On...unashamed unapologetic rhyming

My favorite spring poem. I like to play it to my Intro class as an example of rhythm in free verse and of how rhyme can work when it serves the image and not the line.

http://prairiehome.publicradio.org/programs/2009/04/18/scripts/open.shtml

On...winning the Edwin Markham Prize

Found myself on a conference call with the editorial staff of Reed Magazine last week. Seems I won this year's Edwin Markham award for poetry. I am so pleased! I was placed in 2010, and I called in at their stand at the DC AWP last year to say hello: a great magazine and the staff I met in DC were really friendly.

Add to that a great citation from Kim Addonizio, the Markham judge, and I am glowing with happiness!

"It was very, very difficult to choose a winner from among the finalists, all of whom are talented writers. What finally won me over with this selection was a combination of things: an ability to tell a story not just for the sake of narrative, but to get at a deeper truth; sentences that were complex and layered, as well as musical; and a sense of real presence on the page. And of course the language itself: dogs that are “proud and skitty.” “Trash stitched through / the hedgerow.” A father “silent as a swan.” These poems seem personal, but not merely so; their maker is conscious not only of speaking, but also of shaping the raw material of lived experience into images that leave their mark on the reader’s eye and heart."

On...Imitation Vindicated

I've just finished reading a great interview between Paul Harding (Tinkers and Enon) and Varley O'Connor in the March/April edition of The Writer's Chronicle. In it, O'Connor asks Harding about the influence of Faulkner and Schulz in his first novel. Harding is unashamed; "So long as the writing is not merely imitative or derivative, I experience influence as one of the joys of artistic fellowship and decidedly not something that produces anxiety.:

After reading this and after Zone 3 took my Matthew Dickenson influenced piece "Hotels," I feel in good company and not the least anxious. I hope my 261-ers feel the same.

On...imitation

And the class is divided. Half howl that imitation is somehow cheating and the other half cling to Sellers' idea of "scaffold" as if it were a liferaft - which I think it can be. They seemed happier with the idea of riffing off one line after another than with the "mad libs" idea of "fill in the blank."

After talking around the subject, I led into my in-class Kincaid exercise. Poems were born...about corgis and cutting, horses and problems with french pronunciation. I fielded questions about footnotes and foreign languages in poems. I think the exercise earned its place in the plan.

Feel free to imitate :) There's an link to an audio clip of Kincaid reading the poem on Links Out Loud.

Class Exercise #3: An Imitation of Kincaid's "Girl"

Kincaid’s piece presents two speakers (perhaps)—one handing out advice and the other listening and chiming in. A common experience. Take a moment to pick an instance from your life when you have either given or received advice. Now re-read Kincaid’s “Girl” (page 55) and get ready to write your own imitation.

Kincaid’s first “line” is “Wash the white clothes on Monday and put them on the stone heap;” An imitation on the general subject of “advice about choosing a dog” might be “Choose a dog that runs towards you and make sure you write down his name;” An imitation for a poem on the general subject of “buying groceries” might be “Bend the beans in half and see if they snap;”

End each line with a semi-colon and the poem with a question mark. Have the Kincaid open as you move through each line. Write fast. This is a practice draft. You’ll revise later in your own time. Here we go!

1. Write a command starting with a verb (i.e. Bend the beans to see if they snap;)
2. Write a command starting with the same verb (i.e. Bend the carrots to see if they’re old;)
3. A “don’t” command (i.e. Don’t let the man with the beard and apron see you do this;)
4. Command starting with a verb;
5. Command starting with a verb;
6. General advice;
7. Command starting with a verb;
8. Question about truth that includes a day of the week;
9. An “always” command;
10. Advice using the same day of the week;
11. Command using the same day of the week;
12. A “don’t” command.;
13. Response from speaker “B”;
14. “This is how to” line;
15. “This is how to” line using same verb as the previous line;
16. “This is how to” line using same verb as the previous two lines;
17. “This is how you” line using a new verb;
18. “This is how you” line using the same verb as the previous line;
19. “This is how you” line using a new verb;
20. “This is how you” line using the same verb as the previous line;
21. “This is how you” line using a new verb;
22. A “don’t” command;
23. “This is how to” line using a new verb;
24. “This is how to” using the same verb as the previous line;
25. italicized response from speaker “B”;
26. Question from speaker “A” that starts “You mean to say…?”;

Things to consider as you revise. Kincaid has high energy moments. Her advice about avoiding sluthood is an example. Another is the turn to blackbirds and spit. Try to incorporate some energy peaks in your own piece. Also, Kincaid tells us something we probably didn’t know – benna and duokona. Try to tell your reader something new in your own piece.

On words

I'm reading Three Philosophical Poets by Santayana at the moment and have had to stop copying out marvellous quotes for fear of transcribing most of the book by hand. It's the kind of book I read with a good dictionary by my side. I hate to think I might be missing out on a gem because the terminology falls outside my narrow seam of understanding.

Today, I discovered "weal" as in "their judgements made their ... sense for impending weal or woe quite overpowering" (90).

Weal: happiness or well-being or prosperity.

At first, I was surprised given the destructive nature or history behind "weal" as in "welt," the mark of healed wound. But perhaps a healed wound is,in is own way, a mark of well-being.

Writing on...scrambling cliché

An early semester exercise is to spend some time writing really bad cliches. I chalk the following lines on the board and ask my Intro Creative Writing students to fill in the blanks with the expected words and phrases:

He was _________, dark, and handsome.
Beautiful ____________ _________________ hair.
The waves _____________ upon the _____________ beach.
The baby _______________ happily.
Her eyes shone like __________________.

We end up with something like this:

He was tall, dark, and handsome.
Beautiful, long blonde hair.
The waves crashed upon the sandy beach.
The baby cooed happily.
Her eyes shone like diamonds.

Then I ask them to fills the blanks again but this time with surprises:

He was dead, dark, and handsome.
Beautiful slashes of grey hair.
The waves sucked upon the bubbling beach.
The baby urinated happily.
Her eyes shone like dead roses.

This don't always work, but the exercise enourages students to break rules. We then take the words from the first set of blanks and switch them around.

He was long, dark, and handsome.
Beautiful, diamond-bright hair.
The waves cooed upon the tall beach.
The baby crashed happily.
Her eyes shone like sand.

All in the service of breaking up word packages. For the next week at least, they take chances with their writing. This risk taking sometimes wanes as the weeks go on, so the topic should be revisited several times. It's a good ice-breaker for those sessions where no-one wants to talk or write.

On Troubling Inspiration

I think it was Keats who said that if poetry didn't come as leaves to the tree, then it shouldn't come at all. In the days following my listening to an NPR segment, a new poem has been coming, and in some ways, I wish it wasn't. The segment talked about the execution of homosexuals and alleged criminals in Kabul. On the top of aptly named Swimming Pool Hill, the condemned were led out onto a diving board 30 feet above an empty concrete pool and pushed off. The pool was full of blood and bodies.

Kabul's teenagers now skateboard across the pool's smooth surface.

Afghanistan still plays host to those in search of adventure. Backpacks are replaced by flak jackets. Guides are tough and street-savy, not bearded and beaded a la Bali.

Having spent much of the late 80s and early 90s backpacking Asia and Europe, I think I know danger. The leering threat of a full body search at Ovda, a two-hour detention at Kunming airport, a fishing smack and a storm off the coast of Cambodia. I can "travel back" and write about those. But Swimming Pool Hill?

I've tried to feel that board under my feet, the wind, the prayed-for blindfold, the noise of the jailors behind me. I've considered the possible freedom on the jump but I cannot stay with the process to the concrete of the deep end.

I suppose leaves don't necessarily come easily to the tree. Who can know how difficult it is for the tree to produce the things it needs.