The Mad Poets Blog

I’m always excited when I see poetry mentioned in some mainstream outlet where I’m not expecting it… so okay, maybe the NYT blog about books isn’t totally mainstream… but its pretty close… so check it out:  it’s a quick little article and pretty active comment stream about favorite poems for a broken heart.

I loved reading everyone’s favorites… and posting a few of my own.  Let us know if you post anything over there.

I write free verse all the time. When I try to write metrical poetry, I get a headache and an intense craving for a glass of wine. What I don’t get is a successful sonnet, or villanelle, or whatever. But that’s ok, I’m comfortable with my limitations. Having a best friend who is a formalist, though, means I am kept abreast of excitement in the formalist poetry world. Some of the happenings over the past week caught my attention, and I thought I’d toss them out here for public consumption: (Continued)

recently, i’ve been overwhelmed with work (9-5 job work) to the point of having little to no time/energy to read or write poetry. add to that, nearly all of my recent submissions (scant as they may be, for same reason) have been returned with unsympathetic form rejections. and there you have my reason for wondering why i even bother and whether i should continue. BUT, this is NOT a plea for people to stroke my ego (and if you do that in the comments, i will delete them. Seriously. I’m the site admin, and I have that power).

My question is: have you ever what’s the point of writing poetry? (Continued)

Lately I’ve been reading a lot of online journals. It’s a faster, easier, cheaper way of seeing what’s being published in the poetry world. Standard print journals like Poetry and American Poetry Review are, of course, wonderful – but again, they’re expensive and slow to come (being published once every two months). I’m impatient. And online, there is an infinite variety of journals to choose from - instant gratification. So here are a few of my favorite, in no particular order (well, actually, in alphabetical order): (Continued)

Lately, I haven’t been reading much poetry. I set a goal for myself at the beginnng of the year to read something like a hundred poems a month. I was doing really well for the first four months - by the beginning of May, I’d read over 400 poems, from journals like Poetry and the American Poetry Review, as well as online journals like Wicked Alice, Stirring, 21 Stars, Diquieting Muses and Apple Valley Review. I could feel the nature of my poems changing - I moved toward a style that was more stream-of-consciousness, more fragmented. I felt it was truer to my circular way of thinking than my previous attempts at more structured narratives.

But since May, I’ve sort of given up on poetry. Well, not entirely. I just haven’t been able to put my mind to it in quite the same way. So instead I’ve been reading quite a bit of fiction, and some personal essays. And now I’m realizing that my poetry is changing again - this time, instead of changing style, I’m changing content. Prior to the shift to reading prose, I was writing a lot of poems about my life - divorce poems, love poems, poems about children. These are things that have meant a great deal to me, and so of course found their way into my writing.

But now I see my writing shifting toward subjects of greater universality - race, gender and sexual expression, politics, war, peace. I’d like to think I’m finding a way to tie these universal concepts to my own life, that I’m grounding them in tangible, believable experience. I don’t know for sure.

So how about you? How does what you’re reading affect what you’re writing?

I have been weighed down lately by this feeling of disillusionment with the very tangential place of poetry in today’s world, not to say its futility. It seems very few arts can claim a more marginal status in today’s culture, or could matter less for that matter. And the whole endeavor is so close-circuited that it seems incestuous at times, in the sense that the main audience for poetry tends to be poets, poets that are often more interested in hearing themselves than anybody else. Everybody is so eager to get published in journals that they’ve never heard of before (and hardly know where to acquire); and there certainly is more supply than demand. I am the first to admit that I haven’t read most of the other poets’ work in the few journals I have been published in; and I am sure I’m not alone. There is an ever-increasing plethora of little venues for poetry (or shall we just call it “self-expression”?): from the myriad literary journals littering the shelves of bookstores (and those are the ones that do make it to the shelves), to blogs and the infinite variations of online publication. But is anyone reading? The Poetry Foundation tried to answer this question with an admirable “scientific study”, the conclusion of which was, basically, what we’ve known all along: that almost nobody reads poetry, but those who do are essentially “better” people than the rest.

And yet, we are all here obviously for more than our love of our voices. We are here for a love—a perhaps idealized one (as all the best kinds of love are)—of a medium that we believe in, one with an ancient and profound history in perhaps every culture on the face of this slowly-simmering earth. We are here because, obviously, poetry has worked, at least for us, at one point in time. All of this reminds me of an excellent essay by Dana Gioia titled “Can Poetry Matter?” The essay is published in Gioia’s book of the same title (and which I have yet to buy/read). If you haven’t read the essay, I highly recommend it (and you can find it online at the link above). It is a very coherent and ambitious essay, and ultimately very optimistic (with its suggestion of a work plan and all). I first read it two years ago, and I don’t know if I was simply in a better mood, but the bulleted recommendations at the end of the article seemed feasible, if hopeful. Now… I obviously don’t feel that way anymore. Yes, it was a historic moment when poetry made it to The Daily Show with Jon Stewart in the form of Robert Pinsky; but it was also, to say the least, severely cringe-inducing. Maybe poetry is more at home on NPR, and in poorly attended readings at cafes and bookshops. Maybe that is why we are into poetry in the first place.

In conclusion, and in the spirit of true cynicism and self-absorption, here is my poetic riff on the matter, if anybody cares…

As I was reading G Emil’s most excellent interview with Samantha Barrow, I noticed the events calendar in my periphery and that it erroneously reads “No Events.”   This is my fault.  A few weeks ago I started a really exciting new job, and the pace has been pretty nutty.   I’m almost settled in.  I’d like to promise that I’ll update the events calendar this weekend, but in case I don’t, rest assured there are events.  Just check out the Mad Poets’ main page.  Pick a series, any series (right there in the left hand menu), and you’re likely to find a Mad Poets event coming up in a matter of days.

Thanks for your patience.

Every writer experiences their share of block, and I bet if you talk to 10 writers, you’ll get 10 different explanations of how it happens.  For me, usually, I can’t write a dang thing when the block hits.  No.Thing.  It’s crappy.

Tonight, though, I hit a different kind of wall.  I was outside playing with my son when an idea for a poem hit.  Fortunately he wanted a break from me, so I let him play with his new Lightning McQueen toy while I scrambled off to find some paper.  I scribbled out the first draft of the poem - the initial idea (which was something like two lines) led naturally on to the next idea, and the next and the next, until I had a full first draft.   After putting the little monster to bed, I transferred the poem from my notes to my laptop, and did a bit of editing.

And now I’m looking at the poem and thinking, “Damn. This sounds just like this other poem I wrote.  And that other poem I wrote.  And a little like that one, too.”  I have four poems that have the same pacing, the same rhythms, the same voice.  I know each writer develops a voice, and I have my own.  The problem is that these poems are slightly different than what I’ve been writing for the past few years - they’re not the carefully paced and stanzaed poems I’ve been laboring over.  They’re a bit breathless, a bit looser,  a bit more informal and conversational.

The four poems span a pretty good range of topics: a walk with my son, a hate crime, a sexual assault and being on the receiving end of inconvenient news.  But I’m worried that’s not enough - is a difference in topic alone enough to make the poems successful instead of derivative? Is similarity in voice and rhythm enough to doom a set of poems to failure?

Perhaps I’m being a little melodramatic here.  I’m just a little worried that the poems will seem unoriginal and uninspired.

So what do you think - when you’re reading a collection by a poet and you come across several poems in the collection that are reminiscent of each other in voice and style, are you put off? And do you find this happening in your own writing?

Vincent Quatroche who read for the Mad Poets last year in Newtown recently wrote a poem about my 91′ Buick entitled “Vanishing Breed” at Rubber Eden following a visit to his town. This is the link if you want to have a look : http://www.rubbereden.com/poetry/

Lamont Steptoe and Samatha Barrows have agreed to interviews for the blog. As soon as I receive them I will post them. I also requested an interview with Heather Thomas.  I am hopeful all will appreicate the poets interviewed sharing with us.

Until next time,

G

Well it’s that time again, kids:

Anything exciting happening this week? Did you just find out about an acceptance or a reading invitation? Do you have an upcoming appearance in person or in a journal? Did you just have a set of poems accepted for broadcast at Skin Radio? Let us know what’s going on!

Bring on the self-promotion!