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.

First Friday Series Reading

Hope you can make it out to this reading. I'll be featuring, for the first time in a long while, along with Thomas Curry, Elizabeth Harper & Janet Kuypers. The inimitable Charlie Newman hosts.

Abstraction and Ethical Choice in Camus' The Plague

In an early chapter of Albert Camus' The Plague, itinerant journalist, Raymond Rambert asks the town doctor, Bernard Rieux for a certificate stating that he is plague-free, in order that he might leave the quarantined city of Oran and be reunited in Paris with his girlfriend. When his request is refused, Rambert angrily accuses Rieux of being incapable of understanding his situation:

You're using the language of reason, not of the heart; you live in a world of abstractions.

After Rambert's departure, Rieux muses on his accusation:

Yes, the journalist was right in refusing to be balked of happiness. But was he right in reproaching him, Rieux, with living in a world of abstractions? Could that term “abstraction” really apply to these days he spent in his hospital while the plague was battening on the town ...? Yes, an element of abstraction, of a divorce from reality, entered into such calamities. Still when abstraction sets to killing you, you've got to get busy with it. And so much Rieux knew: that this wasn't the easiest course.

The answer to both of Rieux's reflexive questions is no. Rieux, in fact, isn't dealing with abstractions, or ideas at all when he refuses Rambert's request—he is reacting rationally to unforeseen events that have befallen Oran. In addition to working long clinical hours, diagnosing and treating contagious patients, he helps convince city health officials to institute measures for inoculating the city's populace at the earliest possible time, in an effort to stem spreading of the disease. Rieux does what he has to do in the face of calamity, out of a sense of responsibility to himself, as a citizen of Oran and the community, as a doctor who has pledged to treat and heal the sick, even if his own well being is threatened in turn.

Aristotle, in Nicomachean Ethics, says,

[V]irtues arise in us neither by nature nor contrary to nature, but nature gives us the capacity to acquire them, and completion comes through habituation.

In other words, virtue is not something we are born with; but life experience gives us the potential to be virtuous, to learn by doing, which doesn't necessarily involve navigating the “the easiest course.” Furthermore,

[A]ctions done in accordance with virtues are done in a just or temperate way … with knowledge … from rational choice … and … from a firm and unshakable character.

Rieux's actions—instituting a quarantine, treating patients as if they were afflicted by the plague before an official declaration of outbreak has been made, at the risk of infecting himself—arise from rational choice, and from “a firm and unshakable character.” He chooses to do good, based on objective evidence, operating under directive from his own moral compass, and sticks to his guns. “You're stating the problem wrongly,” Rieux remarks to his compatriot, Dr. Richard, discussing implementation of prophylactic measures. “It's not a question of the term I use; it's a question of time.”

Later, once the plague taken firm hold of the city, Rieux is talking with a newcomer to Oran, Jean Tarrou. Tarrou unexpectedly offers the besieged doctor assistance by organizing voluntary groups of helpers, an offer which Rieux gladly accepts. The discussion then turns to Father Paneloux's recent fire-and-brimstone sermon; pressed for an answer as to his particular beliefs, Rieux admits that he is an atheist. Tarrou asks him how he can work so devotedly when he doesn't believe in God? Rieux replies,

I have no idea what's awaiting me, or what will happen when all this ends. For the moment I know this; there are sick people and they need curing.

Rieux is concerned not with the nebulous prospect of an afterlife, but with the here-and-now. “Virtues are rational choices,” Aristotle says in Nichomachean Ethics, and Rieux's decision to try to cure his patients arises from the knowledge that he, as a physician, has the requisite knowledge, is the best prepared to effect such a remedy if possible. He continues,

When I entered this profession, I did it 'abstractedly,' so to speak; because I had a desire for it, because it meant a career like another, one that young men often aspire to. Perhaps, too, because it was particularly difficult for a workman's son, like myself. And then I had to see people die. Do you know that there are some who refuse to die? Have you ever heard a woman scream 'Never!' with her last gasp? Well, I have … I've never managed to get used to seeing people die.

Rieux confesses his earlier attraction to medicine may have been for 'abstract' reasons—aptitude, social pressure, prestige, hierarchical class distinctions—but the reality of being a doctor, of dealing with life and death on a one-to-one basis, quickly altered his conception. Virtue “comes through habituation,” is a learning process; therefore, through applying himself as a doctor—saving, as well as losing patients; becoming familiar with, yet not inured to death—Rieux has come to be virtuous.

Later in The Plague, when contagion is at its zenith, Magistrate Orthon's young son is afflicted by the epidemic and brought to the auxiliary hospital for treatment. Camus spares little in describing the boy's febrile convulsions and “torture.” Drs. Rieux and Castel, Tarrou, Paneloux, Rambert, and Joseph Grand, Rieux's former patient and a municipal clerk, bear witness to the child, Jacques' symptoms, after being administered Castel's last-ditch anti-plague serum:

[T]he pain inflicted on these innocent victims had always seemed … to be what in fact it was: an abominable thing. But hitherto they had felt its abomination in, so to speak, an abstract way; they had never had to witness over so long a period the death-throes of an innocent child.

Medicine, religion, so-called journalistic facts, even the daily business of living in the midst of plague—no belief system, science or philosophy—can approximate the reality of pain, suffering, and death, especially that which affects “an innocent child.” Disgust at such senseless and widespread suffering ceases to be conceptual or intellectual when one willingly undergoes exposure to it. No one is untouched by Jacques' death, least of all Rieux, who says, in reaction to Father Paneloux's platitudinous statement, “But perhaps we should love what we cannot understand”:

“No, Father. I've a very different idea of love. And until my dying day I shall refuse to love a scheme of things in which children are put to torture.”

Rieux will never “manage[] to get used to seeing people die”—it is beyond his character, the opposite of what is good, the antithesis of action. His character will not allow it.

Once the plague has officially abated, Oran is scheduled to reopen to the public. Though he is still overworked, considering a return to normalcy brightens Rieux's perspective—he's hopeful, with an optimistic general outlook for himself, as well as others. He ponders further change:

Yes, he'd make a fresh start, once the period of “abstractions” was over, and with any luck—

Rieux's thoughts are interrupted when his mother arrives to tell him Tarrou is not feeling well; within days he has died of the plague. The “period of 'abstractions'” Rieux had in mind—the idea of a plague-free Oran, as opposed to the reality of reopening the city, its citizens acclimated once again to the rhythms of reality, the all-encompassing pestilence banished—is summarily over. Prior to succumbing, Tarrou asks his friend to be honest with him regarding his prognosis:

“Rieux,” he said at last, “you must tell me the whole truth. I count on that.”
“I promise it.”

Telling the truth, no matter how ugly, unpleasant, or frightening, is a noble choice. Hard as it may be for him to do so personally, Rieux is honest with Tarrou about his prospects, and that final declaration obliterates the temptation to cloak meaning or hope in abstraction. Tarrou's death brings “tears of impotence” to Rieux's eyes, but it is his inability to thwart the plague through medical treatment—science, medicine—that brings on the tears. Sometimes the plague kills; death is not an abstraction, and Rieux's intentions and actions are profoundly moral.

De Composition! De Composition!

As a card-carrying poet, people might think I prefer writing by longhand, versus writing by computer. They're half right. I consider myself a reformed Luddite; once I may have clung to the idea that purer composition, more artistic writing, was done solely with a pad and paper, or in a stretch, on the keys of my old portable reporter's Corona typewriter. But once I abandoned my stubborn reliance on such an antiquated notion, I began to see that there was a time, place, and argument both for and against each mode. However, I said those people who imagine I embody the Byronic ideal of the poet, scribbling frantically by flickering candlelight, were half correct, because my preferred procedure for composition still involves paper and a pen. I'll tell you why.

When you write with paper and pen, you have defined boundaries—literally. You are limited to the borders of each side of your paper, the top and the bottom. Of course, when you get to the end of the page you flip it over and continue on the back, or start on a new sheet. Nonetheless, having a set space in which to compose your thoughts forces the mind to contemplate borders, to engage in rigorous and sometimes drastic pre-editing of work that, on a computer screen, may go through various electronic permutations, sometimes altered by as little as a word or even letter, over and over, before a first draft sees the light of day. A pad of paper is also a three-dimensional world unto itself, a physical reality onto which a pen or pencil scrawls down ideas by literally engraving. I find this method reassuring; it also provides me with an immediate and kinetic connection to the history of writing and writers from the pre-computer past whose work I've admired and learned from. It also leaves me, from draft to draft, with a chronicle of my thinking process laid out in words, phrases, cross outs, add ins, and so on. Many times I've longed to have that record of my work when the current draft in hand was something that barely resembled my first inkling, something perhaps far removed from my original intention in a bad way, and now I have no road map back to where I started.

Composing on paper is cheap: you can buy a pad or notebook at a nearby chain pharmacy or grocery, even your corner mini mart if need be, walk with it into the parking lot, plop down on the pavement and begin writing. With a laptop, you need electricity, or batteries; and if your batteries begin dying out on you before inspiration has run its course, you are going to be in trouble. A computer that can't turn on isn't going to do you any good, unless you sell it and use the quick cash to buy yourself a ream of legal sized pads and a dozen boxes of Bics. Computers too, with all their bells-and-whistles, entice writers away from their craft with the allure of easy distractions, convincing them to take a break when they should keep writing, or to check email between brainstorms; I'm as guilty as the next person when it comes to this. If it's something important you're drafting, sometimes taking the hard (copy) route will force you to remain on task. That screen, reflecting like a mirror, seems to bring out the narcissist in us all, and often at the worst possible time.

I do see how computers have enabled us to get rid of paper waste and eased burdensome storage; hard drives and flash drives take up less space and are as portable as, in the latter example, a tube of lipstick. Thousands upon thousands of pages of brilliant writing, right in your pocket! But if my mind is already attuned to its chosen environment—in this instance, a blank piece of paper—it's also already finding strategies with which to make the physical part of my job the least strenuous, since my mind has plenty of heavy lifting to do in composition mode. The result will be far less drafts, far less actual paper use and accrual, than if I am privy to the benefits of relentless on-screen editing.

The final irony? I'm composing this brief essay right on my laptop. As I said in the beginning, those know-it-alls who believe they've got me pegged are partially on the money. I want this draft to be rough and speedy and what better way to knock it out quickly than on my MacBook? Once it's done—in exactly another minute or two—I can get back to more important work—namely, a new poem, written in longhand earlier this afternoon.

Hands on Stanzas 2008-2009

I'm thrilled to once again be teaching as a poet-in-residence through the Poetry Center of Chicago's Hands on Stanzas program. This year, I'll be returning to three schools: McPherson, Solomon, and Shields Elementary. I start at Shields next week, and the other two follow shortly.

Be sure to check each school's blog weekly for updates. Links are above. Student poetry will be posted soon!

The Poetry Center recently re-launched its web site; go here and take a peek. Snazzy, eh?

I'm lucky to be a participant in the Hands on Stanzas program, and specifically to be working in these incredible schools.

More to come...

Mega Reading

Hope you can make it out to this aptly-named event. See below for approximate reading times, including yours truly's. I'll be reading all new poems.

Tentative Schedule for Mega Reading on August 9th:

1) Vittorio Carli (2:00-2:10)
2) Tom Henkey (2:10-2:20)
3) Articulite (2:20-2:30)
4) Buddha 309 (2:30-2:40)
5) Count Leonard DeMontbrun (2:40-2:50)
6) Donnie Byron (2:50-3:00)
7) Jason L. Ammerman (3:00-3:10)
8) Joe Carli (3:10-3:20)
9) Maureen Tolman Flannery (3:20-3:30)
10) Katie Schaag (3:30-3:40)
11) Lee Groban (3:40-3:50)
12) Dr. Groove/Geoffrey Watts (3:50-4:00)
13) Jessica Guzales (4:00-4:10)
13) Ditch Pigs with Miss Lady J. and Suzy Sunshine (4:10-4:20)
14) Kim Berez (4:20-4:30)
15) Janet Kuypers (4:30-4:40)
16) Yolanda Yo Jackson aka Poetic Flow (4:40-4:50)
17) Bob Lawrence (4:50-5:00)
18) Laura Lionello (5:00-5:10)
19) Ixta J. Menchaca (5:10-5:20)
20) Dena Pope (5:20-5:30)
21) Blonde Lesbians from Outer Space (5:30-5:40)
22) Jesus Sains (5:40-5:50)
23) Cathleen Schandelmeier-Bartels (5:50-6:00)
24) Shag (6:00-6:10)
25) Earline Strickand (6:10-6:20)
26) Larry O. Dean (6:20-6:30)
27) Vincent (6:30-6:40)
28) Erika Mikkalo (6:40-6:50)
30) Cynthia Walker (6:50-7:00)
31) Ivan Petryshyn (7:00-7:10)
31) Jennifer Watman (7:10-7:20)
32) Valya Woodstock (7:20-7:30)

Mercury Cafe
1505 W. Chicago Avenue
Chicago, IL 60622
(312) 455-9924

Hope to see you there!

Steve Orlen's The Elephant's Child

I first became familiar with Steve Orlen through Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac. Here's the poem, “Monkey Mind,” in its entirety:

When I was a child I had what is called an inner life.
For example, I looked at that girl over there
In the second aisle of seats and wondered what it was like
To have buck teeth pushing out your upper lip
And how it felt to have those little florets the breasts
Swelling her pajama top before she went to sleep.
Walking home, I asked her both questions
And instead of answering she told her mother
Who told the teacher who told my father.
After all these years, I can almost feel his hand
Rising in the room, the moment in the air of his decision,
Then coming down so hard it took my breath away,
And up again in that small arc
To smack his open palm against my butt.
I'm a slow learner
And still sometimes I'm sitting here wondering what my father
Is thinking, blind and frail and eighty-five,
Plunged down into his easy chair half the night
Listening to Bach cantatas. I know he knows
At every minute of every hour that he's going to die
Because he told my mother and my mother told me.
I didn't cry or cry out or say I'm sorry.
I lay across his lap and wondered what
He could be thinking to hit a kid like that.

“Monkey Mind” isn't among the sixteen new poems in Orlen's The Elephant's Child, which also collects work from 1978-2005; it's from his 2001 book, This Particular Eternity. By far, my favorite, and I'd argue the best poems here are from the last ten years, and even Orlen (or his publisher) agrees, since earlier books, from 1978, 1981, and 1992, are represented by four, four, and seven poems, respectively. He seems to hit his stride – and by 'stride' I mean come into a comfortable and recognizable style – in Kisses (1997), a book that also addresses Orlen's Jewishness. (An earlier poem collected here, “The Pripet Marshes,” has the Holocaust as its theme, but its voice is more reportorial.) Which doesn't mean there's no discernible style or voice in the thirty-year-old poems by Orlen; if I picked up the aptly-named Permission to Speak, chances are I'd recognize right away a poet whose work talks to me, whose words I really hear. The best thing is, his poetry has both improved with age, as well as become better, more incisive and personal over time, reflecting a fine tuning of Orlen's work and obsessions.

One of Orlen's great subjects is sex, which he approaches unflinchingly. “In Praise of Beverly,” from Permission to Speak, is the first chronologically in this collection, if not sequentially. What he exhibits here, as well as in later works, such as “Poem for Women and for Men,” and “Nature Rarely Confides in Me,” is not just 'honesty' but a rejection of sentimentality. As a poet grows older, the inclination for them is to mellow with age; the same is certainly true, and perhaps more evident in contemporary music. But while the not-necessarily-well-fed rock and roller loses their bite as well as their bile – meaning 'success' is neither the measuring stick, nor the impetus for toning down the barbaric yawp that came naturally early on – the poet, already a creature of isolation and introspection, should be immune to such a dwindling of character, or at least an extreme case of it. Orlen's work here, especially the most recent, shows no sign of wimping out.

Back to “Monkey Mind” for a moment. What I admire about this poem – and what grabbed me right away – is Orlen's deft mental maneuvering through a minefield pocked with memories and emotions. For him, crass lust is on a par with stupidity, is equal to childhood fears, measures up alongside love and forgiveness; he doesn't prioritize these all too human failings and feelings, creating a rhetorical argument for one, and against another. That so much baggage apparently at odds with itself can coexist in one poem is a laudable already, but Orlen makes it appear natural, leads the reader by the hand without drawing attention to the disparateness around them. As to style, he doesn't give eyes a workout by letting lines meander or zigzag across the page, but employs instinctive breaks between sentences and stanzas, breaks that are not uniform yet which both inform the text as well as allow it to move gracefully. Notice the shortest line in “Monkey Mind” –

I'm a slow learner

– how it says what it says by saying as well as showing. Great craft, great poems.

Tom Carey's Desire

I'm not exactly sure where I read about Tom Carey's Desire. I'm a big list-maker and an inveterate jotter, specifically in the pages of my trusty At-A-Glance appointment book, where I know nothing escapes my scrutiny for long. If it's worth remembering, pondering, vetting, analyzing, dissecting, it winds up there. Those items that do are ritually moved to later pages if not dealt with in a timely fashion, and as I'm transitioning from an elder planner to a neophyte edition, I make one final pass of the former's pages, just in case something fell through the proverbial cracks. Cary's book found its way into my At-A-Glance, and after some shuffling and juggling, I finally got myself a copy.

Carey is a native left-coaster – specifically, a southern Californian – who grew up in the shadow of Hollywood. IMDB only lists one screen credit, but his bio notes a role as well in Day of the Locust (one of the best book-to-screen adaptions ever), which is apt because of its poison pen attitude toward Tinseltown. He studied acting seriously, and seems to have continued with it after a move to New York in the late '70s. However, in 1988, he became a Franciscan brother in the Society of St. Francis, a religious order in the Episcopal Church – “men who live under vows of poverty, chastity and obedience,” according to their web site. It continues, “In addition to the work of prayer, most of the Brothers are engaged in work outside the friary.” Indeed.

Desire bears the subtitle, Poems: 1986-1996. Does Carey write or, more specifically, publish anymore? The book is ten-plus years old, and the only other publication credit I can find is as co-editor of James Schuyler's Collected Poems (Desire is dedicated to Schuyler); a poem about Joe Brainard appeared in Jacket, in 2002. That's it, based on a cursory search. It's not the selected work of a longstanding writer; Desire instead seems to be a compendium of poems written during a decade, including some overlap with Carey's entry into the Franciscan order.

Carey ain't no Thomas Merton. He's obviously influenced by the New York School, and writes in a cosmopolitan, chatty, yet often world-weary style about people and places in bohemian New York; his poetry isn't universal, but it also doesn't feel hermetic, like the worst graduates from that particular alma mater. Unlike the NY poets, though, many of Carey's poems are confessional, written by a mind on the cusp of being both gay man and religious acolyte. He doesn't appear to be torn about the religiosity, in fact relishes the rituals of his chosen vocation. But it's an unusual blend, to say the least, these poems of longing and lust, death and dying, life and living.