Big Poetry Giveaway 2012

Happy National Poetry Month! I'm participating, with a lot of other poet-bloggers, in the Big Poetry Giveaway organized by Kelli Russell Agodon. Each year she encourages poets to give away 2 books of poetry, and you can read her guidelines here and check out the books she is giving away here!

I am giving away an extra copy of Ballistics, by Billy Collins, and my new chapbook, Nocturnes, just out from Hyacinth Girl Press. If you want to win them, leave a comment on this blog and some safe version of your email address [spell out "dot" and "at" to avoid spam] and I will contact you in early May, and ask for your address if you are the name I pull out of the hat. Or little green basket.

If I have another duplicate of something by then--book or journal--I will throw that into the package, too!

I love to read: short stories, novels, poetry, essays, memoir & biography, nonfiction, especially science and history. A book I want to read that I haven't got from the library yet is All the Devils Are Here. Another book I hope to read this summer is The Art of Fielding. Baseball novel. Ish.

I love to read and write outside, at a picnic table in the back yard. But I can read and write anywhere and everywhere, if I bring a book, a notebook, and some pens or pencils.

I'll be drafting a poem a day in April, with a poetry workshop I teach and another group I know online. It's an intense thing to do, but I love doing it because I always end up with a bunch of stuff that gets revised into real poems! And sometimes a few "gift" poems, those that fall out whole by grace!

If you are writing a poem a day, too, have fun! If you want to participate in the giveaway by giving books away, click on Kelli's guidelines! If you want a chance to receive these books, leave a comment below with your email. If you just want to comment, that's fine, too! Always happy to hear from you.

Bird on Glass, 3.

I hope this is the last “bird on glass” entry, for the sake of the birds! (No birds were harmed in the writing of these blog entries: Bird on Glass, Bird on Glass, 2.) But it might not be.

In a comment on “Cool Snap,” Carol said that “it's always somehow surprising and informative for us novice poets to hear someone more established getting rejected as well,” and I was surprised to be considered “established,” since I don’t feel very established. Hence, that “outside looking in” feeling.

I joked back that I am not part of “the establishment” and am old enough not to trust it (my kids think their parents are hippies—I’m a weensy bit too young to be a true hippy, but I have a hippy spirit), all the while aware that a younger generation of poets is joyfully engaged in kicking an older generation of poets out of here 1) until they die, when it’s OK to revere them or 2) unless they were beloved mentors or teachers, and it’s wise and good to love and respect them. 

I hope my own joyful, joking tone is coming through, not just the cynical awareness. In me, most things are sifted, blended. Makes for very fine pancakes. Drenched with pure maple syrup, or Cary’s sugar free. And a few burnt ones.

Anyhoo, I get rejected along with the best/rest of us, yes. No string of past publications makes the next poem any more likely to get accepted. The poem must speak for itself and get itself accepted, and that will also be a matter of the tastes, preferences, judgment, and needs of the editor or publication to which I have sent it. I hope to have sent to the right place, by reading the publication or samples from it, and the guidelines, but I can’t know the literary journal’s individual needs at this moment. That understanding of the process (aided by years of being on the other side, the editors’ side) and that conviction that the poem is more important than the poet’s name or resume helps me move on from the momentary pang of rejection, which is as brief and routine (and annoying and necessary) as, I imagine, pricking the finger to check one’s blood sugar.

I have been so lucky to learn so much by working for a time with 3 publications: Poetry East (where I was associate editor in graduate school), RHINO (where I was with a group of editors for a decade), and Escape Into Life (where I get to read poets at large in the world and choose some to feature every couple of weeks, to share with online readers). Part of what I learned is that a jillion people are writing poems in this world, sharing their hearts, minds, and skills. I am amazed and full of respect for these poets. I like all kinds of poems. I am impressed most by those who take care, who respect the world and the poetic process (and the submission process), and who find a way to “tell it like it is” in their work. There are a jillion ways to do this.

But I remain alone and at large in the world myself, not connected to some group or cultural institution that supports me, morally or practically, not part of any establishment. And, as you well know if you are a poet, the world doesn’t tend to value or respect poets on a daily basis. American culture pushes us to the frivolous fringe; we are not contributing to the economy in important ways. Etc.

But we know our own value, yes?  “So,” to quote Emily Dickinson, “let us keep fast hold of hands, please, that, when the birds begin, none of us be missing.”

Bird on Glass, 2.

Ruth wanted to know more about my “bird on glass” feeling earlier this month, and I have continued to ponder it. It’s that “outside looking in” feeling of alienation or distance, at times a longing to belong.

Oddly, I felt it on a day of being inside looking out.  Only the metaphorical (but based on literal) bird was looking in, and not really. The bird was seeing the reflection of the sky, not wanting to come in or to belong to any human group. Just mistaken and confused.

Of course, Plato’s cave is pertinent here.  If we are inside one way of looking at things (the cave) and learn that all we are seeing is a reflection flickering on the cave wall, we’d have to realize and turn around to be able to walk out through the mouth of the cave into the true world. 

Likewise, if the bird could just turn around, she would see more sky, more trees, and her true home. Yes?

Why do we get confused and bang our heads on the wall, or our wings on the glass? Yes, it can lead to death! The bird’s death, the heart’s death, the death of the soul perhaps. Or the dulling of the mind, the numbing of our existence.

My dad turns 80 in a couple days, and I was just telling him how he has comforted me during my moments of alienation, reminding me that my true community includes the dead, and people in the future, people not now living but who have written things down or painted things. Yes, the writers and artists are no doubt my true community. (And his.)  Especially the writers, but I am married to an artist, and I drew before I wrote, so I feel an affinity there, for sure.

In the recent tributes to Adrienne Rich, I encountered this quotation: “You must write, and read, as if your life depended on it.” I do. It does. Reading and writing are my natural activities, my (good!) habits of being.

But it’s true that we are living in a time of quick info, often gained through quick visuals, sound bites, quick, too-quick, and often dubious “facts,” some of which (in the political arena) are outright lies. Very little paying attention and sustained attentiveness going on and rigorous attachment to what is real or true here. So that probably intensifies my “bird on glass” feeling. Though I am part of a natural world, I am not part of this “new” world. And it is hard and shiny.

Mostly, though, I simply feel the slight distance of the artist, the person standing on the edge and looking, listening, paying attention. I’m not eavesdropping on purpose or to use anything I hear in a harmful way. I just understand that I am not in the “in” group at hand or of much interest to them. I am what I am, and it’s hard to explain to people who are not really interested.

“What are you up to these days?”

“I have a rich inner life.”

See what I mean? (It’s OK to laugh. I do.) But I see the irony here, too. In my answer, alas, they are on the outside looking in, and not able to see what I am up to because it is part of the inner life. (Although I do make it outer in my writing.)

Then again, as I said, they are seldom really interested. Not in my inner life, anyway. I hope they are interested in their own!

I love this piece on vulnerability in Maureen’s blog today. Partly because I imagine many people feel vulnerable and have rich inner lives, and that if we could connect, share, respect and protect each other, truly pay attention to each other, many feelings of alienation would fade….

And I have to say, I do feel I belong to a community here, of people who read, write, and care about each other. Thanks. And thanks again, to artist Pamela Callahan, for her birds.

Spring Beauty

The yellow tulips are open, the red ones beginning, wild violets and yellow lamium profuse, and blue bugleweed about to wake up with reveille.

The re-designed Escape Into Life is up and running, but running slower than I remember. Sigh...

And, though designed to be easier to navigate, I'm still having a little trouble finding my way around. But that's me. With technology. Or directions. Sigh...

But here's a new poetry blog entry: a mini-review as appetizer for Charles Rafferty's digital chapbook, Appetites. Art there and here by Brian Oldham.

Last night's history- and letter-based poetry reading went well, with museum director Greg Koos reading a couple poems, too!

Afterwards, a drink with my mom and dad at the historic Lucca Grill, where we were treated to impromptu singing by a band of random barbershoppers. Or maybe not so random. I think they come after practice, and, if they sing, they get a free pizza!

Ah, what lovely blended voices. I love my town.

Potluck O' the Irish

St. Patrick's Day has come and gone, but the new exhibit is still up (& will be through the summer of 2014!) at the McLean County Museum of History, The Greening of the Prairie: Irish Immigration and Settlement in McLean County, and tonight some of us will be celebrating it with a poetry reading: Potluck O' the Irish.

So any of you locals, please come join us, and bring cookies. Shamrock cookies!

No need to fear poetry! It will be fun, with narrative poems recreating Irish history and myth, lyric poems in free verse, and even some rhyming poems, echoing Irish folk song and ballad. Themes of luck and greening will weave themselves into the history, and some of the poems are in the form of letters.

Seven readers: me, my mom (Peg Kirk), James Dunnington, Candace Armstrong, Ginny Nappi, Judy Boudreaux, and Jan Neuleib. Come and support them!

And be sure and visit the exhibit tonight, before or after the reading, later, or again. There's a lot to see, read, and learn, and a big loom as soon as you walk in the door!

And now I should be showing a bit o' the green.

That's one of my collage bookmarks. With butterflies on it. Fake money. Not a bribe.

Shamrock cookies. Bring some!