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145th Virtual Poetry Circle

April 14, 2012 by

Welcome to the 145th Virtual Poetry Circle!

Remember, this is just for fun and is not meant to be stressful.

Keep in mind what Molly Peacock’s books suggested. Look at a line, a stanza, sentences, and images; describe what you like or don’t like; and offer an opinion. If you missed my review of her book, check it out here.

Click for Schedule

Also, sign up for the 2012 Fearless Poetry Reading Challenge because its simple; you only need to read 1 book of poetry. Please visit the stops on the National Poetry Month Blog Tour from April 2011 and beginning again in April 2012.

Today’s poems is from Carole Bugge (aka C.E. Lawrence):

Meditation on an Ancient Widow

Her husband has just died
after sixty-two years of his stark, lean body next to hers
in their creaking, aged bed with the musty mattress and rusty springs
And now she listens from within this grey house with its peeling paint
weathered wicker chairs and faded sea green shutters
as the wind and the waves beat against the bellows of the bay
Her ancient voice, thin as paper,
dry as the brittle rushes growing along the side of the house
floats across the water to where the buoy floats
bobbing in the restless water with its swelling, roving tides
She sits under the yellow corner lamp, crossword on her lap,
listening to the seagulls run their hollow, falling scales
as they caw and cry and call to each other
the tea in her cup is cold
She draws her sweater close around her thin, sharp shoulders
the curve of her back bent with age
like the prow of a ship
all the more keenly to press through the waves
to cut cleanly through the wake of his leaving
Her body has stored each touch of his hands
sixty-two years of kisses and caresses
sixty-two years of his body next to hers
Self-pity is not in her nature
she is keen and sharp and unsentimental as the sun-bleached driftwood
gathering dust on the window sill
Still, at night she thinks she hears his footsteps along the floorboards
padding slowly down the hall to her room
As the old ship’s clock on the mantel strikes midnight
she turns her face toward the door
and opens her arms to him

What do you think?

About the Poet:

Carole Bugge ( C.E. Lawrence) has eight published novels, six novellas and a dozen or so short stories and poems. Her work has received glowing reviews from such publications as Kirkus, The Library Journal, Publisher’s Weekly, Booklist, The Boston Herald, Ellery Queen, and others. Her short fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies and magazines. Winner of both the Euphoria Poetry Competition and the Eve of St. Agnes Poetry Award, she is also a Pushcart Prize nominee and First Prize winner of the Maxim Mazumdar Playwriting Competition, the Chronogram Literary Fiction Prize, Jerry Jazz Musician Short Fiction Award, and the Jean Paiva Memorial Fiction award, which included an NEA grant to read her fiction and poetry at Lincoln Center.

A finalist in the McClaren, MSU and Henrico Playwriting Competitions, she has read her work at Barnes and Noble, The Knitting Factory, Mercy College, Merritt Books, the Colony Cafe and the Gryphon Bookstore. She has received grants from Poets and Writers, as well as the New York State Arts Council. Her story “A Day in the Life of Comrade Lenin” received an Honorable Mention in St. Martin’s Best Fantasy and Horror Stories, and she was a winner in the Writer’s Digest Competition in both the playwriting and essay categories.

More recently, “Chrysalis” will be appear in an anthology entitled Motherhood, very shortly, and she was nominated for a Pushcart Prize last month for her poem “In Other Words.”

Her latest book is Silent Kills; stay tuned in May for a guest post and giveaway.

***For Today’s National Poetry Month Blog Tour stop, visit Adventures of Cecelia Bedelia.***

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2011 Indie Lit Awards Short-Listed Poetry Review: Sonics in Warholia by Megan Volpert

April 13, 2012 by

Indie Lit Awards 2011 short-listed poetry title, Sonics in Warholia by Megan Volpert is highly experimental with poetic form meshing together pop culture and prose with lines from songs and other elements many will recognize in a homage to the conundrum that was Andy Warhol (most famous for the Campbell’s Soup Can).  An interesting thing to note is the red “SIN” in the title, as well as the use of “Sonics,” which could be a reference to the garage band, The Sonics, from the 1960s.  The images of Volpert in the background remind readers of Warhol’s famous Marilyn Monroe paintings and the rows of knives.

The collection consists of eight long poems that play on musicality and surrealism, engaging readers in a back-and-forth, push-and-pull of ideas, much like Warhol himself, who remained cryptic about his process and his influences.  In many ways, Volpert’s work resembles that cryptic nature.

From “Portrait of a Mix Tape” (pages 7-12), “. . . Thus, Andy, please/enjoy your 58 years boiled down to fifty-seven minutes and fifty-/one seconds.//” the poem is homage to Andy through lyrics in popular music appearing from the time of his birth to beyond the time of his death to illustrate the influence he had on the narrator and the world, especially the world of pop culture.  In many of the poems, the narrator speaks directly to the ghost of Andy Warhol, but on some occasions readers will be left adrift if they are not as familiar with Warhol or the other images and pop culture events discussed.

“For the Love of Good Machines” (pages 13-19) begins with reference to Warhol’s relationship with Lou Reed as lead lyricist of The Velvet Underground, and again Volpert is combining music with her poetry as she speaks about the internal rhythms of songs vs. their external lack of speed and vice versa in the image of the stationary motorcycle, which she equates to the creativity of the mind — whether among poets, musicians, or artists.  Even though little may be produced outwardly, these creative spirits are always creating inwardly.  An ambitious collection of just eight poems oscillates between sublime and ridiculous, deftly providing a portrait of Warhol and all he gave to the world.  However, the style in which it is written could cause readers to take each poem in small chunks rather than as a whole and require some “googling.”

Sonics in Warholia by Megan Volpert has moments of sheer insanity and surrealism that many readers will either detest or love, and while the form is experimental, it does have poetic qualities of allusion, narration, and imagery that draw out themes and comparisons between all art forms and the often “hidden” quality that they all share — that which makes the affectations of that talent either succeed or fail in the eyes of the public.

Please check out other reviews from the Indie Lit Awards Panelists:

Necromancy Never Pays and her interview with Megan Volpert.

Poet Megan Volpert

About the Poet:

Megan Volpert is a poet and critic from Chicago who has settled in Atlanta with her wife, Mindy. Volpert holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Louisiana State University and is a high school English teacher.

Sonics in Warholia is her fourth collection of poems (Little Rock: Sibling Rivalry Press, 2011). The other three are The Desense of Nonfense and Face Blindness (Buffalo: BlazeVOX Books, 2009 & 2007), and Domestic Transmission (San Antonio: MetroMania Press, 2007). She is currently editing This assignment is so gay: LGBTIQ Poets on the Art of Teaching (Little Rock: Singling Rivalry Press, 2013).

***Today’s National Poetry Month Blog Tour stop is at The Indextrious Reader.***

 

This is the 7th book for my 2012 Fearless Poetry Exploration Reading Challenge.

 

 

 

This is my 25th book for the 2012 New Authors Challenge.

Filed Under: challenges, Events, Fearless Poetry Exploration Reading Challenge, Indie Lit Awards, national poetry month, New Authors Challenge, poetry, Read in 2012, review copy, reviews Tagged With: , , ,

Guest Post: Author Beth Hoffman Shares Her Favorite Poem by Ted Kooser

April 12, 2012 by

Today, I’ve got a real treat.  Not only is one of my new favorite authors — Beth Hoffman, author of Saving CeeCee Honeycutt — visiting today, but she’s also sharing her love of a poem written by one of my favorite poets — Ted Kooser, a former U.S. Poet Laureate (2004 – 2006).

I adore both of these writers immensely, and I’m so glad that today for National Poetry Month, they’ll be sharing the same space.  Without further ado, please give Beth a warm welcome.

In a letter to George Bainton, dated 1/15/1888, Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain) wrote: “The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter—it’s the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.”

I believe that statement to be true (and an ideal goal) in all writing, but especially in poetry. For an ill-chosen word that goes unnoticed or is forgivable in longer writings, surely is a disastrous bump in poetry.

Word selection, imagery, and variations of tone through word values and sounds are vital to a poet’s successful composition. It is with these thoughts that I have selected to highlight my favorite work by poet laureate Ted Kooser. Mr. Kooser ranks high among the nation’s most esteemed poets and served as the United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004 – 2006. He also won the Pulitzer Prize for his book of poems, Delights & Shadows (Copper Canyon Press, 2004).

While countless poems have moved me to a state of wonder, it is a poem from Ted Kooser’s collection Flying at Night: Poems 1965-1985 (University of Pittsburgh Press) that evokes not only powerful imagery, but a delicacy of sadness and loss that is, in my opinion, visceral and genius. In a scant 126 perfectly selected words, he tells an entire story I never tire of reading, and I’d like to share it here.

A Room in the Past
by Ted Kooser

It’s a kitchen. Its curtains fill
with a morning light so bright
you can’t see beyond its windows
into the afternoon. A kitchen
falling through time with its things
in their places, the dishes jingling
up in the cupboard, the bucket
of drinking water rippled as if
a truck had just gone past, but that truck
was thirty years. No one’s at home
in this room. Its counter is wiped,
and the dishrag hangs from its nail,
a dry leaf. In housedresses of mist,
blue aprons of rain, my grandmother
moved through this life like a ghost,
and when she had finished her years,
she put them all back in their places
and wiped out the sink, turning her back
on the rest of us, forever.

Thanks so much, Beth.

Author Beth Hoffman

About the Author:

Beth Hoffman, a New York Times bestselling author, was the president and owner of a major interior design studio in Cincinnati, Ohio, before turning to writing full time. She lives with her husband and two cats in a quaint historic district in Newport, Kentucky. Saving CeeCee Honeycutt is her first novel.

 

 

Poet Ted Kooser

About the Poet:Ted Kooser was the United States Poet Laureate from 2004 to 2006 and won a Pulitzer Prize for his book of poems DELIGHTS AND SHADOWS. He is the author of twelve full-length volumes of poetry and several books of nonfiction, and his work has appeared in many periodicals. This is his first children’s book. He lives in Garland, Nebraska.Barry Root has illustrated many books for children, including THE CAT WHO LIKED POTATO SOUP by Terry Farish and THE BIRTHDAY TREE by Paul Fleischman. He lives in Quarryville, Pennsylvania.

***For today’s National Poetry Month Blog Tour, please visit with Read Handed.***

Filed Under: Events, guest post, national poetry month Tagged With: , , , , ,

Listening to Africa by Diana M. Raab

April 11, 2012 by

Listening to Africa by Diana M. Raab are the poet’s thoughts on her trip to Africa in 2008.  The poems are not about Africa and the events that happen there, so much as the effect the trip had on Raab and her family.  A trip motivated by death and malignancy, Raab is seeking a spiritual renewal, a way to rejuvenate her flagging will to fight.  She finds what she needs as she watches the village people struggle to clothe and feed themselves by actively pushing their crafts onto tourists and selling themselves to tourist firms as entertainment for the pampered Americans.

From "Amplified Melancholy" (page 8):

. . . and all I can tell you is that
on the tenth anniversary of dad's
passing, the doctors removed

my right breast and five years later
stabbed by a second diagnosis,
bone marrow malignancy,

no cure, just treatment --
the holiday lights sharpened.
Past dripping menorah candles,  . . .

Emotions run the gamut in this collection from fear to nostalgia for the past, and a new understanding of how the past has shaped each of us.  She sees the grandfather in her son in “Your Camera” as he approaches the world behind the viewfinder of a camera.  There is fearsome beauty in Raab’s poems as she explores the wild with her family, even though her trip is controlled.  The beauty of the sunrises and sunsets, the hidden dangers of genteel looking hippos, and the fight for survival among all nature’s creatures.  For example:  “The forces of life and death/are at play like the day I found/my grandmother dead in her bed –//” (from “The Scent of Death” on page 19) and “We are snapped into silence, the comes the roar/of dragon breath and then silence again./The purple scarred panorama lingers//” (from “Balloon Rides” on page 21).

Readers will become steeped in the melancholy and the tentative observations of Africa from which the poet is seeking to draw strength and understanding.  Like the hippo in “Hippos” and in nature, the poet has a deep, hidden strength and history of survival from which to draw from as she fights what ails her, but also the cancers have their own hidden strengths and it is clear there will be a battle of wills.  “Our jeep arrived at sunset//at the edge of their swamp/as their big papa sat and stared/deep into our foreign eyes, long enough//to bring ten more in his company,/as if this army could infiltrate/our veins with fear.  They sat proudly//” (from “Hippos” on page 43) illustrates the duel going on within the poet between the cancer cells staring her down eager to win the battle, and her doing the same as she gathers her inner strength and support systems around her.

Listening to Africa by Diana M. Raab is a wonderful reminder that we each struggle for survival, though we all may not live in the wilds of the jungle.  Raab is a talented poet who takes her memorist talents and weaves them into imagery and verse that creates emotional tension and verse readers can reflect upon and apply to their own lives.

Poet Diana Raab

About the Poet:

Diana M. Raab is a memoirist, essayist and poet. She has a B.S. in Health Administration and Journalism, and an RN degree from Vanier College in Montreal, in addition to an MFA in Nonfiction Writing from Spalding University’s Low-Residency Program.

Diana has been writing from an early age. As a child of two working parents, she spent a lot of time crafting letters and keeping a daily journal. A journaling advocate and educator, Diana teaches creative journaling and memoir in workshops around the country. She frequently speaks and writes about the healing powers of writing.

 

This is the 6th book for my 2012 Fearless Poetry Exploration Reading Challenge.

***For today’s National Poetry Month blog tour stop, please visit Necromancy Never Pays.***

Filed Under: challenges, Events, Fearless Poetry Exploration Reading Challenge, national poetry month, poetry, Read in 2012, review copy, reviews Tagged With: , , ,

Guest Interview: Emma Eden Ramos Interviews Poet Lisa Maria Basile

April 10, 2012 by

You may remember Emma Eden Ramos from my earlier review of her poetry collection and Indie Lit Award short-listed title, Three Women.  Today, she’s come to celebrate National Poetry Month with an interview of a poet she adores, Lisa Marie Basile.

First, we wanted to share with you a poem from Basile’s latest collection Andalucia:

I Wear Short Dresses When I Visit Alejandro

I wear short dresses when I visit Alejandro. You
have legs for many miles, he says. So I show them.
If I take my legs away, would he still see me? Linger on his skin. I am the
mosquito, but he—he drinks
my blood. He sleeps on the floor, on his back. He
is covered in flies. I step over Alejandro, and his
fingers linger on my toes. He is wet from seas.
I step again over him, teasing, teasing. I cannot
seem to feed all the flowers. The red ones, the hard
ones. The fat ones. They grow. I cannot tame
them. I cannot groom them. I cannot control them.
I say hola and they grow and grow. The more we
talk the more they grow, and, oh, we talk, and we talk.
We talk about beauty and the way a body is
supposed to look. We talk about the way a woman
should be shaped and we talk about my hips, my
lips. Too round, too powerful, too godlike. You
cannot trust a woman who looks like a woman, he
says. She might destroy you. Look, I am
unribboning! My bones are peeling as petals. I am
hungry. I say I cannot seem to stop stepping over
and over him. You know that I look up your dress
every time, he tells me. I know that. I know that is
how I can keep him there, buzzing.

And now onto the interview; please give Emma and Lisa a warm welcome:

It was around this time last year that I discovered poet Lisa Marie Basile. I’d had a poem accepted for publication by one of my favorite online literary blogs, Calliope Nerve (the editor of which tragically passed away last August), and was excited for the piece to go live. Excited, that is, until I read the three poems that came out the day before. “SAILOR (BRIAN), 63,” “NEVADA, YOUNG,” and “LIPRARI (45) DIED IN ITALIAN,” all by Lisa Marie Basile, were three poems from a collection of obituaries. As I read Basile’s work in Calliope Nerve, I couldn’t help but feel that my piece would be a bit of a let-down.

It’s been a year since I first read Lisa Marie Basile’s work. So I thought, this year, it would make sense to interview and get to know one of the poets whose writing I have had the pleasure of exploring. Here is an interview with poet Lisa Marie Basile, followed by a poem from her most recent collection, Andalucia.

1. As a fiction writer who has also written poetry, I am very aware of the differences between the two mediums. You are a published short story writer and award winning poet. How would you compare writing poetry to writing fiction? Which comes more naturally to you?

Writing poetry certainly is the medium I tend to write in most often, because for me beauty is usually in snapshots in my mind. However, when the idea strikes, you go with what you think addresses the idea the best. The words are like their own entities; they need a space to live. We just give them that how we can. For more, poetry is more the default, because allows me to provide words with a place outside of the confines of structure and grammatical correctness. I love poetry’s natural fluidity. The more fiction I write, the more I realize how poetic it is for me; then, the more poetry I write lately, the more it is driven by prose I’ve written. I love prose-poetry, it’s something I’m gravitating toward.

2. How do you prepare yourself to write a poem? Do you have a ritual you do beforehand or are you more spontaneous?

I don’t have a ritual. Usually I’m intensely upset. Maybe a little drunk? I have to be honest. My latest collection —for my thesis—was written during times when my eye condition (Uveitis) flared up. Because of it, I had to be secluded in total dark, with no stimulation. No television. No music. My head was spinning in pain. I’d think and think and think, because there was nothing else to do. In these days, we need constant stimulation. In these situations, I just wrote, pieces of words, phrases, thoughts. Over time, I compiled these pieces. So there aren’t any real rituals. I don’t believe in ritual, because mostly if you force it, it won’t come.

3. How do you feel about spoken word poetry? Do you think it is more or less powerful than written poetry?

When spoken word is good, I really respect it. Other times, like any performative poetry, if the poet doesn’t understand how to trim, cut and emphasize the important parts of piece, it can really take away from the power of the performance. I think each poem has to be presented in the way it needs to be presented. Some poems are better as whispers; others as screams. If you do it well, you do it well, and I think the power is found in both the content of the poem and the treatment of it by the poet — no matter the form: spoken word or not. It has to be sincere.

Presenting your poetry doesn’t, for me, mean tacking on some theatrical spectacle if the poem doesn’t require that.

4. You have authored one full-length poetry book and three chapbooks. Along with being the Founding Editor of Patasola Press, you have edited for a number of renowned publications. Would you say that working as an editor has strengthened your own work?

My full-length, A Decent Voodoo, will be out with Cervena Barva Press this year. The editor, Gloria Mindock, is incredible. I’m so lucky. Also another chapbook, Triste, will be released by the badass Dancing Girl Press, this summer. Andalucia came out in December 2011 (Brothel Books) and it’s just my life; I love that I have that book. It really marked a time in my life. Working as an editor is important to me because as much as I love to write, I love to read and I love to help other people get their work out there. It’s super beautiful to hold your thoughts and dreams in your hand. Being an editor has made me more attentive to poetry’s power, for sure. I learn about the ebb and flow of a good or bad poem, and in turn, I learn from everything. There’s nothing I dislike more than a lazy poem, so I strive to keep away from that.

Later this year, some really inspiring poets will be released by Patasola Press. I’m happy to bring Kristina Marie Darling and Kiely Sweatt work to the world. Their books, Palimpsest and Origin Of, respectively, are the most beautiful works I’ve read in a long time. And this follows gorgeous work by J. A. Tyler and Rae Bryant—I’m lucky to work all these super talented and driven poets.

These are the people who will be canonized within our generation.

5. What is The Poetry Brothel and who is Luna Liprari?

The Poetry Brothel is a unique and immersive poetry experience that takes poetry outside classrooms and lecture halls and brings poetry to people in a lush and beautiful atmosphere. You spend so much time writing this beautiful work; it can be really disheartening to have to present your blood and work under a loud, flourescent light. Why not make the poetic experience gorgeous and welcoming. The Poetry Brothel presents poets as high courtesans who impart their work in public readings, spontaneous eruptions of poetry, and most distinctly, as purveyors of private poetry readings on couches, chaise lounges and in private rooms. Central to this experience is the creation of character —mine is Luna Liprari— which for poet and audience functions as disguise and as a freeing device, enabling The Poetry Brothel to be a place of uninhibited creative expression in which the poets and clients can be themselves in private. For a small fee, all of the resident poets are available for these sequestered readings at any time during the event. Of course, any true brothel need a good cover; The Poetry Brothel’s is part saloon and part salon, offering a full bar, musicians, painters, and fortune-tellers, with newly integrated themes, performances and installations at each event.

We’ve done events in New York (our home), Chicago, New Orleans, Barcelona, California, D.C., Massachusetts (actually I’m sitting at the Massachusetts Brothel right now). I’ve read in a lush speakeasy decorated with teacup globes and red lounges, an erotic soiree in a Catalonian side street and in a treehouse-like fort. I’ve read at private parties and in public events. We’ve presented as part of The Annual New York City Poetry Festival, which we present as The Poetry Society of New York.

Luna Liprari is my character. She presents poetry and interacts with people at The Poetry Brothel. The poetry is my own, and Luna Liprari is a part of me, whether she reads poetry or does burlesque.

Luna Liprari came from a Sicilian father and French mother, from whom she ran away when she turned 15 in 1925. She was to become the secret love of Hemingway and Anais Nin, living in a tiny room above a butcher shoppe in Paris. They helped her publish a book of her poems. When she grew up, she moved to Argentina and was said to be seen in Mexico, teaching poor women to dance for their husbands. She was a clairvoyant they said, always dreaming of explosions, always making men explode from the inside. Her lips brought rainfall to its knees, her hips were said to have been the inspiration for the holy design of Vesuvius. Years later, she was the first Pinup painted on the side of a World War II bomber plane, her black hair and long legs dropping like webbed-spiders into sleepy French streets and Japanese cities. She had predicted weapons, slapped Oppenheimer in the face, seduced (and poisoned) two-dozen Nazis, and finally became a Pinup girl and burlesque dancer, touring the world with the Poetry Brothel.

6. If you don’t mind talking about it, what is your latest project?

My latest project is my thesis work. I’m writing about the intersection between body and mind, how the body reveals our pains and feelings and desires through sickness. Someone recently said to me, “the most poetic thing is not being sick.” I wonder, though, because being sick forces you to really confront who you are and your limitations. So the project is a collection of work written during times of physical pain.

Thanks to both Emma and Lisa for sharing their thoughts about poetry with us.

Poet Lisa Marie Basile

About the Poet:

Lisa Marie Basile is an award winning poet from New York City. She is currently pursuing her M.F.A. at The New School and is a member of The Poetry Society of New York. Basile is the founding editor of Patasola Press, the company that published Rae Bryant’s The Indefinite State of Imaginary Morals: Stories by Rae Bryant and Comatose by J.A. Tyler.

***Also please visit Bermudaonion for today’s National Poetry Month Tour stop***

Filed Under: Events, guest post, Interviews, national poetry month Tagged With: , , ,

The Virgin Journals by Travis Laurence Naught

April 9, 2012 by

Imagine a life in which everything is viewed from a wheelchair or from the arms of someone moving you from the bed to the chair and back again.  The Virgin Journals by Travis Laurence Naught is that story and more.   Naught was diagnosed as an infant with incurable spinal muscular atrophy, and his poems and prose speak with a frankness that is not only raw but unsettling.  Do we want to truly know what he’s thinking as he sits in his wheelchair and cannot decide to go to war as a soldier or to even have a choice about what he does physically?  His collection reads much like the confessional poets of Sexton and Plath with its brash ambition to tell it like it is without sugar coating, but in many ways it is not as sophisticated in that there are no mysterious images to unravel.  He puts it all out there without pretense and the poems read more like journal entries.

From "All You Need is Touch" (Page 75):

Feeling like a pain in the ass
Is no fun for anyone
But I get by every day
By needing
Basic life functions
From "Big Mouth" (Page 50):

Do not treat me with distrust
For I have not lied
Only told the truth too much

The collection is broken into three sections:  Life, Love, and World.  It is likely to make readers uncomfortable in that the narrator of these poems is constantly frustrated, deprived of human touch/contact, and full of lust.  To truly understand the plight of someone stuck in a wheelchair, these poems can do just that, but the poems appear to be prose broken up into lines and stanzas arbitrarily.  Moreover, there are more poems here that read like stream of consciousness prose and late-night confessions that normally would not see the outside of a drawer.  They are raw and unflinching.

Some poems are more typically poetic than others, but it is clear that writing is an outlet for Naught as he struggles daily with his lack of physical freedom and desire for more out of life. From “Lack of Physicality” to “Movie in Mind,” Naught’s poetic talents shine as he weaves in images to display how we are all human and struggle with our own limitations.  These are the gems of the collection.  Readers may want to dip into the collection over a period of time rather than read it from beginning to end so that they can take in the heavy emotions put forth by the narrator.  The Virgin Journals by Travis Laurence Naught is a good debut from a writer who clearly has more to say and more to explore in terms of poetry and prose.

Poet Travis Laurence Naught

About the Poet:

Travis Laurence Naught is poetry/prose writer … college graduate … former Division 1 college men’s basketball assistant … quadriplegic wheelchair user.  Join him on Facebook and on Twitter.

***For today’s National Poetry Month blog tour stop, go to the bookworm.***

 

 

 

This is the 5th book for my 2012 Fearless Poetry Exploration Reading Challenge.

 

This is my 24th book for the 2012 New Authors Challenge.

Filed Under: ARC, challenges, Events, Fearless Poetry Exploration Reading Challenge, national poetry month, New Authors Challenge, poetry, Read in 2012, reviews Tagged With: , , ,

Real Courage by Michael Meyerhofer

April 8, 2012 by

Real Courage by Michael Meyerhofer is a chapbook that showcases a unique perspective and use of imagery and comparison.  Much like “BPM 37093” (Page 5), Meyerhofer takes often wildly different images and situations together in comparisons that generate an “aha” from the reader after a momentary question mark hovers over their heads.

A smoldering white dwarf
like our own pyrite-colored sun may be.
Proof that after a solar relationship
ends, like most relationships,
with a fiery, bloating rampage
followed by a crash diet
down to blistered, white-hot corestuff,
the leftover carbon crystallizes
into a two-septillion-ton rock

However, in “The Great Refrain” (Page 19), Meyerhofer plays with the notion of refrain in which lines are repeated in a song-like chorus. Rather, the refrain here is more of a repeated emotional response to how things have changed, seemingly more like a lament. “are the remnants of motor-skiffs/and sun-sails, bronze men hauling//titanium fishing lines, mothers/reading to their infants from books//filled with calculus and poetry./That ages before an ice-pole shifted//”  Readers also will appreciate how Meyerhofer explores ideas contrary to conventional wisdom, like comparisons of dogs to the uncivilized in “Ode to Dogs” (page 22).

Real Courage by Michael Meyerhofer is full of unconventional wisdom and unexpected images and comments that reaches beyond the typical rant or disillusionment with the modern world. There also are more personal poems here that strive to make sense of death and loss, but there are others that uncover the surprising reactions of those in society considered more reserved than the rest of us and those that shun technology. Meyerhofer explores the human condition from an unusual perspective and uses language that does not dare hide his meaning.

Poet Michael Meyerhofer

About the Poet:

Michael Meyerhofer‘s third book, Damnatio Memoriae, won the Brick Road Poetry Book Contest. His previous books are Leaving Iowa (winner of the Liam Rector First Book Award) and Blue Collar Eulogies (Steel Toe Books, finalist for the Grub Street Book Prize).

He has also published five chapbooks: Pure Elysium (winner of the Palettes and Quills Chapbook Contest), The Clay-Shaper’s Husband (winner of the Codhill Press Chapbook Award), Real Courage (winner of the Terminus Magazine and Jeanne Duval Editions Poetry Chapbook Prize), The Right Madness of Beggars (winner of the Uccelli Press 3rd Annual Chapbook Competition), and Cardboard Urn (winner of the Copperdome Chapbook Contest).

He received his BA from the University of Iowa and his MFA from Southern Illinois University Carbondale. He currently teaches poetry, creative writing, and composition at Ball State University in Muncie, IN.

 

This is my 23rd book for the 2012 New Authors Challenge.

 

This is the 4th book for my 2012 Fearless Poetry Exploration Reading Challenge.

 

 

***For Today’s National Poetry Month Blog Tour stop, hop over to Books, Thoughts, and a Few Adventures…***

Filed Under: challenges, Events, Fearless Poetry Exploration Reading Challenge, national poetry month, New Authors Challenge, poetry, Read in 2012, review copy, reviews Tagged With: , ,

144th Virtual Poetry Circle

April 7, 2012 by

Welcome to the 144th Virtual Poetry Circle!

Remember, this is just for fun and is not meant to be stressful.

Keep in mind what Molly Peacock’s books suggested. Look at a line, a stanza, sentences, and images; describe what you like or don’t like; and offer an opinion. If you missed my review of her book, check it out here.

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Also, sign up for the 2012 Fearless Poetry Reading Challenge because its simple; you only need to read 1 book of poetry. Please visit the stops on the National Poetry Month Blog Tour from April 2011 and beginning again in April 2012.

Today’s poems is from Jennifer C. Wolfe, author of Somewhere Over the Pachyderm Rainbow. She’s sharing a poem from one of her upcoming collections, Elegies of Vitriolic Harmony, and she is working on another collection, Reflections of Hostile Revelries, as well:

(Roving) Eye of Newt

Ah, Newt Gingrich—that alleged everyman, who cheated on
His first two wives, while they were hospitalized; sallying forth,
To marry his third voluptuous blonde bedroom conquest.

Yes, Newt Gingrich—that alleged “family values” supporter,
Who remarked that his first sick wife was not “young enough or
Pretty enough to be the (US) President’s wife.”

My, Newt Gingrich—that realistic pinnacle of chauvinism,
Self-righteously imagining a working scenario, where he would
Even be elected to the US Presidency, in the first place.

Watch out, current “Mrs.”  Calista Gingrich:
You’ve won yourself the equivalent of the garish stuffed animal
Nobody wants from the gambling midway at a State Fair.

What do you think?

***For Today’s National Poetry Month Blog Tour stop, check out Peeking Between the Pages.***

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The Penguin Anthology of 20th Century American Poetry edited by Rita Dove

April 5, 2012 by

The Penguin Anthology of 20th Century American Poetry edited by Rita Dove (listen to her NPR interview, where she talks about the anthology and provides advice for young poets) collects a few poems from some of the great poets at the the height of their craft between 1900 and 2000, and while Dove notes that some of the poets who were starting to emerge in the latter portion of the century may not be included, it is merely because the anthology had to have a cutoff point and those poets may have reached the height of their craft after 2000.

Moreover, her introduction goes on to demonstrate the various turns in social movements throughout the United States and how poets and their poetry fit in with those historic changes, ranging — of course — from the backlash following the U.S. Civil War and the beginnings of WWI to the antiwar protests, the emergence of the feminist movement, and the struggle for civil rights.  Each poet’s bio is included alongside samples of their work.

“. . . and I should have written it right then, before rereading, discovering, misplacing note; before tracking down copyright dates, crunching numbers — in short, before the politics of selection could interfere with my judgment.”  (Page XXIX)

“If I could, I’d make this introduction a fold-out book.  Open to the first page, and up would pop a forest: a triangle of birches labeled Robert Frost, a solitary Great Oak for Wallace Stevens, a patch of quirky sycamores tagged William Carlos Williams, and a Dutch Elm for Hart Crane, with a double lane of poplars for Elizabeth Bishop and a brilliant autumnal maple tree marked Langston Hughes bearing leaves called Harper, Clifton, Soto.”  (Page XXX)

The selection of poems for this collection must have been a tough task, and Rita Dove employed the best tools at her disposal.  She’s spoken frankly in the introduction of the politics behind the selection of poems, particularly regarding a budget that was unable to meet the rights fees for certain poems (i.e. Plath and Ginsberg, who are notably absent from the collection, but not the introduction).  While some can not forgive this decision (i.e. Helen Vendler, whose criticisms have been widely used in college classrooms, including some I’ve attended; please also view Rita Dove’s reply to Vendler’s criticism), some readers can accept the oversight given how widely known and published some of these absent poets are and were.  Dove has even discussed the problem of “rights” in an interview with The Writer’s Chronicle, in which she said that one of the worst offenders was HarperCollins, which owns the rights to Sylvia Plath and Allen Ginsberg (December 2011, pg. 22).  “What I hated most about this unsettling affair was seeing other, less iconic poets held hostage by the very company they had trusted to promote them,” Dove lamented in the interview after discussing how one publishing hose offered poets the option to have their poems included in the anthology if they gave up their share in royalties even though the publishing house would not.

As with any “collection of great works,” the anthology is bound to have its detractors who are dissatisfied with the selections and who lament the absence of their own favorite poets and poems.  Dove says in the introduction, “The impulse driving them all, however, stemmed from the same revelation:  that every person contains a story that, if told well, would resonate within us no matter how strange or unfamiliar the circumstances, bound as we are by the instincts and yearnings of human existence.”  (Page XXXIII)  Readers will find that some of the poems speak more to them than others, but that also is expected in a collection of multiple poets with multiple styles.

Insect by Annie Finch (Page 540):

That hour-glass-backed,
orchard-legged,
heavy-headed will,

paper-folded,
wedge-contorted,
savage--dense to kill--

pulls back on backward-moving,
arching
high legs still,

lowered through a deep, knees-reaching,
feathered down
green will,

antenna-honest,
thread-descending,
carpeted as if with skill,

a focus-changing,
sober-reaching,

tracing, killing will.

There are old favorites from classics like E.E. Cummings to contemporaries like Yusef Komunyakaa. Readers will want to dip in and revisit their old poet friends, but also find the undiscovered gems from the past, present, and future. Ruth Stone, for instance, is a prolific poet, who may not be known by may readers, but her verse is so present and relatable; From “Scars” (page 178): “Sometimes I am on a train/going to a strange city,/and you are outside the window/explaining your suicide,/” Then there are Edgar Lee Masters at the beginning of the century that may be overlooked in favor of Robert Frost and other more well-known poets, despite his prolific career. From “Fiddler Jones” (page 2), “The earth keeps some vibration going/There in your heart, and that is you./And if the people find you can fiddle,/Why, fiddle you must, for all your life.” As the anthology progresses there is a distinct inclusion of more minority and female poets, like Reetika Vazirani and Terrance Hayes.

The Penguin Anthology of 20th Century American Poetry edited by Rita Dove is one perspective on American poetry over the last century, while it touches upon each of the social and poetical movements in the nation, it does skew the reality of the poetic realm a little bit by being unable to include certain icons and including newer poets who may or may not have proved their historical impact on the world of poetry to the satisfaction of everyone.  However, the inclusion of new voices is always a blessing when so much of poetry is consider classic and iconic from Frost’s New Hampshire woods to Ginsburg’s outspoken Howl.  Dove’s anthology is a collection to be dipped into time and again to visit old favorites and delve into the images and verse of new voices who have emerged in the latter part of the 20th century.

Poet Rita Dove

About the Editor:

Rita Dove, born in Ohio, served as Poet Laureate of the United States and Consultant to the Library of Congress from 1993 to 1995 and as Poet Laureate of the Commonwealth of Virginia from 2004 to 2006. She has received numerous literary and academic honors, among them the 1987 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry and, more recently, the 2003 Emily Couric Leadership Award, the 2001 Duke Ellington Lifetime Achievement Award, the 1997 Sara Lee Frontrunner Award, the 1997 Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award, the 1996 Heinz Award in the Arts and Humanities and the 1996 National Humanities Medal.

 

 

This is the 3rd book for my 2012 Fearless Poetry Exploration Reading Challenge.

 

 

***For Today’s National Poetry Month Blog Tour post, hop over to Unabridged Chick***

Filed Under: challenges, Events, Fearless Poetry Exploration Reading Challenge, national poetry month, Penguin, poetry, Publishers/Publicists, purchased, Read in 2012, reviews Tagged With: , ,

The Auroras by David St. John

April 4, 2012 by

The Auroras by David St. John is broken into three distinct sections:  Gypsy Davy, In the High Country, and The Auroras.  In this triptych of poems, “In the High Country” is flanked by the smaller sections “Gypsy Davy” and “The Auroras” but what ties the sections together is not a cohesive story as in Emma Eden Ramos’ Three Women, but a set of emotions ranging from unrest to pain and melancholy.  Both expressions of a poetic triptych are effective, but St. John’s is a little more subtle in its attempts at cohesiveness.

However, within these subtle lines and images, there are real gems, leaving conclusions and epiphanies with the reader, like in “The Aurora of the New Mind” (Page 4):

Still I look a lot like Scott Fitzgerald tonight with my tall
Tumbler of meander & bourbon & mint just clacking my ice
To the noise of the streetcar ratcheting up some surprise

I had been so looking forward to your silence
& what a pity it never arrived

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But even with these offhand remarks do not end the discourse of the poem; the narrator’s desire for silence is powerful and he has not qualms about uttering it aloud, but is he happy when he receives it or is he unsettled by the granting of that wish? Through subtle images and seemingly forthright comments, the narrator has brought to the surface questions of how when we receive our desires the result may be less adequate than expected. Following that train of thought, “Shopenhauer’s Dog Collar” (Page 14) speaks to the dissatisfying nature of desire fulfilled as Shopenhauer himself did in some of his philosophical works and the disillusionment of that realization in “Three Jade Dice” (Page 8-9):

I wish I could tell you that it's time for coffee
I wish I could tell you that the card table

Carved of onyx & ivory
Supports a life of orgasmic hope & certain prosperity

I wish I could tell you the legs of the piano reach
All the way to the ground as

I wish I could tell you the melody of the forgotten
Is as beautiful as the melody of the desired

“In the High Country” has poems that set the narrator apart from the action of each poem as events and moments — regretful and heartbreaking moments — are witnessed and observed in a helpless state, especially in “From a Bridge” (Page 23), “Waiting” (Page 24), “Human Fields” (Page 32), and “My Friend Says” (Page 34), but in “My Friend Says” the narrator begins to draw comparisons between himself and the subject of the poem or in some cases the “victim” of the events in the poem.

In the final section that mimics the name of the collection, the narrator becomes a mouthpiece of a higher power, speaking to the reader about the glories of the moment and how each is not perishable, but leaves a lasting imprint on the earth even if it is not explicitly seen. But there remains a questioning between the poems, a wondering about what will remain behind once one passes into the next world or simply ceases to exist. There is a reverberation of each person as we pass through the lives of one another, and those “auroras” will live on even after we have passed.

The Auroras by David St. John are at once deceptive in their simplicity and complex in their references to Fitzgerald, Shopenhaur and others, but the arc of the collection is that our beings impact one another and the world around us in even the most unapparent ways. And while we lament the passing of our family, friends, and those who have sought to move on without us to other places and times, their indelible marks remain as do our own.

About the Poet:

Prizewinning poet David St. John is the author of ten collections of poetry, including Study for the World’s Body: New and Selected Poems, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, as well as Where the Angels Come Toward Us, a volume of essays, interviews, and reviews. He is the co-editor, with Cole Swenson, of American Hybrid: A Norton Anthology of New Poetry. He teaches at the University of Southern California and lives in Venice Beach.

***For today’s National Poetry Month Blog Tour stop head over to Diary of an Eccentric.***

Want to win a copy of The Auroras for yourself?  Go enter.

This is the 2nd book for my 2012 Fearless Poetry Exploration Reading Challenge.

 

 

This is my 22nd book for the 2012 New Authors Challenge.

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Guest Interview, Part 2: Edward Nudelman and Aaron Belz Talk Inspiration and Creative Process

April 3, 2012 by

Indie Lit Award Nominated and Runner-Up Poet Edward Nudelman, author of What Looks Like an Elephant, offered to help celebrate National Poetry Month with an interview of poet Aaron Belz.

What follows is part two of Nudelman’s discussion with Belz.  If you missed part one on April 2, 2012, please check it out.  Today’s discussion is about Aaron’s influences and his creative process.

Please give both poets a warm welcome.

Please tell us how you got into poetry and what were some of your early influences. What kind of poetry do you read nowadays, and how does your reading affect your writing?

I think I backed into poetry as a medium. In grade school I was interested mostly in visual art. I loved to draw, to make things, and listen to music. I loved to read, too, mostly fantasy and sci-fi, plus Agatha Christie and WWII comic books. I was the photographer for the school newspaper. I also drew comics. I had pencils of every lead, many kinds of erasers, non-photo blue graph paper, and for Christmas one year my parents gave me an expensive set of Koh-I-Noor Rapidograph pens. I built different pen-holding accessories on my dad’s tool bench in the basement. Poetry came later, perhaps as a result of laziness—it’s so much tidier and less expensive, requires work that is purely mental plus some finger movements. In eleventh grade my French teacher told me I was one of the most verbally adept students he’d ever taught, and I didn’t forget that. I think we move forward partly based on what people tell us we’re good at doing. So in college I wrote more, editorials for the student paper, little jokey poems, etc. Then I decided to go to grad school for poetry. Then I just kept going with it, because it was the only thing I was reasonably good at—otherwise I was a jack-of-all-trades, truly master of none. Shiftless and lazy and horribly selfish, I now come to see. Prone to fantasy and wild thoughts. I really don’t even recognize, now, the person I was back then. I’m glad to be beyond him. These days I do spend a lot of time with poetry, but not always for delight. I write reviews, teach people how to read poetry, evangelize for art and music frequently, and make very little money doing all that. Hard to call it a “career” in the way I think the baby boomers envisioned career. I’m not exactly a man of letters. Or a man of leisure. Not sure what I am. When in doubt, start working on a new writing assignment.

It would be interesting to hear a little about your creative process. You have spent a good deal of time on the comedy circuit, and am I not correct in assuming you could call yourself a ‘standup comic’ at least once or twice in your past. How different is writing a poem for you from writing comic material which has as its sole aim to make somebody laugh (correct me if I’m wrong here)?

Correction, for the sake of reality—not a “good deal of time.” I’ve been in a dozen or so comedy shows, and always as a poet, never as a stand-up comic or improv performer. I have a huge amount of respect for the real comedians and comic actors, the skills they’ve honed, the risks they take, the hard ground they till, and I can say without a doubt that although I sympathize with them I am not one of them. Comedy works from prepared material, generally, which is then performed live. My set—my “show,” if you want to call it that—is simply to stand up in front of a crowd who has paid to see comedy and read my poetry, straight up. It gets a good response not just because it’s good “material” (as one of Will Ferrell’s agents once told me!) but because it’s a change of pace for the audience. Part of my act is that I’m a poet, just a poet, reading aloud. I once asked advice from Orson Bean, legendary comic actor, on how to improve my set. His response was telling: “You’ve got to edit, select poems which make sense in following the previous one and tell some kind of a story overall. Then you’ve got to memorize them and practice performing them at first in front of a mirror and in front of audiences. Then you’ll see if you have something which could be called entertainment. A lot of work! Good luck.”

Poet Aaron Belz

You have said that writing a poem for you is a very pleasurable experience, and, unlike some poets, you don’t much anguish over the functional side of actually creating your poems. Why is this? A genetic proclivity, or have you discovered some tricks you’d care to share with us plodders and scrappers?

Maybe not tricks but a difference in philosophy, at least between the way I write and some others with whom I’ve discussed writing. I remember in grad school Galway Kinnell talking about his own revision process, which could span decades. He said (in 1995) that he’d recently revised a poem he’d published in the late 1960s. I didn’t like that idea at all, that he’d written and published a poem so long ago and yet it still felt unfinished to him. I began to think, and this was supported by another grad school class, with Allen Ginsberg, that there was some holiness to the process, that it was time-locked, for one time, not transcendent or part of some “great poem” reality that could continually be discovered. A poem is today’s exercise; instead of making one poem or certain poems great, I’d rather focus on making new poems. Another poet, Jason Sommer, in St. Louis, held more with Kinnell’s view. He wrote and labored and revised quite a bit, which I admired, because I felt like I was incapable of staying with one poem. I needed to keep moving. Finally I told him that writing poetry is, for me, analogous to playing baseball. You stand up to the plate, have that defined opportunity to get a hit, and if you do, you’re on base; if you don’t, you sit back down on the bench and wait for another at-bat. But no batter would continually revisit a particular at-bat. The goal is to become a more skilled batter, not to sweat one plate appearance. So that’s the philosophy I’ve settled on, largely. I do revise, but I don’t revise much past the week or two during which something is composed. Most of my most successful poems (“successful” meaning, I see them shared and reprinted or notice them being enjoyed more than others that I’ve written) were composed completely in a matter of minutes—five minutes, ten minutes. It’s more a matter of being the right frame of mind when writing. “Revise yourself,” Ginsberg said. That’s baseball.

Along these same lines, you have said that John Ashbery is your ‘main dawg.’ Is that because his work seems so rooted in the process itself, not self-absorbed, but the poem itself becomes the living entity, jam-packed with the culture of the day, hidden jabs and allusion. What do you like about Ashbery and how does your poetry aim to mirror these aspects?

The thing that initially appealed to me about Ashbery was that he moved so easily in and out of image and conventional expression, shifted tone suddenly and frequently, and yet his texts seemed to have an undeniable unity—a unity I don’t think I’d ever encountered in poetry. You read Hotel Lautréamont and come away thinking, a tank just ran over my head. A single, solitary, perfect machine of words. A monolith! What I love about Ashbery is that his work is so collage-like and yet so unified. I think he admires Braque and other modernists. I know he admires Wallace Stevens and William Wordsworth, high-philosophy poets for whom unity was everything. Maybe the antithesis to Ashbery is Charles Olson, whose poetry feels like tree bark crumbling in my hands. I can’t hold it. It almost feels like there’s nothing there, after reading it. But Ashbery feels sleek, perfect, smooth, funny, wrong in so many ways, yet completely accessible. That might be the first time Ashbery has been referred to as completely accessible. To me, he’s more accessible than any poet of his generation. I also love O’Hara. As to emulating what he does, I once sent a cover letter along with a submission in which I said that I was like Ashbery but better. This was probably fifteen years ago.

I never heard back.

I notice you have received your PhD in literature from St. Louis University, though you don’t seem to publicize this much (as per my request for your bio, you were as terse as a Haiku, omitting your letters in a most unprofessorial sort of way? Could you speak to this apparent panning of formal education? Currently there is a debate as per MFA programs churning automaton ‘poets,’ all speaking in the same voice, and all being published in the same journals? What can you tell us about what makes a good poet?

In his poem “What Is Poetry,” Ashbery says, “In school / All the thought got combed out.” This is consistent with an American Romantic way of thinking, and I believe Ashbery is basically a Romantic Transcendentalist, so it makes sense that he would write this. When I’ve asked him questions about his work he’s responded sometimes with lines like “Leave that to the critics to figure out” and “I don’t know, I don’t think about it that way.” He resists the academic side a lot, but you know he also loves the attention he gets from the academy in the form of Harold Bloom and being asked to give the Norton lectures at Harvard, which eventually became a book called Other Traditions. Personally, I don’t reject the academic life. I also don’t live and die by it. To me it’s the same thing as Wal Mart, overseas travel, eating dinner at your great-uncle’s house on Sunday afternoon. School is just school, and it’s important as what it is. It’s important to an extent. Poetry workshops can be helpful, no doubt. If you eat them like brownies they can kill your poetry, though. Just try to hold other people’s opinions at arm’s length a bit. Art is great because it represents some sense of total freedom. You do what you want. Make your vision real in your medium. But that doesn’t mean you’re not a human being, and as we say: All things in moderation.

What’s next on the list for Aaron Belz? Do you have a book in press? Could you give us a sneak preview?

I do have one, and it has a title, and I will not share the title. I’m afraid someone might steal it.

About Interviewer and Poet Edward Nudelman:

Edward Nudelman is a poet, scientist and literary critic from Seattle.  He has two poetry books and his latest collection was runner-up for book of the year.  Check out his Website.

About Poet Aaron Belz:

Aaron Belz has a Master’s in Creative Writing from New York University (1995), a Ph.D. in English from Saint Louis University, and has taught English and Creative Writing at several Universities.  His books include: The Bird Hoverer (BlazeVOX, 2007) and Lovely, Raspberry (Persea, 2010). A third is due out from Persea very soon.  Check out his Website or follow him on Twitter.

***For Today’s National Poetry Month Blog Tour post, hop over to Rhapsody in Books***

***Also, I’ve been interviewed at Curiosity Quills***

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Guest Interview: Indie Lit Award Nominated Poet Edward Nudelman Interviews Poet Aaron Belz

April 2, 2012 by

Indie Lit Award Nominated and Runner-Up Poet Edward Nudelman, author of What Looks Like an Elephant, offered to help celebrate National Poetry Month with an interview of poet Aaron Belz.

What follows is part one of Nudelman’s discussion with Belz about his two books of poetry, The Bird Hoverer (BlazeVOX, 2007) and Lovely, Raspberry (Persea, 2010).

Please give both poets a warm welcome and stay tuned for part two of the interview tomorrow, April 3, 2012.

Aaron Belz is a poet who has forged a considerable niche in the American poetry scene. Where similarities and knock-offs are the rule of the day, Belz’s poetry is a recognizable entity highlighted by layers of irony and contemporary idiom, always punctuated with some deeper purpose lurking below the upbeat flow. His poetry has been likened to Ashbery and Brautigan, but really stands alone in authenticity.

I first read an Aaron Belz poem while staying at my niece’s in Brooklyn, in their somewhat dank basement with low ceilings and low light. There, neatly placed by my bed stand, was a well-used copy of The Bird Hoverer (BlazeVOX, 2007), no doubt placed there to appease my celebrated tendencies toward insomnia. I read it straight through, quite taken in by its accessibility and metaphor, how he used humor as an instrument for relief and also a device to uncover a weightier mood.

From “Canaries:”

The jackknife you filched
with etchings of boxing gloves on it
reminded me of the metal fruit
in the center of the table at Canaries Street,

for both were perfectly round
and gave off an inaudible hum
like that of a remote dishwasher.
When Susan came bounding down the stairs

with her arms full of teen magazines
and hollered something to Rudy
about your new jackknife,
I came in from the field where

I had been sitting in a lather
about my cracked telescope case.
I said, Rudy’s not in earshot, sister,
he ran out for decorative pomegranates;

Aaron was kind enough to answer in detail several questions I posed which provide a little more background and understanding into this poet’s wonderful world of poetry.

After reading through your first book, The Bird Hoverer, then scanning and reading selected poems from Lovely, Raspberry, I’m struck by the similarity of tone in both books, but what appears to me a departure in the second book to broader themes and perhaps a more contemplative mood behind the counterpoint of humor. Can you walk us through your evolution of thought as your poetry develops through these two books? In Lovely, Raspberry, have you found a place you want to be, or are there new and wild transitions to come?

Thanks for reading the books. I’m not aware of a change in the humor, but I can tell you that much of Lovely, Raspberry was written earlier in time than most of The Bird Hoverer, which was my second manuscript. So to answer your question, maybe the humor is brightening up a bit, at least chronologically? My newer poems (of the past three years) are less intent on whipping the reader with wit. I’m finding myself enjoying the language more now, letting it roll beneath my boat and steady as she goes. The third book’s manuscript has been accepted by Persea and its title has been decided—it’s taken a lot of conversation to finalize—but I’m afraid I can’t share it for fear someone else will use it! It’s a great title! The next collection will feature some shorter poems, one and two liners. I always hate finding those in other poets’ collections, because I feel like I wasted energy turning the page. But they’re in mine, I guess.

What I like about your poetry is how naturally your humor flows from experience. However, with all the wild and wooly situations and outcomes we find ourselves led into, it begs the question how much of this stuff is honestly from your experience, and to what extent to allow yourself license to depart from what really has occurred?

All of my poetry comes from my own experience. I have a hard time imagining it coming from someone else’s and then ending up on my page. Whether it comes from my experience honestly is another question—perhaps it comes from it artfully. Psychologically and emotionally. Writing poetry, for me, feels like spitting back stuff I’ve been chewing on for a long time. Finally, it’s out, and it feels so good to have done with it. What sticks most in my craw is certain manners of speaking. “In a manner of speaking” is a common disclaimer. I’ve gotten to the point where each word seems like a wheel rut in a long road toward meaning. I feel like meaning will never be reached, but we keep driving whatever car God’s given us down the road toward meaning. There, a second transportation analogy. I hope you’re happy.

In the opening poem to Lovely, Raspberry entitled “direction,” you spend three stanzas (out of five) equivocating what the you in the poem should or should not do with respect to communicating feelings, ending with this superb mini-conclusion:

In this way perhaps we can accurately triangulate

brief but nearly photographic images of each other’s

Mothers when they were first married, in veils,

and of their driving down the street with tin-can trails. . .

and then a remarkable personal reference, deftly rendered:

You expect me to tell you about the spite in my loin
Which is the sad hail of commas in the professor’s paragraph

is followed by a very self-effacing remark which seems to further separate you from the central character in the poem. I want to ask you if this poem is about the speaker’s inadequacy to articulate, or more broadly, a commentary on the difficulties and pitfalls of dealing with extraneous baggage in a relationship. The sardonic tone only adds to the poem’s success in conveying a kind of futility in resolving conflict. Would you agree? Has this been your experience?

I don’t think of “Direction” as being about interpersonal conflict as much as it’s about the way readers expect a poem to be framed. Like, I’m supposed to architect something, and the reader is supposed to inhabit it. That’s what I learned in school, basically. But in my poems I like to unpack those assumptions and assemble them into something new, like Ikea furniture for the literary home in which we live. The goal of any text is to create a sympathetic connection between writer and reader, but the means by which that goal is achieved vary widely. Like my favorite recent poets (Ashbery, O’Hara, et al) I enjoy discussing the framing method somewhat lightheartedly, following the logic where it happens to go. I feel my way toward the end. In “Direction” I felt like I was really trying to explain the relationship between writer and reader. It seemed funny to me to attempt to reinvent the reader’s way of interpreting.

I love the poem, “my best wand”, because it does what so many of your poems do, yet so seamlessly, in one small burst. And that is convey a paradox or a twist in a culminating line. Whereas one often finds too big a buildup, (the reader is often numbed as a result), in so many of your poems, the setup is masterful and succinct:

my best wand

Of all the magic wands

I’ve bought over the years,

only the steel one with the sharp tip

really works- you point it

into someone and say

ABRACADABRA

and the person magically

becomes wounded.

Humorists often come from anguished pasts, dropped when they were infants, had bamboo pressed into nails, etc. Do you have marks from your childhood or something dark and sinister tailing you? If so (or if not), how have you handled adversity? Does this poem speak to a method you’ve dabbled in? Can you tell us ways you’ve adapted, how you’ve learned to put down your magic wands?

That’s a good question. I think that’s exactly what I described near the middle of the first answer above: I’ve become less intent on whipping the reader with wit. Wit is fun, at first, but then can lead to bad places, such as resentment. It can be a show of power. Rather than my poems be barbed and have readers lose sympathy, I’d rather they be little verbal masseuses, working their readers’ backs and necks. There can be a kind of deliriousness or spectacle that achieves that effect. In future poems I want my phrases and lines, transitions and images, to be a little bit more swimmy, delicious, and ongoingly re-readable. Oh, and yes, I do have a lot of sinister stuff tailing me, from childhood till the present. And I’ve handled adversity poorly. I can’t imagine having written the things I’ve written without being so troubled. I do try to hide the fact that I’m troubled, but it doesn’t always work. There’s a powerful darkness at work in my poems that I think a lot of readers—maybe they think, I’ll just pop this poem in the microwave and eat it—miss on first reading. But not everybody misses it. But then again, I’m a Christian, which means I believe that there’s eternal hope in Christ’s love for me. I suppose poetry, like all of my other work, has to span competing senses of failure and hope.

Thanks, Ed and Aaron. Please come back tomorrow for part two of the interview.

About Interviewer and Poet Edward Nudelman:

Edward Nudelman is a poet, scientist and literary critic from Seattle.  He has two poetry books and his latest collection was runner-up for book of the year.  Check out his Website.

About Poet Aaron Belz:

Aaron Belz has a Master’s in Creative Writing from New York University (1995), a Ph.D. in English from Saint Louis University, and has taught English and Creative Writing at several Universities.  His books include: The Bird Hoverer (BlazeVOX, 2007) and Lovely, Raspberry (Persea, 2010). A third is due out from Persea very soon.  Check out his Website or follow him on Twitter.

***For today’s National Poetry Month Blog Tour stop head over to Wordy Evidence of the Fact.***

***Also, I’ve been interviewed at Curiosity Quills***

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