The Best American Poetry

What Copywriting Taught Me About Poetry [by Megin Jimenez]

A few years ago, when I was working as a Freelance Everything (writer, editor, translator), I spent some time as a copy writer at Victoria's Secret, two days a week for about a year. It felt like Megin's Secret, because I was coming from the non-profit world, specifically international organizations working for women's health and rights, whose philosophical roots were grounded in questioning traditional gender roles. And then there I was, in the glossy offices of a gigantic corporation. My task: make the clothes and shoes in the famous catalog (its many many editions over the course of a year) and the website alluring, irresistible, in the "voice" of the brand. I think the job was intriguing precisely because I had spent so much time thinking about feminism, femininity and all of its trappings. This was an opportunity to dive into the fragrant, silicone bosom of the beast. 

I ended up at VS via a writer friend who generously gave me a chance to try something I hadn't done before; I surprised myself by having fun writing copy and actually being pretty good at it.  Readers may be surprised to learn that the creative department was not populated by busty, bright-eyed vixens chattering at their desks and indulging in the occasional spirited pillow-fight.  What I observed in the copy writers section was a group of very fashion-savvy, creative women, many of them writers with their own personal projects across a range of genres (essays, fiction, poetry, young adult novels). I used to wonder what we could produce if we were actually able to write and design something together of our own choosing. It was easy to joke about the job (the writers themselves joked about it), because it was so much about the frothy confection. But it's really not something just anyone can do, which is why it's paid handsomely. (This isn't mine, but here's a taste: Meet the hottest little halter for warm-weather fun. The shimmery Beach Dress is the perfect pack-and-play, with a plunging v-neck and a built-in shelf bra that lends light support at the beach and beyond. In an exceptionally soft cotton blend with sparkling sequin stripes, it’s your go-to frock when you want to outshine the sun.) 

It was not about endlessly repeating cliches (I was asked to avoid the word "sexy"), it was about turning them inside out, picking up on slang, trends of the time, fabrics, fashion history...  I wasn't writing about gender-based violence or the feminization of the AIDS epidemic (like at my other gigs), I was writing about shoes and flirty nighties. But that job is hands-down the one that most valued my creativity as a poet. I was encouraged to pull out my full bag of tricks -- rhyming, alliteration, personas, puns -- and basically to have fun with the English language for a few hours a day. I was quietly proud that my skills were valued to the point that in the year 2009, surrounded by computers filled with thousands of dollars worth of software, I was given the freedom to sit with pen and notepad and jot down ideas for hours (which I would later transfer to a template on the computer).  

I didn't ultimately want a career as a copy writer, though I did consider it briefly when offered a full-time job, especially having felt so undervalued in the non-profit sector. But I couldn't move beyond the anthropological stage to seeing it as what I did full-time. (Probably if I was still there I would be nauseated by the sight of yet another sassy little halter dress, envisioning myself as a trained monkey and ruminating darkly about taking down the empire of corporate greed, so it's best I didn't move in that direction and can instead remember it as a learning experience…)  

What I did not see coming from my stint at Victoria's Secret was how I started to sell myself on clothes, with my own words. We weren't given the glossy, sexy final photos of the models to work with. At best we had a cheap digital picture of the shoes or article in question. I knew what the mark-ups were, I knew what was going on. But in imagining the allure of a color, of a cut, a season, a lifestyle, a story -- I would get sucked into my own illusions. I found myself wanting to shop more, taking more chances with how I dressed (I'm not talking cleavage, more like color), thinking about what style means to a person. Advertising, in the end, proved something about poetry: that stuff poetry teachers say about the visceral component of language is not bunk. There is something fundamental about the charm of the words, about rhyme, about alliteration that we want to respond to, even (or especially?) when it is put to capitalistic purposes. 

The Readers and the Writers [by Megin Jimenez]

At the reading last night, I heard several people talking about this big conference coming up. Perhaps it will be of interest to readers of the blog. It's called something like "AWB"? 

Yes, yes, the largest gathering of the residents of Poetryland (as Jordan Davis usefully referred to it last week) and other literary lands will be starting soon, and we will no doubt be hearing dispatches from writers in Chicago on this very site and across the web. I'm not going to AWP this year, and I haven't been to AWP. I am a little curious, as the common reaction when it comes up is a groaning sound, followed by "It's great... It's exhausting... but it's fun at the same time! ... groan... there's a lot of drinking." I also have an allergic reaction to the use of the word "network" as a verb and fear going into anaphylactic shock if I should attend... That sounds snottier than anything I intended; I have actually come to see this as a shortcoming on my part. A bit of "network-as-verb" is necessary to getting anywhere in public life, and I do realize a lot more goes on at these epic gatherings than The Schmooze, including a great range of panels, readings, and debauchery (antidote to the allergy?), so I wouldn't rule out attending in the future... Happy travels to all heading to Chicago and I look forward to reading live dispatches.

This question of the kind of public life we assign to the writer, of peddling your writer-wares, makes me think of the heated debates that have been burning up literary-minded corners of the web and print journals for the past couple of decades (longer?). The questions are: Can poetry matter? What is the value of a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing? (Or alternatively, "Why the hell would anyone get an MFA in Creative Writing"?) Who reads poetry? Who decides what is poetry? Why doesn't anyone read poetry? What does it mean to teach creative writing? Is the whole endeavor of "creative writing" too institutionalized or hermetic? Is there such a thing as a sustainable model for publishing poetry? Etc., etc. (For a primer of the complaints and some answers, once again here's the link to Jordan Davis's excellent précis.)

I have read a lot of opinions in these various these debates, from nearly every camp, with varying degrees of interest, dread, excitement, and bewilderment. I certainly don't intend to take on all of these questions in a humble blog post, but I can say something about the MFA issue from a personal perspective.

When I was in grad school at The New School, we would commiserate about how difficult it was to talk about what it was we were studying with family members, strangers at a party, at our day jobs. There was something embarrassing about talking about being a writer of poetry (uh, a poet), not because I was embarrassed about what I was doing, but because I had to contend with other people's embarrassing preconceptions about what that meant. The most negative among these, or what I most feared, included, "Oh a poet, isn't that sweet?", "Oh a poet, you mean Raging Narcissist," or "'MFA in poetry, what kind of job do you get with that?". There's also the dreaded, "What kind of poetry do you write?", which you should be nice about answering even if you don't know what kind of poetry you write, because it's actually often an expression of genuine interest. I still don't really like talk about "the whole poetry thing" casually, because so much of it is ultimately between myself and the page, which is enough to sort out already.  

Notes on readings, becoming a creeping Internet creep [by Megin Jimenez]

A few notes on poetry readings (gotta make it quick today):

Reminder to NYC poetry people/poetry people in NYC that we are hosting Martha Rhodes and Lynn Emanuel at KGB Bar tonight, 7:30.

Here is a taste of Lynn Emanuel:

from Dream in Which I Meet Myself 

Dear Diary, here in New York City,
the snow descends.  The days go on forever.
Hash made my mind from my fingertips stream out.
My brain was tapped, under surveillance 
by the eyes of the traffic lights jewelling the foreheads of the avenues.
Inside my red dress I was a sunset.
I lingered and blinked in the gold windows of NEW WORLD FETISH
at the nun in her rubber habit.
I tried on her wimple of lurid beauty and it fit.  
Then suddenly back in the cold I was stolen upon
by the voice of an unemployed actor
who was walking me home to my small room, bruised
floorboards, more (blonde) hash, lurk of heat from the snickering 
serpentine radiator and I drank six
inches of black Barolo until I didn't have to think
about the hyper-privileged and under-subverted,
until I was too buzzed to be devoured
by these cannibalistic times,
until I became a blizzard of nothingness.
Undulant dust. 

from Noose and Hook (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2010)

and Martha Rhodes:

An Immense 

I liked sitting in our room
by the early morning window.
I'd watch him stretch his legs
just shy of violent cramp until
he'd wake, the bed's smell
an immense blend of sex so that
I'd rush back to him.
This blank room's smell
is like that, persistent, as I rest
against the wall; I'm merely
passing through, to visit
someone, though I am not
quite sure who, actually, and if
I am to say hello, or goodbye--

from The Beds (Autumn House Press, 2012)

...It will be a good reading.

Hearing the poem or reading the poem

Speaking of poetry readings, in pursuit of an answer to the eternal question, "Why do people go to poetry readings?" (which I explored on this site a couple of years ago), I keep returning to a point my friend and brilliant co-curator/co-host at KGB, poet Matthew Yeager, made about the existence of a poem (or a poet) on two planes: on the page and out loud.

Matt was speaking in the context of the National Book Awards. Every year, the week the awards are presented, a big reading is held for all nominees in all categories, giving them a chance to share some of their work. I attended one year -- it's a bit of a marathon, but it's especially fun to see non-fiction writers get their moment in the sun (i.e., read their words before an appreciative live audience), and the poets kind of kick everyone's ass. The judges of the awards (prominent writers in their genre) get together that week, too, to make their final decision... but they're not allowed to go to the reading, for fear that the performance might sway them. Matt found this ban objectionable in the context of poetry, arguing that often a poem's true existence is out loud, much more so than on the page. The awards, then, are recognizing or privileging any given poet's work on the page... This discloses an implicit definition or philosophy as to what a poem is, and who is more likely to be awarded.

Matt's insight made me realize that a reading is the only place you will get access to the poem incarnated as speech, as breath. There is only that live moment, those minutes of the writer living the words, and then it's done. 

(There are videos, but, I am willing to confess, I don't particularly want to watch YouTube videos of poetry readings. I did hear a recording of Berryman reading "The Ball Poem" once that completely changed the poem for me. Maybe audio only is better? Oh hey, I tried to find it (no luck) and came across these audio archives at the Academy of American Poets. Here he is reading the first Dream Song.) A poet whose work changed for me after hearing him read it live is Jeffrey McDaniel. Hearing him read is an emotional experience, he gives each rendition his all.

Informal, accidental poll of American singles who read poetry

* Speaking of Jeffrey McDaniel, in attempting to find one of his poems online couple of days ago, Google spit out an OKCupid page with every single person who had mentioned Jeffrey McDaniel in their personal profile (this was without me having an account or logging in in any way). How quickly one turns from virtuous poem-seeker to creepy creeper looking at people's dating profiles....

This may come as heartening news for those fearing for the future of poetry: a lot of young single people, ranging in ages from 21 to 35, from Hawaii to Missouri to Long Island, like and appreciate the work of Jeffrey McDaniel, and of many other poets (Sharon Olds, Frank O'Hara, Marie Howe, Neruda, Bukowski, Anne Sexton...). They appear to be a healthy, good-looking bunch, with varied interests, and rich internal lives. Maybe they're all creative writing students, or maybe they're all poets, but still, it appears to be a critical mass... I was tempted to see how other contemporary poets fared among Internet daters (that would be interesting metadata to crunch!), but refrained. Although those profiles are public, they also seem intimate in their way. Note to OKCupid users: check your privacy settings!

Bet Your Bottom Dollar You'll Lose the Blues: BAP at AWP Chicago - We'll be there, will you?

 

We hope to see you at these events next weekend in Chicago:

 

Saturday, March 3, 12:00 noon-1:15 pm:  Anthologizing the Canon: Five Editors Discuss the Role of Annual Anthologies in Contemporary Literature. Wiliford A, Hilton Chicago, 3rd Floor
 
Series editors Laura Furman (PEN/O.Henry), Jesse Nathan (Best American Nonrequired Reading), David Lehman (Best American Poetry), Martin Riker (Best European Fiction), and D. Seth Horton (Best of the West) gather to discuss the relationships between annual anthologies and the general state of contemporary literature.

Saturday, March 3, 3:00 - 4:15 News that Stays News: The Best American Poetry Blog and the Future of Electronic Publishing Continental A, Hilton Chicago, Lobby Level (  Emma Trelles, David Lehman, Stacey Harwood, Laura Orem, and  Stephanie Brown)

The Best American Poetry Blog resembles a newspaper created anew each day by its editors, correspondents, and numerous guest bloggers from around the world. Blog readers will find everything from poetry to jazz to literary controversies to digital publishing. Launched in February of 2008, the blog gives its writers new forms, means, and opportunities to reach a steadily growing readership. Panelists are the blog’s editors, correspondents, and guest bloggers.

-- sdh

Julie Sheehan, Constituent Bartender: Greenspan's Own Oops Punch

Entertaining as Rick Perry’s November 9, 2011 “Oops” moment was—you know, the one when in his frenzy  to take a hatchet to government, he forgot which heads he was chopping off—the more significant and now completely repressed “oops” moment for the American right occurred three years earlier, on October 23, 2008, when Alan Greenspan confessed his “state of shocked disbelief” that markets don’t regulate themselves.

Without rules, the free market is kind of like the punch you might have served at parties in your college dorm. Who knows what toxic assets were swimming around in there? Fermented Hi-C? Grain alcohol? Nail polish? Why not, when punch itself was invented by desperate sailors who had run out of beer and turned to the locals for a stimulus package. One of the oldest recipes calls for arrack, which tastes a bit like a credit default swap and is made from palm trees. Any punch worth its floating lemon wheels is meant to creep up on guests, unleashing a voracious appetite for risk. In dormitories, that means regrettable sex. Greenspan’s deregulatory punch unleashed a voracious appetite for paper profits, what he called “euphoria” and the rest of us call greed.

Beyond chopping off regulatory heads wherever they might be, Chairman Greenspan left another insidious legacy. He handed off a historically low 4.25% interest rate to his successor, Ben Bernanke, who then had very little room to cut it. Fiddling with the Federal Funds rate is one of the few tools the Fed has. Roughly put, the idea is to crank the rate up when the economy’s “euphoric.” Paul Volcker raised it to 20% in 1981, and was duly vilified. Nobody likes a spoiler, but ever since the Depression, the Federal Reserve’s job was supposed to be to take away the punch bowl just when the party gets going. And part of why you take the punch bowl away is so that you can bring it back, by lowering rates in a crisis like the one we have now. That’s hard to do when rates are already low.

Greenspan not only failed to take away the punch bowl, he spiked it with 80-proof easy money, in the form of both low interest rates and deregulation. No wonder the speculators got drunk. His tenure fit right in with the larger recklessness of the Bush years, the blind appetite for risk, the unwillingness to weigh long-term consequences against immediate gain--in the case of the invasion of Iraq, the neglect to think even one week ahead into a post-Saddam future. The attitude was to take the easy profit in the short term and let the future fend for itself. Thus so-called fiscal conservatives and budget hawks gave away a budget surplus to the 1%, rather than saving it for a rainy day. Meanwhile, the rest of us journeymen got punch drunk, battered in the early rounds of what turned out to be an economic TKO to the middle and working class.

At his 2008 hour of reckoning, Greenspan predicted a “restrained” market “for an indefinite future”:

"The financial landscape that will greet the end of the crisis will be far different from the one that entered it little more than a year ago. Investors, chastened, will be exceptionally cautious. Structured investment vehicles, Alt-A mortgages, and a myriad of other exotic financial instruments are not now, and are unlikely to ever find willing investors."

Chastened, my ladle. Not only did investment banks and hedge funds quickly return to that “myriad of other exotic financial instruments,” Greenspan himself renounced caution a few years later, criticizing the meek regulations of the Dodd-Frank Act for their attempts to impose order on financial markets.

Have a cup of Greenspan's Oops. You’re going to need it when you get rabbit punched by those party animals again.

The Bookstore and the Psyche [by Megin Jimenez]

First of all, many thanks to Stacey Harwood and David Lehman for this opportunity to share a few thoughts and for hosting this community. I enjoy reading the broad range of voices represented here and am happy to take part. (Recent guest posts that have stayed in my thoughts include Robert P. Baird's thoughts on how poetry "spends it all" and Amy Glynn Greacen's week of posts on Rome, language, chance, loss.)

Today is Sunday, day of looking out the window, day of strolls, day of meditational cleaning, day of loafing, day of reading. Sunday is the day I often find myself at the bookstore, so I thought I would start with a little ode. I started thinking about the importance of this space after reading an opinion piece by technology writer Farhad Manjoo called "Don't Support Your Local Bookseller" published on Slate in December, which was almost comically tone-deaf (possibly to generate maximum page views?) regarding the various roles a bookstore plays in a community or in the life of an individual. He argues that if you love books, you should embrace and prefer Amazon, as it allows people to buy even more books and generates "smart" recommendations of other books you would like based on its access to vast book-buying data, versus the limited tastes and knowledge of bookstore employees.  He compares shopping at independent bookstores to shopping at the more expensive Whole Foods rather than your regular grocery store: a luxury experience. I don't think I need to bring up counter-arguments, as I have no doubt that Manjoo already got a lot of heat from book lovers, and I am no doubt preaching to the Bible-study group in defending the value of a bookstore here. I'm also setting aside the questions of economic models, the publishing industry, e-books vs. print, "what people buy", etc., as much has been eloquently written on these issues already. What the piece made me ponder is what psychic space the bookstore inhabits. What does it mean to love the book as an object? It's not simply about sentimentality, or possession, or the fact that used bookstores are required to have a fat cat in them in order to be fully respectable.

Quote of the day: James Logenbach on Wallace Stevens

“The point is not so much to understand the poems (for when we understand something, we don’t need it anymore, and we don’t read it again); the point is to inhabit the poems. By doing so, we recognize that our humanity is not constituted by our ‘mastery’ of something. It is constituted by our willingness to humble ourselves to the ‘mystery’ of something.”

Read the entire post here.

-- sdh

Megin Jimenez, Guest Blogger February 26-March 3

This week we welcome Megin Jimenez as our guest blogger.  Megin was born in Mérida, Venezuela and grew up in Denver. Most recently, her poems have appeared in Barrelhouse, NOÖ Journal, Denver Quarterly, La Petite Zine, and Sentence. She is a graduate of The New School Writing Program and co-hosts Monday Night Poetry at KGB Bar. She works as a translator and lives in Brooklyn.

Welcome, Megin.

In other news . . .

Find us at AWP in Chicago.

And stop by the Carnegie Mellon table at the AWP Book Fair (table A26) on Thursday, March 1 (3-4 PM) so that Jim Cummins' can sign your copy of his fresh Piece of Cake.

-- sdh

A Backward Spring by Thomas Hardy

Common Snowdrop at Jefferson Market Garden, Greenwhich Village, NYC (2/06/2012)

The trees are afraid to put forth buds,
And there is timidity in the grass;
The plots lie gray where gouged by spuds,
And whether next week will pass
Free of sly sour winds in the fret of each bush
Of barberry waiting to bloom.

Yet the snowdrop's face betrays no gloom,
And the primrose pants in its heedless push,
Though the myrtle asks if it's worth the fight
This year with frost and rime
To venture one more time

On delicate leaves and buttons of white
From the selfsame bough as at last year's prime,
And never to ruminate on or remember
What happened to it in mid-December.  

-- Thomas Hardy

sdh

Interview with Alison Stine [by Jordan Davis]

I first met Alison Stine in Austin, Texas, six years ago, having just missed being introduced to her two years before that in Chicago. Her poems are unlike any I'd known before then -- as her teacher Brigit Pegeen Kelly once remarked, she has a perfect ear. She is the author of two collections of poetry, the Vassar Miller Prize-winning Ohio Violence (UNT Press), and the Brittingham Award-winning Wait (Wisconsin). We spoke at our home in southeastern Ohio at ten p.m. last night.

Q. So when did you first realize you could work out the ends of stories in the first few minutes you were hearing them?

A When I was a kid, my dad brought home Splash. He said, “You’re really going to like this one, it’s about a man who falls in love with a mermaid. And do you know what happens at the end?” And I said, “He becomes a mermaid?” And my dad said, “Pretty much, yes.” And then I realized I didn’t enjoy some movies as much as my friends did, and some books as much as my friends did, because I could tell what was coming. It’s not as much fun if you always know what’s coming, only if you know what’s coming sometimes.

Q But one of the things I remember best about first reading your blog, was that --

A Wait, when did you read my blog?

Q Well, I think we were already married.

A I remember reading your blog, and was mad that you didn’t mention my poems.

Q Funny thing about that.

A I thought, “This guy’s not worth my time!” This was three years before I met you.

Q Yeah. So, about your blog.

A You can edit that.

Q Actually, I intend to use it. 

Meet the Press: Nin Andrews in Conversation with Kristy Bowen of Dancing Girl Press

Ed note:  During AWP, Dancing Girl Press will participate in an open studio event with book signings on Saturday, March 3, from 1pm-8pm at our studio space just up Michigan Avenue in The Fine Arts Building, 410 S Michigan, studio #921, Chicago.

NA:  Tell me about Dancing Girl Press.

KB: The dancing girl press chapbook series publishes a yearly schedule of handmade chaps devoted to work by emerging      women authors.  We are also particular interested in the intersection writing and visual arts, so the studio as a whole produces a number of book, paper, and ephemera related arts.  We have been housed in the historic Fine Arts Building in Chicago for the last 5 years.

NA:  What inspired you to start a press?

KB: In 2001, I had started an online poetry journal, wicked alice, so the press was a product of both a desire to put something a little more tangible than html out into the world, as well as a personal interest in art and book design.  Once I had given it a trial run with producing a chapbook of my own, it was no time before I had lined up our first author (the late and fabulous Adrianne Marcus) and secured a saddle stapler, some cardstock, and a decent printer.  There were a lot of great micropresses proliferating around that time (Effing Press, Big Game Books, also lots of journals entering the physical book realm Diagram/New Michigan Press, Tarpaulin Sky), so I decided to throw my hat in.

NA:   Why do you only publish women-poets?

KB: My background as a reader, writer, and scholar has always been women’s writing, so when I founded wicked alice, it was my intent to focus my publishing efforts there, mostly just as a way to define the endeavor.  Over time, it became more of a political act, as again and again, statistics showed the dearth of writing by women in the poetry world and in the general poetry conversation, and not just historically. I feel like my role, as an editor and publisher, is to get those books out there, to increase the number of women poets taking part in that conversation, particularly emerging writers at the point where their work is taking off.

NA: How many books do you publish each year?

KB: Over the years we’ve grown from publishing around 5 books to around 30 each year.   Our publication list is usually a mix of submissions and solicitations. We’re pretty lucky in that we’re pretty much self-sufficient, each book funding the next and so on.  I sell artwork and accessories to maintain our studio space, but the books are pretty much keeping each other rolling.  I hope to continue to grow as large as finances and time constraints allow, since I feel like the more we get books out there into the world, the more people there are reading them, talking about them, sending us amazing work.

NA:   How do you attract and promote writers? How do readers find out about your books?

KB: Mostly, it’s all word of mouth.  A lot of our poets wind up sharing news about their books, or touting other books we’ve published, which leads to more people taking an interest and sending us work. Social networking is increasingly a big part of it. As with most poetry publishing, the author does the bulk of the work in promoting and we’re lucky that so many of our poets do it so well. We’ve also built up a good following of steady readers who purchase our titles quite regularly.

NA:  What kinds of work are you particularly interested in publishing?

KB: I have a pretty open mind when it comes to styles of poetry, ranging from more innovative and conceptual work to traditional lyric and all things in between.  The only requirement is that it interest me in some way, be it subject matter, style, format, use of language. As I mentioned, I also love books that engage with the visual arts in some way, so we occasionally publish manuscripts that include drawings, photography, diagrams, charts, etc. (either by the writer or in collaboration with a visual artist.) Also, books that engage socially and historically or with other texts.  I also like surrealism, dreams, logical illogic.

NA:  I would love to see a poem or two from one of the books you have published that somehow exemplifies your aesthetic.

"Dear ---: " [by Alex Dryden]

This morning
I meant
to say
that I
love you

but somehow
came out:
“Fuck you.”
Forgive me.
I don’t
know what
happened there.

But, on
a lighter
note, it
felt so
fucking good
to say.

Kristen Bell's Sloth Meltdown [by Jordan Davis]

Required viewing for today's post:

 

Flarf. Not a lot of middle ground in Poetryland on flarf -- you either hate it or you quote it. Even the name is rage litmus. I’ve given up defending it -- as a logical consequence of language poetry, as a healthy reaction to the moralizing one-upmanship of poetry communities, as a way out of what I’ve referred to elsewhere as the cul de sac. Now I just watch it filter into the culture.

Not much else to do, really -- flarf is dead.

 

Poetryland or Cole Slaw [by Jordan Davis]

“Hello America let’s tell the truth!”
    -- Peter Schjeldahl, “To the National Arts Council”

The correct answer, when asked about any poet living or dead, is “I love them.” Ask any poet you’ve ever heard of about any other poet you’ve ever heard of, and if they know what’s good for them, that’s how they’ll respond. (If they don’t, you probably won’t hear of them much longer, at least not about their poetry.)

That said, I have never yet met a poet entirely satisfied with the state of affairs in Poetryland, myself excluded. I love it and know it to be the best of all possible worlds. I’m fascinated when anyone is discontented in the Republic of the Imagination.

Over the years I’ve collected a few hundred complaints, which I’ve analyzed, removed references to individuals and institutions, and reduced to their essences. In all but a few cases, I can demonstrate that these conditions are not only unavoidable manifestations of the larger culture, but are also for the good of the art.

I've also collected a few hundred variations on cole slaw. I asked the readers which they'd rather see -- complaints or cabbage (therefore the title of the post). Complaints won. Enough preamble. Here is the whine list:

Fatalism. Not the philosophical kind that freshmen everywhere debate (if anyone tells you there's no free will, tickle them), but the belief that the game is rigged, it’s not how you write it’s whose influence you demonstrate, the editor has to know you, the big magazines / presses / anthologies simply aren’t an option for that kind of work, the Nineties tried your game, why bother sending work. Look. Rejection is an occupational hazard of poetry. You could win the Bollingen and still get a form slip in the mail with “Sorry” scrawled in pen. It’s terrible but what are the editors going to do, print everything? Besides, if you’re thinking more about your CV than about what makes a poem undeniable, you’re working too hard on the wrong thing.

A poet I used to work for said he wrote every day not because he thought he was going to write something good every day, but because it was the best way he knew to have a chance at having written something good every year. Eye on the ball.

More complaints after the jump. What are your (generalized, no names please) complaints about Poetryland?

Gracie Allen for President (by Lawrence J. Epstein)

Stephen Colbert's mock exploration of a presidential run this year was not the first time a comedian satirically sought the highest office. Will Rogers, Eddie Cantor, and Pat Paulsen were among the others.

But of all the aspiring leaders, Gracie Allen was my favorite comedic candidate. Gracie, along with her partner and husband George Burns, made up one of the most successful comedy teams of all time. Gracie's character had a unique mind filled with what George called illogical logic.

Writing for Gracie wasn't easy. One day in 1940 the writers were trying to come up with an idea about how Gracie might spend some spare time. One of the writers noted that she had done everything except run for president. George immediately loved the idea.

In real 1940 politics, President Franklin Roosevelt was running against Wendell Wilkie. When Gracie entered the race she said that she'd been laughing at presidential candidates for years and so decided she should run herself. She declared herself the candidate of the Surprise Party. After all, she noted, her father was a Republican, her mother was a Democrat, and she had been born as a surprise. Her campaign slogan was "Down With Common Sense. Vote for Gracie."

Audiences reacted so well to the idea that the writers decided to continue the gag for a few more shows. Suddenly, though, the success was such that the publicity stunt took on a life of its own. The Union Pacific Railroad donated a campaign train for her to ride to Omaha for a convention. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt invited Gracie to Washington. A campaign song was born. At her first press conference, Gracie promised to settle the simmering border dispute between California and Florida. When asked about the Neutrality Bill, she asserted that we should pay it if we owe it.

Thousands of people greeted Gracie at each stop the train made. There were parades. When babies were thrust in front of her, she claimed she wanted to wait until the male babies reached twenty-one before she kissed them. The nominating convention was held on May 17th. Eight thousand fans were there to greet Gracie. She told them she didn't want a vice-presidential running mate because she didn't want any vice on the ticket. After the convention, Harvard University announced that it was endorsing her. The reaction of President Roosevelt, a Harvard alumnus, was not recorded.

Gracie received several thousand write-in votes on Election Day. The good people of Menominee, Michigan nominated Gracie for mayor, but they noted that she couldn't serve unless she was a resident. Gracie wrote back complaining about the residence requirement because she couldn't live in two places at once. There were some complaints that Gracie wasn't taking the presidency seriously enough so she made a speech noting that she had meant no disrespect.

There are those observers who claim that some presidential candidates provide enough unintended satire to render professional comedians superfluous. Perhaps, but as Gracie Allen demonstrated, Americans need what comedians always provide: a good laugh and, underneath that, sharp insights about the society.

I wish Gracie were around to run again.

Half Time [by Jordan Davis]

Whew! I forgot how much work blogging is. Thank goodness it's Wednesday, half time. Speaking of which -- great billboard at the MD/WV border showing the WVU logo and the score from the Orange Bowl, with the legend: "Seventy isn't just our speed limit."

Still here? Let me get out the good stuff. (Don't tell everyone who left early that they missed out. Actually, yes, tell them.) Here's poet-musician (and the houseband of my old talk show) Franklin Bruno singing "Two Knives."

 

More writing tomorrow, and more videos after the jump...

Buzz about James Cummins' "Still Some Cake"

James Cummins’ Still Some Cake is filled with brilliant poems—“This Night of All Nights,” “My Father’s Hair,” “The Greatest Generation,” “The War of All Against All,” and “Moses”—to name just some of the longer ones—written in an effortless, fluent style that presents surprises in almost every line.  But the book transcends its individual poems, as its recurring obsessions—the burdens of the proximity of those closest to us, including ourselves—surface and resurface in the context of the family romance, history and war, the solitary, violent imagination, the narrative of the Bible—to create a fugue-like whole, by turns harrowing and exhilarating.  Still Some Cake is one of the most powerful books in recent memory.  —John Koethe

Better than any American poet of his generation, Cummins, in a voice fierce, simple, and matter of fact, writes nakedly of men and violence, men and their fathers, men and their friends, men and the women and children they love.  His command of formalism is still as impressive as it is unobtrusive, and with it he renders the self—that’s all of us—and our human longing to speak our truth nakedly and to be whole.  I read this book, and am astonished and graced. —Marilyn Krysl

-- sdh

Feeling Comes Through [by Jordan Davis]

    “She read my mind and slapped my face...”
        -- Bill Cox and Cliff Hobbs

Here’s the thing: whatever you feel when you’re writing comes through for the reader, whether you or the reader are conscious of it or not.

We have a mockingbird who comes to the porch feeders. Back when we had a bluebird house, the mockingbird ran off all the cowbirds and brown-headed blackbirds that monopolized the feeders and tried to substitute their eggs for the ones the bluebirds left. He’s got some nerve, and he keeps his own schedule. Months go by without a song, then he lets loose. I’ll open the window for as long as he’s on. When he’s not around, I look at the internet more.

What was that take-the-top-of-the-head-off feeling, anyway, adrenaline? I’ve overheard more than one writer say they know they might be onto something if they get a little turned on while they write. The feeling that you’re maintaining interest, not simply performing to meet expectations, but actively engaged, which will usually produce a physiological result. You will feel it. This is what feeling means. You either hit it or you mark time, possibly admirably. The reason, as far as I can tell, that we all put all our energy into this thankless art, is that we each have a memory of being worked up by it.

From the Archive (February 16, 2010): Happy Fasnacht Day (by Laura Orem)

It's Shrove Tuesday, and while New Orleans may have Mardi Gras, we here in Pennsylvania Dutch Country have Fasnacht Day.

What is a fasnacht, you ask? It is a kind of super-doughnut, made with potato flour, sugar, and lard. Don't scoff. They are terrific. They are only sold one day a year - today, the day before Ash Wednesday. Historically, they were the last gastronomic hurrah before Lent, a way to use up all the sugar and lard in the pantry before forty days of fasting began.  As you might imagine, they are not health food. No one, as far as I am aware, has ever calculated the calories in a fasnacht. Really, it's better not to know.

Continue reading here.

Julie Sheehan, Constituent Bartender: Santorum Phones In Your Faith

I see into your heart.

Not really. I wouldn’t presume, not while Rick Santorum’s on the case. He’s like Santa, knowing whether your theology is naughty or nice. Or phony. If your “worldview” is one that “elevates the Earth above man,” for example, it’s phony. Never mind that no one on earth actually has such a “worldview,” or can figure out what it is. Is it a pre-Copernican understanding of cosmology? Could Santorum draw a little diagram, please?

Most of us value Earth selfishly, as the planet upon which we selfishly live. Though we acknowledge the solar system in a superficial way, we really believe the sun revolves around us. To lay waste to Earth would threaten us, the center of it, and so we try not to. This human-centric “worldview” is not one that “elevates the Earth above man.” A few of us are selfless enough to view Earth as a gift from God, and therefore something to which, out of reverence, we should not lay waste. Is that what Santorum means? If so, it’s “some phony theology, not a theology based on the Bible,” as Psalm 24 so clearly states: "The earth is the Lord's, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it." Or maybe
he’s thinking of Leviticus 25: "The land must not be sold permanently, because the land is mine and you are but aliens and my tenants." Either way, it’s clear that the Bible agrees with Rick Santorum about how unimportant Earth is, and how important is alien, rent-paying man. The Bible’s right in line with Santorum’s free-market, property-rights, capitalistic theology, and the anti-immigration stance he so Biblically takes. What else could “The land must not be sold permanently” and “you are but aliens” mean?

And even though the Constitution is a political document, not a theological one, if you are “trampling on a constitutional right” as Rick Santorum reads it, your theology is bad. To wit, don’t let individuals make their own decisions about contraception, because that would be to impose “ideology on a group of people expressing their theology, their moral code." Where to begin with this convoluted thinking? Santorum can impose his “ideology on a group of people,” but if “people” have other ideas, they are “phony”? And possibly, as one of his aides suggested of President Obama, Muslim? What if the pesky ideology being imposed is enshrined in the Constitution?

As lazy thought and self-defeating rhetoric, Santorum’s statements taste a lot like a Maiden’s Prayer. I say this for two reasons: first, this cocktail has serious varieties of religious experience. Secondly, its recipe is lower-case catholic—i.e., you can put whatever gets you elected in there and still call it a Maiden’s Prayer.

To the first point, like a “worldview that elevates the Earth above man,” we must ask, what is it?  What is the Maiden Praying? Turns out, the Maiden is Praying to get laid. Consider two of the alternate names by which this cocktail goes: Leg Spreader and Between the Sheets. According to research by Esquire’s Resident Cocktail historian, the wondrous David Wondrich, a Maiden’s Prayer “exists to assist a young gentleman in convincing a young lady that he has something to offer the gene pool. That's right, a date-peeler.” To be accurate, the Maiden isn’t Praying to get laid, her boyfriend is. But that just goes to show that the Bible is right: Adam did the naming, not Eve.

To the second point, like Santorum’s argument, a Maiden’s Prayer is what the deconstructionists in my undergrad English department would call an indeterminacy. Nothing in the recipe seems to be verifiable through testing and experiment; the whole is both remedy and poison. I did a quick survey of my recipe books and found, to my surprise, that even the base liquor of a Maiden’s Prayer varies from source to source. In some it is gin-based, in others rum- and/or brandy-based. There was only the fuzziest of consistency with what else goes in the drink, aside from lemon juice, which occurred in all of them. Some had orange juice, some Cointreau, others Triple Sec, and a few Curacao. The oldest version had champagne. One had cream. Wondrich moans that these days the recipe includes “pretty much anything the sexually insecure undergrad finds lying around.”

Which brings us right back to Rick Santorum. He alone knows what’s phony and what’s Biblical. He alone determines meet and proper theology, no matter how flimsy his argument. He is Adam—a sexually insecure, yet-to-graduate, presumptuous Adam, but Adam nonetheless. He knows the Maiden’s Prayer: spread your legs, ladies, while the men get busy outlawing contraception. Pick a photo, any photo (and yes, all of these photos claim to be of the same drink). The Maiden's Prayer is whatever RIck Santorum says it is. We’re in great hands with this potential leader of the free world.