Starting the Sealey Challenge

Reading poetry is something I love and have done for decades, but sometimes it still intimidates me, either because I’m in awe of the poet’s skill or I’m frightened by the depths of emotions the words take me to. 

That’s why I loved discovering #theSealeychallenge last year and why I’m doing it again this year. Reading a poetry book a day for a month (or 100 pages a day, or however close I could come to that) was so freeing! At first I approached it like a task to do well, but I soon realized the only way I could do it was to let go of how I normally read (slowly, carefully, thoughtfully) and just go for it. Let the words flow over my eyeballs, my brain, my heart. Devour the words like popcorn, instead of eating them gingerly like petites fours.

I discovered some poets whose work amazed and excited me. I slogged through some who just didn’t do it for me. But the best gift I got from the experience was gorging on words, trusting that they were changing me even as I let them go, like racing down a highway with the windows open, poems written all over the land.

My bookshelf, ready to go!

The One Faithful Good Thing: A Thank-You to Black Poets

The title of this post is part of a quote from Lucille Clifton that, as you can see in the picture of this well-loved sheet of paper, I tore from a daily poetry calendar who knows how many years ago. I’ve come and gone from poetry reading and writing as life’s challenges have ebbed and flowed, but the point is that I always come back — it’s always there for me, thanks to all the other poets in the world who dip in and out of the well, collectively creating our shared and complex heritage.

About a month ago, after a long dry spell, I restarted my writing practice by creating what I’m calling poem sketches — they begin as notes on my phone, often while I’m drinking my morning tea. I was inspired by my artist friend Lauren Kindle, who shares her sketches in blog posts as well as more crafted works of art in her online store. I’ve been trained to recognize Poetry (with a capital P) as being necessarily labored over, but I wanted to give myself permission to play and share less polished things, too. Because why not? Life is short and all that.

In the current moment, when I and many of my fellow well-meaning white folks have awoken or re-awoken to the need to, as Bryan Stevenson says, “reckon with our history of racial injustice,” I don’t feel right simply launching into another period of posting and sharing my words on this blog without first acknowledging the work of writers of color, particularly black American writers, whose words have instructed and inspired me to become more awake, aware, and active.

Here are four Black poets whose work has affected me in the past year:

• Morgan Parker’s Magical Negro is a kick-ass collection of righteously pissed off, bold and brazen poems. One of my favorites is It Was Summer Now and the Colored People Came Out Into the Sunshine.
• Ross Gay’s writing focuses on joy, gifts, and beauty, even when his topic is tragedy or violence, like in his poem about Eric Garner called A Small Needful Fact.
• Life on Mars by Tracy K. Smith explores love, violence, the afterlife and outer space in a beautiful, celebratory, and mournful collection of poems. Her podcast The Slowdown delivers powerful, contemplative essays and poems daily.
• Kevin Young’s Brown is, among other things, a series of history lessons in poem form, a primer in empathy for white folks to imagine, as he writes in Nightstick [A Mural for Michael Brown], what it’s like to “dare take / a left / into the wrong / skin.”

Something I’m learning that making art and fighting racism in society and ourselves have in common is that all of these efforts can be thwarted by perfectionism. Too often, I’m hesitant to share creations I view as somewhat flawed or to say things I’m not 100% confident about, for fear of — gasp! — making a mistake. Going forward, my aim is to fear mistakes a little less (my own as well as my culture’s) and to learn from them how to do better. Being unconscious of my white privilege is one of those past mistakes. One action step I’ve taken is to use race and ethnicity as part of the criteria for choosing the books we read in a discussion group that I lead, alternating white authors and people of color.

Remember, if you read or hear a poem that you like by a poet who’s new to you, that’s a great reason to get a book of theirs and see what else they have to say. There are many ways to fight racism and educate ourselves, including reading literature (poetry or otherwise) written by black Americans — preferably procured from your local public library or independent book store. You can also check out this list of black-owned bookstores.

While trying to find a citation for the pictured quote from Lucille Clifton (which I haven’t managed to find yet), I came across one of her poems called my dream about being white. In it she says “there’s no future / in those clothes,” implying that there’s no future in the so-called privilege of “wearing / white history.” What I take from those lines is that there’s no good future based on an unacknowledged and unhealed past of white dominance — hopefully, with awareness and action, we can make a better future together.

Oh the Chickens

Today I spent a fair amount of time daydreaming about chickens, gardens, and digging in the dirt when I was supposed to be thinking about work and databases.

My non-required lunchtime reading included this essay by Michael Mauri, in which he muses, "Someday, maybe, our insignificant micro-decision to raise laying-hens in the backyard will prove provident. Maybe it won’t seem so odd in this American neighborhood setting where maintaining mow-able lawns is a top priority, where status is measured in lack of productivity."


Here are my friend's chickens, photographed last summer. I don't have my own yet, but maybe someday.

Author's Books and Author's Jobs

I had a "driveway moment" yesterday while listening to a story on NPR about a new book in which authors reminisce about various jobs they've held and how those experiences inform their writing. "Don't quit your day job" is both the title of the book and the facetious advice that the experienced novelist gave to the interviewer, an aspiring novelist. An aspiring novelist myself, I always appreciate hearing from those who have "been there, done that," and the reference to Truman Capote's maxim Write something true (and then start lying) was a good reminder.

While searching for the link to that story on NPR's website, I found another interesting book-related story about a reader discovering an author's personal library for sale in a used bookstore. How could she tell the book belonged to a writer? Because the book's previous owner had filled it with margin notes, conversing with the printed text in a close and thoughtful interaction.

Last night I was at a party and someone asked me how, as a writer, I decide what books to buy. My criteria for buying a new book is whether I might want to read it more than once. If I'm not sure that's the case, I will borrow it from a friend or the library. Used books, however, are not always held to the same standard, which is why I have a revolving-door relationship with Cherry Picked Books and Raven. I do love the idea of an author's library going out into the world, posthumously and diffusely, through the venue of a used bookstore. The books and their conversations could stay alive that way.

Reading List

Arthur Schopenhauer said, "Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in: but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents." How true this is! So many times I have bought books (usually nonfiction books) because they "looked good" (or better yet, like something I "should read") only to have them sit primly on my bookshelves for years unopened. Every so often I gather these books and sell them to a used bookstore, where I get a credit with which to buy books I have a slightly higher chance of reading (usually novels).

Now that I have committed to buying a book a month (ideally from a small publisher), I want to follow that up by actually reading said books. So far I am halfway through July's book (Redemption in Indigo by Karen Lord) and have not opened August's (Granta's sex issue: not a book per se, but book-like enough in shape and heft), although I did get a head start when I heard its opening essay at a reading. September's book, which I just ordered, is Dear Al-Qaeda by Scott Creney (Black Ocean).

As if I didn't already have enough to read, I just subscribed to Writer's Digest (I also read Poets & Writers). The latest issue included many "top 10" lists including advice from bestselling authors. One of Sherman Alexie's tips was to "subscribe to as many literary journals as you can afford." I noted that he did not say, subscribe to as many literary journals as you can possibly read in your lifetime, because that would be a much smaller number for most of us.

Library as Lifeline

Continuing the spirit of celebrating books and bookstores and small presses, one should not neglect the equally important need to support libraries. So in that spirit, Dragon's Meow is reprinting this post by KL Pereira from her blog Dead Disciples. (This is the first in an occasional series of posts by guests.)

Reading is Sexy. Yeah, You Heard Me.

So I was on my dear friend Sue Williams' blog a few days ago, catching up on her fabulous posts when another friend commented that financial constraints make them an avid library user and I thought: Damn straight. Libraries are sexy.

What do I mean by "sexy"? Well, not only are public libraries economical, they are revolutionary (two of my favorite things). The idea on which they are based posits this: that reading is crucial to our human growth and that everyone should be able to read (and have access to knowledge) FOR FREE.

I don't know about you, but when I was growing up, reading was my saving grace, keeping me sane in a world that was more about survival than about enjoyment.

Not interested in the Clueless age of the early 90s (and being without MTV and extra money for the local Waldenbooks), the library opened up a universe of possibility for me; reading Anais Nin's diaries, Stephen King's tales of grey matter and the macabre, Neil Gaiman's dreamy and dark worlds, and Sylvia Plath's and Anne Sexton's verse kept me sane when I couldn't make sense of what was around me, showed me that there was more to EVERYTHING than what I could see on the surface.

Reading made me question, contemplate, challenge, and DREAM: important skills that have made me the person I am today. I owe all these skills (at least in part) to my library (and the kick-ass librarians who showed me the way).

So yeah. My point: Reading is a revolutionary, sexy act, one that is made possible by libraries. Go support your local library and the awesome people who work to bring you the books.

Also: if you know a young person, give them books. Take them to get their library card. Show them how cool it is to be in control of what knowledge they receive and to be contemplative of how they respond.

Comment on this and let me know which books changed your life and you're reading this summer!

Spending Money

I don't like to spend money. Both the environmentalist and the cheapskate in me like to buy used whenever possible. Many of the books I read are from the library. But I also know that as a writer who cherishes books as objects, not just as text, I should support the book industry (and small, independent booksellers and small presses) as much as possible.

Someone once said it's worth thinking about how much one spends on clothing versus books, if you want to think about how spending reflects personal values. I haven't spend money on clothing in several months, so I guess it's ok that I also hadn't bought any books recently, either, until last week. (Side note: Tin House Books has a new submission policy, where authors submitting manuscripts must also include a copy of a receipt of a book purchase. Now that's doing something for the community.)

So in the spirit of supporting what I believe in, I've resolved to buy one book a month (more if possible, but at least one). I know this is not a radical idea to many of you (and probably would be like a crash diet for certain people), but there you have it. I pledge to buy one book a month for the rest of 2010. I'm excited about the possibilities this will open up.

By the way, this month's book is Redemption in Indigo by Karen Lord.

Poetry for Haiti

Tonight in Northampton, MA, local poet and poetry advocate Lori Desrosiers will host a poetry fundraiser for Haiti at Green Street Cafe, with 25% of the dinner proceeds being generously donated by the restaurant to Partners in Health. The event begins at 7 p.m.

Tomorrow, across the pond, UK Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy will host Poetry Live for Haiti. In describing the event, Duffy said:

"We turn to poetry at intense moments in our lives...And I think that can happen at moments of public grief too, as well as personal. It is so close to prayer, it is the most intense use of language that there is."

Eternal Paper

I was both entertained and educated by Michael Agger's article in Slate about writing for the web (writing for the web is part of my day job, so I'm continually learning more about such things).

I was simultaneously heartened by the author's observation of the permanence of paper. "We'll do more and more reading on screens," he writes, "but they won't replace paper - never mind what your friend with a Kindle tells you."

Intimacy and tactility - sensuousness - are the most notable aspects of reading from paper as opposed to reading on the screen. Agger describes paper as "a balm for the distracted mind." This is absolutely true for pleasure reading, where one treasures the feeling of diving into a book. I also prefer to proofread and copyedit publications of any length on paper instead of on screen, since paper allows for easier concentration and focus.

When I visited Goddard College for the first time and heard program director Paul Selig describe the MFA experience, he talked about how most of the professors still prefer to receive packets of physical paper in the mail (oh, the time we spent on those packets!) as opposed to being emailed manuscripts. "You might get your manuscript back with wrinkles and coffee stains," he said, and I felt the instinctive joy of a bibliophile whose passions have been recognized and acknowledged. Not only did we all love writing, but we all loved paper.

Extreme Reading

For today's post, I bring you an essay by prose poet John Olson. While at first I found "Extreme Reading" difficult to get into - it really reads as more of a prose poem at the beginning - I was soon able to drop into Olson's particular and illuminating logic that zooms around in a nonlinear, beehive fashion.

He writes:

"Reading is a form of hallucination. The images and people we encounter among the letters are not there. The reality they acquire in our mind is equal to the effort we make in building them in our mind. Sufficient training will help understand the meaning of someone waving semaphores up and down but true reading requires something more of you than knowing how to spell or understanding the relationship between a sign and its referent. The letters invite a cooperation greater than the peremptory commands of a traffic light. Whoever came up with the idea of separating green from red with the happy ambiguity of yellow was clearly someone who enjoyed reading."

I have to admit, I needed to look up two of the words in this paragraph... but that's also part of extreme reading.

Read the entire essay here.

Bibliophile

"Sometimes, I wish I could read faster."

If you can relate to that statement, check out this little animation I found on the website of the Boston Book Festival.

Reading Girls / Girls Reading

I've been trying to read Twilight to see what all the hype is about. So far, I'm not really enjoying it but haven't stopped reading because I want to see what happens. I'm doing the skim-until-you-don't-know-what's-happening-then-go-back-and-
see-what-happened thing.

Fascination with fantasy and creatures of other worlds is, to me, explained by this quote, which arrived in my inbox this morning: "Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality." - Jules de Gautier

There's an excellent review of Twilight in this month's Atlantic Monthly that I think is a fabulous description of the pull of reading on certain girls (of which I certainly was one). Here's an excerpt:

"The salient fact of an adolescent girl’s existence is her need for a secret emotional life—one that she slips into during her sulks and silences, during her endless hours alone in her room, or even just when she’s gazing out the classroom window while all of Modern European History, or the niceties of the passé composé, sluice past her. This means that she is a creature designed for reading in a way no boy or man, or even grown woman, could ever be so exactly designed, because she is a creature whose most elemental psychological needs—to be undisturbed while she works out the big questions of her life, to be hidden from view while still in plain sight, to enter profoundly into the emotional lives of others—are met precisely by the act of reading."

Read the full article here.

Bitextual

Well, a Google search for "bitextual" turns up several different types of entries, but what I mean by this word is an author who writes in more than one genre. I first heard it used this way by Chris Abani (poet and novelist). I don't know if he coined the phrase, but I think it's a great word and encourage writers to both use it, so that it will become more widely known, and practice it, because we can all benefit from literary cross-training.

Thinking about this made me wonder how many other writers I admire are bitextual. This is the short list I came up with so far:

Margaret Atwood, famous for her novels, also wrote many well done poems that are polished and mythic.

Vikram Seth, author of the epic A Suitable Boy, wrote a novel in verse that I recently picked up at a used book store (but I can't recall the title at the moment).

Jan Clausen, one of my advisors at Goddard, has written extensively in both poetry and fiction, and talked to me about how switching back and forth can feel freeing.

Maya Angelou, of course, has written a library of memoir and also several volumes of poetry.

I'm sure there are others who have been masters of more than one form... feel free to add to this list! Let's get bitextual...

Poets Should Give Encores

I think that as poets and consumers of poetry we can be entirely too sedate. Thus, I want to propose a new aspect to poetry readings: encores. Even at quieter readings of "page" poems (as opposed to "spoken word" poems), when there is a good connection between reader and audience, that energy should be recognized and honored with an encore. Musicians give encores. The whole idea of an encore is for the audience to let the performer know how much they loved the performance and don't want it to end. When Mark Doty read at Smith College a couple weeks ago, he said, as he neared the end, "Ok, I think we have time for three more poems." Someone in the audience yelled, "Could you make it four?" When Doty was done reading, we clapped and clapped and clapped and he did stand up again and take a bow, but it would have been so much more gratifying if he had given an encore.

The other thing I think we should embrace more is applause, which is another great way for the audience to interact with the reader. Normally at poetry readings, the audience behaves like concert-goers listening to sonatas: remaining silent through everything, no matter how moving. All the emotion stays inside the individual listeners. Sometimes, this is appropriate. The poems are more quiet, or they require some pondering before they sink in. However, certain audiences tend to break into applause more easily at poetry readings. This gives the evening more of the lively feel of a jazz show, in which audiences applaud throughout in appreciation of the artists' virtuosity. When Sharon Olds read at Smith College last week, people applauded after every poem. The part of me that was raised going to Classical music concerts with my family thought, "How uncouth!" but the part of me that loves spontaneous expression thought, "How wonderful!"

Quotes of the Month

"Poetry is a rich, full-bodied whistle, cracked ice crunching in pails, the night that numbs the leaf, the duel of two nightingales, the sweet pea that has run wild, Creation's tears in shoulder blades."
- Boris Pasternak

"If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know it is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know this is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?" - Emily Dickinson

So Much for Objectivity

Today's Writer's Almanac quotes former New Yorker poetry editor Howard Moss as saying a good poem is "one I like." Although I would disagree with him on quite a few of those poems (I rarely like the poems printed in the New Yorker), I have to admire such a bald statement on the impossibility of objectivity.

True, one can strive towards objectivity - like my current MFA advisor, who recommended I read and learn from Jean Valentine's work even though she doesn't like it. (We'll see what she thinks of what I do when inspired by a poet she doesn't care for!)

It's also true that one's opinion will carry more weight when it's backed by the experience and breadth of knowledge that comes from years of work and study, as one would presume in the case of Howard Moss - but the fact remains that value judgements are always subjective, and there's no objective criteria for evaluating art.

I'm aware that this is a philosophical position and that some may disagree. For hundreds, if not thousands, of years the so-called "objective" standards for evaluating art have gradually evolved, but usually come down to the consensus of a large enough group of influential people.

An article published by the Poetry Foundation about high school students' reactions to canonical poems gives a refreshing take on the old standards. "Herbert sucks. Donne is a pimp." The high school students did trash my beloved Elizabeth Bishop, but at least they did it in an entertaining way.