Of Poetry, Students and Teachers

Like so many writers who teach writing across the United States, my semester is almost over.

And, I suppose, I could go on quite a bit about how busy, how exhausted, how demanding these past few months have been.

But I want to say something else here, I want to speak directly to the serious students of creative writing. I want to say--what I always say--to my students at the very end of my creative writing classes--

thank you. 

Thank you for trusting me with your stories.
Thank you for allowing me into your imaginations.
Thank you for your serious and considered efforts.
Thank you for speaking--which, as those of you who know me have heard me say often enough--
is not insignificant.
Thank you for giving me a job--which is also not insignificant--and I mean that in the most profound way.
I consider it a blessing to be able to speak about creative writing--with "serious intent" as Lucille Clifton used to say--to speak with passion and focus-- to those who feel that same seriousness of purpose--to those whose very presence in class constitute the "making of our contemporary literature culture."
Thank you for being brave. For taking risks. For looking--unflinchingly-- at yourselves as writers but also as human beings.
Thank you for your courage, your convictions, your passionate devotion to literature...

for all this--and more--I say thank you.

 I am a better writer--and a better person--for having you as my students.

Five Poetry Prompts for Poetry Month

April is Poetry Month, so let's celebrate by writing something new. Here' s five prompts to get you started:

1) Read a favorite poem. Copy it out onto a piece of paper by hand. Do not use a computer.
Take the last line of the poem as your title prompt. See what develops.

2) Look up the front page of the day and year you were born.  Take as the "frame" for your poem an event that was reported on that day. 

3) Read "My Last Duchess" by Robert Browning. Write a poem in which the Duchess speaks.

4). Imagine yourself standing on a high cliff. The winds are so strong no one can hear you. Write a poem which assumes no one is listening or will ever hear what you have to say. (Feel free to rip it up after you are done. Or save a line or image, then rip it up. No poetry police will come to your home if you do.)

5) Write a poem that uses nothing but dialogue. Your poem has two speakers. (Think Robert Frost on this one.)

Say Thank You With Your Feet: Poetry Readings and Your Community

It's Poetry Month. Which means there are a lot of events planned. It's time to say thank you.

For example, I'm packing this morning to go to Tucson, Arizona. Tonight, I'm reading for the "Other Voices Reading Series" held at Antigone Books, run by Liza Porter.  I've read there before and they always have a great audience.

Also, this week I had a delightful breakfast with a good friend of mine, Catherine Hammond. She created and runs the premier reading event in our community--the Tempe Poetry in April events. Along with my composer friend Christopher Scinto and some other musicians, we will be reading and performing poetry and music from our jazz opera in Tempe on April 27th. We have a similiar event planned at my college campus on April 20th. And, currently, I am scheduled to do readings during poetry month all the way into 2011 and 2012.

I've given readings all over the country in all kinds of venues. For example, I've read at the prestigious and huge Chicago Humanities Festival as part of the Poetic Dialogue project which was held the year I read at Loyola University in Chicago. In Clearwater, Florida, I read at 9am in the morning to a dedicated writer's group in a library which had a two-story window that overlooked the beach. And I've read with a nationally known poet on the second floor of a jazz club in Ithaca,  New York.  I've been invited to read my poetry at universities, coffee shops, libraries, bars, bookstores, private homes, college classrooms, a converted church, book festivals, and once, even sandwhich shop. 

No matter the place, the size of the group, or if the reading series is new or well-established, the point is that those who create and run these kinds of events, significantly contribute to bringing poetry to the forefront of our consciousness.

These people--who often work for no or little money--spend a great deal of time and effort in putting these poetry reading events. Their efforts go beyond the obvious--that is finding good, dependable, engaging, interesting readers.

Their behind-the-scene efforts include maintaining a level of professionalism before, during and after the events; obtaining funding whenever that is possible for the readers but also for the hidden costs connected with venues, pr, coffee/tea-ish things etc. etc.; creating viable public relations efforts and then implementing those efforts; finding suitable--and often beautiful--physical spaces in which to readers and audiences can fully experience the magic of a poetry reading; dealing with the always and ever present Murphy's law--the endless details that--more often than not-- don't happen as they should.

Running a poetry series is a labor of love.

And, as importantly, it is a labor of love that influences our communities right now. And these events reach into the future so others will know that culture exists because these events exist, because we exist.

So, say thank you with your feet...attend a poetry reading this month.

High Notes, Finalist, 2011 Paterson Poetry Prize

Yesterday I came home from having a delightful lunch with my good friend, a lovely and gracious poet who also lives in Arizona. Even though we  live the same city, we are both so busy that getting together outside of work or our writer's conference is always a special occasion.  We met at a local French restaurant and always reserve 3 hours to talk. Our conversations cover a lot of ground--poetry, the business of poetry and health and shared friends and jokes and make-up and husbands and so forth.

So after our lunch, I went home. I stopped by our neighborhood's collective mailbox station which is ubiquitous in Arizona and specific to our community. It was really warm day for March--about 98 degrees--somewhat early for this kind of heat in Arizona.  After collecting the contents of my overstuffed box,  I sat in the car and I opened my mail.

There was one piece--which I almost mistook for junk mail--I don't know why--maybe it's because I am a member of a lot of writers' organization and they always solicit me for donations and the color of the envelope looked like one of those solicitations-- which I almost tore up before reading. Somehow, I guess I decided to open it up before I threw it away . Anyway,  I wasn't paying much attention as I scanned the letter...

which began "Congratulations!"

Now you have to understand that, as a writer--especially a poet-- one doesn't get a whole lot of letters that began this way. Not serious ones, anyway.

Another poet friend of mine once, half-jokingly, commented to my students: "If you are interested in mental health, don't become a writer. Because there is a lot of rejection and you have to learn to deal with it without it hurting you or your work."

And clearly, she has a point.

Rejection letters and learning how to deal with them are just part of the business. One needs to understand that. As I tell my students, rejection letters for one's writing never feel good.

However, yesterday was not one of those "figure-it-out-and-move on" kind of days for me.

This letter began "Congratulations!" and it went on to inform me that my book, High Notes, was chosen as a 2011 Paterson Poetry Prize finalist.

Elizabeth Alexander won this year's award for Crave Radiance: New and Selected Poems, 1990-2010. You may remember that Elizabeth Alexander read at President Obama's inauguration. And her list of awards and honors are many. For example, she was one of three finalists for the Pulitzer Prize and her work was one of the American Library Association's "Notable Books of the Year."

There are just a few finalists for this award. In the past, the finalists list often would reads as a "Who's Who" list of poets.

In addition to this honor, I have been asked to read with the winner and other finalists next April as part of the Distinguished Poets Series.

So...I am thrilled!

Speaking of Chinese Poets

Poets from across time and civilizations speak to us. Some feel like they are right here beside us.  We feel like we know them. And, more importantly, we feel like they know us.

Here are a few more international poets for you to consider.

Wang Wei, from the eighth century, has a moving poem, "Lament for Yin Yao" which ends with these lines:


All your old friends have brought you gifts
But for your life these too are late.
I've failed you in more ways than one.
Weeping, I walk back to my gate.
translated by Vikram Seth

Of course, there is the famous Li Po who lived in the Tang Dynasty (700's).  His poem, "Alone and Drinking Under the Moon," has a contemporary quality which is almost unnerving. He writes:

"....while

still not drunk, I am glad

to make the moon and my shadow 

into friends..."

Clearly, this is a sentiment which would have been much appreciated by French poet Charles Baudelaire (19th century)  who wrote the famous prose poem "Drunk" which declares, mid-poem:

"....ask what time

it is and wind, wave, star, bird, clock will answer you: 'It's time to be drunk! So as not to be the

martyred slaves of time, be drunk, be continually drunk! On wine, on poetry, or on virtue as you

wish."

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16054

Then there a contemporary Chinese woman poet Zhai Yongming who, in her poem "In this Instant" has this to say about  on time and timelessness --and our responsibility to both:

"....only I 

heard the tip tap tune of breaking dawn

The flash of ecstasy had no equal, the aloofness 

was like a distrust of air, or the dew

or the night...."

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/184235/2_translated_poems_of_zhai_yongming.html 

Yevtushenko, Paz and Szmborska: 3 International Poets You Should Read

There are some poets in the world who speak to us even when we don't understand their language.

The power of such a voice--even in translation--transcends  boundaries,both time and space. We feel less alone in the world when we encounter them on the page. 

Three such poets who have changed my poetic world are: Yevgeny Yevtushenko (Russia), Octavio Paz (Mexico) and Wislawa Szmborska (Poland).

I first saw Yevtushenko on a public TV  when I was 15-years-old.  It was a Sunday night and I was flipping around the dial looking for something interesting. By chance, I happened to land on a channel which showed a bare stage and a man dressed in a gray turtle neck. The man was prowling the stage and speaking in Russian. I didn't know what the words meant, I only knew that what the man was speaking was poetry and that I was deeply moved. Soon after he finished his piece, some translators spoke the words in English.  I was only 15 but I knew these English words were not--could not-- be as powerful as the Russian words the man just spoke.

I don't remember how I bought Yevtushenko's book. I came from a neighborhood that barely had a library. My town was filled with working class folk, mostly, and building a library was a costly endeavor for them. So, eventually, a library building got built but--well...let's just say there were a lot of bare shelves and not a lot of books when I was growing up.

So it must have been when I went into New York City with my school for various trips that I was able to buy his book. I should say books--because I loved his poetry so much I kept buying books and giving them away.  I still have one copy from those days. It is old and yellow and I still love the poems.  Among my favorites are "The City of Yes and The City of No," "Babii Yar," "Lies" and  "Colours," ("When your face came rising/above my crumpled life,/the only thing I understood at first/was how meager were all my possessions.")

I encountered  Paz and Szmborska much later in life but my reaction was similar to these poets as to when I met Yevtushenko.

When I first read Paz--especially his poem "Between What I see and What I Say"--I, literally, could not breathe. My chest felt as if all the air was being squeezed out of it. ("Between what I see and what I say; between what I say and what I keep silent,/between what I keep silent and what I dream,/between what I dream and what I forget:/ " 'poetry.' ")http://www.wisdomportal.com/PoetryAnthology/OctavioPaz-Anthology.html)

Reading Szmborska still makes me want to cry, laugh and dance in crazy high heel shoes.

Take a look at the first few stanza of "A Few Words on the Soul" and see if you don't feel the same way.


We have a soul at times.
No one’s got it non-stop,
for keeps.

Day after day,
year after year
may pass without it.

Sometimes
it will settle for awhile
only in childhood’s fears and raptures.
Sometimes only in astonishment
that we are old.

It rarely lends a hand
in uphill tasks,
like moving furniture,
or lifting luggage,
or going miles in shoes that pinch.

It usually steps out
whenever meat needs chopping
or forms have to be filled.

For every thousand conversations
it participates in one,
if even that,
since it prefers silence.

Just when our body goes from ache to pain,
it slips off-duty.

(translated from the Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh

https://www.bu.edu/agni/poetry/print/2002/56-szymborska.html)