The Relationship with Rhyme

Tracks

Every poet must contemplate his or her relationship with rhyme.  Meter and rhyme are often identified as the elements that make a poem a poem.  I consider poetry to be a pattern language. The images, marks and appearance on the page are not random. The idea of pattern encompasses more than meter and rhyme.  Poems draw patterns with image, metaphor, myth, and music.  Within the term music, I want to recall the phrase "in time," in other words, being able to hold the beat or rhythm. Timing. Secondarily, poems can be both in time and out of time (referring to temporality) but their rhyme and meter are about timing.


My relationship with meter and rhyme is complicated. My mother grew up in a family of musicians. She loved to dance, and she tried to teach me to be in time with the music. In her arms, in step, I remember traveling across the dust rising from the wooden floor of the dance hall. Eventually my music became language, and it is sometimes syncopated, and my English inflected with the rhythms of her first language, Finnish. My grandparents did not speak English, and I didn't speak much Finnish. There existed a space in between the languages that I came to know very well, and often we were confronted by the barrier of language, trying to say the unsayable or sometimes merely the untranslatable. 

The old language was familiar (and meant "home"), but it was also incomprehensible and abstract to me, more akin to music than language.  I learned to listen deeply, not just to words, but to rhythm, inflection and gesture and context. English poetry rolls with iambic rhythms. Finnish language reverses the beat. When my parents spoke English with their accents, they did so with trochaic meter.  I was charmed by their English and (some people might have thought) hobbled by it. (A very endearing memory was of my father when he was looking for his wallet and called it his purse.) In this way, I became obsessed with words.


Consider this translated poem, chosen because it has one rhyme that will not distract from its other clear pattern:  

Tracks
by Tomas Tranströmer 

2 am: moonlight. The train has stopped 
out in the middle of the plain. Far away, points of light in a town, 
flickering coldly at the horizon.

As when a man has gone into a dream so deep 
 he'll never remember having been there 
when he comes back to his room.

As when someone has gone into an illness so deep 
everything his days were becomes a few flickering points, a swarm, 
cold and tiny at the horizon.

The train is standing quite still.
2 am: bright moonlight, few stars.

                                             • Translated from the Swedish by Robin Fulton

The poet or translator has been 'light-handed' with meter and rhyme. The train image, set against the landscape and sky, is both actual and metaphoric. Similes are introduced:  train as dream. Next, an illness is as a train, but this time around, the poet returns to the landscape and sky, "calling back" to these images, and now the landscape and sky are metaphor. Certain words are repeated: horizon, so deep, gone, flickering, 2 am, moonlight.  A man or someone is in stanzas 2 and 3, but not in stanzas 1 and 4.  The repetition (a slight variation of stopped: standing quite still) at the end of the poem encloses it.  We see the poem itself as a train, waiting to depart.   

Paul Valery described the difference between poetry and other kinds of writing as physiological.  By the use of the poetic line and its line and stanza breaks, meter, assonance, consonance, and rhyme, poetry works with our breath. Prose is different. Once the reader grasps the meaning in a novel, the words disappear. They are not necessarily meant to be memorable. A good poem enters us physically, engages our senses. Breath to breath, the poem functions like a delightful mechanism designed to create new meaning at each reading. 

Catherine Wagner in "The Politics of Meter: On Traditional Forms" writes an excellent analysis of the trends over the years. Traditional forms changed to free verse and avant- gard, and now a new formalism has risen. (It's no surprise of course. How long can a powerful tool of poetry be ignored?) She's drawn to exploring rhythm in her own writing, saying: 

Rhythm can induce trance states. Anyone who’s recited a rosary or been to a rave or drum circle knows this. In trance, your brain is in theta rhythm, dream rhythm, but you are not dreaming; you are conscious and acting, not simply being taken over. Poetic rhythm has been shown to change heart rate, and it’s not impossible that simply thinking in rhythm could induce changes in brainwaves. So I’ve been experimenting with using traditional poetic rhythms as a way to alter my consciousness while writing. The experimental English poet Tom Raworth, inventor of dozens of ingenious and provocative forms, has asked whether "form is a kind of quotation?" When I "quote" traditional forms, something outside and prior (a formal version of Jack Spicer’s Martians?) comes into me, something I can transform as it alters me.

Physiological, poetry!  Mention of the trance states brings to mind the cadences of the Kalevala and the beauty of spoken word and rap. Each poet, each voice, has a unique grasp on rhyme and meter, just as each poet has a unique fingerprint. The spoken word artists and "New Formalist" poets have rescued rhyme from its bad reputation as old fashioned, unskilled, even amateur. Too regular meter and end rhyme can dominate poems; a sing-song rhythm and obvious rhymes cause runaway trains.

Aside from inducing trance states or reverie, we are surrounded by the day's familiar rhythms. To ride a train is hypnotic. The sound of wheels on the tracks, the creaking of the car,and  the couplings between each car fill our ears and lulls the riders. The train smells of diesel fuel and grease, and sweaty hands grasp the chrome plated poles and railings. The experience engages all five senses. It transports us, and as a metaphor, transforms us.  

Trains are deep metaphors of rhythm and time. Consider their beautiful timetables that unfold in our hands. Notice the skill that Tranströmer uses:  he repeats 2 am, moonlight, horizon, gone, train. The standing still train brings to mind two journeys, one into dream, and the second into a long illness. He juxtaposes the time-bound train with the horizon and the moon with stars.  He is accesses several patterns: the constellations, the cycle of the moon, the train routes, the wake/sleep cycles, and the course of illness and recovery.  The little word swarm calls to mind a cloud of insects; it is slightly menacing--it could be hornets or biting ants. For the title, he chooses "Tracks" instead of "Train." Tracks are always there, and trains come and go upon them.  Perhaps the decision was made to avoid saying 'train' twice and changing the balance in a perfect construction. The words plain and train pulse, like lights blinking.  

Catherine Wagner mentions Tom Raworth's idea of form as a sort of quotation. It might be true. I think of it as a form of echo, a structural echo. A rhyme creates a sound echo. Literary allusion, symbol, metaphor also use visual echoes.  

The poem "Tracks" has places of fastening or mooring. The connection here is between train and plain, the object on its landscape; the poet captures the moment before turning, the poem is suspended between two journeys. The moorings must flex and expand, not bind but open.  At times they must hold and other times, release.  I am most drawn to internal rhyme and near rhyme. These offer ways to build structure, to call forward and back. I think of rhymes as points that function in ways similar to cleats or mooring points on a boat.  If poems are trains made of language, each rhyme can be a coupling or switch, a place of connection, a place of turning (or both).  Each pattern becomes a train- track for the poem.

Another possibility emerges and is held back in the following words: moonlight, light, light. This thrice repeated light calls attention to itself. The darkness is encompassing, but instead of the poet meeting that expectation with the use of the word 'night', the poet and/or  translator offers 2:00 am. twice. It falls in with the pattern of other repeated words. It's 2 am, so deeply night! But there are other kinds of darkness, the dreams and the going into illness. Night would not be able to hold all of it. We brush against the thought of this obvious rhyme, night; we are flooded with night (and yet light arrives three times).  These opposing forces and the expectation of a rhyme that is refused are full of tension, nearly erotic. 

The poem "Tracks"  is an excellent example of the possibilities of patterns.  As a metaphor, it is one that the reader understands richly; the actual and metaphoric train waits. It will have many destinations and arrivals.  Repetition and variation. Timing.  The poem balances on a fulcrum, one set of rhymed words.  If I have a train, I prefer not a runaway, but a Tranströmer train. 


Work Cited

Tranströmer, Tomas. "Tracks." New Collected Poems. Translated from the Swedish by Robin Fulton. Bloodaxe Books. 2011.  Web. Retrieved 29 November 2013.  http://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/oct/06/tomas-transtromer-poem-nobel-prize-tracks

Wagner, Catherine.  "The Politics of Meter: On Traditional Forms."  Poets.org. Academy of American Poets. Copyright 1997-2013.  Retrieved 29 November 2013.  http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5906

Valery, Paul.  Selected Writings of Paul Valery.  New Directions Press. 1964. Print.

Tuesday Poem: Afastina by Grace Teuila Evelyn Taylor

for Selina & Tusiata

Hey Afakasi
can your palangi hands do the brown siva?
can you Sāmoa siva a show and tell?
Island Monarchs
rebirth a longing for butterfly belongings
I used to hide unknown in their shame

Awkward siva
is my show and tell
I inherited this landscape of cultural monarchs
they whisper stories of missed belongings
white is my shame
for I am, Afakasi

Can you tell?
bowing to

The Poet on the Poem: Susan Laughter Meyers

I am happy to feature Susan Laughter Meyers as my guest on The Poet on the Poem. I am confident that you will enjoy her poem and her comments about it.

Susan Laughter Meyers is the author of My Dear, Dear Stagger Grass, released in August 2013 as the inaugural winner of the Cider Press Review Editors Prize. Her first book Keep and Give Away (University of South Carolina Press, 2006) received the South Carolina Poetry Book Prize, the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance (SIBA) Book Award for Poetry, and the Brockman-Campbell Book Award. Her chapbook Lessons in Leaving (1998) won the Persephone Press Book Award. Her poetry has been published in numerous journals, including The Southern Review, Prairie Schooner, and Crazyhorse, as well as on the online sites Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, and Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry column.

Today's poem comes from My Dear, Dear Stagger Grass.

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 Coastland

When the wind gets up and the water rises,
those who live on higher ground, at a distance
from the pinched smell of pluff mud,
from spartina marshes and swamps of cypress knees,
upland from the tannin-black tributaries
where through the bottoms, among the wet-footed
spider lilies, one barred owl
calls another, one to the other till there’s little left to say,
upland from the cottonmouth and the brown water snake
coiled and rooted by the tupelo
and the alligators logging across the slough,
upland from the deer hound pens full of yelps—
full of naps and pacing, full of cedar-thicket dreaming—
and the dirt yard’s milling of gray cats
and striped kittens yawning by the palmettos,
upland from the sea sky sea—the horizon
a fine line polished away—
from the shrimp boats shrinking smaller and smaller
on their way to their serious work of gathering,
from the smooth, quick balancing act
of the sun—heavy and orange—riding the waves,
upland from salt myrtle and the season’s second growth
of trumpet honeysuckle, those who live at a distance
from the band of quick, dark clouds blooming at sea,
upland from the bang and whirl, clatter
and shake of the wind when it’s up,
those who live on higher ground ask
of those who live by the flats and shoals,
the shallows and bogs, Why, and again, Why, O why.


DL: The diction in your poem is wonderful, e.g., pluff mud, spartina marshes, wet-footed spider lilies, salt myrtle, trumpet honeysuckle. How did you acquire all these succulent words? Did they appear in your first draft or did you add them to the poem during revision?

SLM: From the poem’s inception I knew during the whole process of writing it that I would be knee-deep in language and sound. Just now I went back to look at the first draft—there were twenty-six drafts—and from the start the poem included image after image from the natural world; but of the ones you pointed out, only the trumpet honeysuckle was in the first draft. By draft three, though, the pluff mud and spartina marshes were there, as well as the spider lilies—though they weren’t wet-footed yet. So it was an early, but gradual, process—the accretion of language and imagery—and it’s a boon to us poets that the names for native flora and fauna are rich in sound.

DL: I very much admire the way you've succeeded in animating the setting. Tell us how you created the sense of motion and energy that pervades the poem.

SLM: I wrote the poem not long after the active hurricane season of 2005, the year of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita among others. So the sheer energy of the storms was still with me. Despite the danger from hurricanes, the love for the lowlands and the wild beauty there persisted in my mind. More than once I’ve been in the situation of whether or not to evacuate—and if so, when—and it’s hard to leave, despite the danger. In the poem I wanted to show the attachment to the land, to a way of life, to the wild and even the less-than-beautiful aspects of the coastal plains.

Most of the images that came to mind as I was writing have their own motion of some kind—the snakes and alligators, the owls, the shrimp boats at work—that energy plus the force of the wind in the poem, always the wind—well, all of these, together with the fear, attachment, and uncertainty stirred up by the storm at hand, contributed to my own sense of agitation and unrest. And I hope that the swirling energy was conveyed.

DL: One of the feats of this poem is its syntax. How difficult was it to get one long sentence to sustain the entire poem? Tell us, also, about the function of the dashes.

SLM: I love what syntax can do in a poem, its ability to indicate not just sequence but also hierarchy and relationships, its role in manipulating the rhythm and pacing. Syntax is truly like a conductor leading an orchestra. Because “Coastland” consists of a sustained list, it felt natural for it to be one long, convoluted sentence. I wanted the movement of the poem to be somewhat like a spring that uncoils, a movement that seemed fitting for a poem of wind. As you can tell, too, I’m fond of dashes. I often use them to interrupt myself or to set off an explanatory phrase, sometimes for the extra-long pause that I’m aiming for. Other times I use them because I’ve already used commas, and further commas to set off the phrase or clause would simply be confusing.

DL: Your use of anaphora is hypnotic and all the more impressive because it occurs within one long sentence. The repetition of "upland from" and "from the" scattered throughout the poem adds speed and intensity. How did you decide how much was enough and not too much?

SLM: I did play around with that as I revised, but actually the frequency of those repetitions settled in sooner than I expected, probably because I kept reading the poem aloud. That’s the only way I can make those sorts of decisions, to hear the rhythms and patterns sounded out in different ways. While I’m reading my poems aloud, I hold my hand up close in front of my mouth as I read so that the sound bounces back to my ears. Then, and only then, can I begin to tell what is and isn’t working.

DL: Although there's no end rhyme, you make the poem sing with other sound devices—alliteration, assonance, consonance, and monosyllabic words. Tell us about the craft decisions that resulted in the poem's music.

SLM: I try to follow sound whenever I can. Thus, when I make diction choices, they’re often based on sound. The more I do this, the more it becomes natural to me. As a result, my ear is becoming more attuned to sound patterns. Reading the poem aloud comes into play, too. One example from the poem is those spider lilies mentioned earlier. In an early draft the image focused on “the spider lilies’ white thin stars,” referring to the narrow-leaved white flowers of native spider lilies that grow in swamps and along the edges of rivers. I liked the description of the flowers, but the image didn’t seem to do anything for the sound and rhythm of the poem. Eventually the wording became “the wet-footed / spider lilies,” which meant a loss of the flowers as stars but a gain of the rhythm and sound repetition in “wet-footed.” That’s the kind of change I’ll make for the sake of a poem’s music.

My reading directly affects my craft decisions, too. I seek out poems by other poets that are musical, hoping to learn from them. There are so many decisions to make! Thank goodness, many of them are ones we’re not even conscious of when we make them. Some of those good, unnoticed decisions derive from the bones of our writing practice—and old failed poems.


***************

Readers, please listen to Susan's reading of her poem.                                             

In Brilliant Explosions Alone by Steve Brightman

 

In Brilliant Explosions Alone: poems of baseball

publication 2013

Steve Brightman

NightBallet Press
nightballetpress.blogspot.com
ISBN 978-0-9893106-2-8

Review and Interview by Barbara Sabol

                     

In Brilliant Explosions Alone:
A Brilliant Blending of Pitcher and Poet

     The writer who follows the adage “write what you know” is sure to produce a credible read; pushed further along the spectrum of engagement, however, he who writes not only from knowledge but from love creates work truly passion-infused. Such is the most recent poetry chapbook by Steve Brightman, whose knowledge and love of the game of baseball ignited the collection In Brilliant Explosions Alone, published by Night Ballet Press. More than baseball, it is about Cleveland Indians baseball during a particular 2008 season, and about a particular young pitcher with promise to spare who failed to live up to his own and the fans’ great expectations.  Jeremy Sowers, the subject of Brightman’s lyric sequence, embodies much more than a could-have-been-ace pitcher:  in these poems he is a metaphor for a dream and a dream dashed, a modern-day David whose Goliath might be a Yankee slugger or Life coming at you.  In the poem, “All Our Smaller Battles,” Brightman aptly plays on that comparison―the small man with the sling shot and the one with hard ball―in the poem’s final stanza:

           . . .        

         

         This is where our stoic southpaw

         became us, because not all of us

         get to slay Goliath. Not all of us

         get cast as David.

         Most of us rest our heads

         as the vanquished.

     In Brilliant Explosions Alone works almost as a lyric documentary, one that the reader views in her imagination, game-by-game, poem-by-poem.  The book is neatly unified around the 2008 Indians season and proceeds chronologically from Sowers’ opening game in March to his last in September.  Cleverly, play dates replace page numbers, a feature that draws the reader further into the atmosphere of the field, the fans, the solitary pitcher on the mound.

     The 22 poems that form the narrative of Jeremy Sowers’ turbulent season are bookended by a poignant prologue and epilogue.  The prophetic prologue poem, “Left and Nothing,” sets the tone of the collection:

         

          . . .

          He was

          small enough

          for shadows,

          small enough

          for getting lost

          in the crowd of

          everyone who

          paid to see him

          pitch that day.

The epilogue poem, “Or Best Offer,” closes the narrative with a suggestion of regret, of failure.  Each of the four stanzas begins with the line “Not one damn kid/”:

          . . .

          Not one damn kid

          signs on the dotted line

          thinking that he is going

          to find his cards buried

          in a box of commons or

          sold on eBay in lots of 50    

          for a dollar or best offer.

          . . .

          Not one damn kid

          signs on the dotted line

          thinking that he will be

          epilogue before he’s thirty.

In this closing poem, Sowers, our anti-hero, broadly represents promise unfulfilled and the sad regret of failure under the field’s night lights.  The poet’s richly sympathetic rendering of his subject is the heart beat of this book.  Brightman’s real skill lies in his ability to establish an authorial distance and at the same time empathize so fully with the struggling pitcher, such that, for the reader, his struggle becomes our own.    

     The poems are shaped by taut, condensed lines, often running unbroken down the page, much like the outline of a fast ball over home plate. This, combined with the poet’s employment of the game’s charged argot and repetitive phrasing, results in a compelling cover-to-cover read; for this reader, in one captivated sitting. Take the poem, “Counting Tigers”:

          Seven Tigers

          tonight grounded

          out.

          Six Tigers

          tonight made it past

          first base.

          Five Tigers

          tonight managed

          hits.

          Four Tigers

          tonight were left

          stranded;  . . .

The recurring phrasing and form creates an urgent tempo that draws us through to the final stanza where the reference shifts to “One Indian/tonight has finished/counting Tigers.”

     An effective use of the speech line underscores the clipped vernacular in poems like “Perfect Through Five” where Sowers exultant voice animates descriptions of the game’s action:

          “Hell yeah,” I thought,

          “this was why

          they drafted me.”

          Home plate

          looked as big as

          the horizon and I was

          perfect through five.

     Brightman also effectively employs the rhetorical devices of anaphora and epistrophe−repetition of  phrasing at the start and ending of a line, respectively−blended with the first-person quote to reinforce the subject’s defeated and self-berating tone in “Like This”:

          . . .

          I could be 6-6. I could be 1-11

          I could be anywhere between.

          I could be a star.

          I could be in Columbus

          taking a bus.

          I’ve never struggled

          like this.

          I’ve never been hit

          like this.

          I’ve never doubted

          like this.

          I’ve never stood

          on the mound

          and questioned

          like this. . .

     Indeed, nearly three-quarters of the poems are persona, written from the pitcher’s alternately hopeful and hapless perspective. Another tight handful of poems blend poet’s and pitcher’s voices so seamlessly that narrator and subject become one. This is the greatest strength of In Brilliant Explosions: the poet aptly inhabits his subject, creates a credible voice that reveals the pitcher’s inner life, while making the game a palpable, dynamic and sensory-loaded experience. Brightman paints an intimate portrait of a player in the context of the great game of baseball.  These poems move the reader−baseball fan or no−because they manifest the ambition and struggle of an everyman with a dream and a chance to live it.  

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Barbara Sabol lives in the Great Lakes area and has an M. A. in Communication Disorders, an MFA, and a BA in French. She is the author of two chapbooks: Original Ruse (Accents Publishing, 2011) and The Distance Between Blues (Finishing Line Press, 2012). Her poems have appeared in a number of journals, including The Examined Life, San Pedro River Review, The Louisville Review, on the Tupelo Press Poetry Project web site, and in the collection, Bigger Than They Appear: Anthology of Very Short Poems (Accents Publishing). 

---

Conversation with poet, Steve Brightman

What a great read In Brilliant Explosions Alone is. You really hit your stride with the language and rhythm of the poems, which enacted the struggle and loneliness of a person under great internal and external pressure to perform in the spotlight. A wonderfully intimate portrayal of Sowers, and also a great depiction of the game of baseball, which I happen to love, as well.  What perfect timing that Night Ballet Press released the book mid-October, right in the thick of the World Series.  As a reader, I could appreciate even more the baseball colloquialisms and calls and the rhythm of  the announcer’s patter as I read through the book – straight through.

This is such a satisfying  book of poetry for the quality of each poem individually and for how you stitched them into a such a well organized series, to create a narrative of this one player and a field-level depiction of the game.  Why don’t we begin by talking about how the book is put together.

B: The collection is wonderfully unified and composed with a singular focus, which perfectly suits the theme of one pitcher, one season.  I really loved that the poems are organized by game date versus page number, which lent to the sensation of travelling through an entire seven month season in the short space of 24 pages. Did the organization of the book precede the writing of the poems?

S: Yes and no. I wrote the epilogue shortly after I’d seen him with backpack at PNC. Once I decided to move forward with this as a collection, the organization dictated the production. I’d spent a lot of time on baseballreference.com poring over the box scores, trying to get a feel for each individual game.

 B:  I know that you’re a great baseball fan and undoubtedly have some real ball player heroes. I’m curious about your choice of Jeremy Sowers as a sort of protagonist/anti-hero in that particular 2008 Indians season. 

S: I kind of stumbled across it in stages. It wasn’t a conscious decision to sit down and put him on a pedestal. I should start by saying that I’ve always been drawn to the anti-hero, so you can count that as the first stage: two of my favorite baseball players (Curt Flood and Roger Maris) were both maligned during their careers by the mainstream media and the public for one reason or another. The second stage was my general befuddlement at the relationship between Cleveland sports teams and their fans. Some guys become idols while others become afterthoughts and there seems to be no rhyme nor reason as to why. The final stage, the metaphoric straw, was seeing his game used jersey in the team shop for considerably less than other players’ jerseys. Heck, it was marked down cheaper than the manager’s and coaches’ jerseys. So I bought it. And kind of adopted him. Then I just had to figure out what to do with him now. Writing seemed like the most logical choice.

B: In these poems, Sowers is portrayed as both baseball pitcher and struggling human being; someone with a broad spectrum of feelings on and off the mound.  Reading the book, I was continually impressed with how you captured that alternately lonely and lofty experience of the pitcher.  How did you manage to step inside the imagined skin of your subject?

S: This was pretty easy. I’m a pretty big baseball fan, so the little boy inside of me still relishes the opportunity to see big league ballplayers in person (I hope I never outgrow that, FYI). One of the best places I’ve found to do this is at PNC Park in Pittsburgh. Fans gather before the game outside the visitor’s entrance for similar type run-ins and photo/autograph opportunities. Ballplayers get dropped off by taxi or bus or whatever service their hotel provides outside the ballpark and a scrum of varying degrees ensues, usually depending on popularity (sought out by autograph seekers) or how good-looking a ballplayer is (sought out by girls of all ages). I was there before a game in which the indians visited the pirates a few years back and was part of the scrum. Everybody went ballistic over Grady Sizemore and Victor Martinez when they left their cabs. Jeremy Sowers, meanwhile, walked up to the park with his backpack on, completely unmolested. It was like he was just some random guy walking up to the park to catch the game. That had stuck with me ever since.

B: There’s a wonderful balance of pathos and restraint in these poems.  On one hand, there are the numbers, baseball’s so amazingly abundant numerical data. And, on the other, the heart of the player. Did you consciously hold back or check your sympathetic response to Sowers by talking about speed of fast ball, field measurements, batting averages and so on?

S: Actually, I had to take a bit of the opposite approach if I wanted it to work on a personal level. I wanted to make it accessible to die hard baseball fans, but also casual fans (as well as those with little to no interest in baseball). I had to scale back my reliance upon the stats, rather than the man.

B: Most of the poems are persona, with Sowers relaying what’s going on in his head in the raw moment, as in “Empty Weird” or recollecting specific moments in the game, as in “This Is the One” (one of my favorites). I wonder why the intimacy of the persona poem, versus the straight narrative.

S: This kind of dovetails into my previous response. It was easier for me to access the man – Jeremy Sowers as Everyman, even – and avoid the clinical aspect of statistics through a persona. Statistics really only tell you about what happened, after the fact. They are their own narrative, so to speak.

B: The diction― the natural speech line, jargon―throughout is fantastic, reminiscent of the rhythm of the announcer’s patter. Did you deliberately fashion the lineation and cadence on how the game is called?

S: I did not. Over the last six or seven summers, though, I have spent a large part of my summers at games or watching and listening to games. March through October, baseball is pretty much the soundtrack of my life. I would have been more surprised if, upon completion, some of that cadence hadn’t seeped into my work.

B: Do you plan to write more books covering the life and times of one character?  I hope so, because you have a real talent for lyrically hunker into a character’s psyche.

S: Funnily enough, I’d been mapping out the idea of a Lou Reed chapbook, which was inspired by “13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” by Wallace Stevens, excepting Lou Reed will be my blackbird. The title, then, will be “13 Ways of Looking at Lou Reed”. I’d started it about a month before he’d passed. Now that he is no longer among the living, I feel a bit conflicted about continuing. I don’t want it to seem like I am being a parasite or an opportunist, so the release will have to be handled delicately.

B: On that same note, I wonder what inspires you to take up the proverbial pen―what form(s) does your muse take?

S: I don’t really have a muse. I don’t really search for inspiration. I just keep my eyes and ears open and write. That said, I do have a consistent and particular audience in mind when I write.

B: This is your fourth chapbook in less than two years time, which signals that there’s quite a lot in your creative hopper to write about! Please talk about your writing regimen and how you manage to be so prolific.

S: My writing regimen is pretty simple. I write every day. Literally, every day. Halloween was 1400 days in a row. It boggles my mind a bit when I think about that (and the accumulation of forgotten poems). Sometimes, I’ll participate in poem a day challenges in order to find prompts that I wouldn’t normally use to write, but most days I just sit down and write. Granted, my writing style (short poems, mostly) lends itself to that routine, but in a lot of ways that routine has also lent itself to my writing style. As I was telling another writer the other day, I tend to write near the end of the day. My body winds down and becomes tired and my mind is quite near the muddiness of sleep. It is also quite clean as, by this point in my day, I’ve managed to move past the events of the day. My writing happens in that area in between clean and muddy. Obviously, some evenings I’m not near my computer or able to write due to other commitments. On those days, I try to write first thing in the morning (before my day has a chance to fill with events that need to be shaken free) or whenever my schedule permits.

B: You have yet another book coming out in the near future, correct? Can you tell us about it?

S: I have been wrestling with the idea of a full length manuscript, but have not really applied myself to that too seriously. If and when I do that, I will probably self-publish unless someone out there with a specific idea (and the means to wade through/cull my body of work) wants to take the reins on that.

B: What projects are you currently working on?

S: Well, as stated earlier, I have my running poem a day project. Not sure when that will end, although I realize it will eventually. I also have a chapbook slated for 2014 with NightBallet Press. Dianne Borsenik has really been a guardian angel with her oversight and presentation of my work.  

Steve Brightman, Biography

Steve Brightman lives in Kent, OH. He has published three chapbooks this year: In Brilliant Explosions Alone (Nightballet Press, 2013), Absent The (Writing Knights Press, 2013), and Like Michelangelo Sorta Said (Poet's Haven, 2013); and has just put the finishing touches on a fourth, 13 Ways Of Looking At Lou Reed. His work has also been included in a number of journals, such as Two Hawks Quarterly, The Cleveland Review, Junkmail Oracle, Bear Creek Haiku, and in  anthologies, such as Buzzkill: Apocalypse – An End of the World Anthology (Night Ballet Press, 2012), Lipsmack! A Sampler Platter of Poets from Night Ballet Press (2012) and I Have My Own Song for It: Modern Poems about Ohio (U of Akron Press, 2003).

 

Publishing Tips

The bookshelf

Do you want to see your book in the bookstore? It happens, but it takes a long time. Read on for some guidelines about seeing your work into print (or e-publication). 

Present a manuscript that looks professional: 

• Proofread carefully, then have a friend proofread
• One poem per page
• Use standard margins
• Use a standard, 12 point font. Avoid fancy font.
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments - add a page that acknowledges previous publications: what, where, when
• Paginate

A cover letter should include the title of the work that you are submitting and a brief biographical statement. If you are sending a manuscript to a competition contest, or if it's part of a grant application, read the submission guidelines carefully. Some contests request that your name does not appear on the manuscript.

What are the standard sizes of manuscripts?  

• A full poetry manuscript: 60-100 pages
• Chapbook length: about 30 pages
• Novella: 60 pages
• Novel length: about 300 pages

How Do You Assemble a Manuscript?

This is a challenge, and the answer lies within the poems. Let the form rise out of the content. Art and poetry is an emotional investigation of a subject. Most poets discover the nature of this investigation during the project, perhaps at the completion of the project.  An image or concept might arise. This is the key to the overall organization of the manuscript.  Maybe you wouldn't call it a concept, but you would call it a question or an inquiry.  

It's helpful to develop sequences of poems that are related thematically or by form.  It's sensible to use these sequences of closely related poems to build a manuscript.  

Most presses like to see individual poems published in magazines.  I know some publishers would like about fifty percent of the poems previously placed in literary magazines.  Send out your work regularly. Most online and print literary magazines now have an online submission manager (like Submittable or Submishmash), and the editors of the magazines usually request a small batch of poems to review, 3-5 poems usually. 

The online submission managers are easy to use. You are asked to fill out text boxes online that include your name, address, and other contact information. It will guide you through uploading a file that contains the poems you want to be considered (saved in .docx, .doc, .rtf).  After you press the "Submit" button, a page will open confirming your submission and you'll also receive a confirmation e-mail. 

Read the submission guidelines on the literary magazine's website, and look for additional information. Some magazines develop themes and want to consider theme-related work. Others will request a certain number of poems.  All would greatly appreciate it if you become familiar with the publication (by subscribing or buying a copy). Most presses take 2 months or more to reply, and your reply will come via email.  The better you know the market, the more successful will be your efforts to place poems.  

Alternatives to print publicatiion: zines, broadsides, posters, poetry videos, e-publication

DIY Publishing:  (It helps to know people)

• resource: Midwest Independent Publisher's Association
• http://www.mipa.org/
• be wary of "preditors" -- do your research / avoid paying for unnecessary services

Establish an Editorial Process

• Professional quality work: Hire proofreader(s)
• Cover: cover image/ (hire a professional for professional results)
• Text: Consider "standard practices" or consistent "styles" for title formats, margins use inDesign for best results

Turning the Manuscript into a Book 

There are many design decisions that must be made. You can hire somebody to do it for you (and it will be expensive). You can do it yourself if you are skilled.  These are things you will be thinking about:

• The cover -- have a concept for visual images, title placement, font size & style back cover -- blurbs, isbn bar code, price, publisher
• spine -- author, title, publisher
• ISBN numbers / http://www.isbn.org/standards/home/index.asp
• LCN numbers/ Library of Congress / http://www.loc.gov/publish/pcn/ Copyright / http://www.copyright.gov/
• Style Choices (be consistent with font for titles and text)
• Title Page: title/author/publisher/place of publication
• Publisher Information / ISBN & LCN / Acknowledgments
• Table of Contents
• Poems (one poem per page, consistent margins, format, font style & size, titles)
• Information about the author
• Blurbs - ask other writers

Find a Printer and Distribution Network

• offset press / digital and print on demand / e-books
• read the National Writer's Union Print on Demand Report: http://nwu.org/sites/nwu.org/files/print_on_demand_report.pdf
• A popular website for DIY authors: https://www.createspace.com/

Plan to Do a Creative Marketing Campaign

Many writers are publishing their own books these days, and you will need to work hard to find your market and appeal to readers.

• build your network
• send advance copies to reviewers/ send to Publisher's Weekly 6-8 months in advance create a website
• use social media: facebook / twitter / social bookmarking
• plan a book launch / schedule readings / book signings
• do promotion and outreach / book fairs / book award competitions
• find creative marketing strategies/ niches and unique approaches 

Fragments of Marilyn

Plenty has been written about Marilyn Monroe, and yet, she still remains something of a mystery. She had a spectacular and sad life. She was treated like a dumb blonde and she played into that image at times. She also wanted to be considered a serious actress. She wrote poetry and journals that never appeared during her lifetime and that, perhaps, she never wanted to appear. She married a high profile baseball legend, Joe Dimaggio, that only turned the wattage on the spotlight even brighter. Then she married an intellectual playwright, Arthur Miller, who must have been attractive for very different reasons.

 A few years ago, I bought a collection of her own writing—diaries, poems, and letters—  titled Fragments.

It is fragments. Never meant to be a book. It shows many of the scars of her sexual abuse, psychotherapy, betrayals, her fears of madness in her genes, and someone who wanted to really master her art.

Marilyn also wrote (or had ghostwritten by Ben Hecht) an autobiography called My Story when her career was peaking, but it was not published until over a decade after her death. In the book she describes herself as "the kind of girl they found dead in the hall bedroom with an empty bottle of sleeping pills in her hand."

There are a number of photos online of Marilyn reading. A few seem candid. Some seem staged, as if trying to promote that other Marilyn.

A famous one is by Eve Arnold showing her reading James Joyce’s Ulysses. Alfred Eisenstaedt photographed her reading and looking casual curled on her sofa in front of her real personal library. Another photograph shows her reading the poetry of Heinrich Heine.

The book of her fragments shows that she was serious about writing and that poetry was a way she tried to understand herself and her very strange place in the world.

Her marriage to MIller, like all her marriages and relationships with men, went bad and he was a real betrayal for her. But when her love for him was new, she wrote a poem imagining him as a young boy.


my love sleeps besides me—
in the faint light—I see his manly jaw
give way—and the mouth of his
boyhood returns
with a softness softer
its sensitiveness trembling
in stillness
his eyes must have look out
wonderously from the cave of the little
boy—when the things he did not understand—
he forgot

but will he look like this when he is dead
oh unbearable fact inevitable
yet sooner would I rather his love die
than/or him?

I don't put the poem forward to say she was an important poet. She wrote, as many of us do, because we feel we must write, even if the audience for our poems is small or non-existent. The poem would not seem out of place at a workshop or open reading or coming from one of my students.

My own boyhood crush on Marilyn the movie star turned in a very different direction when she died the summer of 1962 at age 36. I heard terrible stories about her - the difficult and spoiled diva, drugs and affairs with the Kennedys.  When I was a teenager, I read her autobiography and read about her life and each new sad revelation made me feel sorry for her.

I know that she probably didn't want pity, but I definitely went through a phase when I fantasized being the man that might have really understood her - and saved her.

"Goodbye Norma Jean, you lived your life like a candle in the wind," sings Elton John and I'm sure that my fantasy and his were not so far apart. "I would have liked to have known you, but I was just a kid.  Your candle burned out long before your legend ever did."

Elton John's lyric sums up pretty well the short arc of her career that didn't really end very far from where it started in the eyes of the press and public.

Hollywood created a superstar
And pain was the price you paid
Even when you died
Oh, the press still hounded you
All the papers had to say
Was that Marilyn was found in the nude

Reading her personal writing again this past weekend reminds me of why we write and what writing can do, and not do, to help us deal with our lives and those lives that are tied to us.


       

Heart Land

I've enjoyed hunkering down in Iowa for these weeks. Teaching at Cornell College has been a revelation--the focus on creative nonfiction, with an emphasis on incorporating science on technology, has been a great change of pace. Some thoughts....

1) Meeting with students five days a week permits no room for procrastination. Each week takes on its own thematic shape and pace. The 10-11 AM "workshop hour," in which I divided my 15 students into groups of 3 and 4 for the sake of informal conversation, was both my single best decision (in terms of getting to know my students) and the worst decision (in terms of conserving my own work time).

2) I am still not a morning person.

3) This generation of students doesn't use email much. They don't send a confirming reply unless you explicitly request it, so it can feel like you're shouting into the void. On the upside, I was glad they so readily left behind their laptops in coming to class.

4) Lecturing on five books, a dozen articles, and the craft of nonfiction is a lot for one month. I used cards with abstract keyword prompts (e.g., for The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks: gender, class, race, identity) to guide discussion. Being a teacher requires an extraordinary vocabulary, one which you can and will flub from time to time, and then you must decide: do I correct myself in front of my students?

5) I still haven't figured out how to balance the needs of the students who get lost in class-wide silences, and the ones who use those silences to shape their answers. 

6) No matter how sophisticated your class, arts and crafts are a good thing. Every time I can work erasures onto a syllabus, I do, thanks in large part to Mary Ruefle's great craft essay. This time around, we're using outdated science textbooks courtesy of Cornell College's library to shape creative texts from "uncreative" sources. 

7) Never give back graded work at the beginning of class; always wait until the end. 

8) Students are comfortable reading beyond their level in an academic field, as long as they are regularly assured that it's okay to not "get" everything. I was delighted by how many gravitated to Leonard Susskind's The Black Hole War, opting to read it in its entirety, which I suspect is in part because he is so generous on this point. 

9) Strange that we ask students to spend four years offering up informal opinions--"Did you like it?"--and close analysis on the page, without offering practical experience with the intersection of the two: the 1,200-word book review. That's a real-world writing skill. We talked about what reviews are meant to do, reading examples from the New York Times Book Review and The American Scholar, and they wrote their own. 

10) You never know which readings students will love, and which will elicit a "Meh." You never know which personal details to share, or which questions to answer only with editing. You never know who dreams, deep down, of being a poet. 

Back in my own undergraduate days at the University of Virginia, I realize that I had no idea how hard it was to run a class. In recalling the things we harped on--spotting typos, expecting a 100% correct answer to every question, sulking when someone returned graded papers later than expected--I'm embarrassed. And newly grateful. 

Most nights I come home to Collin House and daze out with an infinite supply of SVU episodes. But I made it to Iowa City to see Hailey read from her new book, SWOOP, at Prairie Lights, and afterwards we sat by the fireplace at Sanctuary. In Cedar Rapids, I walked the Czech Village, then camped out at the NewBo Market to watch a juggler and snack on fresh falafel. On a tip from the gentleman who specialized in Eggenberg glass, I drove to Solon and found an oasis of entrepreneurship. The Salt Fork Kitchen is on one side of the street, with a bloody mary bar stocked with house-picked onions and four different pepper sauces. On the other side of the street, Big Grove Brewery sells six varieties of in-house beer--I recommend their seasonal IPA, the Redheaded Stranger--and serves dishes like this elaborate roasted cauliflower, with curry sauce and coppa ham. (That morning, the chef had also carved a duck from a whole pear, which then roamed the length of the bar. Not for sale.) These two places, staffed by enthusiastic 20- and 3o-somethings, have only been open a matter of months. I hope they thrive.

I came to Iowa with no expectations. I leave thinking I could live here.

"Pigs" by Les Murray

Us all on sore cement was we.
Not warmed then with glares. Not glutting mush
under that pole the lightning's tied to.
No farrow-shit in milk to make us randy.
Us back in cool god-shit. We ate crisp.
We nosed up good rank in the tunnelled bush.
Us all fuckers then. And Big, huh? Tusked
the balls-biting dog and gutsed him wet.
Us shoved down the soft cement of rivers.
Us snored the earth hollow,

The Crafty Poet Book Party

The book launch reading for The Crafty Poet: A Portable Workshop was held on Sunday, November 10, at the West Caldwell Public Library. We had a perfect day for it and a heart-warming turnout. A total of seventeen poets came to read. Here are some photos, in the order of the reading. I used the structure of the book to structure the reading.

This is an early picture of the audience arriving. We had 52 people for an afternoon of poetry.

This is me, Diane, welcoming the audience and introducing the book.

Section I. Generating Material / Using Time
Ann DeVenezia was our first poet. Here she reads "Waiting for My Friend," a sample poem
written to the prompt that accompanies Karin Gottshall's model poem, "More Lies."


Section II. Diction

Susanna Rich reads "Radish," a sample poem written to the prompt that accompanies 

Rod Jellema's "Because I Never Learned the Names of Flowers." Susanna later also read 

"Gassing Up in New Jersey, Just Before Midnight."

Me talking a bit about my Craft Tip, "Finding the Right Words." (I seem to be looking for them
on the ceiling.)

Tina Kelley reading "My Man, the Green Man," a sample poem written to the prompt
that accompanies Caitlin Doyle's model poem, "The Foley Artist's Apprentice." Tina later
also read "To the Inarticulate Man Who Tries."

Michael T. Young reads "Advice from a Bat," a sample poem written to the prompt that
accompanies Amy Gerstler's model poem, "Advice from a Caterpillar."

Section III. Sound

Sandy Zulauf reads "Doctor Poets," a sample poem written to the prompt that accompanies
Suzanne Zweizig's model poem, "American Supermarket Idyll." Sandy will present his poem
and the book as a gift to his doctor on his next visit.

Section IV. Voice

Joel Allegretti reads his acrostic poem, "In a Station," a sample poem written to the prompt
that accompanies Jeanne Marie Beaumont's acrostic, "After."

Gail Gerwin reads "Rosebuds Ungathered," another acrostic poem.

Ken Ronkowitz reads "Carpe Diem," a sample poem written to the prompt that accompanies
Jennifer Maier's model poem, "Post Hoc."

Section V. Imagery / Figurative Language

Bronwen Butter Newcott reads "Love," the model poem that begins this section.

Wanda Praisner reads "After Love," the sample poem she wrote to the prompt for Bronwen's poem.

Section VI. Going Deep / Adding Layers

Charlotte Mandel reads her poem, "Flood Washed," a sample poem written to the prompt 

for Stanley Plumly's model poem, "In Answer to Amy's Question What's a Pickerel."

Broeck Blumberg reads "Grief Beyond Sorrow," her sample poem written to the prompt 

for Richard Jones' model poem, "White Towels." 

Section VII. Syntax

Delaware Poet Laureate JoAnn Balingit discusses her craft tip, "The Promise of Syntax," 

and then reads one of her poems illustrating a syntactical device.

Section VIII. Line / Stanza

Marie-Elizabeth Mali reads "Second Year of Marriage," the model poem that begins this section.

Basil Rouskas reads "Scents of Summer," a poem that he wrote using the prompt 

based on Marie-Elizabeth's poem.

Section IX. Revision

Laura Freedgood reads "Breakfast in Patmos," a sample poem written to the prompt
that accompanies Adele Kenny's poem, "Snake Lady."

Section X. Writer's Block / Recycling

We didn't have any poets present for this section, but we hope we sent everyone home
with lots of enthusiasm for revising poems and writing new ones.

Following the reading we had a reception with homemade cookies made by me—brownies, white chocolate chip and chocolate chip cookies, toffee delites, date nut bars, and lemon love notes. While people munched and talked poetry, I signed books which felt like a perfect way to end the party.

The Crafty Poet is available HERE.