The Best American Poetry

Good morning!

 

Food/Writing [by Rebecca Lindenberg]

            I love reading about food.  Cookbooks, blogs, essays, you name it.  And since everybody eats and therefore thinks about food, you can find writing about food from novelists and poets, housewives and scientists, the affluent and the grossly underpaid.  Young writers, old men, women who don’t necessarily think of themselves as writers, and some women – like the brilliant essayist M.F.K. Fisher – who changed the way Americans not just write but also eat and think about food. 

M.F.K. Fisher

            It’s hard to overstate the importance of M.F.K. Fisher’s contribution to American culture, especially to American letters.  The poet W.H. Auden once said of her:  "I do not know of anyone in the United States who writes better prose."[1]  No everybody knows her writing, but they know her legacy – for example, one of her most charming and fascinating books is a slim volume called Consider the Oyster.  Her writing is effortlessly intelligent, which I admire very much, and it’s fiercely charming, which I also love.  Without Consider the Oyster, the nineties and early naughties might not have seen the publication of similar meditations on a single food, its history and economic import, its culinary and cultural importance – books like Cod or Salt.  Author David Foster Wallace certainly knew his M.F.K. Fisher – he cribbed her title for the essay he wrote for Gourmet magazine, ostensibly about the Maine Lobster Fest but really about ethical eating and the nature of pain, “Consider the Lobster.”  When he compiled a whole book of essays, including that one, he used the title again for that volume.  M.F.K. Fisher made some very astute culinary observations.  (For example, she observed that almost everything about an entire cuisine can be reasoned or explained by considering the fat that cuisine predominantly uses in its cooking – the French preference for butter, which smokes at a very low temperature, explains a lot of the ingenuity that cuisine requires; Italian use of olive oil, which smokes low but not as much so as butter, determines many of that cuisine’s flavor combinations; many Asian cuisines prefer peanut or other nut oils that smoke at a very high temperature, so many of those cuisines include traditional dishes that exploit the possibilities inherent in cooking at very high temperatures.  Some would argue that the Chinese “wok he” or “soul of the wok” is really just a clean enough oil over a hot enough fire.)  But M.F.K. Fisher didn’t really write about food – it was ostensibly her subject, but mostly, she wrote about people. How to Cook a Wolf is about rationing during wartime, so it's also about wartime.  And it's about courage, fortitude, and human resourcefulness.  It's about dignity, and it's about identity.  And all of her books work like this.

            Below is a short excerpt from the essay “Borderlands” which can be found in her collection, Serve It Forth.  In the essay, she’s in Strasbourg with her husband, Al, who’s away most of the day on business.  The weather isn’t particularly great, so she spends a lot of time in their hotel room.  She writes in the second-person imperative, maybe a bold move for a lady writer back then, and still she artfully maintains the very lightest touch:

In the morning…sit in the window peeling tangerines, three or four. Peel them gently; do not bruise them, as you watch soldiers pour past and past the corner and over the canal towards the watched Rhine. Separate each plump little pregnant crescent. If you find the Kiss, the secret section, save it for Al.

Listen to the chambermaid thumping up the pillows, and murmur encouragement to her thick Alsatian tales of l'intérieure. That is Paris, the interior…While she mutters of seduction and French bicyclists who ride more than wheels, tear delicately from the soft pile of sections each velvet string. You know those white pulpy strings that hold tangerines into their skins? Tear them off. Be careful.

Take yesterday's paper (when we were in Strasbourg L'Ami du Peuple was best, because when it got hot the ink stayed on it) and spread it on top of the radiator. The maid has gone, of course - it might be hard to ignore her belligerent Alsatian glare of astonishment.

After you have put the pieces of tangerine on the paper on the hot radiator, it is best to forget about them. Al comes home, you go to a long noon dinner in the brown dining-room, afterwards maybe you have a little nip of quetsch from the bottle on the armoire. Finally he goes. You are sorry, but --

On the radiator the sections of tangerines have grown even plumper, hot and full. You carry them to the window, pull it open, and leave them for a few minutes on the packed snow of the sill. They are ready.

All afternoon you can sit, then, looking down on the corner. Afternoon papers are delivered to the kiosk. Children come home from school just as three lovely whores mince smartly into the pension's chic tearoom. A basketful of Dutch tulips stations itself by the tram-stop, ready to tempt tired clerks at six o'clock. Finally the soldiers stump back from the Rhine. It is dark.

The sections of the tangerine are gone, and I cannot tell you why they are so magical. Perhaps it is that little shell, thin as one layer of enamel on a Chinese bowl, that crackles so tinily, so ultimately under your teeth. Or the rush of cold pulp just after it. Or the perfume. I cannot tell.

            The premise of this delightful essay is very simple:  “Almost every person has something secret he likes to eat.”  I suppose we think right away of “guilty pleasures” – which might mean, to some, foods that one ought not to eat because they’re unhealthy (Ben and Jerry’s Cherry Garcia ice cream, for example) and to some, because the pleasure is childish and a little embarrassing (I confess, I kind of love Cheetoes.  Even the sticky orange powder that gets all over your fingertips and face and makes them feel oddly, chemically numb.  Gross, I know.  But there you have it).  There’s also secret eating that’s just about weird preparations – this elaborate ritual for a little tangerine, or for my Mom, the pleasures of crushed ice.  For Christmas one year, I got her a kitchen device that looks like a pretty little baseball bat, specifically designed for breaking up ice in a bag.  She eats it almost by the bowlful every single day.  I love edamame in the pods, but I love it the most when I dip it in a little bit of rice vinegar before I suck the salt off the pods, pop them open with my teeth, and scrape out the little al dente green pods with my tongue.  The little extra sting is just so fine.

Mystery of AWP Elevator Poems Solved!

Jim Cummins' post yesterday about the video loop in the elevators at the recent AWP conference in Chicago caused a bit of confusion.  Turns out, the videos were provided by Motionpoems, a Minneapolis-based organization that connects poets with animators.  Here's one of the poem/videos you may have seen/heard.  It's of Erin Belieu's terrific poem "When At a Certain Party in New York City" that was chosen by Kevin Young for the Best American Poetry 2011. 

-- sdh

Mad Men by Jim Cummins

Two men walk through the boardroom.
Each one carries a spear; each wears a mask.
Each man is afraid of his own death,
but is no less willing to strike, to rend, kill.
Each mask is a grotesque mirror of rage,
meant to inspire mortal fear;
each man hopes the other will be made
too afraid to fight when he finally
confronts him and his hideous mask. 
Each man had a father who told him
his mask represents his true nature within.
Each man had a mother who told him  
it represents what he wants other men
to believe about his true nature within.
As young men, each came to accept
his father’s version of what his mask means,
so had faith in his mask for many years. 
But as he gets older and closer to death,
each wonders if his mother’s explanation
might not be the true one, after all.
Either his mask has reflected his real self
all along, or he has turned into his mask. 
It becomes increasingly important
to know whether his mother’s story
or his father’s is the one he can believe.
Neither man betrays doubt as he glares
through the haze his cigarette makes;
doubt gives other men a license to strike. 
Yet it is only doubt, not certainty,
that allows him to hold the two versions
together in his mind, in some balance.
Two men walk into the boardroom;
they carry spears, wear fearsome masks.
Each man is afraid, but for all his confusion,
is no less willing to strike, to rend, kill;
and he thinks his father, finally, is right.
Yet when his face distorts beneath its mask,
and, cursing the other, he hurls his spear,
each man remembers the words of his mother.

---

From Still Some Cake by Jim Cummins (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2012)

AWP CONFERENCE - CHICAGO - 2012 (by Jim Cummins)

Along with approximately 10,999 other registrants, I attended the recent AWP Conference in Chicago earlier this month. I also attended the first Woodstock, in August, 1969. They were similar events, minus the rock bands and the loudspeaker announcements about bad acid. On the other hand, Chicago had poetry in the elevators; a tape loop of poets reading their own poems played continuously in the elevators throughout the conference. This was obviously a social-networking device on the Hilton's part to help people break the ice, in lieu of mud, good vibes, and the aforementioned bad acid. As I understand it, a few years ago the Poetry Foundation made a number of tape loops of poets collaborating with visual artists; the one that played in the elevators at this year's AWP was also available in its entirety on the in-house channel 44, on our room TVs. I remember poems by Mark Strand, Todd Boss, our own DL, a number of others. I thought the tape loop was wonderful, sort of the equivalent of the rock groups at Woodstock--the background sounds of human contact, interaction. In the morning I'd get on an elevator crammed with poets, and Mark Strand would say, "I don't want to be an American poet anymore," or something like that. "The black flies are after me." People would shift from foot to foot, except there was no room, so we'd all bump shoulders and hips, and get to know each other. At 2 or 3 in the morning, I'd stumble into an empty elevator, and there would be Mark and those flies again, or somebody telling me about how un-hip she was in New York City. I loved those poems, those voices. Most other people didn't; instead of being grateful for the ice-breaking gift, they complained about how un-hip the whole process was. Poems in the elevators! How, I don't know, pathetic! I began to ride the elevators instead of going to the panel presentations, just so I could hear how people responded to the tape loop. I began to volunteer information about the poems, which I'd listened to about a hundred times each by then. I told them about Channel 44. I began to carry a clipboard on which I could note down personal information, such as whether they were poets, or fiction writers, non-fictioners or children's book people, that sort of thing. Several people told me this made them a little uneasy. Occasionally, I'd follow them out of the elevator to their rooms; sometimes the conversations got a little heated. "I'm a poet, too!" I'd say, as the door would close in my face. "Those are my brethren!" I began to pick out women in the lobby, follow them into the elevators. I wanted to see what they thought about the poems. One morning there was a knock on my door. I opened it and two beefy men in suits came in; they very politely asked me to stop following women into the elevators. I assured them I would, but I saw this was a rare opportunity, too. I asked them what they thought of the poems being broadcast in the elevators; they said they didn't have an opinion. By Saturday night, I was exhausted. Downstairs was a madhouse, as usual: eleven thousand people milling around with ID badges on lanyards that twisted them around so you couldn't see the names. I found a place at the bar next to a very attractive young woman; to break the ice, I said,
"So what do you think of those poems?" "Excuse me?" she said. I said, "You know, the poems--in the elevators." My voice might have had a bit of an edge. She said, "I'm afraid I don't know what you mean." I asked her straight out, "Are you a fiction writer?" "I work for Delta Airlines." "Oh--you a stewardess?" "A 'flight attendant'?" she asked. "No, I'm a pilot." She picked her purse up from the bar and began to slide off her stool. "Hey," I said, "you haven't finished your drink!" There was almost a full glass of wine left. "I have an appointment," she said, "you can have it." "I was at Woodstock," I called after her, "the real one!" She didn't turn around. I looked at her wine; there was a lipstick smudge on the rim. What the heck, I thought, and turned the glass around to the clean side and drank it down. Next day I flew back to Cincinnati. I love the AWP conferences, but it was good to get home.

Rebecca Lindenberg, Guest Blogger March 18-24

This week we welcome back Rebecca Lindenberg as our guest blogger.  Rebecca is the author of the poetry collection LOVE, AN INDEX (McSweeney's Poetry Series, 2012).  Her poems, essays, and criticism appear in The Believer, POETRY, Iowa Review, Quarterly West, Smartish Pace,  Mid-American Review, DIAGRAM, Conjunctions, 32 Poems, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Gulf Coast, and elsewhere.  She's the grateful recipient of a 2012 MacDowell Arts Colony residency, a 2011 NEA grant, and a 2009-2010 Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center fellowship.  She holds a Ph.D. in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Utah.  She lives and writes in northern Utah, where she enjoys a good game of Scrabble, a stiff rye Manhattan, and her growing menagerie of pets.  See Rebecca's schedule of readings here.

Welcome, Rebecca.

-- sdh

Funeral Potatoes (by Rebecca Lindenberg)

    This past Christmas, my parents came out here to Utah for the holidays, and the four of us (myself, Joseph, and my mom and dad) went out to Bountiful, Utah for a dinner with Joseph’s folks at his grandmother’s house.  Joseph’s grandmother ran a couple of restaurants in Salt Lake City for awhile – one of them, called Brad’s Café, served home cooking to a big lunch crowd of workers.  A popular menu item was “Hot Hamburgers,” which Joseph remembers as “one bun and two patties, served as two open-faced burgers, smothered in brown gravy.”  Brown gravy, by the way, is what cooks outside the Jell-O Belt might know as “pan gravy,” made from whisking a roux into the fat and juices and scraps left from roasting a bird or a rump roast or even pork shoulder.  You can buy this in powdered packets labeled simply “Brown Gravy,” though that’s not what Joseph’s grandmother does.  Joseph’s grandmother cooked daily for a crowd in the restaurant, and weekly for the crowd of family that gathered at her house for a traditional Mormon Sunday Dinner.  Joseph’s grandmother is a sturdy, unapologetic woman whose basement has been the refuge for many a grandchild in various stages of transition, and whose generosity never falters; despite the fact that the fused vertebrae in her back make it almost unbearably painful for her to stand or work more than five minutes or so at a time, she presented us with a mountain of home-made cookies and candies, and a homemade dinner of spiral-cut ham, honey-glazed and glistening, slightly-opaque green Jell-O salad with whipped cream on top, as well as the kind of salad that has lettuce, onions, tomatoes, and vinagrette. There were white rolls and butter, Jane’s hot mustard (of course), and what my mother would call potatoes au gratin.  “This looks amazing,” I said.  Joseph’s father Frank said, grinning, “It looks like a Mormon funeral in here.”

            The casserole dish my mother would call “potatoes au gratin” Joseph’s family (and everybody who’s spent the requisite amount of time in the Jell-O Belt) would call “funeral potatoes”.  They aren’t quite potatoes au gratin, though the principle is basically the same.  Some people make them with cubed or scalloped potatoes (I slice them thin), some with grated hashbrown-style spuds.  Some people use onions (I do), others prefer without.  Often, funeral potatoes include a can of cream-of-something soup from the food storage (chicken is a popular choice, though I’ve also seen mushroom, broccoli, and asparagus).  Since I don’t usually keep cream-of-whatever around, I just use sour cream.  And then, of course, cheese.  Lots and lots of cheese.  Usually cheddar – I use sharp cheddar but I’ve seen them made with everything from Velveeta to Danish Fontina.  Even my lactose-intolerant boyfriend can’t help but have a little.  “But I love them,” he says later, with a tummy-ache, “they just don’t love me back.”

            Certain aspects of Mormon culture find their way into the lives of everybody who lives in the Jell-O Belt, because they’re just plain good.  I’ve lived a lot of places (the Bay Area in California, Northern Virginia just outside of D.C., Dublin, Brooklyn, Rome) and I have liked – adored, really – almost every place I lived, for its own different virtues.  But not a single one of those places holds a candle to the Jell-O Belt when it comes to people getting born, people moving house, and people dying.  When my sister moved away, we had a dozen people show up at our house and it took all of about an hour to pack her entire apartment into a trailer, then we all settled in for the pizza and beer.  When my friend Tim’s girlfriend moved in, so many people came to help that by the time the stragglers arrived (forty-five minutes after the appointed hour), the work was done and they had to eat their pizza and drink their beer in shame. 

        And when somebody is born or somebody dies, the family whose attention everyone agrees cannot be expected to be on cooking or grocery shopping is brought meal upon meal upon meal.  These meals have to feed a lot of people, so they have to be fairly simple and inexpensive, calorically extraordinary, and accessible to all palates (if not all arteries).  They have to last awhile, and reheat well.  A distinct advantage to funeral potatoes, they can be served a side with breakfast, lunch, or dinner, or as a meal in and of themselves.  They’re tasty, cheap, versatile, and popular, and even if they aren’t per se healthy, you can get your basic carbs, veggies, and protein from the one simple dish.  Like most Mormon food (like most Mormons) they are imminently practical.

            Obviously, funeral potatoes aren’t only served at funerals – they’re also served at, say, a Christmas dinner.  Or a Sunday dinner.  Or a potluck.  Or on a day that ends in Y.  The amateur cultural critic in me reads into this a kind of tacit communal acceptance of the everyday-ness of tragedy that not all cultures share.  We Americans are, generally, an optimistic bunch who view death (especially of the young and virile) as a radical upset of the natural and social order of things, a rift in the time-space continuum.  When you live in a community that is both sizeable and close-knit, you quickly come to understand that simply isn’t the case.  Tragedy is, tragically, a very everyday occurrence.  And it’s good to have a community around when it happens.

            When my late partner, Craig, passed away in 2009, I was living in Salt Lake City, Utah.  As soon as word of what was happening got out, my friends (especially Kathryn and Tim) sprang into action.  It was something I could never have imagined – someone brought a lunch or dinner every single day.  And while the food was amazing (Halina’s chicken and orzo soup, or crispy salad; Danielle’s burritos; Kathryn’s amazing cheese), what I couldn’t have imagined until it was happening was how much I needed the other things that came along with this schedule of meals.  For example, I had to get out of bed and take a shower before noon, since somebody was going to see me.  My long, confusing days of terror and then of shock and then of sorrow were organized into hours by my friends.  Without them, each day would have been a long night of panic and grief, unbroken and maybe un-break-in-able.  And each person who came also stayed and ate with me, and that activity, the communion of breaking bread with a friend, was a sacred and sustaining ritual.  If I wanted to talk, there was someone to talk to; if I wanted a distraction, there was someone to distract me.  And above all, when I felt the most lonesome I have perhaps ever felt, I found I never had to be alone.  When I started to feel better, when summer came and people began to drift away for various jobs and residencies and vacations, my beloved teachers and friends Donald Revell and Claudia Keelan took me in for awhile.  They fed me wine and smoked salmon and guacamole and let me sleep and sleep.  We watched old movies and talked about poems, and I began to understand that, unbelievably, everything might be okay.

"But if you haven't a sou / there's only one thing to do . . .

We drove from Ithaca, NY to Manhattan yesterday and at around exit 92 on NYS Rte 17, this song came up in the rotation.  Even though I know it well, it was as if I was hearing it for the first time.  The harmony that begins at 2:17 makes me tear up. 

 I think I'll do just as the song says. Care to join me?

-- sdh

A few lovely lines . . .

Poets, though divine, are men;
Some have loved as old again.
And it is not always face, 
Clothes, or fortune gives the grace,
Or the feature, or the youth;
But the language and the truth, 
With the ardor and the passion, 
Gives the lover weight and fashion.

        from "His Excuse for Loving" by Ben Jonson

Further Adventures in the Jell-O Belt [by Rebecca Lindenberg]

            In the beginning of the film Napoleon Dynamite, the credits come up as a collage of weird culinary Americana – ketchup and tater tots, mustard and corn dogs, peanut butter-and-jelly sandwiches, cheeseburgers and mayonnaise, nachos studded with black olives.  Plate after plate appears on a background of maroon shag rug, then baby-blue carpeting, then avocado green linoleum, and so forth.  Blast from the past, bomb shelter fare, served in rooms decorated in a similar idiom.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

        Set in Preston, Idaho, where writer-director Jared Hess grew up, Napoleon Dynamite comes right out of the Mormon Corridor, the so-called “Jell-O Belt,” that spans a certain area of America’s Intermountain West.  It sort of radiates outward from Salt Lake City, Utah, reaching deep into Idaho and into Wyoming, very slightly into Colorado, trickling a little ways down through Arizona and then hopping by patches all the way down to certain parts of Southern California.  This exceedingly beautiful part of America includes the surreal red rock deserts of Moab and Monument Valley, the sublime limestone cliffs of Zion and St. George, the lava-rich soils and aspen forests of the Grand Escalante, the eerie stillness of the Great Salt Lake, the rangey splendor of the Wasatch and Uintas, the windy high plains and ranchlands around Rock Springs and Laramie, the stubborn fields and pastures of Idaho all the way up through the formidable Grand Tetons.  It’s dominated by some of the most beautiful and various and mysterious country in the world.  The poet James Galvin, who has a ranch in Wyoming, has at times written about this land, the people who live there, its weather and its other weathering forces – a different portrait, perhaps, than Napoleon Dynamite.  He writes in “Ponderosa,”

 

                                                                        The bolt

came down like knowledge, but the tree did not explode or burn.

                                                                              It

Caught the jolt and trapped it like a mythic girl.

                                                                Its trunk was three

Feet through

            lightning couldn’t blow the ponderosa into splinters,

And couldn’t burn inside without some air.

                                                                A week went by and we

Forgot about it. 
But lightning is a very hot and radiant girl.  

                                                                            When

Heat bled out to bark, the tree burst into flame that reared into

Silence under a cloudless sky.

 

        There does seem to be something about the land in this part of the world that inspires mythic thinking, or at least otherworldly thinking.  The enigmatic rock formation from the 1977 film Close Encounters of the Third Kind is the bundle of hexagonal basaltic columns known as Devil’s Tower, an ancient volcanic plug (the volcano around it long since worn away) rising out of the flatlands of eastern Wyoming.[1] 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Devil’s Tower, Wyoming

         Much of this land was hard to settle, and harder still to scrabble a living out of.  So much so that a lot of it remains very sparsely inhabited.  Indeed, southern Utah was considered so barren and unnecessary (and its mostly-Mormon and otherwise Native American population so “Other”) that the U.S. government wasn’t too bothered about the fact that radiation and radioactive debris from nuclear testing in Nevada was blowing all over it – something Rachel Marston has been researching and writing about for some years.  By some accounts, Uncle Sam even encouraged the smallish population living around St. George at the time to go out of doors and watch the sky change from the nuclear tests, as the sometimes snowflake-sized ashes drifted into their towns, clinging to their clothes and curtains and porch furniture.  (Did the government know what the effects would be?)  Being, as a culture, generally trusting of authority, they did.  And a whole generation of “downwinders” suffered quietly together with the massive, unusual tumors and other forms of cancer that ravaged their communities. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Southern Utah, an arroyo near Monument Valley

        Sometimes, people settled this land because it was so barren, so desolate, so ignored and so ignorable.  In this same area of southern Utah, for instance, you’re more likely to run into individuals who belong to an FLDS (Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints) polygamist community.  Some friends and I have rented a house near Zion in the past couple of summers, where you might just run into a group at the local Walmart or Costco, dressed in Laura Ingalls Wilder prairie garb, buying slats of boxed macaroni and cheese.  Much is being said about polygamy in the media these days, thanks in part to HBO’s Big Love and well-curated “reality” spin-offs like Sister Wives.  Most of what I know about polygamy comes from people who self-identify as victims of it, and I cannot do their stories justice here, so I will not elaborate except to say that, like anything, it’s not like they show it on TV.  For some information about an aspect of polygamist culture and practice that few people, even in Utah, have considered, watch Jennilyn Merten’s amazing documentary, Sons of Perdition.

             Rumor has it that polygamist culture games the government’s entitlement programs, since second and third (and subsequent) wives are, according to the relevant tax documents and applications forms, single mothers with a pack of kids and no job or income whatsoever.  Except that, if the polygamist lifestyle is anything like it appears to an outsider such as myself, they do in fact need those food stamps, and it’s not a scam.  I honestly just don’t know.

            But when we were at a grocery store outside of Washington, Utah, near the Nevada/Arizona/Utah border, and these women in long, high-necked and high-waisted gingham dresses were buying up the milk and the powdered soup and popsicles, we were standing in line behind them with tilapia and garlic and all of the mixings for strong margaritas.  And before I turned my attention to the prairie garb or the fact that one of them with three small children could not possibly have been eighteen, or whether they all might be married to the same patriarchal oddball, I thought:  “I’m kind of glad I’m not eating dinner at their house.”  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Zion, Utah’s first National Park (1919) in southern Utah (in August)

         For awhile, I rode a Greyhound Bus every-other weekend from Salt Lake City to Laramie, Wyoming, through some of the most stridently tough and unpleasant territory in the Jell-O Belt.  Interstate 80 roughly traces other historically significant travel routes in the Western United States: the Oregon Trail across Wyoming and Nebraska, the California Trail across most of Nevada and California, and except in the Great Salt Lake area, the entire route of the First Transcontinental Railroad.  You meet a lot of interesting characters on the bus, before you learn to board with your headphones already in your ear-holes and pretend not to be able to speak English.  Or Spanish.  Or at all.  Of the various people who might sit next to you, the most desirable seat companions are a toss-up between college kids (also be-headphoned) and truckers deadheading back to Indianapolis or wherever they’re based.  In the latter case, they will cheerfully pronounce that the stretch of I-80 from SLC to Denver is the absolute stupidest leg of highway ever laid down – subject to constant closures, and as often as it’s for snowstorms, it’s for unbelievably high-speed winds.  Trying to drive a little Honda along that road is one thing – the wind blows so hard it seems to get under the wheels, so you’re almost aeroplaning from the lift and drag.  But the same wind fills up its cheeks and blows over tall semis, passenger busses, and as I once saw (blood and feathers all over the road), a long trailer full of chickens.

March Madness Continued: Poetry hoops with Natalie Diaz [by Catherine Woodard]

Natalie Diaz, 5’11, played point guard in NCAA March Madness for four years at Old Dominion University, a storied women’s college program. Diaz reached the NCAA finals as a freshman in 1997 and to the Sweet Sixteen the other three years. After college, Diaz played professional basketball for several years in Europe and Asia. Writing got her full attention after a career-ending knee injury during an unlucky, no-look practice pass in 2004. Diaz returned to ODU for a MFA in poetry and fiction. In early April, the week of the NCAA championships, Copper Canyon Press will publish Diaz’s first book of poetry, When My Brother Was an Aztec.

Diaz, 33, is a Mojave and Pima tribe member and the director of a language revitalization program on her home reservation, Fort Mojave on the Colorado River in Arizona. Which means she is the point guard and coach for transmitting the Mojave language from the last four fluent Elder speakers (two in their 90s) to rising elders, the youngest in day care and all ages in between. Diaz credits her college basketball scholarship to opening many possibilities in her life, including writing.   

The first half of the interview is with Diaz, poet and fiction writer. The second half is a Q&A with two Diaz poems, Two Things You Need Balls To Do: A Miscellany From a Former Professional Basketball Player Turned Poet and Top Ten Reasons Why Indians Are Good at Basketball. Game goes to overtime with your comments. 

CW: What’s basketball got to do with what you do now?

ND: Basketball is my core. It made me who I am.

CW: What does that mean?

ND: Basketball gives you a mental and a physical strength to navigate things. You discover the body in a new way. You learn the body’s limits and then you learn you can push further. It opened up a part of me that I wouldn’t have accessed otherwise. It shows in my writing; the physical world that’s how I know how to situate myself.

CW:  Your role as the head learner-teacher strikes me as requiring very complex coaching and teamwork. You are racing against time to keep a language alive and growing. What’s the most rewarding?

ND: With the elders, we’ve learned to read each other and trust each other. Like basketball, it’s the same goal of supporting each other and pushing each other until you just become one mind. Like being a point guard.

CW: You say you’re in love with the sound of dribbling a basketball on a wooden floor. Does that relate to your writing?

ND: There is a kind of music in it. Is it the touch or the sound of it? You’re just so connected to it. It’s like a line of poetry when I know it’s the best I can do. Right now I’m pretending I’m dribbling the basketball.

CW: Your basketball coming of age was coming off the bench your freshman year in the regional finals for seven key points and five rebounds, including the one that clinched the victory that sent ODU to the Final Four. Do you have a writing equivalent?

ND: The final year of the MFA, I started writing – and reading – in a more focused way. And the next year I won the Nimrod International Journal poetry prize. (The journal’s Pablo Neruda Poetry Prize came with publication, a $2000 prize and an all-expense paid reading.)

CW: What do you hope readers will carry away from your first book of poetry, When My Brother Was an Aztec?

ND: These poems weave together a cultural and personal mythology from numerous threads of identity. They struggle with the violence of brothers, reservation, body, hunger, and other types of love. At the core, a sister fights for or against a brother on crystal meth, and everyone from Antigone, Houdini, Huitzilopochtli, and Jesus are invoked and invited to hash it out at the dinner table. These poems illuminate dark corners of the heart, revealing teeth, tails, a million pinto beans, chiming and hands beneath a red dress, and Custer in an ambulance, reducing the violence to beauty or hilarity, to something bearable.

2^nd Half: Q&A with two Diaz poems  

CW: Top Ten Reasons Why Indians Are Good at Basketball was written in November for a basketball fund-raiser to endow a scholarship for a Native American MFA candidate at the University of Idaho. What are the top two reasons?

ND poem: 1.The same reason we are good in bed.

2.Because a long time ago, Creator gave us a choice: You can write like an Indian god, or you can have a jump shot sweeter than a 44 ounce can of commodity grape juice—one or the other. 

CW: Why is basketball popular on reservations?

ND poem: 10. Really, though, all Indians are good at basketball because a basketball has never been just a basketball—it has always been a full moon in this terminal darkness, the one taillight in Jimmy Jack Tall Can’s gray Granada cutting along the back roads on a beer run, the Creator’s heart that Coyote stole from the funeral pyre cursing him to walk alone through every coral dusk. It has always been a fat gourd we sing to, the left breast of a Mojave woman three Budweisers into Saturday night. It will always be a slick, bright bullet we can sling from the 3-point arc with 5 seconds left on a clock in the year 1492, and as it rips down through the net, our enemies will fall to their wounded knees, with torn ACLs.

CW: You’ve described your sentences as hungry lines. What do you mean by hungry?

ND poem: 8. On the court is the one place we will never be hungry—that net is emptiness we can fill up all day long.

Questions for Two Things You Need Balls To Do: A Miscellany From a Former Professional Basketball Player Turned Poet, published in Southeast Review

CW: What’s a foul in writing?

ND poem: Traveling: (a) in poetry is encouraged, (b) in basketball will land you on the bench.

Fouls = Rejection Letters BUT in poetry, you don’t have to keep track of the # you accumulate, which is a good thing for some of us. (In the event there is a rejection letter limit, please, I’d rather not know.)

CW: Can the basketball court be compared to the blank page?

ND poem: Buzzer-beaters and miracle shots are non-existent in poetry—every poem I’ve desperately heaved into the mail with more prayer than craft or confidence has been off the mark.

CW: Your worst poetry and basketball injuries?

ND poem: The Matter of Rejection Letters: Sure they hurt. They bruise the ego a little. This is where basketball comes in handy—remember ‘No Blood, No Foul,’ and, ‘You’re either hurt, or you’re injured.’ If your fingers aren’t broken, if your nose isn’t bleeding, get out there. Plus, getting your 3-pt shot blocked (a.k.a. rejected, stuffed, packed, denied, shut down, faced, etc.) into the 3rd row by Chamique Holdsclaw in the NCAA Finals, in front of over 30,000 people, and on national TV, is so-much-worse than having the New Yorker reject you quietly, politely, and over the privacy of your email.

Another thing, in basketball, no one will give you cryptic pointers about your shot, like ‘Memorable, but needs culling.’

Injuries:

I tore my ACL, meniscus, and MCL (the unhappy triad), fractured my leg and wrist, severed a blood vessel under my eye socket, had numerous concussions, many jambed fingers, dislocated a shoulder, gritted through IT-Band Syndrome and cortisone shots, pulled muscles, sprained ankles that I still have nightmares about—all playing basketball. 

Vs.

Once, I was rushing to the post office to make a post-mark deadline and I stubbed my toe on the curb out front.

CW: Compare the finances of basketball and poetry.

ND poem: Similarity: The cost of basketball shoes, which need to be replaced every 3 months, is equal to the amount you’ll spend on contests.

CW: Which is more thrilling, basketball or poetry?

ND poem: I know I can’t fill the void that basketball has left, but some days when I rise from my desk chair and feel shooting pain in my knees (which are not yet thirty in poetry years, but in basketball years are ancient) and creaking in other joints, I recognize these aches as close to what I once had. And every now and then, I let go of a line or an image and know instantly, as soon as it rolls from the curve of my mind or my gut, that it’s going in, that it won’t rattle around the rim, it won’t brick-up and fall short or bounce too hard from the backboard, that it won’t fall flat on the page…and it’s smooth and sure and turns the net to flames, and as much as I want to stand and watch it, and pat myself on the ass for how beautiful it is, I know I have to keep moving on down the page.

Catherine Woodard has played coed, pick-up basketball in New York City for three decades. Her poems have appeared in Poet Lore, Southern Poetry Review, RHINO and other journals.  In 2011, Woodard was the featured poet at UnshodQuills.com, co-published Still Against War/Poems for Marie Ponsot and was a fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She will be a 2012 fellow at the Hambidge Center in Georgia and is a board member of the Poetry Society of America. Woodard is a former president of Artists Space, one of the nation’s oldest spaces for emerging visual artists. Woodard has a MFA in poetry from the New School University and MS in journalism from Columbia University.

Welcome to the Jell-O Belt...(by Rebecca Lindenberg)

            It’s an absolute delight to be guest-blogging again here at Best American Poetry.  I’ve just returned from a marvelous residency and a series of readings from the new book, and since I’ve been traveling I have found myself talking quite often – and often at my interlocutor’s behest – about Utah.  Specifically, why do I live there (no, I’m not Mormon – I moved here for grad school in 2003), why don’t I leave (the mountains, the boyfriend, the good life, the job market), and what is it really like.  We sometimes joke that Utah’s unofficial Chamber of Commerce slogan should be “Utah:  Not nearly as bad as you thought.”  But then, I should probably add that I myself have kind of an affinity for quirk, and there’s plenty that’s quirky in Utah.  So this week I’ll be blogging about living in Utah, and specifically about food in Utah.  Food is, I think, a marvelous lens through which to look at culture, and place, and philosophy, and well, maybe also poetry.  I hope you have half the fun reading that I’m having writing these pieces…so without further ado…

 

Welcome to the Jell-O Belt

             In 2001, the good people of Salt Lake City, Utah eked out their competitors in Des Moines, Iowa to become the number one consumer of Jell-O not just in Christendom, but in the whole wide world.  The state legislature celebrated by drafting and passing a resolution that would make wobbly puddings, wiggly salads, and sugar-free hospital desserts the “official snack” of the Beehive State.  To commemorate the occasion, Jell-O brand spokesperson and family-friendly comedian Bill Cosby made a visit to Utah, during which he declared, "I'm proud not because you are the number one in consuming gelatin, but because you are the number one family state," he said. "In consuming all of this pudding, you have said you are a state that brings family wherever you go."[1]  

            A visit to the official website for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints will lead you swiftly to one of the central tenants of Mormonism.  “The Family is Central to God’s Plan,” announces one headline, under which appears a quote from one of the church’s more important elders, David O. McKay, “No other success can compensate for failure in the home.”  The vaguely threatening, implicitly judgmental tone is almost certainly deliberate – the LDS church runs a pretty tight PR ship.  It is under the banner of “family” that many things are forbidden – R-rated movies, alcoholic beverages, gambling – and more tacitly disapproved of – radical politics, for example, and for some, even higher education.  (A billboard on I-15 south from Salt Lake City to Provo shows a clean shaven, smiling young man who’s chosen an online education through a Mormon institution, instead of a traditional state university or private liberal arts college, “So he can spend more time with family.”)  Monday night is the church’s official “family home evening,” and it is the faith’s general anxiety about eternal family togetherness that helps makes Mormons the world’s great genealogists.  It is this same notion of families eternally sealed to each other that underlies other uniquely Mormon practices, like baptism by proxy, otherwise colloquially known as baptism for the dead.  But as with most cultures, one of the places the family is most likely to be found together is around the bountiful table.

             The first time I ever had dinner with my boyfriend Joseph’s Mormon family in Layton, Utah, I got what I understand to be the “platos tipicos” of a Mormon Sunday Dinner.  The centerpiece of the meal was “a roast” – this is not quite pot roast, not quite brisket, not exactly roast beef the way I know it from New York.  I’m not entirely sure what cut it is, but it’s definitely cow.  In keeping with the admirable frugality of Mormon culture, it’s probably the piece of meat that can best serve the largest number of folks for the least or maybe next-to-least cost per capita.  Mormon families and functions have an air of jovial socialism about them – everybody cradle-to-grave eats the same food in the same room, so it’s important that everybody likes it, nobody wastes it, and there be enough for at least some hearty souls to go back for seconds, maybe even leave with a Tupperware to-go.  And our roast beast didn’t come with “glazes” or “reductions,”which would seem an out-of-place pretension around a table that looks for all the world like the cover of my mom’s old Betty Crocker Cookbook.  What does accompany the meat (at almost every meal) is Joseph’s mom, Jane’s famous homemade hot mustard – bright yellow, velvety, spooned out of mason jars, sweet, tangy, and searing hot.  This mustard goes right to the third eye and burns it wide open.  And that night, Jane also made her much-in-demand homemade rolls, the soft, pillowy, white rolls baked to a golden brown, still slightly floured on their perfect little domes when she pulls them apart into a basket and sets them steaming on the table.  There were home-pickled beets on the table, and a neighbor’s blueberry-lavender jam.  It was odd to see so much home-made, hand-made treatery alongside canned green beans, but I have since come to understand that canned vegetables on a table or canned soup in the “funeral potatoes” or powdered soup flavoring a dip or casserole is a way of rotating out the three-month to one-year supply of food storage that Mormon families generally keep in a pantry or a basement, just in case.  “Of what?”  I asked my Joseph.  “Of anything,” he said.  “Earthquakes, tornadoes, the government turning on its people, the great final war that will preceded the ascension of the righteous to the celestial kingdom.  You know.” 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

        There is a full aisle in our local Fresh Market (the grocery store formerly known as Albertson’s) dedicated to “food storage”.  Now, growing up in Northern California, we always had bottled water and a milk-crate full of canned refried beans and Progresso soup out in the storage shed, in case of “the big one,” the earthquake that’s eventually going to crack California in half and demolish its always-already threatened state infrastructure.  But this Mormon food storage, this is not my father’s clam chowder and camp stoves.  These are coffee cans of powdered and dehydrated apocalypse fare – everything from “side-cut celery” to “margarine powder” to “dehydrated vegetarian meat substitute,” the latter of which comes in several startling flavors, including “taco”.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

        And even an apocalypse should include a little fun.  Which explains why my family also keeps some Maker’s Mark and Amaretto down in the emergency stash.  In the kinder, gentler Mormon emergency pantry, you might find, say, 37 pounds of powdered chocolate milk beverage – on sale today for 75 dollars and change.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

        It is, I think, a combination of this deep, shared culture of frugality and a preoccupation with food storage and family preparedness that explains a lot of Mormon food, which I have heard described in many ways (some kindlier than others) but I think I like “bomb shelter cuisine” the best.  It conveys the essence of Mormon food as a blast from the past, something impervious to the assaults of cultural evolution (housewives in pearls stirring pretzels and Cool Whip into raspberry Jell-O, or studding a pale baked ham with pineapple rounds and maraschino cherries) and the constant inclusion of whatever might be nearing its expiration date in the food storage pantry, whether canned peach halves or green beans or sweet corn kernels or cream of mushroom soup.  And, of course, Jell-O, which belongs to all of these aspects of the culture and its cuisine. 

            And in fact Jell-O may somehow belong inherently to Mormon cuisine’s history and origin, which seems to remain a bit mysterious even the so-called experts writing Mormon cookbooks and cooking blogs and cultural histories.  “Why Jell-O,” everyone seems to muse, but nobody can quite explain.  Because it goes a long way at a ward potluck?  Because it’s popular with children?  I don’t have any surer of an answer than anybody else, but I developed a conjecture during the year I lived in Rome, where I discovered, for the very first time, how useful and delicious aspic can actually be.

             Roman food is decidedly not the juicy thick-cut steaks and rich truffled sauces of Florence, nor is it the hearty rice and savory soup of Milan, nor the delicate grilled shellfish and waterfowl ragu of Venice.  It’s not the bright lemons and red tomatoes and golf ball-sized green olives of Sicily, and it’s not the almost-French butter-based pastas and thick cheeses of the northern Piedmont region, where the big Barolos come from.  Rome is the culinary mercenary of Italy.  Animals raised in the rich pasturelands of the south were shipped up the coast and along the Tiber River to the Roman abattoirs of Trastevere, where they were slaughtered and the finest cuts of meat were forwarded along to the wealthy trading and banking and educational centers of the north – Genoa, Florence, Milan, Bologna.  The Romans kept whatever was leftover, so Roman food is heavy on the offal.  Braised oxtail is probably my favorite of the traditional Roman meat dishes, and also likely the most accessible, with the possible exception of any number of guanciale dishes – guanciale being the preserved cheek of a pig.  Hearts, kidneys, and livers feature heavily, as does tripe.  And so, of course, do hooves and bones and marrow, though not always in their most obvious forms.  Marrow is scraped from the bones and spread like butter, or boiled with bones and hooves for the thick, savory, flavorful reduction that can be mixed with scraps of animal or vegetable or both and cooled into a mold.  This may sound suspect, but aspic is a genuinely magical substance.  It preserves whatever it encases, keeping meat scraps or vegetables from spoiling.  It can be served in any number of ingenious ways at almost any temperature (note the French chaud froid), and it’s rich, filling, and nutritious, something that hasn’t always been easy to come by in Rome’s rocky history.  I even have one amazing recipe wherein you fold cubes of cold aspic into dumpling skins, so when you steam the dumplings, the aspic melts.  Upon biting into these, you get a savory, soft mouthful of delicious brown broth.  At one amazing little place called Osteria Cibreo, I ate a roasted tomato aspic confettied with fresh basil and I doubt I will ever forget it – certainly it keeps evading my attempts at replication.

             Given the general usefulness of aspic, especially in the pre-refrigeration age, I’m guessing gelatin might always have been a staple of the culturally and constitutionally resourceful Mormons – pioneers, or perhaps more aptly refugees, homesteaders providing for large families and a growing community of hungry laborers.  When it started coming in packets, and then in packets with sugar and food coloring, a gelatin-friendly culture might well have just gotten on board and never looked back.  

Tomorrow: a new Utah food culture, the opening credits of Napoleon Dynamite, some relevant poetry by James Galvin, where to get tapas in Boise, and more...

---

[1] BBC News Online; 6 February, 2001; Katty Kay (Washington, DC) 

 

"apocalyse, a brief history" [by Katie Thompson]

hanging / gunfire   : which do you prefer
if we survive this   if there is a way?

light it on fire, the dry christmas fir
the age of radioactive decay
goodbye   goodbye   my american lime
exceeded by the plight of happier men
compare us with the power line of time
compare us with every now and then

your face   the rehearsed fruit with a soft rot
disappears into    nothing  / into     wire
o! my little severed gordian knot

under water    we are burnedwe are tired
when we are honest we are like    stained glass
everything green finally gone at last

-- Katie Thompson

Rebecca Lindenberg, Guest Blogger March 18-24

This week we welcome back Rebecca Lindenberg as our guest blogger.  Rebecca is the author of the poetry collection LOVE, AN INDEX (McSweeney's Poetry Series, 2012).  Her poems, essays, and criticism appear in The Believer, POETRY, Iowa Review, Quarterly West, Smartish Pace,  Mid-American Review, DIAGRAM, Conjunctions, 32 Poems, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Gulf Coast, and elsewhere.  She's the grateful recipient of a 2012 MacDowell Arts Colony residency, a 2011 NEA grant, and a 2009-2010 Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center fellowship.  She holds a Ph.D. in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Utah.  She lives and writes in northern Utah, where she enjoys a good game of Scrabble, a stiff rye Manhattan, and her growing menagerie of pets.  See Rebecca's schedule of readings here.

Welcome, Rebecca.

In other news . . .

Tuesday, March 20, 6:30 PM:  Tribute to Gerrit Henry
Alvin Johnson/J. M. Kaplan Hall, 66 West 12th Street, room 510
The New School celebrates the posthumous publication of The Time of the Night, a volume of poetry by Gerrit Henry, with Susan Baran, Star Black, Tom Breidenbach, Marc Cohen, Eileen Myles, Carter Ratcliff, Eugene Richie, Rosanne Wasserman, and John Yau. The event is hosted by David Lehman. More information here.

Julie Sheehan, Constituent Bartender, gets educated

To see pigs feeding at the public trough, look no further than for-profit schools, which, like “private” prisons and Blackwell, aren’t the market solutions to failed Big Government that our conservative, pro-business friends tout them as. These entities aren’t market-based at all. They’re dependent on taxpayers. Call them socialist pigs instead of  capitalist ones, because what they’re doing is redistributing your wealth to their owners. And these owners are rich enough to bankroll big fights against any attempt to regulate the flow of federal dollars coming their way. That’s because they charge higher tuition than self-identified state schools like the one where I teach.

Meanwhile, the mission of educating students at for-profit colleges is an afterthought, as is made clear by their websites. I challenge you to go to Phoenix University’s and find out anything useful about the curriculum or faculty without having to chat with a sales representative.

Or read this, an easy A for effort in 9 easy steps.

1. All of the for-profit universities have special software tools and pop-ups designed to get you to enter your contact information. Phoenix nudges you toward this on its home page, with a 4-step “Ready to Change Your Life” tool. Phoenix is big on breaking processes into steps, of which there are rarely more than four. If you’d like to change your life, the 4 Steps are to enter your area of interest, educational background and contact info into Phoenix’s database so that an “Enrollment Advisor” can reach you. Tada! Your life has been changed into fodder for their targeted marketing!

Hi, I’m Shawn! Your advisor! I was also a contestant on “The Bachelor”!

2. You beat a hasty retreat from the “Change Your Life” tool, returning to Phoenix’s home page in search of academic information. Scrolling down, you spot a practically invisible link for “First Year Sequence,” which Phoenix provides on the off-off chance people browse university sites in order to discover what they might learn. You click, expecting a list of courses or a description of the pedagogical philosophy behind the core curriculum. You are disappointed. Whatever the “First Year Sequence” of study might be, the site tells you only that it’s “more than prerequisites and busy work.” Because what could be a bigger waste of time than laying the foundations for higher education?

2½. You’ll also find two videos on the “First Year Sequence” page. Phoenix's website uses a lot of videos, lest you get the impression that you’ll be asked to read in college. One video is called “What to expect” and the other, “Funding your education.” Hopeful, you click on the first. But “what to expect” is mostly about how college isn’t free, it costs money, and nothing about what you might learn. What you should expect, and Phoenix is very clear on this, is to pay tuition. How much tuition, and for what, it doesn’t say.

You turn to the next video, “Funding Your Education.” This one also neglects to specify tuition costs. Instead, it features two main strategies for getting Phoenix University money that isn’t  yours: federal loans and federal grants. That’s right, your first class is in how to feed Phoenix with government dollars. The video does not suggest that maybe you should pay Phoenix out of money you earn in the private sector, where it allegedly dwells. Before you even know what it charges, it’s steering you toward taxpayer-funded subsidies.

Before and After (by Tynan Davis)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As far as I can tell, opening night was a big hit.  It was far from perfect, but I appreciate blips that keep me in check for the next time.  The best part though, was that I had one of those out-of-body experiences during the Act 3 "card" trio.  You know, the kind that happens in the twinkling of an eye, but is so layered and overflowing with awareness that time must have stopped to allow for all the action and you can't believe how sharp and ready you must be to receive all of it?  Yeah, that happened.  My character reads in the cards that she will meet a rich old man who wants to marry her, put her up in a fancy chateau, buy her more diamonds and precious stones than she could possibly wear, and then convenienly die.  As Mercedes proclaims her happily widowed status, she wails a big, honking high note (it is opera, after all).  It was in the lead up to the money note when I felt my breath, noticed my card (5 of swords - totally arbitrary, but I noticed), and felt the audience following me to center stage.  On my inhalation I checked in with Maestro, who flashed a grand grin, and I was off, wailing like a cultivated banshee (Happy St. Patrick's Day!) and milking the tone and text for all it was worth.  I know the supertitles translated the text, but the audience was with me, laughing with me, and playing with me in that twinkling moment of levity before Carmen portends her death at the hands of Don José.  It was my evening's moment of magic, and singing my face off felt damn good!
 

Thanks for letting me share this week with you and thank you for the warmth and encouragement!  I'm off to Louisiana the end of next week to sing Handel's Messiah, followed by a month of preparation for my summer gig in VT with the Opera Company of Middlebury.  I'll be playing a sexy slave-girl in Massenet's Thais.  Hi-ho, hi-ho, it's off to the gym I go!  Hi-ho the glamorous life! 

Happy St. Patrick's Day (by Laura Orem)

This is going to sound a little like gloating because...well, because I'm gloating. Last night, I got to start my St. Patrick's weekend by attending the Celtic Thunder reunion in Baltimore.

This is the real Celtic Thunder, not the Enya-crossed-with Michael-Flatley cheesy-schlocky thing on PBS, the real group co-founded in the late 1970s by BAP's own Terence Winch and his brother Jesse. The sold-out show was presented by the Creative Alliance at the Patterson on Eastern Avenue, and it was wonderful. Great Irish music both new and old, amazing step-dancing, and Terence's poetry between songs, with an appropriately rowdy and appreciative audience clapping, tapping, and singing along.

If you haven't heard Celtic Thunder (the real Celtic Thunder, mind), then I feel sorry for you. You can buy their CDs online (but make sure you get the REAL Celtic Thunder CDs!) In the meantime, here's a sampling of last night's revelries, as they perform Terence Winch's "When New York Was Irish":

(Left to right, Jesse Winch on bouzouki, Dominick Murray on vocals and guitar, Linda Hickman on flute and vocals, Tony DeMarco on fiddle, and Terence Winch on button accordian)

There are faint rumors that this reunion might become an annual event. Here's hoping!

Happy St. Patrick's Day! Or, as they say in the old country, Lá Fhéile Pádraig Shona!

Meet the Press: Nin Andrews in Conversation with Joe Pan of Brooklyn Arts Press

NA:  Tell me a little about the press. Who started it, how long has it been in existence?

JP:  I founded Brooklyn Arts Press (BAP) in 2007, partly in response to watching modern dancer friends, artists, and filmmakers successfully establish their own companies, and partly out of frustration of having my own book get short-listed for a few prizes while continuing to shell out contest entry fees unsustainable on a copyeditor’s budget.  So I started BAP with my own book, with hopes of publishing 4 or 5 new poetry books a year. I’d published some of the poems in my collection in lit journals and had the rest generously picked apart by peers and professors at Iowa, so I felt like I’d paid my dues in terms of editorial scrutiny; plus, starting with my own book, I was free to make the mistakes I couldn’t afford to make with the works of other writers. I picked up book design pretty quickly, having worked for ad agencies, and blindly inched my way through the troubling, shifting terrain of printing, distribution, and marketing. It was great to have total  control over my words and the final product, and the responses I received from writers I admired, to whom I sent copies, were well-worth the time, effort, and money. That winter, after recouping the initial investment with sales, BAP opened its doors to poetry submissions. About that time I took a gig as a Co-Director of an art gallery, and while making studio visits around New York, stumbled upon some amazing artists, which is how BAP began publishing art monographs. In 2009 we halted publishing because the stuttering economy killed sales. Since then we’ve bounced back. In 2010 the sheer number and quality of submissions jumped dramatically. In 2011 we started a poetry chapbook series and began generating revenue, gaining recognition in the community for the quality of the books we publish, both in terms of writing and overall aesthetic. Several of our books eventually found their way to “Best of the Year” lists. And 2012 is looking to expand upon that awesomeness. We attended AWP for the first time, and will be at  conferences and book festivals here in New York.

NA: What makes your press unique?

JP: In terms of small presses, not much. We’ve had years with income and years without, like most independents, though Small Press Distribution, whom we signed with last year, has done spectacular work in getting our books noticed. Our first chapbook, Joe Fletcher’s Already It Is Dusk, hit their bestseller list, as did Carol Guess’ Darling Endangered (our first foray into lyrical fiction). Sales overall have spiked. As a distributor SPD connections are as varied as they are valuable. They have access to libraries and universities and secondary buyer channels.

 A few things that differentiate us from other presses might be that we don’t hold contests or charge for submissions. If you charge a contest fee, you’re beholden to choose a winner. We never want to put ourselves in that position. BAP is less a business venture than a love affair. If I’m going to spend 6-8 months reading, editing, designing, publishing, and marketing a book, it’s because I believe in the author and the work. By the end, I feel as if the book is partly my book, too, and can’t imagine engaging in a process, in a relationship, that from the outset I suspect will lead to a hapless marriage.

Our motto is Pay It Forward. The profits from each book, minus shipping costs, royalties, and promotion, get put into producing the next new author’s book or a subsequent print run of the original book. I don’t pay myself anything. Our editors do it for the same reason I do, and many of our readers and designers are former BAP authors and artists giving back. We compensate them with copies of the books they work on. Most of our authors and artists get  an honorarium plus copies, and we split the eBook proceeds with them 50-50. For future print runs, we work on a sliding scale, so if a book sells out and we enter a subsequent run, the author receives another batch of author copies and an equal or larger paycheck than the first. If we’re lucky, one big seller pays for the publication of two or more new books. It’s usually the costlier art monographs that contribute the bulk of this service.

NA:  How many books do you publish each year?

JP:  Last year we published 4 books. We have 3 lined up for summer 2012 but our submission period just ended a few weeks ago and the batch of full-length manuscripts we’re reading now is promising. We receive between 100 to 250 manuscripts per reading period, January and June, and choose 0 to 4 for publication.

NA:  How do you promote your books?

JP:   The best form of promotion is self-promotion. One of the tragic ironies of MFA programs is the lack of classes devoted to the business aspects of managing your art. When I’m writing, I’m not thinking sales. When I’m sitting across a café table with my agent, I’m thinking sales, I’m thinking marketing. If I’m not, I run the risk of publishers taking advantage of me. Remember, not so long ago big house publishers were offering writers 5% royalties on eBooks being sold for $9.99 per unit. I’ve recently read a blog post that suggests 35-45% should be the rate, if the publisher and writer are meant to split costs and profit equally. We settled on a 50-50 split because the math is easier, and because writers deserve more for their efforts.

So we encourage self-promotion, be it on a blog or with Twitter account or Facebook or by a shouting maniac on a street corner.  We bring to the table print availability via our website, SPD, and Amazon, and eBook availability through our website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, Sony, the iBookstore, and anywhere else we can place them. We email-blast a newsletter and update our Facebook profile. We send out review copies, asking our authors to provide 10 to 20 places that might be amenable to reviewing their work, so that authors can sort through the aesthetic camps themselves. We distribute to ocal bookstores and to any bookstore where the author is doing a reading. Readings sell books. As do book parties and book launches. When we launched Jonathan Allen’s art book Superstructure at the Lu Magnus gallery in Manhattan, the lovely owners let us hang his work for a night.  I brought a keg of beer and we invited everyone we knew and we sold books. But the biggest asset we have is the writer. Even an agoraphobic germaphobe has access to the internet, and some days I’m not too far off that description myself. In the end, word-of-mouth is our best resource.

This Seems Timely: (by Tynan Davis)

I wrote of my shame and fear yesterday, and suddenly I'm seeing this recently posted TED Talk by Brené Brown (a fellow fifth-generation Texan) who researches shame and vulnerability.  Who knew?! 

 

 

Easy for you to say Mr. Maugham

"'Some books,' Mr. Maugham said with an urbanity that was not at all disconcerting, 'are written in anguish, others just write themselves -- and those are jolly to write.'" Harvey Breit, The Writer Observed 147 (1956).

-- sdh