Blue Notes & Mayapples

Day 292 of the "What are you reading, and why?" project, and I have been reading The Clock of the Long Now because Marion Boyer is a poet I've admired over the years.  We took her poems at RHINO, when I was an editor there, and I reviewed her chapbook Green (Finishing Line Press, 2003) for RHINO Reads (then a review section of the journal, now a live reading series), and several of those poems appear again in The Clock of the Long Now (Mayapple Press, 2009), notably the "Jake" poems, in the voice of an interesting man.

And that's just the beginning of the coincidii:

I do hope to review Clock for an online journal (not happy with the lag time of print journals when it comes to reviews, still waiting for a review of This Must Be the Place, by Alice George, also from Mayapple, to appear in ACM, and, like Alice's book, Marion's is from 2009, so I'd like to get it out there!)  Meanwhile, Susan Slaviero has agreed to answer interview questions about Cyborgia, her book from Mayapple, out this year.  So you can look forward to what she has to say--here in this blog!--about her fascinating book of wild science fiction poetry!

I met Marion Boyer once (or twice?) at Woman Made Gallery in Chicago, where poets get to read their work surrounded by art by...yes, women!  And, yes, these blue-note birds are more in the series by Pamela Callahan, a Woman Made artist, for which I keep giving thanks!

A blue-sounding* poem of mine, "A House in Carlock," appears as Broadside #20 currently in Blue Fifth Review, which will be moving to Wordpress in 2011, and transforming into Blue Five Notebook, where I have a poem forthcoming!  I am honored to appear in the last Blue Fifth and the first Blue Five issues of editor Sam Rasnake.  Many thanks for this!

*And you can hear it, as there's a link to Poetry Radio, WGLT!

I met Susan Slaviero once, too, when we both read for the RHINO Reads series in Evanston, IL.  It's always delightful to get to hear a poet read her own work, and I am tickled that she will tell us all more about her cyborg women.

And if you want to see some beautiful blue water, painted by Deborah Van Auten, and hear "the sea's blue music," sung by Freya Manfred, click here to be taken to Escape Into Life.

Caliban as a Fiddler Crab, Moral Beauty

Day 137 of the “What are you reading, and why?” project, and today is a hodge-podge, potlatch, tie-up-the-loose-ends-of-random-coincidii-collage entry that I thought of entitling “Caliban as a Fiddler Crab, Moral Beauty, and a Boob Job,” but it would have made an awkward, unwieldy header and might have attracted unwelcome email messages.

Recently I blogged on Oscar Wilde who mentioned Caliban in the preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray, and Walter Pater, who spoke of moral beauty in a preface to Dorian Gray. Suddenly last night I got to see Caliban under the stars in The Tempest at the Illinois Shakespeare Festival!

Babbitt’s Books staff were invited to opening night, as we created a bookcase of Shakespeare books for their gift shop, and we offer a discount to actors, crew, and staff who visit the store! I saw one of our customers, who had just been in, and who said he, too, had just suddenly been invited, and wished he’d had a chance to read it first. “You can read it now,” I suggested, “and have this production fresh in your mind!” We both loved the circle of blue sky with clouds on the floor, on the back of the set, and on Ariel’s back, that blue-bodied spirit!

Each time I see a production of Shakespeare, I love to see what will come through most vividly to help me understand a particular element of the play I’ve not understood with my whole body and soul before, even if I “understood” it intellectually or had it explained to me in a class or by a critic. That is, what does the particular production make available to me and to everybody else in the audience, whether or not we all respond to it, or interpret it exactly the same way?

I’ve mentioned the blue sky with clouds aspect of the set (which corresponded to the actual weather yesterday: blue sky, puffy white clouds, transforming gradually into gorgeous clear night, nearly full moon, scatter of stars and lightning bugs) and I’d like to mention that two stairways moved from brown below to blue above as they approached the actor balcony and the ethereal realm. But there was also that circle of sky mirrored on the floor!

Caliban—half human, half monster—was marvelous, blotched, and fishy, with a golden fiddler crab-like claw on one hand. He touched me deeply when he spoke to the human visitors about the music of the spheres, the celestial music of the spirits—Ariel and his blue band—that he hears all around him as a matter of course, and which stuns and frightens and delights the humans hearing it for the first time. This Caliban also moved me in his pleas to Prospero. “I loved you,” recounting the early attentiveness Prospero gave him. Then, human monster that he was, Caliban lusted after Miranda, or that is Prospero’s excuse, anyway, for the withdrawal of love from Caliban…gave me pause!

I was moved, too, by Ariel, in service to the magical Prospero, enslaved, enthralled…. Ariel does everything he is asked, in return for his freedom. (I am reminded of the blue genie in Disney’s Aladdin.) And Ariel teaches Prospero a deeper compassion. Ariel would feel something for these dreadful suffering humans “if I were human,” he says! Gives Prospero pause, and helps him access his own empathy and forgiveness.

Then, deeply touching, Ariel is free. The actor’s body takes in the reality of that, the loss of Prospero as master, friend, and companion on the island, and then, deeply satisfied, runs off, free! There is no sentimental, out-of-character hugging. He’s just gone!

And Prospero, now truly humbled, even wiser than before, with only his human powers, asks for our hands in the traditional epilogue. And we applaud.

So what came through for me this time was that compassion and forgiveness are sweeter than revenge, that we ought to love our monstrous flawed selves, that we ought to behave responsibly and with love (both Caliban and Prospero learn this lesson!), and that our human selves are enough on this earth. We can let our spirits run free.

So, some coincidii:

The Babbitt’s bookcase in the ISF gift shop now displays my first poetry chapbook, Selected Roles (Moon Journal Press, 2006), which contains poems in the voices of several Shakespearean characters, including Miranda! I was in the Illinois Shakespeare Festival way back in 1981! (Selected Roles is also on the local authors shelf, and online, at Babbitt’s—always only $5!)

Caliban as a fiddler crab reminds me of Fiddler Crab Review, a marvelous online blogazine dedicated to reviewing chapbooks, old and new!

I have a chapbook by Susan Slaviero, who tells you what she is reading frequently in her blog, Mythology and Milk.

Likewise, Sarah Sloat in the rain in my purse. People keep telling me they loved what she said in the little interview I posted here, to time with a review of her chapbook, In the Voice of a Minor Saint (Tilt Press, 2009), at Prick of the Spindle, and they want more interviews with poets! So I will try to accommodate.

On that, I am thinking I might review/interview here in the blog if you to send me your poetry book or chapbook c/o Babbitt’s, so let me check with my boss about that. I would like to receive the book at the bookstore, have the option of reviewing it here or at the bookstore blog, and also have the option of keeping it, passing it on to a poet friend, or selling it gently used at the bookstore so a poet who can’t afford it new can afford it used, so it gets another reader, and so the boss can receive a bit of economic return for housing it, and for listing it online at the store database. Your thoughts on this?

Likewise, that would carry on the spirit and tradition of my reviews at RHINO, and I am waiting to hear whether they want me to do something similar again for them!

And what about the boob job? OK, I am now reading The Girl Who Played With Fire, by Stieg Larsson, having finished The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo in time to see it tonight at the local theatre, and somebody gets a boob job. Why?! There is a reason, but I am dubious about it, and don’t want to be a spoiler, etc., but it is making me think hard about how much of the trilogy is truly devoted to feminism, and how much is sex-sells-and-makes-for-a-blockbuster-movie-version. So I send you to Seana’s blog entry on another book, using the Steig Larsson phenomenon as a contrast. Much to ponder!

And, finally, one of our Babbitt’s customers yesterday was the woman who ran the spotlight for The Tempest last night! And Julie Kistler was in the opening-night audience, too, to review the production for her blog, A Follow Spot! (Don't know if her review is up yet, but it will be, and there's plenty of fun stuff to read in her blog!)

Sarah J. Sloat--Minor Saint, Major Talent

Day 131 of the "What are you reading, and why?" project, and I have been reading and re-reading In the Voice of a Minor Saint, by Sarah J. Sloat, because I have loved her poems when I read them individually in print and online magazines and in order to review it for Prick of the Spindle, an online literary and art magazine. The new issue is just out, Sloat has new poems in it, and it's all around wonderful.

In the Voice of a Minor Saint was published by Tilt Press, and you can see other reviews of it and their other chapbooks at the Tilt blog. The fabulous cover art is by Emmanuel Polanco. Sarah posts poems or links, neat images, and fascinating observations in her blog, the rain in my purse.

Because Sarah lives in Germany, I have never met her, but I asked her some questions and she kindly answered them. (I'm bold, she's saintly!)

The title of the book makes me ask, “Are you the minor saint?” Do you speak as a saint in some way—someone quietly going about her humble business in service of something mysterious and huge? Likewise, the title poem, “In the Voice of a Minor Saint,” makes me wonder if the speaker is a real or imagined “minor saint” from Catholicism, or someone similar to you? Or both.

I’m not Catholic but I think the saints are adorable. They all start out small, and then inflate. The minor saint is probably a projection, and I am him/her insofar as I’m called on every day to remember my insignificance. It’s a good thought - it staves off despair and generally makes life a lot easier.

I love the lines, “My heart is small, like a love/ of buttons or black pepper.” That couplet has a perfection to it, and I identify with it. How did you find that couplet?

I was under the impression that that couplet had been part of the first draft of the poem, but I went looking through my notebooks and it wasn’t. It crept in gradually. In the first instance black pepper was ground pepper, which is obviously wrong. Along with the saints I like their inventories: hailstones, teeth, horses, boats, the peanut crop. I decided on a couple things small and manageable, but important in their particular ways.

Tell me about how you handle speakers in general. And specifically, in “Europa.”

I wish I could do speakers better. I rarely set out to put words in someone’s mouth. In most of my poems in some way it is “me” talking. In “Europa,” the speaker gives voice to the frustration I’ve often felt having to listen to how great Old Europe is, and how it’s the root of anything good in America. Ideas like New York is European. Woody Allen is European. Tom Waits is European. Oh, come ON!

Tell me about the construction of “Naked, Come Shivering.” I see all the notes at the end, references to other poets, so I assume it’s a collage poem.

“Naked, Come Shivering” is a cento, or collage poem. I am a huge lover of modern French poetry. The Random House anthology 20th Century French Poetry is my plastic Jesus. Pierre Reverdy, Robert Desnos, Guillaume Apollinaire, etc., etc. My cento is a love letter to them. I had another cento published in DMQ called “Quite At Home” that also took its lines from the French. You pretty much can’t go wrong with them.

Tell me, too, how you came to write ghazals and why you like that form.

My first interest in ghazals came from reading Lorca’s gacelas, which are ghazals, if not in the strict form most people are familiar with. His “Gacela of the Dark Death” is one of my favorite poems. It has a rich, dark strangeness to it, and a weariness. I think of it often.

I’ve written a number of ghazals. It looks like an easy form and in a way it is, but it’s hard to write a good ghazal because there’s a certain monotony built in – the reader knows how every couplet is going to end. It’s a challenge to keep it surprising and engaging and have it hang together. What I find most appealing is how each couplet can be its own poem – that gives the poet focus.

I was at RHINO when we took the poem “The Silent Treatment,” but I loved your whole submission, wanted to take others as well, and have recognized other poems from it, I’m pretty sure, when I see them in other journals—for instance, “Tinder Box,”* the crayon poem in Apparatus. Tell me about your submission process—how you decide to send what where, if/when you revise after rejection or keep sending, and whether you are surprised at what a particular magazine decides to take.

I like to think I do my homework. I don’t submit if I’ve no idea what the editors are publishing. I was thrilled when RHINO took “The Silent Treatment,” and I submitted again the following year with poems I thought would fit, but was turned down. I have two poems in the new issue of RHINO 2010, “Steam” and “sPonge,” the latter being an homage to Francis Ponge. French again!

I often let a poem sit. Just as often I go on a campaign, sending out multiple subs. I never submitted “Tinder Box” again after RHINO turned it down. When Apparatus started up about five years later, I went through some older poems to decide if I just wanted them to die, and gave “Tinder Box” a second chance. They took it, and even nominated it for a Pushcart, so you never know. Still, it’s most important the poet like the poem. You can hear it praised to heaven and if you don’t like it, it’s going to sit poorly in your gut.

Because you are in Germany, do you seek out online magazines? Or print magazines that now have online submissions? And has your life as a poet gotten easier with online submission managers? (Any horror stories? Never hearing back, etc. You don’t have to name names.)

When I started submitting I went with online because it was easier. It’s still easier, but I submit to print sometimes, too, although it really is a postal hassle. I’m lucky now that many do take online submissions because it costs me six euros in postage to submit by snail mail if every poem is on a separate page, which it is. If I have to withdraw a poem, I have to send another letter. And then, yes, after all that time, trouble and money, you get journals that never answer. I’d like to think something went wrong with the post but mostly I suspect they couldn’t be bothered despite all the postage I slapped on the SASE.

I appreciate the editors’ conundrum, though – it’s way easier for everyone to use online submissions, but suddenly the journal has poems out the wazoo. I’m sure it blisters.

I love “Opportunity,” the opening poem. How did you come to write that one?

Someone was telling me about a call they missed because their cell phone was turned off. It’s just a poem about missing the cue, or being too wound up in something that seems more important, like making yourself marvelous.

Is “Folk Art” about a relationship as well as art?

Yes. I love naïve and folk art and the imperfections they breed. I made quilts myself for a while, very badly. I always find it sad and funny to see a painting of someone whose head is way too big or whose arms are too short. I get a great comic rush of empathy. There’s something truthful about it. In the poem, that typical image is the jumping-off point for a failed relationship, the speaker having been painted by a handicapped mechanic, her lost lover more a product of John Singer Sargent.

Many hot poems here—lots of heat and humidity. Were several indeed written in a hot and humid spell?

I’ve never liked hot weather. It stems from my teenage reluctance to be seen in shorts. I just enjoy being fully clothed! “Summer’s End” was inspired by heat, or rather the ebb of heat, and the comfort that brings. We had a very hot summer in 2004 and again in 2006 and you know the Europeans don’t do air conditioning, which I’m kind of glad about.

“Humidity” is more about misunderstanding and incomprehension, but found a good metaphor in the weather. “Humidity” was one poem I wasn’t sure would fly, but I was lucky it was taken by the first journal I sent it to. Other poems in the book – “Folk Art” for example – almost died in the no-go file. I submitted “Folk Art” about 12 places before a print journal took it, then Verse Daily ran it, which made me really happy.

I love the ugly sunglasses in “Shady” and the “idiot mittens” of cell phones. We are in contemporary time, then suddenly there’s Jesus, shoeless, by way of comparison. I love the helplessness in the center of the poem, the stripping away. How did you get this poem?

"Shady” is a happy accident poem. I’d lost my sunglasses and my mother gave me hers, which were incredibly awful, but did the trick, sunwise. On one of the days I resorted to wearing them, my sandal fell apart while I was going the short distance to the sandwich shop across from my office. A distance in which I was completely destroyed – my ego, my attire. There I stood persecuted by life, humble and victimized. It was hard to believe, as shady as the story of Jesus.

“Idiot mittens” is a steal from Bill Cosby, who talks about them in a skit on his 1960s record “Why is There Air?,” referring to those mittens kids wear that are connected by a string. He joked about pulling on one hand and the kid smacking himself in the face with the other hand. Which brings me to the cell phone.

Then, from barefoot to “High Heeled” on the next page. Is this a persona poem, or are you a constant striver? Comfortable with/troubled by your own amibitons?

That’s definitely a persona poem, and more about vulnerability than ambition. Weirdly enough, it started out as a Sept. 11 twin towers poem. I know all that is erased. Still, it goes to show, start writing and you never know what you’ll end up with.

I ask because the voice, and problem, sounds so different in “The Problem with Everything,” where there is a kind of wide, ongoing, indiscriminate empathy with things & people.

I’m a great believer in things, like the child who believes her doll is real, or the grown man who talks to his gun. The speaker in the poem doesn’t want to care but she can’t help caring. Even the gum stuck to her shoe is symbolic of something horribly sad, and everything that goes wrong goes wrong with her specifically in mind.

Tell me anything you want me to know about the book. And ignore any question that troubles you, or rewrite it to answer as you wish. I am asking the naïve questions, because I am like that.

I found it a bit difficult to choose poems for the chapbook. I didn’t have a bunch of poems that seemed to naturally belong together. So I chose by feeling rather than topic or theme or form or anything. With all but one of the poems in the first person, I think it ended up well, but it’s still not that cohesive mass of glue that some chap publishers seem to favor.

I do have a number of poems now that use household items as a springboard (toaster, kettle, faucet, etc), which I hope someday to publish. “Steam” and “sPonge” are among them.

[Now I can’t wait for Sarah’s household item chapbook!! ]

*”Tinder Box.” Did you have a house fire? I ask because we did.

Yes, years ago when I was 23 or 24. But no one died, and the house wasn’t destroyed, just badly damaged. With the insurance money, I was able to pay off a chunk of my student loans, and I used the opportunity to switch from cassette tape and LP vinyl to CDs, which is where we were in technological history at the time. As much as a house fire can be a terrible thing, and it was for my parents (I was in grad school and living with them), for me it was a very freeing experience to lose everything but whatever I had in the trunk of my car.

Hybrid Vine

Day 45 of the "What are you reading, and why?" project.

People keep telling me what they are reading in various places, and I keep trying to gather the slips of paper (literal and floating-in-my-brain slips) in one place, here, on this hybrid, ever-growing vine of a book blog.

On the street outside Babbitt's on Tuesday, a fellow told me he was reading The Devils by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (aka The Possessed) and the stack he'd just bought included Letters from the Earth by Mark Twain, which a fellow had come in looking for (and found--we had 2 copies, shelved in different places, like the slips in my brain and in my giant purse....) the previous week. Why are people reading Letters from the Earth this March?! (It's a miscellany, like this blog entry and the hybrid vine in the picture!)

Street guy is the one who looked for but couldn't find Habit of Being, the letters of Flannery O'Connor, whose phrase "a habit of being" helped me understand myself and why I write, and whose birthday was yesterday!

In my inbox at Facebook, Tim told me he is reading Black Sabbatical, by Brett Eugene Ralph, a book of poems, in preparation for writing a review of it. Tim himself is the author of Fault Lines, a book of poems from Backwaters Press, which also published Even Now, by Susanna Lang, who is up next, with Virginia Bell, in the RHINO Reads poetry series at Brothers K coffeeshop in Evanston, Illinois. And Tim has written a book about Jack Kerouac, whose book On the Road we cannot keep in Babbitt's for more than half a day, as it walks right on out the door again.

Joy, who reported this at an online writing workshop, is reading Shadow Tag by Louise Erdrich and The Humbling by Philip Roth (whom some of you will remember from the "dick lit" entries.) Joe is reading Rama II by Arthur C. Clarke, and Rebecca is reading Blackout by Connie Willis, both readers alerting me of this in Facebook comments. Likewise, Carolyn commented that she is reading The Year of the Flood, by Margaret Atwood.

Bringing all these titles together on a hybrid vine, like an anthologist of unlikely blooms, I mention that Toni is reading The Anthologist, by Nicholson Baker, and that Lorel created the vine, which you can view in more detail at flickr.

Baker's novel is about a poet who cannot write a promised introduction to an anthology of poems, and this, too, will now have to go into my Wish List at Amazon, along with several actual books of poetry, thanks to its plot and main character, a struggling free verse poet, and its discussion, within a fiction, of many other poets. Sigh.... (Or maybe I can find it at Babbitt's!)

And, now, before I disappear into the whirling slips of paper in my brain and the duties of the daily routine, I will say that Lizabeth is reading The Lost Girl by D. H. Lawrence and Connie is reading John Amen's book of poems, More of Me Disappears....