Simply Emily

Emily's poems look so simple, but are often so hard to understand  It is so interesting that the relative simplicity of her verse forms actually make it more difficult to pull meaning from our reading of her.

Emily Dickinson's poems often have images and metaphors taken from all around her, especially from nature, but they are just as often psychological landscapes.

Did she want to challenge her readers? Of course, the first published book of her poetry appeared in 1890, four years after her death. I wrote earlier this month about Sylvia Plath's collection, Ariel. I don't think there are many critics connecting Emily to Sylvia, but I see one connection. As with Plath's book, Emily's small poetry collection was also heavily edited by men. They were very selective and removed her unique syntax, spelling, and punctuation.

It took much longer for Emily's true verse to appear than it did for Plath's intended book. The complete, restored edition of Emily's poetry did not appear until 1998 - more than 100 years after the original publication.

I was never fond of allegory, but Em enjoyed using it. Was she writing for me? Was she writing for any of us? I think she was. As often as I hear poets say that they write "for themselves,"  they all are happy to have their poems published. 

What is the writing lesson of Emily's poems?  perhaps, it is similar to this passage from Mr. Whitman.

“The secret of it all, is to write in the gush, the throb, the flood, of the moment – to put things down without deliberation – without worrying about their style – without waiting for a fit time or place. I always worked that way. I took the first scrap of paper, the first doorstep, the first desk, and wrote – wrote, wrote…By writing at the instant the very heartbeat of life is caught.”  Walt Whitman

I wonder if Em's odd use of dashes instead of periods, commas, and the other typical punctuation. marks.  She also liked to capitalize words - not just words at the beginning of a line.  Why? Not totally clear. .

I have read that the use of dashes and of capital letters to emphasize and personify common nouns was something she may have found in the grammar text (Wells' Grammar of the English Language) that she used at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary.

I like those dashes. Fast and simple punctuation. Reminds me of the dashes you find in haiku. A  nice clear indicator to the reader to break, and sometimes a nice bridge to a new idea.

As a young reader, I imagined prim and proper Miss Dickinson as a good, religious girl. I discovered later she had a a lot of skepticism about traditional religion. She would fit nicely into that growing number of  Americans who say they are not "religious" but are "spiritual. She said that "Some keep the Sabbath going to Church" but she was quite content Sundays at home in her garden where "the sermon is never long.”

At Mount Holyoke, they organized students into three categories: "established Christians,” those who “expressed hope,” and those who were “without hope.” Guess which group Emily was in?  I bet she got picked last for softball too.

But, she had her books: Longfellow, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Emerson, George Eliot, and the Brownings.

She loved the Brontës. She wrote “All overgrown by cunning moss" for the death of Charlotte Brontë, 

All overgrown by cunning moss,
All interspersed with weed,
The little cage of “Currer Bell”
In quiet “Haworth” laid.

This Bird – observing others
When frosts too sharp became
Retire to other latitudes –
Quietly did the same –

But differed in returning –
Since Yorkshire hills are green –
Yet not in all the nests I meet –
Can Nightingale be seen –

Emily requested that a poem by that other Emily -  Brontë  - be read at her own funeral. I hope the family granted her wish. I hope it wasn't "Remembrance."  Maybe it was "Ah! Why, Because the Dazzling Sun."

Ah! why, because the dazzling sun
Restored my earth to joy
Have you departed, every one,
And left a desert sky?

AWP 2016 & 2017 & Ad Infinitum

I am about to hop on a plane to Los Angeles, where I will spend 72 hours immersed in the annual AWP Conference, which brings 12-14K writers to one place. I always pack my high heels in plastic bags. Over the years, my plastic bags have acquired an accidental theme, as seen in my pre-packing snapshot. 

If you offer me a button, I will wear it. If you buy me a martini, I will drink it. If you have a poem to read, I will listen. If you have a question, I'll probably screw up the answer, but I'll try.

In terms of simple self-care, I return to what my godmother Laura used to say: Never turn down the offer of water, Kleenex, or a chance to use the bathroom. There's all kinds of additional good advice out there about networking and/or shoes. In future years, I will probably have more to say about networking and/or shoes. 

This is my fourteenth consecutive year attending the AWP Conference. My range of experience includes the euphoria of a book deal, fighting with loved ones, tears, food poisoning, being hit on by famous authors, a random hook-up or two (unrelated to the prior clause), expensive meals, Triscuit-and-tinned-oyster meals, moderating two panels, meaningful conversations with editors, elevator rides spent wondering "Do I say something?," 50+ hours on the Book Fair floor, several marathon offsite readings, dancing at the Black Cat with former students, and one truly raucous hotel room party. I feel pretty at home at the AWP Conference.

That comfort is a luxury. Not a fiscal one--I've paid for fourteen years out-of-pocket. It's easy to take for granted ways that we navigate the AWP conference maelstrom; ways that might feel out of reach for others, even though they are equally-if-not-more talented, equally-if-not-more craving the community of fellow writers.

If you're going to the AWP Conference this year, consider complicating your understanding of what's going on in these ways~

-Ever walked into a panel where the room is filled over capacity and people have hunkered down to sit along every available stretch of wall?

Imagine looking at the front of the room where your reserved seat waits and wondering how you're going to navigate across all those bodies, filling every aisle, using crutches. Or your wheelchair. 

-Ever ignored a moderator's request for texts in advance--the poems you plan to read, or the statistics you plan to cite--because it's easier to plan morning-of? Ever tried to save money or please an aesthetic sensibility by squeezing the handout onto one page?

Consider that printing just 3-5 copies of a handout with a simple, enlarged font could meet the needs of visually-impaired members of our community. 

-Ever waved off the offer of a microphone because "I talk plenty loud"?

Maybe you do talk plenty loud. Maybe the person after you doesn't. Set the standard, for the sake of hearing-impaired members of our community. 

-Ever shot the glare o' death at the person whose infant keeps burbling, laughing, whining, or crying during the Very Important Tribute to the Very Important Poet in the Very Quiet Room?

Rest assured that parent is not bringing along his or her child because of a misdirected theory concerning postnatal aesthetic development. This is not about "Baby's First Villanelle." That parent is trying to preserve a sense of self, possibly in tandem with pressing professional expectations, in a system that offers no standardized options. 

Your matter of convenience might be someone else's critical access point. 

My privilege is profound. I have good sight and hearing; I can sprint from one panel to the next. I don't have to worry about child care. I am often in the so-called majority. But most of us have at least one scenario in which we are marginalized, whether the criteria be physical, emotional, racial, sexual, or fiscal. The nature of my food allergies is a lifetime of walking into rooms where for everyone else, it's time to party--and for me, it's time to strategize. Cake? Pizza? Where should I stand? What, or who, should I avoid touching? How's my breathing? Do my eyelids look funny? Can people tell my lips are swollen?

I like tote bags. I like a good hotel bar. I love seeing a writer I've never heard of before step to the microphone and tear it up. But I am thinking about these bigger matters, too, and I'm not the only one.

"Why Does Awp Writer’s Conference Continue To Refuse To Offer Child Care?" ~ Anna March for HipMama
The Lulu Fund: Supporting Racial, Gender, & Class Justice
"You're Invited to Braless AWP" ~ Karen Craigo

"Disabilities and Writing" ~ Josh Logue for Inside Higher Ed*

AWP Disability Caucus

"AWP Tips for Writers" ~ "Tipsy Tullivan" via YouTube

*As Karrie Higgins has pointed out, this article has some factual issues, and the headline premise of "debating" access is problematic at best. 

In 2017, the AWP Conference comes back to Washington, D.C., in celebration of the organization's 50th anniversary. I'm not on the planning subcommittee; I'm not tenured faculty at any local school. But as someone who deeply loves her city--our capitol city--I want this to be a time and place where the conference's doors open wider. And the year after, opened wider still. We can do better.

*

If you'd like to cross paths in the real world, here are the best ways to do so between now and Saturday. Say hello! I am shyer than I look, but always happy to meet people. The codeword is: capybara. 

Thursday, March 31

9-10:15 AM ~ Poets on Craft: “The Furious and Burning Duende,” with Mahogany L. Browne, Jacqueline Jones LaMon, and Pat Rosal, moderated by Danielle Barnhart ~ Room 404 AB of the Los Angeles Convention Center. (Presenting)

Lorca tells us that the artist is possessed by duende, a malign spirit that burns the blood like powdered glass. This panel asks if poets can or should summon duende at will. Is it fleeting and ephemeral, or can it be harnessed as an instrument of craft? Five poets who have written about and with duende share their experiences invoking the dark, elusive creative force. We promise fiery exchanges on this evocative subject.

11 AM-Noon ~ Signing for Count the Waves, hosted by W.W. Norton & Co. ~ Booth 613 of the Book Fair at the Los Angeles Convention Center. (Signing)

6:30-8 PM ~ University of Tampa Low-Residency MFA Cocktail Reception ~ Diamond Salon 9 on the Third Floor of the JW Marriott. (Co-hosting)

Friday, April 1

1:30-2:45 PM ~ Reading with 2014 AWP Award Series winners Charles M. Boyer, Sarah Einstein, Susan Muaddi Darraj, and Iliana Rocha ~ Room 503 of the Los Angeles Convention Center. (Introducing Iliana Rocha)

6-7:15 PM ~ Disability Caucus ~ Room 411 of the Los Angeles Convention Center. (Attending)

6-7 PM ~ VCCA Fellows Reunion ~ The Mixing Room in the Lobby of the JW Marriott. (Cohosting)

Saturday, April 2

1:30-2:45 PM ~ “Remembering Claudia Emerson” reading with Jill McCorkle, Emilia Phillips, Wyatt Prunty, Kathy Graber ~ Room 403 B of the Los Angeles Convention Center. (Participating)

Claudia Emerson’s death in late 2014 grieved her friends and her readers. This event features panelists remembering her spirit and her work and inviting audience members to participate by also reading her poems so that her single voice resonates through a chorus of witnesses. The panelists focus on her posthumous books, The Opposite House and The Impossible Bottle.

6-8 PM ~ Claudia Emerson Chapbook Award Reading with M.L. Brown ~ Far Bar Little Tokyo (347 E 1st St) in Los Angeles. (Reading)

Bill Murray: Poetry Editor

Bill Murray supports New York's Poets House and has been known to hang around with Billy Collins and others and read or post poems. In celebration of National Poetry Month, Oprah Magazine asked him if he would be interested in picking some poems for the magazine to print and to comment on them. He was and he did.


Galway Kinnell, Lucille Clifton, Thomas Lux and Naomi Shihab Nye are among the poets that Murray chose to include in the issue.

Some of his comments:

On Kinnell's "Oatmeal," about the poet sharing a meal with the late John Keats: "Alas, Kinnell, too, is now available for breakfast." (Kinnell passed away in 2014.)

Lux's odd romantic ode "I Love You Sweatheart" starts out:

A man risked his life to write the words.
A man hung upside down (an idiot friend
holding his legs?) with spray paint
to write the words on a girder fifty feet above
a highway.

The poem got this note: "This poem vibrates the insides of my ribs, where the meat is most tender."

Nye's poem "Famous" says:

I want to be famous in the way
a pulley is famous
or a buttonhole, not because it did
anything spectacular
but because it never forgot
what it could do.

Murray comments on it: "It's not the dream of being big. It's the dream of being real. That's what stands out to me."

www.nme.com/news/

National Poetry Month 20th Anniversary

April is National Poetry Month. Since 1996, we have a put more emphasis on things poetic for that month and it has become the largest literary celebration in the world. This year is the 20th anniversary celebration of poets and poetry.

I have been getting a copy of the official National Poetry Month poster and collecting them since the beginning. For 2016, artist Debbie Millman created one which features lines of poetry by some of our greatest poets. 

The Academy of American Poets distributes over 120,000 posters to classrooms, libraries, and bookstores throughout the United States and you can get one for free, while supplies last.


https://www.poets.org/national-poetry-month/
https://www.poets.org/national-poetry-month/form/poster-request-form

Self-Promotion: When to Say Go and When to Say No

We all know that when you have a new book out a certain amount of promotion is necessary. That's certainly true for those of us with small presses, but it's also true for poets whose books are from larger presses. Several times I've had the experience of learning that a poet I know has a new book out—and that it's been out for months or longer. Why didn't I know that sooner? Because the poet never told me or anyone else. That's a big mistake, one that costs the poet a bunch of sales.

My new book, The Uneaten Carrots of Atonement, came out mid-February. Since I believe that if we poets want readers for our work we first need to let them know that it exists, I prepared a simple flier with cover image, one blurb, and Amazon link included. I sent the flier flying off to my email list.

Within a matter of days, the book sold out at Amazon. Good news, right? Should have been and in the past would have been. But for unknown reasons, my listing at Amazon then indicated that the book would ship in 1-4 weeks. Most people don't want to wait up to 4 weeks. I began to get emails from people telling me they'd deferred ordering or would buy the book when they next saw me. I assumed this was a temporary situation. It was. Soon the book was listed as "Temporarily Out of Stock," even worse. I called Amazon repeatedly and was told that books had been ordered and the listing would go to "In Stock" as soon as the order arrived. One Amazon rep even suggested that I tell people to order from B&N! Weeks went by. Finally, the listing went to ships in 2-3 weeks. Better but not great. Then several people told me that they'd actually received the book within a week. Not a bad wait.

I debated whether or not to send a second e-mail flier to let people know that they could now get the book at Amazon. Would that be pesty, overkill, obnoxious? Then I remembered several times when I'd received a second notice from someone else and was thereby reminded that I'd meant to order that book but had forgotten. I went ahead and ordered that person's book.

Also, in the weeks when my book was not listed as "In Stock," it had become available as an e-book. And the print book was being discounted 25% at both Amazon and B&N. So I had new news to include.

I went ahead and sent the second flier. I immediately began to get return emails. Oh no, I feared, this person is going to demand to be removed from my email list. But that didn't happen. Instead, some people thanked me for the reminder and said they'd just ordered the book. Others wrote notes of congratulations—worded in such a way that it was clear they had missed my first notice. One person wrote and requested a review copy.

Lesson learned: People do need and often want reminders.

So let people know your good news. And if you have a good reason for sending a follow-up note, go ahead and do it.

And by the  way, in the second note, I took the Amazon rep's suggestion and included a link to B&N.

Now as of today, my Amazon listing has finally, finally stopped showing the ships in 1-3 note. Progress. This morning it said Order Soon, Only 4 Copies Left, More on the Way. Definitely progress. And the book is now discounted at 28%. But I won't be sending a third note. That would feel obnoxious.

Plath's 'Ariel' at 50

Ecstasy (1894), a painting by Władysław Podkowiński, depicting a ride similar to that described in "Ariel"
www.culture.pl, Public Domain


Listening to a recent program from the Poetry Off the Shelf podcast, I am reminded that Ariel, Sylvia Plath's posthumous collection, is 50 years old.

Ariel was the second book of Sylvia Plath's poetry to be published, and was originally published in 1965, two years after her death by suicide.

Plath is credited with being a pioneer of the 20th-century style of writing called confessional poetry. Her poem "Daddy" is one of the best-known examples of this genre.

The poems in the 1965 edition of Ariel are filled with frightening psychic landscapes, and were very different from her first collection, Colossus.

In 1963, Plath's semi-autobiographic novel The Bell Jar was published under the pseudonym "Victoria Lucas" (and reissued in 1966 under her own name).

In the collection's title poem, a woman is riding her horse in the country at dawn. I recall reading the poem in a college class and the professor telling us that there were three Ariels to consider.

One was Sylvia Plath's own horse, which she loved to ride. Second, was that androgynous sprite from Shakespeare's The Tempest which I had read that same semester and quite loved. The third allusion, if she intended it, was to Jerusalem, which was also called Ariel in the Old Testament.

I don't know that I have even now completely understood her poetic "Ariel."

In the 1965 edition of Ariel, her husband, the poet Ted Hughes, had changed Plath's chosen selection and arrangement by dropping twelve poems and adding twelve others.

He also asked the poet Robert Lowell to write an introduction because Plath cited Lowell's book Life Studies as having had a profound influence over the poetry she was writing at the time.

Another influence was Anne Sexton who was similarly exploring some of the same dark and personal subjects that Plath was using in Ariel.

In 2004 a new edition of Ariel was published which for the first time restored the selection and arrangement of the poems as Plath had left them.

This edition has a foreword by her daughter Frieda Hughes.

Sample several of the poems:
Ariel
Fever 103°
Morning Song

More about Sylvia Plath.

Girl Talk: Some Photos

Last Saturday was the 10th year in a row that I have run an event called Girl Talk: A Poetry Reading  in Celebration of Women's History Month. Each year I invite more than two dozen multi-talented women poets to each read one poem that's related to the lives of women. We fill the room with poets, poetry lovers, and friends. We fill the room with sisterhood and poetry. It's always a joyful afternoon.

Those poets with recent books are invited to put out copies for sale. The library provides volunteers to handle the sales and the money. I ask my readers to volunteer to bring home-baked cookies. (This year I had so many volunteers that I had to ask a few bakers not to bake.) Then following the reading we have a reception with poets and readers invited.

Here are some photos from the afternoon to give you an idea of our day.

Books for Sale

Audience arriving

Christine Waldeyer, Editor-in-Chief of Adanna

Dawn Gunther Bernstein, first-time reader

Deborah Gerrish, poet and contributor of roses

Denise LaNeve, runs the North Jersey Literary Series

Julie Maloney, founder of Women Reading Aloud

Priscilla Orr, editor of The Stillwater Review

Vasiliki Katarou, curates the Panoply Reading Series

Cookies, cookies, and more cookies

Beautiful roses contributed by Deb Gerrish—each poet gets to take one home

Into the Un-Precise: Selfhood and Discovery in Oliver Bendorf’s "The Spectral Wilderness"

Oliver Bendorf

The Spectral Wilderness

The Kent State University Press

ISBN: 978-1-60635-211-3

Oliver Bendorf 
(photo by Felicity Thompson,
oliverbendorf.org)

_______________________________________________

By Anthony Fife

Arising from the need to self-identify, as is the case with so many poems in The Spectral Wilderness, is the attempt to reflect outwardly to the world any inner revelations of selfhood.  The visual evolution of our singular identity, then, is a poetic mapping of our progress from messy point A, to messy point B.  While the measuring is carried out (and herein lies the tricky part) there is unlimited time for vision and revision.  New trajectories are evaluated, explored, and accepted or rejected.  That element which allows poetry to act as the perfect conduit for such complex mapping, thereby lending artistic order and credibility to the whole endeavor, is its ability to bend and evolve in a way that replicates, in line, the psychic act of discovery itself.  Such is the give and take in this, Oliver Bendorf’s first full-length collection of poems.

In its simplest terms, The Spectral Wilderness (winner of the 2013 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize) is a collection of poems that revolve around the biological and cultural transition from woman to man.  This transition is the edifice upon which the entire book is built.  So much of the power found in this collection is a bi-product of the resistance to change, and the animosity a person must overcome when change is what they most desire, yet consistence is the lifeblood of existence.  In his introduction to the book, Mark Doty points out that the journey isn’t necessarily characterized by peace of mind.  There is “an element of fear in it too; if you go retooling the givens of the body, just how much will change?” (viii).  Doty refers here, primarily, to the books first poem, “I Promised Her My Hands Wouldn’t Get Any Larger.”  Bendorf writes, “But she decided we need to trace them in case I/ turn out to be wrong.  Every morning she wakes me/ with a sheet of paper” (lines 1-2).  The unnamed “she” is framed as the engine that powers the project, but it’s not long in the poem before he whose hands might grow is far more interested and filled with far more anxiety about the change that may or may not take place. 

     [W]e hung them on the wall chronologically.  When I
     study them, they look back at me like busted
     headlights.  I wear my lab coat around the house to
     make sure they know who’s observing whom.  If we
     can ensure records, if we can be diligent in our
     testing.  I wrap my fingers around her wrist.  Nothing
     feels smaller yet.  Not her, not the kettle nor the key.
     If my hands do grow, they should also be the kind
     that can start a fire with just a deer in the road. (6-14)

It is not easy to give up the recognizable parts of ourselves, even in the name of progress.  Our newer, better self must be comprised of much of the matter belonging to the self we seek to leave behind.  This is, perhaps, a paradox, but questions of identity are never easily resolved.  This is especially the case when, as in the above poem, we have more than ourselves to answer to.

“She” is a necessary reminder that, to slightly amend the old adage, no transitioning man is an island.  We must all discover ourselves for ourselves, certainly, but the journey is a shared one.  The closer we are to any given person, or so it seems, the greater the potential for conflict and pain.  Case-in-point, the mother/child relationship in the poem “Patrón.”

     Patrón’s mother
     wished she could
     be proud,
     bring his cookies
     to her church
     friends.  Brag a little.

     Patricia, she said.

     It’s Patrón, he said.

     Right Patrón
     you know
     your aunt’s been
     asking about you
     what am I supposed
     to tell her?

     Tell her
     how I am now
     says Patrón.

     Dishes breaking
     on the end of the line.

     Mother?” (lines 50-69)

We are beholden to those (a mother in this case) who were instrumental in bringing us into the world, but by inviting us into the world are they offering us our own autonomous place in it?  A place where we could grow to be a free agent, separate from our parents though still sharing so very much?  At least for Patrón’s mother, and perhaps to a lesser degree “she” in “I Promised Her My Hands Wouldn’t Get Any Larger,” old habits die hard.  Unconditional love is not always one and the same with unconditional acceptance.  Resignation, too, is not acceptance.  Such trials are, of course, not restricted merely to the home.

Culture pressures to conform are so pervasive that, at least in the case of the characters in some of the poems in this collection, escape is sometimes essential.  One is forced, as “Outing, Iowa” suggests, to “take the highway north from town, past the crowded diner with the neon sign” (1-2), until you largely transcend time and place, far beyond where cornrows “flipbook past your car” (6-7).  In “No Billboards in Vermont,” too, the characters seeks refuge where life is cleaner, simpler, despite its hardships.  A place harsh enough in its expectations that society, the all-oppressing, is stripped away and one is forced to exist beyond labels.

     Americana, we who
     doubted whether
     testosterone makes a man
     while we crouched thinning dill
     in the pickle patch.

     We were working, working it out,

     working until every animal was fed.
     No play party or disco ball here,
     just skin, scraped and eaten,
     our muscles gnarled horseradish.
     We were boy
     and a girl when we slept. (9-20)

Escape, though sometimes satisfying, is temporary.  No amount of distance or labor fixes the internal struggle we carry with us.  The struggle is a permanent badge that, though maybe well hidden, manifests sometimes unexpectedly in a multitude of forms.  In “Split It Open Just to Count the Pieces,” for example, the emotions come hard and fast, dense to the point that the poem is a catalog of identities.

     Call me tumblefish, rip-roar, pocket of light,
     haberdash and milkman, velveteen and silverbreath,
     your bitch, your little brother, Ponderosa pine,
     almanac and crabshack and dandelion weed.  Call me
     babyface, kidege — little bird or little plane — thorn of rose
     and loaded gun, a pile of walnut shells. (1-6)

This poem refuses to choose.  It piles on until, beyond its breaking point, everything is the answer, and is equally just in its pretense.  In a book that focuses so minutely upon itself, that wagers everything with nearly every poem, “Split It Open Just to Count the Pieces” is refreshing in that it lets out so much line that character and reader alike are able to linger within it (nearly without judgment), for as long as the need be, before getting back to the real world, and the real world poems that make up the bulk of the collection.

The real world forces decision.  Not only that, but it forces decisions on its own terms.  Within this context it’s no surprise that a person seeking out their better, truer self sometimes feels like they are going through the motions of discovering and being, and sometimes failing.  Poems like “Make Believe,” for example, are in no way a false start or a misstep, but they also aren’t necessarily forward progress.

     Make Believe

     The first time I took razor to my face

     I forgot what I was made of.  Having
     made believe all I could, I made believe

     a little further, pulling the open blade

     around the corners of my lips, watching
     a few desolate strands fall to the sink

     like soldiers in a porcelain trench,

     or as with invisible ink drew myself
     a mustache I could get behind. (1-9)

I suppose we must all practice.  The poems “The Manliest Mattress” and “In the Barber Shop” recount similar overt attempts to be something the character wishes to be but has not yet become. We come not fully formed into the world and, despite the fact that we might develop clear goals, success is, when it comes to identity and other murky matters, never as certain as we thought it would be.  This is a reoccurring theme in the book.  More questions than answers fill the pages, which is why poetry is the perfect medium for such an endeavor.

The Spectral Wilderness is not a unique poetry volume in that it seeks to describe the internal — they all do that — but that the attempt to describe the internal is coupled with an overt attempt to profoundly shift the external, rendering this a collection of rare insight.  Bendorf’s seeking kind of poems require a canvas that can be taxed in unlimited ways, without breaking or fraying.  That’s not to say that fiction or drama aren’t durable, but in the poetic line there is unlimited capacity to reinvent, to reimagine efforts and themes of what might better reach inward toward our essence, better mapping our journey.  “Poetry,” writes Mark Doty, “makes possible a level of intimacy, of seeing into, which I am not sure is possible in any other art” (vii).  Perhaps Oliver Bendorf, who is also a painter, might disagree with Doty’s declaration, but Bendorf definitely did choose poetry to tell his story and inherent in that decision is, conscious or otherwise, a communion of life and form not nearly as powerful in any other genre of written word.  Bendorf’s collection takes us where we need to go, relying upon the interplay of fact and abstraction more readily available in poetry than in anything else but life itself.

 

Oliver Bendorf teaches at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  He is, among other things, a poet, a painter and a cartoonist.  Click the link belong to hear Oliver read from The Spectral Wilderness.

_______________________________________________

Anthony Fife lives in Yellow Springs, Ohio, with his wife, fiction writer Lauren Shows, and their daughter Lucy. Anthony accepted his B.A. and M.A. in English from Morehead State University and his M.F.A in Poetry from Spalding University. Anthony teaches English at Clark State Community College and Sinclair Community College. Anthony’s taste in poetry is broad, but his main interests include personae poems and character sketches; in short, poems that place the focus primarily on one person's shoulders, and don’t let them get away with anything.