Poetic Asides with Robert Lee Brewer - Poetry Publishing

Interview With Poet (and 2008 November PAD Chapbook Challenge champion) Shann Palmer

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 18:38:55 GMT

It doesn't feel like it's been a year since the last November PAD Chapbook Challenge began, but I suppose we're almost there. (Click here to read about the 2009 November PAD Chapbook Challenge.)

To get everyone in the November PAD Chapbook Challenge mood, I thought I'd interview the 2008 winner: Shann Palmer. Her 11-poem collection, Change, was chosen by Tammy and I from more than 50 chapbook submissions.

Here's a personal favorite of mine:

Patience

There must be a place
where old men wait
for wives to be ready
to couple and uncouple,

give foot rubs after
they shop for couches,
remember to buy bulbs
for living room lamps.

Bearded men who regret
haste having discovered
the wisdom of a light touch,
a dark room, a cool breeze.

A mountain understands,
endures what nature brings.

*****

What have you been up to the past year?

This year I read at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts "Art After Hours" program, a real honor. In April, I participated in the National Poetry Month Pledge Drive for the American Academy of Poets and was one of two national winners--they sent a box stuffed with books, CDs, doodads, and flair! Published in Shakespeare's Monkey Review, the Twitter poets issue of Ocho, a poem in a new chapbook out by the Private Press coming soon. In July, I attended the Writers Workshop at West Virginia University (my sixth time) workshopping with poet Shara McCallum. Somewhere in between we've been repairing/redoing our kitchen and bathroom (like my poems, yet undone).

On November 13, I have a poetry reading with local SlamRichmond champ Tom Prunier called "Big Man, Little Woman" at art6 Gallery where I run regular readings and local art events for poets. I also play piano for a local musical improv group, Iprov--we have a festival performance on November 7. Plus all the regular life and job stuff!

What were you expecting to get out of the November PAD Challenge last year? And did you get it?

I always expect to create a group of poems to refine and hopefully, publish. If five out of thirty find a home, I'm pleased. Writing is a skill, like piano playing or composition--you have to constantly work at the craft so when the perfect motif pops into your head, you can assemble the best words (in the right order). To have my collection picked as winner was very gratifying. I'd say this was my most successful attempt! (I also PADded in April and July).

You self-published your collection Change as a chapbook. What appeals to you about self-publishing your poetry?

Self-publishing is immediate, I've been making chapbooks for myself and friends since 1997. At readings, people seem to always ask for a copy of certain poems, by doing small chapbooks, I can easily provide a copy. I suspect it also makes me lazy, since I continue doing small books instead of compiling a larger collection to submit. Not having a 'real' book probably prevents me from being asked to read or panel at some literary events.

Also, I've had the good fortune to check out some of your other self-published pieces, such as A Little Bag of Love (a little bag with love poems inside) and Poems from the apron pocket (a small chapbook made from a single, multi-folded piece of paper). Both are inventive ways to package poetry. How do you go about distributing these poems?

So many ways! I stick them in between poetry books at bookstores, leave them in coffee shops, hand them out at readings, sell them at art galleries, give them as gifts, teach workshops on how to make them, hand them to strangers on the street, send them to friends in letters and cards. I thought about stapling them to telephone poles but I'm pretty sure it's against the law in Richmond.

What do you feel makes a great collection of poetry?

Compelling poems. Great stories. Details that draw me in even when I don't have a reason to read on. Poems that don't tell me everything, give me room to bring my experiences to the page as I read. Themed collections are not my favorites--though Colosseum by Katie Ford (this years VCU Levis prize winner) is excellent. I prefer the loosely organized work of Tony Hoagland; he's my favorite poet.

Do you have any advice for poets taking on the Poetic Asides November PAD Chapbook Challenge?

Write about anything, keep it simple, don't worry if you think it's awful. These poems should be considered drafts, not finished. I've written some of my worst and best poems during challenges, the rewrite, rethinking process is where the magic happens. Most of all, don't sweat it--the poetry police will not come to your door if you miss a day--it's your words in the end that matter.

Oh yes, PLEASE SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL POETS! (And independent bookstores!)

*****

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Ridiculous Statistic: Poetry Rejections

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 18:10:10 GMT

Earlier this week, I was asked a pretty ridiculous question: How many poetry submissions (or poems) get rejected by American poetry journals (per year)?

It's not so ridiculous, I suppose, if you're just guesstimating an approximation. But then, the person (I'll let him remain anonymous) went on to ask if I can forward him to a resource that knows the answer if I do not. (And, by the way, he's already consulted poets.org, pw.org, The NY Public Library, and the Library of Congress.)

I'm not surprised he wasn't able to find an answer, because any answer he could have received would've been completely and utterly bogus.

To determine a specific number would require:

Knowing every journal (big and small press) that receives poetry submissions each year.
Knowing how many submissions (or poems) are rejected by each journal.

The first part is a lot more difficult than it seems. Even the best directories, do not list every small press journal on the market. Are there 500 literary journals accepting poetry submissions? Are there 5,000? Do high school and college publications count? Where is the line drawn exactly if you want an exact number?

The second part is even harder to figure out. Most editors don't even know how many submissions (or poems) they reject a year. They give approximations like, "We only accept less than 1% of what's submitted," or, "We reject 500 poems every poem we publish." If a journal can't even give you a specific number, how can you give an accurate (or near accurate) answer?

Bottom line: You can't.

More than a million poems are likely rejected each year by American poetry journals. I'm not sure what the point of getting any more specific would accomplish. In fact, I'm not sure why a general knowledge even matters. At the end of the day, it's just another silly, ridiculous statistic.

Poets will continue to write and submit their poetry despite the odds. And I think that's exactly how it should be.

*****

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How much money does a poet make?

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 02:15:03 GMT

Since I'm the editor of Writer's Market and Poet's Market, writers send in questions all the time with questions about craft, publishing, marketing, etc. One of the questions I always hate to answer the most is something along the lines of, "I've been writing poems a long time now, and I think I'm ready to commit to it full time. How much money can I expect to make for my poetry?"

The reason I hate this question is that I feel like I either have to crush someone's dreams or lie. And I'm no good at lying. So, I end up saying (in as much of a non-dreamcrusher manner as I can muster) something along the lines of, "Well...umm...not much, if anything."

There are prizes, fellowships, etc., that are bestowed upon poets. But even if you win a $1,000 book prize every month (which isn't going to happen), you still won't be able to quit your day job--because you'll have to pay for postage, paper, and entry fees for all these contests, fellowships, etc.

Many journals pay in contributor copies (and some don't even do that). The few that can afford to pay in actual money usually offer less than $100 for a poem. And publishing a book isn't going to rake in the cash either. Don't believe me? Go to your local bookstore and find the poetry section (if you don't already know where it's at, it may take you a while). Look at the small offering of poets. Few of them are probably still alive. Fewer still probably don't fall into one of these categories:

Celebrity poet. Billy Corgan, Jewel, etc.
National Poet Laureate. Ted Kooser, Billy Collins, Robert Pinsky, etc.

So, bottom line: There's no money in poetry.

But is that such a bad thing? I think the lack of money in poetry helps take the pressure off the art form. It's really all about a great line, a wonderful image, something that sticks with the reader.

Sure, we all still want to get published and share our thoughts and words with the world; and sure, we'd all love it if someone paid us just to sit around and write poetry all day; but, we know that even if we don't have that situation (even if we're not getting published or getting paid) that we'll still put pen to paper (or fingertips to keyboard) and crank out poems from time to time. Just for the love of it.

*****

Looking for more poetry-related information?

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Interview With Poet Sydney Lea

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 14:59:35 GMT

I discovered Sydney Lea earlier this year while reading issue five of New Ohio Review. I loved both his poems, but especially "Early Life." As the founder and former editor of New England Review, I suppose I should've already known his work. Lea has published a novel, A Place in Mind, and two collections of nonfiction, Hunting the Whole Way Home and A Little Wildness.

Lea's most recent collection, Ghost Pain (Sarabande Books), is his eighth volume of poems. Its predecessor, Pursuit of the Wound, was a Pulitzer finalist and his To the Bone: New and Selected Poems was co-winner of the Poets' Prize. He's received fellowships from nearly everywhere and currently teaches at Dartmouth College.

Here's one of my favorites from his collection Ghost Pain:

Evening Walk as the School Year Starts

When was the last lobotomy, I wonder?
Too late for Carl at least, whom it's all but hopeless
to think of as a whipsaw of hateful passion
that would if it could have torn up his mother and father,
mild as they are; but that's how old villagers say
Carl acted before he was cut. Their smiles are rueful.
They shake their heads, subtle. A raven, unsubtle,
grates from a hemlock as Carl steps into sight.

His wave's familiar: he jerks and drops one palm.
How old must he be? He's ageless. His eyes are empty--
the operation. He turns now: ninety degrees,
then ninety again like a sentry, the other way.
He turns the same on each warm evening, retreating
past the house of our mutual neighbor, who will not speak
to Carl's father, for reasons likely beyond recall.
It seems a shame not to edit grievances.

It's some awful stink nearby that draws the raven,
but the rest of the world seems fixed on the morbid too:
a squirrel keeps pouring spruce cones down at me;
a gall-blighted butternut groans; the broadleafs wilt;
there's a pair of toads at my feet that wheels have flattened
side by side, like cartoon icons of failure;
mosquitoes strafe me, a mammoth dragonfly--
one of the season's last--attacks a moth

so close to me I can hear the fatal click.
The other day a son went off to college.
His mother and I are quietly beside ourselves.
We embrace each other harder now, and vow,
as one vows, to love our children harder too.
Though I hum to distract myself, the raven dives
loud as gunfire through brush to its mess. I jump,
but Carl doesn't seem to hear. I watch him limp

to his family's drive--then again that sure right angle.
Like him, our family finds a virtue in order:
we rise at six to eat our breakfasts together,
then make a certain sandwich for one of the girls,
a certain one for the other; we leave at seven;
we gather the girls promptly at end of school.
Carl opens his door and shuts it--click--behind him.
It's after Labor Day, it's end-of-summer,

it's another season upon us. Now he scolds me,
the squirrel on his branch, his store of weapons gone.
Why me, dumb brute? I haven't done anything wrong,
I've got no grievance with him--not with anyone really.
The darkness deepens, Lord with me abide.
The wishing star is not enough to light
the space around me while this bit of hymn from my schooldays
plays, while daytime's creatures crawl to cover,

and night ones, having no choice, confront the night.

*****

What are you up to?

Well, I just finished a teaching term at Dartmouth. My grad students are adults, many of them high school teachers in search of an advanced degree, and I feel, in my semi-retirement (one course per term), as though I'd died and gone to heaven. The students have been around the block a bit, have had jobs, marriages, children, deaths to contend with, and so on; to that extent, they command subject matter that's often beyond undergrads experience. That's not the undergrads fault, of course. I am moved and inspired by the examples of these aspirant writers in the grad program. Teaching them, to the extent that I can call it that, allows me to stay in touch with a younger generation, have a good deal of time left over for my own writing, and--almost best of all--though I am asked to, I never go to faculty meetings.

I'm also much engaged in non-literary undertakings. I'm the vice-president of Central Vermont Adult Basic Education, which is above all a literacy endeavor, literacy now including computer literacy and more and more, even here in Vermont, English as a second language. CVABE serves three Vermont counties and offers instruction to a thousand students a year. I've been a trustee for almost two decades.

I have also long been involved in a conservation effort in Washington County, Maine, where I, like my late father, have had a camp for decades and decades. Lately the local land trust bought the development rights on 345,000 acres, and bought 34,000 acres outright to be run as a sustainable community forest. Now another 22,000 acres has come on the market rather unexpectedly, so I need to help raise several million more dollars beyond the 35 that the last campaign required. In the grand scheme of things, my contribution to saving these pristine woods and waters may end up being the most important thing--beyond raising five kids--I'll have done.

I have just sold a ninth collection of poems to Four Way Books too, and am trying to finish a second novel; I hope to have it close enough to complete to let my agent look at it in fall.

You're the founder and former editor of New England Review. As an editor, what do you feel makes a good poem?

Oh, there is no short answer to that one! Fact is, I rather shy from the frequent tendency among authors, editors and publishers to choose up teams. If as a poet in my own right, for example, I tend toward formalism, no one could ever force me into positing that approach as ipso facto superior. I love Don Justice in his formal mode, for example, but I also love Allen Ginsberg at his best. I do tend to dislike obscurantism, and ditto preciousness, and I can't for the life of me see what so-called L-A-N-G-U-A-G-E poetry is for.

Ghost Pain was your eighth volume of poems. How do you go about assembling a collection?

I was lucky enough to have Robert Penn Warren as a mentor when I was a younger man, and his description of how he knew he was done with a book still strikes home for me. He says that you write and you write and you write, and in due course you realize that a certain curve of energy has completed itself, that the stuff you are writing now is differently motivated from what you've been doing for some time. I know that's vague, but I can't seem to do better, in that I don't conceive of collections in an aprioristic, programmatic way.

You teach at Dartmouth College. Does teaching inform or influence your writing?

I may have answered that question above, at least in part. The plain truth is that I haven't been entirely innocent of stealing "ideas" from students, ones that they may have been too new at the game to have pulled off successfully. But that's a rarity. Teaching is important to me as a hedge against adopting a mood like Hemingway's at his worst: Long time ago good, now no good. For forty years, in every course I have found at least one young woman or man who bolsters my faith not only in poetry but also in human nature. Also, by my own choice I live a long way from alleged centers of sophistication, which is helpful to me in that it keeps me from the occasional belief of writers in this era of Creeping MFAism that EVERYONE is concerned with literature. Few of my neighbors are concerned with it, at least in the way that the MFAer may be. And yet I do need the "fix" of talking passionately about poetry, fiction, creative writing" in general, and I get it via my students; I get it a lot more from them than from academic colleagues at any rate.

Ghost Pain includes the long poem "A Man Walked Out." What's the most challenging aspect of writing a long poem?

Here's the weird thing. I have written a number of long poems, starting perhaps with "The Feud" in my second collection, moving through "To the Bone" from my 1996 new and selected, into "A Man Walked Out" and most lately into something called "Birds:A Farrago" from my forthcoming book, Young of the Year. And each of these poems seems somehow to have been given to me. Each seems to have followed on a fairly long period of disinclination from writing. Not writer's block but disinclination (whose causes remain unknown to me). Then these poems come in a rush, and I rarely do much in the way of revising them. Is that "inspiration?" I don't know, don't even know if I believe in such a thing, really; rather, I believe these gimmes are the payoff for all those hours of revision that I have put into shorter poems.

So in a sense I am a poor candidate to answer your question. I don't conceive of long poems; they present themselves to me helter skelter. Weird, as I say.

Your poetry has been published in several publications over the years. How do you manage your submissions?

Oh, nothing special: I wait until I have, say, three poems that seem to be as good as they are ever going to be, and then I send them out. After three decades plus, needless to say I have certain favorite journals and editors, and I tend to give them first crack. No, that sounds immodest. They are the readers, rather, who I hope may smile on one of the ones I send on. I have had the experience of landing so many poems with editor X, however, that I begin to feel as if he or she is not sufficiently resistant to what I am doing; I need to overcome real critical skepticism in order to trust that the poem is significant to someone beside myself.

Who or what are you currently reading?

I am rereading the two latest books by Maxine Kumin. At 66, it strengthens me to see someone almost twenty years older doing such marvelous work, probably the best of her wonderful career. I am also reading Elizabeth Strout's stunning novel, Olivia Kitteredge. I read a great deal, too, in natural history publications. A delightful advantage of having given up my specifically academic inclinations a long time ago, despite my unlamented Ph.D. in Comparative Literature, is that I don't think I need to read in a muscular way, to cover a field or keep up with critical postures. I enjoy, in Eliot's delicious phrasing, "the poet's necessary laziness."

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

Oh, I am a terrible advice-giver, or rather just not inclined to give it at all. My way to practice writing is that and that alone; it is not "right" except for me, is not necessarily shareable. To the degree that it may be shared, I prefer to pass it on by way of engaging in dialogue, not laying down rules and prescriptions. I do have one piece of advice to my students, though: write a lot for, say, a decade, in the sure faith that anything you do with diligence for a long time is something you'll get better at. You may not get great (who's to make that judgment anyhow in our lifetimes?), but you WILL get better. I suspect that there were people out there who had as much talent as Michael Jordan, to use an analogy; Michael Jordan became Michael Jordan, though, because he relentlessly practiced his moves.

*****

* To learn more about Sydney Lea, go to www.sydneylea.net

* To learn more about Sarabande Books, go to www.sarabandebooks.org

* To learn more about Four Way Books, go to www.fourwaybooks.com

*****

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Back from vacation...so what's next?

Mon, 10 Aug 2009 18:51:17 GMT

Roses are red;
violets are blue;
I'm going to the Writer's Digest Conference in New York City,
and so should you.

Hmmm... My meter might be a little off in that third line.

I'm fresh back from vacation. So my first official task is to figure out what's the next cool thing on my schedule. And it so happens that the next cool thing (that's not blog-related, of course) is the Writer's Digest Conference in New York City in September. (I bet Central Park will be beautiful!)

From a poetry slam on September 18 at the world famous Bowery Poetry Club to one-on-one critiques with editors, this conference will cover all the bases for publishing, including the top five legal issues writers face, the digitization of the publishing industry, effective marketing and promotion for fiction writers, how to build an effective author website, creating an author platform, and so much more. And the conference is in Times Square, so I can get a little sight-seeing worked in with my...umm...work.

Plus, I'll get to hang with my Writer's Digest posse, including Chuck Sambuchino, Jane Friedman, Alice Pope, Jessica Strawser, and the rest of the gang. And it would be great to see y'all at the event as well. We could talk poetry at the Bowery, wander around Manhattan, and soak up the lights of Times Square.

If you're interested, you can learn more about the conference at http://www.writersdigestconference.com.

And if you do register, send me an e-mail at robert.brewer@fwmedia.com and be sure to say, "Hi."

Promoting Poetry-Related Stuff

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 16:55:50 GMT

While I love being able to offer all the free and valuable content on Poetic Asides, I'm also not ashamed of the fact that I have to sell stuff to keep working as an editor. I've been working for nearly 10 years on Writer's Market and other writing titles, and I jumped at the opportunity to edit Poet's Market last year. After months of hard work, the 2010 Poet's Market is now ready for consumption.

It includes all the listings for magazines, book publishers, contests, conferences, and more that you'd expect from Poet's Market, but I'm also proud of the amazing articles in this edition. From well-known slam poet Taylor Mali giving poetry reading advice to an article on poetry translations, I really feel the 2010 Poet's Market has significantly raised the bar as far as editorial content. (In fact, I've got my work cut out for me to figure out how I can top myself for 2011.)

Oh yeah, each copy of the 2010 Poet's Market also includes an activation code that provides access to the poetry listings on WritersMarket.com for a full year (from when you sign up).

Anyway, the book is now available at a great discounted price on our WritersDigestShop.com site. With a cover price of $29.99, you can get it off the site for only $19.79. And it's brand-spanking-new. Can't beat that.

Check it out at: http://www.writersdigestshop.com/product/2010-poets-market/

Since I don't communicate with the promotions people too often, I'm not sure if that price is permanent or temporary--so it's probably best to order as soon as you can before they come up with some new pricing strategy.

*****

And earlier this year, I led a very successful online seminar for poets titled: Get Your Poetry Published. Many people asked if we'd be offering up a recorded version of the seminar, and I'm happy to say that we're offering that now as well.

In this seminar, I explain how to identify appropriate markets; avoid mistakes many poets make when they submit their writing that can garner an immediate rejection (before the editor even reads any of the poems); write good cover letters; and I give tips on how to track your submissions.

If you're interested in learning more about this recorded seminar (or even if you just want to see a staff headshot taken of me from earlier this year), go to: http://www.writersdigestshop.com/product/get-your-poetry-published-download/

Interview With Poet Cati Porter

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 17:04:11 GMT

Cati Porter is founder and editor-in-chief of Poemeleon: A Journal of Poetry and associate editor (poetry) for Babel Fruit, and is the author of a chapbook of prose poems, small fruit songs (Pudding House Publications), and a full-length collection, Seven Floors Up (Mayapple Press). Cati also participated in the April PAD Challenge this year on Poetic Asides.

small fruit songs is a fun little chapbook--not only is the entire collection prose poems, but they also all explore fruit topics. Good stuff. Meanwhile, Seven Floors Up is a little more of a traditional collection, though it is still a whole lot of fun. In fact, one of Porter's strengths as a poet is her sense of humor.

Here's one of my favorites from Seven Floors Up:

"Caution Please Do Not Try to Turn
the Head Forcefully by Hand!"

(Label found on my son's jeans after his first day of preschool)

I don't know where it came from but it's there, stuck
to his grubby little knee as though someone

saw his small head, how tragically
fragile, how it could turn, like a lid, quite

around. I am grateful to whoever had the foresight
to apply that label, grateful that they did not choose

"Open Me First" or "Discard After _____,"
grateful they turned my attention to the fact

that someday someone may turn his head.

*****

What are you up to?

Well, right now I'm listening to a screaming child tell me I'm mean. It's the last week of school for my boys before their summer vacation. What that means for me is that I'm frantically trying to finish up any projects that require quiet time. I'm now in the middle stages of putting together a second manuscript which is, I think, a departure from the poems in Seven Floors Up; it's very associative and image-driven. Most of the poems in this collection were written in the last year or so, with the core comprised of poems written during NaPoWriMo, after prompts posted to the Poetic Asides blog. I've also been forcing myself to make time to send out more of my work -- the new poems, as well as my chapbook, (al)most delicious, an ekphrastic series after Modigliani's nudes.

I'm also just finishing my first year in Antioch University's MFA program, and preparing for the next residency which is coming up fast. I've been doing a lot of reading, some for the seminars, but mostly for my field study, and have a pile of Marilyn Nelson's and Molly Bendall's books on my desk.

Oh, and I'm beginning to read the submissions that are coming through for Poemeleon's gender issue.

As the Editor-in-Chief of Poemeleon and poetry editor of Babel Fruit, what do you feel makes a good poem?

There are lots of good poems. So so many competently and compellingly good poems. For me, though, they all have certain things in common. And that's the drawback. What's really rare, though, is the great poem, which is so much harder to define: It's the one that hits me in the gut; It's the one that makes everything become suddenly clear, or makes what was previously clear so utterly muddled that I'm dumbstruck. Good poems make me want to sit down and write until my fingers ache. Great poems leave me wondering if I'll ever be able to write again.

But great poems are difficult. In order to write great poems, we must first write good poems. (And of course, before that and in-between, the essential bad poems.)

Both good poems as well as great poems employ craft, image, music, voice, and use them to forward the ideas embedded in the poem. The devices inform, rather than dictate, the shape of the poem, become integral to the movement of a piece -- both on the page and in the head. To take a step back, what separates a good poem from a bad poem? The usage of those same devices: A bad poem uses them to ill effect -- sets out to write a sonnet and writes one, no matter whether the end rhymes are forced, syntax needlessly inverted, the phrases stilted and awkward. A good poem never does that, not without good cause.

But the difference between a good poem and a great poem? That's a little more subtle, but I think it's that gut punch. If it's not there, I might be willing to hang around with it for a while, but it's not the one I'm going to remember down the road.

small fruit songs is a collection of prose poems about fruit. What do you like about the prose poem as a poetic form?

At the time I was writing small fruit songs, I had previously been in love with received forms and was trying them all out. Often my results fell under the "bad poem" heading. But one day, after deciding that I wanted to write a series that used fruit-related terminology as its impetus, I sat down and just allowed my subconscious to take over, and what came out was very associative, unstructured, and organic, which felt like the right choice for the material.

What I like most about the prose poem is its versatility. I've read prose poems that read like stories, prose poems that read like excerpts from a training manual, lyric prose poems, prose poems as dramatic monologue, prose poems as pseudo-journalism, surrealist prose poems.... That said, as versatile as it is, I don't think the prose poem is the end-all, beat-all. It's not functional if the form is forced.

Do you have a writing routine?

I wish! I prefer writing in the very early morning when the house is quiet, but with kids and with a household to run, I have to be more fluid. I used to get up in the middle of the night, but I can only take so much sleep deprivation. I do get up at about five or five-thirty, sometimes earlier, but most days I need a couple cups of coffee -- and an empty house -- to be productive. If I can't finish what I'm working on while they're at school, it's catch-as-catch-can. And I can't use anything but a computer. My handwriting is awful so even if I manage to scribble a few lines while out running around, usually I can't read it later!

Seven Floors Up has some very funny poems in it, including poems inspired by eBay listings. What do you think helps make a humorous poem effective?

Humor is unpredictable. You never know what's going to strike someone as funny. My boys and I spent about an hour watching flashmob videos on YouTube yesterday. One of them was for the Best Funeral Ever. Later I described the scene to my husband. He said, "That's not funny." But it was to us, to me. I laughed hysterically at the sight of thirty people dressed in black showing up and pretending to know the deceased. Which now sounds so totally ludicrous, and inconsiderate.

At Poemeleon we recently published an issue on humorous poems which included a great essay by Renee Ashley on involuntary comedy. Humor is very personal. Heck, all poetry is personal. But what one person finds funny another may think is just plain dumb. I think the trick is not to set out to write a funny poem. If something strikes you as funny, and you decide you want to use it in a poem, do it right then and there before you lose the spark. When my husband was searching eBay for businesses for sale, he happened upon this thing called an inflatable church. I just started laughing. And I knew I wanted to write about it. So I stayed up late that night and got a first draft out. But it's not enough for the poem to be funny -- in order for it to be an effective poem it must also contain some other relevant nugget of wisdom or what have you. In the case of the inflatable church, I found it not just funny, but almost blasphemous (and I'm not a religious person), and in a strange way somewhat true -- thinking about prosperity churches and such, in their depiction of a church as a business opportunity.

How did you go about putting together your collections Seven Floors Up and small fruit songs?

Seven Floors Up was a long time in the making. Before it was published, it made the rounds as a chapbook titled Where We Dwell, which itself began as a chapbook titled Seven Floors Up to the Kitchen of the Soul, a title I had hoped to return to but which my publisher thought was too long so it was shortened. The poems were written over the course of about eight years, beginning when my first son was born up until just weeks before the book went to press. And I spent hours, literally hours, laying all of the poems out and ordering them until it felt right.

With small fruit songs, I fiddled with it for a little while, but then noticed a trend -- the narrative seemed to follow the same trajectory as the alphabet, so I just put them in alphabetical order, and, Voila!, it was done. Oh, and I should mention, it was written in under seven days and had a publisher in ten. Go figure.

Who are you currently reading?

I've been reading a lot of work that's been loosely dubbed Gurlesque: Brenda Shaughnessy, Chelsea Minnis, Catherine Wagner, plus Arielle Greenberg; I've especially loved reading Ann Carson & Alice Notley. And of course Marilyn Nelson and Molly Bendall. I actually have a running list (with annotations) of books that I've read recently on the "What I'm Reading" tab on my blog.

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

Write bad poems. Take risks. Learn from them. Don't get bogged down in endless revisions. If it's a bad poem know when to let it go. Then go write a better poem.

*****

* Learn more about Cati Porter at her blog: http://catiporter.wordpress.com/

* For more on Seven Floors Up and Mayapple Press, go to www.mayapplepress.com

* For more on small fruit songs and Pudding House Publications, go to www.puddinghouse.com

* For more on Poemeleon, go to www.poemeleon.org

* For more on Babel Fruit, go to www.babelfruit.org

*****

If you're a poet or publisher interested in a Poetic Asides interview, click here to find out how you might be able to make it happen.

Interview With Poet April Bernard

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 22:55:49 GMT

Every so often, I get an unexpected review copy of a poetry collection. Such was the case with April Bernard's Romanticism (W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.). Just released earlier this month, this collection was a nice little pre-summer read. In fact, I'd say the poems in Romanticism are perfect reading for summer nights.

Here's one of my favorites:

Romance

I pine. There is an obstacle to our love.

Every time I hear the postman, I think: At last, the letter!
He has overcome the obstacle--

(It is a large obstacle, an actual alp, with a tree line and sheer rock face
streaked with snow even in July)

for love of me! For three years, nine decades, and one century or so, there
has been no letter. I still wait for the letter.

But lately I wonder if my predicament is outside the human,
neither noble nor farcical; if my heart courts pain

because it aimes for immortality, something grander
than I can imagine. Most of what I imagine,

what I want, is small: Hands with mine in the sink, washing dishes,
the smell of wool, feet tangling mine in bed. I know

the gods punish the proud, but I do not yet know
why they punish the humble. Although after all

it is not humble to ask, every minute or so, for happiness.

*****

What are you up to?

I'm using the conventions, underlying ideas, and some of the forms of Romantic period poetry and song lyrics for my own purposes.

In the press release for your collection, it claims that Romanticism the book looks to investigate Romanticism the idea. What's your take on the intersection of Romanticism and poetry?

Romanticism means many things: It means the primacy of feeling; an embrace of the irrational (in reaction to the Augustan Age of Reason); a championing of the individual in terms of democratic rights and a repudiation of the monarchy in revolutionary fervor. The great Romantic poets of the Romantic Age were of course Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats & Byron (and there were others). The impulse towards what we call the "Romantic" existed long before the actual period (circa 1770-1830) and it persisted long after. The operas of the 19th century, many writers of the Victorian age and even well into the 20th century, are participating in a Romanticist aesthetic. It exists today as one of the possibilities available to all artists. In music, painting, fiction poetry, etc.

Do you have a favorite romantic poem?

Of the classic Romantic poets, I have a hard time choosing among the many great poems, but if I had to I'd pick Keats's "To Autumn." It is one of the most beautiful poems ever written, sublime in its swoop of feeling, its tactile sense of ripeness and melancholy in the same moment.

This is your fourth poetry collection. How do you go about assembling your collections of poems?

Each one is different. The simplest way to describe how I wrote this one is to say that early on I had the idea of writing from and about the Romantic period in my head, and as poems arose they either suited my central theme or they didn't. Those that didn't I put aside. I was very excited when I got the idea of writing the "lieder" and then the opera arias, and could have continued with that indefinitely. Indeed I still am.

Your individual poems have been published in many fine publications, including A Public Space, The New Yorker, and Agni. How do you handle submitting your poems to publications?

The same way everybody does; I send out a group of poems to the editor, hoping one or two will catch his or her eye. Luckily for me, as I have published more books I am more frequently asked to submit work and can feel sure at least that someone will read it.

You teach at Bennington College. Does teaching inform or influence your writing?

I love teaching. I had a long career as a magazine and book editor, and I find teaching is vastly more energizing for my own work—though of course too much can also be exhausting. I am a missionary for reading; I love to teach literature, and believe that the only way to become a good writer is by reading. (By the way, I will continue to teach in the Bennington MFA program, but as of this fall I will be Director of Creative Writing at Skidmore College.)

Who or what are you currently reading?

My graduate students; Dickens; Lyndall Gordon's excellent biography of T.S. Eliot; Dan Hofstadter's The Love Affair as a Work of Art; Cavafy; Ingeborg Bachman.

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

Read the greats; don't waste your time with ephemera. That includes Shakespeare, also Elizabeth Bishop, also Frank Bidart, also Henry James and G.M. Hopkins and P.G. Wodehouse. And Austen and Chekhov and Milton and Dickinson and....

*****

To learn more about April Bernard's collection Romanticism, go to the W.W. Norton site at: www.wwnorton.com

To check out other poet interviews on Poetic Asides, click here.

*****

If you're a publisher or poet interested in a Poetic Asides interview, click here to see how we might be able to make that happen.

Identify the Right Markets for Your Work!

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 02:53:26 GMT

Alice Pope and myself will be leading an online seminar June 25 at 1 p.m. (Eastern Daylight Time) that covers how to research markets and find ones that match your style, in addition to other submission tricks of the trade that will help you get published, whether you're writing fiction, nonfiction, poetry, or whatever. With more than 20 years of combined publishing experience, we know what works and what doesn't.

This online seminar costs $129 and includes a one-year subscription to WritersMarket.com (a $39.99 value). Between the seminar and the website subscription, you'll have few excuses for not getting published.

You can register here: https://writersonlineworkshops.webex.com/mw0306l/myw>ebex/default.do?siteurl=wr>itersonlineworkshops

Interview With Poet Frank Giampietro

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 22:53:54 GMT

I first came across Frank Giampietro's name during an interview with Julianna Baggott last year. Since then, I just kept running into either his name or the title of his collection, Begin Anywhere. Finally, I decided to ask him for an interview (he's a Facebook friend--see the power of social networking?).

One of the things I personally love about this collection is that it constantly surprised me. Every time I thought I was going down a predictable road--one I didn't care to go down--the poem would take interesting side streets to get to our destination, which may or may not have been where I thought we were going originally. Eventually, I quit trying to predict our destination. Instead, I just let myself enjoy the ride.

Here's one of my favorite poems of the collection:

Juice

I'd like to begin with my addiction to heroin,
though I never shot it, I only sniffed it.
(Snorted is so, what? Crass?)
Once after seven years without it, I talked
to an Italian ex-junkie who was still smoking hash.
Because she shot it,
she claimed that she was more addicted to it.
Instead of admitting she was right, I went on
about the purity of American heroin
while she repeated no, no, no emphatically.
I found her sexy in a big-boned
Elizabeth Bishop sort of way.
If I were Elizabeth Bishop,
with my history of addiction,
I would have to write a villanelle
like "One Art,"
but my refrains would be
A1: I shared crack with a pregnant Dominican woman
A2: at the top of a five-flight walk-up on 109th Street in Harlem.
They say you can let the arms
of the repeating lines
wrap themselves around you
for comfort. It's a great form for subjects
that might otherwise be a threat.
I wish I could say that my best poems
are written when I'm afraid. Sometimes
when my four-year-old wakes up, he's afraid.
The first words out of his mouth are
I want some juice. Now I sleep with him,
and I wake up to the request
nearly every day. Honestly, there's no better way
to slip from my dreams. I worry I won't sleep at all
when he kicks me out of his bed.
When I sniffed heroin, whole parts of my body
would go completely numb as I slept.
One morning I woke unable to move either arm,
but after a minute or two, the feeling came back. It's not
that I'm afraid to write about addiction--it's just
that this is nothing like that.

*****

What are you up to?

This summer I'm working on a second book while teaching creative writing to undergraduates here at Florida State University. Otherwise I'm making video poems I call "voems" (very original, right?) and posting them to YouTube. You can see two of them here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3Wn_i0PezM.

Your website lafovea.org is rather interesting in how poets become nerves that connect to each other. Could you speak a little about how the site works and what the inspiration was behind the site?

One day after hearing the usual grousing about how nepotistic the publishing world is (an idea that doesn't hold much water, by the way), I had an idea to use nepotism productively, interestingly, as an alternative to publishing in the usual submission rejection sort of way. I thought why not have an internet site that publishes poems by invitation exclusively. And then I thought about how to do that and allow the largest variety of voices to be heard. I envisioned teachers inviting students and students inviting teachers. I also thought and hoped La Fovea might get poets from outside academia too. So I came up with the idea of publishing poetry nerves, nerves all extending from a giant poetry eyeball. I started with twelve poets with very different writing styles, all of whom I know and admire, all of them gathered around the eyeball on the homepage, and had them post two poems. Then they had to invite at least one poet. That poet then invited a poet and so on. We now have over 160 contributors. It's really working well and has been a lot of fun to see grow.

Your poems deal with topics such as being a father and husband. You are both a husband and father in real life. So, where do you draw the line between reality and fiction in your poems?

I guess I don't, in my poems that is. For instance, I have a poem about my son shooting me with an arrow. And knock on wood, he hasn't shot me with an arrow yet. But we have played with a bow and arrow, and he has scared the bejesus out of me a time or two pointing the arrow inadvertently at me or his sister or the cat. That's where I get the poems from, the possibilities for drama in real life rather than the life itself. Life itself is usually dull, as far as I can tell (maybe because I have no "inner resources").

Begin Anywhere is broken into two sections. How did you decide to organize the poems in this collection?

I had a lot of help from my editor at Alice James Books, April Ossamann. She showed me some ways of organizing the book that I just couldn't see on my own.

Your poetry has been published in several literary journals. Do you have a method for handling your submissions?

I send in spurts, usually, and then wait for the rejections to come in. One day recently I got three in the mail at once. I think that might be a record.

When do you know a poem is finished?

After I've sat with it a week or two and shown it to one of my trusty couple of readers and gotten his or her feedback, that's when I know it's ready to send out. Finished is another story. I'm more of a poem abandoner than a finisher. I never feel like my poems are finished.

If you could begin anywhere, where would you begin?

Ha, ha, very funny. I like the 12-step program notion that one can begin one's day over at any time during the day. One can just say okay enough. Let's begin this day again. I do this with my kids sometimes when they are acting up. If things are getting hairy at the dinner table one of us will say "stop, let's start our day over." And then we have a little good morning ritual and then we start again. But even on my own, without the kids, I begin my day over lots of times as a way to keep my head on straight and my attitude and outlook rosy.

Who (or what) are you currently reading?

Right now I'm reading Joel Brouwer's new book "And So." It's really amazing. He's a poetry dude. I'm also reading Anna Karenina on my Kindle iPhone application. I have a house full of books and love paper books just like the next poet, but I have to say it's great reading on my phone because the phone is so much easier to hold than a book. Plus, since I always have my phone, I always have my book and can read while in line at the post office mailing my soon to be rejected submissions.

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

Hmmmm, I like to take advice a lot more than give it. If I could take one piece of advice, I would like to be told to be more satisfied with things exactly the way they are. That's what I need to do, how I need to be.

*****

To learn more about Frank Giampietro and his collection, Begin Anywhere, go to his publisher's website at http://www.alicejamesbooks.org/

Also, check out his online literary journal at http://lafovea.org/.

Or read "Death by My Son" featured on Poetry Daily (and the one he references in the interview above) at: http://poems.com/poem.php?date=14198

*****

If you're a poet, editor, publisher, etc., interested in an interview on Poetic Asides, then click here to learn how to possibly make that happen.

Interview With Poet Justin Marks

Tue, 12 May 2009 02:45:07 GMT

Justin Marks' full-length collection of poems, A Million in Prizes, was recently released by New Issues Poetry & Prose after winning the 2008 New Issues Poetry Prize. His latest chapbook is Voir Dire (Rope-a-Dope Press), and he's the founder and editor of Kitchen Press Chapbooks.

I enjoyed reading both A Million in Prizes and Voir Dire, which is a semi-long poem. Here's one of my favorites from A Million in Prizes:

Matter of Fact

I wanted to create the ocean, the sky,
the intricate structure of a leaf

and thought by now
I'd have come close.

What joy I have in knowing
creation of that sort

doesn't exist.
The world has little

use for me.
Its glare blinds.

How glad I am
for the orbit I inhabit.

A planet to the sun.

*****

What are you up to?

Enjoying being a new dad. Working. Doing some writing here and there. Lining up readings for the spring and fall.

An entire section of your collection A Million in Prizes is one long poem: [Summer insular]. How is writing a long poem different from writing shorter poems?

Writing a long poem, for me, is more comforting than working on shorter poems. Something about knowing I have a large space to work in puts me in a good place emotionally. I mean, I love writing shorter poems, but they generally don't take as long to write and if I don't have anything else I'm working on, I'll start to get real anxious. But lately my short poems are all part of a larger vision/conceptual framework, a book or chapbook, so even when I'm done with an individual poem I know I have a lot more to work on in terms of completing that particular manuscript. It makes me feel more like I'm working on sections of a long poem instead of isolated one night stands, as Spicer called them.

The end of your collection is packed with prose poems. What do you like about the prose poem?

Those poems were a real turning point in my writing. I could sense that I wouldn't be writing too many more poems like the ones from the first section. Not because I didn't like them. It was just that...I don't know...the straight-up, individual lyric poem was starting to feel limiting to me. I was and am proud of the work that’s in the first section of my book, and absolutely stand by it, but in terms of my development it was just time to move on. One of the things a book is to me is in some ways a chart of a person’s development/growth as a writer during the time in which the book was written.

To try and enable that growth for myself I decided that I needed to focus on not caring about the end result and (as much as I possibly could) turn off my inner-critic and just write. One way I was able to make that happen was to not worry about line breaks any more. At the same time, I found myself thinking more in sentences than lines—or maybe more accurately: Thinking about sentences as lines. So that was one thing I liked about prose poems. I was able to sort of pack a lot in and move about in a more relaxed manner than if I were trying to write lineated poems.

Since then I've returned to prose a good bit. A new chapbook manuscript I'm finishing up is all prose. What I hope will be my next book is a series of sonnets, but even with those I keep trying to work prose lines in there somehow to kind of break things up and build some variety into the manuscript.

The poems in A Million in Prizes are all first person narratives. Where do you draw the line between reality and fiction in your poems? Also, what do you like about writing in a confessional voice?

I don't think writing in the first person makes one confessional. My poems in this book—and in general—explore the lyric "I", certainly, but that's totally different than being confessional. I'm not confessing anything. Besides, there are so many problems with that term, even as it has been/is applied to poets like Lowell and Plath and that whole "confessional" crowd—it doesn't feel useful to me.

One of the things I try to do in my work is get an entire self (if such a thing exists) down on the page, so I don't really draw lines between fiction and reality. It's all fiction. And reality. I take from my life whatever is necessary for my work to progress/evolve/change. It potentially gets tricky when I start writing about other people from my life, but so far no one has objected or asked me to not write about them. If they did, though, I'd have to honor that.

Your collection won the 2008 New Issues Poetry Prize, and you're the founder and editor of Kitchen Press Chapbooks. What do you think makes a good collection?

I think about this a lot, and every time I start to approach a conclusion I'm reminded of some book I like that breaks the rules surrounding whatever conclusions I'm approaching. I guess, on a basic level, I think a good collection is one in which the poems become something more than individual poems that are somehow similar in feel and arranged together to make a nice flow. The poems in a good collection are in conversation with each other and form something greater than their parts.

But that definition, for me, is always changing. Over the last few years I've become way more invested in books that are projects or series/serial as opposed to more traditional collections, books that are more akin to Spicer's idea of the serial poem, or are a book length poem, etc. One of my favorite contemporary books is Claudia Rankine's Don't Let Me Be Lonely. The subtitle is An American Lyric. I don't know what that means, or how one might define it except to say, read the book. It's prose, but I'm not sure if it's prose poems. Maybe it's a lyric essay or memoir of some sort. It doesn't really matter. Martha Ronk's Vertigo is another book I enjoy immensely that I think is a little limiting to just call a collection of poems (though it does have individual poems). It's more like a series or cycle of poems.

It’s one of the qualities I look for when I read manuscripts for Kitchen Press. Take Hit Wave, by Jon Leon. I don't know if you've read it, but I'm not really sure what it is: a collection of prose poems? A lyric novella? I could only put it under the rather general category of anti-poetic. And writing I love.

But then there's Old With You, by Lily Brown. I don't think anyone would argue that that isn't your basic collection of somewhat thematically linked, individual poems. But I love that book too.

So I guess what I'm saying is: There are basic qualities that I think make a good collection, but I also really dig work that makes questions just what a collection of poems is/can be. (As an aside, Tarpaulin Sky Press is deeply invested in putting out work that others might not consider to be "poetry.")

Your bio mentions an infant son and daughter. Have they impacted your writing in any way?

They impacted my writing before they were even conceived. I wrote Voir Dire around the time my wife and I were getting serious about trying to get pregnant. There are lots of references to babies in that mini-chapbook. There are also a lot of babies in the two manuscripts I've been working on throughout my wife's pregnancy and since the birth of our son and daughter. In a sense, it's all kind of topical. I never mentioned babies in my work until we started trying to have one/had them. I mean, I'm not writing about my babies as individual people per-se. I don't really write "about" specific people or subjects. Though I suppose there are poems in A Million in Prizes that you could argue are "about" specific subjects. Generally, though, it's not my thing. Anyway. That I'm mentioning babies at all, to me, means my babies have had a significant impact on my writing.

You work as a copywriter. How do the demands of writing copy differ from writing poetry? Also, are there similarities?

Marketing copy has to be concise and to the point, say as much as possible with as few words as possible, and it absolutely has to get and maintain the reader’s attention, even if it is only for a few moments and all you're ultimately saying is "Buy Now". Poetry is like that. (Though there are certainly worthwhile poetries out there that are not at all concerned with the whole maximum-impact-with-minimum-words model.) But I think the most significant similarity is that marketing copy is pretty conceptual. You have to think about all the ways what you're saying can be interpreted and if that fits in with what you want people to take away. For me, with poetry, it's not that I necessarily have a specific idea of what I want people to take away, but I definitely put a lot of time into thinking about how any random stranger out in the world could interpret my writing. In that sense, being a copywriter has made me a much more conscious and aware (I guess "better") poet than if I were in some other profession.

This feels even more true to me when I think about the connections between putting together a marketing campaign and writing a book, or even an extended project that spans across many individual books. You have to really be aware of how each part interacts with the other, whether it's individual ads in a campaign or poems in a book (whether that book be a more traditional collection of individual poems or something more extended/conceptual).

There's also the fact that corporate and marketing lingo is some of the weirdest, most mind-blowing shit I've ever heard. Total goldmine.

But the biggest difference between copywriting and poetry, for me, is that I often feel restricted when writing copy. I may come up with an idea or a line, but so many people above me will have their feedback that I have to find a way to incorporate, and there's also the whole staying on brand and within the voice aspect as well. And that's cool. But poetry, for me, is in large part about freedom. I really don't have anything to lose or gain career-wise with poetry so I feel generally free to do whatever I want. Of course that feeling winds up compromised by various factors and circumstances, as it must, but I'd like to think that that sense of freedom that I try to start from still remains somehow at the core of my poetry.

Who have you been reading recently?

Joe Massey, Eric Baus, Rodrigo Toscano, Jack Spicer, Frank Stanford, Barbara Guest,

Mathias Svalina, Aase Berg, Zach Schomburg, Harper’s Magazine, Wired Magazine, the most recent issue of the Agricultural Reader.

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

I've been given such large heaps of bad advice over the years, I'm hesitant to offer any of my own. So maybe my advice should be, “don’t take any advice.” Then again, I've also gotten some good advice that has often helped sustain me: Trust yourself. Don't let anyone or thing stop you. Be willing to change. Persevere. Stuff like that. That’s my advice.

*****

Check out A Million in Prizes and New Issues Poetry & Prose at www.wmich.edu/newissues.

Check out Voir Dire and Rope-a-Dope Press at http://rope-a-dope-press.blogspot.com.

Check out Justin Marks at his blog: http://justinanselmarks.blogspot.com/.

*****

Are you a publisher or poet interested in a Poetic Asides interview? Then, click here for more details on how to be considered for one.

Poetry Seminar: Get Your Poetry Published!

Mon, 11 May 2009 13:26:03 GMT

On May 29, I'll be leading an online seminar on how to get your poetry published, including what not to do in your submissions. In the seminar, you'll learn how to submit your poetry (online and off), how to identify and study appropriate markets, how to write cover letters, and more.

As an added bonus, I will be providing feedback on one poem (of 20 lines or less) from each registrant--details included in your confirmation e-mail. So, you can learn how to publish your poetry and receive feedback on a poem for only $99.

But that's not all, my OPM just recently gave me a coupon code that'll take an extra $15 off, which would make it just $84. Just go to https://writersonlineworkshops.webex.com/writersonlineworkshops/j.php?J=683166157.

While there, don't forget to use the following coupon code: g1y3f1gq30

Good news!

Tue, 05 May 2009 15:29:22 GMT

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.

Rebirth of Colors (epic poem) and Colors poems from poets

Mon, 04 May 2009 10:14:05 GMT

I've been super busy this past weekend (haven't slept in nearly 24 hours now, in fact) working on Writer's Market. Started checking my e-mail this morning to learn that Rich Atwater is trying to put together some kind of color poem anthology that includes his epic "Rebirth of Colors" poem.

In fact, some poets contacted me very concerned that Rich was trying to steal their poems. I don't think that's what Rich is trying to do; I do think he's trying to get signed permissions to publish poets' color poems along with his epic poem. However, he needs your permission to actually publish your poem. So, it's a personal decision you'll have to make.

Some poets will be all for it, and that's fine. It's good to share your work (I mean, that's what we've been doing all month, right?). In my own case, I will not be giving Rich permission to print my poem or claim that his book is affiliated with Poetic Asides.

This isn't because I don't support other poets promoting poetry in their own ways. It has more to do with we've already got a challenge and an eBook and guest judges (who are volunteering their time) and guest screeners (who are also volunteering their time). And I've just got my own plans for my own writing.

This post is not meant to rain on Rich's parade. It's just to let the poets, who are concerned about their rights, know that they have the power to determine what they want to do with their work. Want to be part of Rich's project? Great. Don't want to be a part of it? That's fine, too.

In the end, as with all issues of publication, it's a personal choice.

Get Your Poetry Published!

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 18:44:38 GMT

On May 29, I'll be leading an online seminar on how to go about publishing your poetry. After all, it's one thing to write great poetry, but getting it published? That's an entirely different hurdle.

Topics I plan on covering include:

How to identify appropriate markets for your poetry.
How to avoid many common submission mistakes.
How to handle your cover letters, including the tricky bio (even if you have no previous publication credits to mention).
How to manage your submissions (and avoid upsetting editors).

And I'm sure I'll cover more. The seminar will begin at 1 p.m. (EST) and will last one hour. You can learn more details and register at https://writersonlineworkshops.webex.com/writersonlineworkshops/j.php?J=683166157.

Interview With Poet Sage Cohen

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 04:09:52 GMT

Sage Cohen is the author of Writer's Digest Books' most recent poetry title, Writing the Life Poetic. She's also the author of Like the Heart, the World (Queen of Wands Press). She's taught poetry at universities, hospitals and writing conferences as well as online. As principal of Sage Communications, Cohen writes the words that connect businesses with the people they want to reach.

Though I admit I'm usually suspicious of self-published titles (Queen of Wands Press is Sage's own press, named after one of the poems in the collection), both Tammy and myself found her collection Like the Heart, the World to be a great read. Here's one of my favorites:

The Irony of the Small Horn

Paul says the Great American Music Hall
should be called The Great European Music Hall.

Its gold flourishes and imperial balcony feel more
like something you'd yearn for from across the ocean.

Nothing is named right in this world.
I don't know what to call Paul's body against mine.

Dancing, maybe, but that's not enough.
It's more like a question before it is born

gathering force among the margins
of what is already known or believed.

Paul has his hand on my stomach where my shirt rides up
and I press into the beat coming through his chest.

My hips rotate with the room. Singular surrenders to plural.
Sweat and smoke and beer and bodies pulse in the darkness.

The music is a fire. Dancing is the flame.
We all depend on each other to burn.

Paul points out the enormous man playing the tiny trumpet.
All the big guys have small horns, we agree.

This poem was supposed to be about that. About the trumpet,
because that was how Paul and I planned it.

But nothing ever turns out the way you think it will.
The music ends, and then it's time to go home.

*****

What are you up to?

National Poetry Month has been great fun over here. I've launched my Writing the Life Poetic book tour by speaking at a few chapters of Willamette Writers and appearing on a variety of writing blogs throughout the month. It's week five of my six-week Poetry for the People online class, and my students have been dazzling me with their dedication and fine poems. My full-time "day job" of marketing communications consultant is clipping right along, and I've been dedicating every scrap of free time to your Poem-A-Day Challenge. Because my son Theo has been waking up every two hours or so throughout the night for the past seven months, I'm in a perpetual sleep-deprivation daze that I've decided to embrace as a poetic state of mind.

Like the Heart, the World is a self-published title. Why did you choose this route of publication?

Before deciding to self publish, I spent about a year sending my manuscript out to publication contests. It placed as finalist or semi-finalist four times, which was exciting. That was enough validation for me...I didn't want to spend any more time waiting for someone to choose my book for publication. I felt a sense of urgency to have that body of work in the world, and to have it look and feel exactly the way I wanted. I've spent years creating marketing communications materials for clients, and I always enjoy the opportunity to design and produce my own pieces. So I hired my favorite illustrator/designer to layout the book and create the cover, and within a few months, had a finished product in my hands.

What do you think is the most rewarding part of self-publishing your collection? What do you consider the most challenging?

It was very empowering deciding that my book was ready to be born, and then making it happen. The poems in Like the Heart, the World span more than 15 years and reflect time periods and thematic cycles in my life that felt complete. With this publication, I feel that they've been well honored, which gives me more breathing room to embrace the poems of this life chapter. There really haven't been any challenges or regrets.

I hope that my experience will remind other poets who feel helpless about the poetry publishing waiting process that they have options. We can decide when our manuscripts are ready to go forth into the world as books, and we can do that however we like...the traditionally prescribed way or our own way.

You've taught poetry at universities, hospitals, and writing conferences. What's the most common question you receive? What's your answer?

While the questions take many different forms, what people studying poetry seem to universally need is permission to write poems--and encouragement about their capacity to do so. I see my role as a mirror...I reflect back to my students what is powerful and true in what they are doing so they can have more fun and be more successful doing it.

Why should a poet buy a copy of Writing the Life Poetic?

The craft of poetry has been well documented in a variety of books that offer a valuable service to serious writers striving to become competent poets. Now it’s time for a poetry book that does more than lecture from the front of the classroom. Writing the Life Poetic was written to be a contagiously fun adventure in writing. Through an entertaining mix of insights, exercises, expert guidance and encouragement, I hope to get readers excited about the possibilities of poetry––and engaged in a creative practice. Leonard Cohen says: "Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash." My goal is that Writing the Life Poetic be the flame fueling the life well lived.

Practicing poets, aspiring poets, and teachers of writing in a variety of settings can use Writing the Life Poetic to write, read, and enjoy poems. Both practical and inspirational, it will leave readers with a greater appreciation for the poetry they read and a greater sense of possibility for the poetry they write.

Like the Heart, the World is broken into three sections (New York, San Francisco, and Portland). How important is location to your writing?

I wouldn't say that location is important to my writing, per se, but that the writing processes that I chose in each of the cities I lived seemed to yield a kind of poetry that resonated with that particular place. In New York, I walked everywhere and carried a small, handheld tape recorder where I whispered my little slivers of street-sightings and trash tracings. Then I'd transcribe these observations into the computer later and write from there. In San Francisco, I had a regular rhythm of freewriting (in longhand, in notebooks) in cafes, often while listening to live acoustic music. These days, I have somewhat of a hybrid of my previous two practices. I carry 3x5" index cards everywhere and write down everything that comes—usually while hiking in a rainforest or taking a bath. As a result, the New York poems often echo urban alienation and are laced with street grit. The San Francisco poems are often thematically and craft-wise a little looser and more musical and the Portland poems feel to me watery and deeply green.

Do you have a favorite poetic form?

I'm fascinated by haiku. This form represents to me the quintessential art of compression that poetry asks of us: to reveal a panoramic truth in a thin, velum layer of words.

Who are you currently reading?

Tess Gallagher, Paulann Petersen, Mari L'Esperance, Jack Gilbert, Jericho Brown, Jay Leeming.

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

Welcome what comes. The poems choosing you are the ones that need to be written. Don't judge them or worry if they're "important" enough. Your poems will teach you who you are as a poet and a person. Just follow the golden thread and let them write you.

*****

If you wish to learn more about Sage Cohen, check out her website at www.sagesaidso.com.

Or you can stop by her blog at www.writingthelifepoetic.typepad.com.

*****

Are you a poet or poetry publisher interested in seeing yourself (or your authors) interviewed here on Poetic Asides? Well, figure out how to get the ball rolling on that by clicking here.

*****

Looking for more poetry information?

Check out our poetry titles (on sale in the month of April) HERE.
Read the most recent WritersDigest.com poetry-related articles HERE.
View several poetic forms HERE.
See where poetry is happening HERE.

Interview With Poet Katy Evans-Bush

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 21:08:58 GMT

Since I know this interview is a little on the long side (which is a good thing), I won't spend too much time introducting Katy Evans-Bush, who recently released her first collection of poetry Me and the Dead through Salt Publishing. She also maintains the very popular literary blog Baroque in Hackney.

As I've come to expect from titles published by Salt, Me and the Dead was a very enjoyable read. Here's one of my favorite poems:

Or Something

You told me the universe is doing something.
I forget what: expanding or flapping
in the wind or something--no matter which,
it's only one infinitely possible universe.
It's only ours and imperfect anyway.
Somewhere somebody else's universe
is either expanding, its particles drawing strangely
away from one another as if in horror but still,
I suppose, part of the pack--
or even shrinking (did we consider that?)
which would be caused by the atoms huddling
close for warmth or comfort
against that flapping wind or something;
rubbing together, the friction,
the blanket of static, creating our electric
storms and other interesting diversions.
The universes are, in their multitudes,
unending and also infinitesimal. Some say
they're parallel while others talk of layering.
Oh, the layered universes--I picture them
piled high like feather beds, the feathers inside them
brushing across each other or something.

*****

What are you up to?

Right now? My boyfriend's daughter just took me out for a slap-up lunch (with cheesecake) for my birthday! She's nearly 15 and she earned the money herself, so it was a huge treat.

Other than that, I'm reading up on Oscar Wilde and Henry James for a long poem called (so far) Speculation and Conjecture. It's half done, and I'm thrilled that it's going to be published in January as a pamphlet by Rack Press in Wales.

Then there's the next collection from Salt; they'd like a manuscript by the end of the year.

Then there's this novel idea.

And I'm a bit behind on essays and reviews promised.

Then there's work, kids, laundry, the kitchen…

You maintain a very popular blog at http://www.baroqueinhackney.wordpress.com. How do you feel poets can benefit from having a blog? Also, do you feel all poets should have a blog?

Well… there are maybe three ways in which a poet can benefit from having a blog, but spending time writing blog posts instead of poems probably isn't one of them!

It's a great way to establish a web presence and build a readership. BUT, it is incredibly time-consuming. Really, you need to be doing it for its own sake. You need to have something to say, and be unafraid of saying it. (Yes: I have had fear. Mainly when you realise beyond the shadow of a doubt that the poet you wrote that thing about has just read your blog. It's a great lesson in circumspection. I'd apologise here but that would mean admitting I said it in the first place.)

You also have to be interesting, so that people will come back and read you. This may seem obvious! But there are some very boring blogs out there and they reek of the devoir. (Of course, there are also lots of great ones.) Maybe it's just about looking as if you're interested in things. Humour helps, but deep thinking and being interested go a long way.

Mine is only partially a poetry blog. I say it's about all the same stuff as poetry, which of course includes poetry; but I write about anything. I maintain multiple blog identities: poetry, local neighbourhood, arts & culture, home life anecdotes, certain political issues, and grammar/copy-editing etc.

A blog is a great way to lay out your stall – if you have one to lay out: this is the "having something to say" caveat. You can use your blog to position yourself, identify and deepen your aesthetic (or other) stance, work up material even. You can establish your credentials as someone who can, for example, write reviews; editors might take you more seriously because they can see you are seriously engaged in the cultural dialogue. But this will only work if you really are engaged…

And you have to love your blog. You need to work long and hard at internet-networking, registering on blog directories, reading other blogs and commenting, building up a blogroll you can stand by, getting to know the landscape, working out RSS feeds… It all takes time. I don't want to put anyone off, but I really don't think it is for absolutely everyone and no one should feel they have to write a blog. There are other things you can do to raise profile. If you're just doing it to get a web presence you'll resent it. And if you don't do all that, you won't get the readers anyway so it won't do so much for your web presence. Also: it's a long haul. I've built up my reader base over nearly three years.

The third benefit, of course, is your readers. Mine are wonderful. I'm always amazed by the great comments they leave. Such interesting people; I really think I have the best readers in the world. I love them. And I'd never have had them without writing my blog!

Some of them tell me they've even bought Me and the Dead…

You have lived in both the United States and United Kingdom. Do you notice any differences in the voices coming out of either country?

Well, there's a massive difference! Just as there is in daily conversation, TV, pop music, etc. As Oscar Wilde famously said, two countries divided by a common language. But then, there is a lot of overlap, as demonstrated in crossovers in all those areas.

The UK "voice" is much more wry, ironic, mocking or self-mocking. There's more use of humour. Wit, word play, punning (even the serious papers here have punning headlines as the standard), double entendre – and there is much more metrical rhyming poetry from people who don't consider themselves "formalists." The political divide between "free verse" and "formalist poetry" doesn't exist in the UK. (I think it is a political, not an aesthetic, one; and it's exacerbated now by the fact that a lot of poets write free verse because it's all they know how to do.) Glyn Maxwell is an example of an English poet who writes in form, who isn't a "formalist" poet in the political sense, who has crossed over (as it were) to the USA. Most poets here use rhyme, sometimes, and metre, sometimes, and think nothing of it.

There is a sort of earnestness in the US which does spill, to ill effect, I think, into poetry. It doesn't do in the UK ever to look as if you care too much about something. But then, the UK can suffer from a surfeit of politeness and anecdotalism. You want sweep, too, and America certainly has that.

I love the multiplicity of experience and the opening-out of the more pronounced Modernist influence. I love DA Powell, and Frederick Seidel, for example. As different as they are; they both use words and cadences in really invigorating ways.

My favourite poets come from both sides of the Atlantic; I think either without the other would be much the poorer.

Me and the Dead is your first full-length collection of poetry. How long did it take to get this collection together?

In one sense you could say my whole life, as I've always read, and written, poetry. But I think the oldest poem in there goes back to maybe 2001, maybe 2000, so in that sense it took seven or eight years. The next book won't take nearly so long – partly because there were poems that didn't fit in the first book, and partly because I think I'm on more of a roll these days than I was in 2001 – or, clearly, before. At that stage I was finding my feet in terms of what and how I wanted to write. The fact that the first poem in the book is from 2001 must mean that that's when I started to find my feet.

Were you surprised by anything during the publication process after your manuscript was accepted?

Not really: as I was new to it I had few preconceptions. Also, Salt is a "small" indie press (though they publish many more poetry books than the "big" established ones), so I knew the rules might be different from what you hear about the big publishers. The main surprise I suppose was how closely they worked with me on things like the cover.

What do you think makes a good collection?

Good poems?

Seriously! People talk a lot about narrative arc and all that, and I think it doesn't matter. Why be so prescriptive? Any good book will have engagement with the world. Something to say. Depth, or truth. Either variety or a single idea used well, and fruitfully. Seriousness of purpose – even Ogden Nash had that. It will do what it does, and do it well. It will be surprising and then inevitable, but still surprising.

What is your favorite poetic form?

I don't think I really think in terms of "forms" as much as structure, or the over-arching idea of form. I write a lot of blank – or blankish – verse. And I am very attracted to sonnets, I love the dialectical structure. But I recently wrote something that feels to me like a sonnet and it has thirty dimeter lines, so don't consider me the expert please.

I think "form" is a word we don't really use correctly, anyway. EVERYTHING has form, unless it is "without form and void," like an egg white. I'm not remotely interested in reading a poem like an egg white.

Whatever the rules, whether the poet made them up or even became conscious of them, whichever bits he or she has pulled from the prosodic toolbox, every successful poem must have some sort of structure or form – something the poet decided he or she was trying to do with that poem. You know, a poem that uses only every third letter of the alphabet and has three spaces between each letter has a form.

High Modernism has form. The higher, the higher.

Language poetry and flarf don't interest me overly. Pure chance is just random and not interesting to me. The human brain is designed to seek, and make, and discern, pattern: even when there is no pattern we try to find it. And IQ tests, what they test is our ability to make pattern. Sure, there is value in being able to cope with the unexpected, but the definition of coping would probably be to make it useful in some way: i.e., to find meaning. If something has no meaning it isn't interesting.

And so on. I'm very open about what I enjoy reading, but I'm utterly attached to the idea of meaning.

Who are you currently reading?

James Merrill: I've recently been rereading his Ouija board epic The Changing Light at Sandover, which I always find very beautiful, weird and fruitful. Very funny, and haunting, and deep.

Also Mick Imlah's astonishing and rich The Lost Leader, which has added poignancy since his early death in January; I've particularly been enjoying the final section, Afterlives of the Poets – and it's only in writing it here that I realise it may be on a theme with the Ouija board romance!

I'm just about to write an essay for the Contemporary Poetry Review about Michael Donaghy's Collected Poems and his prose, The Shape of the Dance; so I've naturally been reading those, too.

Then there's Rita Dove's fascinating new book, Sonata Mullatica, featuring a mixed-race 18th century virtuoso and Beethoven, which just arrived in the post… and Roddy Lumsden's new collection, Third Wish Wasted, which is just out… and a young Hungarian poet called Ágnes Lehószky…

Also I memorised one of Shakespeare's sonnets the other week, and loved it. I said it for days. Lovely shapes in the mouth.

And then there's this book about Henry James and Oscar Wilde…

And, er, Twitter…

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

I'd say, with Henry James: "try to be one of those people on whom nothing is lost."

*****

You can read Katy's blog at http://www.baroqueinhackney.wordpress.com.

Or visit her publisher at www.saltpublishing.com.

*****

Are you a published poet or poetry publisher interested in having an interview featured on this blog? Click here to learn how we might be able to make that happen.

*****

Looking for more poetry information?

Check out our poetry titles (on sale in the month of April) HERE.
Read the most recent WritersDigest.com poetry-related articles HERE.
View several poetic forms HERE.
See where poetry is happening HERE.

Interview with poet Cherryl Floyd-Miller

Thu, 09 Apr 2009 18:42:01 GMT

Earlier this year, Tammy and I took Baby Will with us to his first poetry event, a reading by Cherryl Floyd-Miller at Wordsmiths Books in Decatur, Georgia. Sadly, Wordsmiths has since closed, but Cherryl was nice enough to be interviewed for the Poetic Asides blog.

Her most recent collection of poems, Exquisite Heats, was published in 2008 by Salt Publishing. Cherryl is a native of the Carolinas and has published two other poetry collections: Utterance: A Museology of Kin and Chops. In addition to poetry, Cherryl is also a playwright and fiber artist.

Here's a favorite poem of mine from Exquisite Heats:

Voodoo Chicken

Gots me hanker. Gots me squall, peeping tall-Tom
at your lovely, in your throat, and the itch,
hellcat itch, of it rides me like a witch
into the nights, those crafty nights, no calm
will come. You just a mule teeth puppet show.
Stop and go. Chickenhearted to the core,
you say don't cross the line or crack the door.
How sweetmeat, milk. How navy black. How crow.

But love has stayed and love is made, is all
is with, for. We almost did, just about,
said we (nohow) wouldn't (nungh-ungh) fall.
This moot jinx so far in, it's inside out.
We say we won't. But reckon do. Yak. Stall
for if. Wait for good-good. Gut in. Ass out.

*****

What are you up to?

I am helping a friend build a strong healthcare firm, writing lots of persona poems, finding very interesting ways of writing verse plays and verse narrative ... and (ah, yes) -- quilting. I am truly enjoying this "season" of myself.

You live in the U.S., but your publisher for Exquisite Heats is based in the United Kingdom. How did you go about publishing this collection?

I will have to give credit for my publication through Salt ... to Salt. Chris Hamilton-Emery is an amazing and supportive publisher. He takes the risks others won't take, says the things others won't say and publishes other risk-takers others have not seemed to publish. A poet/scholar friend suggested my work; Chris asked for a manuscript; he liked the work; and we evolved to a contract and a collection of poems. I am deeply grateful for the ways in which Salt shows it believes in me and my *voice*. The faith Chris seems to have in me as an intelligent person and an artist is the kind of faith I've found only one other place: the Fulton County Arts Council in Atlanta and its Deputy Director, Val Porter.

In Exquisite Heats, your work incorporates a variety of poetic forms. Could you speak a little on using poetic forms in your writing?

Ah ... poetic forms. They are helpful play things; by that, I mean it has aided my poem-building skills tremendously to be knowledgeable about forms and make conscious decisions about using them in my work. I've found the most gifted and compelling poets to be those who know the rules and deliberately break them in order to keep their own voices intact. At this stage in my own evolution, the use of forms is both conscious and subconscious. Most of the time I know exactly what I've done after I've done it; but I'm at my best when I don't know what I'm doing while I'm doing it. Poetic forms for me are a good musical instrument to ensure this "band" called my body of work can jam as long and hard as it likes. But I'll be a traitor and leave the forms on the side of the stage if the poem instructs me to do so. Forms come often in my work, but I'm not a slave to them. My only allegiance is to the poem.

Do you use critique groups—or a network of other poets—to help with early drafts of poems?

I don't use critique groups as much as I used to about five to eight years ago. I have trusted eyes and ears who can hear new drafts at any time of the day and give me honest feedback. Usually, these are writers who have known me and my work for a long time and have earned my respect and trust. I'm not closed to critique groups, but I am leery of group dynamics and individual dramas that can be a bit distracting to the purpose of gathering: work.

In your bio for Exquisite Heats, it’s mentioned that you’ve received several grants and fellowships for your writing. Any application tips for other poets who may apply for grants or fellowships?

Yes ... apply. It may sound strange to give this as advice, but many people don't even fill out the application and wonder why they can't get grants. Other tips:

1) Be sure you really want it. Don't apply just for the money. Make sure your values align with the org or individual who is awarding the money, and make sure you believe in what the grant asks of you.

2) Apply again, if you don't get an award the first time you apply. Sometimes, missing a grant or fellowship has nothing to do with your talent or your perfect application. It has to do with timing, the number of other talented applicants and whether or not you come across as credible on paper.

3) Do what the grantors ask. This means meet deadlines, do the accompanying essay, and have a solid plan to do what you say you're going to do with the money. Having been both a grant recipient and a grant reviewer, I can truly say, if you're not sincere, it comes through loud and clear that you're not sincere.

Your bio mentions you’re a fiber artist. In what forms of fiber arts do you work?

I am a quilter who uses techniques of collage, crochet, knitting and mixed media formats. I have no formal training in any of this. I learned quilting at my paternal grandmother's feet at age 7. I learned crochet from my maternal grandmother at age 9. I've experimented with everything else enough to be *confident* about what I create. I explore the same themes in fiber art as I do in poetry: women, the South, folklore, sound music in language, myths, non-linear structures and magical realism. Much of the way I approach art is really about not wasting a single thing. Even the words you cut from a poem or the scraps you create when you cut the fabric of a quilt can be used somewhere else.

Who are you currently reading?

Two voices I think many of us have forgotten: Dolores Kendrick and Sherley Anne Williams. I am also reading a variety of modern verse plays because I'm curious about what others are doing with the form.

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

Write! And then write some more. When you feel like you truly (((can))) *quit* writing, then you should quit ...

*****

To learn more about Cherryl's collection Exquisite Heats and her publisher Salt Publishing, go to www.saltpublishing.com.

*****

Are you a poet or publisher looking for free publicity? Then, check out what you need to do to be considered for a Poetic Asides interview by clicking here.

Interview With Poet Denise Duhamel

Thu, 02 Apr 2009 19:19:19 GMT

(Note to prompt-hungry poets: This is not a prompt; please don't mistakenly post your poems for prompts into the comments of this blog post.)

Okay, so I know everyone's busy with writing poems for the April PAD Challenge and reading everyone else's poems, but I've got a great interview with a great poet burning a hole in my pocket. So, I'm gonna go ahead and post it here.

I remember first reading Denise Duhamel's Queen for a Day (University of Pittsburgh Press) while flying from one place to another. I can't remember which trip now, but maybe that's because while I was in the plane (both ways), I was sucked into Duhamel's poems. Anyway, I recently learned about her most recent collection Ka-Ching! (also University of Pittsburgh Press) and used that as an excuse to interview her.

There are many great poems in Ka-Ching!, but one of my favorites is this sestina:

Delta Flight 659
--to Sean Penn

I'm writing this on a plane, Sean Penn,
with my black Pilot Razor ballpoint pen.
Ever since 9/11, I'm a nervous flyer. I leave my Pentium
Processor in Florida so TSA can't x-ray my stanzas, penetrate
my persona. Maybe this should be in iambic pentameter,
rather than this mock sestina, each line ending in a Penn

variant. I convinced myself the ticket to Baghdad was too expensive.
I contemplated going as a human shield. I read in open-
mouthed shock, that your trip there was a $56,000 expenditure.
Is that true? I watched you on Larry King Live--his suspenders
and tie, your open collar. You saw the war's impending
mess. My husband gambled on my penumbra

of doubt. So you station yourself at a food silo in Iraq. What happens
to me if you get blown up? He begged me to stay home, be his Penelope.
I sit alone in coach, but last night I sat with four poets, depending
on one another as readers, in a Pittsburgh cafe. I tried to be your pen
pal in 1987, not because of your pensive
bad boy looks, but because of a poem you'd penned

that appeared in an issue of Frank. I still see the poet in you, Sean Penn.
You probably think fans like me are your penance
for your popularity, your star bulging into a pentagon
filled with witchy wanna-bes and penniless
poets who waddle toward your icy peninsula
of glamour like so many menancing penguins.

But honest, I come in peace, Sean Penn,
writing on my plane ride home. I want no part of your penthouse
or the snowy slopes of your Aspen.
I won't stalk you like the swirling grime cloud over Pig Pen.
I have no scripts or stupendous
novel I want you to option. I even like your wife, Robin Wright Penn.

I only want to keep myself busy on this flight, to tell you of four penny-
loafered poets in Pennsylvania
who, last night, chomping on primavera penne
pasta, pondered poetry, celebrity, Iraq, the penitentiary
of free speech. And how I reminded everyone that Sean Penn
once wrote a poem. I peer out the window, caress my lucky pendant:

Look, Sean Penn, the clouds are drawn with charcoal pencils.
The sky is opening like a child's first stab at penmanship.
The sun begins to ripen orange, then deepen.

*****

What are you currently up to?

I am teaching, giving a lot of readings, and writing at least 5 minutes a day. That was my resolution for 2008. I thought I can always find five minutes, right? Even if it's in the morning before coffee or before I fall asleep.

Sean Penn won another Best Actor Oscar recently for his role in Milk. As someone who's written a sestina for Penn, what is your favorite Sean Penn role?

My favorite Sean Penn role is actually Brad Whitewood, Jr. in the movie At Close Range. Penn plays Christopher Walker's son.

It seems that I see your name all over the place when reading online literary journals. Do prefer publication in online or print? Does the medium even matter?

I'm open to online magazines as well as print magazines. I am a fetishist when it comes to paper, so I like holding literary journals in my hands, but I also am excited by the idea of having work up online. More people see it that way and, even though the work is on a flickering screen, it somehow seems more permanent.

How do you handle the process of submitting your work?

I have some magazines that I really love and send to often. So I send to those places as well as new start up magazines. I am all about supporting the smallest of mags as that is where my poems were first published when no one else wanted them.

How do you go about putting your collections together?

My friend Stephanie Strickland reads though stacks of poems and helps me find the most accomplished ones and then we start looking for themes. She helped me enormously with Ka-Ching!

In Ka-Ching!, you use form a lot--from sestinas to prose poems in the shape of money. How important do you feel forms are to a developing (or even established) poet? Also, do you think they serve a purpose for the reader?

I resisted traditional form for a long time—I had a sonnet in my first book and then it was free verse and prose poems pretty much until Two and Two. I started feeling comfortable with form because of my collaborations with Maureen Seaton who is a master/mistress of the sonnet. When I wrote forms with her, I finally "got" how they were very freeing and fun. I think it's important for me to challenge myself and change and not get too comfortable in my poetry.

In Ka-Ching!, you include many confessional poems that involve yourself, your husband (the poet Nick Carbo), and others. In your confessional poems, do you draw a line between reality and fiction? And if so, how do you determine where to make that line fuzzy?

I don't really draw the line so much. I love poetry because it is about memory and the way I remember things change and forms of poetry force me to change the story and my way of remembering.

Who (or what) are have you been reading recently?

Ed Falco's In the Park of Culture (short fictions), Bust (magazine subscription), NOR #5 (literary magazine), 5 a.m. #28 (literary magazine), and Mary Jane Ryals' The Moving Waters (poetry.)

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

Read everything! Be open to everything. Trust your process.

*****

To find out more about Duhamel and Ka-Ching!, try visiting the University of Pittsburgh Press website at http://www.upress.pitt.edu.

Interview With Poet Patricia Fargnoli

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 21:07:12 GMT

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.

Poets Helping Poets: What comes first? Poem or collection?

Sun, 15 Mar 2009 15:41:03 GMT

I've received differing answers from poets over the past year about what comes first when putting a collection together. Do they settle on a theme and write poems to fit the theme? Or do they write individual poems and then try to fit them together? Some poets say they do it one way; some the other; some do both (also known as the By-Any-Means-Necessary Method).

Anyway, I asked the Poetic Asides group on Facebook, and once again, so many great answers piled in that I couldn't use them all.

*****

I worry about the book element after the poems are written. Assembling poems for a collection means trying to get a thread running through them that helps them to connect to each other, or lean on other for meaning and content.

Of course, it's easier if you have sequences of poems: their running order is easier to organise, because they have a cohering quality that allows them to stand alone. But you still have the problem of what you put beforehand and what comes afterwards - because the outside poems have to be able to stand up to those sequences: not be overshadowed by the strength of the coherance of that sequence.

Barbara Smith

*****

I have done both. Generally I just write and then something evolves.

David Fraser

*****

Ordering the Storm is a collection of essays by respectable poets on that very topic. I recommend people check it out. Everyone tells you to front load and back load to wow the judges in contests and that's what I did with my first book. When I learned the book was invited to be in the VQR Poetry Series and no longer needed to pass the screen test, I reorganized the first half drastically. Now the poems form a progression and, I'd like to believe, the voice and narrative thread each together collectively.

Allen Braden

*****

My first collection, You Beckon, was put together from the poems written over an extended period of time. So the poems dictated the collection. It was amazing how once the process began it seemed to take on a life all its own and every poem seemed to find its exact perfect spot.

Peggy Eldridge-Love

*****

Charles Olson once told Ed Dorn something like, “If you study one thing deeply, you will learn everything.” Some of the premises being that everything is connected and that extreme concentration will enable you to think as the subject thinks. Dorn followed Olson’s advice and ended up with the great collection of poems called Gunslinger.

I learned about studying one thing before I knew of Olson telling that to Dorn. After I read what Olson told Dorn, I followed the advice more passionately. But for me it’s a bit different. Yes, I can see the interconnectedness of things, and the focus of studying one thing presents an amazing clarity of a sustained thinking process. But for me, as I said, it’s a bit different. For me, it’s about sustaining energy and imagination.

I’ve seven collections of poetry, three of which are published and one is forthcoming. They are all tightly themed. And that is because I stuck to the topic. The topic, for me, creates the energy to write. The topic continually stimulates my imagination. The topic is the muse. And I chase the muse whenever and wherever I can until I’m tired. In this last book, it was about 80 poems over a year until I was tired. I imagine I will pick it up again, because the content does seem endless.

But here’s the point: the theme/topic is the sustenance of my writing. And once it is gone, so is the writing.

Plus, I’m stubborn. While composing this most recent book, I wouldn’t write any poems that didn’t relate to the topic. The same is true of the other books. I wouldn’t veer. One book revolved around cosmology and particle physics and took about four or five years to write. One book fed off the energies of a Lorca poem for about five years. One book fed off a self-created writing assignment for about a month, and then revisions. One lasted for about a half year as I created a world where time moves backwards. One lasted about three or four years as I created a new mythology. One lasted about a year as I was proclaiming love. And this last one lasted about year, though really nineteen or twenty, and I still think there is another five years in it.

So, yeah. I compose by theme. Theme motivates, focuses, and stimulates me. Theme creates visions. Theme is the thing that let’s me confront the big issues, like love, death, and time, but indirectly, which is the only way one can confront those big topics today.

Theme gives me purpose.

Tom Holmes

*****

For me, the idea of a collection comes from a small selection of poems already written -- poems which, when looking back on them (ie to find places to submit them to etc) have a similar voice or touch on complementary themes. My poetry play, "Dreams of May," very much developed from the realization that I had created a character via my poems. But now, I am working on a collection that is more theme driven, and although it is starting from some previously written and published poems, it is continuing with new ones I am writing with that theme in mind. Otherwise, I suppose the answer to your question is "yes, all of the above"

Sue Guiney

*****

I have a chapbook (published) and two full size manuscripts. I put them all together with poems I had written already. It's the following my passion approach.

I'm keeping this email short. I don't know how people decide what they are going to write about and then create a book. Lots of poets do this, but I have to write what comes and then after I have a few hundred poems see what it looks like and begin to put it together. As I send out my current manuscripts I revise and continually rework poems. I am now getting edit feedback, new eyes to look at my two full size manuscripts in process, to see if I can edit them to a better book. I'd like my next publication to be a full size, but I also have chapbook sizes circulating. One chapbook was recently a finalist but didn't quite make it.

Julene Tripp Weaver

*****

Generally I write poems one at a time and later see how I can arrange them. But in all honesty, I find assembling a collection much harder than writing a poem, primarily because I feel there’s a contradiction between something being a "collection" and expecting to find in it a necessary sequence. This need for sequence or cohesion seems to be a variation on the insistence for narrative, which I don't really have an interest in. So I find myself torn between a cohesion so obvious it borders on monotony and a cohesion so subtle I can't imagine anyone else perceiving it. At this point I tend to throw up my hands and say, they are related because they all came from the same mind, it's inescapable. They're like a series of stepping stones; their relationship is simply that they all happen to be in the same river.

Two poets come to mind pondering this topic: Richard Wilbur and Louise Gluck. I remember Wilbur being asked how he assembled his collections and he said, essentially, that he didn't give it much thought. It was a collection. I envied his insouciance, since now, it seems, publishers expect thematic progression in poetry collections. To that end, Louise Gluck's collection, "Wild Iris," which won the Pulitzer, always struck me as great in its thematic cohesion, in its progressive development, but weak in its individual poems. I remember thinking after reading it, I would rather my individual poems be great though my collection lacked thematic cohesion.

Michael T. Young

*****

I've had two collections - one pamphlet and one full. In both cases I arranged the poems after they had been written. I didn't have an idea of how the final collections would look as I didn't know that they would be published. I'm still writing about whatever presents itself.

Maggie Sawkins

*****

I do both really. I have a couple of themes I like to write about, but I also write one-offs that have nothing to do with anything!

Paul De La Plante

*****

I do it both ways. That's the short answer.

Pris Campbell

*****

Ever since I began to really consciously develop my own poetics I have written with the design of the complete book in mind. Perhaps this is a Mallarme influence. For Mallarme, there is only one cosmic book, and each book is merely a reading or commentary on "the one true text"... and which, I imagine, is written in an ideal language (something like Benjamin's Messianic language perhaps, and hence, ultimately a language we no longer understand). I wrote a book length poem over a period of ten years, and then for the past ten years have written books usually composed of two or more long hybrid sequences.

Eric Selland

*****

It really does depend on the muse I think. For example, I'm currently finishing one manuscript and editing two that were done all at once on the same theme. As one thought led into the next so did each poem BUT I'm also editing four other manuscripts that are collections on a theme scattered across years (up to a decade). If the theme is one, I'm more inclined to I obviously write more of it than any other and will do that one in succession more readily (and the same goes for if the theme is a certain format ie sonnet, free verse, prose, etc).

Ronda Wicks Eller

*****

It is quite difficult to explain. I work mostly from a feeling, almost never from an idea. I say that I am always writing the same and endless poem. I meet the poems once written. What prevails is the intuition. There are exceptions: I once worked as a title or subject, with some success or not. I remember a book from the letters of Rimbaud in Africa. This project survived two or three poems that I included in a book.

Carlos Barbarito

*****

Both. Sometimes one way, sometimes the other, and sometimes both at the same time. Right now I'm working in a fully conceptualized project, but the last one had a coherent section that took up about a third of the book, with the rest taken from work done over the same two years.

Christopher Flynn

*****

I make collections after I've written the poems. To start out with an idea about a collection would shape my creative process differently than allowing myself to write each day with whatever is in front of me that prompts a poetic response (and I do write every morning, so this is not a discipline question). This way, I find that threads in my work that surprise me and keep me interested. This is not to say that I would be opposed to trying it the other way around in the future.

Kathleen Cassen Mickelson

*****

I do it both ways, depending on how the poems come to me. I am but the slave of the muse!

Jeffrey Spahr-Summers

*****

I've only done one chap/collection called Book of Aliases. I wanted to get readership on my old poems so I went through my blog archives and picked what I thought were some of the best and strongest. I had a huge amount of them and they were all over the place in terms of themes. As I was trying to sort them into piles I realized that one of the interesting things I had been considering in my writing was the idea that we all are constantly shifting from one presentation of ourselves to another -- something similar to having several aliases. Once I had that as a concept for a collection, I was able to pick 57 of my older poems that could be grouped under that theme and the book became easy to assemble.

Russell Ragsdale

*****

Most of the poetry I write tends to be the quirky, offbeat, humorous kind. After a number of my pieces were published in journals, I started working with an idea about how I'd like to organize them and finally did it in my first poetry book (and first book, too) Mugging for the Camera. I found it was a lot easier to work with a central theme of an idea, even if it was kind of loosely based.

RJ Clarken

*****

I look to see what I've been writing for the last 2 years, decide whether it's a subject or a tone or what, and then include and exclude to make a unified whole.

Then I throw all the poems on the floor, arrange them into three piles or sections, and arrange the poems within the sections. I have never written a poem FOR a collection, but I know many fine poets who do.

I'm talking about collections of individual poems, of course. My three book-length verse narratives have stories to organize them.

Penelope Scambly Schott

April PAD Challenge 2009--UPDATE!

Thu, 12 Mar 2009 18:02:57 GMT

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!

Poetry FAQs: What is getting published?

Thu, 05 Mar 2009 13:52:15 GMT

Whether it's concerning fiction, nonfiction, poetry, script writing, etc., one of the more common questions I get asked by writers is something along the lines of, "What is getting published now?," which also can be re-phrased as, "What is currently hot in publishing?"

Writers naturally want to find success in their craft and trade--just as people who golf or run seek success at whatever level they participate. In golfing and running, it's easier to track progress. For golfing, you know you're doing better if your scores are going down. For running, you know you're doing better when your times are dropping or when you're covering longer distances. So writers naturally look for a way to measure their success in writing and often use publishing, financial reward, and/or critical acceptance as their measures. And these can be good measures if you're following your own path.

In publishing (and writing), you don't want to follow trends for the sake of getting published, seeking financial reward, and/or critical acceptance. And here's why: Trends are moving targets.

Usually by the time a trend is established, there are already experts working the trend backwards and forwards. So, there isn't room for newbies unless you have a significantly different take on the established trend. In other words, following what's hot now doesn't guarantee publication in the future.

So, of course, if publication is guaranteed, then financial compensation isn't guaranteed either.

Since we're talking poetry here, financial compensation shouldn't be a big concern anyway, because there's not a lot of money to go around in the first place. But even if you secure publication, you may want critical recognition, which will be very hard to come by if it's perceived that you're just following a trend.

No. You need to pay attention to what's happening around you, including what you like and don't like. But then, you've got to march forward with your own vision. You need to do YOUR thing.

Rejections will happen whether you follow the trends or not. Acceptances will, too. But if you're marching to your own beat, then you'll find that eventually other writers may be following you. Plus, as you find success, you'll realize there's more reason to feel confident with your own voice.

Poetry FAQs: When is a long response too long?

Tue, 17 Feb 2009 01:33:31 GMT

I received the following question via e-mail from a poet who wishes to remain anonymous:

I recently received a letter from a well-respected poetry print publication after my query regarding my submission which was held longer then their guidelines stated. The reply I received was that my work was still under consideration. Was this good news or just nothing?

How long should I expect to wait. Their reading of submissions ends shortly. Do I query again? Can I assume this is dead in the water, and rather then just sending me a rejection they sent this letter stating my work was still under consideration? They state in the letter it could take up to 5 months for their editors to respond to submissions, but it's been much longer than 5 months when I sent the query to begin with.

Believe me, editors (especially of well-respected publications) are not afraid to send rejection notes. So, it's not good news yet (because your work hasn't been accepted), but it's not bad news either. Unless you don't like waiting around for responses.

If you're tired of waiting and the well-respected publication doesn't allow simultaneous submissions, then you can always respectfully pull your work from their consideration. Or you can move on as if it was rejected.

Many editors go over their stated guidelines, especially when they are drowning in submissions from eager writers. Often, response estimates are given by editors who are overly optimistic about how quick they'll get through everything.

One way to avoid this problem, of course, is to only submit to publications that accept simultaneous submissions. While I'm not a simultaneous submitter myself, many well-published poets are. If you go down that road, just make sure you have a good submission tracking system in place--so that you can notify journals when specific poems have been accepted for publication.

*****

Click here to check out other Poetry FAQs from Poetic Asides: http://blog.writersdigest.com/poeticasides/CategoryView,category,Poetry%20FAQs.aspx.

*****

If you wish to submit a question, e-mail me at robert.brewer@fwmedia.com with the subject line: "Poetry Question".

AWP Update & More!

Sun, 15 Feb 2009 13:46:36 GMT

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!

Interview With Poet J.P. Dancing Bear

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 17:05:04 GMT

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.

Interview With Poet Susan Rich

Tue, 03 Feb 2009 13:00:15 GMT

Susan Rich is a special kind of poet--one who has gotten out and seen the world first hand before setting pen to paper (or keystroke to word processor). She's worked in the field of human rights for nine years; lived and/or worked in Bosnia, Gaza, Ireland, South Africa and Republic of Niger; was shot at in Croatia; and photographed for a recent book on women's body images. With so many experiences, most people would be filled with good stories, but Rich is also able to craft these tales into wonderful poems.

White Pine Press published Rich's first two collections, The Cartographer's Tongue (2000) and Cures Include Travel (2006), and plans on releasing her third collection, The Alchemist's Kitchen, in 2010. Both of her published collections share the knowledge of a writer who's seen the world--as the titles indicate.

Here's a favorite of mine from Cures Include Travel:

Mohamud at the Mosque

for my student upon his graduation

And some time later in the lingering
blaze of summer, in the first days
after September 11 you phoned--

If I don't tell anyone my name I'll
pass for an African American.
And suddenly, this seemed a sensible solution--

the best protection: to be a black man
born in America, more invisible than
Somali, Muslim, asylum seeker--

Others stayed away that first Friday
but your uncle insisted that you pray.
How fortunes change so swiftly

I hear you say. And as you parallel
park across from the Tukwila
mosque, a young woman cries out--

her fears unfurling beside your battered car--
Go back where you came from!
You stand, both of you, dazzling there

in the mid-day light, her pavement
facing off along your parking strip.
You tell me she is only trying

to protect her lawn, her trees,
her untended heart--already
alarmed by its directive.

And when the neighborhood
policeman appears, asks
you, asks her, asks all the others--

So what seems to be the problem?
He actually expects an answer,
as if any of us could name it--

as if perhaps your prayers
chanted as this cop stands guard
watching over your windshield

during the entire service
might hold back the world
we did not want to know.

*****

What are you currently up to?

I'm working on a series of ekphrastic poems inspired by the work of Myra Albert Wiggins (1869-1956). Wiggins was one of the first women artists in the Pacific Northwest to make her living exclusively as an artist. She was a photographer, painter, and poet, but best known for her photographs. For a short time, she exhibited widely in New York and Europe. Alfred Stieglitz published her work in Camera Notes and George Eastman hung one of her photographs in his office at Eastman-Kodak. I'm very drawn to her photographs, in particular, probably because she works from imagined narratives and also traveled widely. I hope to have a small chapbook within my next full length collection, The Alchemist’s Kitchen, coming out in April 2010 from White Pine Press.

This is my first time working on a series of ekphrastic poems, first time writing any poems at all that are inspired by the visual arts and it's sort of magical. Working with images, especially narrative images like the ones Wiggins creates, really functions like the poem's rough draft. I can begin with a girl, a bowl, a dark spoon--and we're off to the races.

I'm also still celebrating my first prize award published in the Times Literary Supplement (of London). My good friend, the poet Kelli Agodon, figured out that my poem earned $333.33 per line or $28.98 per word! WOW! And who said poetry doesn't pay?

With one collection titled The Cartographer's Tongue and another titled Cures Include Travel, travel seems to play a very important role in your poetry. Do you think travel can help a writer grow?

I believe travel offers us a relatively safe way to shed our everyday skins and step outside the closed world we've so carefully constructed around us. In my everyday life I'm in contact with people who often have a shared sense of community, city, country--even if my background is Russian and my neighbor is Somali; but by virtue of living here in the US where I was born, I don't have to examine my everyday assumptions and suppositions.

When I worked in Gaza, I was commonly asked, whether I supported the United States military aide to Israel. In West Africa, I needed to remember, for my two years there, never to extend my left hand in greeting or--God forbid!--eat with it. In Bosnia, one didn't ever ask where a person stayed during the war. These are perhaps a sundry set of examples of how each culture has its own decorum and set of assumptions. What I find so interesting is how rarely we question our own lived ideas.

Yes, I believe travel helps a writer grow, helps anyone grow; allows us the chance to become part of a broader human spectrum of experience.

For your own travel, you've been to places such as Bosnia, Gaza and South Africa. Your poetry often deals with people and events witnessed while on the road. Do you feel you must have something important to say when you sit down to write a poem?

If I thought I needed to only write important poems, I would still be staring into this screen before me. Who needs that kind of pressure?

You've been shot at in Croatia, modeled for a recent book on women's body images, and traveled around the globe; do you feel you live an adventurous life?

When you put it that way, it does sound exciting, doesn't it? No, I am afraid everyday life centers around cups of good coffee and ministering to the cats.

For the last ten years, I have been teaching English and Film Studies at Highline Community College. I have had two sabbaticals, time off for good behavior and done some traveling, but primarily my life is very staid. Seattle is an almost perfect place for a writer to live. I feel very lucky to have found it. I'm originally from Boston, Massachusetts.

What is true is that I am often motivated by fear. If I am offered an experience--such as working in Bosnia only three months after the war--I feel compelled to react against that fear and accept the offers that present themselves in my life. I think it is called counterphobic.

How do you handle the whole submission process from submitting poems to keeping track of your submissions?

I am the odd writer who loves submitting my work. I play the license plate game only with poetry journals and aim to publish in every state--if I can. Over the years it's been a good way to not over think the rejections from the New Yorker or the Atlantic and instead rejoice in smaller, but extremely respectable journals such as the Antioch Review and Quarterly West. To date, my poems have traveled to 33 states and 7 countries. Some states are easier to find journals in than others. In Rhode Island, the choices are limited.

This year, I have had acceptances from three journals that I have been sending to regularly for fifteen years. Fifteen, that's not a typo. In two of the three cases I never even had a "try again" scrawled along the bottom of the rejection slip. In fact, I prefer the pristine, impersonal rejection. Gettysburg Review rejects with high quality paper and in a timely fashion; I like that. They accept in much the same way. As someone who has worked as a poetry editor at several journals, I understand that most of the time there is nothing personal about rejection. I understand, or like to think I understand, that editors are people with bad days and good days.

My little editor fantasy goes like this: It's a sunny afternoon and Mr. or Ms. Editor has just come back to the desk after a light lunch at a favorite restaurant. With a fresh cup of tea and a cat for company, my editor reads my poems. In other words, I believe that timing and context are key. Many different considerations go into the acceptance of a poem and it's impossible to know what they are. You can read back issues of the journal, and that can help you choose food imagery over junkyard cats, but there is still a vast element of the unknown.

My favorite submission story goes like this: A friend of a friend submitted his work to a top literary journal only to have it rejected, but with a note suggesting radical changes. The writer waited a year and then sent the same poems, exactly the same poems (no edits) again. He included a note thanking the editor for such thoughtful suggestions on his work. Final result? One of the poems was accepted. I've also had the same poem rejected and then accepted from another journal. How to explain it except to say that submitting poems is not a realm of science. We send our work out into the world hoping it finds a home; hoping against hope, that it will speak to someone and in another state or on another continent; that we will be seen.

In a previous interview, I saw that you have your students memorize a poem by another poet. Do you feel it's important for poets to memorize their own poetry?

No, I don't. Personally, I'd rather recite Elizabeth Bishop and William Butler Yeats to myself than Susan Rich. Susan Rich isn't bad, but Bishop and Yeats are better.

Who are you currently reading?

My favorite book of poems at the moment is And Her Soul Out of Nothing by Olena Kalytiak Davis. It's the first book in awhile that I find utterly satisfying in its alternating mix of lyric and narrative impulses. For fiction Night Train to Lisbon by Mercier is on my bedside table. My favorite read of the last year was The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway.

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

I wish I had come across W. S. Merwin's poem "Berryman" years earlier. I share "Berryman" with my students now and we read it aloud together. The sense that we will never really know if anything we write is any good I find incredibly freeing. If we aren't able to pass judgment on our work, then we are free of that burden. There's nothing that drains the pen more quickly than the rush to decide if this is the next Pulitzer prize-winning poem or not. Recently, a poem of mine won a large prize which arrived with a bucket of award money. The truth is, I was utterly flabbergasted when I learned that the judges, and then the general public, chose this poem. Please don't get me wrong. I am proud of this poem and I am thrilled to have won the award, but I never would have believed that this small piece would go so far. If I had passed judgment on its worth, instead of sending it off into the world, I would have been wrong. What I want to convey is this: Push and sweat to write your best, and after that, leave it to others to judge. Try not to second guess your craft; trust in what you cannot know.

*****

To learn more about Susan Rich, you can visit her website at http://www.susanrich.net.

To learn more about her publisher (and perhaps check out her books), you can visit the White Pine Press website at http://www.whitepine.org.

Free Writing Contest!

Fri, 30 Jan 2009 17:59:57 GMT

Here's a free writing contest: http://www.writersdigest.com/redheartblackheart

The basic concept behind this free writing contest is that you can write a poem, essay, or letter that either celebrates love or tears love down. Here are the categories:

* Love Poem
* Black-Hearted Love Poem
* Love Letter
* Rejection Letter (as in rejected love letter)
* Essay on Love at First Sight
* Essay on Lost Love

The deadline is February 6--so this sounds like a good weekend project.

The prize is a $250 shopping spree to the Writer's Digest online store, in addition to several other very cool benefits.

To check out all the details, go to http://www.writersdigest.com/redheartblackheart

And have a great weekend! On Monday (Groundhog Day), I'll be sharing the results of the November PAD Chapbook Challenge. (Even the winner has no idea who he or she is.)

Horticulture Accepting Gardening Poems

Fri, 23 Jan 2009 02:58:19 GMT

I don't usually highlight single magazines that are accepting poems, but I'm going to make an exception in this case, because it's the only F+W Media magazine (of which I'm aware) that is accepting poetry at the moment, Horticulture.

Here's the press release from Guy Gonzalez:

Open Call for Submissions

Horticulture, the oldest and most respected magazine for avid gardeners in North America, is pleased to announce the addition of poetry to its editorial features. Cave Canem fellow (and fellow gardener) Michelle Courtney Berry's "What I Learned in the Garden" has been chosen as the debut poem, to appear in the April 2009 issue and online at Hortmag.com.

"For over 100 years, Horticulture has been dedicated to celebrating the passion of avid, influential gardeners, and there is an even longer history of poetry inspired by flowers and gardens -- from William Blake to Louise Glück, and so many great poets between them," explained publisher and editorial director, Guy LeCharles Gonzalez. "Adding garden verse to our editorial mix is simply another way to celebrate and encourage a real passion for gardening."

Horticulture is accepting submissions on a rolling basis, and is seeking poetry about, related to, or in honor of gardeners and gardening: traditional forms and free verse, the meditative lyric and the "light" or comic poem, the work of the famous and the work of the unknown. Our one limitation is length; we are unable to publish very long poems, and our limit is 42 lines.

Submissions should be sent as an email attachment (.DOC or .RTF only) per the guidelines posted at http://www.hortmag.com/submissions/

For more information on Horticulture, visit Hortmag.com.

Interview With Poet Jeannine Hall Gailey

Mon, 19 Jan 2009 06:22:26 GMT

Jeannine Hall Gailey is a West Coast journalist who publishes articles on subject matter as varied as how to bake a perfect scone to how to secure your web services application. (It should also be noted that she is writing a couple pieces for me for the 2010 Poet's Market.)

Gailey's poems have appeared in The Iowa Review, Columbia Poetry Review, Verse Daily, and 32 Poems, among others. She's published a chapbook, "Female Comic Book Superheroes" (Pudding House), and a full length collection, Becoming the Villainess (Steel Toe Books). Plus, Jeannine is quick to point out that she still reads comics.

There were many poems from Becoming the Villainess that I absolutely loved, but this is my favorite:

She Escapes the Film Noir

I slip out the door,
wearing a raincoat as disguise.
It might have wrinkles, indicating a recent tryst.
Also, I may wear a fedora.
I will certainly have a lot of hair
falling over the brim of my eyelashes, either because
I'm too busy to cut it
or I don't want anyone looking me in the eyes.
Ominous footsteps echo in an unseen room,
along with distant thunder.
We are unsure of the dialogue in this script.

You watch me lean into the wet, shining street
and peer, nervous, into shadows.
Am I looking for you?
Or the man with a gun?
Either way, I'm holding tickets to Paris.
Care to join me?
I would light a cigarette
except for the damn rain. My lipstick
in this lighting is darker than blood,
and my hands won't stop shaking.

*****

What are you currently up to?

I just finished teaching my first class for National University's MFA program, an all-online Intro to Poetry Seminar. It was fascinating to try to give feedback on poems as a class without all the little tricks of body language and voice inflection; I remembered how much I rely on non-verbal cues when I teach. But it was a great adventure.

I'm working on some new manuscripts: one that investigates female heroines in Japanese pop culture and folk tales, and the idea of "mono no aware" or "softly despairing sorrow," another about being trapped in the physical body and the stories of Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty, and Snow White, and the third is a just-begun collection about growing up in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, in the shadow of the birth-place of nuclear bombs, as the daughter of a robotics scientist. The first two I'm actively seeking publishers for; the third is still in progress.

Also, I just moved to Southern California from the Pacific Northwest, so I'm still trying to get used to all the palm trees, surfers and women that wear Ugg boots when it's 60 degrees. It's definitely an alien landscape.

Becoming the Villainess is your first book-length collection. Did the manuscript develop naturally, or did it go through many versions?

I began putting together a full-length collection as soon as Pudding House Press offered to publish my little chapbook called "Female Comic Book Superheroes." Putting together the chapbook made me realize just how many poems I'd written over ten years with the same themes, the same characters, the same voices. I originally tried to create a more conventionally-poetic, uplifting manuscript, but one day my husband came along and read my manuscript and said something about how the real story of the book was how the speakers go from powerlessness to power, from innocent to corrupt, from the princess to the villainess. So I titled it "Becoming the Villainess" and stopped trying to fight the dark side of the MS or impose a happy ending on the collection. I also had terrific insight from a bunch of friends about the manuscript during the eighteen months I sent it out. Finally, I decided to rearrange it according to comic book structure--the origin story, the character arc, the final frame, and so on. That felt right. And just after I rearranged it that way, Steel Toe Books' Tom Hunley called to say they wanted to publish it.

You have a website, a blog, and a presence on social networking sites, such as FaceBook. Do you feel having an Internet presence helps spread the word about your writing?

I do feel that it has helped, although, to be honest, I'm sort of a techie geek and love to be on the computer so I'd probably do the website, blog, and Facebook stuff even if I wasn't a poet. Shameful secret: I learned to program video games in BASIC on my Dad's TRS-80 when I was six. So I don't really need an excuse to play around with technology. But if I did, I think that all writers who want to hear from their readers and peers should engage online. You'll get to know people who will never be able to attend one of your readings, whom you might never meet in person, so in that way it does extend your audience.

I do get quite a few e-mails from people who have found my work online and loved it, and I think the blog community has been very supportive. I've met a lot of people "online" and then read their work or met them in person, and was so thankful that they had a blog or website or posted on a discussion board, so I could discover their wonderful work.

On your website, you offer poetry consulting and editing services. What do you see as a common problem poets make in assembling collections?

I think it's hard for most writers (including me) to get enough distance from their own collections to really see what they are really about or what the collection is doing for the reader. What's the subtext? What's the arc? How are the poems related to one another in a larger sense? Sometimes when I read manuscripts I get interesting insights about the writer's personality, about what they choose to share with the world. That's the delightful, fun part of editing a manuscript. It's kind of like a makeover show in that way. Usually people have a bunch of great work put together in a not-so-great way. As an editor, I want to help people present their work in the most intelligent, interesting, dynamic way possible. Sometimes people put together great collections of individual poems with nothing coherent about the collection itself, just a ramshackle bunch of poems. Sometimes the manuscript is terrific and coherent, but the writer chose to put their weakest or most off-putting work first or last. Or they take ten pages to get to the real subject of the collection. Often, it's just a matter of cutting a few poems, a bit of rearrangement, and talking to the author about what they are trying to say with their manuscript and making them aware of their quirks and their strengths. Then, they're usually off and running.

You've been published widely. How do you go about submitting your work, including tracking where everything is?

In Seattle I had a group of poet friends who would meet and encourage each other to send stuff out, make goals, bring in copies of their favorite lit mags, that kind of thing. That was tremendously helpful. I also spent a year reviewing literary journals for NewPages.com, which was probably the best way ever to research a ton of literary magazines I might not ever have heard of otherwise. I encourage every aspiring poet to spend a year writing lit mag reviews for NewPages.com.

As far as nuts and bolts: I've used Writer's Market's online submission tracker, Dueotrope, and I have made my own Excel spreadsheet of poems to send out and where they've been sent. Even with all that, I still lose track once in a while, or receive a rejection or acceptance from a place I don't remember ever sending poems to. I blame my (evil and disorganized) alter ego.

In Becoming the Villainess, you have to get inside the skin of several characters. Did you find this tactic liberating as a writer?

When I first discovered persona poetry as a younger writer, I absolutely felt at home. Persona poetry allows poets to use fiction writers' tools without all the commitment of a novel! Character, plot, dialogue--and a wonderful liberation from "normalcy." I am a champion of persona poetry exercises for writers because often it requires the writer to make a leap in imagination--kind of the opposite of the old "write what you know" adage, instead "write what you can imagine"--and empathy. To write a good persona poem, a writer must develop a sense of empathy for the character they're writing about, go beyond "good" or "bad" to really identify with another person. In my case, embracing and then challenging the stereotypes about women in popular culture and mythology also allowed me to re-write stilted roles--busty superheroine, powerless princess, femme fatale, etc.--which was very satisfying.

Since you mentioned to me in an earlier e-mail that you're a "sort of comic book and sci-fi geek," I've just got to ask: Who would be the last person standing in a battle between Spider-Man, The Hulk, Batman, Superman, Catwoman, Wonder Woman, The Joker, Magneto, Wolverine, Storm, the Invisible Woman, Lex Luthor, James T. Kirk, Spock, Darth Maul, Obi Wan Kenobi, Anakin Skywalker, Yoda, and Luke Skywalker?

Why does it always have to be fighting? Wonder Woman could use her "golden lasso of truth" and they could all get in a circle and talk about how it feels to be different--I mean, alien, mutant, evil genius--these are people that could use a little group therapy.

Seriously, though, Dr. Manhattan, of course. And maybe Dark Phoenix. They'd make a great couple, wouldn't they?

But my favorite comic book character right now is Joss Whedon's Fray.

Who are you currently reading?

I just finished The Elegance of the Hedgehog, a French novel I can't stop talking about because I love it so much. Philosophy, Japanese pop culture, action movies, class issues--it has it all! And I finally got to The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which was brutal but fantastic.

As for poetry, I'm a frequent reviewer and so I'm knee-deep in new books! Suzanne Frishkorn's Lit Windowpane, Michelle Bitting's Good Friday Kiss, Jericho Brown's Please…I think that's just the top three on a stack about three feet high.

I also recently read Alicia Ostriker's book of essays, For the Love of God. There's an essay in there about Ecclesiastes that blows my mind every time I read it. And I loved Beth Ann Fennelly's Unmentionables and Rachel Zucker's Bad Wife Handbook so much I wrote an essay about them, which I am trying to find a home for.

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

Don't be afraid to write about the subjects you care most about; not every poem has to be about snow falling on an old farmhouse. Stick with your passions. Embrace your own special weirdness.

*****

To check out Jeannine Hall Gailey's website, go to www.webbish6.com.

For more information on Steel Toe Books, go to www.steeltoebooks.com.

*****

If you're a poet or publisher interested in an interview on this blog, click here to learn more about how to start that process.

Poetry FAQs: What can be done with an accepted poem?

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 14:47:28 GMT

It's been some time since I've tackled a poetry question. This question was sent in a while ago, and deals with a situation I've experienced personally myself (and is probably common to many poets who've submitted their work long enough).

What can/can't we do with a poem that was either accepted by a journal and then never used, or accepted by a journal that died before they used it?

First off, let me just say that I'm not a lawyer, so don't take my word as law. That said, I can't imagine a lawsuit involving poetry, and I'm married to a paralegal.

I'll address the latter case first (the journal that died before using the poem). Unless the journal bought the rights to your poem before dying, I don't see any reason why the poem would not still be considered unpublished. While it's disappointing that the poem was so close to publication, you should be able to move the poem back into your bin of poems that need to be submitted.

If you were paid for the poem already, then you may need to contact the editors about releasing the rights to your poem. But if the journal died before they used the poem, you probably weren't paid.

The other case (the journal that accepts a poem and never uses it) is only a little more complex. If the journal accepted your poem and has not paid you for it, then contact the editor to find out what he or she plans to do with the poem. If the editor does not have an acceptable answer to your query, then request that it be removed from consideration in a future edition of the publication. And I suggest being nice about how you handle this, especially if you may wish to submit to that particular publication or editor again. In this case, as above, the poem would still be considered unpublished.

If the journal accepted your poem and has paid you for it, things can get a little trickier. Most likely, you will need to pay back the publisher, and there's even the (very slight) possibility that the publication will not release the first publication rights to the poem. I doubt the situation would come to this in 99.9% of the cases. Most editors/publishers want to work with writers, not against them.

*****

Click here for other Poetry FAQs.

If you don't find an answer to your question there, then feel free to send me an e-mail at robert.brewer@fwmedia.com.

Interview With Poet Tom C. Hunley

Tue, 09 Dec 2008 17:22:46 GMT

I'm very pleased to share the following interview with Tom C. Hunley. Recently, Logan House released his third full-length collection, Octopus. He also published The Tongue (Wind Publications) and Still, There's a Glimmer (WordTech Editions) in 2004, in addition to three chapbook collections.

When he's not writing poetry, he's an assistant professor at Western Kentucky University and the director of Steel Toe Books. Plus, he never misses an opportunity to mention that he's a devoted husband to his wife Ralaina and doting father to Evan, Owen, and Blake.

Here's a poem from Octopus that I especially enjoyed (which Tom has pointed out was recently read by Garrison Keiller on October 26 at http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2008/10/26):

The Dental Hygienist

She said "open up,"
so I showed her my teeth,
a chipped-white fence
that keeps my tongue penned in.

She rinsed my mouth.
She suctioned my cheek.

She said "How do you like this town?"
so I said "Mmpllff,"
though I meant "More every day,"

and she said "Gorgeous weather!"
so I said "Mmpllff"
though I meant "In my mouth?"

and she didn't say anything,
so I said "Mmpllff" and "Mmpllff"
though I'm not sure what I meant,
and she took me to mean
"Would you like to go out tonight?"
and "to an expensive restaurant?"

When I arrived with a bouquet of roses,
she stuffed them in my mouth.

She told me all about her feelings:
how she feels about fillings,
how she feels about failures.

She said "open up."
She said "It's like pulling teeth
trying to get men to talk about their feelings."

So I said "Mmpllff,"
though I meant "You smell prettier than the flowers in my mouth,"
and I said "Mmpllff,"
though I meant "I'm afraid of dying alone."

She said I was a good conversationalist
and showed me her perfect teeth.
I felt an ache in my jaw.
I felt drool crawling down my chin.

*****

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

What are you currently up to?

When I'm not looking after my three small kids or my 85 not-so-small students, I'm mostly working on a poetry writing textbook tentatively titled The Poetry Gymnasium: Ninety-Five Poem-Strengthening Exercises. In my experience, most poetry writing textbooks treat exercises sort of as afterthoughts. My textbook-in-progress includes a clear learning objective for each exercise, a little historical background on the poetic subgenre the exercise aims to teach, a clear rationale for each particular exercise, model published poems, and poems written by my students using each exercise. It is the follow-up to my theoretical book, Teaching Poetry Writing: A Five-Canon Approach, and like that book, it uses the five canons of classical rhetoric (invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery) as an organizing principle. I've been at it for almost two years, and I hope to begin shopping it in a few months.

You're the director of Steel Toe Books and accept manuscripts during open submission periods. What's the most common mistake poets make when submitting?

Failing to follow guidelines. For example, in October we advertised an open reading period for predominately formal verse, but many poets sent us manuscripts that were written primarily in free verse.

In your opinion, what makes a good collection?

Arranging poems into a collection is a lot like arranging lines into a poem. I think there should be the same kind of movement, from problem to solution, from buildup to crescendo, from exposition to denouement, whatever it may be. I also find it helpful to think of a book as a concept album. I have an exercise in my textbook-in-process that asks students to analyze the way an album like Tommy or The Marshall Mathers LP or Electric Ladyland is organized. Why does one track follow the next? How would the album be enhanced or damaged if one song were moved or taken out? Then I ask them to discover an organizing principle and try applying it to a chapbook of their own poems.

Octopus won the 2007 Holland Prize from Logan House. Do you usually enter contests, wait for open submission periods, or take a by-any-means-necessary approach to shopping a completed manuscript?

I would like to see presses put more of their energies into sales and less of their energies into running contests. I would also like to see poets put their money into buying poetry books rather than spending it on contest fees.

My first two full-length collections, The Tongue and Still, There's a Glimmer, were both published in 2004 by presses that do not run contests (Wind Publications and WordTech Editions, respectively). I am grateful to those editors, Charlie Hughes at Wind and Kevin Walzer and Lori Jareo at WordTech, not only for publishing my books but also for teaching me a good deal about the business end small-press publishing.

I won Pecan Grove Press's chapbook contest for My Life as a Minor Character (2005). I submitted to them because I had heard good things about the editors, Palmer Hall and Louie Cortez, from a couple acquaintances who had published with them.

Then I entered the Holland Prize because I got a kick out of Logan House Press's web site (http://www.loganhousepress.com). I liked the fact that they once had an "Imagining Editor," rather than a managing editor (Jim Reese, who has since moved on). The current editors, cowboy poet JV Brummels and musician/book designer Eddie Elfers, are clearly enjoying what they're doing, which was evident from the web site. Also, I liked the fact that they sell books through a subscription service called the Live Poets Society, and I like the fact that everyone who enters the contest gets a copy of the winning book; that's a win-win for the published poet and for everyone who enters the contest.

Some of your poems in Octopus (such as "Ism-Ism" and "Interdisciplinary Studies") deal with big ideas in a pretty direct way. Such poems often run the risk of getting too abstract so that the reader is not drawn into the poem, but yours work. Why do you think yours do work?

First of all, thanks. I suppose the key is finding a good hook that gets both the writer and the reader into the poem. In both cases, I didn't start out with big ideas; I started with an image which I built on and riffed off until the big issues sort of emerged out of my unconscious.

Do you have any poetic pet peeves?

I don't like poems without any clear ideas, poems without any clear emotions, humorless poems, poems that pretend to be smarter or dumber than they are, poems that disdain their audiences, political poetry that puts politics first and poetry a distant second, religious poetry that puts religion first and poetry a distant second, or poems where the poet pretends to be taking great risks but is in fact preaching to some choir. That seems to be a long list, I know, but actually my tastes are pretty eclectic; I'm open to all sorts of poetry and I'm glad there's so much diversity of style.

Who are you currently reading?

As book review editor of Poemeleon, I'm currently reading Manthology, a

2006 University of Iowa Press gathering of both male and female poets discussing the male experience. There are great poems in it by Stephen Dunn, Jane Hirshfield, Sharon Doubiago, Norman Dubie, Jeffrey Harrison, and others. I also just finished Kim Addonizio's collection What Is This Thing Called Love, which is so beautiful and poignant and bluesy.

I just finished teaching A Confederacy of Dunces which I find brilliant and hilarious but which many of my students find annoying and confusing. I just began A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers, and so far I'm enjoying its formal inventiveness while also finding deep, authentic feeling in it.

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

Read as many other poets as you can. Buy their books. Get in touch with them. Learn from as many people as you can.

*****

To learn more about Tom C. Hunley, you can check out his bio through the Steel Toe Books website at http://www.wku.edu/~tom.hunley/steeltoebooks/.

And here are some of his poems found online:

* From Verse Daily

* From storySouth

* From Gumball Poetry

*****

And if you're a published poet looking for an interview opportunity, click here for more details.

If you're looking for some free reading material...

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 05:06:33 GMT

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.

Poets Helping Poets: What Makes a Great Chapbook?

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 21:34:51 GMT

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

Poets Helping Poets: Self-publishing and poetry?

Mon, 20 Oct 2008 17:23:25 GMT

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

Exclusive Interview With Poet Diane Lockward

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 16:07:41 GMT

Recently, it seemed as if a lot of the poetry I was reading had something to do with food, and today's interview subject played a significant role in me feeling that way. After all, Diane Lockward's most recent collection from Wind Publications is titled What Feeds Us (winner of the 2006 Quentin R. Howard Poetry Prize), which definitely feeds the senses and the soul.

Diane is the author of two previous collections of poetry, Eve's Red Dress (Wind Publications) and a chapbook, Against Perfection (Poets Forum Press). She is a former high school English teacher and runs an annual poetry festival in her home State of New Jersey.

Here's one of my favorites from What Feed Us:

Hurricane Season

Films of dense tissue swirling like storm clouds.
Specks of light inside, and at the center, a fibroid,
glistening like the lodestar that led the Wise Men
to Jesus. Microcalcification, cluster, fibroadenosis--
words with the force of hurricane winds--
cyst, lump, mass.

Warnings on the screen: a hurricane pounding
the coast. Isabel, like my friend's daughter.
People in North Carolina taping window panes,
boarding up homes. Wind so fierce it rips
a building from its foundation,
picks up a woman and hurls her onto concrete.

Ultrasound, MRI. A file on me now, stored
in a basement, as if I were a secret agent or a spy.
Words from a book on torture:
aspiration, fine needle, thick needle, core
biopsy, the rack of a stereotactic table. A list
of possibilities: stage 1, 2, 3, or 4;
mild pain, moderate pain, extreme pain.

A swath of heavy rain from Cape Fear
to the South Santee River. Whirling confusion
of sand pelting, cars fleeing. Radar. Doppler scan.
Category 5, 4, 3, 2. Satellite photos--
Isabel swirling, a mass on the screen,
eye at the center like a nipple.

Days of waiting for the phone to ring,
the hurricane coming closer and closer.
Days of wondering, How will I tell my daughter?
Waiting and waiting, braced for landfall.

Here's the interview:

What are you currently up to?

I'm zeroing in on the completion of a third book, patiently attempting to nurse into existence the handful of poems I need to flesh out the collection. This new collection began with an idea and the poems are kind of falling into place around that idea. This is a departure from the first two books where I was not aware of any connection among the poems as I wrote them, but once I had 50-55 poems that I thought were respectable, I gathered them together and found some unifying idea. So this time I'm working in the opposite direction. I wonder if that signifies anything?

In What Feeds Us, food plays an important role. Also, the body. Could you elaborate on what you were trying to accomplish with this collection?

The epigraph that precedes the poems really says what I had in mind. I took this from M.F.K. Fisher's book, The Gastronomical Me: ". . . there is nourishment in the heart, to feed the wilder, more insistent hungers." The poems consider what nourishes us or fails to nourish us, what sustains us or doesn't. There is literal food, thus poems about fruits, vegetables, and pasta. There is family, thus poems about parents and children, both present and missing. There's love and sex, thus poems about the body and its various parts. There's fullness and its opposite, hunger.

Oddly, although I write a lot about food, I've always been a fussy eater. But perhaps that fussiness is at the heart of my obsession. When I got married, I vowed to love, honor, and never again eat liver.

As a follow-up question, what are your thoughts, in general, on the importance of food and body for poets? Do you feel diet and physical health influence poets' writing habits?

I think of food as a metaphor for the body. Just think how interchangeable the words are that we use to describe one or the other. For example, a tomato may be round, plump, luscious, full of seeds, ripe, firm, succulent, rotten at the center. Likewise a body. Sometimes when I talk about food, I am really talking about the body. For many of us, the body is a source of dissatisfaction, disappointment, fear, pain. Food can be a substitute for what the body is missing, for its unsatisfied longings. It can be the cause of physical ailments or it can help cure those ailments. Food is full of vitamins but also loaded with irony and thus rich with poetic potential. Certainly self-image and health affect our writing. I can't eat tomatoes, but I can write about my longing for them. I can't write well when I'm in a period of insomnia, but when I'm rested, I can write a poem about sleeplessness.

I noticed there was a business card tucked into the copy of What Feeds Us that I received. Do you feel business cards help with the promotion of the book?

The business card is the new beret. Seriously, most poets I know have a business card. Not that what we do has anything to do with the business world, but sometimes at a reading someone asks how I can be reached. The card contains contact information and is handy to give out. I really hadn't planned to have one, but I wanted postcards with my book's cover art to supplement the press release my publisher was sending out. So I uploaded the cover image to vistaprint.com—a wonderful service—and designed the postcard. Once I did that, I then received an offer from the company for companion business cards. The price was so reasonable I couldn't say no. I ordered 250 which I expect will be a lifetime supply. Do they help with the promotion of the book? I doubt that they directly affect sales, but I think they help with getting readings and workshops and those sell a few books.

You run an annual poetry festival in New Jersey. Could you talk a little about this event?

I've run this event for the past five years. I had an idea for a festival that would be a bit different from the poet-centered festival. I was thinking of one that would be journal-centered. My local library had just finished a big

expansion and put a note in their newsletter that they were interested in new programs. I pitched my idea and the librarians liked it. The first festival was a success, so it's become an annual event.

Each year I invite twelve editors to participate. The size of the festival is dictated by the size of the library, but I don't think I'd want it much bigger. Each journal is represented by two poets who are invited by the journal's editor. So we have twenty-four poets reading throughout the four-hour event. In a separate area the editors display their journals on tables and have submission guidelines and subscription forms.

Each year the word spreads and the festival gets better and better, now bringing in around 250 people. It's a festive and exciting day that pulls together editors, poets, and poetry lovers. The main focus is on the journals and the editors. The purpose of the event is to honor the editors who give us a place for our work and to thank them for the work they do in the service of poetry. No one gets paid, but poets do sell books. And lots of journals are sold.

The festival is also part of my larger mission to help build the audience for poetry. Whitman said, "To have great poets there must be great audiences too." I'd love to see similar festivals popping up across the country.

How important do you feel community is to poets?

I arrived at poetry late. By the time I found it, I had three kids and a full-time teaching job. No time for an MFA! Instead, I went to workshops and summer conferences. I took some courses at a nearby college. I went to readings and met other poets. I was getting my poetry education and, at the same time, becoming part of a poetry community.

I'm sure that most of my neighbors don't know I'm a poet. Perhaps they wonder what I do all day inside my house. I doubt they'd be terribly interested to know that I'm writing and reading poetry. So I've had to find people who are interested. I've been in a group for seven years, ever since I left full-time teaching. We meet at my house once a month. I also belong to a women poets' listserv. For the past three years I've run a three-day poetry retreat for six or seven women poets. We meet in a hotel at the Jersey shore and spend our time writing and reading poetry. I value the stimulation, feedback, and support other poets provide.

What (or who) are you currently reading?

I've been reading Lola Haskins' Desire Lines and Sheryl St. Germain's Let It Be a Dark Roux, both new and selected collections and both wonderful. Each poet has a hard edge and a passion that I really like. My kitchen table is a disgrace. I am always vowing to clear it off, but as soon as I do, more books come into the house. That table is piled up with books waiting for my attention. And I just returned from the Dodge Poetry Festival, so I have a plump list of books to order. Those are just the poetry books. I'm also finishing up Richard Russo's novel, Bridge of Sighs, and recently finished two nonfiction books, Donald Hall's The Best Day the Worst Day: Life with Jane Kenyon, and David Sheff's Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction, both heart-wrenching books.

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

I'm not a minimalist, so I'll offer my three mantras: 1) Weird is good; embrace it. 2) Be alert. 3) Go forth boldly.

*****

Here are some links for more Diane Lockward:

* Website for her festival: http://dianelockward.com/fest8.html

* Diane's personal site: www.dianelockward.com

* Diane's blog: http://dianelockward.blogspot.com

*****

And if you're a poet or editor looking to get interviewed, find out more about how to go about doing that by clicking here.

ForGodot.com ruffles poetic feathers

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 20:03:29 GMT

Wow! This is a busy day for the blog. How many posts am I going to make today anyway?

This post was inspired by a developing story brought to me by my wife Tammy. First, she found this post on Atlanta poet Collin Kelley's Modern Confessional blog: http://collinkelley.blogspot.com/2008/10/my-poem-at-forgodotcom.html.

It talks about an online "anthology" that is "publishing" poems by poets who are online from Jorie Graham to, well, Collin Kelley. Even some of my friends, such as Luc Simonic and Pris Campbell, are in this mega-nthology. There's only one catch: None of the poems were actually written by the poets.

Anyway, Tammy also found some other blogs discussing this odd anthology:

From Amy King's Alias blog: http://amyking.wordpress.com/2008/10/04/the-author-resurrected/

From Reb Livingston's Home-Schooled By a Cackling Jackal blog: http://cacklingjackal.blogspot.com/ (check out the October 5 post)

Also, to check out the source, go to: http://forgodot.com/.

(Really, you should check out the list of poets for the first issue. After a while, your eyes will start to cross--poetically, of course.)

*****

So, this is probably some kind of joke on poets and the universe, but does it make it right? I don't consider myself an elitist or a prude or anything like that, but poets who are in the anthology AND upset do have a legitimate gripe. For one, the poems aren't funny (if that was even the intent). And second, people who may be searching out a poet's work and find these horrible poems online may write off that particular poet as someone the potential reader no longer wants to read.

This site is NOT an obvious satire, and so poets could very easily be victimized by the misrepresentation of their work. This is especially damaging to lesser known poets--and, yes, there are a lot of them in the first issue.

Poetry FAQs: When is something considered published?

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 16:59:42 GMT

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.

First Ever Fake Bio Contest Winner and Other Finalists

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 14:30:22 GMT

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

*****

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

*****

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

Exclusive Interview With Poet Sandra Beasley

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 15:48:40 GMT

This interview has been a work-in-progress since May of this year, even if Sandra Beasley wasn't in the loop on it. When I was in Los Angeles earlier this year for BookExpo America, I brought along a copy of Hotel Amerika for reading purposes and was floored by a poem about a translator by a poet I'd never heard of named Sandra Beasley. I even read that and another Beasley poem to my wife Tammy over the phone that same morning and mentioned that I need to hunt her down for an interview. But then I got busy and kept not getting around to it until Martha Silano mentioned Beasley in a recent Poetic Asides interview. That gave me the extra shove I needed, and so there's the history leading up to this posting.

Sandra Beasley won the 2007 New Issues Poetry Prize for her book Theories of Falling, selected by Marie Howe. It was released in April of this year by New Issues and has already received much praise. She received her MFA from American University and serves on the staff of The American Scholar. Beasley has also won numerous awards, including fellowships to Vermont Studio Center, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Jenny McKean Moore Workshop, the Indiana University Writers' Conference, and the Millay Colony for the Arts.

Here's the opening poem to Theories of Falling, which was also cited by Martha Silano in her interview with Poetic Asides (and originally appeared in 32 Poems):

Cherry Tomatoes

Little bastards of vine.
Little demons by the pint.
Red eggs that never hatch,
just collapse and rot. When

my mom told me to gather
their grubby bodies
into my skirt, I'd cry. You
and your father, she'd chide--

the way, each time I kicked
and wailed against sailing,
my dad shook his head, said
You and your mother.

Now, a city girl, I ease one
loose from its siblings,
from its clear plastic coffin,
place it on my tongue.

Just to try. The smooth
surface resists, resists,
and erupts in my mouth:
seeds, juice, acid, blood

of a perfect household.
The way, when I finally
went sailing, my stomach
was rocked from inside

out. Little boat, big sea.
Handful of skinned sunsets.

*****

What are you currently up to?

As readers of my blog know, a few months back I began writing sestinas, invariably between the hours of midnight and 5 AM. I've always had a soft spot for the form, and the drafts were a way of giving myself a break from my second book manuscript. What started as mere linguistic jigsaw-puzzling has now taken on a life of its own: in October Black Warrior Review will publish Bitch and Brew, all sestinas, as part of their chapbook series. So now I am putting together two manuscripts—one in free verse, I Was the Jukebox, and a formal one called (for now) Count the Waves. Both will circulate to publishers beginning this fall.

I've lived in DC since coming up for my MFA at American University , and I grew up in northern Virginia . This is home. So I've taken on service commitments to the Writer's Center, and the Arts Club of Washington, to host readings and improve outreach. There's something immensely satisfying to me about connecting people with common goals and a love of poetry. I've also been thrilled to start contributing to my hometown paper, the Washington Post, as a periodic columnist for their "XX Files" feature in the Sunday Magazine.

You've had fellowships to Vermont Studio Center , Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Jenny McKean Moore Workshop, the Indiana University Writers' Conference, and the Millay Colony for the Arts. First, what's your secret to success? Second, how have these fellowships benefited you and your work?

A lot of the opportunities I have had come from just putting stamps on envelopes and getting the darn applications out there. Relentlessly, and with cavalier disregard of the (many, many) rejections that will come your way (or at least, they come my way). You have to make the system as assembly line as possible—go ahead and prepare a generic bio note, c.v., cover letter, project description—though, of course, tailor to the individual application before you send.

Whenever I get the slightest inclination to actually fill out an application (or for that matter, send out a journal submission), I drop whatever else I'm doing and honor the impulse. Even if I'm at work. Even if I'm on deadline. You always have to prioritize the poetry, because no one will do it for you.

Theories of Falling was pretty much born at the Millay Colony—at least twenty of the pages were written there, and I moved thumb-tacked copies around on the wall of my studio until I found the manuscript's order. I love a colony atmosphere: the escape from the city to a rural setting; interaction with fellow artists (painters tend to be my favorites); the fact that you can spend a day going barefoot, reading, and drinking red wine, and that's accepted as part of the process. I would be a colony-hopper if I didn't love DC so much.

Do you have any sort of routine to both your writing and submission efforts?

I try to be as systematic as possible in terms of sending out, by conceptualizing "submission packets" of 4-5 poems each: poems that offset each other well, that advance a certain theme or stylistic gesture. I'll match a packet with whatever I think the editors at that particular magazine will like best. It makes me nervous if I don't have things out at at least three journals at any given time. As you can probably guess from that statement, I prefer places that consider simultaneous submissions. As someone who has worked at a number of magazines, I just don't see any reason not to be open to simultaneous.

As for a routine to my writing schedule…can't say I have one. Sometimes I draft every day for a month, sometimes I go three months without writing a thing. Mostly I draft on my laptop, but I use longhand and legal pads too. I like a variety of settings, so I might start work in my downstairs studio and then move to my bedroom rocking chair; sometimes I write on the balcony, sometimes in a bar. I am 100% night owl, though, and would happily always write between midnight and 3 AM. It's a shame that schedule isn't compatible with the rest of the world.

The poems in Theories of Falling often feel embedded in relationships, either between family members or lovers. Do you find digging into relationships makes for more engaging reading?

Mining what's around you is practically inevitable, particularly for the first book. Young writers have been using the same bildungsroman arc since the days of the German enlightenment, and one of the things you hear over and over in MFA programs—"write what you know"—does nothing to challenge that. Which is just fine, as long as the craft is there and the writer has the discipline to then move on. I love Theories of Falling, but it would be a disappointment if I were digging into those same emotional dynamics three books from now. You do what you can with the material, and then you find something new.

Included in Theories of Falling is "Allergy Girl," a long poem (or series of poems?), about your real-life experiences growing up with chronic and severe food allergies. Could you discuss your feelings on how autobiographical you like to make your poems?

"Allergy Girl" offers the most-straight fact of anything in the book. I'd feel comfortable calling them autobiographical, which I would hesitate to do for any other poems. I think fidelity to fact in poetry is overrated, a belief that is to the unending consternation of my loved ones. Poets are always heightening and fracturing facts to get at a lyric or philosophical "truth." But judging from reader response—and when the book came out, I heard over and over about this series in particular —it is useful for the "Allergy Girl" poems to be understood as "truthful," because they offer perspective on a medical condition that might be of comfort or liberation to someone else trying to write about their health issues. Plus, how could I pass up the chance to say yes, I really was the girl in that bed-of-nails episode of Mondo Magic?

My new work is flagrantly un-biographical, playing with persona and surrealism. The jukebox speaks. The orchid speaks. The world war speaks. I go on blind dates with dead Greek heroes. My family much prefers these poems.

You recently hosted a poetry reading in your apartment. An interview you conducted with Henry Taylor while you were at the University of Virginia led to you being invited to get your MFA at American University . How important do you feel community is for a poet?

I respect the specter of the hermit-poet, who does not want to do any meeting or greeting. But I can't empathize at all, and there is a very proud tradition of poets who cultivate community. Henry Taylor fits that mold, as does Ethelbert Miller here in DC, or Lisa Spaar at the University of Virginia . So often we send our work off into the void, publishing in little journals no one ever sees. If I can make the void a little less echo-ey, whether by hosting readings in my living room or introducing people, I will. And I wouldn't give up those 3 AM conversations on the last night of the AWP conference for anything.

You have a very nice website and blog. What do you see as the main benefits of having these?

Honestly? My website started because of "Sandra Beasley and the Spaz Rats," my internet doppelganger who is a renowned expert on alternative medicine for rodents. I am not making this up. Her name was already all over the web, and I knew unless I actively established my own identity, there were going to be some confused Googlers in the poetry world. So I use a very rudimentary WYSIWYG editor, and try to update the site two times a month with readings and recent publications. I haven't gotten any inquiries about using magnets to treat a rat with a sprained ankle, so I guess my initial goal has been met.

The blog began on a whim, because the aforementioned very rudimentary HTML editor makes casual website updates a pain. I wanted to be able to easily post news, random thoughts in the first person, snapshots of inspiring visual art, etc. It amazes me that totally organic, active, palpable communities of poet-bloggers have formed just in the last three years. In most cases I have "met" poets I never would have known otherwise, leading to some invaluable connections in the real world at conferences or colonies. In some cases fellow bloggers are local folk that I never get a chance to see; at least we can keep tabs on each other, and trade a periodic encouraging note.

Who are you currently reading?

I came back from the July Sewanee Writer's Conference with a stack of books by fellow participants. Fiction by Margo Rabb and Jason Ockert; poetry by Cecily Parks , Katrina Vandenberg, Kimberly Johnson, Philip White. Mark Strand's essays on the paintings of Edward Hopper. And, um, eight more. Outside those: Corinna A-Maying the Apocalypse, by Darcie Dennigan—that is what I am literally reading this second, and it is knocking my socks off. Also sestinas, wherever I can find them.

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

Read your contemporary poets, ideally in the venue of literary journals. That's where the heart of today's work is beating. So often poets decide a particular school is "not my thing" based not on what this generation is doing with the tenets of that school, but based on what the canonical style has been. The poetry world should be a lot more permeable than that.

*****

For a lot more on Sandra Beasley, including information on her book Theories of Falling, her blog, other interviews, reviews, etc., I suggest you check out her website at www.sandrabeasley.com.

Poetry FAQs: Is it easier to get published online than in print?

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 18:23:28 GMT

Well, I just finished my annual bookstore tour for Market Books of Southwest Ohio (thanks to Joseph Beth in Cincy and Books & Co. in Dayton!), and I found it interesting that this same question was asked at both locations by different groups of writers: Is it easier to get published online than in print?

The assumption I think most writers (poets included) make is that online is somehow an easier route to getting published. But I don't think that's necessarily true. Online or off, there is still an editor (or group of editors) looking for quality work, usually with a certain aesthetic in mind whether that be formal verse, narrative, experimental, or some other type of style.

A few years ago, one could make the argument that there were more writers submitting to print publications than online publications. However, with the global reach of established online sites and the limited print runs of literary journals, that pendulum may be swinging the other way.

It should also be noted that as online sites, such as The Pedestal and Boxcar Review, come up with money to pay writers there's less of a resistance among writers to publish their work in one place over another. After all, what's even better than getting your work published? Getting your work published and getting paid for it.

So anyway, here's the short answer I give to writers at bookstores and conferences when they ask if it is easier to get published online than in print:

No.

Fake Bio Note Contest!

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 14:36:17 GMT

Recently, I was reading about how the Wine Spectator magazine was duped by a fake restaurant in its restaurant awards. This got me thinking how fun it might be to have a "fake bio note" contest. And since we just recently released the 2009 Poet's Market, I can offer that up as a prize to whoever writes the best fake bio.

You can make your bio funny, outrageous, horrible, seriously intense, etc. Just keep it under 100 words (hey, most publications cap it off at 50 words). Enter as many times as you want to this free contest by pasting your fake bio into the comments section below. With so many great writers reading this blog, I know the competition will be fierce. But only one can win and be known as the Poetic Asides FAKE BIO CHAMPION OF THE UNIVERSE.

Let's give this competition a deadline of September 1, 2008, midnight (EST).

For people who need an example, here's my fake bio note (written on the spot--see how easy it is?):

Robert Lee Brewer has twice been nominated the best writer on Jupiter and hopes to turn his love of writing poetry into a Day-Time Emmy award. When he's not negotiating lower prices on gasoline, Brewer bench presses and curls copies of Writer's Market. You can read about it in his forthcoming book titled Breaking a Sweat With the Market Books: 50 Exercises From Weight Resistance to Step Aerobics.

New Acceptance!

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 12:49:49 GMT

This morning I learned that one of my poems has been accepted for the Autumn issue of DMQ Review. Just had to share.

Slow News Day

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 20:40:46 GMT

So I thought I didn't have anything to share today, but as I was cleaning out my e-mail, I found the following message from Gretl van der Merwe, who's apparently starting up a bimonthly magazine called Melisma.

Here's the official notice:

TheVerbForI will be publishing the first issue of "melisma," it's bimonthly magazine on the 1st of October 2008. We are inviting poets to submit works on the following theme: "The Immediate."

Format: Construct a poetic form consisting of stanzas with an odd line length (3 lines, 5 lines, etc.) where each line in a stanza has a consistent number of words (not syllables or stresses).

No fancy layout. Left justified with initial capitals. Minimal punctuation. Submit in word or pdf format to editor@theverbfori.co.uk.

World Tour 2008!

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 17:41:46 GMT

Every year, we have a Market Books "world tour" to celebrate the release of our latest editions of books. This "world tour," which once consisted of several cities in the region has slowly eroded into our two favorite local locations.

On August 20, the Market Books team (including me) will be speaking at Joseph-Beth at Rookwood Commons in Cincinnati, Ohio. Look for us near the fireplace around 7 p.m.

On August 27, the Market Books team (still including me) will be speaking at Books & Co. at The Greene in Beavercreek, Ohio. You can look for us near their fireplace around 7 p.m. as well.

Now that I'm thinking about it, it is strange that our two faves have fireplaces. What is it about a bookstore with a fireplace that draws the larger crowds and cooler event organizers? Hmm... I wonder.

Maybe next year I will tour the south searching for bookstores with fireplaces to speak to aspiring writers, but for this year, I'm content to continue covering Southwest Ohio.

Poetry FAQs: Having what it takes to be a poet

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 14:11:41 GMT

Earlier this week, I received a long e-mail from an anonymous Poetic Asides reader who asked important questions I'm sure all poets have asked themselves at some point or another in their poetic development. Here's some of the e-mail:

"I want to put together a book of poetry. I have the subject already in mind. Here's the thing. I am a fly-by-night poet. I have a hard question for you. Do you think I have what it takes to make it as a poet from having read some of my work?

"I sent in six poems to a local competition this year and didn't make it even as an honorable mention. I also sent in five or six to the Writer's Digest competition in December. I haven't heard anything, so am assuming that I didn't make the cut. Now we are talking 100 poets who made it, and I didn't get there.

"Anyway, I turn to you in a moment of despair. I am feeling low and just want a crumb to pull me out of this mist. However, honesty is what I need."

And my honesty is what this poet will get.

First, I don't advise poets to try thinking about putting together books of poetry until they've published some individual poems. It's not that a poet can't do this, but by entering competitions, I'm assuming that a poet wants some kind of recognition, and publication is a great form of recognition.

Second, contests are great, but they are competitions, which means there are several other poets battling it out for the top poem(s). If Writer's Digest recognizes 100 poets, for instance, then they must receive thousands of entries for the competition. Keep in mind that most competitions produce a minority of winners and a majority of losers.

Third, I'd suggest spending less time entering competitions and instead submitting to online and print publications that publish poetry that fits your style. Yes, this means you should devote time to reading online and print journals to see what fits. (Note: This is also a great way to learn from what works and doesn't work in other poets' poems.)

Fourth, it sounds like you need involvement with other poets, whether online or in person. I would suggest trying to get a small critique group together, either by contacting other poets online or trying to do so locally--either through your local library or bookstore. You'd be surprised how many poets are all around us.

Finally, only you can say if you have what it takes to be a poet. Do you feel compelled to write poems even facing the possibility that no one will ever read your work? If so, you are and will always be a poet. Poetry is not a form of writing that will earn you much fortune and glory, so using recognition as your "poet worth" gauge is probably not the best idea.

However, recognition can be a powerful fuel for the poetic motor. So get involved with some other poets; read and submit to publications; and keep writing. The rest will take care of itself.

Rabbit Season/Duck Season/Submission Season

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 15:52:21 GMT

I used to love that Looney Tunes cartoon where Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck would argue over rabbit and duck season until Bugs fooled Daffy into saying, "It's duck season. Duck season!" And then, he'd get shot, and say something like, "I hate you," to Bugs--who's so smart, yet always (always) takes a wrong turn at Albuquerque. Anyway, I'm not concerned with rabbit or duck season in this post. Instead, I'm focused on submission season, especially for college-run literary journals.

19 literary journals are listed below by the date that they re-open their submission periods (after taking the summer off). Remember: This is only a short list of possible places to get your poetry published. WritersMarket.com lists more than 200 literary journals, and Poet's Market offers more than 1,600 poetic listings. So if you want comprehensive, go to those resources; in the meantime, check out this list.

August 1

August 15

Alaska Quarterly Review

August 16

Georgia Review

August 31

Subtropics

September 1

September 2

September 15

Bellingham Review

Exclusive Interview With Poet Martha Silano

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 18:00:35 GMT

Some of the poets I've interviewed for this blog were sought out by me; some have been recommended by other poets; and some have come to me on their own. In the case of Martha Silano, author of Blue Positive (Steel Toe Books, 2006), it was kind of a combination of these events.

In my interview with Julianna Baggott, Martha Silano was mentioned as a new poet she took a shining to. I started to check out Martha's work, but then I got sidetracked on some other projects. Next thing I know, Martha is introducing herself and mentioning that Julianna sent her in the direction of my blog--and would I be interested in interviewing her? Anyway, one thing led to another, and wow! Silano is a great new (to me, at least) poet.

There are many excellent poems in Silano's Blue Positive collection, but the one that really grabs me is the following:

Harborview

By the roots of my hair some god got hold of me
--Sylvia Plath

By the roots of my hair, by the reinforced elastic
of my floral Bravado bra, by the fraying strands

of my blue-checked briefs, some god's gotten hold of me,
some god's squeezed hard the spit-up rag of my soul, rung me

like the little girl who rang our doorbell on Halloween, took
our M&Ms is your baby okay? Why did they take him away?

Some god's got me thinking my milk's poison, unfit
for a hungry child, some god's got me pacing,

set me flying like the black felt bats dangling
in the hall, some god so that now I can't trust my best friend's

healing hands, the Phad Thai she's spooning beside the rice (ditto
to the meds the doctors say will help me sleep) Poison poison!

as if the god who's got hold of me doesn't want me
well, doesn't want my rapid-fire brain to slow,

wants this ride for as long as it lasts, wants to take it
to its over-Niagara-in-a-barrel end, which is where

this god is taking me, one rung at a time, one ambulance,
one EMT strapping me in, throwing me off this earth,

cuz I've not only killed my son but a heap of others too.
Some god's got me by my shiny golden locks, by my milk-

leaking breasts, got me in this hospital, wisps like white scarves
circling my head, wisps the voices of men back to bed you whore!

Some god till I'm believing I've been shot, guts dribbling out,
till I'm sure I've ridden all over town in a spaceship, sure

I'm dead, a ghost, a smoldering corpse, though not before I'm holding up
a shaking wall, urging the others to help me (a plane about to land

on our heads), though soon enough thrown down by two night nurses,
strapped to a bed, though for weeks the flowers my in-laws sent

charred at the tips (having been to hell and back), clang of pots,
hissing shower, the two blue pills my roommate left in the sink,

all signals of doom, though some god got hold of me,
shook and shook me long and hard, she also brought me back.

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

What are you currently up to?

I'm working on a book of poems--it's almost finished, I hope--tentatively titled The Little Office of the Immaculate Conception. It's about this mother who gets knocked up, considers fleeing, fights with her husband, almost gets a divorce, has the baby, gets seriously depressed, and continuously (alternately) screams at and revels in/adores her two children. Betcha can't wait to read it!

I've also recently begun a series of poems (I would like it to be a chapbook) about body parts. And I'm working on another full-length collection about space aliens, extra-terrestrials, Galileo, ants, space junk, the universe, and related subjects--but this one probably won't really get going till my youngest starts kindergarten, when I plan to apply to every writer's colony in the country.

I recently read in an interview that you had to suffer through postpartum psychosis to write your collection Blue Positive. Could you elaborate on that experience? For instance, I'm interested in how it affected your daily life and whether you were still able to write, etc., as you went through postpartum. Also, I'm wondering how it was initially detected.

Oh gosh, that's a big question. Thanks for being bold enough to ask it. I've encapsulated what happened during those first six months of my son's life in two essays; one appears in the April ’08 issue of Redbook, the other in Poets on Prozac: Mental Illness and the Creative Process, just out from Hopkins U. Press.

Let's just say my daily life was quite different. I don't remember much about the first week at all; I was actively psychotic--hallucinations, delusions, the whole kit and kaboodle. I mean, I thought I was in cahoots with the Unibomber. When the drugs put a stop to the active psychosis, I was left with paranoia, extreme insecurity, acute anxiety, agoraphobia, and severe depression. "Writing" consisted of scribbling down a few notes about the guy down the hallway who was out to get me. When I got home from the hospital I was still in pretty bad shape--afraid to venture down to the basement, take my son on a walk. I was also prone to gut-wrenching panic attacks. Worst of all, I'd forgotten how to laugh. I remember going to see the movie Best in Show, and not being able to figure out what was so funny (I saw it a year later and laughed my ass off).

As far as the detection issue, that was pretty much a comedy of errors. After my first panic attack (ahem, slip into psychosis), I was diagnosed with sleep deprivation and given a prescription for tranquilizers, which I never took because, of course, the doctors were trying to poison me. The next time I got hauled into Behavioral Health they finally began calling what I had postpartum depression (semi-true) and put me on antidepressants, the worst thing you can give to someone who's manic. Three cheers for modern medicine! The Paxil actually sped up the process from mania into full-blown psychosis, landing me in the ER that much faster.

More doctors and nurses are beginning to understand there's a connection between the postpartum period and bipolar disorder, but in the year 2000, at Harborview Medical Center, in the very progressive city of Seattle, I was treated like a "crazy person," not a new mom suffering from PPP. For instance, I got a wicked urinary tract infection because my hoo-ha was still bleeding and they didn't remind me to take my requisite daily sitz baths.

The collection Blue Positive seems to me to be a collection celebrating life--it covers topics such as sex, pregnancy, motherhood, and food. How did you go about assembling the poems that would go into this collection?

I hadn't thought of Blue Positive as a particularly celebratory book, but—psychosis be damned!—it's quite a mirthful romp, isn't it?

The oldest poem is "Salvaging Must Lead to Salvation"--an I-want-to-get-married piece I began in 1998. For months I was writing these pathetic (very ordinary) little square-shaped poems that were going nowhere, and then it was like the levee broke and this voice came out--not quite "me," more this potty-mouthed gal who both thoroughly adores and completely despises this man she's going to end up marrying. I knew this poem didn't fit with the manuscript I was sending out at the time (What the Truth Tastes Like), so I guess it's when I knew I had another book in me—always a relief.

Then I got hitched, knocked up, and wrote all the preggy poems ("Getting Kicked by a Fetus," "What they Don't Tell You About the Ninth Month," etc.). Then I thought the book was done (2000), and sent it out to a dozen or more places the week before I went into labor with my son. What a joke! When I "came to" after my 6-month trip through crazy-land, I realized, duh, I had actually only written a 1/4 of a book--okay, 1/2 at best. So I kept writing, and of course all the poems were now about being a mother--"While He Naps," "Explaining Current Events to a One-Year Old," "His Favorite Color is Green," etc. Urged by a friend, I sent a revised version off to the National Poetry Series; it was chosen as a finalist.

Once I knew I'd even slightly enticed a neutral reader (i.e., not my mom or sister), I kept adding, cutting, and shaping. It took two more years to (1) write the title poem; (2) figure out that I needed to begin the book with my own childhood, then move chronologically through adolescence, courtship, marriage, pregnancy, and the birth of our son; and (3) be awarded an 8-month writing residency in the wilds of southern Oregon’s Rogue River canyon, so I could get knocked up again and write the thirteen poems that close the book. And that's how it finally got finished.

Motherhood factors into a lot of your poems. How do you work in time to write around being a mother and teaching? Do you have a writing routine--or just write when you can?

Oh, goodness, I envy those people who can write whenever they want. But actually I was always poor with time management. I like rearranging junk drawers, pouring over old photos, gabbing, etc. So it's actually turned out that I write more now than ever. But okay, here's a little secret: self-imposed writing retreats. I've done three in the last year. The first two were paid for by a grant (thank you, Washington State Artist Trust), but the most recent one cost me less than $100--two nights in a friend of a friend's beachfront studio. It didn't have a stove or a bed (I slept on the floor), but hell if I cared.

Otherwise, I write when I can: on the kitchen floor while my 3 year old plays with her dinosaurs, at the dentist's office, in traffic (yes, in a moving car), at the beach, on airplanes and on fishing docks, during snack time, while they're sleeping; in between all the rest.

How do you decide where to submit? Do you have a particular process for deciding where to submit and when your poems are ready to go out?

Under most circumstances I don't send to a place unless I’ve read a back issue/perused their online offerings or am a subscriber.
I've gotta mostly completely love the poems, the fiction, the art work, the layout, the whole shebang, or no thanks.
I avoid submitting to mags where I don't have a prayer (I'm not talking long shots, I'm talking completely different aesthetic).
When a poem is getting close to feeling finished, I email it to a poet/editor friend or two, just to make sure I'm not about to make a total fool of myself. If I skip this step, and sometimes I do, it feels risky, sorta cocky--I mean, how the hell do I know? I've sent things out too early--who hasn't?--but mostly I try to sit on my hands as long as I can, even if it feels like a poem is finished. I can't always wait a year, but usually a month or two at the very minimum allows me to find all the stupid little mistakes, OR to realize the poem is actually a piece of sh*t.

I've enjoyed reading your Blue Positive blog where you deal in equal parts personal and poetic. What are your thoughts on blogging in relation to your writing? Would you recommend blogging to other poets?

I can't say I recommend blogging, though it IS a blast. It might be keeping me away from the real writing, but so far it hasn't interfered much. I like writing about magazines and writers I'm stoked about, asking questions, sharing personal stuff that's not quite poem-worthy, keeping my prose muscles toned. I really haven't thought about whether it's beneficial to my writing in any way; it's just stuff I would have told a friend or written in my journal, so why not put it out there? It reminds me a little of being a DJ at a tiny college radio station in Iowa. I would say these outlandish things, make little jokes, purposely mess up the PSAs--probably only a few cows were listening, but that was half the fun of it.

Could you name a couple poets you're currently enjoying? And why you're enjoying them?

The hard part is keeping it down to a couple. Here’s five:

Heidi Lynn Staples—wacky, wild, mind-blowing leaps;
Matthea Harvey—startling line breaks and imagery, lots of surprises;
Jenny Browne—I love how her poems are both grounded and surreal;
Sandra Beasley—oh man, has she ever changed how I see the world, but especially cherry tomatoes;
Lee Upton—her music is sump.tu.ous. Here’s a gal who knows how to edit down to the bone.

As mentioned earlier, you teach English at two community colleges. Do you feel teaching has helped or hindered your writing?

My students bring satchels and satchels of enthusiasm, excitement, and adrenaline into my life--our conversations wind me up and set me spinning. I love holding back on what I think and instead asking more questions. I love how they talk to each other, teach each other, teach me. Without them, would I still be writing? I grow old; they stay young. I grow set in my ways; they kick me in the pants. It's an incredible honor to teach, a calling, really. If I didn't love it, if it didn't feed my creativity, I wouldn't do it. So, the short answer: helped.

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

Ignore all oracles.
Don’t be too cocky or too humble.
Figure out the poems you were given to write, and get to it.
When an established writer gives you the critique you begged for, listen carefully and do your best to keep mum.

*****

To find out more about Martha Silano, check out her website at http://www.marthasilano.com/.

The site includes poems from her collections Blue Positive and What the Truth Tastes Like (Nightshade Press, 1999), as well as ordering information.

*****

If you're a poet or publisher interested in setting up an interview (or just a poetry lover, who wants to make a recommendation), then check out my Call for Poets. It worked for Martha Silano, and it could work for you.

Poets Helping Poets: On Handling Bio Notes

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 22:22:52 GMT

Over on Facebook, I have a personal account with a bunch of poetry friends, as well as a Poetic Asides group with a lot of members. So yesterday I asked the published poets who are members to share a little bit of advice on writing those tricky little bio notes that poets are often asked to include with their poetry submissions to poetry journals and magazines.

The response was overwhelming. I'm just now digging out of all the great advice. Here's what some of them had to share:

*****

I generally strive for a 50- to 75-word bio, featuring only the most recent and relevant info about my writing life. I list the three publications of which I'm proudest first, then two or three accolades (awards, residencies, honors). If appropriate, I tailor the bio for the publication in which it will appear. For example, if it has a regional focus, I'm likely to mention my previous publications in that region. If there's room, I'll also reference my graduate degree in poetry and the poetry-related community service I do. As my career evolves, I revisit and update my bio regularly so that it represents the best of my writing life each time it appears.

Sage Cohen

*****

The length of a bio can walk a very fine line. As a reader of journals I'm not too interested in work where the bio is only "so and so lives in Atlanta ". I want to know a little something about the poet but at the same time I don't want to be lulled to boredom by reading an overly verbose bio with dozens of credits listed. I use the same approach, mentioning my background very briefly (maybe a word about my novels) and mentioning a few journals where my work has appeared if I mention any at all.

David LaBounty

*****

Typically in my bio I give the title of my book and then list only three journals, or four at the most, where my poems have been published. When I read a bio that lists a whole string of journals, regardless of whether there are other credits included, it makes me suspect that the poet is feeling insecure--in the same way that a poet who writes past the ending of a poem doesn't trust the reader. I prefer a bio that is selective. This is the time to put your best out there, not every little indication that someone likes your work.

Susan Meyers

*****

I do exactly what the editor asks. If he asks for three sentences, I send three sentences. I do not send six and suggest that the editor edit as he likes. Chances are he won't like that at all! If the request for a bio is vague, I check the journal for examples. I never send an exceedingly long bio as I'm turned off by them, especially when they're very braggy. I include usually no more than three journals where my work has appeared. I never use numbers. I find it a complete turn-off when I read a bio that says something like, "So and so has published 502 poems in 138 journals." Bean counting is unattractive and amateurish. I never include information about pets, one, because I don't have any, and two, because I never am interested in pet information in other people's bios. I include my book titles, some journals, what I do for work, maybe where I live, any significant prizes. And those are the things I'm interested in when I read other poets' bios.

Diane Lockward

*****

The formula: [academic accomplishments (MFA/PhD, Grants/Awards)] + [3 or less previous publishing credits (if this bothers you, tack "and elsewhere" on the end)] + [books published or to be published and/or writerly positions, such as "Nonfiction Editor"] = satisfactory bio.

Todd Dillard

*****

Sometimes the obvious must be stated: follow the press or publication's guidelines if they are available, and select information that may be of particular interest to the publisher, such as work in journals with compatible styles or thematic interest. Beyond that, select the information that is most likely to make the reader stop and give your manuscript a close look rather than skim through. A small number of relevant items suggests the tip of the iceberg, while including too much sounds desperate. If you do feel it necessary to include a large number of items, invite the editor to select those that are most relevant for contributors' notes rather than expect everything to be included.

J.D. Smith

*****

Remember that bios are not written in first person, and create a few single sentence and a short paragraph bios to keep on file, making sure to match the tone of the bio with the publication. If your collection of poems about death makes it into a serious anthology, don't use phrases like "loves the feeling of mud squishing between his toes" or "spends her free time singing karaoke on free beer night".

If it's a lighter-hearted publication, have a little fun with your bio without losing focus of what a bio is for - to let the reader know a little bit about who you are, what you do, and why you are significant enough to need a bio.

Lisa Abeyta

*****

Less is more. A bio note is not a resume.

Aaron Fagan

*****

If the editor of the magazine does not provide guidelines, I usually keep it to three sentences, including one that illustrates whether I have been published previously and where. I usually begin the bio with my name, where I am from, and a bit about my educational background. The second sentence is usually something quirky about myself, and the final sentence is where I have been published.

Serena M. Agusto-Cox

*****

First of all, it's important see what guidelines the journal may set on length and/or type of content and follow those precisely. I always mix my bio with some (and the operative word is 'some') of my publishing credits as well as personal comments. It's important to show that you've published, if you have, and yet let the editor know a little of your human side, as well. It should go without saying that you should check your bio for spelling and punctuation before sending it.

Pris Campbell

*****

Keep it short and definitely within any word or character limit (for example, keep it much shorter than this paragraph). Mention only the publications in which your work has appeared most recently (unless you've previously published in the publication for which you're submitting the bio; then, it's nice to acknowledge that). If you've published books or worked on projects that are important to you, put those near the beginning. Keep personal details to a minimum.

Okay, now here are the caveats: Some people write extremely clever and very personal off-the-wall bios. They are entertaining if written well. Try to see what other bios people have written for that publication to determine whether that's a good direction. And if you don't think you can write that kind of a bio well (I don't think I can), consider sticking with the more plain Jane variety.

Joannie Stangeland

*****

In my experience, you have to know your audience. For example, for some journals, I use the opening "Brian Spears is not related to the singer, but he does have a teenaged daughter named Brittany . He hopes she will forgive him one day." storySouth used that bit, but I didn't include it when I was published in The Southern Review. I sent it to Measure, and the editors cut it, but I sent it to them because I knew them from grad school, and I figured I could get away with it.

My basic structure includes this information: recent publications, awards, and what I'm doing now. I expand it depending on the journal I'm sending to, and how adventurous I perceive them to be. Hope that helps.

Brian Spears

*****

There has to be something interesting; a hook in that bio that grabs them as much as what you have written would. Think of your bio as yet more branding for what you are trying to sell. It has to be interesting.

Natalie Williams

*****

Do not under any circumstances tally up your publications and give a total. I have read bio notes stating that the poet has published over 200 poems in over 50 magazines, or over 1000 poems, or whatever. I once read a bio note stating that the poet had only 360 poems to go before hitting 5000 poems published. Seriously. Don't do that.

Jessy Randall

*****

My advice is mostly from working as copy editor for Alaska Quarterly Review for three years. I was sometimes assigned the task of cutting author bios down to the size and content we were looking for; I think it does depend from journal to journal. We did not publish information about where a person worked, as a rule. We did publish awards and previous publications. It usually read like this, "So and so's collection X is forthcoming from such and such press, and her poems have appeared in X', Y, and Z. Her poem Y' won the Pushcart Prize in 1998." If there were more than a few sentences' worth of publications, we might trim it down, choosing the highest-profile accomplishments, so yes, short and sweet is good. If you've been published in 50 journals, best to say, "So and so has been published in more than 49 literary journals, including X, Y, and Z." If someone hadn't been published before, we wrote, "This is so and so's first appearance in a national literary journal."

Erin Wilcox

*****

Always best to look at a recent back issue of the journal to see what sort of tone the editors like (cutesy or serious). As an editor, I really don't like overlong bios (and why give me extra work to do? Edit yer own bio!) -- fifty words is fine. Think of the bio as an opportunity for other people to connect to you: places where they can find you or your work. Never lie.

That said, I like adding an element of subtle perversity, like only listing journals that have a number in their title, or are one word or syllable long.

Hugh Behm-Steinberg

*****

I have a standard bio that includes a couple major publishing credits, my editing work, and what I do to earn a living. I then add information relevant to the specific poems: if I'm sending poems about Japan , for instance, I will mention the time I spent living in Japan .

Elizabeth Kate Switaj

*****

Pick only the most important two or three accomplishments and mention those. Also, try to tailor your bio to fit the audience of the journal or mag in which your work appears. Try to write it in such a way that you highlight what you have in common with that audience or that you establish yourself as unique among the voices there.

Allen Taylor

*****

There's nothing I hate more than a bio that looks like all the other bios. The way some of them read, I imagine there's no person behind it -- only a walking mound of awards and journals, held together by the stickiness of critical acclaim.

The bio itself can be poetry. Be creative. Use a metaphor, or at very least a bit of symbolism.

Jason Mashak

Reader Comments: Parody, slams, getting started, and more

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 16:19:55 GMT

One of the things I value about this blog is the community that's built up around it. As a result, my posts are often just a springboard to more helpful information and poetic discussion. So, when it seems appropriate, I'm going to collect comments that readers have made to posts that could benefit the whole group.

Enjoy!

*****

From Laughing with or at?: The simple joy of parody poems

So the rest of you won't have to work as hard as I did to find the poem We Real White, try the URL below.It goes directly to the poem rather than to the poet list. The poet was Matthais Peterson Brandt.

http://japicx.com/coereview/backissues/cr_35.pdf#Page=30

Now, this would be a great pre-Wednesday prompt, giving us time to figure out how to do one of these ourselves. Maybe you could do a two-for-one Wednesday if you had another idea in mind

I had always considered a parody as making fun of something, but this is simply writing a poem using the original as a template. Thanks for the idea, your poem, and the reference to the We Real White poem. It is fun.

Sheryl Kay Oder |SkoderAT NOSPAMaol dot com

(P.S. I found another great parody poem this weekend from a back issue of Rattle called “T.S. Eliot’s Lost Hip Hop Poem,” by Jeremy Richards.)

*****

From Poetry FAQs: Making Your Mark

I would add, keep the poems you write organized and accessible in some way.

Like you, Robert, I wrote poetry for years before really attempting to publish it. Alas, I was not organized about it, wrote it into various notebooks, etc.

Finally, I wrote one I wanted to keep, so being a person involved with more than one computer, I looked around for a way to make them accessible to all of them and ended up putting them up first in yahoo briefcase and later in google documents.

With google documents, I can go back and see (and retrieve, if I need to) prior revisions. I can go back easily and revise old poems. They are handy to submit.

Having my poems organized and accessible was a real turning point for me. I think it was about a year or two after I started keeping track of them that I was reading an ezine and noticed that I had a poem that fit into the parameters for their current contest. It was a finalist, and this finally got me off my ass, joined a critique group, started reading and writing more poetry, submitting, etc.

Margaret |infoAT NOSPAMmargaretfieland dot com

Start your own critique group. That's what I did and we've been going about a month now. I emailed a few people from the challenge asking if they would be interested. We got the guidelines from Alessa Leming's critique group. Unfortunately, I don't have the website information handy. Alessa, if you're out there, please help this person!!!

Basically, for a small group, one person submits material each week on Sunday, the others send helpful comments by Wednesday, the person revises and sends to others by Sunday. A new week begins, a new person submits material, and it starts all over again. I had never been in a critique group before, let alone online, but I can tell you it is really worth it. Post a notice in the forum for people who are interested and give it a try.

Good luck.

Linda H. |LNSHOFKEAT NOSPAMyahoo dot com

To riff on Margaret's excellent comments re: organization:

I always write by hand - but then I key all work in and edit on my Mac. I have a folder on my desktop: Amy Writings.

Within that, there are folders: Prose, Poetry, The Book (don't get me started on that behemoth).

Within Poetry, there are some folders:

Poems

How to Get Stuff Published

Submissions

Rejections - Building Blocks

Sites to Avoid

Good Sites

You can easily copy a file into a folder and move it around. I always retitle when submitting, for ex: "A Cup Of Coffee," Pedestal 6-08

Can't you tell I used to be an admin. asst.? ha ha good night and good luck, Peace,

Amy Barlow Liberatore |poetmomskasAT NOSPAMrochester dot rr dot com

*****

From Self-publishing and slamming: an interview with poet Bill Abbott

I'm sure there's a slam in Buffalo. Try the slam finder at:

http://www.poetryslam.com/index.php?option=com_sobi2&Itemid=75

The founder of slam, Marc Smith, named it that as a connection to baseball, where a grand slam is a huge success.

Good luck with the 60-day challenge.

Bill Abbott |slamguyAT NOSPAMwoh dot rr dot com