Notes from a Brooding Poet

Unfinished Business

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 11:39:00 +0000

To my mind, the previous post was the last of the project. At present, I'm planning to keep this blog up—even though no further updates will occur.

If you'd like to keep track of what I'm doing, please visit my personal website: leskay.net, which should have occasional news and perhaps a link to a publication every once in a while. Or, if you're simply itching for some great poetry and fiction, check out Ward 6 Review.

If you've not read every post, I'd encourage you to poke around. Perhaps, with a bit of browsing, you'll find something moving or useful to you. There are precisely 100 entries now on a variety of poetry-related topics….from submissions to seemingly random thoughts, and analysis of a few poems I've enjoyed. Feel free to comment on anything, particularly if you find my notions wrong-headed. I'll still watch the comments and add my own thoughts as time and appropriateness allows.

My hope, of course, is that you've enjoyed this little jaunt into the mind of a struggling poet and that you might find a few words of value to you. With this, I'd like to leave you with a revision of the poem "Cryptozoology". I still don't think it's done, but it's closer:

Cryptozoology

Mornings before I woke, father would be up by five,
sitting at the kitchen table, brewing blended coffee,
boiling water, and spreading mustard (or was it mayonnaise?)
on thin slices of white bread for a baloney lunch.

He would open two paper packets of instant oatmeal,
pour their dried flakes into a bowl dolloped with margarine
and baptize the concoction with boiling water.
Every workday for fifteen years, this was his breakfast.

Hollandaise sauce was as likely as holding hands with a hobbit.
Elaborate omelets bursting with ham were rare as Sasquatch sightings.
Lattes were serpentine tales from Scottish lochs.

Now, I can’t remember a single conversation
we had before he drove twenty miles to cut cardboard all day.
Maybe he told me tall-tales about a bear his grandfather
killed with a ball of twine, a duck whistle, and a bottle of moonshine.
Knowing me, we probably talked about the Diablo
I thought I'd buy when I was old enough to work.

Most days, though, he'd let me float through the ocean
of sleep, spotting narwhals and megamouth sharks
from a bathysphere of bunched up blankets.
He wouldn't wake me until he had to.

Since then, I’ve seen a skeleton of Homo floresiensis.
I've pictured tiny hands reaching forth to grasp mine.
I've learned that, sometimes, nothing is better for breakfast

than oatmeal.

What Is a Poem?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 14:59:00 +0000

My wife, my sister-in-law, and my sister-in-law's children sleep scattered throughout my house. Dixie, the Jack Russell, barks into the distance at an unseen threat and grabs a branch from a peony bush in her muzzle, shaking it in a show of strength. Archie trots around the edge of the yard, looking to join the fray.

A firework pops in a distant yard. The neighbor's dog barks in response.

My dogs, it seems, weary. They need water. A nap. A woman walking a dog I've never seen strolls down the right-of-way that edges my yard. My dogs explode in growls and barks with as much fury as the finale of a fireworks display.

The robins chirp above the commotion of Archie's instinctual anger.

We all, I do not doubt, have a different notion of what is happening. Even my dogs, in their submissiveness, will never understand the semi-pastoral way in which I've imagined this morning. But you—who may be thousands of miles away and separated from this time by hours, days, months, or more—can.

Such is the miracle of language.

Yesterday, I took my mother to the bus station so that she could return to her home in Dallas. I waited with her for the bus to load. Behind us, an Amish (or perhaps Mennonite) family waited to board.

I've road more bussess than I'd care to admit, but I'd never seen an entire family of Amish, only young men exploring the wider world. Yesterday, I saw three generations of the same family, waiting for the bus. I'd like, of course, to know their story. If this were a poem or a story, perhaps I'd invent one after spending a few hours research ensuring that my notions where feasible. However, such speculation is beyond my purposes here.

A grandmother, I think, held an infant girl. The infant's tuft of bright blonde hair was tucked beneath a tiny black bonnet. Nestled in the crook of her grandmother's arms, she looked about with delicate blue eyes. Her dress, no larger than the slipcover for a throw pillow, was a dark, vibrant blue, unlike anything I'd ever seen. Her sisters, standing beside their luggage, looked around as if trying to take in everything, which for me must have seemed utterly banal: the neon, the video games, the people and their vast variety of skin tones, pre-manufactured t-shirts and jeans, and inflections of language. They too wore dresses that seemed to me more vivid than the most complex graphics on the latest video game. One wore a green dress, well-pressed, that might let you think you could smell pine needles rustling in a light breeze. One wore a tan dress, and despite the way we typically think of tan, I suspect that there are artists who might cut off their ear for the chance to replicate that color on canvas.

They wore, in short, familiar colors that I'd never seen.

In college, I picked up a poster from the AWP conference in Pittsburgh. I think it was an advertisement for a press, perhaps Copper Canyon or Coffee House . Poetry: The Unsayable Said.

For a long time, that seemed a fitting description of poetry to me. I hung the poster at home and in an office where I worked. I stared at it, thinking.

At this point, I could posit any number of definitions about what a poem is. But, I've spent more than a year telling you, in one way or another, how I define a poem, the process of creating one, and how to support that process. You should see, I hope, that such definitions evolve (or perhaps devolve) constantly. More, I think such definitions are deeply personal. My notion of what a poem is and what a poem should do, may not agree with your definition. Now, tell me yours. Or better, show me.

I wish you the best of luck. I hope that someday you will write poems that, like those of Robert Creeley, a young student will encounter one day and only to muse about the nature of poetry, and much, much more. I hope that your desire to write makes you a better reader. I hope that, in poetry, you can find a few moments as meaningful and fulfilling to you as a bit of affection from a pair of tiny dogs is to me.

Many Volumes, Many Voices

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 18:02:00 +0000

Last night (or was it the night before?) I had a dream that an envelope arrived. Inside was a slip of yellow paper in blurred, blue courier type, like a telegram from another dimension. The message, at first read, was as cryptic as hieroglyphics before the Rosetta Stone was unearthed. Smudged typos. Distorted syntax. I read it several times before realizing what it was. An acceptance to Poetry (I thought). Of course, I shouted for my wife so that I could tell her the news. And that's when I woke.

At the moment, Poetry doesn't have a single one of my poems. They do have a batch of Michelle's poems. Now, she has a better chance of letting loose an excited yell that fills each and every room of our Tudor-style home.

Despite its relatively conservative editorial slant (from the perspective of poetics), Poetry remains among my favorite literary magazines. How could it be otherwise? Although the circulation doesn't compare to The New Yorker or People, no small literary magazine can compare.

***

A siren wails into the distance. Birdsong breaks against the rhythm of the wind in the sweet gum. Archie and Dixie sprawl in sun, squinting in my direction.

Inside nephews and a niece savor canned ravioli on a respite from a marathon of children's movies and cartoons. My sister-in-law, following a day of back-straining yard work, lounges with her children on the sofa. Laundry tumbles in the dryer downstairs. Michelle is off at work.

My mom, between intermittent interruptions, reads a book beside me. The wind, cooled by a cold front, blows through the leaves.

A burst of cicada song trills from a neighbor's back yard, and is gone.

This is sort of a pastoral.

***

If you tried to count the number of books you've read in your lifetime, would you even approach the truth? I have no idea how many books I own, let alone how many I've read. I've read hundreds of journals, and intend to read thousands more. I've read hundreds of submissions and will no doubt read hundreds more. Yet, I still feel as if I don't read enough. I'll never, no doubt, read enough. There simply isn't time.

***

There are a handful of journals (like Conjunctions) to which I do not ever plan to submit. And there are a handful of markets to which I plan to submit annually, at least until they decide to take a poem or two. Today, those journals include: Poetry, The Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, Bitter Oleander, Mid-American Review, Poet Lore, and The Paris Review.

I'm sure, from my reading, that I have poems that might fit each journal. The editors may continually disagree, but when I send a submission, I feel relatively comfortable with the notion.

When I lived in San Francisco, I submitted one story to Zyzzyva. Since they only take work from West-Coast writers, I was thrilled by the opportunity. I still read the journal when I can.

***

Many of my favorite poets are relatively minor. A few look to be major poets of their generation. Each time I crack open a volume of verse, I have the opportunity to learn something about craft (and occasionally about life). Few experiences are better than finding an unexpectedly lovely poem in a crevice you'd not yet explored. Over the years, my expectations have shifted. I once imagined myself a soon-to-be major poet. Now, I expect myself to be an interesting minor poet—perhaps like Roussell—with a peculiar following. In truth, after my wife, a few friends, and I have slipped this mortal coil, no one may ever read a single one of my poems. I have no qualms with this notion. My poems (and my wife) might disagree.

But, personally, I'm simply thankful that in the quest to write good poetry, I've discovered the intimate intellectual and emotional intensities that can come with the reading good poetry. Hopefully, you've discovered this as well. Certainly, there will always be someone whose verse makes every syllable you write seem like a beggar in tattered clothes. Certainly, you will find poets whose relative fame perplexes you to no end. It doesn't matter.

Just take a look at a literary journal or a recent book, and maybe, just maybe you'll find one poem that makes you catch your breath and say, Aha! Now this is poetry!

***

When I was in graduate school, I think I had unrealistic expectations of what a poet should do. A poet, I thought, should be part psychologist, part philosopher, part mystic. Most days, I'll scoff at such ideas. Today, I'd prefer to enjoy them and envision that oeuvre.

That is how I like to imagine myself, sometimes. It is a sort of pastoral.

I hope that someday, you write poems like that—or better, that you write poems as you imagine poetry could be.

Timeliness

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 13:30:00 +0000

My mother arrived for a bit of a surprise visit late Thursday night. I've not seen her for a while, not done the child's duty of trekking across country for a visit since moving to Ohio. There hasn't been time enough, money enough. It's good to see her, but the timing was awful: the in-laws, excepting Michelle's father, arrived Friday evening for a week-long visit.

Timing is often everything.

***

When I was on the cusp of my teenage years, I read an edition of Poe's collected works in my mother's apartment. Life would never be the same.

***

Last night, I tried to teach my nephew and my niece a little about chess. Neither is ready yet to imagine the board beyond the pieces, where lines of force matter as much as position. They are still learning to move. They have not yet grasped the importance of opportunity.

***

Goose bumps prickle the hairs on my arms. Wind sounds softly through the canopy of the sweet gum that shadows the back porch. Our dogs sniff through near-wild foliage. The rain, for the moment, is gone. A neighbor edges the sidewalk in front of his house with a weed whacker. The grapefruit-sized motor whines. I think of motorbikes dusting through slaloms, careening from beveled mounds of dirt. I always wanted one as a child. What boy doesn't?

Life will never be the same.

***

Three weeks ago, as is our custom, Michelle and I drove to Florence, Kentucky to peruse one of the enormous chain bookstores. On the two small bookshelves for poetry, I found a crime novel in verse. Others, it seems, have similar notions about what poetry can do.

Perhaps I should have worked more diligently on my verse "fictions." Perhaps, now, the seeming newness will be dulled. Perhaps those poems are not as important as I had thought. Perhaps they are not important at all.

***

Regrets can handcuff you to the past.

***

In college, I think Michelle always suspected that she was out-of-sync with the times. Perhaps her rightful place was as an ingénue in the 30s. Such disjunctions in self-image and time are not uncommon. The zeitgeist at any given moment is notoriously difficult to describe. I used to think my poems more suited to the milieu of modernism.

***

Often, I worry over my time. A conversation about amphibious cars may seem a waste. There are always more important issues to discuss, unless you are a builder of amphibious cars.

***

My mother is outside with me. She is reading her Bible. Proverbs.

***

If you give a man a book, he may read it. If you teach a man to write, what have you done?

***

Timing is everything in business. Writing is a business. Damn it.

***

I'll never be able to read everything I want to read. Volume precludes it. I'm already lucky to have read more than many, far less than a few. When life ends, I suspect, I'll still have been lucky. Regardless of what becomes of my career(s).

***

I've only scratched the surface of what poetry can mean and how it can matter. It's up to you if you want to go further. It always has been—even as a small child when you first read Shel Silverstein or Dr. Seuss.

***

The dogs are barking. Dixie howls for play. I return her invitation. She grapples with my arm. Soon, I'll head upstairs to wake my wife. This is time I would not sacrifice for anyone—even Shakespeare.

Responding

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 13:25:00 +0000

As promised, you'll find my response to the "Oatmeal" assignment of a couple of days ago. Have a look at the poem. Enjoy it if you so choose. But, keep in mind that this is an early draft and, to my mind, not quite finished.

At a glance, it seems to me that I took the middle-ground between the Jim Daniels and the Galway Kinnell poems by aiming for something whimsical, which still explicates a speaker's relationship to another. But is the poem successful? Would it stand out from hundreds of other poems on a similar subject? Would you, as a reader, be drawn back into the poem, allowing it more than one read? Is it memorable? More so than the latest American Idol?

Consider for a moment or two what you would do if this were your poem. What would you do to improve it? Are any words extraneous? Is anything missing? Could any of the line breaks be improved? Does the rhythm falter in any spots?

If this were your poem, what would you do next?

Cryptozoology

Mornings before I woke, father would be up by five,
sitting at the kitchen table, brewing blended coffee,
boiling water, and spreading mustard (or was it mayonnaise?)
on four slices of white bread for his baloney lunch.

He would open two paper packets of instant oatmeal,
pour their dried flakes into a bowl dollopped with margarine
and baptize the concoction with boiling water.
Every workday for fifteen years, this was his breakfast.
Hollandaise sauce was as likely as shaking hands with a hobbit.
Elaborate omelets bursting with ham were rare as sasquatch sightings.
Lattes were serpentine tales from Scottish lochs.
Lunch at a restaurant was less likely than cornering a chupacabra
that could be tamed with handfuls of chocolate.

Now, I can't, for the life of me, remember one conversation
we had before he drove twenty miles to Fort Worth.
Maybe he told me tall-tales about a bear his grandfather
killed with a ball of twine, a duck whistle, and a bottle of moonshine.
Maybe I've made too much of this poem up.
Knowing me, we probably talked about the Diablo
I thought I'd buy when I was old enough to work.

It doesn’t matter.

Most days, he'd let me float through the ocean of sleep,
spotting krakens, narwhals, and megamouth sharks
from a bathysphere of bunched up blankets.
I wouldn't surface until I absolutely had to.

Since then, I’ve seen a skeleton of Homo floresiensis
and pictured its tiny hands reaching forth to grasp mine.

Breaking into Poetry

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 22:27:00 +0000

Dixie, our Jack Russell terrier, normally functions as the most effective alarm clock I've ever owned. Inevitably, between 7 and 7:30, she sits on the bed whining for me to wake so that I can escort her outside into the cool morning air. Today, perhaps because I was up so late, she let me sleep in.

To me this was an inexplicable surprise. Now, of course, I'm ever-so-slightly behind on my plans for the day (write, write, shower, eat, revise, clean), but I can't help feeling that she's given me the smallest of gifts—one for which I ought to be thankful.

Last night's rain has thundered its way further east along the Ohio, but the air remains heavy with moisture. The sky is as gray as an idea of loneliness, and the dogs are exploring our slick and muddied yard.

Perhaps it was on a day not unlike this when I first typed out a line of maudlin verse. I think, after all, it was summer, and such weather, to the very young, might seem a fine excuse for melancholy, and of course, poetry.

If I recall correctly, the line breaks in those first poems were easy to come by. I just broke on the end-stopped rhyme. Anywhere a couplet rang to a close (regardless of how many metric feet had passed), I'd break the line and move on. The only other technical detail I can remember from those poems is that one of them, amid all of its awfulness managed to rhyme "monkey" with "latchkey." I still like that rhyme, perhaps because I'm a big fan of simians.

A couple of months ago, my wife commented on her own difficulty with line breaks, which strikes me as a technical difficulty that all of us, since the modernists, have struggled with in one way or another. A few weeks later, I offered a few suggestions to her about how the line breaks in a handful of poems might be improved. She was uninterested.

But then again, why should she have been interested? On what criteria did I base my suggestions?

Honestly, I can't remember. My suggestions were likely the result of my own personal aesthetic, my own "sixth sense" of where a line should end. Sure, I've been writing poetry for years, and I can be successful with that strategy given the climate of literature these days. After all, how often do you stumble across a sonnet in a literary journal? An alexandrine? Free verse is the primary mode of our era, and in such a context, there's no fixed prescription for whether a line should break
here
or there.

For me, this has often enough led to avoidance of the question. More, I think such anxiety (along with my respect of tradition and desire to prove to myself that I can do it) may explain why I have a deep affinity for formal poems and alliterative verse. There your line breaks are predefined. A good poet, of course, can still manipulate language so that the line break remains a point of emphasis, but, by and large, once the meter has run its course, you can move on.

Yet, despite its central position in the craft of poetry, I can't recall much emphasis on the use of line breaks in college or graduate school. Sure, we learned the difference between and enjambment and end-stopped, but much of what we learned came through practice. Gentle suggestions from professors or peers were often dotted / about my manuscripts. / / More, by reading widely, / one can glean / in certain poems / why a poet chose to break a particular / line where it was broken.

Let's backtrack for a moment. Why am I "breaking" the above lines as I am? Notice, in this instance, that the line breaks precisely follow the syntax of the sentence. W.C. Williams would, no doubt, approve. So essentially, those line breaks emphasize the syntax of what's been written, highlight natural pauses, and breaths.

But what about the break after "particular"?

To me, this serves two purposes. First, it's a kind of shift in the overall rhythm of the poem. End-stop after end-stop can become tedious. See, for example, a few hundred pages of Alexander Pope. Second, the break emphasizes for the eye the word "particular" and to a lesser degree "line".

Now why would I want to emphasize those two words?

If you're working in free verse (so to speak), every line break you choose should be intentional. It should be there for a reason. In practice, of course, very few of us have the mental acuity to consider all possible variations and meanings implied by a line break. Consequently, I don't want you to approach your next poem with a long laundry list of things you need to accomplish with each line break. Don't let these considerations stand in the way of your writing, use them to augment it. And remember in
revision, one can always adjust the
elements of a poem that aren't quite right.

Let's continue.

Notice all the space I've left on the right-hand side of the page by offering a couple of line breaks, as examples? What does all that emptiness signify? What does the lack of the constant syllables mean? Does it signal anything more than Look, this is a poem?

So, clearly, the line breaks of a particular poem suggest meaning visually. If you've not done so already, have a look at the work of e.e. cummings and Stephane Mallarme. The work of both poets actually uses the page as a sort of canvas (leading us to concrete poetry and reminding us of a few incidental poems by George Herbert, such as "Easter Wings"). Mallarme in particular thrives on white space, letting his lines dance around the entirety of a page, so that the gaps themselves accrue their own kind of meaning.

But both of those, ahem, gentlemen are extreme cases. Generally speaking (and exceptions do remain in contemporary poetry) our use of white space is not as ambitious. Rather, we need to consider, what's the difference between a short-lined poem and a long-lined one? How do such choices affect the movement of a reader's eyes and how he or she perceives the meaning of a poem? What's the difference, to a reader, between lines of a regular length and lines of varying length?

Order? Chaos?

When I was in graduate school, I handed in a poem about drinking alone in a bar. Quite a subject, right? Luckily, I think, the poem is buoyed by a sense of macabre humor that runs throughout the poem, and believe it or not, the professor suggested using line breaks as a way to emphasize that humor.

And why not? Think of your favorite knock-knock joke. Now why is it funny?

Humor, like line breaks and rhythm in poetry, functions by setting up expectations and then eschewing them. For example, take a look at the line breaks in my second "poetry" section above. Who breaks a line on "the"? Or "in"? Did I really want to emphasize those words?

Well, yes, actually, I did. Such peculiar enjambments, I'd wager, gave you pause as you read them, particularly given the context in which they are placed.

I've only just scratched the surface of how line breaks can contribute to the meaning of a poem, but for now I leave you with these few thoughts:

The dogs are sleeping on the sofa
behind me. Thunder shakes
the westward wall of my office.
My wife, I hope, will be home
in minutes. Drenched cardinals call.

May the spaces in your poems
fill with the rhythm of your breath,
familiar as the scent of summer rain.

Now then, how else could you arrange the lines of that little "poem"? Which do you like better? Why?

Oatmeal

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 05:13:00 +0000

I'm stranded in the living room, mesmerized by television. The dogs are curled together on the corner of the sofa sleeping off a frenzy play inspired by my imitation of a chimpanzee. Michelle is sitting on the porch swing outside, reading a science-fiction novel.

It has been a good day. For no particular reason.

On such a day, when an early morning thunderstorm ebbed into a sun-filled day and a two-hour nap capped the day's work, could you imagine yourself sinking into blissful sloth with the merest whisper of conscience being squelched by the notion that nothing worth writing about crossed your path for the entire day? Nothing inspired you?

Once, in a graduate poetry workshop, a peer, who happened to be far more fit than the majority of students in that class, turned in a poem straight from the weight room, about a dumbbell. Now, I can't remember the poem itself or comment it on its quality. I do, however, remember that someone in class thought such content was not the purview of poetry—as though only love, death, and getting laid were acceptable. In retrospect, it seems entirely possible that the poem was, through indirection, about such themes. I don’t know.

Regardless, I remember becoming vaguely irate. Who, after all, were they to tell me what poetry could be? What I could write about? I defended the poem's right to exist and will continue to do so.

The subjects for poetry, you see, are like oxygen. They are everywhere and they, in some way, sustain us. If you can find such inspiration in a gym, a rumpus room, an electronics store, or even a launderette, brilliant!

Of course, if you believe that, you have to question the notion that an average day could bring no inspiration. Think, for example, of oatmeal. What could be more boring? Nevertheless, I've read two poems that use the image of that bland, clumpy substance to marvelous effect.

Consider the poem "Unfolding" by Jim Daniels. To summarize badly, the poem is about a relationship that's destined to break up and, incidentally, the loss of pet. Of course, that summary does no justice to the poem. Imagine for a moment if you decided to write a poem encompassing those subjects. Thinking about how I would fare is worse than listening to Radiohead without a handful of Prozac handy. As I've mentioned before, everyone writes about their pets and some point, typically leaving behind a few trite lines mired in uncommunicative bathos.

Yet Daniels knows this. In the second stanza, he suggests why: "You can't explain about your pets. / People just nod and change the subject." With this acknowledgement, which follows a terse, matter-a-fact description of the speaker's reaction to his dog's dying, the speaker also seemingly changes the subject, offering other ways to describe the relationship:

What country were we living in,
hacking through the tangle of phone lines
and junk mail? We kept our hands in our pockets.
We wore each other's faces on our watches.

and continues on to gloss the inevitable reunion and break up. The poem is an excellent example of a simultaneous narrative at work. Rather than simply describing the turns of the speaker's relationship with a girlfriend, Daniels also focuses our attention, ever so briefly, on another relationship, letting us, as readers, draw our own conclusions about how those two narratives inform each other.

In the final three lines of the fourth stanza, we have three staccato-like sentences. The narrative about the dog re-emerges with the speaker implying, but never directly making, a comparison between the keepsakes. Here, proximity works as a kind of figurative language:

Five shoeboxes full of letters.
I kept them under my bed.
I still have my dog's collar.

Now, look at the penultimate stanza:

Listen, all I can say is
she had oatmeal for breakfast!
Oatmeal! I could almost taste it.

I've carried this image with me for a while now, going so far as to prevent my wife, Michelle, from throwing away a packet of instant oatmeal because it reminded me of this poem. The final line seems to me a perfect execution (and perhaps a simultaneous rebuke) of T.S. Eliot's notion of the objective correlative.

Indeed, in the context of the poem, "Oatmeal!" does fulfill Eliot's criteria that "when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked." As readers, we could almost taste the oatmeal ourselves. More, we can sense the impulsiveness, delight, and apparent intimacy engendered by that young love. Oatmeal, of all things, becomes more than a simple, warm, and hearty meal to start your day (though I suspect Daniels would like us to keep such associations we might have with oatmeal in mind). It becomes a sort of symbol of both age and, well, love.

Nevertheless, don't think that it's necessary to utterly transform the way a reader thinks about a typical object in order to write about it. Consider, for example, the poem "Oatmeal" by Galway Kinnell. Like the poem discussed above, the theme involves loneliness. However, unlike Jim Daniels' "Unfolding," Kinnell uses the image of oatmeal in a manner more consistent with our expectations of that breakfast with a ". . . gluey lumpishness, hint of slime, and unusual willingness to disintegrate . . . ."

From that banal beginning (gorgeously described), Kinnell takes us on a flight of whimsy, imagining himself dining with John Keats because ". . . it is not good to eat oatmeal alone." Yes. That John Keats.

I'll not take you through a close reading of "Oatmeal" as I did with "Unfolding," but take the time to read the poem closely on your own. Enjoy the appropriate little jab at Wordsworth and the close contemplation of poetry itself that Kinnell brings to this imagined dialog. Note the long, flowing lines that evoke the rhythms of the Bible, and finally notice how, from something as simple as a bowl of oatmeal with skim milk, Kinnell manages to work his way to a discussion of the sublime.

Something worth writing about, it seems, crosses our paths every day. To celebrate this fact, I'm planning to write my own "oatmeal" poem over the next week, and I'd like to encourage you to do the same. When I have what I think is a competent draft, I'll post it here, sacrificing notions of publication in a little magazine some day to let you see a brief glimpse of process at work. I can't promise that the poem will be good—only that I'll try.

I hope, if you want to write, you'll do the same.

For now, all the sentient beings in the house, except me, are sleeping. I'll join them shortly. Outside, a bank of cumulonimbus clouds blows in from Indiana. Perhaps my dreams will be thick and lumpy, too.

Suggestions

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 15:02:00 +0000

There are several good reasons not to be a poet. Although I'm tempted to enumerate the handful that flash across my mind or mention the few that have made me actively contemplate whether or not I cared enough to continue thinking of myself as a poet, I think the reasons you would list would be far more valuable to you.

Go ahead. List them.

***

In college (where so many of my stories take place), I first read Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet. I was struck and oddly emboldened by his suggestions that one ought not to write poetry if one can avoid it.

Ich Muss.

More, I adored that book for a while. It set a path out for me, despite the limited interest I have in angels. I gave the book to a dear friend (apologizing for the sexism that seeped through the poet's prose). I have no idea, even now, if she read it. More, I sometimes suspect she followed Rilke's advice the way one would follow some stricture from a holy text and, like the young poet to whom the letters were addressed, decided that her inner life was nothing like the Bohemian modernist, that life could be lived more fully without the constant need to write, or that she had nothing to say.

***

As this project probably makes clear, I no longer agree with Rilke. One can simply decide to become a poet, put in the work, and perhaps, leave the world something lovely. After all, one can decide to become an engineer or an accountant. Why should poetry be any different?

If you think you can write, and if you want to write, try it. But steel yourself against rejection because, at times, you might feel that you’re trapped in a deluge of those little slips.

Go on try it.

***

Let's not make ourselves false promises, unless we need to. Only a few poems written each year will survive time's onslaught. Perhaps you can write one of those poems, eventually. The odds are against it. Even still, there are several good reasons to be a poet.

List those, even if they seem silly, and perhaps you'll see, as I have, that the pleasure of a finely wrought line, a glistening idea, or a simple smile from a reader is well worth the hassle. Perhaps you'll see that you (like all of us) have more to say than anyone could have imagined.

Single-Mindedness

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 17:56:00 +0000

The near rain and occasional showers of the past few days have vanished like a dream. The backyard is a quarter acre of sunlight in which Dixie lazes. Archie, doing far better now, is curled on the sofa in my office, reluctant to stir from sleep. I spent the morning shaping stray thoughts into something like a poem, and for today at least, the result pleases me. My stomach grumbles, needing sustenance. I hope to carve enough time from the march of hours to read a little, write more, and maybe watch a film. But we shall see.

Lately, with an eye toward graduate school and visions of the impending riches from my fledgling poetry career, I have in all likelihood, thrown myself into one too many projects. I suspect, sometimes, that such pluralistic obsessiveness is not uncommon. More, sometimes I think that this is just a peculiar aspect of my personality: I need, for some reason to multitask to prevent boredom while simultaneously needing a glimpse into single-mindedness to excel. Both explanations may be true, but sometimes, I wonder whether or not such constant busyness might be detrimental to those around me and how I interact with them. Or maybe, I'm simply lining up excuses for failure, as failure is, more often than not, the lot of the life's work I've chosen.

***

I have heard (and read) that the university I attended for my Bachelor's degree has one of the highest workloads anywhere in the country. Consequently, while there, I learned (quite by chance) the fine art of procrastination. Most of my friends, likewise, learned the advantages of deferring the inevitable and how to strive under an almost unimaginable level of pressure for something as risk-free as an academic curriculum. All of us discovered that we excel under deadlines. We thrived on caffeine-fueled nights, and a few us, myself included, mastered subtleties of explication when explaining to professors why, precisely, a term paper was late.

For me, this peculiar blend of procrastination and faith in my ability to wriggle my way out of any mess lingered on for years. As did my faith in my ability.

***

As a writer, there are infinite ways in which you can sabotage your own work. Tens of thousands of options allow you easy access to rationale. Don't proofread what you submit. Don’t read aloud what you submit. Don't fret about deadlines. Don't fight your tendency towards procrastination.

The list goes on longer than a 15-minute pop song.

***

Today, I got another rejection. I’m concerned that my last batch of submissions may not manage more than a single acceptance. This is disconcerting because we're so often unable to see the totality of what any single editor sees. Maybe the journal, for some reason, received an envelope stuffed with poems from Nicki Giovanni, Robert Haas, or Jorie Graham. And come on, who would you print?

Instead, I'm mired in my own context. These poems are important to me. For the most part, they are "finished." They are the core of my first book, a book that should begin to establish my reputation.

Sound familiar?

***

I've brought Dixie inside into the cool air conditioning. She's curled on a dirty blanket on the sofa in my office. Archie sleeps above her on a mound of comforter. It's funny, but those dogs don't look for ways to fail, as we do. Sometimes they do fail. They may be reprimanded, but they know, without question, even when their tails dip, that we love them. Why is it so difficult for us to offer the same courtesy to ourselves?

Stepping in the Same River Twice

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 04:40:00 +0000

I.

Night has fallen with no rain. My wife is inside, flipping through cookbooks in search of something for a late dinner. I’m sitting outside surrounded by mosquitoes while the puppies, full with their dinner, sniff around the yard. Archie is just visible at the edge of the patio. Dixie, staring, as if into the stars that break through clouds above the honeysuckle, stands beside him, her spots blurring into the darkness of night. Our fluorescent porch light staves off the darkness, offering a semblance of safety.

A few miles away, lights are everywhere. The summer fairs have begun. The Westside fair, with its whirling carnival rides, smoldering grills, and milling crowds, churns on towards closing. Until tomorrow.

Michelle needs help in the kitchen, so I retreat inside to the dining room. The dogs wait patiently for their treats and then vanish into my office, which is now one of only two rooms in the house that still needs to be cleaned. The lights flicker as the air conditioner kicks on. My wife takes a break from cleaning to contemplate a decorating idea for the living room. Dixie howls from my office. She and Archie are at play. Michelle howls in counterpoint, stalling the dog’s play for a moment, until Archie, growling, goes after Dixie, and Michelle feels compelled to join the fray.

They are, I suspect, making up for lost time. On Friday, while Michelle’s father and his twin brother visited our newly polished home, I took Archie to the vet to have his stitches removed and hear the results of his biopsy. Good news. The tumor was a histiocytoma. It was benign and the resection had clean edges. Perhaps Archie’s luck has changed—even if he doesn’t think so after his third surgery in such a brief life. But now, there are no more torturous t-shirts and no more seemingly draconian restrictions on what Archie can do (aside from those imposed by Dixie and for the good of the household).

I’m tempted to end here, on that note of something like joy, but for today, despite a general sense of happiness, that seems disingenuous. Let me begin again.

II.

Country rock twangs in from the living room. A xylophone, recorded years ago in Texas, jaunts along a major scale and mingles with the plaintive melody of a hollow-body guitar. Michelle has almost finished cooking a late dinner. Archie, who is no longer trapped by the indignity of a t-shirt, lays patiently in the hall, waiting on his share. Dixie slips in and out of sleep as she curls near my feet on the dining room rug.

Lately, I’ve been reading John Ashbery’s Other Traditions , a little Derrida, and a smidge of Foucault. Much madness of late, I suppose. Of course, it has affected my poetry. I find myself worrying less over images and searching out big ideas that I’ve not yet seen explicated in one form or another. Oddly, this month, I’ve written eight such poems, which seem to me to bask in the shadow of Ashbery’s influence without plunging too deeply into the near hermeneutical mysteries that seem to make his work so difficult for so many. Yet, clearly, if I’ve managed so many poems in such a short time the ideas are either smaller than I’d first imagined or I’m cleverer than Michelle (and the dogs) ever suspected.

Now, we’ve finished our dinner. The lights on the summer carnival are dimmed for the night. I’ve felt a few drops of moisture glance across my skin. I’m having trouble believing it will rain.

For the past few days, I haven’t had time to write. Michelle’s father and his twin brother arrived for a visit on Wednesday night and stayed through Friday morning. Consequently, the early portion of the week was dedicated to making the house seem spotless. Now, only our bedroom upstairs and my office need a good cleaning. Laundry still lurks in the basement, and the yew bush out front could use a visit from the hedge trimmers, but the house resembles what Michelle must have been dreaming of for months of our mutual inaction.

While my father-in-law was here, he helped me unclog a sink, reset the garbage disposal, and install new sconces above the fireplace. He, his brother, and his sister, who also lives in Cincinnati, spent the whole of Thursday together. They drove to Indiana to visit the cemetery where their parents are buried. They circled Cincinnati in search of minor shopping deals. More, they spent time together, without children or spouses, for the first time in many, many years.

Yet, even after a weekend like that, I suspect he still wishes that he had spent the time elsewhere.

On Friday night, the same night his granddaughter was tapping her way through another dance recital, he arrived home after the four-hour drive back and learned that a long-time friend, long suffering the indignity of cancer, had slipped away. It was not unexpected. Only a week ago, he’d refused to get out of bed, as though the fight itself had worn him thin. My father-in-law had gone to his house, cajoled him from bed.

III.

On occasion, prose still seems, regardless of your ability, deeply ineffective. To me, in such moments, poetry, despite its limitations, can come closer to capturing the symphony of emotions, often in counterpoint, that leaves us gasping for the right words. I’ll not argue, of course, that it’s a substitute for the weight of a loved one’s hand or the simple fact of someone else’s breath sharing the same room. Yet, there’s a reason why, with each holiday, we reach for greeting cards and their mediocre verse. There’s a reason why poetry, with its perpetual seeming uselessness, seems to survive. Everyone, I believe, has at one point in their lives been moved by a poem—even if the poem is nothing more than an adolescent’s take on existentialism.

I’m not happy with what I’ve written. I’ve approached the topics twice and found my skills lacking for the day. Perhaps, you’ll disagree, and find something lovely, here or there. But would that change my opinion?

If this were a poem, I’d set the piece aside, let it float somewhere in the recesses of my mind for a while. Maybe a few weeks. Maybe a month. Maybe years.

I’d return, like a young adult returning to her high school, hoping that I could see the sentences, the ideas, and the images anew. Then I’d wield my word processor like a scalpel, excising adverbs and articles. I’d tighten (perhaps) the imagery, so that the metaphors, in one way or another were consistent. I’d eliminate those images that seemed redundant to the imagination, and I would try to look at the structure of the piece, locating those moments when the argument (for there is always an argument) breaks down, meanders, or skips ahead like a first-grader who is too clever for his own good.

Often, I’ll fiddle with the language here and there, checking the rhythm with scansion, looking for motifs (whether they are as simple as iambic pentameter or as complex as something Gerard Manley Hopkins might have imagined) that I can use at key points in the poem. I’ll search out repeated ideas or unnecessarily abstract words and weigh the benefit of keeping such an untoward word in something so small as a poem. And once I think I’m close, I’ll read the little beasty aloud, waiting like an over-cautious driver for potholes that slow my progress.

Of course, this, I suppose, is how I imagine my process. Like our lives, the truth of revision is both simpler and more complex than I can convey here. I often trust my gut and my ears. They’ve been around, after all. More, I’ve not listed myriad thoughts I’ve had and do have about poetry. I’ve not even mentioned the aesthetics of line breaks.

It takes practice.

IV.

How would you revise this little essay? What would you say differently? Would your answers to those questions depend on your mood? The weather?

The dogs, at last, have curled on the sofa to sleep. Michelle is lounging in the next room watching television. The revelers at the Westsider Fair have headed home or to bars and diners around the city. The briefest sprinkle of rain has ceased. My muscles ache from a long day of planned and unplanned excursions. On the other side of Ohio, my wife’s family has perhaps found a respite from their grief in a night of sleep. The house is clean, though cold. The lawn, at last, is mown.

If only we could revise our lives as we do our poetry.

I hope you see why it matters so much that we can.

Necessary Repairs

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 18:32:00 +0000

Rachel Ray, the thirty-something Martha Stewart of the new millennium, is discussing something I'd probably find meaningless on a television behind me. A gentleman to my right breathes loudly through his nose as he peruses the splayed pages of some mass-market paperback. A few feet away, a salesman jokes about shipping issues. An announcement for "Tim" blares through an intercom directly over my head. Over the edge of my laptop screen, I can't escape the black mesh grill of a fireplace. A secretary in high heel s clicks by, cupping a stack of paperwork in her arms. I'm trapped here. Waiting. For two hours.

This is the well-lit interior of an auto dealership. Brand new waxed cars gleam under stage lights. A salesman's tennis shoes squeak on the tile, where all the autos are displayed like zirconium.

***

Last Thursday, as I drove for food, I noticed intermittent squealing from the left side of the car, like a pig being chased through the slop by a 10-year-old boy. My first thought (first thought, best thought?) was that the brakes on our subcompact sedan needed to be replaced. Michelle, on the other hand, assumed that it was a worsening of the minor air conditioning issues that have plagued the car since I bought it. But, as the car warmed up, the noise would vanish, suddenly. Brakes, suddenly, no longer made sense to me. I started thinking aloud, bouncing ideas off my wife, listening intently to the sounds of the car in motion, hoping to replicate the sound once it had vanished, and hoping, as a child of divorce longs for a revival of his parents' vows, that the sound would vanish for good when it reappeared. After much thought, a conversation with her father, and a somewhat misleading conversation with a serviceperson at the dealership, by Saturday I'd concluded that the serpentine belt needed to be replaced. This explained why the sound would go away. Rubber, oddly enough, expands when heated.

But the belt didn't look too bad. Yet.

More, Michelle and I were planning to journey to the eastern edge of Ohio in honor of Father's Day, and on Saturday morning after a brief stop at the dealership to make sure the car wouldn't leave us stranded on a two-lane stretch of highway where the only sign of civilization was the road itself (it probably wouldn't), we loaded the puppies and our luggage into the car and made our way.

At first, the car seemed fine. The only sounds were the familiar rubber-band whir of the four-cylinder engine and the rush of wind through cracked windows—until we stopped for gas.

At a truck stop somewhere between here and Columbus, the high-pitched squeal began again. We waited, patiently, for it to stop and pressed on to the border of Columbus where a cafe would welcome our frayed and frazzled nerves. Michelle, at this point, decided that she didn't want to risk the possibility that the serpentine belt would snap, sending all the accessories on our car into chaos, stranding us at the whim of unfortunate chance. We wanted to phone her parents, but Michelle's cellular wasn't charged. She rushed into Target to buy a charger for the car, and we stopped for a fattening of fast food as we waited for her phone to charge. We called, offered our apologies (mediated somewhat by the fact that her father will visit in a couple of days) and turned back home.

***

The dogs, when they realized we'd gone that far only to return home, seemed perplexed and exhausted. We ate and then slept deep into the evening. We'd journeyed from Cincinnati to Columbus for a couple of coffees and a quick jaunt around a Target.

***

Today, I drove Michelle downtown to work, came back home, sat outside with the puppies, and took care of a little business. Now, I'm trying not to eavesdrop on a conversation between two friends who happened into the same dealership. One man is finishing his basement, complete with a bar and bathroom. I'm just hoping to make ends meet this month and looking forward to the painful exodus of a few hundred dollars because the brakes are worn thin as wafers. How long to go now? An hour? Two?

***

Yesterday, I asked my wife, for no particular reason, which of the poems I've written recently she most enjoys. She couldn't answer the question. After all, she's read many of my poems over the past month, but would she be able to differentiate the newest poems from those that had been reworked?

I doubt anyone could.

So, I made a list and discovered that I've actually composed far fewer new poems than I'd first suspected. Instead, I've focused much of my recent poetry efforts on the process of revising. I've been running my own little repair shop, ferrying in lyrics and narratives for their own necessary repairs.

***

I've returned with a just-washed car and phoned Michelle to tell her the damage. The puppies, as ever, were pleased to see me. A brisk wind blows across the yard, jostling a butterfly seeking pollen near the edge the back fence, where Dixie stalks through thick clover. Archie is sprawled on the dog bed that's softening the concrete for him, drowsing in the humid heat. They say the temperature will soar into the 90s by midday.

***

For me, much of the flurry of revisions that has taken place this year has been a direct result of wanting strengthen my chances for application to a PhD program and the oft-discussed decision to work on a book project or two. One project—a chapbook—has necessitated revisions simply to allow the poems to fit within the whole. The other project—a book-length manuscript—served simply to highlight how much stronger many of the poems I'd selected for the collection could be. On the website for Ausable Press, the editor Chase Twichell, who is a very good poet, writes “If you know that some poems are stronger than others, then your manuscript is not yet finished. You'll only damage your future chances by sending work that is unripe."

Although I may not agree with everything Twichell offers in his advice, I agree with the vast majority of it, and that sentence, in particular, stopped me in my tracks. That sentence, I suppose, is why what I'd once envisioned as two manuscripts has been sliced and rearranged into a single manuscript.

Now, the most recent poem in that manuscript is at least three months old. A handful of the poems have been knocking around one hard drive or another for about 10 years as I sought to get the poem "just right"—or at least right enough for me. More, although it would be disingenuous for me to suggest that I considered the effectiveness of each poem every day for each of those 10 years, such a notion is probably closer to the truth than I'd care to admit—to you or to myself. I want, however, for you to keep in mind how arduous the process of revising a single poem can be. For the most part, I've lost track of how many times each piece has been revised, but I imagine that each poem has been through at least twenty drafts, and in some of those poems, the need for further revision gnaws at me like a juicy secret about a coworker.

At the moment, such talk seems vaguely overwhelming, disconcerting. But take a moment and think of your favorite poet. Go back and read one of her poems. A poem you adore. How much time, do you suppose, was invested so that the imagery worked? How much time was taken so that the rhythms never (even for the briefest of breaths) falters?

***

Perhaps it's a bit cliche, but poems are little engines of language. You can't have one misfiring as a reader guns the gas. You can't worry whether or not the brakes will work as the reader cruises downhill. You have to take your poems into the shop, once in a while, and see why they aren't running like you want. Look at the gears, the machinery, and see if that explains why editor X might think you're offering up a lemon. Tomorrow, I'll show you how I dirty up my hands with each service call.

A Bit of a Dickensian Duality

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 19:04:00 +0000

The morning has already slipped, somehow, away from me. Archie is on the mend, aching to play again, to chase Dixie, the mighty Jack Russell, across the shaded grass. Archie and I are sitting outside, surveying the yard with our distinctly different gazes. His head swivels toward each unusual sound until he explodes from his haunches and runs to the fence to bark a warning at a passerby.

My muscles ache slightly, and my eyes feel a bit bleary. I'm regretting, ever so slightly, having jumped from bed at 7 in the morning, when Archie, having jumped down from bed for a quick sip of water was whining at the foot of the bed, unable yet to make the leap.

Yesterday, I let myself get immensely distracted by a bit of good news in the mail: an acceptance to one of the 40 submissions I mailed out. When I saw the tell-tale self-addressed stamped envelope, I simply assumed it was another speedy rejection. When I tore open the envelope, however, I didn't find my returned manuscripts. I didn't find a thin strip of colored notepaper. Instead, there was only a single sheet of colored letterhead. I opened the letter, glanced over its contents and started shivering with adrenaline. They took two poems. I phoned my wife to tell her the news, and sat outside on the front porch smoking until the dogs yelped for my attention. Even though I'm not earning a penny from that publication, my body must have felt as it would feel if I won the Kentucky Powerball and never had to work another day of my life. After taking a few moments to settle myself down and sharing the news with Michelle, I had to share it with more people. I emailed a friend in New York. I emailed a former professor.

Then, after trying, futilely, to return to the short story I had been working on, I gave up and phoned my parents. I reasoned that I would have to tell them soon, and what kind of call would it be if I waited until this Sunday, when I'm planning to phone on Father's Day? So I talked with my father and step-mother for a while, letting the conversation go where it would, letting the tingling from my scalp settle into something more sedate, letting the sudden rush dissipate back into the nothingness from which it had come.

Then, I drove down to visit my wife at her office downtown. By the time I got back, I realized I'd neglected to eat, so I stuffed myself on leftover Sloppy Joes before settling into a long nap with the puppies on the living room sofa.

Today, in contrast, the mail brought a different sort of news. Again, one of the Star Wars stamps I used for the last batch of submissions graced the exterior of an envelope. It was another SASE bearing another answer. Darth Vader's helmeted face gazed up from the corner of the envelope. The envelope, like the one from yesterday, was too thin. Could this be, I wondered, yet more surprisingly good news?

Nope.

My manuscripts weren't returned, but the envelope contained nothing more than a typed rejection slip and an envelope soliciting both subscriptions and donations. Nothing was handwritten on the note. There were no glimmers of hope to ease my maudlin mood. My work simply did not meet their editorial needs at this time. At a future time, or at some time 20 years ago, when I was on the precipice of puberty, the slip implies that my poems might have been appropriate. Of course, this is a falsehood. As an occasional editor, I've fantasized about what a wholly honest rejection slip would look like. I've imagined reading such notes: I've read this before, handled more competently; I can tell you have an MFA, but no thanks; You haven't read our magazine, have you? Please cross us off your list of future submissions; We strongly advise that you read anything other than your own work, written in the last 100 years; What? And of course, the simple, elegant, No.

I do not doubt that if conventions of politeness were not vital to the continued existence of a society as complex as ours, I would have received almost all of those rejections at least once in my life, and I expect to get far more in the future.

After spending far too much energy thinking about it, I'm taking today's rejection as a simple No. Yet, despite clear expectations that the simple No's will far outweigh those surprisingly exciting moments like yesterday, this one still stung. Perhaps, in retrospect, it stung because of the rapidity with which the response came. My wife even suggested that they hadn't read my poems. While possible, I seriously doubt that any literary magazine that takes a semblance of pride in what it does would ever make that mistake. As I've written elsewhere, there are any number of reasons why that No might have arrived in my mailbox today. But an explanation doesn't take away the fact of rejection or the vaguely disturbing notion that after almost 12 years of trying, my ego and my hopes are intimately tied to the response of an editor (or a reader) who may or may not know more about poetry than I do.

I'd like to tell you that over the years, it becomes easier. I don't know if this is true. More, I'd like to tell you that the percentage of rejections plummets as you become more and more successful, that soon enough you'll be sending out all of your poems to fulfill solicitations, and rejections will be a thing of the past. I think this is true for a tiny portion of poets. Even poets who have been nominated for the National Book Award will receive notes back from friends telling them that a particular poem isn't right for the readers of a particular journal.

I'd like to tell you that, as the rejections have piled up, my emotions have been galvanized like steel beams, that I'm no longer affected by the opinions of others, that I trust in the quality of my own work, the potential for my own genius, the certitude of my own peculiar poetic vision. Of course, like so many of those rejection notes we're all bound to see, that would be a lie.

More, I don't think you've come here for unctuous platitudes or Hallmark-inspired missives from some imagined front. You've come here, I hope, for the smallest sampling of truth.

And the truth is, sometimes, I still ask my wife to coddle me when a rejection slip arrives. Sometimes, my ambitions falter, and I let myself spiral into unwarranted negativity. The truth is we all suffer sometimes. Sometimes we are the roots of our own suffering. The world may well be an illusion.

Still, sometimes, I let myself suffer. Sometimes, I know that these infinitesimally small wounds are part of the life I've freely chosen.

Sometimes, it's good to remember that, yes, I still care and that someday is still out there, waiting for me to arrive.

Connectivity

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 13:48:00 +0000

Last weekend, I stumbled across a notion for a chapbook collection. Despite the myriad other tasks I could be undertaking, like working on a collection of Texas stories, continuing research into one of the two papers I'd planned to write by summer's end, or submitting the handful of polished poems that haven't already been sent to magazines, I let myself inhabit the imagined life of poor Sandra Edwards. I contemplated the arc of minor and major tragedies that shaped her fictive life. More, I "recovered" a few poems I felt certain would best be left to rot in a cardboard box in the basement. Poems, once soaked in what seemed to me the stench of youth, became, to me at least, far more poignant after the notions they contained had been stripped of the burdensome "I" that strolled through my college and grad school years. I actually liked some of these poems again.

Of course, you should know by now not to trust a poet's thoughts on his most recent work—particularly when the work has yet to be tested by the submission process, but perhaps one day you'll be able to gauge the worth of those poems for yourself.

This morning, with strange dreams, which I'm attributing to reading Foucault before bedtime, rustling in the crevices of my mind, I thought momentarily of returning to those poems and writing a brief narrative of a childhood illness during the late 60s, but my Internet connection is down.

Think about that for a moment.

In high school, when I first started writing something that resembled a poem (think very loose trimeter with an aaaaa rhyme scheme), I had no idea that the Internet even existed. It did, of course, but I'd never seen it. HTML, if it existed, was nothing more than a language for organizing law books, not the ubiquitous and largely invisible grammar that underpins so much of how we now encounter our world.

I wrote those poems on an electric typewriter—one complete with corrective ribbon. Thankfully, not even a single line of those attempts remains.

When I reached college and decided to study Creative Writing, the poems got better, and for reasons I can't completely detail, I started composing all first drafts (and sometimes many more than that) in longhand. Then, when I liked a poem enough, or when one was due for class, I'd type it up in one of the many computer clusters on campus. I didn't own a computer until I reached graduate school when my uncle sent me an archaic PS/1, and even then, I only composed a handful of poems, which were more experimental than my usual fare, onscreen.

Now, by contrast, I write everything on my laptop—from simple missives to friends to notes about poems or stories I plan to write. Hardly a word leaves the recesses of my imagination without the assistance of this computer. This computer is my quill.

I often think, fleetingly, of the way technology intersects with our lives—technologies like the pencil or even language itself. I wander at how so many of us, particularly in the "Western" world are so utterly divorced from what was once, for thousands of years, our only means of survival. We do not reap what we sow. We reap what has been sown for us, sometimes thousands upon thousands of miles away. The complexity of such arrangements, given how our ancestors lived a scant 200 years ago, is utterly mind boggling.

How many hundreds of people must work to ensure that I can savor a single Chilean grape on a December day?

So many technologies have been, I suppose, absorbed by our flexible natures. Our minds, I suspect, work differently (not necessarily better) than those of our ancestors. How does my life, here under the shade of a sweet gum tree, differ from the lives lived by John Clare, Leigh Hunt, or Letitia Elizabeth Landon?

How do the lives of my readers differ from the readers they sought?

For a moment, my Internet connection was up again. I could look up, in seconds, representative poems of the Romantics above. I felt, in a peculiar way, properly connected to the world. I could have done, in a few minutes time, research enough to make write a believable account of a childhood illness when we had fewer vaccinations. I could have figured out the title of a brilliant book by Walter Ong, S.J. that discusses differences in the way oral, typographic, and secondary oral cultures use language.

Alas, my Internet connection, for the moment, is as tenuous as the life of a secondary character in a murder mystery. Though, at some point today, I hope, it will be restored. The world as I experience it will be returned to order. I will feel connected again. I will allow myself to be, uniquely, a poet of the 21st century, leveraging myriad peculiar technologies to write poems in our own peculiar way.

Still, I doubt I'll ever lose this niggling desire to imitate, in my own small way, the poems of John Clare.

Actions Speaking

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 18:20:00 +0000

Dixie is sniffing around the edge of the yard, scavenging for a sweet gum twig or a fallen tulip, stalking stray moles or chipmunks who errantly wander into the open. I am sipping weak, caramel-flavored coffee from a black Disney mug. Archie is sitting at the edge of the patio, his tail crooked sideways. His creased ears flop across his tiny forehead like fallen leaves. He is in pain.

From somewhere beyond the grove of vine-like trees that line the edge of our backyard, a male voice echoes. Archie and Dixie spring to action. Hair bristles on the back of Dixie's neck. Archie waddles to the edge of the fence, stares toward the voice and begins barking a broken warning. Dixie howls, growls, and runs along the fence barking.

There is no other sound. The dogs quiet. Archie rests on his haunches staring out the side fence. Dixie stares out the front fence. A sparrow chirrups. The upstairs air conditioner rattles its filtering hum.

The voice sounds again. It is the gas man, making his rounds, calling out for entrance into an old garage, a chance to read the meter. He is circling the neighborhood, soon to arrive. Archie, resting again on his haunches, his tail still coiled like a broken slinky continues his barking, continues to do what he sees as his job, continues to protect his house, his pack, from anyone who might intrude, who might be unwelcome.

It doesn't matter that yesterday morning Archie was in a crate at the vet's office, waiting for minor surgery. It doesn’t matter whether or not the biopsy of the small lump that the veterinarian removed from the left side of Archie's trunk comes back negative. It doesn't matter if I've forced him into a tiny dog t-shirt that he seems to loathe, just to protect the stitches that have closed the incision. Archie has a job to do.

Yesterday, as I drove Archie to the vet, catching thick traffic on the sloping curves of Montana that stretched several miles along I-74, I quelled a storm of mounting imaginings about his upcoming surgery, by listening to NPR and a story, like this one about the differing expectations from workers from Generations X, Y, and Z. The commentator suggested that, unlike our parents, we choose to define ourselves in terms other than what we do for a living. According to the story, our "real" lives are lived during evenings and across the expanse of the weekend.

Even though I fall into late Generation X, and I imagine that my wife thinks of her work as an interruption from what matters to her, I still find the notion almost antithetical to the way I think. Of course, I never thought of myself, exclusively, as a copyeditor, an instructional designer, or even a teacher. Instead, I always maintained the notion (even if it may have been slightly delusional) that I was working dual careers, with poetry and fiction as the worst-paying second job imaginable. Nevertheless, those money-making jobs, to this day, play a massive role in my own self-definition. I am, alas, a copyeditor. More, from that simple description, I suspect you could envision pages upon pages of prose describing my character. You would not, of course, manage to capture the totality of my psychology with those pages, but I have no doubt that you could glean far more insight than you would from a brief conversation with me about motorsports.

More, like Archie, who knows instinctively that his job is to protect his yard and his house, I feel as though I know, instinctively that my job is to write, to manipulate language, to observe the state of the world, to consider what I see, and to communicate those thoughts.

I do not doubt that this is an illusion. After all, when I began my freshman year in college, I was certain I wanted to be a medical doctor. Then, after miserable results in freshman chemistry, I was certain I wanted to be a physicist. More, if a poker tournament happens to be on ESPN, it is not difficult, despite my limited knowledge of the game to imagine myself as professional poker player.

Even still, two weeks ago, I sent out 40 submissions to literary magazines. Amazingly, I've already gotten one rejection. Since I chose to send my work to some of the best literary magazines in the country, I don't know what to expect. Who knows, maybe all of the poems will get placed. Maybe none of them will.

For now, it doesn't matter. It's time to wait, to have patience. I'll keep working on the poems and stories at home. I'll keep coddling Archie as he tries to sleep through much of the pain that must radiate from the incision site. I've learned this much, at least. Without patience, which often seems in short supply these days, I'd never reach my goals. Without patience, I'd agonize over the results of Archie's biopsy, perhaps sacrificing the attention he needs now. And every once in a while, I wonder if that isn't everyone's job—to have patience, to know when we need to wait and when our waiting should be done.

Five Senses?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 25 May 2007 04:48:00 +0000

Feeling drowsy and slightly dizzy, I stepped outside onto the porch, and sat in the wooden swing we were given last Christmas. The soft hum of the streetlamps pouring amber light onto the sidewalks, the chirruping din of crickets, and the creak of the swing’s spring were the only sounds. I rocked back and forth, gazing at the seemingly arranged shapes of an old oak's canopy. I thought, intermittently, of poetry, of John Ashbery's singular take on language and the dialogic interplay of voice that informs his poems, of his (difficult) influence on my own poetry, of the manuscript that I reordered today, and of the near-infinite possibilities for misinterpretation our language allows. I though, too, of climbing upstairs and tumbling under the comforter to sleep, as the dogs have already done.

A black shape flew towards my face, as I sat swinging, and then veered left, its wings splayed like a butterfly, off the porch and over the driveway. It was fist-sized. It bristled the thin hairs on the nape of my neck. It was a bat.

I imagine now that the bat had pinged me with its sonar, mapped out its world of obstacles, as it circled sources of light, sounding for the buzzing insects on which it preys.

***

This afternoon, as I sat outside on the patio, moving this poem or that poem hither and thither, our dog Dixie barreled around the corner of the house, batting a prune-sized blur of gray fur between her muzzle and her paws. It was a mole. The mole, in what must have been a furious burst of adrenaline, dodged the last of Dixie's deadly blows and scurried into a gap between our air conditioner and flowerbed gravel. Dixie, aided now by Archie, the ever-loyal Italian greyhound, snorted into cracked earth, plowing her paws through yellowed grass and fallen spring leaves.

I imagine now that the she was sniffing out the crevices and gradations of soil, mapping the flight of the mole through corridors of its own burrowing.

***

Many times before today, I've stared at a manuscript contemplating the appropriate order. As a senior in college, I organized my one section of my senior thesis by focusing on the narrative arc of a first-person speaker. The second section was a very long poem (long enough for its own manuscript), and the third section was simply a handful of persona poems. At least, that's how I remember it now.

At the University of Miami, I don't recall having any trouble with organization. Like Dixie and that bat, I must have relied on some intuitive sense of order, some way to map a progression of thought.

Last year, when I attempted to gather two manuscripts worth of work, one was organized through a thematic notion of opposition, and the other was organized by the increasing potency of the pharmaceuticals from which each poem took its title. Since deciding that both manuscripts would take an enormous amount of work to complete, I decided to take my best work, and organize that, with significant rewriting into a manuscript. The initial attempt at establishing an order went well enough, but never felt quite right. I was like a bat without its sonar or a dog without its scent. I couldn't seem to map the contours of the world I wanted to convey.

In the manuscript, myriad shifts in tone, point of view, setting, and technique made the manuscript seem clumsy. Luckily, I found this article (http://www.awpwriter.org/careers/jlevine01.htm) on the AWP website. Although I tend to chafe at generalized pronouncements like "no adverbs," I found Levine's article immensely useful. Unfortunately, I noticed a few common phrases for closing poems and a tad more redundancy in imagery than I otherwise might have noticed.

But now, the cartography has begun in earnest. Perhaps, after all, being lost, at this moment, was a good thing for me. Rather than trusting my instincts completely, as Dixie would if she ever got her teeth on my manuscript, I've actually begun to think of this task as an extension of the poetic process. Here, I have the opportunity to let words interact through proximity, to echo themes, and skew them through the correlation (and occasional conflation) of the next poem's intent. Now, this is more than a mere manuscript to occupy my time, more than a thesis. It is, I hope, the prodromal phase of a work of art. Now, I am mapping the connections I see in my own work, to chart my own definition of what a volume of verse might be.

***

The bat escaped. The mole escaped. Now, I will make my escape.

A Not-So Freudian Slip

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 24 May 2007 00:51:00 +0000

A breeze too light to cool sways leafy shadows across the patio. The sun is high, stifling, even though the sky is thick with cauliflower-shaped clouds. The dogs circle the yard, fresh-cut, slowly. The air conditioner pants, as if needing a sup from a cool spring. I walk to the edge of the patio, filling their blue plastic dish with water. The robins, all around me, twitter call and response.

I’ve accomplished much today, but little writing—yet. A thick sweetgum branch that collapsed onto the patio under the weight of icicles earlier this year has been quartered into logs. The kitchen is, at last, relatively clean. A good friend in the Czech Republic has been sent a long, rambling letter with advice on publishing (persevere). And I have slept in the muggy heat while listening to Liverpool fall behind AC Milan in the European Cup.

I love football.

Soon, my wife will be home. Soon, the garage door will swing up and open, and she will ascend the steps from the basement, clutching an iced mocha from Starbucks, to meet me, and the dogs, outside. The dogs will swarm her like hornets. Dixie's stub of a tail will beat furiously as she thrust her dust-covered paws up onto her momma's legs, leaving silver-dollar-sized prints on Michelle's slacks. Archie will prance at the edge of the fray, waiting his turn for attention, as his question-mark-shaped tail waggles back and forth with the fury of a conductor coaxing the ferocious notes of a Beethoven symphony from his orchestra. And when Michelle has settled Dixie down, my wife will lift Archie into her arms cradling him like the Madonna with Child.

I adore my dogs.

For Michelle and me, personifying our dogs is easy. Perhaps too easy. Archie, the Italian greyhound, is a mere 10 pounds. Many human infants weigh more than him at birth. Dixie, likewise, weighs about 17 pounds, maybe a little more. At the height of winter, I even torture Archie with disturbingly adorable sweaters because his fur is so thin. More, we often refer to them, jokingly, as our children, and familial terms like "Momma" and "Daddy" pepper our references to and about the dogs. We think of them as part of our family—an integral part.

Nevertheless, at times I suspect I can see that ineffable otherness in Archie’s tiny brown eyes. I'll see Dixie leap three feet into the air trying to maul a sparrow from the sky. I'll catch Archie burrowing his head into a patch of dust from which a tulip once sprouted, sniffing and snorting at the lingering scent of a mole or a chipmunk. They are, unmistakably, dogs.

Every day, I do my best to allow them access to that nature, within reason. It's why I spend so much time outside when the weather allows, and more, it's why, in this space, I've described my dogs as tiny gladiators and described their games of chase and their "fights" at length. As long as nothing is killed, neither dog is hurt, and the yard stays relatively manageable, why should I worry if their behavior diverges immensely from what I would expect of actual "children"?

Yet, yesterday, as I watched Archie bow to Dixie, I found describing their play absurdly difficult. Easy tropes like "fighting" or my teasing association of my tiny dogs with "gladiators," which I've used before, seemed contaminated by the recent news of Michael Vick's potential involvement in dog fighting. I actually wondered whether someone who doesn't know me and hasn't seen the full context of this project might misread a previous description as something similar to the felonious and deeply disturbing activities associated with Vick.

Today, such a notion disturbs me immensely, although a month ago, I wouldn't have thought twice about the language I used.

More, although I won't indulge a peculiar temptation to invoke Derrida, such concerns about the way in which meaning can shift or be interpreted differently by different readers are crucial to writing. Indeed, to my mind, poetry often functions on a connotative level, working with the penumbra of a word's meaning, the variety of associations attached to any single word, or the (de)stabilization of meaning that context makes possible. And finally, consider the power of connotation: The dogs on the Vick property fought like soldiers on a battlefield, charging toward death; my dogs fight as children at play do, meaning no harm whatsoever to the other member of their pack. I find the lack of concern over the well-being of the dogs on Vick's property reprehensible and hope those responsible face the jail time their due; whereas, my actions are based solely on concern for the well-being of my dogs.

And the word "fight" contains, in some ways, both notions.

Transformations

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 22 May 2007 17:41:00 +0000

Dixie, our snarling Jack Russell has just rolled Archie, our prancing Italian greyhound in a patch of dust. His once off-white fur is speckled with patches of grey-tan filth. After I shout “Easy!” in an effort to protect him from her occasionally overzealous play, both dogs speed across the tall grass, veering down the slightly sloped yard into the open, spotted with morning sun, before circling back to the patio, where I am sipping weaker than normal coffee, trying to organize my day in my head.

Inside, the dishwasher is running—hot water and dish soap splashing away the crumbs of our recent lives. My wife, having woken me early because the car was low on gas, has already begun a day staving off clients who fail to read directions.

I catch myself yawning, again. Trying to take in as much air as my body will allow. No reason for such weariness.

Dixie howls a taunt at Archie. They prance about the yard again, Archie trailing Dixie by several lengths in a race he'll never come close to winning.

***

In the middle of last week, we drove four hours to the Eastern edge of Ohio, where my nephew, at the age of 10, was confirmed into the Catholic Church. Michelle was his sponsor. And although I should know better, as the bishop anointed the boy with oil, I could not help but hope for some visible, marked change. I could not help but long for the form of the ritual to enact upon him and the 60 other children who partook in this rite of passage.

Perhaps, when the Bishop placed his hand upon the boy's forehead, something more than mere formalities spoke to him. Perhaps something ineffable in him changed. But, he was still a 10-year-old boy, and at the reception that followed, he made that fact clear.

***

On Thursday, after my nephew and his siblings had long since departed for school, my wife, her sister, and I left the dogs in the care of my father-in-law, and ventured back to Pittsburgh. We began the day with coffee at an old haunt on Craig Street and ventured through several of the small shops while I waited for an appointment with Jim Daniels, a professor at Carnegie Mellon who helped with my senior thesis nearly ten years ago. It was good to be back.

After dropping me off between Schenley Park and the edge of campus, Michelle and her sister continued their tour of Pittsburgh with a jaunt to Shadyside, another series of small shops, and yet more coffee at another old haunt. Whereas I walked back into the halls where I'd studied for my undergraduate degree and explored the new facilities my alma mater has for Creative Writing.

***

Perhaps unwisely, my wife and I drove back home that night, making it to the Western Hills of Cincinnati around 1 AM the next day. Since then, I've not been sleeping well. My legs have been aching as if I had the flu. The peculiar buildup of lactic acid has finally subsided. The world is returning to normalcy after a long and lazy weekend. More chores. More writing. A single cloud in a pale blue sky.

***

While I was eating lunch with Jim last week, the conversation sprawled across topics, pausing now and then to linger on an anecdote, a snippet of work, or reflection. At one point, the conversation veered into discussions of very long poems, and he mentioned his continued interest in simultaneous narratives as a technique he'd used to compensate for a lack of metaphor in his poetry.

To me, this raises an interesting question: what, precisely, do you think of when you think of poetry? Do you think of a poet as someone who gushes similes and metaphors the way a teenage boy might gush about his girlfriend? Or do you think of someone attuned to craft, chiseling away with every technique she can muster—all to find the precise few words that make a poem? Did Basho ever use a metaphor?

***

This morning, after pumping gas, I drove my wife on her morning ritual to the nearest Starbucks. I think, though she normally uses that drive as quiet time to herself, my wife enjoyed having me along as her day began. As we approached our destination, the sun, bright orange, floated just above the horizon. I tried to point to it, hovering between two fast-food restaurants, but by the time my wife looked, a building had already obscured it from view, as happens every day, at sunrise.

Trace Evidence

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 15 May 2007 15:57:00 +0000

Tree-bending wind rustles the quietude of a sunny late-spring day. Dixie, who has been limping occasionally for the past three days wanders the fence line in search of something (or someone) to unleash her howling and flies across the backyard, greening her feet in cut grass. Archie lounges by the backdoor, waiting for Dixie's call to arms or to be led inside where I'll retrieve a treat from a foil bag, and he will dance for his food.

At the moment, I have too much to do. My family is leaving, midweek, on the long drive across Ohio. I need to make preparations. After deciding, a few months ago, that I should apply to PhD programs in Creative Writing, I have GREs to consider, a statement of purpose to craft, and a critical paper to write, or rewrite (as the case may be). More, there is writing to be done. My book of short stories has been neglected for so long that I sometimes imagine it rising up like a wraith from the binary textures of my hard drive only to swat at me with a long, cold claw as I sleep. My manuscript of poems still needs more polish and each of the poems needs to be shown the door, so that they might cavort in distant inboxes, vying with hundreds of other like-minded poems for the attention of an editor's eye. Alas, there is also work to be finagled. An application here or there, with the aim of imagining a hearty savings account from what seems thin air.

Sometimes, I suppose, one must simply focus.

A month ago, after an evening of rain, I let my dogs out for the morning, and Dixie sniffed out a bright red vinyl purse, abandoned in a patch of overgrowth just beyond the edge of our fence. I stared at the purse for a moment, trying to figure out what the object was and what it was doing on my property. I leaned over the fence and opened it, looking for some form of ID. The purse was empty. I wondered how the purse had arrived there. I constructed scenarios. Narratives. A purse snatched from some unsuspecting woman. She would have screamed as the mugger darted downhill under flickering streetlamps. She would have wept, feeling herself violated, as the mugger emptied the contents of her purse, tossing her make-up and chewing gum into the street like nothing more than refuse. She would have been cradled back into the bar on the corner so that she could phone the police, as the mugger rifled through her wallet, taking cash and credit cards, and discarding everything, even the photographs of her nephew’s graduation, as trash.

And now, after trying to be a good Samaritan, my fingerprints were smudged all over the purse.

I phoned the police and left the purse tangled near the fence.

Thankfully, the police did not come for a couple of hours. No one, of course, was any danger. No crime was, at the moment, being committed. I'd hope in a city this size that such a call would take a while. Yet, dispatch did call me to let me know they hadn't forgotten. Someone in uniform would arrive soon enough. I spent the time showering and thinking of how the investigation might unfold, considering how this could change the way I thought about my neighborhood, my home. I imagined the police arriving in droves. Perhaps they would cordon off the walkway with yellow crime scene tape. They would don gloves to dust for fingerprints as I sheepishly explained how I'd contaminated the evidence by handling the coarse vinyl. Perhaps.

When a policewoman finally pulled up in her squad car, she was alone. I took her to the side of the yard and pointed out the purse, explaining that I'd looked inside it, but found no ID. She asked me to step aside, reached toward the fence, and grabbed the purse, which she took to the trunk of the car.

And that was that. A report of found property. No need to speculate.

In retrospect, it seems apparent that, under my wife's influence, I've watched far too many crime dramas. In retrospect, it seems clear that, even if you do not believe that writing can effect change in the world, you must acknowledge that writing can change the way we interact with that world. And, to my mind, that's more than reason enough to write a poem, to hope that it is read.

Shroedinger's Cat

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 20:27:00 +0000

When I was a child—a very small child—I frequently walked across the street to the convenience store on 6th street near downtown Irving. I remember crouching near the floor, staring at the magazine rack and counting what little was left of my allowance. Of course, I wasn’t staring at Car and Driver or Soldier of Fortune, which would fascinate me as I approached my teenage years, nor was I gawking at The Atlantic or Harpers, which holds my fascination now. Instead, I was gazing, with the same glazed eyes you’ll see on any child on the toy aisle of any department store at the comic books lined up on the bottom shelf.

Like virtually every other male child, I loved comic books. Perhaps my love wasn't as involved as that of Michael Chabon or the hundreds of thousands of people across the world who attend comic book conventions. Nevertheless, I still remember fondly those moments when I had enough allowance left to buy a soda and the latest Power Pack. No doubt, there are myriad reasons. Perhaps I was drawn to the presence of the extraordinary in ordinary people, like my father or our neighbors. Perhaps I was drawn to the crystal clear demarcations between good and evil, the elegant simplicity of a morality play. Perhaps, I needed to cultivate the spaces in my imagination for pure escapism. I don't know.

I do know, however, that aside from a peculiar fascination with the Green Lantern, my favorite stories involved alternate realities. Of course, every comic book is a depiction of an alternate reality, but I'm referring to those story arcs that delved into history and altered it to provide us with another possibility of what our world would be like. Through such comic books, I had the opportunity to imagine what life would be like if Germany had won World War II or if a handful of fledging British Colonies in the Western Hemisphere had lost their Revolutionary War. Even now, I remain fascinated by stories, like Philip Roth’s The Plot against America, that explore what could have happened.

***

Lately, I've been overly anxious about these initial rumblings toward a writing career. Money has been tight lately. I haven't had any paying work for a little while. I find myself worrying whether or not the investment of time is worth the hassle. I find myself thinking about what I ought to be doing, rather than soaking in the hot bath of the present. More, when a writing day goes poorly, I berate myself until I feel overwhelmed by the seeming failures of my life.

Of course, if I dwell too long, there are friends and acquaintances who, by one measure or another are more successful, but inevitably, my mind nevertheless wanders to those myriad "what ifs."

What if we'd stayed in San Francisco? What if I'd already finished that novel draft that may or may not be corrupting on my hard drive? What if I'd simply abandoned these dreams of poetry and fiction and focused on my professional career?

I think that, at times, all of us are guilty of such imaginings. We picture ourselves as we may have been if a single decision—like whether or not to kiss someone—had been handled differently. Our personal histories, like those of societies, cultures, and the world in general, are constantly subject to such speculation. This is why those alternative histories found in comic books are so intriguing—they demonstrate that possibility that everything could be different, occasionally on the basis of the smallest change, the smallest detail that might otherwise go unnoticed.

***

One of the greatest regrets of my life, thus far, is the way I responded to a partial draft of a story wrote around Christmas time the first year we lived together. Rather than simply pointing out some of the fascinating details she'd captured and letting her know I couldn't wait to see the completed draft, I offered a few criticisms I thought would be constructive.

She hasn't worked on a story since then.

To me, that time period seems like a brief and unique period in our lives, one in which my wife actually allowed herself to dream big dreams. Perhaps, after all, she would be a writer, as she'd imagined she would be as a small child, and as, in college, we both assumed. In fact, her career path seemed utterly clear to me: she would find some administrative job whilst slaving away in stolen moments to produce a novel of uncompromising genius.

Later, by the time we were both in our 30s, I would run into her at an AWP conference, and we'd catch up over drinks, laughing at the way we behaved around one another in college. This, of course, is an alternative history, and not at all what happened.

Instead, we both followed life's own peculiar momentum. My planned teaching career never got further than an adjunct position at a community college, and her professional development was mired in a bad administrative job back in Pittsburgh.

Yet, for a few brief moments in California, she let herself bypass the doubts and indecisions that plague most adults, most of the time, and she wrote a few marvelous paragraphs.

***

I like to think sometimes of alternative histories where my wife has already won a Pulitzer. I like to contemplate the brilliant possibilities. After all, if one errant decision, 20 years ago could so profoundly affect our lives, I know that, around the corner there is a decision that could profoundly affect the next 20 years.

For now, I'm trying to keep this simple notion in mind anytime that anxiety strikes, for risk, alas, is part of the equation. And, regardless of the outcome, I'll not confine this kitten of a writing career to the paradox of what might have been possible just yet.

Fire and Ice

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 03:57:00 +0000

I woke up early this morning after falling asleep near nine o’clock last night when the President was due to begin his State of the Union address. Yet, even with what would seem enough sleep, my eyelids feel like flypaper and my back has been transformed into an enormous throbbing ache. This morning, light flurries covered the footstep-mottled snow from Sunday with fresh powder. Everything was aglow with the reflective light of the morning's snow.

Now, Dixie is wandering the perimeter of our backyard, as Archie nuzzles against the comforter on the other sofa. My wife has just phoned, having forgotten her lunch, so, in a few minutes, I'll be off in our dinged-up gold Escort, sliding across the streets on balding tires to have lunch on the other side of the Ohio River.

Although I'm looking forward to a brief conversation with my wife at what seems an unusual time for me, I'm also weary and concerned about writing time. The morning, as ever, was spent minding the dogs, while surreptitiously catching up on a handful of emails. Oddly, last week was incredibly productive. I drafted three short stories—all of which have more potential than the majority of stories I've written in my life. But to get there, I'd settled into an odd rhythm.

Each day, after waking a bit too late, I would mind the dogs, getting in a writing exercise or two between emails with my wife and jaunts outside to tire the puppies. Some days, I'd even remember to eat a modest lunch—a sandwich, a bowl of cereal, or some form of pasta left over from dinner. Then, at last, around 1:30, I'd saunter off to a local cafe for hours on end.

***

That is not what happened today. Instead, exhaustion caught up with me, and I lazed on the sofa with the dogs for a two-hour nap, dreaming of vistas now forgotten. I woke just as my wife arrived home and read and read, in search of something akin to insider advice on the publishing industry.

And now, here I am, approaching the end of the day, lamenting the seeming lack of writing accomplishments as though it were a moderately serious injury, like a sprained ankle that would keep me off my feet for the better part of a week. Why?

***

In college, I took to writing in a cafe near campus. The cell-sized establishment, thick with smoke, catered to students from the nearby campus. I would sit there, sipping a hot coffee, lighting cigarette after cigarette, while contemplating the next tiny line to scribble along the lines in by black hardcover journal. But as I look back on that time period, imagining myself, a friend or two or five is always present. Perhaps someone sits across the table from me, reading a thick textbook for a class on Information Design. Or perhaps, across the aisle, a group gathers around a surprising trick in a game of bridge. Regardless, there is always the presence of others in these memories.

When the cafe, inevitably, closed, we were lost. There was chatter of transforming one or another friend's houses into a make-shift coffee house, but that didn't happen while I was still in school. Instead, we found another establishment where the smoke would fill the rooms, where we could write papers, poems, or stories, and where a game of bridge or spades was almost always ongoing.

At times, I miss the camaraderie of those days—so many of us gathering together like a gang. The endlessly foolish possibilities of youth constantly simmered beneath the surface. Greatness, it seemed, loomed at every corner, to the point where I started to get pissed if anyone called me a genius.

***

Last week, while at the cafe I now frequent, I made the acquaintance of an elderly man. For Christmas, his daughter had purchased him a new, black laptop, sleek as ice on an unsalted winter road. He needed help connecting to the free wireless and then logging onto his email account. In return for that smallest of favors, he played me a few tracks of a jazz CD his son had helped him record. He played the alto sax, long ago, with a series of long sustained solo notes, that trilled upwards and downwards with a gentle lethargy that sounded nearly pre-bop. More, he told me tales of a Cincinnati from long ago, when he had more work than he could imagine, and how each night, as he played his wife's favorite song, he would wrap his arms around her, cradling his saxophone behind her back, and dance the melody into those smoky clubs.

It shames me a little to say this, but part of me, longed for the solitude that I so often seek out in cafes now. I engross myself in the silence of chatter, and the act of actually leaving the house makes it easier for my psyche to think of the task at hand as work—even if the payment for such exertions remains constantly delayed. I take those two to three hours and focus on my current project without worrying over the dogs, jostling between emails, and quick glimpses at CNN. I manage, lately, to move ahead.

But through happenstance, I lost a day of writing.

I suppose, in many ways, this is the precarious position of the writer. We need both to experience, whether through reading or active engagement, the world. We need, also, to lock ourselves in a figurative hermitage, where writing, and writing alone is primary.

***

My wife is sleeping soundly on the sofa, with the puppies. I have a few moments now to gather my bearings and set out into the frightening landscape of a glowing white page. Emptiness everywhere, waiting to be filled with verbs, nouns, etcetera.

Pearl Diving

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 03:59:00 +0000

Today, for me, was a frustrating day.

For the past week, rather than toiling away at Ward 6 Review any number of poems, or the novel I've long been promising myself I'll finish drafting someday, I've been spending stolen moments at a nearby restaurant—typically two or three hours just after lunchtime—to pound a few haphazard paragraphs toward a collection of short stories. Until today, the time has been stunningly productive. With no dogs to fret over, no chores staring at me, no television masking the silence I seem to fear each day, and no Internet to peruse, I've managed first drafts of a handful of interesting stories.

Alas, today, I got off to a late start, uncertain which of a number of half-finished drafts I'd tackle. I spent several minutes working with a list, a few minutes staring at a seemingly worthless free-writing exercise where my mind wandered to places that could be only be of interest to an intellectually challenged actuary, and a few minutes trying to take stock of where that aforementioned collection stood (123 pages of double-spaced prose, much of it in need of fairly serious reworking). Of course, such work is worthwhile. We all need time to mark our surroundings before treading too deeply into a dark wood. We all have those lulls in imagination where ideas that once seemed to bloom so frequently that many would rot before they could be properly plucked are nothing more than the sound of a rake scraping the dust-dry earth. Alas, I wanted a story for the day.

Eventually, I did manage to eek out the first few paragraphs of a story, but the narrative—from voice, to setting, to plot—was more forced than a Rush Limbaugh smile would be at the Democratic National Convention.

Perhaps I let such minor failures bother me perhaps too much. But that perpetual annoyance drives me. Now, as it nears 11 at night, my wife is sleeping on one of our sofas. Dixie is curled beneath a blanket, propping her head on Michelle’s leg. Archie, after fighting sleep briefly like an infant, has clambered under the comforter to my left to sleep. The television, at long last, is quiet. The heater shudders and thumps to life. Warm air blows through the vents. In the distance, I can just hear the sound of the washing machine churning a quick load of laundry with filmy soap. Here, at last, is quietude. My mind, at last, feels at ease. I feel, for the moment as though I could write absolutely anything, and you would believe me. I feel, if only for the moment, as though I could dive into the deepest crevices of my imagination, those fetid places reeking with the mildew and mold of shame or regret, chip away at the cracking surfaces and come forth, breathless, with something tiny, glittering, a jewel of sorts—just for you. Perhaps, in a few minutes, I'll step outside into the heavy wind, feel it rush against my face, letting my back tense and uncoil with shivers. Perhaps I’ll gaze out at the hillside where our house rests, studying the sameness of the crested roofs, imagining one or another lifted to the Black Forest, as if for one of Grimm's tales. Perhaps, I'll simply flick on the TV and laugh.

I'm not sure yet.

And even though it occasionally feels ulcer-inducing, it's nice to know I have that option. And so do you.

Each night, after work.

Each morning, after you wake.

There are moments scattered throughout the day where you could lapse into something comforting, like a bowl of rocky road ice cream, or you could step, one foot after the other, into the dark of your imagination, curious about what you will find.

Resolutions

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 17:15:00 +0000

Outside, it is freezing. The hill of my backyard is covered with crystals of ice and hard as stone. My fingers ache still, from a few minutes outside with the dogs. Dixie remains outside, stalking bluebirds and cardinals, there vivid plumage bursting from bare branches like hallucinations.

The long-delayed winter in Cincinnati has finally arrived. Inside, I bundle under a blanket with Archie, our smallest dog. He nuzzles against my side, keeping me warm. It's a new year. Sixteen days into a new year. So many days lay ahead in that space of time delineated by the circling of the sun. So many days remain. Three-hundred-and-forty days stretching forth like a blank canvas. Each new year, like so many of you, I make resolutions. Inevitably, the most of the resolutions—aside from those of the requisite quit smoking, eat better, and get more exercise variety—revolve around writing. Some years, publication has been the goal. Some years, the completion of a long dreamt of novel. Some years, I've had to resolve, merely, to write, to force myself to sit at a desk, on a sofa, in the kitchen, or at a cafe a brisk walk away long enough to let the words flow over me like rain.

In previous years, I've failed miserably at keeping such resolutions. Distractions abound. I've had my guitars to blame, the television, and the constant siren call of video game systems. More, I've given in to the desire to eat, drink, and carouse with friends. I've let the pursuit of a lover seem, for a few moments at least, to be the most important work in my life.

Of course, there's nothing inherently wrong with any of these pursuits. Without sacrificing a few moments here and there to the adoration of those we love, a novel or verse of poems might spill forth from your pen, but would you be happy? More, there's a reason why millions of units ship each time a new video game system ships. And of course, who am I to say, like so many others before me, that television is a plague against our intelligence? Regardless of the truth of such a claim, it remains, for many, their primary way to glimpse the world around them.

For a writer, of course, it's different. The passive engagement of television or video games seems far more insidious. Yet, each day, I still flick on the cable and listen to a morning sports program, as though I couldn't bare the silence. Even now, the television is thumping along as background noise—doubtlessly slowing my progress.

Archie is awake again and needs to be petted. Outside, Dixie is cavorting in warm sunlight, chasing her ball, gnawing on golden shafts of bamboo. The crystalline splotches of frost are melting from the lawn, leaving nothing of last night's light snow. Soon, like every last resolution I've made, the frost will be gone.

Yet, I'll still look forward to the year and to filling those seemingly empty spaces with possibility. This could be the year that more stories land, that more poems are published in journals with larger and larger circulation. This could be the year when I finally have something to shop to agents. This could be the year when, at last, I decide that the dream is nothing more than a dream. Who knows?

Still, I'm delighted by the possibilities and, as it seems every year, overcome by hope. I realize, of course, that we ought to make resolutions we can keep. I could resolve, simply, to continue writing and to continue down the path. Perhaps, just through fastidious striving I'll manage to get a manuscript looked at by a few publishers. Perhaps, I'll even manage a few publications that make me gloat a little. Perhaps again, I'll turn to more effective ways to make money out of concern for my family and admit that, for the moment, my writing isn't good enough. But, as I jot these last few sentences, it occurs to me that I don't want to dream small. Life, despite is complexities, is already small enough. No, instead I want my dreams to fill billboards in Times Square. I want my fancies to rove far and wide, like salesmen for pharmaceutical companies. I want, for the moment, to make resolutions so enormous that simply keeping them will be an accomplishment. So, I'm resolving to finish three books this year and have them in the mail being perused by agents and publishers. And, who knows, if all goes well, the royalties will start trickling in and I'll be able to afford, um, more expensive coffee.

Inevitability

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 17:10:00 +0000

Outside, the cold is shiver-inducing. Patches of snow cover the yard. Yet, in the distance, songbirds still twitter from perches in bare branches. The neighborhood dogs still howl against the wind. And inside, the sunlight still falls through the windows above our mantle, throwing patches of bright onto the coffee table, the area rug.

I've not been writing enough lately.

Stopping and starting. Now and again. An occasional line. A few moments staring at an old story.

Most days, of late, I struggle with the dogs—Archie, once again able to run; Dixie, as ever, the bane of his brief existence.

Most days, I stare at my email, looking for rejections or the occasional note from a friend. And, when the rejections arrive—festooned with the inevitable form letter—I search for markets where the poem might be a better fit. On occasion, I'll decide the poems shouldn't have been in the mail in the first place.

***

Now, the dogs have crawled from beneath the comforter where they slept away much of the morning. Archie and Dixie are involved in supervised combat.

Since Archie's surgery, I've become much more protective of them, knowing that there's a distinct possibility I'll only make matters worse. I never leave them alone together—unless they are sleeping.

Now, Archie bows to the floor, craning his neck, so that his nose slides beneath the sofa. He sniffs furiously, as though he might find something magical hidden among the dust bunnies on the hardwood floors.

Perhaps one day, he will.

***

I spent the morning, trying, first to gather my bearings. I was itching to write, but uncertain what path to follow. Should I work on the myriad poems that need improvement? Should I finish a short story about the night before a wedding? Should I work a story I wrote years ago with the intent of polishing the prose enough so that I'm comfortable sending it out? Or should I work on my long-delayed novel?

Ultimately, I simply delayed the decision, returning to this project for a respite.

Yet my thoughts wandered, and I let them. They inevitably strayed to thoughts of money. Finances, which always seem stretched thin by generosity at this time of year, are a constant source of consternation.

And why wouldn't they be?

I found myself wishing that I'd made different decisions with my life: I imagined myself as a stockbroker, finely coiffed in silk tie and three-pieced pinstripe suit. I imagined myself pitching split-fingered fastballs for a university in Northern California, brushing the dust from my uniform. I imagined myself picking up my guitar before flashing a bonded smile at a thronging crowd.

Perhaps this penchant for imagining things is one of the reasons I think of myself as a writer.

If only imagination were enough. Better to picture myself picturing a pencil in my hand, filling in the circles on a lottery ticket that would insure a life of luxury, with no worries about whether or not a particular bill will be paid in a given month.

***

More often than I'd care to admit, doubt about my ability creeps into my mind, shadowing every word I type. I wonder whether my poems are good enough, whether I have the discipline to continue composing them. I wonder whether I'll continue to develop my skills as a fiction writer, whether that long contemplated first novel will ever be completed and worse, whether it will be read.

I feel like someone standing in the cold without a hat or gloves—the blustering winds stings against your face. You bunch your hands into your pockets, searching for some semblance of shelter.

***

When I was in college, I remember thinking on a summer day, as I descended the stairs at work on the South side of Pittsburgh, that fate had something wonderful in store for me, that my path was destined for greatness.

Perhaps it is. Who knows?

Perhaps—remember this—my life (like yours) has already been touched by greatness. Perhaps, after all, that feeling of fate that felt linked to the slant of sunshine falling through the windows that day has already been fulfilled. Perhaps, there is greatness in loving your wife. In caring for your family, your friends. Even in coddling two tiny dogs to the point that their needs often come before your own.

Perhaps.

***

Most of the time, I can remember that such thoughts have nothing to do with writing. Writing instead is a process. Writing is about audience—however narrow or broad that audience may be. Writing reminds me that nothing—with a few notable exceptions—is inevitable.

Now, I'll take the dogs outside into that bitter cold. I'll head out for a little while, taking a break from the same spot on the same old sofa. And when I return, I'll light a fire, listen to Christmas music and think faraway thoughts as my hands tap out scenes, one word at a time.

In Medias Res

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 17:13:00 +0000

The respite from rain has ceased. The skies are occluded by slow moving clouds emptying swaths of rain onto the hills of Cincinnati. I'm tempted to conflate the dreary weather with my mood, but honestly, do I feel like a chill wind? Do I feel like wet, vibrant leaves gathering on suburban lawns?

It has been a difficult week—for me.

But my mind is still aflutter with thoughts of fiction and poetry, alighting here and there.

More, both of our dogs are curled asleep on the sofa beside me and I have a day before in which I can contemplate literature and take seemingly insignificant steps—deleting sentences, crossing out cliches, and rearranging paragraphs—to add my voice to the constant conversation of the world's literature.

It is not so bad.

***

On Tuesday night, Michelle and I were lazing on the couch, indulging ourselves in a little mindless television. We let the dogs cavort upstairs in the wide-open spaces of our attic bedroom. Archie, our Italian Greyhound, appeared as if from nowhere, at the foot of the sofa. His right hind leg was pulled up to his side as he stumbled forward on three legs.

Michelle picked him up, coddling him for a moment. Together, we ran our fingers along his leg, looking for something bruised or broken, but he never once lunged with a bite. He never once whelped in pain. He just let us move our hands across his leg as though nothing—aside from the constant shivering that might have been simple fear—was wrong.

All night, Archie kept his right hind leg off the ground. We watched him, concerned. But figured it was just a bruise or a slight sprain. Something Dixie had done to him by playing a little too rough.

We went to sleep.

***

What is the proper order here?

When you write a poem, a story, or even an essay, it's often easy to follow the clock of your memory. Wind it back to what seems the beginning and go from there. In their epics, of course, the Greeks eschewed such notions—always jumping to the middle of the conflict, allowing the epic to unfurl both backwards to the beginning and forward to the end.

In The Odyssey, what does this tell us about causality?

***

Sometimes, I suspect it's difficult not to view one's life as a kind of epic poem. Like Stephen Dedalus, perhaps. In contemporary terms, perhaps a melodramatic mini-series is more appropriate.

Regardless, we constantly look at our own lives through the lens of narrative. We constantly rewrite and revise the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves.

I am still looking for the words to describe Archie's injury. Part of me wants to blame myself for not watching the dogs more closely. Part of me wants to blame Dixie, our Jack Russell Terrier, who is perhaps twice his size.

But we've not reached the beginning yet.

***

On Saturday, rejection after rejection seemingly tumbled from the heavens like hail. I did not react well. Instead, I kept thinking about endless rhetoric I've heard. The Internet is changing publishing—with lower cost publishing virtually anything can be published.

I kept asking myself why my flawed poems have yet to catch this wave. Is it because such sweeping generalizations miss the particulars of publishing a poem anywhere? Or is it because my poems just aren't as good as they should be?

My wife had to cheer me over diner food.

***

Where is the beginning?

We've learned that when Archie was born, his hind knees had a congenital defect. The tendons between two of his leg bones are not straight. Instead, they angle across the joint, resulting in more pressure and a likelihood that the tendon could pop loose from the groove where it lays. And his tiny knee cap floats from its normal position—painfully.

Typically, this condition, called meida patella luxation, manifests itself gradually. Yet, with Archie, some sort of trauma on Tuesday exacerbated his condition. Archie will need surgery.

In the meantime, there is nothing I can do for him, aside from being here for him, restricting his movement as much as possible, and providing him with a little pain killer when he needs it.

***

I want you to think for a moment about ordering. Why do we make the decisions we do about ordering?

And how have I done today? Are all of these disparate parts connected?

Can you see how one thought is strung together with another—the way a tendon connects two bones, the way a difficult day can help connect a couple, the way a line connects to the next one and the next, turning, here and there, toward the end?

Archie will be fine by next month. I will be fine. We will be fine. And this knowledge, I suppose, is a kind of beginning. Isn't it?

Prodigal

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 07 Oct 2006 00:40:00 +0000

When I first started this project, I intended to write an entry each day for a year. When I described my aims to a friend, he suggested that it seemed destined to be an "interesting failure". Now, months later, his prediction has come to fruition. Yet, I do not regret a single moment, nor do intend to stop writing here just yet. After all, in writing, sometimes your failures will teach you more than any success ever could.

As with anything, the business of life—fixing furnaces, ferrying tiny dogs to the vet, driving across the state for football games, driving around Cincinnati in search of restaurants, and earning a dollar or two through business—has stood in the way.

More, over the past month, I've focused more and more of my waking time to Ward 6 Review, while working more on other business. Consequently, although I'm hesitant to admit it, my writing life has begun to resemble the life of a low-level bureaucrat in a Kafka novel. Mainly, I move papers about—except there is no paper.

***

Now, it's autumn. Splotches of amber and burnt orange have tumbled from the sweet gum tree to flutter in a chill wind across back yard's still green grass. While driving through the Western Hills or out to the Mount Airy forest, I've been struck by occasional bursts of color: a single tree standing against the yellow-green of surrounding shrubbery, looking as if it had caught fire.

Inside, it's chilly. I'm anxious to turn on the heater—even though the air conditioner has only recently stopped its constant humming.

Baseball's last hurrah is the afternoon's background noise. Archie, the Italian Greyhound, is curled asleep near my abdomen as Dixie wanders in surprisingly warm sunshine that's bathing the back yard.

Soon enough, neither dog will want to go outside.

***

Since starting Ward 6 with my wife, I've thought more about my own poems and how they might appear to an editor of an online journal or little magazine. I've invested the time to research a few markets properly and sent out the contents of both manuscripts. Thirty days of waiting has been punctuated by excellent news from Tar River Poetry and Word Riot, as well as four rejections and a deeply annoying email from editors who had opted not to accept electronic submissions, despite what their guidelines had said.

Thus far, the waiting has gone well. With each rejection (and acceptance), I've immediately sent the poems that were not taken to another market.

Persistence.

***

My wife is due to return from work soon. Looking back at what I've written, I know that I can do better. The lyricism and insight that I longed to chisel into this little vignette appears only as the slightest flicker of shadow—here and there.

But how could it be otherwise? Writing, more often than not, is about failure and fortitude. Countless talented students of writing will find happiness elsewhere. Countless young poets will send off their poems, expecting—as I once did—instantaneous praise. Few poets deserve such praise. Rather, success is built upon failures: the failures of ambition, the failures of luck, the failures of timing, and the failures of placement.

For me, I've learned from those failures, and more, I've learned that, in truth, a rejection isn't a failure. It's just a rejection.

***

Now it's autumn. The air outside is crisp. Crimson sweet gum leaves dot the lawn. My wife is home—I think about lighting a fire and warming some apple cider on the stove, but I won't. The dogs are sleeping now. Dixie, our Jack Russell is cuddled in her crate. Archie, with his ears pricked up, is burrowed half-under a blanket, nuzzling my leg.

I'm glad to have returned.