The Best American Poetry

Don't Bury the Lede [by Walter Carey]

In the current Atlantic,
the time-waster who got the coveted assignment
to write about "The Waste Land"
on the poem's one hundreth birthday
begins with these three questions:
"Why is April the cruellest month?
Why did the chicken cross the road?
Why do people watch golf of television?"

Really.  -- WC

"Dear John Ashbery" [by Nicole Santalucia]

Dear John Ashbery

It doesn’t seem to matter if we are a hundred pages ahead or two hundred behind. Everything compared to a sack of melons is sour, which has something to do with aging. But it’s different for dinosaurs. In the manner of a T-Rex with big boobs and popcorn textured ceilings and early retirement… Maybe it’s a hoax. When breasts are blurry it basically means that women are not allowed to see. Thank god birds and humans sleep at the same time or we’d always be awake and hungry. I am not a forger, but I am in denial about my mouth. Everything that grows in the garden and the birds and jangles that fall out of mannerist paintings and poetry biz; I’d rather have a slow mouth with room for all this stuff than a mouth that runs. The same goes for social commentary and those imitations of football and beer. They are positioned near the center like the sun and in the end they are found in books. Bones made of zeros don’t rise to the surface. It all translates to something thinner than air. But in this translation the rocks have a future full of garbage and our necks grow an inch each year. How else are women going to reach the fruit when their fists stand in for stars and moons on nights like this? I’m almost certain that you know what it means to have a steady stream of light. You’ve anticipated future positions that used to be various shades of pink, but now there are fewer sources of light and everyone is shaped like smoke. You got me if I can tell which is which. It could be a nude woman painting another nude woman or an assemblage of fruit and visual trickery.

Ed. note: Click here for the Diode page where you will find this and a second in a series of "Dear John Ashbery" poems written collaboratively by Nicole Santalucia and Dante Di Stefano.

David Lehman, Poet, Critic, Anthologist, Professor, and More (by Nicole Santalucia)

This is the sixth and final post in a series of blog posts to honor those whom Nin calls star-makers, meaning those who help make others’ literary lives successful.

When you say David Lehman most think of The Best American Poetry series, but he does it all:  anthologist, literary and cultural critic, editor, professor, star-maker, and poet. And more. Much more. But when I think of him, I think first and foremost of a brilliant poet, a man who seems always to have a poem moving through him, who can easily compose a poem a day, as he did for his collection The Daily Mirror. The way I see it, America is one lucky gal to have David-Lehman poems, David-Lehman wit, and David-Lehman exuberance flowing through her veins.  

When I say that David Lehman’s poetry is flowing through America’s veins it is both a metaphor and very much a reality.  Here’s just one recent example.  A few weeks ago I was invited to read poems at a peace rally in central Pennsylvania. Community members organized this rally—the main organizer is a dear friend, Neysa Thomas, who wanted to find a meaningful way to respond to an act of vandalism and hate speech that involved defacing the local high school’s property with swastikas. Many members of the local community and Neysa’s synagogue supported the peace rally’s efforts. As I chose poems to read, I wanted to include poems of peace and prayer, poems that concretely communicate awe, poems that tell a story and make a peaceful argument, poems capable of speaking directly to a community that is at a loss for words, and, well, I immediately turned to Yeshiva Boys. David’s poem, “Day of Penitence and Awe.” That moving poem is still echoing through the streets in this small P.A. town. The opening lines of the poem read, “In temple I prayed / and chanted Holy! Holy! / Holy! And was scared.” It’s David’s voice that’s flushing out the wound. Poets like David who master the art form are poets who teach, influence, and shape how we see the world. 

In his new and brilliant book, Poems in the Manner Of, David enters into conversation with poets from the past as he transmits his poetic influences and gives aspiring poets permission to embrace, imitate, and converse with the poets they admire (I will be using Poems in the Manner Of in my creative writing classrooms from now on). This collection is a shadowed contour of poetic forms, styles, voices, yet, as we journey through the tributes David’s wit and humor is often at its core. The book is a pure pleasure to read.

I laughed out loud when I read “Poem in the Manner of Emily Dickinson.”  Here’s the poem in its entirety:

Paradise—

Another poem that exemplifies the amalgamation of content and style is “Poem in the Manner of Williams Carlos Williams.” 

As the rain

washes her hair                                                     

the plums red

in the bowl 

on the table

with their dark

red rind wait

for her eyes

to see them

her hair still

wet still full

of suds as

three old men

watch her touch

she sees them

And as David says in his note to the reader, “Limiting myself to three words per line, I sought the jagged edges of a William Carlos Williams poem.” He goes on to inform us how his imitation is an attempt to capture WCW’s style as he also imitates a similar process that produced this gem.

Another poem from the new book that I admire, “Poem in the Manner of Pablo Neruda,” is briefly prefaced with the note: “The industrious Neruda wrote odes to many things –including laziness.” I read this as a stage direction because this poem performs the essence of Neruda’s many odes and it’s an interpretation.

Poem in the Manner of Pablo Neruda

Yesterday I was too lazy to write this poem.

So I wrote an ode to laziness

and put in yellow birds and purple plums.

I closed my eyes and wrote an ode to sleep.

I opened them and conceived of odes

to streets, rain, wine, a beautiful nude,                                                                      

my clothes waiting for me to wear them,

my toolbox, my medicine chest – 

but these I left unwritten.

Laziness demanded it. She was a beautiful nude,

and we sat on the porch and watched the storm.

And I didn’t write an ode to the storm and an ode

to dying in Paris on a Thursday afternoon,

an ode to dusk on a lonely country road,

an ode to chaos (the sea) and an ode to form,

to books, to Buddhism, to the stars and moon.

 

I thought that I’d ask David Lehman a few questions here…

NS:  David, you mention in the introduction of this latest collection how you began writing “poems in the manner of” back in 2002 and that the pace of producing slowed down, but the idea never went away. Could you talk about what you did during the dormant periods and about ideas that linger and eventually stick? There’s so much hope in knowing that the idea for this book lingered for well over a decade. Did you ever consider scrapping it altogether?

DL: I'm always working on multiple projects concurrently. Either that's because I'm a Gemini with Leo rising or I'm a workaholic or I'm just a guy who likes writing something every day. I always thought of this project as one that would take years to finish. Every so often I'd return to it and add a poem in the manner of someone I hadn't done before. Books take their time. Sometimes you so enjoy working on something you don't ever want it to end.

NS: Do you ever savor a project for too long or to a point that leads to new ideas/discoveries for other projects? I love the whole idea of writing "in the manner of" as opposed to "after" another poet or poem. I also love how you write poems "in the manner of" a whole decade or manner or mood. I was wondering if you could say a few words about the difference between a poem written "after" another poet, and a poem "in the manner of" another poet. 

DL:  Thank you for the compliment. I construe "poems in the manner of" to be wider in its application than "after." I like the idea that a poem can be a homage, a parody, an appreciation, a translation or adaptation, or an appropriation -- or any combination of these things. It was a great day when I realized that I could widen the project yet further by writing a poem in the manner of an Eric Ambler spy novel or a Johnny Mercer lyric for a Harold Arlen tune. That led to "Poem in the Manner of a Jazz Standard" and the ones dedicated to decades. I wrote almost twice as many poems as those included in the book. Among the ones I have shelved for now are poems in the manner of Victorian pornography, contemporary fiction, a romance novel, the Gothic manner, the "modern" manner, Sextus Propertius, Emerson, Hart Crane, as well as a short play about Shelley and his circle. These may yet have their day, who knows?  Revising is sometimes even more fun than writing.

NS: I love that you say revising is sometimes more fun and that you mention what led to "Poem in the Manner of a Jazz Standard." The book ends with two poems influenced by music: “Poem in the Manner of a Jazz Standard” and “Poem in the Manner of a Hit Song by Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer, c. 1945.”  Music is such a big part of many of your books. What song is running through you right now?

DL: There are two songs taking turns in my brain right now. One is the Gershwins' "I Don't Think I'll Fall in Love Today," a duet sung by Dawn Upshaw and David Garrison. The other is Leonard Bernstein's "Lucky to Be Me" from the show On the Town. Both are fantastic.

NS:  You are a poetry-father to many poets—you’ve guided and nurtured poets as they’ve made their way into the poetry world. You’ve influenced poets as a result of your contribution as an artist, teacher, critic, editor, etc. How do you balance between being a star-maker and an artist, teacher, etc. How do you do it all? Do you sleep?

DL: I need a lot of sleep and I work hard because I enjoy it. That's the simple answer.  I wish I had more time. There are many demands that are made of me and if I honored them all I wouldn't get any writing of my own done. 

NS: Speaking of working hard and loving what you do. I'd like to bring up The Best American Poetry series. How did you become The Best American Poetry editor? How did you come up with the idea for the series? To what do you attribute its great success?

DL: The idea came to me on the first of August 1987. I remember the very moment. I had moved the day before, from Ludlowville to Ithaca, and on this day I was driving back to pick up assorted house plants that we'd left behind. No one thought such an anthology would have a chance because of the presumed lack of interest in poetry. We proved the doubters wrong. A lot of people are interested in poetry, at least potentially, but we have to overcome a defeatist attitude and we have to bring some imaginative flair to the project of publishing our poems.

NS: Now I want to know if you still have any of those house plants. Do you? This isn't a question for the interview, but I am curious. Deanna and I keep killing house plants and replacing them. Well, except for one aloe plant that seems to have survived for a few years now. We've named some of the plants (Ms. Bart, Sanchez, Lady Woodrow) thinking that it might help them live longer, but no luck. On a different note, I am always so impressed with your memory.

DL: Our house plants seem to be doing pretty well though probably none are left from 1987. Geraniums are very hardy. My memory's still pretty good. I had to memorize a soliloquy from "Hamlet" for last night's class and I did it and it went over well.

NS:  Can you describe what goes into the editing process and how you choose the guest editors? Have you ever asked a poet to edit and had him or her turn you down?

DL: Very few have turned us down: some are too busy, some just don't want to do things that will interfere with their own writing time. In an editor I look for a poet of national reputation, who is writing well, whom I respect and whom I can get along with, and who would welcome the challenge with all the risks it entails—it is, after all, easy to offend friends and associated who don't make the final cut.  Each year the dynamic between series editor and guest editor varies.

NS: Give me a highlight—one of your best memories or moments of editing The Best American Poetry.

DL: In our first year John Ashbery chose a poem by Donald Hall, "Prophecy." John told me confidentially that he thought it would be an even stronger poem if a certain stanza were omitted.  Meanwhile he chose it for the “Best American Poetry 1988.” I asked Don for a comment on the poem and he told me he had revised it—he had removed the very stanza that John questioned. Great that their minds worked alike. When the series was new and we were establishing our name, the work was very hands on and I got to spend time collaborating with Jorie Graham, Mark Strand, Charlie Simic, Louise Gluck, Archie Ammons etc. Those were great days.  I'm proud of the discoveries we made. Certain poets were little known when we published them—Nin Andrews, Anne Carson, Catherine Bowman, Billy Collins, Denise Duhamel, Amy Gerstler, Terrance Hayes, Rodney Jones, Yusef Komunyakaa, Kay Ryan, AE Stallings, Natasha Trethewey, Susan Wheeler, Dean Young, to name just a few. In New York one day in 1990 Mark Strand and I spent a great afternoon looking at potential cover art for BAP 1991. Ten years later Robert Hass and I met in a hotel room in Princeton for a marathon session in which the merits of various poems were discussed. When  Kevin Young  was the guest editor, another decade later, in 2010, we kept bumping into each other by chance—once at the Tibor de Nagy art gallery in New York, another time in a Boston restaurant. These are all happy memories. I have enjoyed my dealings with all the guest editors; I have broadened my ideas about contemporary poetry, and we have done something that is indisputably good for the art and its sometimes beleaguered practitioners.

NS: This is so cool to hear straight from the source! Can we close with a poem of your choice from your work?

DL: Gladly. I will attach the first of the new poems in my New and Selected Poems: "Sixteen Tons." 

Sixteen Tons

To prolong the moment

as a simile extends a sentence

about the heroine’s innocence

which she yielded to her lover and now

she hates him as Eve hates Adam

when she risks her life

to give birth to their child –

To sit in your car and listen

to the last bars of something great

(Bernstein’s “Divertimento for Orchestra,”

you find out later) and then you turn off

the engine open the door

and return to your life, “another

day older and deeper in debt” --

That’s what the authorities fail to get.

You can learn a lot from

the sportscaster’s present tense:

“Three years ago he beats out that hit,”

about a player who has lost a step or two

due to a leg injury.

Three years ago, we all beat out that hit.

When I escape from this party

of unloved doves and loveless hawks,

I shall head to my desk and write

the sonnet that praises the antique pen

used to write out prophesies of today

with you on my arm, unafraid.

-- David Lehman

 

 

Nicole Santalucia is the author of Because I Did Not Die and Driving Yourself to Jail in July. She teaches poetry at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania and brings poetry workshops into the Cumberland County Prison.

The Three P’s: Prison Poetry Process (by Nicole Santalucia)

Right now I am sitting in my spacious third floor office with hardwood floors in a one hundred and twenty year old building that used to be a ladies dormitory at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania. My office is about the size of my first studio apartment in New York City and it feels as if I’m sitting in prime real estate in an adjacent world and era. Classes ended about two weeks ago and I’m taking advantage of my quiet old world office. Although it feels a little haunted at sundown I stay put—as if I’m prepared to see a ghost—because part of my creative process involves escaping and I both enjoy and want to escape from this space.

I was hired as a visiting assistant professor two years ago. After my first semester, I was missing something. Although my students and classes were absolutely wonderful I was hungry for more, so I started to volunteer by bringing poetry workshops into the Cumberland County Prison. I work with the female population in the prison and together we escape worlds that entrap us.

In part, I was motivated to reach out to women impacted by drug addiction and alcoholism, people who are working to survive a personal battle, a battle that has gotten them into trouble. I needed to talk to people that I could relate to on a different level than those who walk the halls of a university. Although, I must say that survival in prison is not always that much different than survival in higher education.

I have a personal history with alcoholism and drug addiction and I’ve learned that I need to give it away in order to keep it. In other words, service work is like personal maintenance for my sanity and humility. It is also important to remember where I came from and not to regret the past or shut the door on it.

When I’m in prison teaching a poetry workshop, typically on a Friday afternoon, I visit pain, despair, suffering, desperation, a little hope and a lot of cold cement and cinderblocks. I visit an environment that is all too familiar. Although I didn’t go to jail I did go through many institutions where I sat behind plexiglass walls and walked on shiny grey cement that smelled like eggs and bleach; this Friday-afternoon-classroom has the same shiny cement floors and plexiglass wall that I remember from my own experience and I try to encourage the women to avoid facing the transparent wall because they get distracted by the guards passing by or visitors sitting down to talk on the phone through another glass wall.

There is a large table in the middle of this cold cement room and sometimes as many as twenty-five women sit around the table with me. We sit for about an hour, but on days when we are on a roll I will stay for up to three hours. We read a few poems, discuss them, and then we write our own poems. We consider poetry as it connects to life, culture, society, personal experience, and expression. I don’t think the women realize that they are in direct conversation with poets like Ann Sexton, Maya Angelou, Lucille Clifton, Ada Limón, Nin Andrews, Maria Gillan, Rachel McKibben, Jan Beatty, Jim Reese, Ron Padgett, etc. The women read these poets, channel the energy in the poems, and their own voices emerge as they write about their place in the world, their reality in jail, their families, losses, and hopes for the future.

Together we revisit some of the darker moments from our pasts and together we gain trust and courage. I often claim that we are attempting a cleansing process—to capture the darkness in writing, in poems, makes room for more light to enter the crevices where pain tends to burrow and breed. Where there is sorrow we reach for triumph and where there is darkness we reach for light. The dark moments that we write about tend to have less strength when they live in poems and those poems live out in the world away from the self.

I use poems as models and I bring in lots of prompts. The goal is to sit in prison, to center the conversation on poetry, and to engage in the act of writing. After reading a few poems, we sit in silence and the women—no matter how big or small the group is on any given Friday—either write as if it will carve a tunnel to freedom, or they sit studying and thinking about the poems that we read moments earlier. Sometimes we end up talking for an hour before we get to the writing.

For instance, a few weeks ago I brought in a batch of poems for us to read: “The Mother” by Gwendolyn Brooks, “I Go Back to May 1937” and “Ode to the Condom” by Sharon Olds, and “Before” by Ada Limón. After we took turns reading these poems aloud the one that echoed our conversation for the next hour was “The Mother”—it was the content that the women related to. We talked about abortion and many of the women shared their experiences. Almost all the women in the room had either young or grown children and one woman was seven months pregnant. We also talked about relationships and took turns defining what toxic and healthy relationships look like. We talked about personifying certain problems or personal defects of character. The conversation was long and the room was not as cold as it was when we started over an hour earlier.

Many of the women wrote poems in the form of a letter. Some addressed their living children, some their aborted children, and others wrote about life and motherhood. One of the poems from this workshop begins, “Oh, sweet innocent baby growing inside of me / I am so proud to call myself your mamma.”

All the women shared their poems with the group that day.  Sometimes a few people choose to save their poem for the next class or they don’t read aloud to the group at all. No matter what they decide is okay, the letting go already happened in the writing. I encourage no disclaimers because some of the time we spend together is about building self-esteem and courage; it is about acceptance and healing. Not self-shaming or negative self-commentary. I say all this and then when I go to read my poem, which I always do no matter  what I write, I have to stop myself from saying things like, “this one is a dud, but I’ll read it anyway,” or “I fell short today ladies.” In prison, I am more positive, at least out loud, and I practice what I preach. And I mean practice.

Last summer one of the workshops focused on odes and I was grateful to leave prison that day. Well, I must say, that I am grateful to leave after every workshop. I ended up writing “Ode to Locker #17 in the Cumberland County Prison” (follow the link to read this poem). In fact, I wrote a ton of poems with the women these past two years.

I think my next book will be devoted to the work that is coming out of the prison. Speaking of “out of prison” I started taking many of the women’s poems home with me after our classes. I make copies of their work and then bring it back to them. I love having their work on my desk at home. I carry a piece of them, or maybe I carry the voice of hope and desperation out into the free world for a little while before returning it back to jail. In a way, I help them explore new territory as if this is a way to visualize change even though it is probably only me doing the visualizing in this case.

Lastly for now, I started bringing my students from the university into the prison—one student at a time. The student who comes with me sometimes co-teaches or sometimes she jumps right in and joins the class. It is an excellent experiential learning experience. One of my students wrote a wonderful article for the school paper after her visit. You can read her article here: “Poetry Heals Hearts in Prison.”

Nicole Santalucia is the author of Because I Did Not Die (Bordighera Press, 2015). She is a recipient of the Ruby Irene Poetry Chapbook Prize from Arcadia Magazine for Driving Yourself to Jail in July and the 2015 Edna St. Vincent Millay Poetry Prize from The Tishman Review. She received her M.F.A. from The New School University and her Ph.D. in English from Binghamton University. Santalucia teaches poetry at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania and brings poetry workshops into the Cumberland County Prison.

Road Kill Sightings or My Struggle with Confessional Poetry [by Nin Andrews]

The other day I was reading posts on Facebook by the many poets who admire Mary Oliver’s poem, “Wild Geese.” So I read the poem over, stopping at those lines: Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

I began to wonder. Do you really want to know about my despair? Do I want to know yours?

Because honestly, I’m not sure I like confessing. Or that I like confessional poetry. But I’ve been struggling to write it lately, studying the how, the why. (If I am critical of a kind of poetry, I make myself try it on for size.)

It seems that many confessional poets start with their parents, describing the terrible things parents did to them: the betrayals, the abuse. So that’s where I wanted to begin, too.

I started with my mother who was totally in love with nature. She also admired Mary Oliver. I consider that a serious betrayal.

Once after hearing that same poem, “Wild Geese” on NPR, she asked me why I didn’t write nature poetry. You should write a poem about wild geese, she said. (The truth is she would have liked me to write about anything besides orgasms.)

My mother could name every bird, plant, and tree, and when I was a girl, she tried to teach me to do the same. I was a lost cause. I never learned the names of any birds or trees or flowers beyond sparrow and spruce and tulip. Discouraged, my mother begged me go to a nature camp, but I refused. She had sent my older sister, D, the year before, and when D returned, she had two new skills: snake handling and taxidermy.

These two skills are my metaphors for confessional poetry. Snake handling is writing about the living. Taxidermy—writing about the dead. Today, I’d like to expand on the taxidermy metaphor.

Because after her stint at nature camp, D spent our vacation in Maine staring out the car window, looking for a dead animal to stuff. We’d be driving along the freeway when suddenly she would shout STOP at the top of her lungs. My mother would screech to a halt, and D would climb out of the car to inspect a dead deer or dog. My mother called these stops road kill sightings.

Usually D would decide the animals weren’t fresh enough. It’s kind of like selecting vegetables and fruit, she explained. You want the dead to be just right.

Isn’t that just like writing poems about the dead? So often we don’t really do them justice. And something begins to smell bad, at least to us. Or anyone who actually knew the person we are writing about.

Also, a memory can come so quickly, like an image seen from a speeding car. Often it arrives at an inopportune time, maybe when you are swimming or having a drink with friends or drifting off to sleep. And you don’t write it down. By the time you are sitting down at a desk, you can’t recapture the scene, the mood, the excitement.

I remember how once, in frustration, my sister, D, went searching for dead animals along Route 1, and when she returned, she was carrying what she said her teacher from Nature Camp would have called a real fine carcass. (We poets have a few of our own Route 1’s, I think—those places we go again and again for well-traveled sources of inspiration.)

This raccoon hasn’t been dead that long, she assured me before dumping it onto the kitchen counter. Slicing neatly and sliding the raccoon out of its fur, she explained that skinning an animal is as simple as taking off his jacket. See? she said. The insides stay together, just like they’re in a Glad baggy. She held up a shiny sack of entrails up to the light for me to admire.

I suppose I don’t need to explain the analogy here to the experience of writing about those we love, discovering and exposing those choice, glistening moments. But let me expand a little more . . .

Because sadly, D’s raccoon’s head was a bit squished. And my sister wanted to make him look really alive. She dabbed his face with black paint where the fur was missing, and replaced his eye balls with yellow marbles. Then she named him Buddy Boy before posing him on a stand. One front leg was bent, and the other was stretched forward as if he were in full stride. Buddy Boy looked as if he were racing off the platform, still trying to escape an oncoming car.

How many poems have I dabbed and painted over again and again? How many look back at me with yellow marble eyes?

After she’d finished, D wasn’t sure she wanted to sleep in the same room with a dead animal. Neither was I. Buddy Boy was beginning to stink. D stuck Buddy Boy on the flat roof outside her window. Soon a sickly sweet scent wafted through the bedroom. In a few days buzzards circled overhead.

I couldn’t help thinking that maybe we should have left the dead well enough alone. Let its spirit fly away like Oliver’s wild geese.

I picture the dead parents of confessional poets in their afterlife, seeing us still coming after them like an oncoming car.

Bitching With Nin Andrews [by Nicole Santalucia]

This is the first in a series of blog posts that Nin Andrews and I will write about our writing process, or lack thereof. We like to bitch about writing, and I've been not writing and then bitching about not writing . . . 

CALL IT WRITER'S BLOCK

1. I say I am going to write but then I can't decide where to start. I feel like a little kid with her pants to her ankles standing in the middle of a high school lunch room—vulnerable, exposed, full of fear. 

2. I say I am going to write and this has me in a tizzy. So I take for a walk to de-tizzy. 

3. I say I am going to write so I make myself a sandwich instead. I open a can of tuna fish and toast some bread. I don’t have any mayo, so I get in the car and drive to the store and get a jar of mayo. When I get home I find that the dog ate the bread.

4. I say I am going to write but then I realize that I am late to a department meeting and I needed to make photocopies for the other committee meeting after the meeting. When I stand in the copy room and wait I recite “In a Station at the Metro” over and over.

5. I say I don’t have time to write so I show up to the department meeting early. This turns out to be the perfect place to disappear into a poem. My colleague’s must think I take very good notes at our meetings.

6. I say I am going to write as soon as I am done reading those papers. As soon as I finish reading those papers I collect more papers.

7. I say I am going to cook dinner, something special, but instead I heat up leftovers. I wait till tomorrow to go to the farmer’s market and get fresh produce: spinach, arugula, watermelon radishes, purslane, purple potatoes, pea shoots, and heirloom black beans.

8. I say I am going to write so I vacuum the house for two hours. I get on my hands and knees to scrub the baseboards then start a load of wash then take the dog for a walk.

9. I say I am going to write but then I get in the car and drive to the antique store and look at dressers. I open and close the doors on old dressers, rub my hand around the insides to see if anyone hid a letter. I convince myself that some old dresser drawer sitting in an antique shop has a letter hidden inside.

10. I say I am going to write but then I call my mom and ask her for my great grandmother’s recipes. We stay on the phone while she digs through the kitchen drawers and then she reads me recipes over the phone for an hour. She says wait till summer to make the cagootz and don’t forget to slice the zucchini thin before adding the eggs.

11. I say I am going to write but then I call Nin Andrews instead. She tells me a story about this one time when she was at a fancy restaurant before a reading. She and her friend kept yelling out. It went something like this: Nin: Should I read the vagina poems? Friend: Yes, read the vagina poems. Nin: But, I don’t know if I should read the vagina poems. Friend: Oh, yes! You just need to wear the right dress to read the vagina poems. Nin: Okay, I will read the vagina poems.

12. I say I am going to write but then I check my email, iron all my shirts, dust the light fixtures, replace the eyehook on the screen door, make a few phone calls, fall asleep at a decent hour, wake up, exercise a little. I completely forget that I said I was going to write. I go teach a poetry class in the prison and sit around the table with ten women. I write a poem about escaping and call it “Writer’s Block.”

Not writing is part of the process. But, there are those times when I feel guilty or fearful and all I need to do is to keep going, keep being, keep showing up. Too often, I get that feeling of not remembering how to write, but just like all feelings, this one is temporary, too.

Bitchin' with Nin and Whitman by Nicole Santalucia

I've been bitchin’ with Nin Andrews about what it’s like to live like a gypsy, about how being a poet has led to a vagabond life.

I got a degree (hurray!), made a move for a job (at least I am lucky to get a job), and now I can’t help but think of how a lot of poets live out of a suitcase. And, it’s a little scary.

As I was in the last stretch before my move—I had till Monday, July 14th to finish packing—the sea of boxes and clutter and exhaustion consumed me. I was already worried: will I have to do this again and again?    

I always feel vulnerable in the process of upheaval... I know it's normal to get nervous before starting something new. But it's all new: the job, the school, the town, the people, etc.—and for me that brings up self-doubt. I have this fear, what if I can never write again?  Sorry to be dramatic. Moving brings out the drama in me, too. I wonder how many poets are out there, thinking these thoughts as they, too, move to another college town.  

To calm myself, I started bitching to myself, and then I started bitching to Nin, and then to Whitman as if he were my friend on Facebook. And that perked me up. Just the idea of Whitman on social media made me laugh. I am jealous of Whitman because he didn't have to worry about a classroom of freshman staring at him.  And I am jealous of Emily Dickinson, too. She just stayed in one room as long as she liked.   

As I was preparing to make my big move, it was a late afternoon, a Sunday, and Walt had just updated his Facebook status, There is no loss of time in the mountains! I sing on this day: happy birthday to you, Fanny Fern. On the off-chance that Walt had his iPhone while he was riding the ferry back to the main island, I sent him an instant message because I worried that no one would ever read my first book. I wanted him to promote me, loud and gregarious man that he is.  But I evaded the topic; instead, I started questioning him about what all of this means.

NS: But Walt, what about the loss of identity? I fear that I am really no longer here, in the flesh. If I exist at all, how is it that I no longer know how to splay myself on a grassy knoll and look out at the emptiness?

WW:                Answer.

Nothing is ever really lost, or can be lost,

No birth, identity, form—no object of the world (“Continuities”).

NS: But Walt, every time I am on Facebook I feel lost in space and time. It’s as if my senses have been removed—carved out of my being by a motherboard manufactured in some foreign country.

WW:                Answer.

That you are here—that life exists, and identity;  

That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse. (“O Me! O Life!”)

NS: But Walt, I am faithless and foolish and full of myself—there is nothing but emptiness in front of me, behind me, between my fingers, between my ears, my breath.

But then the conversation stopped. Later Walt mentioned how he almost dropped his phone overboard, just as the ferry was approaching the port at the tip of Manhattan. He was on his way to pay back Fanny Fern the five bucks he borrowed from her over a year ago. I think he was telling me how his debts never go unpaid as a way to enlighten me. He also said it’s not good to burn people with a high profile.  

High profile. Is that what we're all looking to become? 

Don't Blow a Gasket on Your Way Home. (Nicole Santalucia & Deanna Dorangrichia)

AWP 2014 has come to a close. We saw Sherman Alexie and Tim Egan read on the main stage last night. This reading was a perfect way to end the conference. Now that we are bleary-eyed on all things literary it is time to go home. We won’t forget to tell everyone how great Seattle is and we hope that everyone else will do the same. Make sure to come and visit, if for no other reason than to get a cat and a bear in your cappuccinos.

 

 

Travel safely and thank you Seattle!

Video Poem: "Looking Out the Window at the SAM on Saturday Afternoon (Puget Sound)"

 

The Word on the Street & Writer’s Block is Chocolate (Nicole Santalucia & Deanna Dorangrichia)

AWP is influencing the city of Seattle! Just a few blocks away from the Washington State Convention Center we noticed a poetry reading taking place in the dog park. We also noticed some great finds at the bookfair and learned that writer’s block can be cured with a little bit of chocolate, courtesy of Writers’ Workshoppe Imprint Books.  

         

Other things that we tasted in Seattle today that the rest of you might enjoy can be found at Purple Café and Wine Bar. We definitely recommend these menu items: The Quinoa and arugala salad: mixed quinoa, arugula, roasted butternut squash, le puy lentils, pickled shallots, toasted almonds, parmigiano-reggiano and lemon vinaigrette, and the Pan Seared Skuna Bay Salmon Sandwich with tomato,english cucumber and house tartar.

We appropriately stumbled across Buster Simpson’s art installation on 1^st Ave and Virginia Street on our way back to the hotel. I hope Sammy the dog didn’t do his business here.

And for a night cap we ended up at Café Fonté for espresso that was to die for. There was also a great reading happening in the café by Gold Wake Press authors.

Seattle, We Smelt You! Literally. (Deanna Dorangrichia and Nicole Santalucia)

Picture taken at Pike Place Market

AWP was rockin’ Seattle’s downtown area today. We found poetry all over the clean sidewalks of this wonderful city. There were so many caffeinated writers in and out of the Washington State Convention Center and their words and energy busted out of those conference rooms and onto the street; it was almost lethal. Boom!

We hope everyone is eating well while in and out of the bookfair, readings, and panel talks. We could recommend lunch at Pear Delicatessen and Shoppe. Try any of their sandwiches, but we can specifically vouch for the Tuscan Tuna Fish, Market Veggie, and Egg Salad. Also, they have a great Clam Chowder. For quality and quickness, this is the spot. Lunch trumped dinner on day two of AWP. We were with a bunch of Italians from New Jersey and New York and went on the hunt for a little taste of home. And instead, we got a little taste of doo doo. Without meaning to be too negative, we must say that the Italian restaurant was a no go. Too much pepper and the pasta was frozen or boxed (except the gnocchi). What did we expect from a place that is not owned or operated by Italians? Can’t win them all.

The best place for coffee on the way to the conference today was Monorail Espresso. Not only was the cappuccino awesome, but the service was above and beyond. And, I made a new friend.

We did find a visual art gem. Do take a walk to Seattle Symphony located at 200 University Street and get a look at this beauty:

"Crystal Cascade" by Dale Chihuly (A Washington native) 1998 Hand-blown glass and steel. Check out more details at Seattle Symphony

 Our night cap was provided by keynote speaker Annie Proulx and Shawn Wong     who primed the stage with humor and insight into Seattle living. Keep an eye on AWP’s website for a recording of her address. She packed the house. 

AWP Kick Off & Eating Your Way Through Seattle (Nicole Santalucia & Deanna Dorangrichia)

What is one to do after registration is complete for AWP? Stop for a snack of course. A short stroll later, we found ourselves at Belle Epicurian, a café and French patisserie.

We recommend this cafe to grab breakfast pastries, desserts, sandwiches, salads & soups made from natural and organic ingredients (1206 4th Ave.). A strong cappuccino and almond croissant later and we were sugared up, caffeinated, and ready for AWP’s Opening Night Awards Celebration where the winners of the George Garrett Award for Outstanding Community Service in Literature and the Small Press Publisher Award were announced. Congratulations to Maria Mazziotti Gillan, recipient of this year’s George Garrett Award and One Story, recipient of the Small Press Publisher Award!

Stay tuned! Deanna Dorangrichia and I will be posting live from AWP these next few days.We will be talking mostly about food and where to eat in Seattle. We believe that getting to know a city happens through the food it serves and it's also a means of comfort and familiarity when adventuring into new territory. AWP attendees should remember to eat a good meal before entering the crowded venues. In order to ingest your AWP experience you’ll need to stay caffeinated, hydrated, and well fed. 

Left to right: Judith Baumel, AWP President & Northeast Representative (2010-2014) presenting Maria Mazziotti Gillan with the George Garrett Award for Outstanding Community Service in Literature. AWP 2014 Seattle.

Oh, and our hotel is right across the street from the Seattle Public Library (1000 Fourth Ave.) just a few blocks from the Washington State Convention Center, a perfect getaway from the masses. And, we have a pet fish in our hotel room. Appropriately named Tanker, this gold fish is on our AWP journey with us!

More photos and AWP 2014 Seattle to come from Deanna and Nicole. Maybe you remember us from 2011 when BAP blogged about our wedding (if not, check us out here) We are still married and we are still bitches.