The Best American Poetry

BAP 2011 Comics continued (Major Jackson) by Nin Andrews

Read the complete poem here.

BAP 2011 Comics continued (Anne Marie Rooney) by Nin Andrews

 Read the complete poem here.

BAP 2011 Comics continued (Olena Kalytiak Davis) by Nin Andrews

Read the complete poem here.

BAP Comics continued (Terrance Hayes) by Nin Andrews

Read the complete poem here.

BAP Comics continued (The Editors) . . . by Nin Andrews

Here they are in a casual mood . . .

And here they're more formal:

Which do you prefer?

Read Guest Editor Kevin Young's introduction and Series Editor David Lehman's foreword here.

-- sdh

BAP 2011 Comics by Nin Andrews

To read the complete poem, go here. 

-- sdh

This Just In from Nin Andrews: RESPONSE TO DAVID: Trilling, Snobs, and a Poet in Poland, Ohio

Dear David, 

I got a little carried away with my response to your recent posts on BAP.  I even added a little comic . . . .

I fear I might be misreading Trilling.  It has been so long since I actually read his book, I can't even find it now.  All that remains is the quote below, which obviously stuck in my head a bit, almost as a judgment.

Hope you are well!

Love, Nin

Above my desk I used to have a quote from the final lines of Lionel Trilling’s Sincerity and Authenticity:

The falsities of an alienated social reality are rejected in favor of an upward psychopathic mobility to the point of divinity, each one of us a Christ—but with none of the inconveniences of undertaking to intercede, of being a sacrifice, of reasoning with rabbis, or making sermons, of having disciples, of going to weddings and funerals, of being something and at a certain point remarking that it is finished.

He sounds so noble.   As if with a flourish of his pen, he could discredit the halo-seeking poet of alienation—the postmodern artist who sees himself or herself as apart from the culture, perhaps helplessly at odds with it.   

But lately I’ve been wondering, what if it is only natural to feel alienated, disillusioned, abstracted?  Is it possible not to feel like a cultural anomaly as a poet in this country? Especially if you are a poet in Poland, Ohio, or a living oxymoron?  Especially when you meet your yoga teacher at the local vegetarian deli, only to have her ask you if you have any poems she could read for sivasana ( the relaxation meditation at the end of class), poems like Rod McKuen’s or maybe Mary Oliver’s? 

I don’t think of myself as a snob, but I do feel disgruntled at times like that.  

Of course, my poet friends have argued that James Wright did okay in Martins Ferry, Ohio.  To which I respond: Is there a place for a contemporary James Wright? 

Don’t get me wrong. I used to love James Wright.  I’m just not such a huge fan these days.  Maybe I am just too grumpy.  Maybe I’ve grown too cynical to think I could break into blossom.  I’ve started to doubt the poets of transformation, poets who can see a chicken hawk and conclude they have wasted their life.  Poets who see a torso of Apollo and conclude you must change your life.  Poets who hear wild geese and preach  that “You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.”  Really?  Is that all? 

These days when I see a hawk flying overhead, or geese, or when I see a torso of Apollo, I can conclude only that I have become a bitchy poet.  I find myself making up alternative pronouncements to replace the famous: You must change your life.  After all, changing one’s life seems a bit daunting.  How about: You must wash the sheets. You must brew the coffee. You must cut the dog’s toenails.  Or how about the via negative:  You must not floss your teeth in public.  You must not mistake the word, clock, for cock or vice versa.  You must not overuse syllepis. Or mistake them for zeugmas.

Meet the Press: Nin Andrews interviews Joan Cusack Handler of CavanKerry Press

NA.  My first question is about the name, CavanKerry.  A nice Irish name. Can you tell me how you came up with this name?  What it means to you? Is there anything Irish about the press besides the name?

JCH   People often ask about the origin of the CavanKerry Press name. It originated with my mother. Her cancer erupted during my earliest days planning for the press, and she seemed energized discussing our progress. Her interest in my writing, which had until then been lukewarm at best, also increased; until then, her pride had focused on my education and my long time career as a psychologist in clinical practice. But when she got sick, she wanted to know about my writing and wanted me to read to her, so during our daily visits, I often read to her from my memoir about the early days of our family. That was a great joy for both of us.

       In a conversation about possible names for the press, a friend suggested I name the press for her—Mary’s Press or O’Connor Press or some variation. I liked the idea of honoring her, but I didn’t want to exclude m father, nor did I want to name the press after any one person. Our goals included creating a community, so I wanted a more inclusive name. The combination of Cavan and Kerry, the two counties in Ireland where my parents were born and raised, seemed the most natural way to honor both of them and the two lands that spawned my own writing. Though the name came quickly. I researched the logo endlessly. I wanted a Celtic symbol that would define CavanKerry, so I studied the Book of Kells and settled on the linked circles which represent our core value, equality—separate identities and relatedness, equality of voices—diverse and distinct, equality of artist and audience—speaker and listener.

      So, though I never conceived of CavanKerry as an ‘Irish’ press, its name. logo, and sensibilities are: fine writing, individuality, community, and generosity.

NA.   You started CKP eleven years ago.  What inspired you to start a press?  What are the best and worst aspects of being a publisher? 

JCH  The story of CavanKerry Press begins with my own writing story and is grounded in my study of human behavior and my life as a clinical psychologist. People fascinate me.  As do their stories.  Each and every one—diverse and unique, public and private. But that doesn’t really explain my need to publish books.

           Ever since I started writing, which was in my early 40s, I was acutely aware of the lack of opportunities for new writers, for older writers (youth is venerated in all of the arts—particularly in our culture), for a preference for more intellectual over emotional/psychological poetry which I preferred, wrote and considered most vital. The fact that I am a psychologist as well as a writer and publisher clearly informed this preference--I believe we write to communicate and that the deepest connection between people is emotional. It follows then that it is the work that speaks to/from that intimacy/vulnerability that I would find most gratifying and nourishing. It would certainly be the work I’d most likely turn to if awake in the middle of the night.  It was the poetry that I read, loved and wrote. It’s what I longed to publish.

Abandoned Quarry Seen from Below by John Lane

(c)Nin Andrews

Nin Andrews interviews John Lane here. 

Meet the Press: Nin Andrews interviews John Lane of the Hub City Writers Project

(photo (c) Les Butchart)

Ed note:  John Lane is a naturalist, author, professor of Environmental Literature and Creative Writing at Wofford College, and co-founder of the Hub City Writers Project in Spartanburg, South Carolina

 

NA:  I first met you at a poetry reading back when you were a Hoyns Fellow at the University of Virginia.  Already an accomplished poet, I remember listening to you read the poem, “Quarries,” which beautifully articulates the poet’s need to look at the losses in the world, a poem I am happy to find in your new and wonderful collection, Abandoned Quarry.  The poem ends with the line: I longed to grow into a man and work/to quarry the emptiness outward/until all was level again.  I know it’s an odd question, but I’d love to know how you see your evolution as a poet?  How has your quarrying been?

 JL. Thank you Nin. That was I believe 1980. A long time ago. (It’s getting close to the time when “half a lifetime ago” isn’t just a figure of speech!) I’ve always loved that poem “Quarries,” which I wrote during my Hoyns Fellowship year in Charlottesville. It’s one I return to often when I want some sort of hard fix on what I want from my poetry. I’ve got a great story that goes with its republication in  Abandoned Quarry.  I was back in Charlottesville last fall as a visiting environmental writer at UVA’s Brown College and I had breakfast with Greg Orr, my mentor in whose workshop I wrote “Quarries” over 30 years ago. It was a very emotional visit for me—walking the Lawn and seeing old friends. It was one of the few times I’ve been back there since I left in 1981. As you know, lots of my changes were there, both good ones and bad. When I told Greg the name of the new & selected poems I had due out from Mercer University Press he picked up the reference to the old poem right away. “I can’t wait to read the poem called “Abandoned Quarry,” he said. I had to admit to him that I had not written a poem called “Abandoned Quarry,” and he said, “Well, get to it. You can’t call that collection ‘Abandoned Quarry’ unless there’s a poem to show why.” So that next day I wrote a first draft of the poem “Abandoned Quarry” in the Charlottesville airport on the notes app of my iphone! In a few days I sent it to Greg right and we “work shopped” the poem back and forth, and now I have that new echo poem to that one written over 30 years ago. Strangely enough, it was written in Charlottesville. So after 30 years of, as “Quarries,” says, “thick dust stirring, then slowly settling around me,” I’m still at it!

NA: I often think of you as a nature poet, recalling many of your poems that move gracefully from the natural to the personal, from the intimate to the infinite.  But you write other kinds of poems including your quirky and insightful dead father poems. I am not usually a fan of dead father poems, but yours I love.  They remind me of how the dead actually do continue to talk to us—in the most ordinary ways. I love how the dead father in the poems is cooking hash browns, gambling, telling you to change the oil in your car, etc. Can you talk a little about these poems?  Which poem was your first dead father poem?

JL:  Those are real ghost poems. I wrote the first one—“My Dead Father Dressing”-- at Interlochen Arts Academy in the winter of 1987 or ’88. I was there teaching as a poet in residence for a semester. I’d been out cross country skiing and I’d piled my wet clothes in the corner of my little room when I returned and then sat down to type at my computer. Out of the corner of my eye I had this funny little vision of my long dead father putting on my clothes. The spooky visitation only lasted for a few microseconds but in the midst of it I began typing this poem, “I see my dead father in the room…” A little background: a few weeks before at Christmas my mother had given me my father’s driver’s license. He’d died, a suicide, in 1959 when I was five years old. Well, when I looked at the license I noticed that my father was only 5’6”. I never knew that. I’m over 6’! Well, that I believe was the beginning of it in my unconscious. Fathers are supposed to be bigger than sons, and yet my father was a half a foot shorter. There also was the whole thing Donald Hall made famous among poets with his long poem “The Day I Was Older.” Will we live more years than our fathers were given? (Or our mothers?) Well, in 1987 I was 33 years old, and I knew my father took his own life when he was 44. Over the next ten years I wrote the rest of the poems that appeared in The Dead Father Poems, the beautiful letter pressed Horse & Buggy collection in ‘99. The last one in the collection (or section in the new & selected) is “My Dead Father Rebuilds My Engine,” where he rebuilds an old car in my yard and then “hands me the keys.” Very metaphoric! And I wrote that when I was approaching the age my father was when he died. It’s all about ambition (“a dream with a V-8 engine,” as Elvis said) and about my dead father giving me permission to go on without him. The last poem written though was the one called “My Dead Father Visits my Mother.” This poem was a request written for my friend, the poet Deno Trakas. He read the collection in draft and said, “You know what’s missing? He’s got to go over and visit your mother.” He was right and so I added that one in before it was published.

NA: I have been enjoying your two new books, Abandoned Quarry, and The Best of the Kudzu Telegraph, bending the pages of the poems and essays I like the best.  As I do this, I think of how authors often read the same pieces from their collections over and over again—when they give readings. I am wondering if you could name one or two of your favorite poems and essays to read aloud?

JL: It’s hard to decide. There are 107 poems in there written over a period of 33 years in the collection, so I could dip in almost anywhere. I have little colored markers on the ones I read a bunch. There’s “Quarries” and “Tony Dorsett and his Band,” from the early years, and I have to read “Sweet Tea” if I’m in the South (it’s become my “Sweet Baby James” here in South Carolina) and I like to read the “Certainty” section from the long poem “Against Information,” and I always read a “Dead Father Poem” or two, and the Mark O’Conner improvisation “Delta Morning Blues,” and of the new poems I’ve read “My Sister Cleans Out My Ears” several times, and “Cliffs of Moher” once or twice. With  The Best of the Kudzu Telegraph I like to always read “The Battle for Suger Tit,” and “The Not So Constant Gardner” and “Ode to a Truck” and “Whose Planet is it Anyway?”  I think those transcend the local and people seem to enjoy them all over, even above “the kudzu line.”