Paterson Poetry Prize Reading

Each year I go to the reading held for the winners of the Paterson Poetry Prize. Yesterday was this year's reading. Although I'd just returned the preceding day from my own reading in the Collected Poets Series in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts, and was pretty tuckered out after a total of 8 hours on the road, freezing close to death in my unheated B&B, and then the exhilaration of the reading with Mary Clare Powell (we had an amazing turnout!), and then the fun of dinner after, I, nevertheless, hauled myself over to Paterson. I wanted to hear Franz Wright—all of the poets, but especially Franz Wright. Imagine, then, my disappointment when it was announced that he hadn't been able to make it down from Massachusetts. There was an audible groan of disappointment when this was announced. Happily, though, things went well after that.

Here's Stanley Plumly reading. If I were a man, this is what I'd like to look like. He has such fabulous hair, silver and full. He also has a wonderful voice, deep and resonant. He read one poem whose form intrigued me. It was 11 stanzas long, each stanza 11 lines, each line 11 syllables. This reminded me of Galway Kinnell's "When One Has Lived a Long Time Alone," but it did not have the repeating lines in lines 1 and 11. I always think it's a risk and usually a mistake to read such a long poem, but this seemed to hold the audience's attention.

I must mention here that I was using my brand new digital camera for the first time. And therefore I messed up. I took 11 photos, but when I returned home, I realized that I had only 3. Apparently, I pushed the button down only halfway on the others. I wondered why there was no flash and credited the camera with figuring out the lighting. Wrong! So no picture of our host Maria Mazziotti Gillan or the first finalist, Suzanne Cleary.

This is the second finalist, Linda Susan Jackson. She was followed by Matthew Lippman, but I neglected to push the button all the way down, so no photo.

And here's David Young.

It was a good reading, well-attended, but I wanted Franz and was sorry to have missed him. Then home for a snooze.

PO'd at the PO

Buried amidst all the bad news about our economy and stimulus packages, etc., was the story that our postal service is considering dropping one delivery day, going from 6 to 5 days of delivery. The dropped day will most likely be Saturday or Tuesday, the two slowest days. Apparently, the postal service is losing money. Join the crowd. The alternative would be another increase in the cost of stamps. I also heard that the increase is coming regardless. Didn't the price of a stamp just go up?

This talk of one less delivery day is for me grim news. And I bet I'm not the only writer who feels that way. I love my mail! It's part of my daily ritual. As I get dressed in the morning, I check out the window to see if the mail truck is coming. If I'm out when the mail is delivered, all the way home I'm looking forward to the mailbox. If I'm out of town, when I call home, I don't ask, "How are you?" I ask, "Did I get any mail?" Bad weather days like we've been having too many of cause me anguish as I try to strategize how I can get to my mailbox at the end of my ice-encrusted driveway. How can I climb over that pile of snow without breaking a vital body part?

It's not that I get all that much mail—much of it catalogs and junk mail. It's the possibility of something good arriving. Some lovely acceptance. Some invitation to a festival. Now most days that doesn't happen. But on any day when there's mail delivery, it could happen.

Years ago I read in a biography of J. D. Salinger that he hated holidays because there was no mail. I knew exactly what he meant. I feel the same way. A day without mail is a day without sunshine, practically. I especially dislike holidays that fall on Monday as that means two days in a row without mail. Then I expect Tuesday to make up the loss, and when it doesn't come through for me, I'm disappointed in Tuesday.

If the post office must stop delivery one day, I vote for Tuesday. Don't make it Saturday. A whole weekend without mail? Thank goodness for email which can take up the slack. Email which now also offers the possibility of some cool news coming through. And no stamp required.

Any other mail addicts out there?

Poems at Mezzo Cammin

The new issue of Mezzo Cammin is now online. This journal is devoted to formalist poetry by women. It evolved out of a critical seminar led a few years ago by Marilyn Taylor at the West Chester University Conference. I was one of twelve participants. Our topic was undervalued women formalists. We each chose one poem by each of two such poets and wrote a critical essay. It was a wonderful experience and out of the lively conversation that took place came the idea for the journal, beautifully ushered in by Kim Bridgford who is its editor.

While I don't consider myself a formalist poet, from time to time I enjoy working with forms. I have a particular interest in invented forms. I have two poems in this issue, both invented forms. The first one, "The Very Smell of Him," is a syllable count form. (I'm embarrassed to say that I can no longer remember what the exact name of this form is. Help?) The first line is 9 syllables, the next is 8, and so on down to 1 so you end up with a 9-line poem. The second poem, "Onion," is called a niner—9 lines, 9 syllables in each line. The form, as far as I know, was invented by Ann Silsbee.

Barbara Crooker also has two invented form poems, the first an anagram, the second a sevenling.

And then there's a crown of sonnets, this one including 14 sonnets. What's unique about this crown is that it's a collaborative crown with sonnets coming from six different poets. There's also a critical essay by Kathrine Varnes about the collaborative crown.

Each issue of this journal also features the work of a different woman artist. This issue's artist is photographer Marion Belanger whose photos don't even look like photos. They're exquisite. The artist has also written an essay about her work.

So check out this issue of Mezzo Cammin.

Some Nice News

It's nice to receive good news anytime, but especially these days when there's so much bad news. I've had several pieces of the good kind in the past few days. First, Ed Byrne, editor of the online journal, Valparaiso Poetry Review, let me know yesterday that he was featuring my review of Paula Bohince's collection, Incident at the Edge of Bayonet Woods, on the journal's companion blog, One Poet's Notes. The feature also includes links to poems of mine that have previously appeared in VPR. If you haven't yet discovered the journal, check it out. It's one of my favorites. If you haven't yet bought Paula Bohince's book, do so immediately. Paula, in addition to publishing this wonderful collection, recently received an NEA fellowship.

And if you haven't yet discovered Ed's blog, do bookmark it. It's one of the most informative poetry blogs out there. Apparently, lots of people agree with me. Ed's post on Elizabeth Alexander's Inaugural poem received 1500 visitors in one day and 60 comments.

In other good news, my poem, "The Missing Wife," is reprinted in the online journal, On the Issues: The Progressive Woman's Magazine." Also included are poems by Lois Rosen, Annie Finch, and Marge Piercy.

One more piece of good publication news, but I'll save that until next time.

Women Poets Reader Directory

The Women Poets Reader Directory is now open for business. The Directory, created by Ann White, includes listings by members of the Wompo Listserv. It is divided into three global areas and six regional areas of the U.S. as well as “Anywhere in the U.S.”

Each entry gives useful information about the poet's availability, how far she is willing to travel, her terms, and preferred audience. Most entries also include links to websites and sample poems, a poet photo, and a book cover image.

This should be a useful resource to anyone who is looking for a poet to book in a reading series, a book fair, or a festival. If you are an educator looking for a poet to visit your campus, you'll find her here. If you'd like a poet to visit your classroom and talk to your students about poetry, you'll find her here. If you need a poet to lead a workshop, you'll find her here.

Please visit soon. And spread the word.

No More Dodge Poetry Festival

By now the word is all over the place. Jim Haba has retired as Director of the Dodge Poetry Program, a huge amount of funding has been cut off, and the Dodge Poetry Festival will not run in 2010 and maybe never again. People who have attended this festival know what a loss this is. I read in the festival in 2006. It was a fabulous experience and I'm grateful that I got in before the hatchet dropped. I'm sorry for the poets who might have but now won't have this same experience.

But it seems that this rotten economy is creeping into all areas of life. The article about the demise of the festival appeared in Friday's The Star-Ledger, New Jersey's largest newspaper. Right next to the article is another one announcing that the county I live in has just eliminated 219 jobs. In this week's issue of my local newspaper there is an announcement that my town's one and only independent bookstore is, after many years, closing. I guess they just can no longer compete with the chains and the online bookstores. The Frost Place will not run its annual poetry conference this summer. The enrollment last year dwindled to the point where it is no longer financially feasible. We went to the pizzeria last night. The place was close to empty. So there's grim news all around.

One thought lifts up my poetry spirits a bit: Lots of poetry events can be run on small budgets or no budgets. I'm hopeful that Dodge will fund and run some smaller events. How about an East Coast Poetry Festival? How about state festivals, county ones, local ones? New Jersey poet BJ Ward created the Warren County Poetry Festival which has run since 1999 in alternate years with the Dodge Festival. Maybe other such events might be created? This weekend a few hundred poets have migrated to Cape May, NJ, to participate in Peter Murphy's Winter Getaway, a program designed to give aspiring poets and fiction writers the opportunity to immerse themselves in reading, writing, and talking about poetry and prose for three days.

We will all miss the Dodge Festival, but let's remember that poetry by itself is an inexpensive art. Let's not just accept that there will be no more special events. Let's instead think about creating some new ones. I'm optimistic that Dodge is already thinking along those lines.

What Releases the Poems?

The January / February issue of Poets & Writers came just when I needed it. After the brain-numbing, creativity-killing holidays were over, I was looking for something to stimulate some new poems. This new issue has just what I was looking for, i.e., an article by Kim Addonizio, one of my favorite poets.

The article is entitled "First Thought, Worst Thought: Poetry Exercises That Inspire." The first part of the article lists and discusses the qualities that Kim values in a poem: Surprise, Music, Sufficient Thought, Syntax, The Parts Contribute to the Whole, and Mystery. The rest of the article includes six exercises "to get you writing," ideas to use "when you feel blocked and need to reconnect with your muse, or as a way to begin."

I was immediately drawn into the first exercise, "American Sentences." The term was coined by Allen Ginsberg who created the American Sentence as a response to Japanese haiku. It's one sentence consisting of 17 syllables. Here's Ginsberg's example: "Four skinheads stand in the streetlight rain chatting under an umbrella."

Your task is to simply write your own American Sentences. Kim offers a variety of ways that the task might be approached. I spent one morning on my first sentence. I wrote that one sentence and labored over it. I returned the next morning and wrote another sentence. And another. Then I remembered a poem from many months ago that hadn't amounted to anything, and I thought it might work nicely as part of what seemed to be developing as a new poem. So I imported it, spending a few more hours counting syllables on my fingers.

Of course, at a certain point, I allowed for a few of what ended up as couplets, each one sentence, to be a syllable less or more. But what I liked and found exciting and energizing was the task of sticking to the plan. It made me pay careful attention to diction, to music, to the necessity of what I kept. It let me, or forced me, to surprise myself with the alternatives I explored in order to get the 17 syllables.

I plan to try some of the other exercises as well. And I immediately pre-ordered the book from which the article is taken: Ordinary Genius: A Guide for the Poet Within, forthcoming in February from W.W. Norton. I expect it to be useful to me as both a poet and a poet-in-the-schools.