The Truest Affair

I got lost on the way to the reading, wandered the deserted UMass campus, staring at cement walls in sunset light. Finally I found a security guard who walked me to the auditorium door, whistling. I found a seat, said "Is anybody sitting here?" before I realized I was surrounded by teenage boys and wondered what kind of audience they'd be. Anyway. I was there in time for the introductions.

Noy Holland read first: an unpublished story both meandering and hurtling, with beautifully wrought details and horrifying events. It was a quiet story, in which much of the violence happened offstage, or was told with a child's matter-of-factness. I wondered what the teenage boys got out of it. They doodled. I tried to read their scribbles before reminding myself again to pay adult attention to the unassuming figure on stage. Because her particular reading on this particular night would pass my ears just this once, and it was worth following.

Mark Doty read a few new poems, including "Pescadero," which had not wowed me when I read it in The New Yorker, but in the poet's voice, the words came alive with smile-inducing wonder. I was reminded of Mary Oliver's prayerful celebrations.

Then he read an essay from Granta's Spring 2010 Issue. This was the "you must change your life" (as Rilke wrote) portion of the evening. Not that one should live in a particular way but that one should write with such brutal and beautiful honesty. Doty did say that he was able to publish this essay only because its main characters are now dead-- but dead people or no, few could write of romantic misfortune and sexual awakening with more candor, pathos, and gratitude.

The essay's narrative was punctuated with reflective pauses. As good as he is at saying something, Doty is aware that some things cannot be said, and his story made room for that unknowing, admitted its own incompleteness.

The teenage boys were clearly amazed by Doty's frank, anatomically correct sex scenes. What lucky, summer-program-going kids. They'll never read something like that in high school, but now they know what's possible. It was the good kind of shocking.

Both Holland's story and Doty's memoir portrayed affairs. While it was hard to tell the role of the lover in the first, in the second, the lover was clearly a liberator. "His body was one of the doors through which I entered my actual life," were Doty's final words from behind the podium.

My Time With The Poets

I am blessed with a great group of fellow poets that meets every Thursday night to critique each other's work. This spring we decided to take it a step further and go on a three-nights-four-days retreat in nearby Vermont. We rented a cabin, ate, drank, wrote, and were merry - despite an afternoon of plumbing problems (not our fault). Here's a photo essay of my reflections.

Lessons for Poets
When you're a poet, it's important to eat well. Feed the muse and all that.



Write alone, but don't drink alone.



It's important to find a nice place to work.



We're creating order (or something) from life's chaos.



In order to draft a poem, you have to let go and let things flow. Save your love of order for the editing process.



Sometimes, things flow too much ... then you must reach for a mop.



Writing poetry can be tough ... but really, if you're eating well and drinking among friends, it's not that bad.



When all else fails, quote yourself. "In the end is the beginning." When all else fails, burn your poem and start again.



"Think small." - Richard Hugo



A poet's job is to go to dark places and bring back light.



Can you spot the poet in this picture? No - she's behind the camera. So step away from your work and let it speak for itself.

With Apologies to Keats

Keats' poem "To Autumn" has always been one of my favorites. I've never found a more evocative description of a September morning than his "season of mists and mellow fruitfulness." While walking to work last month, passing apple and cherry trees laden with blossoms, I tried to think of a spring equivalent to Keats' ode. Here's what I came up with.

To Spring

Season of buds and mellow ruddiness
Close BFF of the awakening earth
Contriving with her how to gild and drape
With noisy color all the plants in town;
To grace with red wings the maple trees
And smother the lawn with violets small and bright;
To trumpet the daffodil, and raise the pansy’s face
To meet the sun; to set budding more,
And still more, purple azaleas for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease—
For you've whispered sweet nothings to them all.

Who hasn't seen you wearing your petals,
throwing hues about, carelessly trying
them all to see which part of a rainbow
suits you best? They all do, beautiful girl.
You've painted the town with weightless colors,
the air itself held between branches, caught
by sunlight, refracted sumptuously.
And your odors—sweet blanket of cherries,
sharp fume of white pear, lilac's silken scent—
lure all who breathe into the spell of your
department store collection of perfumes.

Who hasn't heard you barking from behind
the glass, or on the street as you promote
you wares? Enough for everyone to buy!
You've so much richness, but its twin, loss, lurks
within each colorful piece of jewelry.
Wind plucks petals by handfuls, tosses them
in torrents on the ground, snows white and pink.
Spring, you vixen, you’re too harsh to last long.
Summer will smooth your rough edges with green,
closing in the view of mountain and cloud
with sheltering shade, the soothe of leaf.

From Now to the Far Away

Our interaction didn't last long. He wasn't someone I'd imagined getting to know. I remember his first name and I have two letters from him without dates, without envelopes (no return address). The only thing I have from him is our one creation, and whenever I look at it, I wonder where he is.

I'm not talking about a missing father or a lost lover. I'm remembering my one-time collaborator, known only as Chris, who was a counselor the same summer as me at an arts camp in Connecticut. I worked in publications, he worked in book arts. He made all kinds of wonderful books and book-like objects: book with drawers, fold-out books, collaged picture books. The last I heard from him, he was going to teach somewhere in Central America.

Despite the wonders of the Internet, it's still pretty hard to find someone when all you have to go on is a commonly used first name. If I knew how to contact him, I'd say, "Hey Chris, I had so much fun working on that book with you. Want to do another one?" And he'd say yes, and we'd collaborate on a whole series of books that would tour art galleries and museums across the country, ending up in both public and private collections, inspiring the next generation of artists and writers.

Until that happens, though, I'll just share the one book we did make, which is titled (appropriately enough, if Chris is still in Central America) From Now, to the Faraway.

Letters Aren’t Dead Yet (Nor Are Books)

Sunday night, I find myself catching up on things and getting to the final few items on the weekend’s to-do list. This time, the list includes writing cards—two “welcome baby” cards (for a pair of friends who’ve had their second child and for a pair of friends who just had twins) and also a card for a friend whose mammogram turned up positive for early stage breast cancer. I don’t see any of these friends too often anymore, but when you hear about something like this—cancer or babies being born—you send a card. At least, that’s the way I was raised.

My grandmother was a committed card-sender. She bought birthday cards months in advance, wrote dates on the upper right corner of the envelopes (where the stamp would later cover up the numbers), and kept them organized chronologically in a box. She sent cards to all her friend’s children and grandchildren, no matter how physically distant they’d become. I haven’t been nearly as vigilant with birthday cards as she was, but I did get the gist of her example: that, as much as possible, it’s important to keep in touch.

Incidentally, Gram also taught me to send thank-you notes by threatening that if I didn’t send thank-you notes for birthday or Christmas gifts, she’d tell the person not to give me anything the next year. That was a high-stakes lesson for a kid, so if you ever give me anything, you’re sure to get a card in the mail if I have your address or can find it on whitepages.com.

This weekend I stopped by the Independent Journal & Book Fair at UMass, Amherst, which was put on by the MFA program there. It was great to be in a room full of people who believe not only in texts but also in books and literary journals as art objects made with care.

A book is more than the text it contains—it is an object, it has a presence and a body. The space it occupies on a shelf or the weight it adds to your bag gives it significance. Also, books can stimulate 80% of the five senses (100% if you snack on them, but I never have). I’m not saying I wouldn’t use an e-reader if someone gave me one; they have their practicalities and I’m not a purist when it comes to technology. As author and editor Gian Lombardo wrote in his blog, "I guess I’m bi in this case." But even if I needed or chose to go digital with most of my books, I’m sure I’d still keep my favorite books in physical form.

I send plenty of emails for all sorts of occasions and I read lots of things online—but I do like to hold the things I care about. Similarly, life’s major events still call for the time and care of putting pen to paper and stamp to envelope. Thanks for the lesson, Gram. Your Mother’s Day card will be in the mail soon.

Wandering Genius

Yesterday I went for a walk with a friend at lunchtime. It was a great day for a walk - sunny, warm - but not a great day for getting writing done after work. My friend invited me to a seder, and I declined, saying I had too much to do around the house. This was a lie. I didn't have too much to do around the house, and I love seders, but I planned to spend the evening writing, even though the sunshine and sweet air gave me the sinking feeling that I wouldn't get much done.

So, last night I indeed "wrote." I thought about writing, worried about writing, and felt bad about not physically writing, even though the machinations of writing were grinding away inside my head as I walked my dog, sent a few emails, and watched a video online.

One of my writing teachers at Hampshire College, Michael Lesy, gave fewer assignments than many professors because he said we needed time to think and plan. That was the first time I'd heard reverie acknowledged as being just as essential to creation as the actual creating. Sometimes I'm OK with the reverie, but often I'm impatient. Although I want to see results, I must put up with the inertia and unruliness of my own mind. It just insists on daydreaming and wandering. In that way it's like my dog - trainable, but so much.

As I walked said dog along on a wooded trail, I wasn't consciously thinking about the order of the poems in my chapbook manuscript, but when I got back to the house I'd decided to move one of the poems from the end of the book back to the beginning of the second section, where it had been originally. "Great," I thought sarcastically when my "writing time" was up. "Three hours later and all I have done is shuffle some papers around." I was reminded of the quote from William Wordsworth (is that who it was?) about working on a poem all morning, taking out one comma, and then putting it back in that afternoon.

"You've chosen a vocation in which the rewards come very infrequently," my wife said that night as we watched the NCAA championship game at the local bar, a good venue for me to bemoan my temporary and non-life-threatening misery at not conjuring the willpower to sit down and add copious amounts to my scribbled word collection that night. I thanked her for pointing out the obvious and told her about the video I'd watched.

Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat Pray Love, was talking about "genius," but not as you might expect. She says that instead of a person "being" a genius, all of us "have" a genius, which to the ancient Romans was a daemon or spiritual being, kind of like a personal muse. It makes sense when you hear her say it. (Thanks to poet Adam Rubinstein for sharing the link.) My wife, however, immediately thought of my cat, who usually sits on my lap while I write. "Don't ask me to call him your genius now," she said. "I just can't do that."

Poetry Obscura

Confessions of a bibliophile: sometimes when I shelve or re-shelve my books of poetry, I imagine the authors talking to each other, like they're all shoulder-to-shoulder at a cocktail party. What would Rita Dove say to Carol Ann Duffy? Would Martin Espada and T.S. Eliot have anything to say to each other? It's an event when someone new comes along. All of a sudden, Sylvia Plath is no longer talking to Adrienne Rich, and they're both talking to Claudia Rankine instead.

I also introduce poets to each other by selecting one or two to take to my annual trip to Anne Sexton's grave in Forest Hills Cemetery. I think that doing something three times assures that it is becoming a tradition, and this was the third year that I and fellow poet KL Pereira (you can read her account of this year's trip here) picnicked in Forest Hills and read poems aloud there. This year we actually became part of the main attraction when a walking tour of people visiting "wondrous, curious, and esoteric places" happened to pass by (apparently March 20, 2010, was Obscura Day - who knew?).

My method for choosing this year's "read to Anne" poet was simple - the most recently purchased, unread book of poetry on my shelf: Elena Georgiou's Rhapsody of the Naked Immigrants (Harbor Mountain Press, Sept. 2009), which I had not purchased from Amazon (see Elena's blog to find out why) but had instead ordered through my local independent bookseller, who got it from the publisher. So, I read aloud two poems: "Immigrant #18: Prayer for an Alien with Extraordinary Ability in the Arts" (and nearly wept) and "In Case of Emergency" (what a love poem that is).

KL read two poems from Dearest Creature by Amy Gerstler. Her method of choosing this year's "read to Anne" poet was also simple - the most recently purchased, never-heard-of-before-but-immediately-loved book of poetry in her bag. In his review of this book, David Kirby writes that "a poem either sends you a bill or writes you a check." On Sunday in the cemetery, we were rich, and the dead people joyfully rattled their coins as well.