Letters to the World: The Poems

In my last post I mentioned that Letters to the World is a unique anthology for several reasons. It is the first collection to emerge from an internet collaboration and is the largest collection of poems by living women poets, but more than that, it is a collection of wonderful poems. Here you will find poems by American poets such as Judith Barrington, Lynnell Edwards, Mendi Obadike, Kathleen Flenniken, Marilyn Hacker, Judith Johnson, Alicia Ostriker, Katha Pollitt, and Evie Shockley. Since the collection reflects the global nature of the listserv, you will also find such poets as Ren Powell (an American living in Norway), Anny Ballardini (Italy), Farideh Hassanzadeh-Mostafavi (Iran), and Crystal Warren (South Africa).

As I always do when reading a collection. I circled page numbers in the Table of Contents to indicate favorite poems, ones I planned to return to later. Here are two poems that brought me back again and again. The first is by Paula Bohince.

Acrostic: Queen Anne’s Lace

Quietly tatted, silent, they edge the snowball bush—
unlit, without judgment. Theirs is a vision I’ve always wanted:
eiderdown-colored, stained as lace in a cupboard,
emblems of a softer life.
Neglected, they lean neck and neck with each other.
Audit of sixty years: one tablecloth, one draft card, one confession…
No one else to do it: emptying his house of its sorry
nests, cubbyholes filled with flannel and moth-eaten deer heads.
Entropy and decay, he said. A house is a kind of bondage.
Strangled, the weeds have no one to kill them. Difficult to
leave them alive, these last witnesses to his last days, who
act blameless, cowering beneath brambles, who
cannot tell me a fraction of what happened. Who did this? You
ears, you idiot eyes that cannot close.


I appreciate what this poet does with a form that we often think of as belonging to elementary school teachers, a form used to engage young students in word play. Bohince's poem shows that the acrostic can have real substance. I also like how this acrostic plays with the sonnet form. And I admire how the poet begins with a simple wildflower and moves so gracefully into something else. Such a seamless shift.

Good news: This poem will appear in Bohince's first collection, Incident at the Edge of Bayonet Woods, forthcoming from Sarabande Books this July. Click the cover image to be taken to the website where you can pre-order.

Another of my favorites is by Charlotte Mandel.

Still Life

Transfixed within the scrolled frame of marriage—
Glossy, still as a Flemish nature mort—
You are the basket’s woven lines,

I the overripe purpling grapes. What is marriage
without realism, plain detail, the more
examined the more discretely outlined?

Gleam seizes shadow, motionless. Marriage
of canvas, oil and turpentine. One more
scrape of the palette’s umber and aniline’s

blue thin menace. I animated marriage
cartoons as a child, bright crayon, not a mor-
bid thought in view. Polka dot curtains lined

window frames with daisies: picture marriage
as bungalow tilting, blue skies evermore,
uplifted arms diaper-pinning the line.

Watercolors risk salt: over marriage
tides flow. Initials carved in sycamore
erode the jackknife wriggle of their lines.

A playhouse, yet a serious marriage.
Undeclared we knew the stakes, how much more
asked of us. Anniversaries fall in line—

patina thickens—varnish conceals—marriages
shiver apart—ours strains its well-mixed mor-
tar—surfaces enhanced by spider line.

Who sees us defines us by this marriage.
Hand in hand, smile / click. To viewers, a maud-
lin sentiment. To ourselves, still, life line.


Again, I was initially attracted to the form of the poem, its 3-line stanzas and its repetition of end words, 1-2-3, 1-2-3. I also like how Mandel follows her pattern, yet has some fun with it by altering the words a bit. And I like what she has to say about a long, happy marriage. I asked Mandel about this form. It seems she was trying to write a tritina, which I believe is an invented form, but she couldn't remember the pattern, so she invented one something like it. Her students affectionately named the result a "charlottina."

More good news: This poem will appear in Mandel's collection, Rock Vein Sky, forthcoming soon from Midmarch Arts Press.

Challenge: Try your hand at one or both of these forms. For Bohince's try to come up with a 14 letter combination, a single word or a phrase. Make it something from nature--or maybe something far removed from nature. For Mandel's bring in some opposite idea, eg, write about a brief, miserable marriage or the single life. Or anything else.



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Letters to the World

Letters to the World: Poems from the Wom-po Listserv is a new anthology that you’ll want to add to your bookshelf. This collection is an outgrowth of the women poets online community founded in 1977 by poet Annie Finch. The listserv began with a membership of fewer than a dozen. When I joined nine years ago, the membership was 120. Now it has swollen to approximately 800 members and serves as a gathering place for women poets from around the world. Members enjoy many benefits. For example, the listserv is a valuable resource for book titles, teaching ideas, discussion of hot topics, job leads, publication opportunities, and information about MFA programs and workshops.

Surely one of the most impressive accomplishments of the listserv has been the publication of this anthology which is the largest collection in print of poems by living women poets. The project was the brainchild of Moira Richards who lives in South Africa. Moira proposed the idea and offered to usher the collection into existence. She was soon joined by Rosemary Starace and Lesley Wheeler. The three became the editors. Committees were formed and a call for submissions went out. Each list member was invited to submit one favorite poem. A total of 259 poets contributed. The beautiful cover was done by member Margo Berdeshevsky who lives in Paris.

Although the original plan was to self-publish the collection, as the project gathered steam and generated excitement, the membership began to realize what an astonishing endeavor they were engaged in. Discussion turned to the possibility of finding a reputable publisher. Eloise Klein Healy contacted her publisher, Kate Gale at Red Hen Press. Kate joined the listserv and soon offered to publish the anthology.

The collection is unique in a number of ways. It is the first such collection to evolve entirely out of the Internet. Instead of the usual face-to-face meetings, all work was done online. A blog was set up to collect the poems and bios. Editors conferred via email and a discussion forum. Proofreaders received packets of poems via email. All of this work was done by volunteers.

Somewhere during this lengthy process, someone suggested that some essays might be a nice addition to the collection. Scattered among the alphabetically arranged poems, these essays are another unique aspect of the collection. There are short pieces about the history of the listserv and a few about the role the listserv plays in the lives of poets who live in remote areas of the world and have no poetry community. There’s an essay about what the list means to a disabled poet. There are discussions of how the listserv has helped poet-moms continue to think of themselves as poets. And there’s an essay about some of the spin-off projects that have emerged such as other listservs and small online writing groups that critique each other’s work and one that produces sonnet crowns.

Best of all, of course, are the poems, a feast of them. Formal poems, free verse poems, poems about the lives of women, poems that pay tribute to our foremothers, traditional poems, experimental poems, short ones, long ones, funny ones and ones that shoot daggers into your heart.

More on the poems coming soon. In the meantime, get your hands on this book!



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No Regrets?

Kelli Russell Agodon recently posted the notes she took during Mary Oliver's reading and talk at Pacific Lutheran University. The talk, Mary Oliver and The Writer's Story, consisted of an hour-long Q&A. Many thanks to Kelli for her notes which are full of wonderful thoughts. One question and answer that made me pause and reflect for several days:

Question: As a poet, what's your biggest regret?

Answer "I don't' have any." She said she is very happy with her life as a poet and living with her art. She said, "Art is an essential hallway into a spiritual life."

I kept thinking no regrets? None? Is that possible? Okay, so maybe Oliver just means in her poetry life. But still, even with that limitation—and surely her life as a poet must be a huge part of her life—it seems to me kind of, well, not believable. Poetry is the place I go to for happiness, and my life as a poet is intensely exciting and satisfying, even when I'm writing sad poems. Nevertheless, I have lots of regrets as a poet. Why didn't I start sooner? Why didn't I pursue this or that opportunity more aggressively? Why don't I write everyday? Why do I go weeks or longer without producing?

And don't even get me started on other areas of my life. I don't want to go on a real bummer, but I'm always regretting something. The list could go on and on. These thoughts got me to remembering and thinking about a poem I like by Natasha Saje. It's from her collection, Bend (Tupelo Press).


Regrets

I regret I sleep so much, that my body

makes demands I do not refuse. I regret

my thirties, unreasonable as crabgrass,

and I regret the two vertical lines between

my brows, the manifestation of my anxieties

which of course I also regret. I regret

the Swiss milk pitcher broken by the neighbor’s

cat and I regret my soft teeth. I regret nights

I stayed awake baking or reading novels

that changed me only momentarily. I

regret that capitalism is my religion

and the small red purse I do not use.

I regret lying in the sun as a teenager and

not putting a safety catch on my grandmother’s

brooch. I regret the poisoned dish of lacquered duck

in 1977, and the squirrel that last year

got caught in a rat trap. I regret the Procrustean

bed of my job and having no columbine

seeds from the beds by the old library. I regret

the demise of the streetcar and the perils

of color, and that in my sleep I do not

dismantle silence. O my Great Lake of Regrets,

my body a floating island—

I like the structure of the poem, the repetition and list. I like the mixture of serious and trivial regrets, the resulting feeling of disproportion. I like Saje's word choice: manifestation, crabgrass, capitalism, brooch, lacquered, Procrustean, columbine, demise, perils, dismantled. These words appeal to my ear and my brain. And what an ending with its sudden switch to apostrophe and the metaphor that drifts off to an unfinished thought.

Challenge: Make your own list—regrets, minor infractions, things for which you should apologize, or things for which you refuse to apologize. Turn the list into a poem.



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Valparaiso Poetry Review

The spring issue of Valparaiso Poetry Review recently appeared online. In my opinion, this is one of our best online poetry journals. It's aesthetically pleasing, yet simple enough that the graphics are not a distraction. The quality of the work is consistently high, and editor Ed Byrne supports well-known poets as well as those who will soon be well-known. I love the variety offered in each issue and return numerous times while the issue appears online. (Actually, each issue remains online in the archives, another nice feature of the journal.)

This issue offers three new poems by featured poet, Lynnell Edwards, and poems by familiar favorites such as Pat Fargnoli, April Lindner, and Julia Kasdorf. There are also poems by rising stars such as Greg McBride and Mary Biddinger, poems by poets I've met in person such as Jennifer MacPherson and Peggy Miller, and poems by poets whose work I'm looking forward to reading for the first time. There's an essay about the work of Zbigniew Herbert. And finally, there are five book reviews, including one by Ed Byrne of Lynnell Edwards' new collection, The Highwayman's Wife. If I hadn't already ordered the book, this review would certainly entice me to do so.

So check out this issue. Many pleasures await you.


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New Orleans Review: Review of Martha Silano's Blue Positive

At last my review of Martha Silano's amazing collection, Blue Positive, has appeared in the New Orleans Review. I say "at last" because it seems like I waited forever. Due to some strange internal errors, the review was omitted from the issue for which it was scheduled to appear. Then through yet another such error, it was omitted from the next issue. Then came the delays at the printer. But at last, yes, at last, it arrived, and it's a lovely journal, my first time in it. Wonderful poetry, an interview, very interesting black and white photography, and a number of book reviews. I'm proud to be part of the issue.

But I'm even happier to give some much deserved attention to Silano's book, published by Steel Toe Books. I was immediately captivated by the cover. Who could resist these brown eyes?

The poems are every bit as appealing. The dominant theme is motherhood. Silano looks at the subject from all possible angles. There's the excitement of pregnancy and the thrill of having a baby, but there's also the hard reality of postpartum depression. Silano gives us a close and painful view of the dark side of motherhood. Not just being tired or in a bad mood, but descending into real psychosis.

Other aspects of a woman's life are included: relationships with relatives, love and love-making, food. Silano has a masterful touch with sensuous details. When she sets the table in a poem, you feel as if you are right there, breathing in the aromas.

But that is just one of many gifts. Silano is wonderfully inventive and playful, and she employs engaging diction. Here's a poet who revels in form and language, deals comfortably in contradiction, and consistently surprises and delights the reader.

Here's one of my favorites from the collection. This poem first appeared in Poetry Northwest and was later featured on Poetry Daily.


Getting Kicked by a Fetus

Like right before you reach your floor, just
before the door of an elevator opens.
Like the almost imperceptible
springs you waded through
in Iroquois Lake.
Carbonation.
Twitch.

Sometimes high and jabby near the ribs;
sometimes low and fizzy like a pie
releasing steam, like beans
on the stovetop—slow
simmer,

like the shimmer of incoming tide—hot, soft sand
meeting waves, slosh bringing sand crabs
that wriggle invisibly in.

And sometimes a school of herring
pushing through surf,
or a single herring

caught from a pier like a sliver of moon rising in the west;
sometimes a tadpole stuck in a pond growing smaller
and smaller, a puddle of mud, squirmy like worms—
now your left, now your right. Sometimes

neon flickering, like that Texaco sign near Riddle, Oregon—
from a distance it read TACO, but up close
the faintest glow, an occasional E or X,
like an ember re-igniting.

Like seeing your heartbeat through the thinnest part
of your foot, sunken well between ankle and heel,
reminder of a world beneath your skin, world
of which your know little,

and the pond growing smaller and smaller, soon the rolling waves
like the ones you dove into at Bradley Beach, at Barneget,
growing less frequent, your giant ocean
drying up, your little swimmer

sinking, giving way
to the waves
of his birth.


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Poet du Jour: Joe Bolton

Joe Bolton was born in Kentucky in 1961 and died by suicide in 1990 at the age of 28. I recently read The Last Nostalgia: Poems 1982-1990, and found much to admire. Prior to his death, Bolton had published one collection and had a second scheduled for publication. Selections from both appear along with newer work in this posthumous collection, edited by Donald Justice and published in 1999 by The University of Arkansas Press.

In his brief Introduction, Justice informs us that Bolton won a scholarship to the University of Mississippi but left after his freshman year. He transferred to Western Kentucky University where he earned his BA. He then migrated from one creative writing program to another, eventually earning his MFA from the University of Arizona. Although he had a book coming out soon, he apparently felt that his best work was behind him and he had no prospect of a job. He turned in his thesis, a collection of poems entitled "The Last Nostalgia," then took his own life, leaving no note.

The Acknowledgments page of The Last Nostalgia lists an impressive number of publications in respectable journals, such as Agni, Black Warrior Review, Crazy Horse, the now defunct Cumberland Poetry Review, The Formalist, The New Republic, North American Review, Poetry, and Wind.

The poems reveal a poet who might be called a Romantic with his persistent fascination with suicide, death, and nature. Bolton might also be regarded as a Southern poet with his attraction to decadence and darkness and his attention to Southern settings and local color. And he might be regarded as a quintessential American poet whose work often deals with cities and small towns, waterways and boats, well-known American figures such as Sherwood Anderson and Hank Williams, and Americana such as diners.

Bolton was comfortable working with both free verse and forms. He was a poet of much achievement and even greater promise.

Here's one of my favorite Bolton poems.

Black Water

It happens like this

Over and over:

A light breaks on the shore

Of a black water

Hemmed in by cliffs of red

Stone with faces

Carved into the faces, and you

See another face

–The face of the remembered–

Rising from the water,

Descending from the sourceless light,

And cannot call it out,

Because now you are the light breaking

Over the black water,

And you are the black water, and you

Are the face they make.

And then you wake up, and light

A cigarette,

And you are in time again, the world

Of time and outside

It is Tuesday, and early June,

And 1985.

And it would be your wedding day,

Were it three years ago;

And it would be your anniversary

Had she not left you . . .

But it is simply a Tuesday, in June,

In 1985,

And you have woken up alone to the life

You live alone,

And the workmen down the block are hammering

The last of the dream from you.

And what work will there be

For you today,

Dreamer whose dream the world

Of time has torn away?

—What task to occupy your hands

That tremble?

Only this resurrection of the grief

That sweats the drink

Out of you and makes you thirst

For more—

Makes you dress up to go out and drink,

Then undress to lie down.

And you will lie down, and you will be

The light breaking

Over the black water, and you will be

The black water.

I like the use of repetition, the format, the slow slide into memory, the sharp jolt back into the present. I like the tone of sorrow and regret, ie, the nostalgia. The language is simple, even perhaps flat, but for me that makes the emotion more poignant.

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Gothic Reading

Last night was the Gothic reading at the Kuran Arts Center in Fanwood, NJ. Hosted by poet Adele Kenny, the reading included a total of 7 poets, each properly attired in gothic outfit, though the term "gothic" was left open to interpretation. Each poet, with the exception of Adele, read two poems in the gothic tradition, each by a dead poet. Then four of us read two of our own poems of a "darkish" nature.

This is the Kuran Arts Center, formerly a carriage house, where the reading was held as part of the Carriage House Poetry Series.

Adele Kenny, poet and series director, decked out in an outfit she made herself! She spent two months with needle and thread. The skirt sported a real old-fashioned hoop. Adele complemented her outfit with fangs. She opened the reading with "Spirits," a poem she composed for the reading.

Tom Plante, editor of Exit 13, read Frost's "I Have Been One Acquainted with the Night" and Shelley's "A Dirge." Note the authentic Victorian piano shawl and candelabra.

Rev. Alex Pinto, an authentic Catholic priest, read Dante Gabriel Rossetti's "The Heart of the Night" and Poe's "Spirits of the Dead."

Clearly, some poets are bolder than others! Susanna Rich read two poems by Emily Dickinson, "I Heard a Fly Buzz" and "Because I Could Not Stop for Death."

Bob Carnevale read Frost's "The Pauper Witch of Grafton," dressed as the witch herself. This photo captures Bob hanging out in the attic.

Me, sporting hot pink streaks in my hair and an evil-looking tattoo. I read Joe Bolton's "Black Water" and Frank Stanford's "Freedom, Revolt, and Love." Both of my poets died by suicide, Bolton at 28, Stanford at 29. Amazing poets who should be better known.

Close-up of my tattoo.

Cat Doty read Christina Rossetti's "After Death" and Marianne Moore's "A Grave." Notice the spirits lingering on the piano.

Linda Radice, as the Ghostly Lady of the House, greeted audience members in her vintage wedding gown and veil.

We hope the audience enjoyed the reading. We know the poets did, both the living and the dead.


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