Pith & Vinegar: "The Plunger as Villian," "The Plunger as Hero"

A twofer today, from QWERTYUIOP (1989). Each could certainly work on its own, but the cumulative power of both together is undeniable.

The Plunger as Villain

How the eyes of passersby
bulged as my roommate and I
bore the plunger I'd bought
to clear the stopped kitchen sink

up like the Olympic torch,
or the Statue of Liberty
lighting the path home
to standing water and dirty dishes.

The Plunger as Hero

I carried the plunger home
and pressed its lips
to the mouth of the sink
for a resuscitative kiss,

whereby the drain
swallowed finally
and gasped, breathing
unobstructed again.

Pith & Vinegar: "Tourists (photographers)"

Here's a poem from my chapbook, Barking Up the Wrong Tree (1989) that I recently rediscovered. (Kudos to friend and wonder-bassist, Ned Doherty for the canine cover image.) Over the course of preparing my Pith & Vinegar manuscript, poems have been added and subtracted, but what the current version tries to achieve is some kind of balance in terms of numbers of representative poems per book. The trick is finding work that still resonates personally, as well as holds up generally.

I don't remember a specific occurrence that triggered "Tourists (photographers)," but rather an amassed ennui after years of working in San Francisco's financial district and observing the de rigeur ritual of tourists shutterbugging indefatigably every inch of the city.

Tourists (photographers)

snap pictures upward
preserving tallness
(sheer walls of windows)
on film forever.

Where (I think)
do these photos
fit in? Between
baby shots
and bar mitzvahs,

graduation and
surprise parties

in an album set aside
for when guests drop by?
How do you explain
the presence

of a monolith
to the casual page-flipper
bored already
with unfamiliar faces

and shebangs they
weren't invited to?

It doesn't make sense.
But here they converge
(cameras collared
to their necks), snapping

happily ugly skyscrapers
from the cold blackness

their shadows puke out.

Pith & Vinegar: "Red Lobster Blues"

Another uncollected Pith & Vinegar poem for today, which originally appeared in The Banana King:

Red Lobster Blues

Because they loved the crabs too much
the customers at Red Lobster

management was taken in the back
and beaten with jumbo shrimps

◊ ◊ ◊

Questioned about such plentiful
platefuls of servings, black eyes

blinked and trembling Adam’s apples fell
and “they were hungry” was their confession

Pith & Vinegar: "Dollar Store Nontraditional Sestina"

Today's Pith & Vinegar selection has not appeared previously in print. It was commissioned by The Dollar Store, a very cool and unique reading series in Chicago (that's currently on tour, by the way -- catch 'em if you can).

Dollar Store Nontraditional Sestina

The fried chicken he coveted came in a bucket of 6 pieces.
Safe for use around children and pets, the real wax candle glows and flickers without fire. Battery operated,
it emits a warm, ambient light without unhealthy smoke byproducts. In the living room, a circling train set
went round and round its track, a choking hazard with small parts,
toxic paint, smiling and waving animal passengers, its caveat “not for children under 3 years”
cruelly taunting tiny, yearning minds. It was, hastily, and on the cheap, made in China.

He and she own so many things made in China:
TV, DVD player; pants, socks, shirts; teakettle with 6 pieces
that whistles The Andy Griffith Show theme, but more often, does not. For children under 3, “years”
is a tricky concept. She looked at her daughter, soon to be four. Battery operated
clocks are telling her time, unlike her grandfather’s antique pocket watch, whose springs are suspected to be a choking hazard. Small parts
of him admired the force of habit of a circling train, set

in its ways; the circling train, setting
out to cover a route routinely made. In China,
the streets of Hong Kong are littered with choking hazards, and the small parts
played by its citizens help keep it safe—he admired that, too. Going home at 6, pieces
in the evening newspaper motivate millions of commuters to purchase premium batteries, operate
on a schedule and whatnot for children under 3 years,

watch more television, save Social Security. If not for children, under 3 years
is all the time it takes to let everything slide. In the old west, circling trains set
out for parts unknown circled at night for safety; pioneers didn’t have flashlights, much less batteries, operated
horse-drawn carriages and never dreamt what “made in China”
would one day suggest. They got by without being stigmatized. She used to know 6 pieces
by Shakespeare by heart, played them beautifully, people said. Choking back tears, hazarding graciousness, ever smaller parts

are all she plays now; like a Heimliched actress choking on her lines, the hazard of small parts
is once you play them, no one will cast you in leading roles anymore, not even for children. Under 3 years
was all it took to cool her heated dismay. Her husband’s on his way home at 6. Pieces
of pasta bob in boiling water. There are certain want ads she’s circling: will train, set your own schedule, earn money at home. If they made in China
what he makes, things would then be different. Neatly displayed in a battery, operated

from the backseat of her car, Tupperware tumbles at each unsuspected speed bump; in a battery,
operated
on the spot, she parks and promotes her wares. Some contain choking hazards: small parts
of kitchen utensils, plastic molded what’s-its, knickknacks and accouterments made in China
expressly for the US market. She wraps her fingers in a knot. Four children under 3 years
old walk toward her unaccompanied, weaving and circling. Train set-
backs have delayed his homecoming to half past 6. Pieces

of jigsaw puzzles made in China displaying pictures of battery operated
cartoon characters are down to 6; pieces the kids don’t see as choking hazards, small parts
that might injure them, are not for children under 3 years. But a child’s mind is a circling train set.

Pith & Vinegar: "Lunch at the D.O.C."

I used to work for a non-profit organization in Chicago's loop that was a block away from the Cook County jail. Today's poem, originally published in my 2003 chapbook, Identity Theft for Dummies was inspired by many lunchtime excursions and observations that took me past the Dept. of Corrections.

(Ironic side note: I was contacted by a reporter from The Flint Journal shortly after the publication of Identity Theft for Dummies. Turns out I had been sought out because I was a Flint native who, the reporter erroneously assumed, had written a book on identity theft prevention. No interview took place, I'm sad to say...)

Lunch at the D.O.C.

It’s pretty there,
in the courtyard,
where in the fall trees
jettison leaves
like marked money.

Babies in buggies
with kind, cooing moms,
hair freshly done, resting
in the shade
smoking cigarettes.

Visiting hours over
guests assemble outside,
trading greetings,
weirdly friendly,
and pause

checking likenesses
in the bulletproof glass.

Pith & Vinegar: "Boredom"

Today's poem is from my 1995 chapbook, Workers' Comp. (That's my dad, on the right in the cover shot, standing below the GAINFULLY EMPLOYED? banner, holding his paycheck. This photo is most likely from when he worked as a polisher at Ternstedt, in Flint.)

Boredom

People are bored, you can tell.
You can see it in their eyes
and in their manner—
the way their feet step
by rote and they never look
up to see where they're going.

I'm bored, too, barely
breathing through days on the job,
walking downtown in shadows
of anonymous skyscrapers,
diligently enabled
until five o'clock.

The only worse thing than being
bored are those people who
aren't—not because every
day's an adventure but because
every day isn't—with their go-
getters' enthusiasm and purgatorial pluck.

Pith & Vinegar: "Feet"

Here's a poem from my Eyes, Ears, Nose & Throat chapbook (1990, cover art by Ken Rasak) that originally appeared in The Altered Mind. It's very evocative to me of a place, person and time in San Francisco, and is one I frequently read.

Feet

My right is bigger
than the left,
although you wouldn’t
know it just
to look; hers
are dirty
from going barefoot.

Out of curiosity,
I consider my hands
after giving them
a massage: the memory
of her arches,

ankles and toes lingers
there in an odor
unnoticeable
to any but the well-
trained in podiatry.

◊ ◊ ◊

Walking, I keep
my eyes peeled
for broken glass
on the ground,
never breaking stride
as we move on

up the street,
past lilac bushes,
the sun going
down
behind us
like a shiny dime.

Pith & Vinegar

I've been working intermittently at putting together a manuscript that collects poems that were originally published in small press zines that are long out of print; most of those were done with limited press runs to begin with. Other poems appeared originally in chapbooks printed and distributed solely in San Francisco. I've been vacillating on the title, but Pith & Vinegar is one I keep returning to. My goal is to have the manuscript together before the end of the year.

Readings lately have largely comprised new or newer material, so I'm going to start posting some of the older poems earmarked for this volume -- to see if anyone still likes them, and to see how I feel about them now as well. The first is taken from by debut chapbook, Rate of Exchange & Other Poems (1988); it originally appeared in Poetalk, a little mimeographed mag from out of the East Bay.

Juggernaut

My sphinx-like cat
reclines on the
table, soaking up

sunshine

with that spongy intensity
he exhibits
at every new morning.

Wish I could be
that certain
or sometimes, that stupid.

Trio of Upcoming Gigs

I have three upcoming gigs to announce.

Friday, June 26 @ 3:30 PM
Taste of Chicago
Best Buy Live Stage
Jackson Blvd & Lake Shore Drive
* The Injured Parties play during this annual event


Saturday, June 27 @ 10 PM
Uncommon Ground
3800 N. Clark Street
Chicago, IL
(773) 929-3680
* Alex Chilton Birthday Bash-and-a-half, featuring yours truly along with Christine Cozza, Doleful Lions, Adam Fitz, Julie Jurgens, Kasper Hauser & Dann Morr, performing our favorite Chilton-written numbers.


Wednesday, July 8 @ 9 PM
Double Door
1572 N. Milwaukee
Chicago, IL
(773) 489-3160
* Rock 'n' Roll Bailout free show! Record release for The Injured Parties' debut, Fun with a Purpose! Also with Welcome to Ashley, The Moves and The Beat Seekers

Hope to see you at any/all of these special events!

Remembering Stephanie Morris

My good friend, Stephanie Morris passed away on June 1st. I met Steph and her soon-to-be husband, Nathan Keay at the Beat Kitchen, back when we were neighbors, living on the same block as that establishment. Stephanie was introduced to me as a singer-songwriter from Austin, TX who would be an excellent choice for my monthly songwriter series, Folk You! Listening to her music made it abundantly clear that she was a gifted and understated writer. Over the years, Steph played Folk You! a number of times, and was a frequent presence at the December "best of" shows capping off each year. I often joked -- seriously -- that I would have her play every month if it wasn't for the damn format hawking "three new songwriters" every show. She was never less than wonderful.

When The Injured Parties were recording our debut, I thought of Stephanie immediately as someone whose backing vocals would augment and improve two tracks on the album, "Dogwalker" and "Be My Jesus." A consummate pro, I sent her rough mixes of the songs and asked that she come up with some ideas. With those vague instructions, she came into the studio and was paired with another good friend of the band, Clarissa Novales. The two of them not only hit it off but worked together beautifully, creating lovely harmonies on the spot. She also sang with us live a few times, impromptu. It's a testament to her nature that she never balked at being asked to contribute, and always did an exemplary job.

Stephanie was one of those rare people who made everything she touched even better than you expected she would. You knew she was not only capable of rising to the occasion, yet were still surprised at how highly she elevated the quality and emotional level of the song. Her own compositions were like that, too -- songs that were laid back and discreet, in that they disarmingly struck you without resorting to tricks or histrionics. She was a deft lyricist whose words surprised and delighted.

Her husband has set up a memorial page on Facebook. I encourage everyone to go there and learn more about this talented and unique person. She will be missed.

Kunming-Chicago Poetry Group

I'm very pleased to have six poems in translation in New Poetry Appreciation Anthology, vol. 2 , from the Kunming-Chicago Poetry Group and Yunnan University Press: "Emilee Is That You?," "Gold Coast Hand Car Wash," "Hope," "Map of the World," "Passing Fancy," and "Soft Palate." The poems include work written over a twenty year period. Thank you to literary liaison, Steven Schroeder for this incredible opportunity.

Steve reports that a bilingual edition may be next. Chinese speakers may purchase the anthology here.

Throw the Lions to the Christians

Finally, my first solo album, Throw the Lions to the Christians has been made available for purchase on Amazon. It's also in the process of being made available digitally for download, via iTunes (US and international), Rhapsody, Napster, eMusic, Lala, et al.

This is yet another step toward bringing my back catalog into print. Down the line I am anticipating full-scale releases of all the Fussbudgets recordings, as well as the voluminous home recordings done while I was in San Francisco, some of which were previously released in super-limited cassette-only capacity. All this work will be remastered.

Mister Martini

Check out my review of Richard Carr's Mister Martini, in June's Gently Read Literature.

June readings

Two more Chicago readings, coming up in June:

Friday, June 5th @ 8 PM
Loose Leaf Tea Loft
4229 N. Lincoln Avenue
(773) 832-4229

Tuesday, June 9th @ 8 PM
The Cafe
5115 N. Lincoln Avenue
(773) 275-5025

Lots of new material I am eager to share. Hope to see you at either/or!

Pilcrow Lit Fest

I'm pleased as punch to be moderating a panel on teaching artists during the 2nd Annual Pilcrow Lit Fest. For one week in May, Pilcrow brings authors, writers, poets, librarians, booksellers, and publishers from around the country together in support of small presses and independent media through small workshops, panel discussions, lectures and author readings in Chicago. Last year I partook in three panels, each unique and enjoyable in its own right.

Pilcrow kicks off on the 17th, and has affiliated events throughout the week, including a reading Monday, May 18th at Jak's Tap where I'll be featuring, alongside the always-scintillating Charlie Newman.

For more information on all the panels, go here. The teaching artists panel, featuring myself and representatives from 826Chi, Center for Community Arts Partnerships, Chicago Teaching Artists Collective, Snow City Arts, and the Teaching Artist Research Project, among others, will be held Saturday, May 23rd at 1:00 PM at Trader Todd's. No cover, open to the public, all ages are welcome. The full Pilcrow calendar is here.

Hope to see you a-Pilcrow-ing!

National Poetry Month Readings

Posting this rather last minute for one of these events, but did want to mention that I will be reading at two fantastic gatherings during National Poetry Month:

#1

WHEN: Sunday, April 19, 3 to 6 PM

WHAT: Chicago Poetry Explosion: A National Poetry Month Celebration

WHERE: Peter Jones Gallery, 1806 West Cuyler, 2nd Floor

WHO: Featured poets include Bill Allegrezza, Lisa Alvarado, Stella Radulescu, Jennifer Karmin, Rey Escobar, Kevin Blanchard, Nick Demske, Larry O. Dean, Erika Mikkalo, Tara Keogh, Kathy Kubik, Josephine Lipuma, Doree McNulty, Donna Pecore, Paul Martinez Pompa, Cathleen Schandelmeier, Dina Stengel, Sheila Donovan, Roberto Del Rio, Pam Osbey, Mike Puican, PJ Destin, Adam Shames, Michael H. Brownstein, and Maria Fischinger.

WHY: to celebrate National Poetry Month

HOW MUCH: free and open to the public

NOTE: Bring snacks, soda, beer, wine. If what you bring requires paper plates or plastic ware, please supply.

#2

WHEN: Saturday, April 25, 2 to 4 PM

WHAT: Chicago Poetry Cram

WHERE: Harold Washington Library, Lower Reception Hall, 400 S. State

WHO: Poets from Young Chicago Authors, A Small Garlic Press, After Hours Press, Dancing Girl Press, Fractal Edge Press, Free Lunch, March Abrazo Press, Neighborhood Writing Alliance, Poetry Magazine, RHINO, Swan Isle Press, Third World Press, Univ. of Chicago Press / Black Ocean Press, Virtual Artists Collective, and EbonyEnergy Publishing among others. A few of the poets performing include Allison Joseph, Gene McCormick, Irving Miller, James Reiss, Michael H. Brownstein, Lisa Alvarado, Ned Haggard, Paul Brandon, Stella Radulescu, A.J. Bryson, Roberto Del Rio, Anna Husain, Larry O. Dean, Dred Sista Ren , Erika Mikkalo, Sheila A. Donovan, Emily Calvo, Sharon L. Powell, Lynn Fitzgerald, Glenn Ferdman, Arlene Zide, and Laurie Blum.

WHY: to celebrate National Poetry Month

HOW MUCH: free and open to the public

NOTE: Poets interested in participating in the open mic portion of Chicago Poetry Cram may sign up in the library lobby at the ChicagoPoetry.com table, prior to showtime.

Both are hosted by CJ Laity of ChicagoPoetry.com. He may be reached at chicagopoetry@chicagopoetry.com

Hope to see you there(s)!

Morton West-ward ho!

This past week I once again had the pleasure of reading before a group of students from Morton West High School in Berwyn, IL. I previously read at Morton two years ago, having been put in touch with a teacher there by my pal (and fellow Fractal Edge Press poet), Tom Roby. I'd mentioned that I enjoyed working in the public schools, especially in working class communities, and thus Tom's nudge Berwyn-ward. Berwyn is just outside the Chicago city limits, a smidge from better-known Oak Park with its earnest Ernest Hemingway and frank Frank Lloyd Wright pride worn on its civic sleeve.

The person who'd been my contact at Morton was now gone, but Jaime Dahm, who teaches creative writing there—and had been at the prior event—was now in charge. Unlike before, where I was set up in a corner of the main library area to read, myself and the audience had a special room all to ourselves in the back, away from the brouhaha. (Morton is a big school and the number of students milling around the common area was daunting.) Cookies and water were provided, and being conveniently close to the entryway, the chocolate chip scent wafting outward provided further incentive to an assembling crowd of mostly seniors.

I'd forwarded approximately a dozen new poems to Ms. Dahm ahead of my appearance, which she copied and handed out to the students. When I arrived, she showed me some of the questions which they'd written out in advance of my appearance after reviewing the poems. Most of them were as good if not better than questions a more “learned” crowd might ask, so I was excited to get down to the nitty gritty. I'd have to say my favorite, however, was “what inspired you to write things people don't even think about?” Indeed! I had Ms. Dahm return the questions to their writers—some had been written on the poems themselves, and I wanted the students to have them in hand while I read—and said at the beginning that it was up to them to ask the questions. (I didn't do this to “put them on the spot,” but thought they were well worth everyone hearing. I also suspected I might answer some of them unbidden via my own commentary.) Unfortunately, the author of my favorite question failed to bring it up during the Q&A following, at least in its unadulterated form.

The reading itself went quite well. Most of the poems had not yet been tried out before an audience, so I was officially in uncharted waters. Thankfully, I was never rewarded with cricket chirps, though certain ones did resonate in particular with the students—two, specifically, on opposite ends of the poetic spectrum.

The first was also the last chronologically I read, taken from my ongoing Loma Prieta persona poem project. Since much of what I've been writing lately is less narrative than usual, and also going for “the funny,” I wanted to include it for its leavening potential, and also to hear how/if it “worked” with this group. (I'm a believer that reading is as important to the reader's ears as the audience's—gauged not necessarily on how they react, but sometimes how they non-react.)

Loma Prieta #1: Donna Marsden

Hospital Administrator, age 36. Born in Torrance, CA. Daughter of a Los Angeles police officer. Married, divorced and remarried. An administrator in the pathology department at the University of California at San Francisco. Lived in Alameda.

“We grew up out here” was Bruce's
line, and never an apology. (We
Californians don't feel the need
to apologize for our lifestyle.)
If anything, more than once I'd been
on the phone with friends in the Midwest
and said, “It's your tornadoes that scare
me,” although I hadn't been really
scared since watching The Wizard of Oz
as a child, back in Torrance.
Every
spring, it played on TV, and each
time I'd watch, and get scared all
over again when Dorothy's house
picked up off the ground
and whirled away, into a black-funneled sky.
That fear gave me a thrill,
took me somewhere I didn't know
I wanted to go. Like our Victorian:
I hadn't thought we could afford to own
out here, and when Bruce and I signed
the papers, my hand shook (but
only a little).
I liked painting and papering
the walls, fixing furniture, making it
our own. And the china cabinet
we found at that yard sale—it was
my idea to wrap rubber bands around
the knobs, preventing grandma's plates
from shaking loose and crashing
whenever a little jolt hit.
Like
the tea cup she always drank from,
blue birds and clouds circling the rim?
It broke last summer, after
a small quake, and it was
my fault. It was her favorite;
I should have been
more careful.

I miss our dogs and cats, the plants;
in the morning, the sun rising
behind green leaves and fronds
in the bedroom, our little jungle.
The low hush of traffic
over the hill,
morning rush, sounded like mysterious
animals talking to each other, candy-
colored birds buzzing, or some yet
undiscovered species in the Amazon
rain forest. We always talked
about going. And Bruce's whispers, after
shutting off the alarm—we
still have some extra time . . .

If I had been late to the carpool,
if I had stopped to put up
my hair, if I had paused to gloat (just
to myself, just a little) about
the promotion . . . if, if,
if . . . If I had eaten granola instead
of Froot Loops—if I wasn't allergic
to bee stings—if I had won our 8th
grade spelling bee, and not
Susan Sweetwater—if I hadn't kissed
my boyfriend's roommate, been so
drunk, at that party . . . But I did,
am, didn't, did. So much water
under long-gone bridges. Are
they even still standing?
The van
was on time
like it always is. Traffic wasn't bad.
Nobody felt like talking. Sunlight
strobed through the Madrones.
Last weekend, Bruce
and I went to hear
Bonnie Raitt; we didn't do that so
much, hadn't been able to afford it,
but now, with my raise coming,
I was looking forward to going
out more, relaxing a little,
living it up.
I felt a bump and
just then all I could think about
was Bruce, working
late, the view from his office
window above the Embarcadero
and the dinner I had promised
for when he got home, something
he liked,
a surprise.

The second likely doesn't need an introduction:

The Angry Whopper®

The Angry Whopper® is mad as hell and not going to take it anymore!
The Angry Whopper® is a road rageaholic.
The Angry Whopper® is so tall for his age, the other kids make fun of him and he whimpers and stomps out of the room.
The Angry Whopper® has been galvanized by gloom.
The Angry Whopper® is a misunderstood genius, or so he'd have us believe.
The Angry Whopper® is affronted and annoyed whenever mistaken for a Double Quarter Pounder® with Cheese, fiery and fuming if christened a Baconator®, piqued and provoked whenever fancied a mere White Castle Slyder®.
The Angry Whopper® flunked anger management class. Again!
The Angry Whopper® chafes whenever it doesn't get its wrathful way.
The Angry Whopper® flaunts his his flame-broiled burger patty furiously.
The Angry Whopper® whops its enemies upside their adversarial heads.
The Angry Whopper®'s ill-tempered tantrums tersely traumatize the collaterally damaged.
Splenetic, riled and resentful, the Angry Whopper® battles the blithe Whopper Junior® in a duel to the death!
The Angry Whopper® convulsed into choleric spasms of disdain.
The Angry Whopper® broods with a solemnly sullen and sarcastic brain.
The Angry Whopper® aggressively ignites the taste buds of its open-muzzled eaters.
The Angry Whopper® is displeased and discordant, maddened and mordant.
The Angry Whopper® bitterly bitches about any old goddamn thing...
The Angry Whopper® stormed out of the big meeting in a hateful huff.
The Angry Whopper®'s impassioned speech to shareholders did nothing to quell fears of a ferocious freefall in an exasperated economy.
An indignant sesame seed bun and sore-yet-spicy, cross-but-crispy, sulky sizzling onions voted to secede from the Angry Whopper®. They lost.
The Angry Whopper® jalapeños jalapeños jalapeños all the way home.
A paranoid Angry Whopper® thinks everyone is against ham.
The Angry Whopper® is passive-aggressive over the meritorious tang of pepper jack cheese.
The Angry Whopper®—inflamed, infuriated, irascible, ireful, irritable, irritated—has waited and waited and waited, enraged, outrage exacerbated.
The Angry Whopper® would get a kick out of kicking your uppity uptight ass!
The Angry Whopper® quaffs from a half-empty glass.
The Angry Whopper® is vexed, vehement and vilifies vitriolically.
The Angry Whopper® is turbulently, tumultuously tomatoed.
The Angry Whopper® resents the implication—!
The Angry Whopper® rules a resentful, offended and noxiously nettled nation.
Amazed and mayonnaised, the Angry Whopper® tasers its foes with fierce aplomb.
The Angry Whopper® rages, rages against the dying of delight.

Thanks to Ms. Dahm and the students of Morton West for making me feel welcome and for being such a terrific audience.

Filling Station

I'm thrilled to have two poems in the current (#44) issue of Filling Station magazine.

Our Father,

I was recently asked to do a variation on my "Ternstedt" poem (see January 27th post), based on Tony Hoagland's excellent essay, "Fear of Narrative and the Skittery Poem of Our Moment," in his highly recommended book of essays, Real Sofistikashun. The idea struck me as rather daunting, since I've certainly abandoned poems that weren't working before, and used them as spare parts for newer, hopefully better-functioning engines; written imitations and homages. These approaches were more familiar to me. Yet, despite my initial reticence to disassemble the impulse that gave way to the former poem, I think I'm happy with its latter-day unsaintly counterpart, and learned a bit more about the aesthetics of this nebulous form by doing by design.

Avoiding narrative wasn't the issue. I began with the basis of my previous poem, my father as a central character, but I decided to widen the perspective a bit, depersonalizing it to a certain extent by saying “our father” instead. (For the record: I haven't any siblings.) From that change, I thought of the biblical reference to the “Lord's Prayer.” This gave me a skeleton over which to stretch the skittery skin and sinew of this new gryphon. And though I did make narrative sit in the backseat this time, I don't believe I totally ignored it, as here I wanted narrative—or the conscious impotency of it—to be staggered through the repetitious use of em dashes, frustrating the reader's attempt to get into any regular rhythm. The poem, instead, loops on itself in a series of asides that are, hopefully, hermetically rhythmic and sportive. I also chose to keep the factory worker motif from the last poem, at least partially, by referring to the father's “first shift posse,” which also gave me additional wiggle room to toy with the names and associations of his “peeps.”

I like playful language. I can do something that's barer, but even in those works it's hard for me to ignore the impulse to let the words sing. Here, perhaps the words harmonize but in a language that is archaic or eccentric or unto itself: art for art's sake. As I understand it, the skittery poem is self-consciously playful, or can be on a number of levels. I didn't want to be opaque; I wanted to be oblique. A more dissociative poem, of course, can be skittery, but for myself I prefer to consider the style as a smart method for constructing a “shaggy dog” poem. Not that every one has to do that, or not, have 'meaning' or not, but if I did throw everything and the kitchen sink into it you'd have a poem with many ingredients but no defining flavor. Hopefully this one has taste, while not necessarily being tasteful.

Our Father,

who art in heaven, or
arts in heaven—because he so enjoyed
painting on the weekends (seascapes,
portraits, still lives)—still
lives—in the memories of those who then
knew him best: Moose Mulhern,
Petey Peters, Ed ((just Ed) who was any-
thing but well-adjusted, if you re-
member that one Xmas party where he
came dressed as an X-rated Saint
Nick: Saint Dick (the Gingham
sisters practically fainted
when he came down the chimney))—
guys from the factory,
his first shift posse,
the punch-me-out-pleasers,
retire-in-twenty-teasers,
a-pack-a-day-wheezers,
his what kids nowadays might say
peeps—“in heaven!” in how
he licked his Nirvanaic lips
after Thanksgiving undid his belt
and unzipped his fly—“why,
we're all family here”—
and he collapsed snoring
on the Lay-Z-Boy, reclining,
declining dessert until Aunt Francis
delivered it on tiptoe and tray
with a knowing wink and a wave
of her kindled Virginia Slim
while cousins football cheered
for the same rival teams
year after rollicking year
—in Florida.

Pics and sketch from big reading

Here's a sketch of the reading by Dmitry Samarov...



Here's a photo of the crowd during the off-site reading during AWP. Thanks to Brianna Pike for snapping it (and being a good sport about reading at the end of the night -- readers chose names of the next reader from a pill bottle, and sadly, Bri's was picked last. What is it they say -- last but not least? Certainly true here).

Reading Between the Lines: An AWP Offsite Event

Hope you can make it out to this event...

Thursday, February 12th
8:00 p.m.

Beat Kitchen (upstairs)
2100 W. Belmont
Chicago, IL 60618
(773) 281-4444

Join emerging as well as established writers from across the US for this intimate reading scheduled to coincide during the annual AWP Conference. Admission is free!

Readers include [order TBD]:

Shaindel Beers’ poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. She is currently a professor of English at Blue Mountain Community College in Pendleton, Oregon, in Eastern Oregon’s high desert and also serves as Poetry Editor of CONTRARY. She has just released her first poetry collection, A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME, from Salt Publishing.

Jessica Berger was born and raised in Chicagoland, where she is now a graduate student in UIC's Program for Writers. She has worked as an illustrator and is especially interested in the coupling of text and her other great love: the visual arts.

Emma Bolden is the author of three chapbooks of poetry: HOW TO RECOGNIZE A LADY, published as part of Edge by Edge, the third in Toadlily Press’ Quartet Series; THE MARINER’S WIFE, published by Finishing Line Press; and THE SAD EPISTLES, forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in such journals as the INDIANA REVIEW, THE JOURNAL, FEMINIST STUDIES, PRAIRIE SCHOONER, REDIVIDER, VERSE, GREEN MOUNTAINS REVIEW, SALAMANDER, and on LINEBREAK.ORG. She was the recipient of a Tennessee Williams Scholarship for the 2008 Sewanee Writers’ Conference and was named a finalist for a Ruth Lily Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation/Poetry magazine. She is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of English in Creative Writing at Georgetown College, where she also serves as poetry editor of the GEORGETOWN REVIEW.

Donald Breckenridge is the Fiction Editor of THE BROOKLYN RAIL and Editor of THE BROOKLYN RAIL FICTION ANTHOLOGY (Hanging Loose Press, 2006). In addition, he is the author of more than a dozen plays as well as the novella ROCKAWAY WHEREIN (Red Dust, 1998), and the novels 6/2/95 (Spuyten Duyvil, 2002) and YOU ARE HERE, new in 2009 from Starcherone Books.

Bruce Covey's fourth book of poetry, GLASS IS REALLY A LIQUID, will be published by No Tell Books in the summer of 2009. He lives in Atlanta, GA, where he teaches at Emory University, edits COCONUT POETRY, and curates the WHAT'S NEW IN POETRY reading series.

Jacque E. Day's latest book, IMAGES OF AMERICA: WEST RIDGE hit bookstores last September, a follow-up title to her 2007 book about Chicago's northernmost neighborhood, IMAGES OF AMERICA: ROGERS PARK. She co-authored both books with Jamie Santoro. Jacque also contributed to the books ARMCHAIR READER: BOOK OF INCREDIBLE INFORMATION (2008), SCIENCE FICTION AMERICA (2006) and JOURNEYS OF FRIENDSHIP (2005), and wrote for many Chicago publications, including New City and ReelChicago.com. She now lives with her husband in western Kentucky, where she works as a reporter for NPR affiliate WKMS-FM, and serves as assistant managing editor for NEW MADRID, JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE.

Larry O. Dean was born and raised in Flint, Michigan. He attended the University of Michigan, during which time he won three Hopwood Awards in Creative Writing, an honor shared with fellow poets Robert Hayden, Jane Kenyon, and Frank O'Hara, among others. He is author of numerous chapbooks, including I AM SPAM (2004), a series of poems “inspired” by junk email; his poetry has also been internationally anthologized. In addition to writing, he is a singer-songwriter, performing solo as well as with his current band, The Injured Parties; he has released many critically-acclaimed CD’s, including FABLES IN SLANG (2001) with Post Office, and GENTRIFICATION IS THEFT (2002) with The Me Decade. His current band, The Injured Parties' debut, FUN WITH A PURPOSE, is due in spring 2009. Dean was a 2004 recipient of the Hands on Stanzas Gwendolyn Brooks Award, presented by the Poetry Center of Chicago.

Lori Desrosiers is a poet, editor and publisher. Her chapbook THREE VANITIES is being published by Pudding House Press. She is the managing editor and publisher of NAUGATUCK RIVER REVIEW, a new journal of narrative poetry (available during AWP at the New England College MFA program table) and also publishes POETRY NEWS, an online events chronicle for the MA and CT area. She is an Assistant Professor of English at Westfield State College in Westfield, Massachusetts.

Laura Dixon earned a BA in literature from The University of Chicago and an MAT from Dominican University. She has worn many hats, from teacher and coach to circus performer. She is currently a Michener Fellow at The University of Texas at Austin, working toward her MFA in poetry, with a fiction minor. She has been featured at numerous Chicago venues, including the Green Mill, Fitzgerald’s, and Lollapalooza.

Eckhard Gerdes is a novelist who has published eight novels in thirty years of writing. His most recent, MY LANDLADY THE LOBOTOMIST, was voted novel of the year 2008 in the annual international on-line PREDITORS & EDITORS Readers Poll. He also edits THE JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL FICTION and teaches at Lake Forest College, DePaul University, and Triton College.

Johannes Göransson was born and raised in Skane, Sweden, but has lived in the US for many years. He is co-editor of Action Books and has translated the work of Aase Berg, Henry Parland, Ann Jaderlund and other Swedish and Finland Swedish poets. His newest book is DEAR RA, A STORY IN FLINCHES, from Starcherone Books.

Sara Greenslit has an MFA in Poetry from Penn State University. She has received grants from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and from the Barbara Deming Foundation/Money for Women, and her novel THE BLUE OF HER BODY was chosen by Brian Evenson as winner of the 2007 Starcherone Prize for Innovative Fiction. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin, where she recently graduated from the veterinary program at University of Wisconsin.

Chris Hildebrand was born in the Spring of 1963, where he grew up watching the moon shots from his driveway in Winter Park, Florida. When he was 15, his family moved to Mobile, Alabama, where he perfected the art of truancy and spent his school days on the waterfront mingling with sailors from around the world. After dropping out of high school, he ran away with the Clyde Beatty Circus and spent the summer traveling about the south with them. He sold monkeys on a stick. Shortly thereafter, he joined the Navy and saw the rest of the world. Many other things happened along the way, but he survived nonetheless. Eventually, he went back to school and now teaches Freshman Composition at Murray State University where he attempts to undermine everything his students ever learned.

Matt "McG" Markgraf is from Chicago but for some odd reason lives in Kentucky, where he works at the NPR station WKMS and with GreenMark Public Relations (based in Chicago). He enjoys writing letters in an order that forms words, hoping they'll eventually form sentences or grocery lists. When he's not throwing down wicked bass-lines on his electronica radio show, he can often be found shouting obscenities at the television whilst playing old school Nintendo and dining on Indian cuisine.

Pamela Johnson Parker is a certified medical language specialist and adjunct instructor at Murray State University in Murray, Kentucky. She attended Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, and Murray State University, where she received a MFA in Poetry in May 2008.

Ted Pelton is the author of three books, including the novel MALCOLM & JACK (Spuyten Duyvil, 2006). An NEA fellowship recipient in fiction, he is the founder and publisher of Starcherone Books, a press devoted to innovative fiction.

Brianna Pike is interested in embarrassing her boyfriend whenever she writes poetry—we should all strive to such high standards. Through her introspection into the natural and the mundane, she seeks to show the beauty and chaos of life. She is currently an Instructor of English at Ivy Tech Community College in Indianapolis, teaching comp and creative writing. She enjoys the challenges and successes of teaching, and finding the time to devote to her craft.

Sarah Rosenthal is the author of HOW I WROTE THIS STORY (Margin to Margin, 2001), SITINGS (a+bend, 2000), and NOT-CHICAGO (Melodeon, 1998). Her work has appeared in journals such as BIRD DOG, FENCE, and BOSTON REVIEW, and has been anthologized in BAY POETICS (Faux Press, 2006), THE OTHER SIDE OF THE POSTCARD (City Lights, 2005), and HINGE (Crack Press, 2002). Her cross genre book, MANHATTEN, is forthcoming from Spuyten Duyvil, and her collection of interviews, A COMMUNITY WRITING ITSELF: CONVERSATIONS WITH VANGUARD WRITERS OF THE BAY AREA, is forthcoming from Dalkey Archive.

Davis Schneiderman is co-author of the novel ABECEDARIUM (Chiasmus Press, 2007), and author of DIS (BlazeVox, 2008) and MULTIFESTO: A HENRI D'MESCAN READER (Spuyten Duyvil, limited ed 2006). He is co-editor of RETAKING THE UNIVERSE: WILLIAMS S. BURROUGHS IN THE AGE OF GLOBALIZATION (Pluto, 2004) and the forthcoming THE EXQUISITE CORPSE (U. Of Nebraska), and co-creator of the audiocollage record MEMORIALS TO FUTURE CATASTROPHES (Jaded Ibis, 2008). He has recently been named Director of Lake Forest College Press/&NOW Books.

Karissa Sorrell is a poetry student in the MFA program at Murray State University. She is from Nashville, TN, and teaches ESL at a local high school.

Roger Stanley is a teacher, traveler, and music-lover who has seen Lucinda Williams in concert at five different Chicago venues. These interests combine for his Murray State MFA thesis in creative nonfiction, which he is completing this spring and summer.

Richard Thomas lives in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. He has been published in COLORED CHALK, CAUSE & EFFECT, GOLD DUST MAGAZINE, VAIN MAGAZINE, and online at NEFARIOUSMUSE.COM, REDFEZ.COM and OPIUMMAGAZINE.COM. His work will also appear in two anthologies from New Voices in Fiction in 2009, as well as online at their site. He is pursuing an MFA at Murray State University while editing his neo-noir thriller novel, TRANSUBSTANTIATE.

Chet Weise is currently an MFA candidate in poetry at Murray State University. Naturally, he chose a Kool menthol as the first cigarette he ever smoked. Kools proved to be the gateway drug to many others including marijuana—much like the Rock 'n' Roll of the Doors, Stooges, and Velvet Underground gatewayed to William Blake, Yeats, and Rimbaud. Listening to the Stooges while getting high inevitably lead the impressionable youth to LSD and an odd affection for its deep images of flashbacks, tracers, and moving ceilings—much like Blake lead to an affection for Eliot and Dylan Thomas. Then there was the Cocaine. Cocaine is a helluva drug, especially when Crystal Meth is mistaken for it. Chet Weise didn't like Cocaine in general much or the non-stop seventy-two hours spent driving a Chevy van as a result of a Crystal Meth mixup. But, he did like picking up that copy of Frank Stanford's book THE SINGING KNIVES at Powell's bookstore. And subsequently, Robert Desnos to Larry Levis. Nowadays, all those gateway experiences have been laid to rest after a bad trip on Mushrooms lead to the fetal position in Auburn, Alabama—a suitable ending to a mostly harmless, innocent time in any red blooded American boy's life. But the poetry has stuck, and hopefully won't be so innocent in Nashville, Tennessee.

Scott Woodham is an MFA candidate in Poetry at Murray State University. He teaches developmental college English courses on Fort Knox and serves as a contributing editor for AlaskaDispatch.com.

Snežana Žabić hails from Croatia by way of Serbia, Hungary and Czech Republic, and resides in Chicago. Her publications include the award-winning short story collection IN A LIFETIME and a collaborative collection of essays and poems titled DISCURSIVE BODIES OF POETRY. Her prose and poetry has been translated into Polish, Swedish, Macedonian, and Hungarian. She edits PACKINGTOWN REVIEW, new journal of arts and scholarship published by the University of Illinois Press. She serves on the board of the Edgewater Film Society, which has been organizing the annual Chicago Festival of Bosnian-Herzegovinian Film at Loyola University since 2006. In 1998, she co-founded LITKON, the pioneering Internet-based network of young writers in the post-war Balkan region. She currently teaches literature and writing at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Ternstedt Division, 1961

Here's a new poem I've been working on. The impetus behind it is, obviously, my father. He died when I was just eighteen. My parents had been separated for many years—I had long before assumed they were divorced, but the actual legal process occurred much later, when my father decided to remarry—and so my impressionable teen years were spent shuttling between Michigan, Virginia, and South Carolina, where I spent my summers with dad, and the last, with him and his new wife and step-daughter.

For many years after his untimely death from throat cancer, I “demonized” my father—not because he was mean or abusive, but because he spoke with a quintessential southern twang, and being an enlisted “lifer” in the Air Force, I came to believe that he must've been some kind of willing as well as enthusiastic cog in the big military-industrial complex, happily obeying orders, voting a straight Republican ticket, and warily eyeing neighbors for telltale signs that they were Communists, radicals or instigators, the kind of ne'er-do-wells who were busily tearing down the fabric of whitebread American life. The truth is likely to be found somewhere between that rather crass cliché and what I'd like to believe, as an enlightened adult, based on recollections of our time spent together. My dad was friendly, relaxed and casual, and displayed better musical taste then my mother, although at the time I was myself becoming cognizant of the more esoteric offerings available if one only browsed beyond the generic mega-marts, and I looked disdainfully upon his Linda Ronstadt, Eagles, and Waylon Jennings albums as remnants of an uncool fealty to dinosauric and more pedestrian listening pleasures.

I'm sure, given my angsty adolescence, that I also felt guilty, not because I was in any way responsible for his death, but because his Social Security benefits enabled me to go to college—something I had not planned to do, and scrambling at the last minute for the cash to do so required me to take out the dreaded student loans that only partially paid for my books and classes (and which I only—finally!—paid off two years ago). Those dependent benefits helped fill in the gaps, and each time I cashed one of the checks I was reminded—painfully—of where they came from. (My mother later spoke scarily of the origin of additional funds that arrived out of the blue: marked OMNIBUS PROGRAM, those checks were cut as some kind of settlement—read: hush money—for families of veterans who had been exposed to Agent Orange. Agent Orange's link to cancer is undisputed.)

I also mistook my father's easygoing nature for a kind of willful stupidity; even if he had “brains,” he apparently never used them, segueing from a job as a shoprat to his gig as a Loadmaster in the USAF. What kind of a choice was that? To my innocent—OK, pretentious and uninformed—younger self, it would never have occurred that it may have been an economic choice, to offer stability to a young wife and new son. Even if that wasn't the reasoning, it was his life, and to a person considering a long-haul commitment to the stultifying effects of repetitive motion on an assembly line, the allure of visiting foreign lands—even if to bomb them, or drop weapons of mass destruction to be used on the ground for same—coupled with the promise of some kind of unpredictability on the job must have made his choice to enlist an easy one.

Ternstedt was General Motor's body hardware division. It operated for many years as a separate division but in 1969 it was absorbed by the Fisher Body Division (which had been its primary customer). I remembered my mother talking about my dad working there, and an old black-and-white snapshot of him holding a pay stub in the company of five other unsmiling cronies beneath a sign reading GAINFULLY EMPLOYED became the cover of my 1995 chapbook, Workers' Comp. His face betrays nothing, and I don't recall asking him about those years on the line in Flint; most likely, that was a time he preferred to forget, but I know if I'd only asked he would've probably talked at length about his experiences.

This poem actually began as a longer one, about my parents meeting. Since my mother died in 2006 I've had plenty of time to ponder all those memories, most of which I don't know with any certainty; so I decided to create them myself. I did a little research into Ternstedt, to confirm its location (between Saginaw Street and Dort Highway north of Coldwater Road), and other little details, such as the makes and models they would have been assembling that particular year. It may yet get expanded—I did start on its second part, but now that I've excised its opening, it seems to stand alone pretty well. When I was writing it, that was my intention—to make each part its own reward—but I'm not entirely sure I'm comfortable truncating that second, and possibly other parts, because that changes the entire scope of the poem as I originally envisioned it. But for now, I'm pleased with what it says and how it says it.

Ternstedt Division, 1961

My father twirls the window crank
like a steel noisemaker,
smacking it in his left palm
again and again—
because his father made him
write with his right
hand as a child—
in the rhythm of someone
who is bored or anxious,
or both. He stares out

through sooty glass
at Coldwater Road, past
an expansive parking lot
littered with LeSabres,
Impalas, Bonnevilles,
Wildcats, Corvairs—
a sea of made-in-America
pride, before Toyota,
before Volkswagen,
before those distinctions
seemingly mattered.

The grease beneath
his thumbnail is a black
crescent moon.
He
anticipates his date later,
already planning what
to wear, after scrubbing off
dirt and sweat and the stink
from sputtered sparks—
a metallic reek—erasing
the factory's tangible
funky tattoo, the fetor
of hardware and harder
living.

The whistle blows
and before the foreman
invades the break room,
poking his buzz-cut head
around the corner, hoping
to catch idling workers
gambling or drinking
or worse, reading, my dad
pockets the handle and re-

turns to the line, where
Cadillac Eldorado door panels
glide by first shifters
standing side-by-side
with lifted screwdrivers
and wrenches like spoons
and forks at a holiday dinner,
pausing, waiting
for somebody to say grace.

Steve Gehrke's The Pyramids of Malpighi

At the behest of a friend, I read Steve Gehrke's “Secretarial School Graduation Dance, 1968” and really liked it. I looked into his available books, and even though he had a newer one I went with his second, where "Secretarial School Dance" was taken from, The Pyramids of Malpighi. It's no surprise Philip Levine chose this title for the 2002 Levine Prize; it's not that Gehrke writes 'like' Levine, though there is a camaraderie with, and a sympathy for the working class that each shares, and most importantly, which never amounts to chin-chucking or pedanticism. Both writing styles complement each other, and both poets employ a thematic reach that is laudatory while appearing wholly sincere—neither seems to grope for what they have to say, and if any groping occurred it was more in how to say it, during the writing process, and such rummaging has since been absorbed or trickled away, like watery runoff after a storm.

There's only eighteen poems in The Pyramids of Malpighi, but at eighty pages it doesn't feel slight. The book is anchored by two longer poems that mirror each other, the title poem and “Inside the Dialysis Machine.” The book is broken into four section—the first and third with seven and nine poems respectively, the second and fourth comprised of the aforementioned anchor poems. In “The Invention of Pointillism,” Gehrke establishes certain motifs that are to recur throughout the book—science and spirituality, birth and death—while linking Seurat's painting, The Circus, done in the titular style, a reproduction of which appears in the poem on one of its characters' walls, with his own poetic style, or at least the style chosen here with which to deliver the poem. By that I mean, like Pointillism, which is a cousin of Impressionism, in which tiny dots of primary-colors are used to generate secondary colors, Gehrke's work can be prismatic, image-wise, but it can also introduce primary images that give way to secondary ones:

Once, in the apartment of a woman I barely knew,
in a room made of blurred light and ashes
with carpet the color of very old newspaper,
I began to believe love was a collection of sighs
and small gestures that flew off as we move. (7)

Consider, as noted above, in the poem's first stanza, the setting of a strange apartment, barely known, leading to “blurred light and ashes”—indistinction—carpet colored like “very old newspaper” as faded memories, hazy words; love as “a collection of sighs,” minute emotions separated into small moments; even “small gestures” that “flew off”—dissipated, into the ether. All of this, working together to, in a way, fabricate a verbal Pointillism, to give us a sense of the room with its parts but also the room as a whole. That Gehrke does what he does with such a high level of skill makes reading these poems 'easy,' in an immediate way, but afterward little depth charges begin going off, compelling the reader to go back over what has just been read in order to find the oblique details.

In terms of style, Gehrke here proves to be, if not restless in an adroit way, then cognizant of ways in which to best serve each poem. Perhaps they began differently, but the cumulative end result is a treat for the eyes, as well as ears: there's step lines and regulated patterns of indentation, as well as stanzaic variety and even prose poems—a form that, like Bigfoot I wonder if it really exists? But Gehrke pulls it off, because the language is 'poetic' enough to both keep the book's flow going, while breaking it up in deceptive ways.

David Lehman's When a Woman Loves a Man

I recently picked up David Lehman's When a Woman Loves a Man. I chose it not because of a long-held interest in Lehman's work, or even a casual curiosity based on poems read over a period of time, but because I read a single poem from it on Writer's Almanac, “SF”:

SF stood for Sigmund Freud, or serious folly,
for science fiction in San Francisco, or fear
in the south of France. The system failed.
The siblings fought. So far, such fury,
as if a funereal sequence of sharps and flats
set free a flamboyant signature, sinful, fanatic,
the fire sermon of a secular fundamentalist,
a singular fellow's Symphonie Fantastique.

Students forget the state's favorite son's face.
Sorry, friends, for the screws of fate.
Stage fright seduces the faithful for the subway fare
as slobs fake sobs, suckers flee, salesmen fade.
Sad the fops. Sudden the flip side of fame.
So find the segue. Finish the speculative frame. (69)

“SF” appears in the second half of When a Woman Loves a Man, and reading it here again, all by its lonesome, I'm less enamored of it than originally, but I still like it. Having read the whole book, which isn't very good, my interest has waned—what I now know has colored my current perception as well as my memory of the past. What sold me on giving the book a try was Lehman's New School cred; not that I'm an acolyte, but I do have a soft spot for NY School poetry in general, and I'm willinger to toss out a wide net in the cold Atlantic than to plow my way through a cornfield of Iowa alums.

That said, what do I like about “SF”? Lehman handles the central conceit rather well—working in all those esses and efs in an interesting sonic fashion (hey, that's an SF!), and then making some sense, though tangential of the combinations; for example, Sigmund Freud/serious folly; funereal sequence/sharps and flats; flamboyant signature/sinful, fanatic; and slobs fake sobs/suckers flee/salesmen fade, though there I'd excise either slobs or sobs, just because I think it sounds better without one or the other. The poem, overall, doesn't feel belabored to me; it's fun, as it's meant to be, but it's also light as a feather, and feathers work better when put together to make something fly. If Lehman's, or any poet's idea was to examine a feather's intrinsic beauty or design or purpose, that's one challenge, and I venture a more daunting one; therefore “SF” is a trifle of a poem that floats off on its own, but can't withstand the demands of establishing a sound foundation for the rest of the structure that this book is.

When a Woman Loves a Man begins strongly. A prelude, “Brooklyn Bridge” recalls Hart Crane's “To Brooklyn Bridge,” in terms of its subject matter and the enthusiasm, even love each poet has for it, but stylistically each couldn't be more different. Lehman's single-stanzaic poem is like a mighty outpouring (or as they say on Law and Order, “an excited utterance”)—ecstatic, untamed, a declaration descending from Whitman's barbaric YAWP, using step-lines that add to its unbridled giddiness:

Calvin Coolidge,
jump for joy!
I've got to hand
it to you—
with compliments
that it will make you blush
like my country's flag
no matter how United
States of America
you may be! (1)

Here's Crane:

How many dawns, chill from his rippling rest
The seagull's wings shall dip and pivot him,
Shedding white rings of tumult, building high
Over the chained bay waters Liberty—

Then, with inviolate curve, forsake our eyes
As apparitional as sails that cross
Some page of figures to be filed away;
—Till elevators drop us from our day . . . (57)

There's an excitement in Crane, rediscovery upon closer examination that is cinematic and sweeping of a beloved object, but it's discreet, polite; not to say that Lehman is impolite, but he strikes me as someone more likely to belch in public and apologize for it, than ducking out of the room to burp in private. Also, breaking United / States of America as he does is a simple thing, but it's effective, and shows he's got the wherewithal to put some additional thought into how the lines look on the page, not just as a mass exodus of celebratory language but in microscopic detail, too.

There are other good poems here, but they are outweighed by an excess of cleverness and featherweight verse that doesn't work even as well as “SF.” The high points are lofty, but even those ultimately diminish when combined with what remains.

Writing the Chicago Crawl

Most people I know hate teaching comp classes, but as a 'creative writer' I find that it keeps my head straight as far as the so-called writing basics go; it also helps stave off any incipient existential angst when my own writing may not be going so well, by simply forcing me to address rudimentary issues in a manner that makes them clear to my students, therefore getting me to be actively engaged in thinking about writing, while not thinking about my writing. For the semester that just ended, my 101 class focused by design largely on language issues, reading essays by Anne Lamott, Malcolm X, Brent Staples, Amy Tan, Richard Rodriguez, and Marjorie Agosín, but as I was reading through William Stafford's Writing the Australian Crawl, I found numerous essays that would also tie appropriately into the arc of the class.

I finally settled on “A Way of Writing.” Stafford begins, “A writer is not so much someone who has something to say as he is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things he would not have thought of if he had not started to say them” (17). This is, of course, an important philosophy for neophyte academic writers, poets, fiction writers and essayists too. He stresses the importance of receptivity while writing, as well as a willingness to fail: “most of what I write, like most of what I say in casual conversation, will not amount to much” (19). Once any writer realizes this, and sees that the most important thing is writing itself, again, as a process, they have leaped an important hurdle. Stafford ends this essay on what he calls the “process-rather-than-substance view of writing” with a final dual reflection:

1. Writers may not be special—sensitive or talented in any usual sense. They are simply engaged in sustained use of a language skill we all have. Their “creations” come about through confident reliance on stray impulses that will, with trust, find occasional patterns that are satisfying.
2. But writing itself is one of the great, free human activities. There is scope for individuality, and elation, and discovery, in writing. For the person who follows with trust and forgiveness what occurs to him, the world remains ready and deep, an inexhaustible environment, with the combined vividness of an actuality and flexibility of a dream. Working back and forth between experience and thought, writers have more than space and time can offer. They have the whole unexplored realm of human vision. (20)

I like “the world remains ready and deep, an inexhaustible environment, with the combined vividness of an actuality and flexibility of a dream.” Many times writers feel compelled to take sides, either planting their feet in the realm of the real, or letting their heads float into the clouds. When either commitment works, on an personal level, and we see it reflected, alive and vibrant in their work, the writer doesn't need any excuses—the work speaks for itself. But those instances may be rarer than the true believers would choose to admit. Picking a style, and sticking with it is, in some ways, like a marriage; but promises made at the altar need to adapt to changes as the couple grows as individuals. Before too long, the writer is letting style drive the bus, and not the other way around. Stafford's reflection allows for a “your-shit-does-stink” authenticity alongside the promise of deeper or more arcane knowledge.

On Jane Kenyon

It's hard to believe—for me, anyway—but I've never read much of Jane Kenyon's poetry, at least not on its own, in one big gulp. The same is true of her husband, Donald Hall, who is most familiar to me (aside from his Poet Laureate stint) as the editor of the highly-influential Contemporary American Poetry anthology foisted upon me as an undergrad at the University of Michigan. (Wish I still had it; but like many things, especially as I have gotten older and found myself the owner of a home smaller in size than many previous apartments, it went the way of myriad books from that time, that is, to a second-hand shop or all-inclusive thrift store.)

But thanks to Graywolf Press, who kindly (desperately?) priced all their hardbacks at ten bucks apiece on the last day of Chicago's annual Printers Row Book Fair, I couldn't resist adding Kenyon's Collected Poems to my lofty pile. I'm glad I did. It's not a very imposing compendium—only four full-length books, two short posthumous tomes, a handful of uncollected poems, and twenty translations of poems by Anna Akhmatova—the fact that it's in hard cover makes it feel weightier than a paperback probably would. But it's quality, rather than quantity that counts, especially here. Reading these poems again, I searched for some abiding metaphor to describe what it is that makes them so special, yet so elusive. Then it hit me: Kenyon's style is almost transparent, so much so that while engrossed in her work you might miss the machinery that makes these poems tick. Like an old watch when it's disassembled, part of the pleasure is in observing the gears as they spin, working in tandem and making everything run smoothly. Not every poem—by Kenyon, or otherwise—would benefit from being taken apart, however. One might, on their own or on assignment, try it with any random poem, and arguably succeed in laying bare its innards; but not every poem would be as beautiful in pieces as it is whole, nor would those components necessarily reveal something of interest, much less merit about the poet who assembled them. Kenyon's poems are simple machines of deceptive agility and skill.

For my money, the most successful poems—I hesitate to say 'best', because there's plenty to like in all Kenyon's books—are found in From Room to Room, her first. “My Mother” is one example. I recently used it in my public school classes, as a writing prompt for 3rd through 6th graders. I suspected its plainspoken language would translate well with any age group, even in classes with many ESL students, and I was correct. It's not a poem I found on line, and I don't recall seeing it in any anthologies, but it's quite powerful as well as quietly powerful. Here it is, in its entirety:

My mother comes back from a trip downtown to the dime store. She
has brought me a surprise. It is still in her purse.

She is wearing her red shoes with straps across the in-step. They
fasten with small white buttons, like the eyes of fish.

She brings back zippers and spools of thread, yellow and green, for
her work, which always takes her far away, even though she works
upstairs, in the room next to mine.

She is wearing her blue plaid full-skirted dress with the large collar,
her hair fastened up off her neck. She looks pretty. She always dresses
up when she goes downtown.

Now she opens her straw purse, which looks like a small suitcase. She
hands me the new toy: a wooden paddle with a red rubber ball at-
tached to it by an elastic string. Sometimes when she goes downtown,
I think she will not come back.

Initially, Kenyon's poem reminds me of Weldon Kees' “For My Daughter”:

Looking into my daughter’s eyes I read
Beneath the innocence of morning flesh
Concealed, hintings of death she does not heed.
Coldest of winds have blown this hair, and mesh
Of seaweed snarled these miniatures of hands;
The night’s slow poison, tolerant and bland,
Has moved her blood. Parched years that I have seen
That may be hers appear: foul, lingering
Death in certain war, the slim legs green.
Or, fed on hate, she relishes the sting
Of others’ agony; perhaps the cruel
Bride of a syphilitic or a fool.
These speculations sour in the sun.
I have no daughter. I desire none.

Each poem startlingly reinvents itself in its final lines. For Kees, such misanthropic musings are mere speculations that, like (mother's?) milk, “sour in the sun.” What at first appears to be a young father's macabre preoccupation is instead a brazenly nihilistic dismissal of traditional family values. Kenyon, whose poem appears autobiographical, deals with a much different kind of horror in her denouement, when the child narrator says of her mother, “Sometimes when she goes downtown, / I think she will not come back.” Fear of abandonment trumps the loss of a child, when the child, in fact, is not there and never was. More than that—the idea of a child's mind preoccupied with the terror of losing a parent is far worse than an adult imagining an imaginary child's moral decay and inevitable death.

Stylistically, Kees' poem is also a much different animal than Kenyon's, but let me get back to the latter. What I love about “My Mother” is manifold: the almost reportorial details, wrought using basic colors and plain speech; the linear narrative, which nonetheless allows readers access to elements of an accrued past—mother, who works “upstairs, in the room next to mine,” but whose work “always takes her far away” (physically as well as psychologically), whose trips downtown, for which she “always dresses / up,” may be purely innocent but which cause no small amount of anxiety for the daughter; even the line break “at- / tached,” which suggests the motion of the paddle ball toy with its elastic string mother has brought back as a gift...to assuage her daughter's fears, mother's own guilt, or both? Also its two accessible similes—shoe buttons, “like the eyes of fish,” and the straw purse, “which looks like a small suitcase” (echoing the daughter's worries that mom may leave and never come back). How accurate, imagistically, as well as emotionally resonant.

Very few of Kenyon's poems spill over onto even a second page. In later books, such as Constance, she pushes herself into composing longer narratives, such as “Having It Out with Melancholy” and the more blatantly autobiographical “The Stroller,” but these are two rare exceptions. Her style is lean and sinewy, and while much of her work is set in the country (where she lived with Hall) and peppered with allusions to crops, hay, lakes, screen doors, flora and fauna, and the stillness one associates with rural living, I would hesitate to call her a “country” poet like Wendell Berry. She seems to be influenced less by place than by interior factors, her writing coming from some deep reservoir that could be full of well or fluoridated and pipe-fed water—it hardly matters what the source is. What's more important is Kenyon's candor and the force of her words.

The New York Postcard Sonnets

Check out my recent review of Philip Dacey's book, at Gently Read Literature.

See also last month's review of Karen Harryman's Auto Mechanic's Daughter.