First Books 3/26/09

A reading and panel discussion regarding one's first literary publication, with Salvatore Scibona, novel, The End (Graywolf Press) nominated for the National Book Award; Nicole Johns, memoir, Purge: Rehab Diaries (Seal Press); and Kao Kalia Yang, memoir, The Latehomecomer (Coffee House Press) nominated for a Minnesota Book Award.



It was a nice evening, well-attended by prospective students and the local literary community. I was the only program poet there... and tired and stressed and generally not in good form. When it came time for Q & A I slurred a question about poetry publishing that included the phrase "Gray House." Oh dear.



The readings were fantastic. I've heard parts of The Latehomecomer before, and this different excerpt did not disappoint. Kao Kalia Yang has a high-pitched voice that contributes to her memoir's urgent tone. It's always nice to get more exposure to the work of recent program grads, and Nicole Johns' work was excellent. Salvatore Scibona's novel was lively and inventive, his demeanor charming and funny.



The panel discussion wasn't too relevant to poetry publishing, about literary agents and decisions on the numbers of copies to print. The response to my question was basically that since poetry is "protected" from the marketplace there are generally less unknown factors: print-runs will always be small. But the comments about author-promotion apply to poets very much. The panelists emphasized forming relationships with people in the literary community: your fellow students will one day be running journals and reading series... keep in touch for your book tour! "Web-Presence" is also important, and they seemed to think we should be cultivating that nebulous entity now... which probably means I should stop avoiding those social networking sites, ugh! Author websites were also mentioned, but that's a step I personally don't feel the need to take until one has a book to sell. Unless of course you have a super-dope project like CAM!!!

Edit: on the subject of author websites, I've added links to the three readers. They certainly represent a diverse range of styles/approaches.

Just a quick question: Anyone interested in the Bly Conference? It's $25 for students until the end of this month.

power politics

Plath: me too, me too. When I first read The Bell Jar, I felt intimate with Sylvia. It was something about the body, merging with an(other) abject current, and there finding a voice. Now I sometimes wonder if I read Plath's death into her writing - and feel guilty that my reader's tooth/claw might have preyed upon her actual turmoil. But in whatever scorched earth, the ecstasy of Plath's language - its own carnival - disarms. So: maybe violence doesn't thrive here after all, even that which I fear in myself-as-reader. Plath's generous tumult seems to generate more of itself, with or without me.

Which is why I have to share this section of a four part poem by Adrienne Rich, "For Ethel Rosenberg," which features in an anthology I'm reading for my nuclear study, Atomic Ghost: Poets Respond to the Nuclear Age.

But first, a slightly sheepish plug for Fission Kitchen, where I'm studying nuclear power, from bombs to bulbs, from light to might: Visit http://fissionkitchen.tumblr.com to learn more and take a short, anonymous nuclear survey.


iv.
Why do I even want to call her up
to console my pain (she feels no pain at all)
why do I wish to put such questions

to ease myself (she feels no pain at all
she finally burned to death like so many)
why all this exercise of hindsight?

since if I imagine her at all
I have to imagine first
the pain inflicted on her by women

her mother testifies against her
her sister-in-law testifies against her
and how she sees it

not the impersonal forces
not the historical reasons
why they might have hated her strength

If I have held her at arm's length till now
if I have believed it was
my loyalty, my punishment at stake

if I dare imagine her surviving
I must be fair to what she must have lived through
I must allow her to be at last

political in her ways not in mine...

(1980)

plath / hughes

I was thirteen when I first read The Bell Jar.

I grew up in Chattanooga, went to an arts and sciences magnet school (where a second language was learned from kindergarten on, where theatre and art were a regular part of the curriculum, and dissections of nurse sharks occurred in the parking lot) and we had summer reading lists. I think The Bell Jar was one of the options for freshmen, though I could be wrong. Did those list-makers know, when they put together that list, how much angst they were encouraging in their students? I had moved by the time I spotted it on the list, but being the reader that I am, I asked a friend to save her copy of the list (which includes all the grades' assignments) so I wouldn't miss out.

And I fell in love.

And I expanded to Anne Sexton and read Girl, Interrupted in the summer sun (while my mother changed a flat--I remember sitting on a park bench in downtown Appleton while my father looked on; gender roles in our house were always a little muddy).

When I was fifteen, I photocopied pictures from Plath's biographies and put them up my bedroom wall, which was entirely made of cork and tucked away in the basement.


And when I started my undergraduate career here at the U of MN, Frieda Hughes came to what was then called The Hungry Mind bookstore (later Ruminator, and after expanding to a second store in the Open Book, it folded), located on Grand just next to Macalaster. I made my friend Jesse come with me; this was my first "author event." (I was nineteen.) Hughes was touring to promote her own book of poetry, Wooroloo, and I sat, rapt, and guiltily kept thinking: This is the daughter of Sylvia Plath, this is the daughter of Sylvia Plath.



And, as you may have already heard, the son of Sylvia Plath committed suicide last week.

These kinds of things always rock me a bit, the early losses of people whose lives have always been in my periphery. (A side note: I'd been going through a Natasha Richardson marathon last week--Gothic and Evening and The Handmaid's Tale--and then.)

So my question to all of you, I suppose, is this: who is it for you? Maybe it was in high school, maybe some other time, but who moved you in such ways, in the days before poetry became a daily part of your life? Who began to open up those doors for you? Plath started it for me, and Sharon Olds really cemented it, among others, but I'm curious as to your beginnings.

Grading Poetry Portfolios

Are pedagogy posts allowed? I wish I wasn't thinking about teaching over break, but I just handed back a stack of poetry portfolios on Friday and it's taken this long to catch up on lost sleep. So my mind hasn't had much of a chance yet to turn to other things, but now I'll get the grading out of my system and move on!

This was my first experience using a rubric to grade creative work, and I have to admit I was surprised about how well it turned out. There were a couple portfolios that didn't seem as well served by the categories, but for the vast majority of them I felt like I was giving more detailed feedback than I would have been with solely a paragraph of comments. I had room to type a little over 100 words to each student, and the grid freed me to discuss specifics in that space.

There is a companion sheet to this rubric that specifies what each category means (ex: within rhythm they're asked to think about their line breaks, stanzas, and punctuation) that I handed out on the first day. Then of the 3-4 poems that were required I asked that at least one be dramatically rethought and approached an entirely different way through revision, while all must employ basic nuance-based editing.

I have overcome my resistance to rubrics and will definitely be using them in the future! Where do you all weigh in?

april events / deadlines

Events:
- 4/2: John Graber will read from his collection of poems Thanksgiving Dawn at Best of Times Bookstore in Red Wing at 7 pm.
- 4/14: Bill Holm (with Robert Bly, hosted by Fred Child) tribute produced by MPR at Fitzgerald Theatre at 7:30 pm. Tickets are $25, with proceeds going to a Bill Holm fund for authors, artists, and community programs. Tickets available on 3/18 by calling 651-290-1221
- 4/16: Free Verse at the Walker. Discussion of collaborative artists' books. 7 pm.
- 4/17: Tina Chang and Ravi Shankar, editors of Language for a New Century. Reading and discussion. 7 pm at The Loft.
- 4/21: Sandra Cisneros at Talking Volumes.
- 4/28: St Paul Poets. With readings by Naomi Cohn, Jim Heynen, Leslie Adrienne Miller, John Minczeski, and Mary Jo Thomps

Deadlines:
- 4/6: Gesell Summer Residency at the Anderson Center for two week residency in July 2009. Cover letter stating intended creativing work project. Selected by CW faculty. Due 222 Lind by 4 pm.

Also: Graywolf is celebrating spring cleaning with a free book giveaway until the end of March on their website. More information here.

Also always, please leave comments on this post so I can add more deadlines and events!

Dislocate Reading

The reading was lovely and full; I really admire Morgan and Amy Mae and Shantha's work a great deal, and it was nice to hear it. I'd also read Laura Flynn's Swallow the Ocean in the autumn; it's always good to hear work out loud.

The next reading is in April with Wang Ping. I'll have to do an April events / deadlines post fairly soon, as that month is sure to be busy!

See the rest of the photos here.

PS: Also, apologies if I am absent from Maria's class tomorrow. I am now officially a juror, and this case could go into next week. I can't believe the amount of nuttiness this semester: snowstorms and poetry festivals, sick professors and AWP.

J=O=H=N C=A=Y=L=E=Y

This past Thursday Maria Damon's seminar on Bodies + Knowing attended a conversation between John Cayley and Rita Raley (a former professor of mine, actually, back in the fall of 1999 when I was an undergraduate here--I remember Freida Hughes, the daughter of Plath and Ted Hughes, had done a reading of her own work at what was then the Hungry Mind [later Ruminator, and then, sadly, it closed, my favorite bookstore of all time]--and I told Raley and she told me about another poetry something, to which I somehow replied that "poetry wasn't really my thing"--funny how things work out) in the e-poetry series. All of us minus CAM attended, laptops open (minus my own, whose battery did completely die on me yesterday and the plug-in is feisty, so I believe I might be in the market for a new laptop--drat), listening to song and distorted language, an eerie experience with the lights shut in a small fusty university room.

Different moments of the presentation, I think, both repelled and interested us--or at least, for me, I felt both reactions, sometimes simultaneously. I curled in on myself, feeling protective of books as books, as two covers, pages in between, curious about how technology can serve the written word, but very taken with the book as an object, and much more interested in the book as a work of art than the book as a technological experience.

However, I had never encountered "the cave" before, which just adds a bit to my lack of awareness in technology--the program medical students used and have abandoned for better, stronger, faster (my husband informs me that our very university has developed the cave in new technology--I'm wanting for synonyms here--which does not require the 8x8 room but can be projected nearly anywhere)--and Cayley simulated an undergraduate program using the cave as a surface on which to write, a three dimensional experience that would have been pretty amazing with those trick glasses, the strange cacophony around us, etc. I wasn't entirely interested in what was written though, and I think that is for two reasons--one, I was too distracted by the program itself, and two, the writing itself was not terribly compelling.

However, I was thinking about what other poets could do with a room like that, could do with a space, a kind of performance of their own work. I know I'd be interested to see what certain classmates of mine might do with it, but I'm trying to think of those big name poets, who might be able to do something truly interesting with the cave's parameters. The poet would have to be incredibly aware of timing and space, something I believe is lacking in my own work. This, to me, indicates where I ought to turn--what poets, then, might you hire for the cave? Living or dead, no limit, collaboration considered as well.

Louise Gluck: Edelstein-Keller Lecture

I have selected four favorites to post above and dedicate them to each of you in (lastname) alphabetical order: Amanda, ColleenC, Meryl, ColleenM.

xo

And all so-called decent photos are here.

A Post! A Post! My blogdom for a post!

Lunch yesterday with Louise Gluck ruled for the following reasons:

1. Vegan food was scarce, so I was only eating fruit. Gluck was also only eating fruit, which means we had some small thing in common.

2. We talked about her recent poem in the New Yorker and how willing folks were to (mis)read autobiography into it ("I didn't know your father drank!") as well as to approach it as a short story.

3. Gluck spoke of the value reading prose, especially fiction in manuscript form, has had for her in helping to structure a book of poems. She also mentioned the merit of murder mysteries, or any other guilty pleasure, in giving the conscious mind a rest and allowing the subconscious to replenish itself.

4. Allowing for differences in process, she didn't put much stock into a nun-like renouncing of distractions in favor of rigid writing schedules. Gluck said she's found it impossible to force herself to write, and has gotten used to long periods of silence followed by periods of intense productivity. This is what she believes has made it possible for each of her books to have unique aims instead of working in the same vein as the last.

5. Finally, as Amanda commented on earlier, Gluck spoke of alternating between horizontal and vertical tonal shapes in her books, finding her newest project (_The Village Life_, coming this fall) to be more landscape-oriented and to call for a flatter language.

book arts

In MDB's poetry workshop this past semester we gave presentations on elements from the outside world that drew us as writers. I spoke of photography, and Colleen C gave a presentation on Chicago art, which included Brian Dettmer, I believe. I had discovered him only a few months earlier, and his work is always so surprising and gorgeous to me. I've always loved the idea of altered texts, of creating artwork from the book as object, and have been enamoured especially with the talent of broadside artists.

This is why I am so excited to be taking a letterpress course with Scott King at Red Dragonfly. The Anderson Arts Center is really such a wonderful organization, and it's lovely to have this place so nearby. In fact, this collective out to mark July 11th on their calendar in hopes of a Red Wing field trip; this is the summer celebration of the arts, where you can tour the studios of the artists-in-residence, purchase some of their work, enjoy music, and lie in the sprawling lawn amongst the sculptures.

I've included some images and links here that intrigue me as well as two events at the bottom that are book and art related. I feel that Colleen C is more of an expert on this subject and hope she'll post / comment some on this topic.

In the meanwhile, who else is going to see Louise Gluck? Anyone going to the lunch? I teach at 12:20, so I'll be able to sit in on nineteen minutes of the lunch, but I will be photographing the reception and reading / lecture, as I did for Junot Diaz, so that evens things out a little.

Jacquline Rush Lee

Cara Barer

Brian Dettmer: Book Autopsies

Walker Arts Center: Text/Message. December 19 2009 - April 19 2009.
While literature is often a point of departure, artists’ books often bear little resemblance to conventional volumes. Many are sculptural, multidimensional, or made of material other than paper—some have no pages at all. Over the past three decades, the Walker has amassed a significant collection of books by artists, now numbering some 2,000 objects. Many of these are housed in the Walker’s library, where they have long been an insider favorite. Staff and visitors conducting research cannot help but be drawn in by librarian Rosemary Furtak’s enthusiasm for the eclectic collection, which has been steadily growing under her watch since the early 1980s. The library, says Furtak, “tries to have books by all artists represented in our permanent collection who have made books.” She is also “constantly trying to balance the need for new titles with an attempt to acquire out-of-print material that might represent a significant period or style of bookmaking.” Examples include books by Surrealists and Futurists, elegant tomes conceived by artists such as Robert Motherwell and Ellsworth Kelly, conceptual projects by Lawrence Weiner, humorously subversive books by Karen Finley, Mike Kelley, and Paul McCarthy, and rare illustrated editions such as Salavdor Dali’s take on Alice in Wonderland. Usually accessible to the public only by appointment, these items are now brought together in a major exhibition.

Co-organized by Furtak and Walker curator Siri Engberg, the show highlights this important trove of material, which is supplemented with pieces from the museum’s collection. Showcasing examples from a broad range of artistic movements, the books and book-based works on view come from some of the most recognizable names in contemporary art as well as lesser known artists. The process of selecting the works in Text/Messages: Books by Artists was a fascinating endeavor for the curators, who found the premise of the exhibition to be an ideal opportunity to explore many areas within the Walker’s collections. Even in today’s digital age, artists’ continued engagement with books—as medium, material, and subject—is evidence, say Engberg and Furtak, that this is an area of artistic invention alive with ideas and possibilities.

Minnesota Center for the Book Arts: Reflections. March 20 - May 3 2009.
Text + Image: Collaborative Broadsides from the MCBA Archives
March 20 – May 3; Open Book Lobby Gallery
Text + Image presents an historic format for the pairing of writing and art -- the collaborative broadside. Words, phrases, verses and stanzas are paired with drawings, calligraphy, illuminations and symbolic imagery in over 20 contemporary works.

march events / deadlines

March Events:
- 3/11: Dislocate reading at Magers + Quinn
- 3/11: MDB reading at The Loft
- 3/18 + 3/19: Martin Espada at Hamline
- 3/25: St Paul Poets
- 3/26: First Books at McNamara

March Deadlines:
- 3/13: Academy of American Poets: James Wright Prize for Poetry.
- 3/20: BreadLoaf application deadline.
- 3/27: Artwords: Writing at the Weisman.
- 3/27: Gesell Awards in Fiction, Poetry and Creative Nonfiction.
- 3/30: Marcella Debourg Fellowship.
- 3/30 Finishing Line Press Women's Voices chapbook deadline.

a few from _playing the black piano_

Icelandic Recycling on a Summer Night
for Wincie

Toward midnight, the sky pinks up.
The low cloud at the bottom of Tindastoll
turns the color of wild grapes.
Inside four women sit around a table,
oblivious to natural phenomena,
folding plastic bags
into neat white triangles.
"Ever so much nicer to store!"
They are performing women's work:
tidying up the garbage
until it looks like modern sculpture.
They have seen it all before:
midnight sun, revolution, disease, chaos.
Their female wisdom comprehends
there is nothing to be done about chaos,
except bring order and harmony
to plastic bags as if they were
wandering children needing to be tucked
in neatly for the long night.

------

Capitalist Music on Luoshi Road--Wuhan 1992

At the Sunday street market, three shabby men, the Music Torture Orchestra, move from peddler to peddler. The erhu player scratches out a tune that sounds like Grand Old Opry. The young one sings in a harsh falsetto clacking his two loud sticks to keep time. The wizened old man on a crutch holds out his palm till money crosses it.

At the feel of a few jiao, the music stops in midstroke. Crutch hops to the next peddler with newly empty palm, and the tune resumes until more jiao appear. The peddlers pay up grudgingly so that real customers can come spend. The music production racket moves on.

A hundred peddlers at their Sunday stalls in earshot. Sometimes the trio gets out only a few scratchy bars, only a few stick clacks, before the bought silence. Sometimes a stubborn peddler makes them finish a whole verse. Maybe he likes this free market music better than haggling over cabbages or reed brooms.

This backward jukebox disappears down the street, diminuendo poco a poco, crutch hopping from stall to stall like a human metronome.

------

The Sea Eats What it Pleases

If you turn your back to the ocean
Do you think the tide will not find you
If it decides to rise a little higher
Than usual, to swallow an extra helping
Of gravel, to suck on your bones to clean
Its palate? The sea eats what it pleases
Whether you face it or give it your back.
No use having opinions about this.
But the sea does not hate you, or imagine
That you have wounded it with your avarice.
You cannot blaspheme the honor of water
Or insult the tide for tasting of salt.
Only humans, so newly risen from fish,
Imagine drowning each other for reasons.

------

It's always curious when one person plucks out a few poems from a collection, deems it somehow representative. I may have turned one away from Bill Holm, may have alerted another to something radiant. (Meaning, my choice of, as it's all up to Bill Holm's words to push either way. I may have created a collision, or perhaps highlighted the "wrong" poems.) MDB said he was surpised at which poem of his Garrison Keillor selected for his Writer's Almanac, as was my friend Greg Watson (though pleased at being selected at all). For my book club, which consists of a high school English teacher, a friend who works with computers, and an entomologist, I selected Good Poems for its readability; many of my favorite poets appeared there (Maxine Kumin standing out in memory the best, also Joyce Sutphen and probably Adrienne Rich) but certainly not my favorite poems by these authors--and as we paged through the anthology, discussing favorites and why, I found myself wanting to create a companion anthology, one that highlights better samples from those writers.

I found reading this book this weekend haunting, especially with the large number of references to the poet's grave, the poet's mortality, living after loved ones are gone. The last:

Letting Go of What Cannot be Held Back

Let go of the dead now.
The rope in the water,
the cleat on the cliff,
do them no good anymore.
Let them fall, sink, go away,
become invisible as they tried
so hard to do in their own dying.
We needed to bother them
with what we called help.
We were the needy ones.
The dying do their own work with
tidiness, just the right speed,
sometimes even a little
satisfaction. So quiet down.
Let them go. Practice
your own song. Now.