The Love and Hatred of Poetry

If you are a reader of this blog, the chances are that you are NOT a poetry hater. But I discovered a book, THE HATRED OF POETRY, by Ben Lerner that is about those who do hate it.

Lerner is not a hater. He is the author of three books of poems and two novels. But he does feel there are haters.

In a review of the book by Craig Morgan Teicher, he starts by saying:

Although Ben Lerner’s latest book is titled “The Hatred of Poetry,” I am almost certain that poetry is less hated now than it has ever been. I don't think the readers who would be drawn to this book — poetry fans with their dukes up — actually need it at all. And an actual hater of poetry wouldn't get past the first page.

Lerner's book uses Marianne Moore’s poem “Poetry,” for its opening - "I, too, dislike it" but Moore continues:

Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one
discovers in
it after all, a place for the genuine.

As a poet, I meet lots of people who don't like poetry, though "hate" may be too strong verb to use. Blame school or blame poets and poems that plot not to be understood, I think poetery is more popular now than it was in the 20th century. I agree with the reviewer who says that "Poetry is read by a larger number of people than ever before, if only because it is written by more people than ever before, due in large part to the proliferation of MFA programs..."

Yes, it is an incestuous popularity. Poets love poetry. Poets buy poetry books and go to readings. Ask if you give a reading how many people in the audience are poets. A lot. And there are more readers who enjoy poems that allow them in without pain, and enjoy hearing poets read their work and talk about it.

That is always true at the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival which celebrates 30 years of gathering those kinds of people this October.

Finally, back to Moore's poem, which concludes:

In the meantime, if you demand on the one hand,
the raw material of poetry in
all its rawness and
that which is on the other hand
genuine, you are interested in poetry.

Syllabizing the Essay

When American University asked if I could teach a section of creative nonfiction this fall, I was thrilled. I've spent much of this year strategizing and drafting essays, so their craft is on my mind right now. Although I get to engage both genres as part of the faculty for the University of Tampa's low-res MFA program, poetry commands most of my time and my student assignments. Also, AU is the program that sent me out into the world as a writer; the first alumnus portrait that comes up on their splash page shows Derrick Weston Brown, one of my classmates from days of workshopping poems with Henry Taylor, Myra Sklarew, and Cornelius Eady. 

I decided to emphasize essays that incorporate lyric energy, by which I mean energy that is grounded in perception by (or will of) the author over the material, versus a topic’s intrinsic narrative or suspense centered in plot. Signature elements of a lyric essay usually include framing figurative language, raw juxtapositions, and unconventional structures--for example, a personal revelation embedded within a seemingly objective encyclopedia entry. Poets who crossover to nonfiction are often drawn to lyric forms, which I have written about here.

The great thing about teaching a class you've never taught before is that you get to envision everything from scratch--no preconceptions of the canon, nothing you're loyal to simply because you know it well. The terrifying things about a class you've never taught before is assembling a syllabus from scratch. I chose two core texts to anchor the workshop, which meets on Mondays, and will always include at least twenty minutes of craft talk before we segue to discussing student drafts. 

The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Nonfiction is a very straightforward and democratic guide, edited by Dinty Moore. Each contributor--including Bret Lott, Robin Hemley, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, and Norma Elia Cantú--offers a brief essay on different aspects of flash nonfiction, accompanied by a prompt and an exemplar. Other than his introduction to the form and, implicitly, his shaping of the table of contents, Moore's voice is absent from the RMP anthology; he is happy to step back and let the contributors speak for themselves. 

In contrast, The Next American Essay, part of John D'Agata's trilogy of anthologies for Graywolf, embraces subjectivity. D'Agata's voice is interspersed throughout the collection, which is arranged chronologically from 1975 into the early 2000s, via prose-passages that comment on the particular moment in American literature--and sometimes D'Agata's personal biography, and sometimes the larger pop culture. I don't know if the students will find those passages useful; I don't know if they'll find them at all. I cherrypicked individual essays from within a slightly overwhelming (if very well curated) 450+ pages. Then, because that selection lacked pieces of the last decade, I added another nine pieces of my choosing. 

So these are authors whose essays we will give a close reading to:

John McPhee 

Barry Lopez 

James Wright 

Harry Matthews 

Eliot Weinberger 

Dennis Silk

Fabio Morabito 

Susan Mitchell 

Sherman Alexie 

Susan Griffin 

Carole Maso 

Mary Ruefle 

Thalia Field 

Jenny Boully 

Eula Biss

Maggie Nelson

Kiese Laymon

Roxane Gay

Sarah Einstein

Carmella Guiol

Camille Dungy

In addition, we have two weeks where we do not meet, so I've suggested hefty longform pieces--Joan Didion's "the White Album" and David Foster Wallace's "Ticket to the Fair," both conveniently anthologized by D'Agata --as supplemental reading. 

Toward the end of my syllabus, I've included "A Note about the Reading":

It is not your imagination if you find this reading list intensive. We have essays by thirty-some authors, plus lengthy suggested readings for the two weeks we do not meet in person. We will not always have a chance to discuss the readings fully, given the demands of our schedule. 

Here is my motive: being well read as a writer is a form of currency. If you stay in the publishing world, you will find yourself part of a thousand conversations in which the names of authors are dropped. When that happens, I have found that if I have even one genuine point of reference—that one essay I read, for that one class—I can contribute to the conversation with confidence. When I have no familiarity with the author, I’m a little embarrassed. I fall silent. 

So our reading list is intended to fill your coffers, Scrooge McDuck-style.

This is a pass / fail course with no pop quizzes. There may be days when you skim the reading and lay low during discussion, and no one is the wiser. That doesn’t make you a bad person—we all have weeks when we fall behind and need to cut ourselves some slack. But if you choose that path consistently, just be aware that you’re missing out. These readings, one and all, are ones that I wish that I’d gotten to digest during my MFA years. 

In addition to the reading, they'll be writing two longform essays, which I hope will incorporate lyric elements inspired by the readings, and four flash nonfiction pieces inspired by Rose Metal Press prompts. How will it all turn out? I have no idea. But I'm excited to find out. Class starts in the three hours.  

Writing About Craft

One of the unique components of a low-residency graduate program is the residency itself, which is often designed using the template of writer's conferences such as those at Sewanee or Bread Loaf. For the University of Tampa MFA instructors, this might mean that in a given 10-day stretch we're giving a craft talk in our genre (~20 poets), plus perhaps a craft talk to all students, in multiple genres (~80 people). That is in addition to leading eight sessions of a workshop with our 4-5 students, which I always lead off with a 20-minute close reading of poems framed as craft discussion. 

In other words: we've got craft coming out of our ears. 

It wasn't until I began to teach that I came to appreciate the art of smart, incisive yet conversational craft writing. It wasn't until I began to teach that I realized we needed more of such prose published, especially by women and voices of color.

I'm not talking about book reviews. That is an important genre as well, but different in tone and intent. I've also encountered a lot of great self-reflexive craft pieces written in the past few years, views of "inside my process." Increasingly, such pieces are one of the myriad of ways we're asked to promote new work. Those are wonderful, but they often have hybrid qualities--they can very easily cross over into the realm of personal essay. I've worked in that mode myself,  and will continue to do so, but I've really come to admire are crisp IM-personal essays that focus solely on outside authors and do not measure themselves by timeliness or relevance to a zeitgeist; they simply show us, line by line or phrase by phrase, how the language is exerting power on the page. 

One of my other responsibilities at UTampa is giving a pep talk to the Third-Termers, who are responsible for generating a 25-page critical essay on top of their standard responsibilities. This often freaks them out, because it feels like an arbitrary hoop to jump; irrelevant to their aspirations as a "creative" writer. But a good writer is a good writer, period. Coming at this as a mentor, the point isn't that I'm going to lose sleep if someone's citations aren't in perfect MLA format. The point is that someone who can't strategize a 25-page essay is also going to struggle with sustaining 250-page novel, or sifting and organizing 50 poems. 

The point, as well, is that the best gift you can make to a book you're passionate about, perhaps of a rarefied genre or by an author no longer with us, is to write something illuminative that makes others more likely to pick it up.

One of my resolutions, in choosing to accept more teaching roles while still prioritizing my writing, was that I would generate at least one or two substantive craft essays each year. Since any book aspirations I have in this regard are at least five years out, that leaves me in search of great journal venues that are open to essays about craft. Not too long ago, I surveyed friends and fellow writers for their favorite publishing spaces, and with their contributions in hand, I give you this list.

VENUES FOR WRITING ABOUT CRAFT

American Poets [General info]
American Poetry Review ["About Us" / Submittable]
Assay [Guidelines]
Blackbird [Guidelines / Submission Manager] 
Brevity [Guidelines]
Cleaver [Submittable]
The Essay Review ["About" / "Submit"]
The Hopkins Review [Author Guidelines]
LitHub [General info]
Measure [ Guidelines / Submissions Manager]
N+1 ["Contact"]
Parnassus Poetry in Review ["Contact Us"]
Passages North [Submissions]
Poetry Foundation  [Submittable]
Poetry Northwest [Guidelines / Submittable] 
Poets and Writers  [Guidelines]
Talking Writing ["General Guidelines" / Submittable]
The Tishman Review [Guidelines / Submittable]
TriQuarterly ["Submissions" / Submittable]
Writer’s Chronicle [Guidelines / Submittable]

Note: I've included a couple of magazines where the craft writing is delegated to a particular space, e.g. the "Writers on Writing" blog for Passages North.

Got a journal you think should be listed here? Let me know! I'm happy to expand.

~

P.S. - If you missed it, I just did a sprawling interview for The Mackinac, Issue 10. This is a startlingly wonderful little journal that designs a custom "Liquor List" for each issue, in addition to a Spotify playlist. They asked me to send along two new poems, so I did. Thanks to the editors, Lenea Grace & Brookes Moody. 

Titles

A poem's title can change a lot about how a reader approaches it. I was posting on another blog about book titles and it got me thinking about titles on books and poems.

This month, our writing prompt about triggering a poem also considered the use of a title. 

Novelists have often looked to poets for inspiration. Evelyn Waugh’s novel A Handful of Dust comes from T.S. Eliot’s "The Waste Land." Haruki Murakami’s borrowed Dance Dance Dance from W.H. Auden’s “Death’s Echo.”

You might think that a writer could come up with an original title, but keep in mind that using an allusion to a poem (or other work) is more than just a literary hat tip because it can lead a reader to the source which might provide additional insight into the new work.

Madeleine L’Engle got her title A Swiftly Tilting Planet  from Conrad Aiken’s “Morning Song of Senlin” and Cormac McCarthy selected No Country for Old Men from Yeats’s “Sailing to Byzantium.” E.M. Forster found A Passage to India  in Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass."  

Mr. Shakespeare provided titles for many writers from David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest (from Hamlet) and Joyce Carol Oates (New Heaven, New Earth) to Edith Wharton (The Glimpses of the Moon), and Isaac Asimov (The Gods Themselves) to Dorothy Parker (Not So Deep as a Well).

From this short poem by Stephen Crane, Joyce Carol Oates found her book title, Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart.

In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said, “Is it good, friend?”
“It is bitter—bitter,” he answered;

“But I like it
“Because it is bitter,
“And because it is my heart.”

I went through an exercise at a poetry workshop where we were given a packet of probably unfamiliar poem that had no titles or authors listed. The idea was to read and discuss the poems and then later see how the title and any knowledge of the poet's life changed our interpretations. How do you read a poem about a woman giving birth when you know it was written by a man?

I gave a reading and included a poem of mine titled "Weekend With Dad." After the reading, a woman came up to me and said she enjoyed the reading, especially that poem because "she was also a single parent."  But I'm not a single parent. And the poem isn't about being a single parent. Or is it? Rereading my poem, through the single parent filter suggested by the title, I see that it very well might be about being a single parent.

In a workshop with poet Billy Collins, he gave us some Chinese poems to read that had very long titles. In fact, several of the poems themselves were shorter than the titles. It led us to look at other poems with and without their titles and we played with giving poems new titles in an attempt to move a reader in another direction.

Billy Collins later wrote a poem about all this with the title "READING AN ANTHOLOGY OF CHINESE POEMS OF THE SUNG DYNASTY, I PAUSE TO ADMIRE THE LENGTH AND CLARITY OF THEIR TITLES."

Collins gives Lu Yu the prize of a simple rice cake for his very long title "In a Boat on a Summer Evening I Heard the Cry of a Waterbird. It Was Very Sad and Seemed To Be Saying My Woman Is Cruel—Moved, I Wrote This Poem."

In that workshop, Billy said that he liked a poem title that invites us into the poem. As he says in his own poem: 

How easy he has made it for me to enter here,
to sit down in a corner,
cross my legs like his, and listen.

What We're Reading Now

We're always reading fine works of poetry. This month on Poetry Matters, instead of an in-depth review or interview, you’ll find three quick posts about what books have captured our attention: 

• Melva Sue tells us about couple of books she recently read: Virgil’s Georgics and a memoir, Early Morning: Remembering My Father, William Stafford.


• Anthony Fife discusses Robert Hayden's Collected Poems


• Nancy Chen Long discusses The Book of Goodbyes by Jillian Weise

So take a look—you might find that next great book of poetry or a poet whose work resonates with you. And friends, please do share with us what you're reading. We're always looking for good books!

From Melva Sue Priddy's Bookshelf

Virgil’s Georgics: A New Verse Translation (The Yale New Classics Series)

translated by Janet Lempke

Yale University Press; New Haven, 2005

ISBN: 0-300-10792-7

A copy of Georgics was loaned to me by poet Chris Mattingly. His comment about how the same tools used in farming today were used in farming 2000 years ago hooked me. And so they were. I had never read Virgil’s Georgics in its entirety, so this was a pleasure. I soon found I needed a copy of my own so I could annotate it. Lempke, whose father was a farmer, retains as much of the original poetry as possible while translating into American English. She replaces out dated place names, and other obscure antiquities with their geographic, modern equivalents. She retains the four book division and line numbers as closely as possible. What a joy to read about the work of farmers, not as an idyllic pastoral, but as the daily struggle the work is, with ruin from insects and weather a perpetual possibility. Book Four reminded me of my family’s bees, however our’s arrived by mail.

Early Morning: Remembering My Father, William Stafford
by Kim Stafford

Graywolf; Saint Paul, 2002

ISBN: 978-1555973896


I return to this memoir written by the son about his father William Stafford. Kim Stafford mines his father’s journals, book, letters, notes and poetry drafts as his father’s literary executor. As well as chronicling the elder’s life and work, it reads as an honest portrayal of the strained relationship between son and father. The poet isn’t understood by his son, though they lived closely and often worked together, until after Kim delves into his father’s papers, and it then becomes part of his life’s work. I attended several AWP conferences and had the pleasure of sitting in on panels including Kim Stafford.

Anthony Fife Discusses Robert Hayden's Collected Poems

Collected Poems
by Robert Hayden
edited by Frederick Glaysher

Norton, 1985

Regarding “‘Mystery Boy’ Looks for Kin in Nashville,” the poem is so profoundly grounded, so deeply of this world that I can’t quite reconcile how distant the poem truly is. The story floats ten feet off the ground, never touching down, despite that fact that its full weight is a burden upon my shoulders each time I think of it throughout any given day. And I think of it often.

Robert Hayden’s work cannot, however, be pigeonholed by the likes of the “Mystery Boy.” Hayden’s oeuvre is quite varied, as would be any half-a-dozen-decades-worth of work, and knowing this, as I read and re read my way through his Collected Poems I can't help trying to recapture that feeling so strongly eased upon me by the aforementioned poem. I ‘v yet to find its like, though I have combed the pages many times. I haven’t found it, at least, in quite the same way.

Whether it’s a poem about Malcomb X (“El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz” 86-89) or the legendary fighter Tiger Flowers (“Free Fantasia: Tiger Flowers” 130-131), many of the poems in this collection select a topic, a very specific topic, and more or less stick to it throughout. In this way they are particularly linear. Highly imaginative: definitely. Conscientious in light of the multitude of responsibilities they name and satisfy: absolutely. They pull in and out their masterful focus, never resting long before a single storefront. But highly linear. Having typed and edited the previous paragraph, I think I’ve learned a little more about our “Mystery Boy.” Though many of Hayden’s poems are self-contained—leaning heavily on the book ends of a definite and logical place to start and stop—there is, it turns out, no damned kin in Nashville. The poem—organized but decisively nonlinear—will go on forever. And with no beginning and no end the poem has no choice but to swell and resonate.

Before recently reading his Collected Poems, my only exposure to Robert Hayden was his “Those Winter Sundays” (41). Due to being so commonly anthologized, I was highly aware of “Those Winter Sundays” and the role it plays in 20th Century literature. It’s a marvelous poem, of course; it’s earned its place in the thick books. And, revisiting it now after having read and reread 195 pages of Hayden’s work, I can’t help but feel it serves as the perfect halfway point between the two types of poems I mention above. Definitely linear. Yet allowed off the leash to expand and fill an almost empty room.

Of course, whether it’s the historical epics concerning the lives and exploits of notable personages including but not limited to Malcolm X and Tiger Flowers, character sketches that are also cultural and historical lessons (read the wonderful “The Ballad of Sue Ellen Westerfield” 13-14 for proof of my claim), or a poem more like the one concerning the young whomever that begins this brief rumination, Hayden’s poems often tell much more about Hayden himself than the supposed subject of the poems. I’ve enjoyed getting to know him.

Nancy Chen Long Discusses The Book of Goodbyes

The Book of Goodbyes
by Jillian Weise

BOA Editions Ltd, 2014

ISBN: 978-1938160141


The Book of Goodbyes is Jillian Weise’s second book. Her first is The Amputee’s Guide to Sex. The Book of Goodbyes is the winner of the 2013 James Laughlin Award, which is awarded by the Academy of American Poets to a poet for a second book of poetry. The Book of Goodbyes is also the winner of the 2013 Isabella Gardner Poetry Award, which is awarded to a poet with a new book of exceptional merit.

I found the overarching theme of the book to be what the title indicates—goodbyes in its various forms: loss, departure, death, loneliness. The book contains four sections that are presented like acts in a play (Weise is also a playwright): act “One,” an “Intermission,” act “Two,” and “Curtain Call.” With respect to subject matter, the sections titled “One” and “Two” center primarily around two things:

• The first is how other’s react to the speaker being an amputee, for example “The Ugly Law,” a poem that weaves in lines from a law about disfigured or unsightly people being restricted from appearing in public, and “Café Loop,” which reads as a sort of transcript of things the speaker has overheard in a café: “She's had it easy, you know. // I knew her from FSU, back before she was disabled. / I mean she was disabled, but she didn't write like it. // Did she talk like it? Do you know what it is, exactly?” (You can read the poem here, second poem on the page). “Café Loop” is indicative of the conversational tone of most of the poems in the collection. The collection is peppered with dialog.
   
• The second is the speaker’s affair with an older person, someone she calls Big Logos, e. g. “Poem for His Girl” (“I’ll tell you which panties / look good on you // psychedelic plaid / with ruffles on the waist …), “Semi Semi Dash,” “Poem for His Ex,” and “For Big Logos, In Hopes He Will Write Poems Again” (“Maybe it’s because you’re cut off / from your roots, and need to go / to Spain, be with your forefathers …”)

Act “One” tends to dwell more on the disability; “Two” tends to dwell more on the affair. Regarding the intermission between the two 'acts', it is indeed that: It's comprised of three poems that form a narrative about “Tiny and Courageous Finches” named Bitto and Marcel who live in a cave behind the Iguazú Falls on the Argentine side.

The last section, “Curtain Call” is one long poem “Elegy for Zahra Baker.” Zahra was a ten-year old who, due to cancer, was deaf and disabled (she had a prosthetic leg.) She went missing in North Carolina in 2010. Her step-mother confessed to dismembering her and leaving her remains in the wild. The poem includes snippets from news reports, personal reflections of the speaker, snippets of conversations between the speaker and others, dialog from Zahra herself.

Friends, I was quite taken with this book and will definitely re-read it. It’s quiet and powerful, unflinching. I find something about it to be irresistible. Here is one of my more favorite poems in the collection, “Goodbyes.”

Poetry in the Wild

I've been emailing with a high school teacher, planning toward National Poetry Month events next April. A lot of poets sigh for dramatic effect when April comes around--and I sigh too, primarily in dread of figuring out my tax forms. But I'm thrilled by the travel, which in 2017 will take me to Russell Sage College in upstate New York and Auburn University in Alabama, as well as the opportunity to do local outreach.

Often, a conversation with a teacher includes a statement such as "Oh, good, we'll have just finished the poetry unit." But celebrating poetry in April would be so much easier if we didn't think of poetry in terms of "units," but rather an everyday presence. Kids grow up surrounded by language--newspapers and magazines, novels, comics and graphic novels, internet articles--and so they begin to absorb, organically, what makes for style and innovation in these modes. Part of the intimidation attached to poetry is that readers "new" to the genre worry that they aren't equipped to judge what is good. They don't trust their brain, which means they're afraid to get their hearts involved. 

Those eight-year-olds who are passionate about Shel Silverstein? We need to find a way to keep them in the poetry fold. Those readers should become the eighteen-year-olds who are passionate about e.e. cummings. 

All of which is to say, I'm a huge fan of initiatives that implement poetry into daily life. 

In May, I got to serve as one of three judges for the student component of Arlington County's "Moving Words" competition, which puts the winners' work on metro buses all around town. I was startled by the images, originality, and intensity of voice. You can read all the winning poems here; as you'll see, age was no guarantee of dominance. My favorite, Lucy Rissmeyer's "Big Electric Cat," describes the cat's "Jelly bean toes, claws of broken glass." 

September is on the horizon. Here are links to three of my favorite "public poetry" projects in 2016. I'd love to see a ten-minute discussion in every classroom that uses one of these projects, or something similar, to ask:

What makes us recognize these lines as poetry?
When you read it aloud, what words do you notice?
What would you do if you ran across this on your own?
How and where would you put poetry in everyday places?
What poem would you choose to display, and why?

Wall Poems in Charlotte, North Carolina

Photo by Amy Bagwell

The concept is straightforward: take advantage of otherwise vacant wall space all around Charlotte by presenting brief, pithy poems in bright colors. The execution, directed by Amy Bagwell and her team, is unforgettable.  For more on the Wall Poems initiative, check out their website. For a partial photo-"tour," go here.

Cookie Fortunes in Miami, Florida

After your last slurp of spicy noodles, you reach for the satisfying crunch of a fortune cookie. Instead, you find a riff on Frank O'Hara's "Lines for the Fortune Cookies." Created by Benjy Caplan for the annual O Miami festival and distributed by the midtown outpost of Delivery Dudes. Check out all the 2016 O Miami Festival's projects.

Sidewalk Surprises in Boston, Massachusetts

Rain falls in downtown Boston, and a poem--perhaps Langston Hughes, perhaps Elizabeth McKim--materializes under your feet. Once stenciled, water-resistant "ink" lasts for about a month before naturally degrading. Mass Poetry's website has more on the project, curated by Boston's inaugural poet laureate, Danielle Georges.

If teachers started off every month of the school year with a mention of poetry in the wild, rather than waiting for "the poetry unit," perhaps April could feel a little more like a celebration, and less like an indoctrination. 

P.S. - If you're wondering where I've been, the answer has largely been "writing essays" (more on that to come) and "in Florida," including our residency for the University of Tampa's MFA program and a week at the Hermitage Artist Retreat. I let this blog go dormant, and I took a Twitter hiatus, to see if I missed such things. 

I did. So I'm back, and back on Twitter too--you can find me there @SandraBeasley. 

P.S. pt 2 - I'm teaching TWO poetry classes for the first time with 24PearlStreet, which is the online learning component of the legendary Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. Each is designed as a one-week intensive. Each will feature a mix of guided readings, revision of existing drafts, generative prompts for new ones, and my line edits on a few poems of your choice. 

"Your Voice: Work It, Raise It, Change It"

October 10-14, 2016

We often regard the author’s voice as having an inherent, unchangeable quality. Many writers have invoked the analogy comparing one’s voice to a fingerprint. But one person's “fingerprint” is another person’s rut, and no poet should feel trapped in his or her voice.

&

"You Should Write Poems About That"

January 23-27, 2017

We are writers, but not just writers. We bring different areas of expertise to the table—whether a profession, another creative passion, travel, or the experience of parenting a sick child. Have you ever had someone say “You should write poems about that,” and not known where to begin? This one-week intensive course unlocks that material.

FAWC just unveiled their roster for 2016-2017. It's a jaw-dropping list...

...but what they need to advertise more widely is that there are DISCOUNTS available for enrollment, namely:

-Early Registration Discount: Receive 15% off tuition if you register by October 1. 

-MFA Discount: If you have or are earning an MFA in Creative Writing, use code MFA50 for 50% off any one-week intensive class. 

If you're curious about these classes, email me; I'm happy to answer any questions. 

Triggering the Poem

Poet Richard Hugo believed that we’ve written every poem we ever loved. He said that he was particularly proud of having written Yeats’ poem Yeats’ “Easter, 1916.”

The Dodge Poetry Festival blog has asked several poets "What great poem are you proud of having written?" One of my first professors of poetry, Alicia Ostriker, said she was "I’m pretty proud of having written Antony and Cleopatra and King Lear. Maria Mazziotti Gillan answered, "I am proud to have written 'somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond' by E.E. Cummings. I often recite it to myself when I’m driving or walking and I find it very comforting. I think it is one of the most beautiful love poems I have ever read."


In his book of poetics, The Triggering Town: Lectures and Essays on Poetry and Writing, Richard Hugo offers a series of essays about what triggers poems.

He argues against the often heard idea that a writer should “write what you know.” Instead, he suggests an approach to poetry based on triggering subjects and words.

In one essay, he explains triggering subjects, using the example of towns, as points of entry into the realm of the imagination.

Again, opposing the write-what-you-know, he suggests that new poets might try to own an imagined, or barely-known, town, rather than trying to convey their actual hometown. That hometown, he feels, may be one in which “the imagination cannot free itself to seek the unknowns.” Then, the poet can focus on the play and music of the language.

At this point, the poet's private language, personal connections and certain words that have rich associations for the poet can move the poem forward.

“Your triggering subjects are those that ignite your need for words. When you are honest to your feel­ings, that triggering town chooses you. Your words used your way will generate your meanings. Your obsessions lead you to your vocabulary. Your way of writing locates, even creates, your inner life. The relation of you to your language gains power. The relation of you to the triggering subject weakens.”

Hugo's book is not about writing prompts, but it does offer a lot of advice. Here are some examples:

1. “Don’t write with a pen. Ink tends to give the impression the words shouldn’t be changed. 
2. Write in a hard-covered notebook with green lined pages. Green is easy on the eyes. Blank white pages seems to challenge you to create the world before you start writing. It may be true that you, the modern poet, must make the world as you go, but why be reminded of it before you even have one word on the page?
3. Don’t erase. Cross out rapidly and violently, never with slow consideration if you can help it.
4. Read your poem aloud many times. If you don’t enjoy it every time, something may be wrong.
5. Never write a poem about anything that ought to have a poem written about it.
6. Maximum sentence length: seventeen words. Minimum: One.  
7. Start, as some smarty once said, in the middle of things.

We might choose one of Hugo's more obvious "town" poems such as "Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg" or "Glen Uig" as examples of his "triggering town" approach. But I chose his poem "The Church On Comiaken Hill."

As with this month's writing prompt, the title is the trigger. In this case, the trigger is a place.

In the poem, we explore the place, both by seeing what the poet saw, and what no one can see with their eyes - such as the Indians who were once there.

I did a simple search and found that real church. You don't need the history to understand the poem, but the history does help you see why it triggered the poem.

Your assignment this month is first to tell us up front in your title what it was that triggered the poem. Second, your poem needs to begin rather literally with that triggering person, place or thing, but then it needs to move beyond that to things we would not know even if we encountered that trigger. It should be two stanzas.

Of course, that second stanza is what makes it your poem. It contains what it triggered in you that might not be triggered in any other poet.

The submission deadline for this prompt is September 7, 2016.

Terrapin Books Now Open for Submissions

Terrapin Books is now reading full-length poetry manuscripts during its second Call for Submissions. Our doors opened for submissions on Monday, August 1, and will remain open thru Wednesday, August 31.

Please read and follow our Guidelines. Then make your submission via Submittable.

We anticipate accepting 2-4 manuscripts. We take pride in putting out beautiful books by wonderful poets. We are selective and devote time and careful attention to each book. We work closely with our authors. We do not maintain a long list of upcoming titles as one of our goals is to publish accepted titles in a timely manner.

We look forward to reading your work.

Take a look at the covers of our current titles:

Darwin in Verse

You know Charles Darwin as the author of On the Origin of Species, a book that launched a scientific revolution - and still causes arguments with some people for introducing evolution.

He was a writer. He labored over that book and withheld it from publication until the time when another naturalist, Alfred Russel Wallace, independently reached the same conclusions.

He also kept a diary that’s actually interesting to read.

“On the one hand he was trying to write very, very accurately,” says Darwin’s great-great-granddaughter (and Oxford poetry professor) Ruth Padel. “And on the other hand he was trying to write vividly, to convey his own enthusiasm for what he was seeing.”

She was fascinated by her ancestor’s artistic soul, more than his scientific mind and it inspired her to write a biography of Darwin entirely in verse.

How would Charles darwin have felt about the book? Darwin wrote, “If I had to live my life again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week.”

Charles Darwin was born in 1809. He lost his mother at the age of eight and repressed all memory of her.

His five-year voyage on H.M.S. Beagle, when he was in his twenties, changed his life. When he returned home, he began publishing his findings and working privately on the groundbreaking theories about the development of animal species, including human beings., and he made a nervous proposal to his cousin Emma.


Darwin: A Life in Poems  is an interpretation of the life and work of Charles Darwin by Ruth Padel.

Charles and Emma

More than his work as a naturalist, she focuses on his marriage to Emma and their ten children.

His theories came between Charles and Emma because of the differences between her deep Christian faith and his increasing religious doubt. The death of three of their children made those differences more severe.

Although Darwin didn't really use the expression "survival of the fittest," Padel sees Darwin's views on death and extinction as nature’s way of developing new species. But, for his wife, death was a prelude to the afterlife.