Hey Columbus! by Thomas Hubbard

You step
out of your sport utility vehicle and
begin
fueling on pump number three while I

finish up
on pump number four.



You eye my
braid, my old car, my flute bag
in the
rear window, and that expression comes
onto your
pale, clean-shaven face.



You seem upset
that I don't shuffle, step aside,
show
embarrassment about my dark skin, and
why must I have feathers in plain view?



You are

The Good News Department

I've had a few good weeks for good news. I recently signed up for Poets & Writers Thursday e-newsletter. It comes each week and includes a fiction prompt, a poetry prompt, and a Best Books for Writers recommendation. Look what came this week!

I am thrilled to have my book The Crafty Poet listed as a Best Book for Writers. This recommendation appeared not only in the newsletter but also at the P&W website where it will remain.

Then the book also received some local attention with an article in the online newspaper, The Jersey Tomato Press. The article is titled Crafty year round, not just for season of the witch: The Crafty Poet.

A few weeks ago I was invited by poet Adele Kenny to be a guest blogger at her blog, The Music In It. Adele posts a new prompt every Saturday and recently began inviting other poets to contribute a prompt. My contribution is The Word Chain Poem, which appears in The Crafty Poet. Adele also appears in my book with a Craft Tip on Imagery and a model poem from her collection, What Matters.

I was also happy to receive this lovely, unsolicited testimonial: "I was just at a 4 day retreat with two poet friends. Each of us had a copy of your book. And we used several prompts. As a result we walked away with about three new poems each and several revisions of old ones. Thank you for your newsletter and your book!" How perfect is that? This is exactly what I want my book to do, i.e., provoke new poems and improve ones in progress.

And there's a book party coming up for The Crafty Poet on Sunday, November 10! Ken Ronkowitz, one of the contributors to the book, has posted the details and information about The Crafty Poet at his blog, Poets Online. Twenty poets from the book will be reading, including Ken and Adele. Ken has a sample poem in the book. I'll be baking cookies for this reading.

Also on the list of good news: two Pushcart Prize nominations. The first came from Rose Red Review for my poem, The Color of Magic, which appears in the current issue.

The second Pushcart nomination is for Original Sin from Naugatuck River Review. This poem appeared in the spring issue.

I like good news so much better than bad news. The best that can be said of bad news is that it makes us so much more grateful for the good news. And I am grateful. Thank you, Universe.

Book Launch for The Crafty Poet: A Portable Workshop

Book Launch for The Crafty Poet: A Portable Workshop

Sunday, November 10, 2013

2 PM

Join Diane Lockward and 20 poets featured in the book for a book launch reading for The Crafty Poet: A Portable Workshop at the West Caldwell Public Library (30 Clinton Road, West Caldwell, NJ)

. . . this is a poetry exercise/craft tip book poets (and English instructors) only dream about, a collection divided into sections such as "Sound," "Voice," and "Syntax," each addressing the stated topic with relevant writing/revision suggestions, plus a poem provided as a springboard for writing a poem in a similar mode or form. There are even examples of poems written from the prompt. . . I look forward to the next time I teach introduction to poetry writing because I definitely think students will appreciate the specificity of Lockward's prompts.
Martha Silano, Blue Positive

Diane Lockward is the author of three poetry books, most recently, Temptation by Water. Her poems have been included in such anthologies as Poetry Daily: 360 Poems from the World's Most Popular Poetry Website and Garrison Keillor's Good Poems for Hard Times, and have been published in such journals as Harvard Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, and Prairie Schooner. 

The book conatins model poems with prompts, writing tips, and interviews contributed by 56 of our nation's finest poets, including 13 former and current state Poets Laureate: Kim Addonizio, JoAnn Balingit, Ellen Bass, Jan Beatty, Jeanne Marie Beaumont, Robert Bense, Pam Bernard, Michelle Bitting, Deborah Bogen, Kathryn Stripling Byer, Edward Byrne, Kelly Cherry, Philip F. Deaver, Bruce Dethlefsen, Caitlin Doyle, Patricia Fargnoli, Ann Fisher-Wirth, Amy Gerstler, Karin Gottshall, Jennifer Gresham, Bruce Guernsey, Marilyn Hacker, Jeffrey Harrison, Lola Haskins, Jane Hirshfield, Gray Jacobik, Rod Jellema, Richard Jones, Julie Kane, Adele Kenny, Dorianne Laux, Sydney Lea, Hailey Leithauser, Jeffrey Levine, Diane Lockward, Denise Low, Jennifer Maier, Marie-Elizabeth Mali, Jeffrey McDaniel, Wesley McNair, Susan Laughter Meyers, Bronwen Butter Newcott, Alicia Ostriker, Linda Pastan, Stanley Plumly, Vern Rutsala, Martha Silano, Marilyn L. Taylor, Matthew Thorburn, Lee Upton, Nance Van Winckel, Ingrid Wendt, Nancy White, Cecilia Woloch, Baron Wormser, Suzanne Zweizig

And an additional 45 accomplished poets whose poems inspired by the prompts in the book serve as samples: Joel Allegretti, Linda Benninghoff, Broeck Blumberg, Rose Mary Boehm, Bob Bradshaw, Kelly Cressio-Moeller, Rachel Dacus, Ann DeVenezia, Liz Dolan, Kristina England, Laura Freedgood, Gail Fishman Gerwin, Erica Goss, Jeanie Greensfelder, Constance Hanstedt, John Hutchinson, Penny Harter, Wendy Elizabeth Ingersoll, Tina Kelley, Claire Keyes, Laurie Kolp, Joan Mazza, Janet McCann, Antoinette Libro, Charlotte Mandel, Joan Mazza, Janet McCann, Nancy Bailey Miller, Thomas Moudry, Drew Myron, Shawnte Orion, Donna Pflueger, Wanda Praisner, Susanna Rich, Ken Ronkowitz, Basil Rouskas, Nancy Scott, Martha Silano, Linda Simone, Melissa Studdard, Lisken Van Pelt Dus, Jeanne Wagner, Ingrid Wendt, Scott Wiggerman, Bill Wunder, Michael T. Young, Sander Zulauf

What We're Reading Now

It's October, the month of beautiful autumn weather, and—at least here in America—the month of embarrassingly-abundant processed sugar. With trick-or-treat and all that, we at Poetry Matters say Skip the caramel apples, candy corn, and tootsie rolls! Give us a good book instead!  So for our post this month we've got some poetry goodies for you: Nancy shares a couple of books and journals that she's currently reading, including Ultima Thule, one of her favorite poetry collections, and Temper, the debut book of Beth Bachmann. And after that, Karen delights us with a mini-review of Iris A. Law's poetry chapbook, Periodicity.

We invite you to take a longer look at these fine books. And as usual friends, please share with us what you're reading. We're always looking for good books.

______________

 From Nancy's Bookshelf

Probably like most of you, at any given time I've got several books going, not just one. And usually one of those books is a favorite that I am re-reading. The favorite for this month is Ultima Thule (Yale University Press, 2000) by Davis McCombs. Ultima Thule was selected by M. S. Merwin for the 1999 Yale Younger Poet’s Prize. McCombs, who grew up in south-central Kentucky (an area known for its caves), served as a park ranger at Mammoth Cave National Park. The book was written, in part at least, while McCombs worked at Mammoth Cave; the poems center around caves in general, and Mammoth Cave in particular.

The book has three sections: The first and last sections are comprised of sonnets, and the section sandwiched between them is full of free-verse. In the first section, the sonnets are all persona poems written in the voice of Stephen Bishop, who was the slave of one John Croghan. Croghan owned Mammoth Cave for ten years or so in the mid-1800’s and Bishop functioned as a cave guide there for twenty years. Here is a link to my favorite poem in this first section, written in Bishop's voice as imagined by the poet. It’s the title poem of the collection, “Ultima Thule.” 

The second section contains poems that explore a more personal landscape. Each finely-chiseled poem in this section flows freely, unencumbered by the rigidity or stilted feel that some readers might experience in first section with its combination of sonnet-form and persona-voice. I have no favorite in the second section; all would be favorites, depending on where I happen to be in my head. Here is link to one of the poems for you to experience, “Freemartin.” (From dictionary.com—freemartin: “a female calf that is born as a twin with a male and is sterile as a result of exposure to masculinizing hormones produced by the male.”) 

The third section returns to the sonnet form, but now it is McCombs (or the poet-persona) who is the cave guide instead of Stephen Bishop. The sonnets in this last section have the same beautiful lyricism found in the second section. Here is a link to my favorite, which is the opening poem in this last section: “Dismantling the Cave Gate.”

I've read Ultima Thule several times now, and each time I continue to be fascinated by it, so much so that I've written the entire second and third sections out by long-hand, using a fountain-pen and fine-lined yellow paper, lingering over each poem. If you haven't read this book yet, you're in for a treat. 

Another book I’m reading is Beth Bachmann’s debut book, Temper(University of Pittsburg

Press, 2009), winner of the AWP Award Series 2008 Donald Hall Prize and 2010 Kate Tufts Discovery Award. The book addresses a murdered sister and a father who appears to be suspect. The poems in Temper are short and intense—the images, sharp and violent; the voice is restrained, at times distant. These poems are haunting, folks, each of them a lyric that together stitch a narrative. This book, this book …  I can’t put it down. It, too, will be one that I’ll read again and again. I won’t say any more than that. I'll just leave you with a few links to some poems, let you experience them for yourself:

• “Temper,” prologue to the collection
• “Heaven” from Section I
• “Colorization” from Section II
• “Mystery Ending With a Girl in a Field from Section III

As for literary journals, here’s what’s piled on my nightstand: Caketrain issue 10, Reed Vol 66, Mid-American Review Vol 33.2, Crab Orchard Review Vol 18.2, and the beautiful, beautiful Briar Cliff Review Vol 25. I love the look and feel of Briar Cliff Review! Here’s a link to the opening poem to that journal, “Break of Day,” by Beatrice Lazarus, winner of the their recent Poetry Prize.

Karen's Mini Review of Iris A. Law's poetry chapbook, Periodicity 

I met Iris Law at a "poet's lunch" during The Kentucky Women Writers Conference in Lexington, Kentucky, and later noticed her chapbook for sale. I was drawn to the cover art by Killeen Hanson, an incandescent blue-white flower sprig against a dark background, and the title whose meaning I wasn't sure of, as well as blurbs on the back of the book that mentioned women scientists. When I glanced at the book's center poem, "Blue," I was irretrievably hooked.

Iris A. Law, a Kundiman Fellow, is editor of the online Asian American poetry journal Lantern Review. She received a B.A. in English from Stanford University and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Notre Dame. Her work has appeared in such journals as Lumina, Phoebe, qarrtsiluni, Boxcar Poetry Review, Drunken Boat, The Collagist, and she was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2011. She lives in Lexington, Kentucky.

Periodicity (Finishing Line Press, 2013), Law's debut chapbook, celebrates women from various times and countries connected to the world of science. Thirteen of the eighteen poems are persona poems, written from the first person point-of-view of women such as: British botanist/illustrator/author Beatrix Potter, British biophysicist/X-ray crystallographer Rosalind Franklin, French-Polish physicist/chemist Marie Curie, American marine biologist/conservationistRachel Carson, and Faith Sai So Leong, the first Chinese American dentist. Law uses various forms such as the tercet  in the voice of astronomer Maria Mitchell, and a cento, "Botanical Variations," composed of passages from the 18th century botanist Jane Colden's work, Botanical Manuscript which describes such plants as "S'alomons Seal," "E'nchanter's Nightshade," and "Lady's S'lipper."

Many of the poems explore familial relationships such as between father and daughter in "Ada" about mathematician/writer Ada Lovelace and her father, poet Lord Byron, and in "Anna Atkins" where Atkins, botanist/photographer, mourns the death of her father who was also a scientist; between wife Emma Darwin and husband Charles Darwin in "Finchsong" and Marie and husband Pierre in "Horse and Cart;" and between mother, daughter and sister in the poems centered around the Curie family, "Periodicity" and "The Girl with Radium Eyes."

The chapbook, named after the title poem "Periodicity," refers to the periodic table in which the chemical elements are arranged in related groups according to their atomic numbers. Periodicity also refers to anything having the characteristic of being periodic, occurring at regular intervals or having similar properties. The title echoes the overall compass of Law's book that re-imagines these dynamic women in all their complexities with a haunting sense of compassion and intimacy. We see them in moments of vulnerability and pain as in "Marie Curie, Dying" with stunning lines such as "On her tongue and in her cheeks, a constellation of throbbing stars" and "the ore, with its necklace of fallen particles, grows dim to her"; and in moments of everyday life as in "Finchsong," where she portrays Emma Darwin cooking and playing piano outside the door where her husband, Charles Darwin, "measured wingspans...parted stiffened beaks" and ends with the striking image of "those fingers / that bent the necks of birds would trace / blue nocturnes against your spine." Though the women presented in these poems are similar in spirit and the extent of their accomplishments, often working against gender bias, Law insists each is unique, as said so beautifully in the closing lines of the last poem of the book, "Slant," written for Chinese Americanphysicist Chien-Shiung Wu:

                                                ...We do not mirror

            one another. Rather, we resist replication, shaping our stories

            stubbornly against our chosen vectors: one arm, one eye,

            a single plotted quadrant into which we arrange

            battered folding chairs and settle in to watch the sun

            slide liquidly into the diamond-speckled dark.

             

Law's use of "we," repeated throughout the poem includes not only Chien-Shiung Wu, but herself, the other women in her book, and all women, creating a feeling of intimacy and respect, as if the poet is directly speaking to the reader. Many of the Law's poems contain this close sense of connection to the reader, as in the first lines of the opening poem, "Field Notes, Lichen Morphology," where it feels like Beatrix Potter is whispering: " "Listen: / that // rasp. The fall/ of fractured // trees / predates // the quiet lying // down, the waiting". Law's use of repeated vowel and consonant sounds in these lines is mirrored throughout the poems; they resonate with rhythm, as they do with radiant images of the natural world, as in the poem, "Blue," describing Anna Atkins cyanotype prints of algae: "Lucid shadows, layered / on blue ground: a reverse / china pattern. Cystoseira / blisters, bifurcates to / deeper marine. Part wisp."

In Periodicity each poem is like a radiant jewel (sapphire, emerald), or an element essential to life (oxygen, hydrogen) that are linked by each woman's particular voice that reaches us through Iris Law's luminous voice. These unforgettable poems pulse with a sense of awe and longing, an invitation to pay attention, to explore, document, and revel in the wonders of the natural world in which we live.

If you'd like to read more of Iris Law's work, visit her website at http://www.irisalaw.com/index.html.

If You Are Lucky, by Michelle McGrane

If you are lucky
you will carry one night with you
for the rest of your life,
a night like no other.
You won't see it coming.

Forget the day, the year.
It will arrive uninvoked,
an astrological anomaly.

You will remember
how every cell in your body
knew him, this stranger,

how you held your breath,
the way you searched his face.
This is how such evenings begin.

And you will be real in your

Thoughts of the Father by Philip Salom

Thoughts of the Father
Ku / Work on What Has Been Spoiled
… Setting right what has been spoiled by the father. Danger. No blame rests upon
the departed father. He receives in his thoughts the deceased father.

It hurts when you know thoughts of the father are in the son
like a repertoire of non-events.

Thinking how the father spoiled the son, the sons
of broken marriages, my own.

Not '

5 AM Thoughts, North Carolina (& Back Again)

*Before I forget: I am hosting a kickass fiction event at the Arts Club of Washington this Wednesday (October 9; full description here) with novelists Mary Kay Zuravleff and Lisa Gorman, and journalist Judith Warner. Please come if you're in DC! And if you're in New York, perhaps I'll see you at the Center for Book Arts reading this Friday (October 11). It'll be my first chance to hold this brand-new chapbook... 

A confession: I was going to to write here about Miley Cyrus and the anguish-porn of talented twenty-something girls. (The ambiguity of "of," because that is something both put upon them and championed within.) I took screen caps from the "Wrecking Ball" video and everything. But that story is moving too fast. Anything I write today might be contradicted tomorrow. I'm keeping an eye on it. 

Also: I'm going to devote a post to this in the future, but for now I want to share the news that I've joined the faculty of the University of Tampa's low-residency MFA program (which, thankfully, I can do from D.C.). I'm taking the leap because my experiences at the Writer's Center and elsewhere have been deeply rewarding--but there's such a great opportunity to develop a philosophy of craft that works best with a serious, longterm commitment from students. If you're interested in hearing more, and would even consider enrolling in the program, feel free to email me. We will not talk about Miley Cyrus, I promise. Unless you specifically request it. 

The other week, we drove down to Raleigh, NC, for the annual International Bluegrass Music Association award show. It was a stunning three days of music. Tony Rice was inducted into the Hall of Fame, which was important for all kinds of reasons to be elaborated on at a later date. I attended a live WAMU recording, which gave me a bit of hometown pride. I got to hear Frank Solivan & Dirty Kitchen; congrats to Mike Munford, their banjoist, for his IBMA award. If you're ever looking for a great night out in Raleigh, next door to The Pour House Music Hall is Bida Manda, an authentic Laotian restaurant. We managed to snag the last two seats at the bar for dinner one night and I had the Mee Ka Tee, a pork belly & rice noodle soup, which was just as indulgent as you would imagine. 

We trekked over to Durham, which I'd never visited before. The Scrap Exchange is an amazing nonprofit "creative reuse center," a warehouse space filled with wallpaper remnants, plastic bits, feathers, discarded TVs and radios, boxes, yarns--all the quality junk that can inspire an artist, priced to be bought with the coins out of your pocket. Later, along Duke's college corner, my love shopped for records and I shopped for dresses; we both found something that suited us, then headed to Geer Street Garden for dinner, and from there to a friend's art opening in Chapel Hill. I'm hoping to get back to do a reading at The Regulator Bookshop with Count the Waves. While there I bought a copy of Scott McClanahan's Crapalachia: A Biography of Place, and when I introduced myself to the bookseller he turned out to be the son of author John Dufresne. The day just had that kind of serendipity to it. 

Our last afternoon in town we explored the North Carolina Museum of Art. Wow. Though I loved Hickory, this was the more revelatory trip in terms of North Carolina's contemporary, edgier sensibilities.

Every nook was an opportunity for sculpture; we almost missed the Rodin garden.

Inside the museum, there were intriguing works by everyone from Joseph Cornell to Kehinde Wiley. The sculpture Tar Baby vs. Saint Sebastian, by Michael Richard, would have been mesmerizing by any standard in its tribute to the Tuskegee Airmen. But the image--cast from the artist's body--is especially haunting knowing that he was killed while in his New York studio, located on the 92nd floor of World Trade Center's Tower One, on September 11, 2001.

Beyond the museum is a sprawling park, which houses many more large-scale artworks. There was a nice mix of seclusion and open expanse. We hunkered down in Chris Drury's "Cloud Champber for the Trees and Sky." Vollis Simpson's "Wind Machine" was a-spin. I'm not going to wax poetic. I'm just going to let you gawk over my shoulder at Thomas Syre's "Gyre."

We made it back to DC and promptly collapsed into sore throats and grumpy unpacking. We rallied enough for this past weekend's (e)merge art fair, at the Capitol Skyline Hotel--right by the Nats baseball stadium--which belongs to the Rubell family. On Sunday we armed ourselves with bloody marys, and set to wandering. In the lobby Andrew Wodzianski was enacting a "Self Portrait as Jack Torrance," typing All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy over and over on a manual typewriter. Setting a different tone, the lovely Holly Bass was conducting an "Art Baptism" out by the pool, under a wind-whipped canopy, complete with community music.

A half-dozen followers stepped up to announce their artistic ambitions, and to invoke the names (privately, as scribbled on a slip of paper) of three people who sustain their spiritual selves.  Then Holly baptized them in the Skyline's pool. It felt like I was back in Miami for a minute, in the best of ways. I felt refreshed. I sang loud.

Things are a little frantic in Sandra-land right now. So this is the last you'll hear from me on the blog for a couple of weeks, until I'm in IOWA. Iowa! Where I'll live all November thanks to Cornell College, teaching creative nonfiction and, y'know, frolicking in corn fields. But maybe I'll see you, in DC or New York City? Until then~

Good News for Literary Fiction

"A striking new study found that reading literary fiction – as opposed to popular fiction or serious nonfiction – leads people to perform better on tests that measure empathy, social perception and emotional intelligence."

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/03/i-know-how-youre-feeling-i-read-chekhov/?hp&_r=0

A Logic Model for Poetry?

Dream Big!  I want to foster the literature of Minnesota and the North, empower women, decrease the exploitation of the weak, create peace and make the world more beautiful.

Okay, I plan to make a living as a writer. In the Creative Community Leadership Institute, we have been discussing use of "The Logic Model." With it, individuals and organizations can develop projects or programs.  It is a way to strategize. Some people hate Logic Models, and other people find them useful.  As a poet, I was repelled by the concept--it's too linear! it's too insane! it kills creativity!--but now I've decided to try it.

Notice I'm not using it to build poems. For sure, it would not work.  But it might be useful as I build my career.  In the coming weeks, I will be modifying and developing this model.  I'm curious now.  Will it work?

If we could speak like Wolves by Kim Moore

if I could wait for weeks for the slightest change
in you, then each day hurt you in a dozen
different ways, bite heart-shaped chunks
of flesh from your thighs to test if you flinch
or if you could be trusted to endure,
if I could rub my scent along your shins to make
you mine, if a mistake could be followed
by instant retribution and end with you
rolling over to expose the stubble and grace
of