Tharp habits

During my vacation, I read The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life, by Twyla Tharp.

The book is meant to apply to all art forms, all creative endeavors, but I found Ms. Tharp's dance stories and movement examples especially invigorating. They brought back memories of standing in the studio, at ballet class or at rehearsal, choreographing, teaching phrases to the generous women who danced with me--and it reminded me of the time I auditioned for Twyla Tharp (longer story, there).

In the section on scratching for new ideas, Ms. Tharp advises to always scratch in new places for new ideas. At first, I thought that sometimes I like to revisit my tried-and-true sources. For example, I've learned that reading Lynda Hull's poems lights a creative fire for me. Then I realized that it's the difference between a new idea and a rejuvenation. One is the spark for new work, and the other is the inspiration that helps me start.

I liked Ms. Tharp's advice in "Accidents Will Happen" to pick a fight--to create your own accidents. This is an intentional way to keep you on your edges, an idea that is again explored in the chapter on skills. I'll admit that this chapter flummoxed me some--on the one hand, you need your skills at their peak, the very best, but you also need inexperience, so that you're forced in new directions. That all makes sense--you want skills, and you want new directions--but I found the juxtaposition unsettling. Maybe that's the point. (I liked the stories about standing behind the best dancers and copying their moves, and the general advice to copy the experts--but honestly, I don't know if I want to copy anyone right now. I'm 51, and I want to learn from the best, but I don't want to copy. Talk to me in a week or a month.)

In that same chapter, Ms. Tharp suggests that readers take an inventory of their skills. That sounds like a good plan (haven't done it yet--but I was on vacation). She also provides a 20-questions exercise that could also fit in the section on "spine."

Then I suffered a crisis of confidence. It was in the Waipio valley, and I thought, "Maybe I'm not a writer! I'm not looking at every plant and transcribing it into a poem. I'm not seeing so many shapes in the clouds." And if I'm not a writer, what? I've already ruled out visual artist, musician, and dancer and choreographer. Then I convinced myself that this is ridiculous, and I reminded myself that I've spent years learning to let go of the constant need to look at every experience as a poem and to live in that experience as completely as possible instead, to trust that the experience will return when I need it.

I'm still working through the idea of spine. On the one hand, it makes perfect sense: Pick a concept and make sure that all your efforts fit with it. On that other hand, I've heard that poems work best if you can not know what they're about for as long as possible--and I believe that. So although Ms. Tharp says, "Once you accept the power of spine in the creative act, you will become much more efficient in your creativity," I don't think that for me it's about efficiency. I do think that spine is a critical tool in revising and even more so in choosing poems for a manuscript.

I spent the rest of the week trying to figure out what the spine was for the poems I'm working on right now. Still working…

The book includes much more. I recommend it, and I'm confident that I'll return to it.

Winter is cold, but the Poet is Smokin'

Fallen Trees at Cape Kolka, photo by Andris Silis

The winter issue of The Smoking Poet is online, with poems by Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé, Amy MacLennan, Ruth Foley, and more--plus an interview with Dorianne Laux, A Good Cause, the Cigar Lounge, and more.

Enjoy!

What kind of poetry do you write?

How do you answer this question?

It came up again last week at a dinner party. I hem and haw, never sure what to say.

And it depends who's asking. If it's another poet, do I say lyrical or narrative? I'm still trying to wrap my head around those two, because at one end we have the Iliad and the Odyssey, and at the other hand we have postmodern lyrics (and probably post-postmodern lyrics), and I fall somewhere in the vast middle.

If it isn't a poet, I want to say "accessible," because that's true. Even my new, more fragmented poems are still pretty accessible. And I don't want to get into explaining how I'm exploring with more nonlinear poems, trying to break up the narrative in longer poems that are divided into sections. How dry. (Although I'm having a blast writing them.)

Often, I try to answer the question by saying what I write about. The stock answer: gardening and death. Except that my forthcoming manuscript is about illness and healing. And the poems I'm working on right now are mostly about middle age, set in the Pacific Northwest landscape. Except for a few more poems about death and grief. And then I'm toying around from time to time with the messy confessional poem.

Clearly, I need a succinct answer that is generous and--yes--accessible.

How do you answer this question?

A question about prose poems

From what I know, in a prose poem, the unit is the sentence, as opposed to the line.

But I read in an interview a poet saying following about the publication of a manuscript:

"...it was nothing but a series of disappointments and frustrations...a prose poem is lineated where the manuscript margins ended;"

And?

I thought that's how prose poems go. At the margins. Justified, even. Otherwise, isn't it a poem with page-long lines?

What do you think?

Was it a dream? A question of form...

I could swear that I recently read about a poetic form that sailors used to compose poems to Saint Christopher. Or Saint Elmo. I don't remember which Saint.

I also don't remember which form, or where I read it.

Was it in Lyric Postmodernisms? Was it in Ecstatic Occasions, Expedient Forms? I looked (using Google books) in those and also in Handbook of Poetic Forms.

And now the cat is barfing.

Got to go...any ideas about a form used by sailors to write poems to a saint?

All help is appreciated.

A problem with prose poems

They look short.

Not in a book or a publication, but when I print one of my prose poems out on my 8 1/2 x 11-inch sheet of paper with 1-inch margins, it just looks short. So much of the page is left.

(I'm typing this with one hand while I sit on the basement bathroom floor and hold my cat. This makes him happy and provides plenty of time to ponder things.)

It's not that I want to write longer prose poems. I just feel a little sheepish about all that left-over space.

Do you write in more compressed forms? (Haiku and haibun come to mind.)

Do you ever feel that, visually, the page should look fuller?

Poetry + technology, in video

Recently, my colleagues at my Microsoft job asked me whether I'd be interested in talking, on camera, about how I use OneNote to write poetry.

Would I ever!

This was a real grown-up video, with a professional make-up artist (thank you so much) and a big heavy camera and a lot of planning and an interview (a little scary).

But what a great opportunity to bring poetry and writing center stage.

Smokin'

In a good way—

—the Fall 2010 issue of The Smoking Poet is online now, including the poems about Schrodinger's cat and stealing an ambulance, plus much more.

A new book is in the works

When I logged onto email Saturday morning, I found really good news: Ravenna Press would like to publish my book!

It was a euphoric weekend. It's still so exciting…

And the book will be coming out sometime in 2011.

I'm especially excited because I wrote these poems for a friend who, when I started, was undergoing breast cancer treatment and the long healing after. I've shared the manuscript with her (several versions over the past three years), but I've really wanted to be able to give her a book.

I went the query route and then the contest route. I was not always cheerful about this. A lot of rejection.

I returned to the query route, following some advice by Karen Finneyfrock , and I attended the Hugo House conference Finding Your Publisher in the 21st Century, which is where I first connected with Ravenna Press.

Now, I'm thinking about blurbs and cover art and an author photo.

But I want to take a moment to thank all my friends who have read through the manuscript and helped with the poems and cheered me up. I want to thank my friend who inspired these poems, for her persistent energy (she's also a fantastic wit). And I want to thank my daughter, who has believed in this project, and prodded me on it, from the beginning.

That's my news, my good news.

I've been working on a poem that I've wanted to write for a couple of years. I got a little bit of it out and wrote that down. Later, pulling weeds in the garden, I thought of a bit more, a couple of images—and then I realized that I didn't need to rush in and save them. I could get them later.

Yeah, right, you're thinking. I've tried that before.

So have I—and it never works.

But this time, I had a feeling that the poem had become a place I could visit, like going to my friend Laurie's house in Queens. I could look in the poem's different rooms, hang out in the kitchen, listen and write. When I left, the poem would still be there.

Maybe I'm not explaining this well—but that thought reminded me of Mark Doty saying that a poem is like a house—you don't need to take the reader into all the rooms, but you need to know what's in them.

(I like to imagine Indonesian parasols or Victorian wash basins—and I guess it's different for each poem. This one has red dirt and scents of cumin in the hallway and worn bus seats and it's almost always dark outside.)

This was new for me, and I hope the feeling returns for other poems. Meanwhile, I have this one to explore.

"Hurricane Season," by Alexandra Teague

I am in awe of this poem by Alexandra Teague, which appeared on Verse Daily the other day. I read it and was hooked immediately. I felt it unfold. I felt, I wish I'd written that. I wish I could write like that.

Now, any poem that talks about a hurricane invokes the memory of Katrina. But it also resonated with me because my first date with my first husband was the evening after Hurricane Gloria brushed by Manhattan, where I was living then.

I asked myself what I could learn from this poem.

It's a poignant story, but we all have poignant stories in our lives—or we're poets and we can make them up.

Ms. Teague begins by setting up tension—the tension in the foreshadowing and also the tension between the storm's violence, the hurricane's lashing on the ground, and its circular beauty when seen from far above.

Then, each image and each verb supports the storm image.

Powerful. Something to aspire to.

What poems do you learn from?

This is how it's done

In the '80s, I moved to New York to be a modern dancer, and (almost) every morning, I took a ballet class from Jocelyn Lorenz. While I stood at the barre next to Gina Gibney or floundered across the floor, I was surrounded by people who danced for Twyla Tharp, Mark Morris, Merce Cunningham, Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane, and others.

As much as Jocelyn taught me—and that was a lot—I realized that I could also learn a lot just by watching these other dancers. Translating what I saw into my body was rarely accomplished, but at least I could see, up close, how dance was done when it was done really well.

Last night, I went to the Floating Bridge Review gala launch reading—what a wonderful night! Many poets read--two poems each, one from the Review and one free choice. The result was an evening packed with powerful poetry—and a lot of humor. I was in awe—inspired, but also increasingly filled with doubt when surrounded by so much poetry prowess.

I walked out feeling—yes, still inspired—but also kind of like a hack, like I didn't even know where to start. Then I remembered watching Rob Besserer in Jocelyn's class. At the reading, I'd seen and heard how it's done. I can learn and grow from that. Now, to write.

Reading + inspiration

Tonight, I'm attending and reading at the launch of Floating Bridge Review 3, over at Jack Straw Studios, 7:00 PM.

Hearing and reading poetry is always exciting, but tonight I'm going to read a poem or two inspired by work, my day job. Imagine Dilbert plus a prose poem in a Russian novel. Yes, my work inspired that.

What else is inspiring?

I'll admit that I'm an absolute sucker for this, the kind of marketing videos that tell someone's story. Yes, they're marketing, but I love the stories. (And in this case, I love the fact that Microsoft made a video that includes poetry!)

Check it out, and if you're in Seattle tonight, swing by Jack Straw and hear lots of poetry.

And let me know: What inspires you?

More [frag] ments

I've been finding this approach helpful.

Taking old poems that weren't quite working,
deconstructing them,
using images,
writing in the margins

writing more
in the margins

over several days,

pulling it all together then,
looking at what fits,
paring and pruning

not just for fragment poems
but for regular poems, too
(I need a name for those…).

What works: I write over days.

I don't require a 20-minute continuous effort.
I don't require the zone.

But I keep looking at images,
looking at everything from the days before,
and images come,
images fly out of the darkness,
then quiet

another image, maybe
while I'm walking from the bus (maybe
in the middle of the night).

Also, because I know
I'll be gathering this poem
over time, I feel less pressure
to write something good

to choose whether it works now
or discard it.

I just keep writing
in the margins

and loving it.

Have you tried this?

What ways do you push
or stretch
your edges, your known?

Gushing

In a good way…

In praise… in delight...

Today I opened up Susan Browne's Zephyr, from Steel Toe Books.

OH MY GOSH!

These poems are amazing.

These poems are conversational—chatty even.

…like pondering how twenty-five hundred
left-handed people are killed annually from using
right-handed products.

You think maybe you know these poems, maybe you worked with them at an ice cream parlor or a bar. You can imagine sitting in these poems' kitchen, at the blue Formica table, and drinking coffee, or lolling on the river bank with a bottle of red wine.

And then

a little gasp

Your sister talks to her husband's ashes
that are in a black enamel box on her dresser
between the Eternity perfume bottle and a dish of earrings.

but the conversation continues

You rode your bicycle up the hill behind your neighborhood,
stood in the mustard weed and listened to the eucalyptus leaves clapping...

and you're enjoying the way the images careen, as though you're on that bicycle, too, until suddenly the shoe drops, the axe falls, the bough breaks, and something in the world, something in you has changed.

Thank you, Ms. Susan Browne.

A bit more about fragments

I've been having a wonderful time exploring this approach on another poem—and I've remembered a couple more things:

1.

white

space is

important

The white space emphasizes (or creates?) the more fractured experience, but it also allows the reader to make his or her own leaps from word to word, line to line, stanza to stanza. That happens in any poem, but with a lot of white space, the reader has more time, more room. Or that's my theory.

2.

One lusciously ethereal example that helped inform our work in Sarah Vap's class was Anne Carson's translations of Sappho. Because so much of Sappho's work was lost, it has become fragmented, and so it leaves the reader openings.

I confess that I sometimes I have trouble reading some of the more broken-up poems. I'm a narrative woman at heart, and I want it all to make sense. Buttoned-up and tied with a bow.

But I'm trying to let go of things, and maybe my old ideas about sense can loosen up a little. In the meantime, it's fun.

Summer!

Starland, by Sniedze Rungis

The solstice is still a few days away, but the summer edition of The Smoking Poet is here, packed with poems and stories, plus interviews and reviews, art (see the art?), a good cause, and a cigar lounge.

What do you think?

And what will you submit for the fall issue?

When a slam isn't slammin'

Recently, I've been invited to participate in two poetry slams—something I'd never done before.

And I still haven't.

I appreciate the invitations to read, but these are readings in the usual way, where each person gets up and has 10 minutes or so and then is done. That works for me, but it doesn't fit my understanding of how a poetry slam proceeds.

So I checked. From the Poetry Slam, Inc website:

A poetry slam is a competitive event in which poets perform their work and are judged by members of the audience. Typically, the host or another organizer selects the judges, who are instructed to give numerical scores (on a zero to 10 or one to 10 scale) based on the poets' content and performance.

(Which might explain why I haven't participated in a slam before.)

So what's with suddenly calling everything a "slam"? Is "reading" too boring? Will calling a reading a "slam" inject it with a sudden knock-down vigor?

Do readings need to change? See Martha's post on how to have a most excellent poetry reading for some ideas.

Or do we just need a new word? "Event" sounds too corporate.

Poetry party?

Poetry bash?

What would you call it?

On the same day

I read this article by David Biespiel about poets and civil discourse, and my daughter showed me this spoken word performance and this one, by a friend of hers at school.

In Our Own Words

The new volume of In Our Own Words - A Generation Defining Itself is out.

I received my contributor copy in the mail yesterday. It's pink!



I have a poem on page 40, called "That Grand Address."

For a teaser, here's a picture of my first husband and I on our wedding day in front of the Jersey City Jail. (Perfect pic to send the parents.)