest is that writers didn't need to have any "real" credits to enter--just a great imagination of what they'd like to have in their bio notes. That said, the competition was fierce--with many entrants owning impressive "real" bios.

Anyway, the judging was difficult, especially as I got closer and closer to narrowing down the field to 8 finalists from which to pick the winner. To build the suspense and share some of the fake bios I found most interesting, here are the 7 finalists who did not win:

Pris Campbell's poetry book, Sucky Relationships, was just turned into an award-winning movie, directed by Clint Eastwood. She will be featured on Dr. Phil and Oprah where she'll moderate participant's arguments about which partner sucked the most. She is currently being sued by all six of her ex-husbands who demand parts in the movie as their award. She lives with her pet monkey on an island off of Maine where she's hard at work on a sequel. Jib-Jab plans to spearhead a drive to make her poet laureate for 'making poetry relevant to the people' again.

Pris Campbell |camprisAT NOSPAMbellsouth dot net

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Kellian Angelou is famous and well-known for winning the Pullet's Surprise, the No Bell Piece Prize, and the Mack Arthur Genie Grant for her poetry collection exploring the uncertainty of scales, The Waistland. The Waistland is a corset of sonnets dealing with the tragic difficulty of being a size 14 in a world of zeros. Kellian received her MFA from the I-Owe-ya Writers Workshop. She currently lives with her wild emu, Walt, in the Northwest.

Kelli Agodon |kelliAT NOSPAMagodon dot com

*****

Caili Wilk has been awarded the Emily Dickinson accolade for her upcoming work titled, “I am so old”. At age 32, this will be her first award for poetry; however as a teenager she received a bronze certificate for her entry into the middle school song contest. Miss Wilk is most well known for her attempt to break the world record for typing out the letter P on a keyboard; however, after 5,328,685 times, she collapsed muttering “I need to pee”. Inconsequently, she retired to her bathroom, and has not been seen in public since developing severe typophobia.

Caili Wilk |cailiwilkAT NOSPAMgmail dot com

*****

Robert McDermott was intended to be the reincarnation of Robert Lowell but owing to a clerical error is actually the reincarnation of John Berryman. His poetry is quite remarkable and is easily the best on his ward. He is currently writing an opera about oranges and in his next life he wants to be a Shakespearean villain. His latest collection 'In conversation with Kilgore Trout' has attracted wide praise and is available in spirit everywhere.

Robert McDermott |robertmcdermottAT NOSPAMgmail dot com

*****

Odoacer Pinkyring Moses de la Salle Cuthbert-Jones is that weird guy who lives in the van parked across the street from your house. He is allergic to everything, especially air and water. His most recent book, the title of which is unpronounceable in any human language, spent 30 seconds at the top of the best seller list in the Autonomous Republic of Erewhon. One day he will destroy you all.

Matthew Falk |mdfalkAT NOSPAMsvsu dot edu

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Jonathan Pinnock is the author of "Apathy: A 21st Century Manifesto". He'd tell you more about himself if he could be bothered.

Jonathan Pinnock |jonAT NOSPAMjpassoc dot co dot uk

*****

Shaindel Beers, the once promising young poet, has decided after reading many literary journals, including this one, that mediocrity is the way to go. Obviously no one was brilliant enough to understand her allusions to the classical mythologies of ancient civilizations, her personal theories of metaphysics, or her unique insight into the human condition. Instead, journals have elected to publish her drunken scrawlings written on napkins at dive bars, which she then drunk types when she comes home alone from happy hours at various establishments. The other nights, little writing gets done.

Shaindel Beers |shaindelrAT NOSPAMyahoo dot com 

*****

All of these were great, but the first ever winner cracked me up--and got bonus points, because writers could actually submit a similar bio note without stretching the truth. As a result, Jessy Randall will receive a free copy of the 2009 Poet's Market. Congratulations, Jessy!

Here's her winning entry:

Jessy Randall has read poems in the Iowa Review, Ploughshares, the Paris Review, the New Yorker, and The Best American Poetry 1999, 2003, and 2007.

Jessy Randall |jessyrandallAT NOSPAMyahoo dot com

It's Labor Day weekend here in the States, so I get a 3-day weekend with my sons and family reunions on both Sunday (in Northwest Indiana) and Monday (in Southwest Ohio). Woo-hoo!

Also, I want to remind y'all that the deadline for the Fake Bio Note contest is drawing near. So before you get too busy to enter, I suggest you go over, take a look at a few and then take a stab at entering your own fake bio note. It's free--and if yours is selected as the winner, you'll get a free copy of 2009 Poet's Market.

You must add your fake bio note to that actual post, though. So to make it easy on you, here's the URL for that post: http://blog.writersdigest.com/poeticasides/Fake+Bio+Note+Contest.aspx

Besides that, be safe and have fun this weekend!