I just got the fantastic news that “One Fish, Two Fish” by Erica Dawson is today’s featured poem on Verse Daily.
The poem appears in Volume 7, Issue 2 of The Raintown Review, which was published in December 2008.
Happy, happy, happy!
February 28, 2009
February 26, 2009
An Honorary Bryn Mawr Girl
Last night I drove to Bryn Mawr College in PA to give a short, informal talk to some undergraduates about poetry in general, formal poetry in particular, and to supply details of my “career” in poetry, such as it is.
I hope it was useful to them. It was certainly fun for me, and the young women proved to be a very receptive audience for my chick poems. There is also going to be a short piece in the campus newsletter about it, I believe, which is good publicity for me among the academics/faculty of the college. And, I may have acquired a volunteer intern for the Barefoot Muse this summer. One of the young Creative Writing Majors was particularly keen to wade through my slush pile!
Somehow we got onto the topic of rejection, and I expounded on my philosophy that when poems (or, yes, the book manuscript) come back, as they do all too regularly, the only thing to do is dust them off, check they are the best they can be, and send ‘em on back out for as long as you still believe in them.
Dealing with rejection is tough, and alas, most poets have to deal with it on an almost daily basis. (I have another friend who says we shouldn’t call it “rejection” but “a release of the poems so they can seek other homes.”) Having just whisked through the second half of January’s submissions to the Muse, I know there are a number of poets trying bravely to see it that way right now.
I told the young women last night that I had entered 24 poetry book contests, and I fully expected that number to double before I got the manuscript accepted anywhere, despite my three encouraging results.
“You sound like a Bryn Mawr girl,” one of them said, and I was proud of that.
February 21, 2009
Mad About Poetry
I just got back from the Mad Poets’ Review Book Party in Media, PA, where a fine time was had by all. This annual launch is held at the Delaware County Institute of Science, a suitably eccentric venue with cases of stuffed birds lining the walls.
The Mad Poets are one of the oldest and most active poetry organizations around, and you can read all about them here. As grass roots poetry groups go, they are the seed, the mulch and the well kept lawn rolled into one, hosting myriad events, readings and workshops in the Philadelphia area. MC’d by the wonderful Eileen di Angelo, this morning’s program included Glenn McLaughlin in his usual stunning drag (I swear that man has better legs than I do!), noted local poets Tree Riesener and Dan Maguire, among others, and of course, yours truly, huskily reciting an end of the era anti-Bush polemic called “The Good Consumer.”
I was pleased to see two poems by my friend and former professor B.J. Ward although he was unable to attend. Also in this issue: W.D. Ehrhart, Diane Lockward, Leonard Gontarek, Madeline Tiger and Louis McKee.
While I’m here, I’d like to invite my regular readers to take a sneak preview of The Raintown Review’s new website, which I have been hard at work on all week. There’s more to be done, and features to add, but I hope you’ll agree it is MILES better than the old one. Thanks to John Oelfke for setting it up and purchasing our very own domain name!
February 17, 2009
Singing in…The Raintown Review?
Good things are happening at The Raintown Review.
Firstly, please note that the new email address for all correspondence and submissions is: theraintownreview_at_gmail_dot_com
Quincy and I know that some contributors have been frustrated by long response times and lost submissions, and we hope that this new streamlined process will remedy the situation. You should however be aware that up to three people can read emails sent to this address, so if you want to flirt with Quincy or schmooze with me (or the other way round!) you should use our personal email addresses! Our Duotrope’s Digest statistics have been, quite frankly, appalling, although it is worth noting that since Quincy and I took this in hand we have actually managed to decrease the non-response % from 30 to 16! My goal is to get these statistics as good as those for the Barefoot Muse, although I realize that will take some time.
Emails sent to the old submissions address will be forwarded to the new one for the foreseeable future.
Secondly, please visit and join our Facebook Group. Members will receive advance notification of any special events, news or calls for submission.
I just opened up the Discussion Board with a call for ideas about what to put on our forthcoming new website. The Raintown Review has never had a unique site, merely piggy-backed on the site for its parent, Central Avenue Press, so I am very excited about this development.
If you haven’t submitted your work for the upcoming Summer 2009 issue, now would be a good time!
February 15, 2009
Back from AWP
Well, that was a great way to spend four days!
Not only did I get to hang out with literary people, listen to invigorating panels and inspiring readings, and spend quality time with my husband, but I also managed to visit a new city (Chicago) in a state, nay a whole region of the US, that I had previously only known from literature–a fitting juxtaposition.
A few highlights: the panel on Multiformalism with Annie Finch, where violence was invoked so often as a metaphor it almost seemed as if audience and panel members were about to come to blows; the reading by Mary Jo Bang (whose beautiful book Elegy I had finished only days before) and Frank Bidart; the West Chester reading, where I had the opportunity to chat with Director Mike Peich and broach my idea for a panel in 2010; the Tribute to Gwendolyn Brooks; the VIP party Major Jackson snuck us into, where I hung out (a little) with Kim Addonizio; the Tribute to Jason Shinder, which was unexpectedly uplifting.
Shout out to: my Bennington buddies both from my own graduating class (Maureen D., Susan M-S., Laura N., Jenn S-K., David S., Shubha) and from other classes (Amy J., Leigh J., Ralph., Ann., Jan., Dara-Lyn, Did I miss anyone?) and of course faculty etc. (Victoria and Elaine); my Bread Loaf buddies (Dan–sorry we didn’t manage more than a quick hello, Steve W.) and other people I’d known previously either online or from other events (Tess T., Dick A.–get yourself that Facebook profile!) Also, once again to Rachel and Donna for moving into my house and providing onsite child and dog care for the four day period.
Things I’m Glad I Did: left the conference to actually see a bit of Chi-town, for which I have to thank my husband, whose patience for literary gatherings could only go so far. The view of Lake Michigan from the 96th Floor Lounge of the Hancock Tower was breathtaking, and Jilly’s Piano Bar fun-fun-fun!
Things I’d Do Differently: walk around the Book Fair earlier and for longer–I didn’t get there until Saturday afternoon by which time many exhibitors had packed up; not go to so many panels on electronic publishing–they really didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know.
Future Plans: AWP 2010 for sure! I don’t think I’ll get a table for The Raintown Review, but I would like to come up with an idea for a Panel that will promote Raintown, plus there’s a bunch of literary websites and journals I need to look up.
First though: LAUNDRY!!
February 8, 2009
I Saw a Man, He Danced with His Wife…
In three days I am off to AWP in Chicago. I’ve never been before, and I am psyched! So many writers, readings, seminars, parties!
I’ve got a number of mass emails and Facebook messages from friends and acquaintances, mostly better known than I am, telling all and sundry when and where they are going to be at AWP. For a while I considered sending one myself, but I decided against it and in favor of this blog entry instead. I suspect most of the people to whom I would send such an email are indifferent to the fact that I’m going to be in Chicago, whereas if you’re reading my blog, I have to assume you might be at least vaguely interested!
The schedule is hefty, and I haven’t really mapped my way through the conference yet. However, I think I’m going to go to the session on “What’s in the Magazines” with New Letters, PBQ and The Adirondack Review, which is at noon on Thursday, followed by “Postmodern Poetics of Form” with Annie Finch (who I’d like to meet in person.) On Friday evening I plan to attend the West Chester Poetry reading and the Anti reading. (Again, I’d like to meet Steven Schroeder in person.)I also believe there is a Bennington get together at some point, which of course I want to go to.
I’m also bringing Mr. E along with me; he loves Chicago, and has spent quite a bit of time there on business, so he knows the city well. It will be the first long break we have had together (without the children) since we went to Portugal for a long weekend in April 2005. Of course, this creates its own challenges in terms of child and dogsitting. A big shout out to Rachel for offering to move into my house for the entire four days and become me, even down to driving Becky to her first full Level 8 meet on Sunday 15th.
If you do happen to want to meet me at AWP, whether it’s to talk formal poetry, editing, or even to buy copies of The Raintown Review, and you don’t know me well enough to have my phone number, just drop me an email: editor_at_barefootmuse_dot_com or leave a comment below.
See you in the windy city!
February 7, 2009
“A Poem Should Not Mean, But Be”
So said Archibald MacLeish in his “Ars Poetica”. It’s something I have been pondering lately. More specifically, I have been considering the ways in which a poem can “not mean, but be.”
One traditional way, often overlooked in today’s poetry, is for a poem to take a predominantly narrative voice: the poem as rhythmic fiction. A typical New Yorker short story will fall into one of two categories–either it will be set in a foreign environment, or it will be an anecdotal first person (or close third person) tale of something happening in America, either in the present or recent past. We can assign such stories two purposes: social commentary and the delivery of an allegory or moral. In other words, the fiction gives us information about living conditions in a particular time and place, and we infer something about how the characters have learned or grown through the course of the story. A poem can behave in exactly the same way, and if done correctly, can be more immediately powerful than prose because of compression and linguistic devices. I’m thinking here of Donald Justice’s “Pantoum of the Great Depression” and of Elizabeth Bishop’s “A Prodigal.”
Both these poems are full of meaning in the most basic sense of the word–the sentences make sense, and there is a logical progression. But the poems themselves don’t try to mean anything. The trick is to avoid hammering the reader over the head with the allegory or moral. It’s something fiction writers learn early on, but poets sometimes have trouble with, especially formalist poets accustomed to the surfeit of closure delivered by e.g. the epigrammatic Shakespearean sonnet. It’s way too tempting to wrap everything all up in a final rhyming couplet.
In lyric or narrative-lyric poetry, of course, it’s much easier to avoid the pitfall of “meaning” rather than “being.” In fact, some critics might suggest that much of today’s poetry has gone the other way. There was recently a lengthy discussion on Eratosphere about the value of this poem. The poem certainly does not mean but is. However, does it have enough logical sentence structure to communicate an intention from which a reader can infer anything? Does that matter? Or is it sufficient to enjoy the unlikely juxtapositions and the poet’s sense of play?
Your answer to the preceding question depends upon your personal aesthetics, of course. As for my opinion, drawing on my usual continuum theory, I suspect that both ends of the spectrum would benefit from an unprejudiced analysis of the work being done at the other end, which is probably why the books I checked out of the library this morning included Ashbery and Pound.
February 1, 2009
Words in February Air
Most of the contributors have now received their copies of The Raintown Review, and everyone seems pretty pleased. There is this thread on Eratosphere, for example, and I received a personal note of thanks from Daniel Hoffman.
Coincidentally, Mr. Hoffman is the one poet who appears in “Words in Air” (The Lowell-Bishop correspondence, which I got for Christmas) whom I can count as a friend. I was most delighted when I discovered a wonderful Lowell thumbnail character sketch of him as a young man about midway through the book. I am reading the hefty volume alongside library copies of Lowell’s Selected (1976) and Bishop’s Complete, (1969) so that I can re-read most of the poems as they come up. I think I prefer Bishop on the whole–when her poems work they really take the top of your head off, as ED required (cf “Cirque d’Hiver”, “The Fish”, “The Prodigal”, “Arrival at Santos”, “Filling Station” etc.) Lowell was, of course, far more prolific, and less consistent. On the whole I admire his poems more than I like them, although I do have favorites, like “For the Union Dead” and “Waking Early Sunday Morning.”
A couple of interesting things: both library copies were printed before either poet died, which means, of course, that Bishop’s Complete isn’t, (”One Art”, written after Bishop’s girlfriend Lota died, is missing, for example), and that this is Lowell’s own personal selection, NOT one made by posterity on his behalf. There is also a photo of him looking scruffily rakish on the cover. Reading their correspondence (lengthy, erudite, intimate) while dipping into these non-posthumous books has something of the quality of time-travel about it, if one went back unable to interact with the timeline, but as a voyeuristically close spectator.
Another thing that strikes me is how phenomenonally well-read both poets were! Every letter contains accounts of books read and/or recommendations. They seem to read not only all the new work of their respected contemporaries (a lesson today’s poets could benefit from, I suspect) alongside the poetry canon, but also books on politics and philosophy, biographies, art, travel and history, not to mention the many novels (Mary McCarthy, Flannery O’ Connor etc. etc.) they bat back and forth between them. Of course Bishop had neither children nor a job, so when she says that she and Lota typically read books from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. every day (!) it shouldn’t come as too much of a shock!
Anyway I resolve to read more and worry less about Pobiz! Meanwhile, Becky competed her first Level 8 meet. She only competed Bars and Beam, because her ankle is still bothering her, but she got 9.3 on Beam, winning her age group, and 8.0 on Bars (Still not comfortable with those grips).
So, let’s hope for a gentle upswing in the Evans’ family fortunes in February. Yours too, if you’re reading this.
