The Poet on the Poem: Chana Bloch

I'm delighted to have Chana Bloch as the featured poet for The Poet on the Poem.


Chana Bloch, the author of award-winning books of poetry, translation and scholarship, is Professor Emerita of English at Mills College, where she taught for over thirty years and directed the Creative Writing Program. Her latest book is Swimming in the Rain: New and Selected Poems, 1980-2015 (Autumn House Press, 2015). Her earlier poetry collections are The Secrets of the Tribe, The Past Keeps Changing, Mrs. Dumpty, and Blood Honey. Her work has been published in The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, The Nation, The New Republic, and elsewhere, as well as in the Best American Poetry and Pushcart Prize anthologies. Her book awards include the Poetry Society of America's Alice Fay di Castagnola Award for Blood Honey, selected by Jane Hirshfield, and the Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry for Mrs. Dumpty, selected by Donald Hall. She is the recipient of two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, in poetry and in translation, a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Writers Exchange Award of Poets & Writers, two Pushcart Prizes, and the Discovery Award of the 92nd Street Y Poetry Center.

Today's poem comes from Swimming in the Rain: New and Selected Poems, 1980-2015.

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Happiness Research

Rain over Berkeley! The birds are all out
delivering the news.                                                                                   
The evening is wet and happy tonight.               
“Is there more to happiness than feeling happy?”
the moral philosophers inquire.

Research has shown                                                        
if you spot a dime on the sidewalk
you're more likely to tell the professor your life 
is fine, thank you. The effect                                             
generally lasts about twenty minutes.    
                                     
Scientists are closing in on                                                               
the crowded quarter of the brain                                                 
where happiness lives. They like to think                                              
it's hunkered down
in the left prefrontal cortex.

“Even in the slums of Calcutta
people on the street describe themselves
as reasonably happy.” Why not be
reasonable? why not in Berkeley? why not                     
right now, sweetheart, while the rain                                         
is stroking the roof?                                   

The split-leaf philodendron is happy            
to be watered and fed. 
The dress I unbuttoned is more than glad
to be draped on the chair. 


DL: Research is clearly an important motif in your poem. How much actual research went into the writing of the poem? Which came first, the science or the love poem?   



CB: Research on happiness by social scientists, neuroscientists and psycho-pharmacologists has grown at a phenomenal rate over the past two decades. I must admit that I can’t help reading the stuff. So it’s not by chance that I clipped and saved a review-article by Thomas Nagle in the New York Review of Books, “Who is Happy and When?” The moral philosopher Sissela Bok, who wrote the book under review, Exploring Happiness: From Aristotle to Brain Science (Yale UP), wants to know: What is happiness? How much should we value it? Questions I’ve often thought about. 
  


I almost said that science came before love in writing this poem, but when I looked at the article again, I saw the illustration that first caught my attention—Rubens’ captivating portrait of himself and his young wife, “In the Honeysuckle Bower,” painted the year of their marriage. In both faces, the lineaments of gratified desire.  
 


DL: What do you see as the function of the two quotations you’ve woven into the poem?



CB: I hope the quotes will draw the reader into the poem, just as they drew me into the review. They made me ask myself: How am I doing “on a scale of one to ten”? Contented, elated, exhilarated? Which suggests that I was ready to appear in the poem long before I made my appearance.
 In the version of “Happiness Research” I'd drafted a few years earlier, the scientists and the dime were already present, though not the inquiring professor. Sharing the page was “a Norwegian philosopher, 82, who recommends / daily swigs of cod liver oil / for despair:/ ‘It’s almost as good as garlic.’” That draft of the poem remained parked in a desk drawer until science and love revved up its engine.



DL: In stanza 4 you suddenly switch from third person point of view to a first person direct address to “sweetheart.” This and the rain “stroking the roof” move the poem from scientific to personal and intimate. At what point in your drafting did this risky shift enter the poem? How did you know it would work?



CB: Once I disposed of the cod liver oil and added the two quotes, the direction of the poem became clear. I knew I had the setting and the dramatis personae—our house (rain on the roof, a chair, and a split-leaf philodendron) and the two of us. I even had a come-hither line, which turns on the two senses of “reasonable”: the people in Calcutta are passably happy; let’s you and I be sensible. “Why not be reasonable?” might conceivably sound irritated, even reproachful, but the context makes clear that it’s playful, teasing, inviting. At that point I was more than glad to work on the poem. I was elated, exhilarated.



DL: You end the poem with a stunning sensual image. Tell us about your use of personification there, the dress that is “more than glad.”



CB: The dress, c’est moi. The truth is, I usually wore pants in those days, but a poem needn’t be true to fact so long as it is true to experience. In The Cortland Review and two beautiful broadsides, framed on my wall—the poem ended with the philodendron “doing its new green thing.” Once something is in print, I often can’t help wanting to change it. Working on Swimming in the Rain: New and Selected Poems, 1980-2015 gave me my chance. I decided that the happy plant was too nature-club-wholesome an ending for a seduction scene, so I revised and changed the order of the lines in order to end with the dress.



DL: Your first three stanzas each have five lines. Then you alter this pattern and give stanza 4 six lines and stanza 5 four lines. Why not stick to the established pattern?



CB: My poems often have an irregular number of lines in each stanza. Although I do write in couplets, triplets, or quatrains, I like to break the form depending on the demands of the poem. In stanza 4 I lay out my argument, so I need a little more room. And there’s a reason, too, for the quick denouement in stanza 5: so the couple can get down to business.





Readers, please listen to Chana reading her poem.



   

Please also visit Chana's poem, "The Joins," featured on Verse Daily on Tuesday, January 27, 2015.

My Cup Runneth Over

That is, my mug runneth over. Today Garrison Keillor is featuring another of my poems from What Feeds Us. I'm feeling enormously lucky, grateful, and happy. And thank you so much to all the amazing people out there who took the time to listen to and read Thursday's poem and then write me a nice note. I really appreciate it!

Today Keillor is featuring Blueberry, one of several food-related poems in the collection. I am so pleased that Keillor chose this poem as it's one I often use when giving workshops. It works with poets of all ages. The poem and the prompt will also appear in a new textbook coming out soon from Autumn House Press.

I began the poem several years ago during a week at the Provincetown Fine Arts Center in Massachusetts. Having time and space to myself for an entire week, I wanted to get as much writing done as possible. Sometimes, though, it takes more than time and space.

One evening I found myself facing the blank sheet with a head just as empty. So I thought about the fruit salad I'd had for lunch that day, especially the plump blueberries. I then began a free-writing about the blueberry, largely just descriptive—size, shape, color, and so on. Not surprisingly, I was not overly thrilled with what I produced. I put the writing away in my folder—I never throw out any of my writing.

Sure enough, when I looked through that folder several months later, I saw potential in the draft that I hadn't seen before. And I remembered my mother's fondness for blueberry pancakes, so I added on something about that. Then I thought I wanted to know more about the blueberry, so I did a Google search and uncovered some interesting pieces of information, e.g, that the blueberry is the state fruit of New Jersey—I live in NJ and didn't know that. I also learned that the little blueberry is great for fighting urinary tract infections and is rich in antioxidants. I imported some of that information and diction into the poem. I began to think of the blueberry metaphorically, and that's when the poem took off.

Time, patience, persistence. Then maybe a poem gets hatched.

A Nice Knock at My Door

Much to my great delight, Garrison Keillor is featuring another poem of mine on The Writer's Almanac. The poem, After the Ice Storm My Son Does Not Come Home, is from my book, What Feeds Us.

I am again reminded how much patience poetry takes. My publisher sent the book to Mr. Keillor right after the book came out in October 2006. Now more than two years later, long after I stopped hoping to hear from him, I hear from him. And then hear from him again. This makes me hugely happy!

This is a poem I wrote, not surprisingly, during one of those beautiful but terrifying ice storms when the trees are weighed down with ice, when everything glistens, when the roads are a sheet of danger. I had three teenagers, each with a driver's license. Need I say more? You may have been there, too, awake, waiting for everyone to come safely home so you could go to sleep.

The poem was written as four separate, unrelated pieces of fast writing. Then I fused the parts together, found the link among the four parts. That, for me, is one of the most exciting parts of writing poetry, i.e., finding connections among things not apparently connected. The poem went through many, many drafts. It's a fairly simple poem, but one that I hope captures the beauty and terror of parenthood.

Good News

I'm pleased to tell you that my poem, Idiosyncrasies of the Body, has been selected for the 2008 Best of the Net anthology, published online by Sundress Publications. The image above is an enticement to visit my poem.

Editor Erin Elizabeth Smith describes the press's mission as follows: "This project works to promote the diverse and growing collection of voices that are choosing to publish their work online, a venue that still sees little respect from such yearly anthologies as the Pushcart and 'Best American' series. This collection will hopefully help to bring more respect to an innovative and continually expanding medium."

I, for one, am tickled silly to be included along with the other 16 poets and poems selected by Dorianne Laux, this year's judge and one of my favorite poets. The notification of my inclusion came as a complete surprise as I hadn't even known that I'd been nominated. So I skipped that whole period of waiting and hoping and went immediately to the good news part.

The anthology, out late this year, was posted two weeks ago, but I'm just now announcing this news as when the poem first appeared all my carefully deliberated-upon stanza breaks had been omitted and the poem appeared as one long stanza. I notified the editor, but she was out of town and unable to get to a computer. Now the breaks have been restored, and the poem appears as I intended it to appear.

Tell me I'm not the only one who would fuss about missing stanza breaks. To me, they really matter. I think that there's a logic in line breaks; certainly, that was my intention in this poem. Also, as its subject matter is pretty intense, I think those moments of pause are necessary.

Serving Linguini at The Writer's Almanac

I'm delighted to tell you that my poem "Linguini" is featured today at Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac. If you click on the link, you'll be taken to the poem. There you will also be able to listen to Keillor's 5-minute radio podcast and hear him read the poem. The poem appears in my book, What Feeds Us, but was first published in Poet Lore.

The idea for "Linguini" came when I read a poem called "The Blended Family," by Carol Potter. I found Potter's poem in Prairie Schooner. What I noticed about that poem was that each line ended with the word "spaghetti." I started thinking that I'd like to write a poem about linguini. Initially, I tried ending each line with that word. But soon I abandoned that effort as the poem took on its own life. It, too, wanted repetition, but the repetitions are scattered throughout the poem and in the different forms of pasta that appear. I seriously doubt that anyone would draw a connection between the two poems, but I remain grateful to Potter for her poem which served as my muse.

And now I'm thinking I might like to try a poem about ravioli.

Opera and Poetry

Poet, reviewer, and opera buff Karren Alenier has written a review of the opera Carmen. Entitled "Finding the Russian in Carmen," the review has been published at The Dressing. Alenier zeroes in on the jealousy theme in the opera. Her reviews usually end with a poem that picks up a theme of the opera under review. This particular review ends with my poem, "My Husband Discovers Poetry."

I really like it when different forms of art mingle. One of my favorite readings was given with jazz musicians Spencer and Nancy Reed at Northampton Community College in Pennsylvania. I read for twenty minutes, Spencer and Nancy played and sang for twenty, and then we had a second round. A reading I gave this past summer at the Brockton Library in Brockton, Massachusetts, had an art show in the back of the reading room. So while I know not one thing about opera, I'm really pleased that Alenier saw a connection between my poem and the opera.

I also like it when one thing leads to another fortuitously. It turns out that as Alenier was writing her review, she read my blog post about the poem and then read the poem. And that's how my poem ended up sharing the stage with Carmen.

My Poem Enters Analysis

On Monday, October 13, I posted a link to my poem, "My Husband Discovers Poetry," which was featured at the Ars Poetica site. Thanks to everyone who read it and sent me a nice note! I was happy to see yesterday that fellow blogger and poet Elizabeth Kate Switaj had posted the link at her blog and done an analysis of the poem. Is there anything cooler than someone looking really carefully at your poem?

Elizabeth does me the honor of comparing my poem to James Joyce's short story, "The Dead." She ends her discussion by saying, "Now, I have no evidence that reading Joyce directly influenced the writing of Lockward’s poem. Joyce was hardly the first, last, or only one to depict the man as the artist in a couple. Comparing these specific pieces of literature, however, helps to throw light on how narratives change when women do the writing."

I'll shed some light on this. I've never read "The Dead." So I definitely was not influenced by that work. Nevertheless, as Elizabeth suggests, the couple in my poem does include an artist, a poet, but it's the woman who takes that role. And it's a woman who knows how to get even. Even though I can't claim Joyce as an influence, Elizabeth's comments have had me thinking all day about Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Kurtz and his Intended. And I remembered that Kurtz was once a poet before he became hollow at the core. Still I don't think of myself or that poem as following in any particular tradition. But then I wonder if we ever consciously follow in a tradition? Or if that's something that critics uncover? Certainly, the same issues and thus themes persist over time.

I don't usually like to talk about the personal details that went into a poem, but because I'm so often asked about this poem and because I think of it as an ars poetica, this is one poem I've been happy to talk about.

But the question I'm most often asked is "How does your husband respond to this poem?" People assume that the man in the poem is my real husband. They feel sorry for him. If he's in the room when I read the poem (which isn't very often), people turn to look at him, to gauge his reaction. Or they think he must be a creep and I'm well rid of him; they assume that I divorced him. One woman, I've been told, said to a group of people talking about the poem that I, me the poet, had to be a "mean-spirited" person to have written that poem. Now that's a woman who's never met me. Maybe I am mean-spirited, but she'll need better evidence than my poem. I have poems in which "I" am really quite nice.

This question was asked in an interview that appeared in Valparaiso Poetry Review. I'll excerpt that part:

Question: 
I love the irony of "My Husband Discovers Poetry," the way it combines humor with gravitas. The wife has been spurned; now she spurns her husband. In the act of discovering poetry, the husband is tortured. Many have wondered if this happened or if it is part of your metaphorical life. Can you talk a bit about how the poem came about? 



Response: 
What touched off the poem was a conversation with a group of women poets I had just met. They were talking about husbands and boyfriends reading and responding to their poetry, and I stupidly said that my husband never read my poetry. There was an intake of breath and the women, one by one, expressed their disapproval of my husband. They thought it was terrible that he wasn't interested in my poetry, so then I felt I needed to defend him, but they weren't having any of it — they insisted he wasn't interested in my soul. As I thought about the conversation throughout the day, I found myself getting annoyed at my husband for putting me in that awkward situation, and I started asking myself why the heck he wasn't reading my poetry; at the same time, I had to acknowledge that I liked that he didn't read my work because I could write anything and not worry about his reactions. Then I started thinking I could say anything about him and he'd never know. I asked myself how such a wife might get even with such a husband, and the poem began to take shape. So to some extent, this is a kind of revenge poem. I also think of it as an ars poetica. It seems to be autobiographical, as first person poems often do, but by the time the reader gets to the end of the poem, hopefully he or she realizes that there has been some fabrication going on. That's what the wife does; that's what the poet does. But you're right — readers often assume that the poem is entirely autobiographical, and they are embarrassed and sorry for my poor husband. Actually, it's his favorite of my poems. Or should I say his favorite of the ones he's read?

Queen for a Day

I'm thrilled to be the featured poet today at Poetry Daily! Please pay me a visit. The poem is "Seventh-Grade Science Project." It appears in the current issue of the Harvard Review.

As if that weren't enough excitement for one day, I'm now up in Kingston, NY, where I have come in order to take an all-day poetry workshop with Dorianne Laux and Joseph Millar. I haven't taken a workshop in a long time, but jumped at the opportunity to spend time with these two poets. One benefit of being in the workshop is that it will prevent me from sitting around all day staring at myself on Poetry Daily. And I hope to return home with some new poems underway. Details coming soon.

Invented Forms

Last summer I became interested in invented forms. I gathered together a bunch of them and tried my hand at some. I liked the challenge of them and often the zaniness. And in several cases, I liked the results. Recently, I submitted two invented form poems to The Del Sol Review, an online journal. Both appear in the current issue. I thought some of you might like to try your hand at these two forms. I'm offering you one today; the other will soon follow.

Today's challenge is an anagram poem. The instructions come from Terrance Hayes in his collection, Hip Logic. According to Hayes' note, he found the instructions in the puzzle section of newspapers.

First, choose a word of substantial length. Then quickly form as many words as you can from that lead word. You will need a minimum of eleven. Words should consist of four or more letters. That's the rule, but one I easily broke, and I allow you to break it also. You are not allowed to make a three-letter word into a four-letter one by the addition of s. I broke that rule also and so may you, if you like.

Then from your list of words, write an eleven-line poem. Each line must end with one of the words on your list. So if your list contains fifteen words, you will use only eleven of them. You could go on longer if inclined, but I obeyed this rule.

I found this form quite addictive. I was intrigued and pleased by the resulting sounds—the near rhymes, the alliteration, consonance, and assonance. Here's one of my favorite anagrams.

Ecdysiast

You think it's easy
to unravel the boa of feathers and cast
it off, to turn the act
of undressing into an art, suggest Yes
to each hungry face, go just so far and then desist?

Not one can touch, but all must leave feeling sated.

Sequins sparkle as she slinks across the dais,
peels the skirt and tosses it as if rolling dice,
and then the bustier, hook by hook, and thrown aside,
a spider molting, her gaze at once smoldering and icy,
the swivel of hips, to keep the tease slow and steady.