Some poetry miscellany to uncover interesting new reads:
Maxine Kumin - Christian Science Monitor has a wonderful audio slideshow of Kumin reading from her newest book set against pictures from her farm. Note that the farm is named "Pobiz."
http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0415/p13s01-bogn.html?page=1
Wikipedia list of poets -- slanted for lots of reasons, but still an interesting place to browse, discover new poets, follow links. The list is alphabetical, but alternate links at the bottom of the page allow you to organize them by many interesting categories.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_poets
A blog that provides birthdays of poets. You can find poets that share your birthday, or you can follow throughout the year and learn a new poet or two every day.
http://birthdaysofpoets.blogspot.com/
Monday, June 23, 2008
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Review: Legacy, by Jane Levin
I recently received a slender, elegantly printed book of poems in the mail from Jane Levin, former St. Louis resident now in Minneapolis. She had found this blog, and sent off the poems. I recognized her name from past involvement in the women's movement here in the 1980s, but we had never met. This encounter through the blogosphere, with a slim volume of poetry as the conduit, is the sort of lucky and random connection computers allow.
Legacy is Jane Levin's first book, and is from Moonflower Press (price $8, inquiries to moonflowerpress at gmail dot com). It is slim--20 poems, and most of them are brief...in the way Emily Dickinson's poems are brief. Spare, finely edged, and the resonance afterwards is huge. Here is the opener:
Some of the poems are about the author's fight with ovarian cancer; some are deeply sensual lesbian love poems, or poems about the harder societal aspects living a lesbian life; some are about Jewish culture; some are funny. One of my favorites, perhaps because of the title that splices one type of gambling (emotional) into another (financial, as in the commodities market) and layers it into a new understanding of risk, is this:
Understated and overpowering -- rare in a first book, where the usual tendency is to over-write.
Lines here will draw you in, and the small poems will enlarge you. They invite close attention, and give it back.
Legacy is Jane Levin's first book, and is from Moonflower Press (price $8, inquiries to moonflowerpress at gmail dot com). It is slim--20 poems, and most of them are brief...in the way Emily Dickinson's poems are brief. Spare, finely edged, and the resonance afterwards is huge. Here is the opener:
Atoll
her life
is an
atoll
tiny islands of dependency
alluring from oooooo afar
up close
a relationship
of sand
she leaves at
oooooooooooo high tide
oooooooooooo floats
Some of the poems are about the author's fight with ovarian cancer; some are deeply sensual lesbian love poems, or poems about the harder societal aspects living a lesbian life; some are about Jewish culture; some are funny. One of my favorites, perhaps because of the title that splices one type of gambling (emotional) into another (financial, as in the commodities market) and layers it into a new understanding of risk, is this:
Futures
Clumps of wavy brown hair cover my pillow
like November leaves.
She leans close,
scoops a curly nest into her cupped palm,
wraps it in tissue paper, whispers
just in case.
Tears trickle down my chest,
flat as Nebraska.
She licks the moist prairie,
files its taste under "beloved."
Understated and overpowering -- rare in a first book, where the usual tendency is to over-write.
Lines here will draw you in, and the small poems will enlarge you. They invite close attention, and give it back.
Preservation
In the interest of conservation
recycle a poem
to kindle
reuse each word
every line
Saturday, May 24, 2008
The Urge To Believe
The latest release of the Midwest Women Poets Series from Cherry Pie Press is an extended piece by Erin M. Bertram.
The Urge To Believe Is Stronger Than Belief Itself is a meditation on connections and cleavings. Its backdrop is a story about how breast cancer recreates the ties between mother and daughter. Seen through the lens of language, relationship is stronger than illness. Bertram’s poetry is a quiet crescendo of love and attentiveness that connects and redefines whatever it touches.
Click here to view a downloadable flyer/order form for The Urge To Believe Is Stronger Than Belief Itself.
Erin M. Bertram is a fellow and instructor at Washington University in St. Louis, where she studies Women & Gender Studies and poetry. She is the author of three other chapbooks: Alluvium (dancing girl press, 2007); Body of Water (Thorngate Road, 2007) which won the Frank O'Hara Award; and Here, Hunger (NeO Pepper Press, 2007) with Sarah Lilius; and the micro-chapbook Wise Raven (Big Game Books, 2008). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Barn Owl Review; Bloom; CutBank; Forklift, Ohio; Knockout; So to Speak; and others. She edits Shadowbox Press.
The Urge To Believe Is Stronger Than Belief Itself is a meditation on connections and cleavings. Its backdrop is a story about how breast cancer recreates the ties between mother and daughter. Seen through the lens of language, relationship is stronger than illness. Bertram’s poetry is a quiet crescendo of love and attentiveness that connects and redefines whatever it touches.
“But are you not, as you said, your body. Is it not, in its own quiet heft, 2 percent your agile frame. I’ve done the math, twice. One night, on a dare, I tugged one of mine from its cup, placed it on the postal scale on my desk. It rested there awkwardly, weighed 2.5 lbs. Once I woke clutching them both, groping for a loophole, a patch of dry skin, guilty of having & holding what you no longer possess.”Erin M. Bertram's The Urge To Believe Is Stronger Than Belief Itself (ISBN 978-0-9748468-8-0) is available locally in St. Louis at Left Bank Books, 399 N. Euclid, St. Louis, MO 63108 (ph 314.367.6731), or from the publisher cherrypiepress@yahoo.com.
Click here to view a downloadable flyer/order form for The Urge To Believe Is Stronger Than Belief Itself.
Erin M. Bertram is a fellow and instructor at Washington University in St. Louis, where she studies Women & Gender Studies and poetry. She is the author of three other chapbooks: Alluvium (dancing girl press, 2007); Body of Water (Thorngate Road, 2007) which won the Frank O'Hara Award; and Here, Hunger (NeO Pepper Press, 2007) with Sarah Lilius; and the micro-chapbook Wise Raven (Big Game Books, 2008). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Barn Owl Review; Bloom; CutBank; Forklift, Ohio; Knockout; So to Speak; and others. She edits Shadowbox Press.
Sunday, May 11, 2008
A mother of us all - Joan Lipkin
This Mother's Day, I'm thanking Joan Lipkin for all the mothering she's done over the years. She is the quintessential example of how to use art to change the world and to improve the lives of individuals. She's recently written an article on her own Mother's Day mode of honoring her mother's contributions to the world and to the development of her own mettle, and describes it here: http://www.thevitalvoice.com/node/255.
Joan is an essential part of St. Louis and its art, St. Louis and its heart. She has brought theatre and audiences together in unexpected, challenging ways, working with high school students, people with disabilities, all the while up-ending and challenging the audiences thoughts on democracy, disability, gender roles, and the power of art. Last year she won The Ethical Society's St. Louis Humanist of the Year award (http://www.ethicalstl.org/hoy2007.shtml).
You can read more about her on the web site of her theater creation, That Uppity Theatre Company, http://www.uppityco.com/index.html. Thank you Joan, for all that you've brought to so many of us.
Joan is an essential part of St. Louis and its art, St. Louis and its heart. She has brought theatre and audiences together in unexpected, challenging ways, working with high school students, people with disabilities, all the while up-ending and challenging the audiences thoughts on democracy, disability, gender roles, and the power of art. Last year she won The Ethical Society's St. Louis Humanist of the Year award (http://www.ethicalstl.org/hoy2007.shtml).
You can read more about her on the web site of her theater creation, That Uppity Theatre Company, http://www.uppityco.com/index.html. Thank you Joan, for all that you've brought to so many of us.
Monday, May 05, 2008
Poem Bakeoff Winners!
Thanks to all who sent in a poem for the Cherry Pie Poem Bakeoff. Competition was hot, plentiful, and -- I'm glad to report -- yummy. I had planned on picking a single entry, but there were three competing for that spot, even after multiple read-throughs. So the results include a first-place winner, and also a second-prize and third-prize winner. I'll also mention some choice lines from other poems.
The first-prize winner will receive free copies of all three Cherry Pie chapbooks to be published in 2008. Since second and third prizes are now included (it's just so hard to say "no" when the poems are good!), those winners can each select one free chapbook from the 2008 selections.
The three Cherry Pie chapbooks for 2008 are:
The Urge To Believe Is Stronger Than Belief Itself, by Erin M. Bertram (May 2008)
A Stranger Here Myself, by Niki Nymark (late summer 2008)
Weaving the Light, by Mary Ruth Donnelly (fall 2008)
Here are the winning poems.
First Prize goes to an untitled cinquaine (loosely) from Dianne Ladendecker. I was charmed and astonished each time I read this economical little wonder.
Second Prize goes to Gaye Gambell-Peterson for a pantoum about a middle-aged mermaid. I was intrigued by the well-used effect of the pantoum's interlocking structure, and completely sold on the "C-sharp half-life, caught in the half-light" which mingles echoes of music, radiation/decay/science, time, and water so beautifully.
And Third Prize goes to Elizabeth M. Johnson, who gains an extra point for incorporating the full title of a Cherry Pie chapbook (Kiss Me Cold). Some of the required five words in this poem were used in variant forms (e.g. disproportionate instead of proportion) and although I've seen many contests be strict on that count, I'm constitutionally unable to be strict and so will allow it. The poem's worth it.
Notable lines or moments from other entries, that I just couldn't resist:
From Bobbi Lurie, a prose poem that started off: "brine she says is nothing but the half-life of the pickle. . . "
And from Gail Eisenhart, a sinister love poem that included: "this tryst / has the half-life of house-fly."
To wrap up, an unexpected "non-winner" that simply must be mentioned for its refusal to follow any rules, and for the delightful poem that resulted. This is from Katherine Mitchell, who attempted a poem using the five required words but ended up with a poem that used a form of one of the words, did not use the other four at all, and is titled as a haiku but is, in fact, not a haiku. So here is a poem of . . . great resistance? Katherine sent it in as a non-entry, and I reproduce it here as such. Not a prize-winner, but in many ways a winner!
The first-prize winner will receive free copies of all three Cherry Pie chapbooks to be published in 2008. Since second and third prizes are now included (it's just so hard to say "no" when the poems are good!), those winners can each select one free chapbook from the 2008 selections.
The three Cherry Pie chapbooks for 2008 are:
The Urge To Believe Is Stronger Than Belief Itself, by Erin M. Bertram (May 2008)
A Stranger Here Myself, by Niki Nymark (late summer 2008)
Weaving the Light, by Mary Ruth Donnelly (fall 2008)
Here are the winning poems.
First Prize goes to an untitled cinquaine (loosely) from Dianne Ladendecker. I was charmed and astonished each time I read this economical little wonder.
The brine
Then there's the knife
It's out of proportion
I hear eerie sounds of half-life
Opera
Second Prize goes to Gaye Gambell-Peterson for a pantoum about a middle-aged mermaid. I was intrigued by the well-used effect of the pantoum's interlocking structure, and completely sold on the "C-sharp half-life, caught in the half-light" which mingles echoes of music, radiation/decay/science, time, and water so beautifully.
Mermaid’s Pantoum
I am unrepentant mermaid, middle aged.
Flesh and scales still in seemly proportion,
though wrinkled by brine and tattered by time.
Still adored, a diva of fathomed opera.
Flesh and scales still in seemly proportion,
a siren, chanteuse, my voice a knife-edge
shrill, adorned. A fathomed opera’s diva
in a C-sharp half-life, caught in the half-light.
A siren, chanteuse, my voice a knife-edge
cutting through tides. Me, under the weather,
caught in sea’s half-light with only a half-life,
still luring men with plaintive arias.
Cutting through tides, me, under the weather
though wrinkled by brine and tattered by time,
still luring men with plaintive arias.
A middle-aged mermaid, unrepentant am I.
And Third Prize goes to Elizabeth M. Johnson, who gains an extra point for incorporating the full title of a Cherry Pie chapbook (Kiss Me Cold). Some of the required five words in this poem were used in variant forms (e.g. disproportionate instead of proportion) and although I've seen many contests be strict on that count, I'm constitutionally unable to be strict and so will allow it. The poem's worth it.
Congratulations on the great poems! The other entries were wonderful, and I hope everyone had fun with the contest.Ending It
Last summer, in the months without an “R,”
we ate oysters, the jagged edges of
the shells were sharp against our tongues, the brine
cool in our throats, delicious as the crisp
sea salt against our skin, the beach bonfire,
the Great Bear asterism far above,
an operatic swell in the timeline
of us, peace tenuous but in our grasp.
But now the months have “Rs.” Also, “-embers.”
You lumber toward me, and I try to move
away; your heavy body next to mine
seems wildly disproportionate. You claspme, kiss me, cold, your lips a slick steel knife
at my throat. No half measures, just half life.
Notable lines or moments from other entries, that I just couldn't resist:
From Bobbi Lurie, a prose poem that started off: "brine she says is nothing but the half-life of the pickle. . . "
And from Gail Eisenhart, a sinister love poem that included: "this tryst / has the half-life of house-fly."
To wrap up, an unexpected "non-winner" that simply must be mentioned for its refusal to follow any rules, and for the delightful poem that resulted. This is from Katherine Mitchell, who attempted a poem using the five required words but ended up with a poem that used a form of one of the words, did not use the other four at all, and is titled as a haiku but is, in fact, not a haiku. So here is a poem of . . . great resistance? Katherine sent it in as a non-entry, and I reproduce it here as such. Not a prize-winner, but in many ways a winner!
Summer Haiku
paddle boats float
on two tanks
painted copper lake
paddlers wear pajamas
hold champagne flutes
small rising circles
happy tongues
water smoothed
butter knives in cake frosting
orange bursts
over the horizon
sending heat
inside our paper lantern faces
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Poem Bakeoff - Get those last-minute entries in!
Poems have been rolling in, embracing a banquet of forms. Sonnets, pantoums, free verse, we got 'em! You have until midnight tomorrow to send in your entry if you've been dallying.
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Big Diesel Chapbook
What better place to publish a poem than a vehicle that moves constantly through the city with an all-day captive audience? The Poetry in Motion project this year has selected 15 poems -- one of my lucky poems among those -- to appear on local buses. Think of it as a big diesel chapbook.
See the poem posters here -- scroll through all the selections by clicking on the arrow at the lower right corner of the displayed poem.
http://www.artsintransit.org/PIM08.html
See the poem posters here -- scroll through all the selections by clicking on the arrow at the lower right corner of the displayed poem.
http://www.artsintransit.org/PIM08.html
Monday, April 07, 2008
Contest update -- Poem Bakeoff, a report from the kitchen
Thank you, ambitious souls who have already submitted entries! There's still plenty of time left for those of you still crafting your poems. And for those of you who've grumbled about the difficulty of combining opera, proportion and brine (those seem to generate the most angst) in a single poem, I refer you to Contemporary Verse's contest, which runs only 48 hours and this year presented a list of 10 words, one of which was . . . thorax.
Yes, thorax. You can be grateful that contest is already over -- you're too late now to sweat over that one.
So, no whining. Get back to the kitchen, bake me a poem.
(Full disclosure -- I did enter their contest, thorax and all, but the subject of my poem was Whitman, and the magazine is Canadian, so I'll guess my chances are .... zip?)
Yes, thorax. You can be grateful that contest is already over -- you're too late now to sweat over that one.
So, no whining. Get back to the kitchen, bake me a poem.
(Full disclosure -- I did enter their contest, thorax and all, but the subject of my poem was Whitman, and the magazine is Canadian, so I'll guess my chances are .... zip?)
Wednesday, April 02, 2008
What's it like to publish your first book?
Browse these interviews of poets publishing a first book. Interviews are from Kate Greenstreet's blog, Every Other Day.
http://www.kickingwind.com/interviews.html
http://www.kickingwind.com/interviews.html
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Contest -- Cherry Pie Poem BakeOff Contest
To celebrate Poetry Month and the three chapbooks forthcoming from Cherry Pie in 2008, we're announcing the first annual Cherry Pie Press Poem BakeOff Contest.
1st Prize: Free copies of each of the three chapbooks to be published in 2008 (by Erin M. Bertram, Niki Nymark, and Mary Ruth Donnelly). Even better, the winner's poem will be published here on the Cherry Pie Press blog.
Rules: Contest is open now through the end of April 2008. To enter, write an original poem in any style or format using all five of the words listed below (one word selected from each of the published Cherry Pie chapbooks). You can see this contest will increase in difficulty each year as the list of publications grows, so enter now while it's still easy!!!
Words to use: brine, half-life, knife, proportion, opera
Notes:
brine is from Colleen McKee's My Hot Little Tomato.
half-life is from Helen Eisen's The Permeability of Memory.
knife is from Donna Biffar's Kiss Me Cold.
proportion is from Nan Sweet's Rotogravure.
opera is from Martha Ficklen's The Palm Leaf Fan.
Submission of entries: Send your poem in an email by midnight April 30, 2008 to cherrypiepress@yahoo.com. Please put "Poem BakeOff" in the subject line, and include your name with the entry. Submission of a poem for the contest implies permission to publish the winning poem on the Cherry Pie Press blog.
Eligibility and Judging: Poets previously published by Cherry Pie, or scheduled for publication in 2008, are not eligible to enter. Judging, due to the perennially low budget here, will be done solely by the Editor (me).
1st Prize: Free copies of each of the three chapbooks to be published in 2008 (by Erin M. Bertram, Niki Nymark, and Mary Ruth Donnelly). Even better, the winner's poem will be published here on the Cherry Pie Press blog.
Rules: Contest is open now through the end of April 2008. To enter, write an original poem in any style or format using all five of the words listed below (one word selected from each of the published Cherry Pie chapbooks). You can see this contest will increase in difficulty each year as the list of publications grows, so enter now while it's still easy!!!
Words to use: brine, half-life, knife, proportion, opera
Notes:
brine is from Colleen McKee's My Hot Little Tomato.
half-life is from Helen Eisen's The Permeability of Memory.
knife is from Donna Biffar's Kiss Me Cold.
proportion is from Nan Sweet's Rotogravure.
opera is from Martha Ficklen's The Palm Leaf Fan.
Submission of entries: Send your poem in an email by midnight April 30, 2008 to cherrypiepress@yahoo.com. Please put "Poem BakeOff" in the subject line, and include your name with the entry. Submission of a poem for the contest implies permission to publish the winning poem on the Cherry Pie Press blog.
Eligibility and Judging: Poets previously published by Cherry Pie, or scheduled for publication in 2008, are not eligible to enter. Judging, due to the perennially low budget here, will be done solely by the Editor (me).
Review -- In Mi'kmaq Country
In Mi'kmaq Country: Selected Poems & Stories is a new book by Alice M. Azure. I was delighted to be gifted a review copy from Alice, who is a solid and enlightening presence in two of the local writing groups I participate in.
Alice Azure's poems have previously appeared in publications such as Shenandoah, The Cream City Review, and Eating Fire, Tasting Blood: An Anthology of the American Indian Holocaust. I'm excited to see her work now collected in her own book.
Alice Azure's poems have previously appeared in publications such as Shenandoah, The Cream City Review, and Eating Fire, Tasting Blood: An Anthology of the American Indian Holocaust. I'm excited to see her work now collected in her own book.
I'll excerpt two poems that I think convey the flavor and some of the range in her book.
Northwoods Haiku
Spring was cold that year,
the trillium wouldn't open.
Then you came to me.
Gisoolg
...is a verb, an action. When we say "Gisoolg," it means that you have been created, and you are being created. Stephen Augustine, Mi'kmaq Elder
listen
listen
a voice
pulses above
above in the stars
they pulse
clear
like the voice
early early
this winter day
listen listen
Paradise pulses
participates
Paradise participates
at times
times
times like this
participates
with thee
thee
listen
thee listen
Paradise participates
pulses
for thee
listen listen listen
thee listen
participates
with thee
The book is beautifully produced by Albatross Press, with a striking woodcut by the author as the cover image. It is available locally from Left Bank Books, which is always glad to handle mail orders, and is also available from the author (speelya@aol.com).
Friday, March 21, 2008
Colleen McKee -- news and publications
News about Colleen McKee (author of My Hot Little Tomato) --
Are We Feeling Better Yet?, an anthology of personal narratives about women and U.S. health care, co-edited by Colleen McKee and Amanda Crowell Stiebel, will be published by Penultimate Press in October 2008.
Colleen McKee also recently won a Poetry in Motion Award from Metro St. Louis. She will receive a $50 mystery gift certificate, a subscription to Poetry, and her poem "Dream of the Enchanted Supermarket" will appear on local trains and buses. Additionally, she won Third Prize (and a certain sum of money) in the Wednesday Club's Annual Poetry Contest for her poem "Terminals and Gates." Another recent prize was First Place in the River Styx Nanofiction Contest for her story "Piss and Vinegar, or, The Decision," which garnered no publication or money, just glory and a six-pack of Schlafly Ale.
Her poem "Grand Station" will appear in qarrtsiluni's "Nature in the Cracks" issue in March or April.
Are We Feeling Better Yet?, an anthology of personal narratives about women and U.S. health care, co-edited by Colleen McKee and Amanda Crowell Stiebel, will be published by Penultimate Press in October 2008.
Colleen McKee also recently won a Poetry in Motion Award from Metro St. Louis. She will receive a $50 mystery gift certificate, a subscription to Poetry, and her poem "Dream of the Enchanted Supermarket" will appear on local trains and buses. Additionally, she won Third Prize (and a certain sum of money) in the Wednesday Club's Annual Poetry Contest for her poem "Terminals and Gates." Another recent prize was First Place in the River Styx Nanofiction Contest for her story "Piss and Vinegar, or, The Decision," which garnered no publication or money, just glory and a six-pack of Schlafly Ale.
Her poem "Grand Station" will appear in qarrtsiluni's "Nature in the Cracks" issue in March or April.
Local poet Jane Ellen Ibur honored by 2008 Visionary Award
Grand Center, St. Louis’ premier Arts and Entertainment District, announced the honorees of the Sixth Annual Visionary Awards, which recognizes women for their contributions to the St. Louis arts and culture community.
Jane Ellen Ibur, poet, writer, and teacher was chosen as Outstanding Arts Educator.
Grand Center created the Visionary Awards to highlight the wide-ranging work of women artists and arts leaders in the community. The Visionary Awards will take place on Wednesday, May 21, 2008 at the Sheldon Concert Hall, 3648 Washington Ave in Grand Center.
For other honorees visit www.grandcenter.org.
Jane Ellen Ibur, poet, writer, and teacher was chosen as Outstanding Arts Educator.
Grand Center created the Visionary Awards to highlight the wide-ranging work of women artists and arts leaders in the community. The Visionary Awards will take place on Wednesday, May 21, 2008 at the Sheldon Concert Hall, 3648 Washington Ave in Grand Center.
For other honorees visit www.grandcenter.org.
Niki Nymark poem to appear in Lilith Magazine
Niki Nymark, with a chapbook forthcoming later this year from Cherry Pie Press, has received a letter from Marge Piercy that her poem, "Chava," is accepted for publication in Lilith Magazine.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Women Writers for Women's History Month
Slate magazine has put up a wonderful photo essay on women writers, including Maya Angelou who hails from these parts. See how many you recognize without looking at the captions....
http://todayspictures.slate.com/20080310/
http://todayspictures.slate.com/20080310/
Friday, February 22, 2008
Timing is everything
In Jane Hamilton's novel, A Map of the World, the narrator begins by weaving a context of past, present, family, inner predilections, habits, and setting the stage for a tragedy that starts the book off on its amazing and haunting journey. By page 21 you are as close to the narrator as her own skin, and the tragedy has occurred, and her husband tries to shake her out of shock by saying: "Tell me, Alice. Say something." That simple phrase made me tingle and stop -- and then I realized that until that point, I knew the names of every other character, and the speaker had repeated those names many times, creating a web of family and history and familiarity, and yet I hadn't known the speaker's name. Alice. It lands there gently, unexpectedly, almost unnoticeable except for the little tingle it leaves, and it enters at just the right moment, as Alice steps into a landscape where she will lose and try to find herself. Identity there will be tenuous but critical.
Alice. Thunk.
Here is the red wheelbarrow (WC Williams) that so much depends upon, common and utilitarian and quotidian, arriving just when it should. Small but essential. Timing, in novels as in poetry, is everything.
Alice. Thunk.
Here is the red wheelbarrow (WC Williams) that so much depends upon, common and utilitarian and quotidian, arriving just when it should. Small but essential. Timing, in novels as in poetry, is everything.
Monday, February 11, 2008
Nan Sweet - Poetry Reading and a Retrospective
Nan Sweet, author of Cherry Pie's second chapbook Rotogravure, will read her poems along with other faculty members to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the MFA program at the University of Missouri-St. Louis this Saturday, February 16, at 7 p.m. at the Touhill Center at UMSL. Click here for information and directions.
The MFA program at UMSL has been growing in numbers and in poetic heft, and Nan has played a supporting role in that growth, encouraging students and connections, teaching poetry classes, and last year serving as Guest Editor for an issue of the program's literary journal Natural Bridge, #16. Most recently, Nan is serving as Chair of the English Department.
The anniversary and reading provide an occasion to reflect on Nan's chapbook, which quickly outsold its first run of 100 copies and has now nearly sold out of the second run of an additional 50 copies -- no small potatoes for a poetry chapbook.
Over the last few months, I've found many of Nan Sweet's poems and images running through my head for an unexpected reason. I've spent most mornings lately in a tall building overlooking the St. Louis city's north side, the setting for some of Nan's poems. My company (not Cherry Pie! -- but my day job) is undergoing a merger/acquisition, and during long morning meetings to hash out how the merging companies will combine their computer systems I've sat in a low-lit conference room facing the landscapes of old St. Louis, with Nan's lines about the city's history running through my head and her understated but incisive awareness of economic factors feeling all too relevant. Depending on weather, the landscape is gray or brightly illuminated in whites and ethereal yellows, and I see echoes of a line from the title poem in Nan's collection:
"We drive off into a morning / already yellow, mordant, we say, corrosive enough / to fix the dye into cloth, or etch the news onto metal." From the eighth floor my unimpeded view is frighteningly vast, summoning all the awe that history and generations--and poetry--can inspire.
Nan's poems in Rotogravure span the mosaics hand-laid at the old St. Louis Cathedral, to the buildings where the local newspaper produced Sunday supplements using rotogravure printing methods, to the campsite where William Clark made his headquarters before this city took its present form. History becomes personal as she visits these places, calling up their stories and connecting us to them with finely and subtly crafted verses that demand to be read, and re-read. She brings to her poetry the same care, precision, and generosity of spirit that I have seen her extend to students, to the interpretation of poetry and its ability to pull in the good and the bad and the enternal, and to the art of teaching itself. There's an acceptance--more than that, an embrace--of the "heartland both tainted and providential" as she points out in her preface to the poems.
In the opening poem, "The Jazz Flute Plays," set in the city's north side--the portion of the city my eighth-floor view affords--she establishes the importance of rhythm. Art and music play a sustaining role in history, it seems: "it is rhythm alone that is knowledge."
Her aesthetic is tied to the details of daily life and the details of the mind, woven together--Hegel, hotcakes, toy volcanos, corroded pennies, history, the shifts of power, and coffee table books--with today projected onto the grand theatre of the past:
I'll end by simply quoting in full one of the poems that keeps pulling me back, again and again. It is about the city's main public park, Forest Park, and its history.
The MFA program at UMSL has been growing in numbers and in poetic heft, and Nan has played a supporting role in that growth, encouraging students and connections, teaching poetry classes, and last year serving as Guest Editor for an issue of the program's literary journal Natural Bridge, #16. Most recently, Nan is serving as Chair of the English Department.
The anniversary and reading provide an occasion to reflect on Nan's chapbook, which quickly outsold its first run of 100 copies and has now nearly sold out of the second run of an additional 50 copies -- no small potatoes for a poetry chapbook.
Over the last few months, I've found many of Nan Sweet's poems and images running through my head for an unexpected reason. I've spent most mornings lately in a tall building overlooking the St. Louis city's north side, the setting for some of Nan's poems. My company (not Cherry Pie! -- but my day job) is undergoing a merger/acquisition, and during long morning meetings to hash out how the merging companies will combine their computer systems I've sat in a low-lit conference room facing the landscapes of old St. Louis, with Nan's lines about the city's history running through my head and her understated but incisive awareness of economic factors feeling all too relevant. Depending on weather, the landscape is gray or brightly illuminated in whites and ethereal yellows, and I see echoes of a line from the title poem in Nan's collection:
"We drive off into a morning / already yellow, mordant, we say, corrosive enough / to fix the dye into cloth, or etch the news onto metal." From the eighth floor my unimpeded view is frighteningly vast, summoning all the awe that history and generations--and poetry--can inspire.
Nan's poems in Rotogravure span the mosaics hand-laid at the old St. Louis Cathedral, to the buildings where the local newspaper produced Sunday supplements using rotogravure printing methods, to the campsite where William Clark made his headquarters before this city took its present form. History becomes personal as she visits these places, calling up their stories and connecting us to them with finely and subtly crafted verses that demand to be read, and re-read. She brings to her poetry the same care, precision, and generosity of spirit that I have seen her extend to students, to the interpretation of poetry and its ability to pull in the good and the bad and the enternal, and to the art of teaching itself. There's an acceptance--more than that, an embrace--of the "heartland both tainted and providential" as she points out in her preface to the poems.
In the opening poem, "The Jazz Flute Plays," set in the city's north side--the portion of the city my eighth-floor view affords--she establishes the importance of rhythm. Art and music play a sustaining role in history, it seems: "it is rhythm alone that is knowledge."
Her aesthetic is tied to the details of daily life and the details of the mind, woven together--Hegel, hotcakes, toy volcanos, corroded pennies, history, the shifts of power, and coffee table books--with today projected onto the grand theatre of the past:
...The only stars we know
are old ones, only our knowledge is new,
And perception is an arrangement of
The present...
from "Allegheny"
I'll end by simply quoting in full one of the poems that keeps pulling me back, again and again. It is about the city's main public park, Forest Park, and its history.
Scattered Lagoons
. . . not yet a breach, but an expansion. . .
Donne
The past recedes, and in proportion
to the increasing distance, affiliation
grows and the form of knowledge changes.
Along a boulevard, small-cobbled in mountain
gravel, everything darkens to a dream. Then,
streetlights come on, their soft whites
an ornamental haze. Moisture rises,
and the smell of green. At twilight
there are no other cars. This is The Park,
the only one this city loves. These are the
late nineteen-forties, and there are terraces,
fountains, falls. No one is running
steadily at the perimeter. Families
practice fishing, noondays, along
the scattered lagoons that are remnants
of the River of the Fathers. On the hill
the Museum is full of iron and bronze, bodies
gleaming with blacks and greens. In a fountain,
pennies corrode. Something like gravity
pulls down the good appearances of thought,
and good moves into distortion with evil.
Somewhere under the park, the River
springs with the seasons. Giant fairgrounds
have melted into the ground. Downtown
the highway moves in its limestone pit
going west. This highway has always been.
It will divide tree from tree in the Forest.
In the dream, the park is quiet. The people
listen with no radios. Even the twilight
opera drifts away. The homes to the south
are cemented to the avenues. To the north
the balustrades are crumbling. The River
of the Fathers surfaces in railyards and then
borders the city with the white stones of its walls.
This knowledge begins with a dream. Even time
is controverted when art is the only power.
Saturday, February 09, 2008
2008 Chapbooks - coming up!
I am delighted to announce three new chapbooks will be appearing this year from Cherry Pie Press. We haven't firmed up the schedule yet but here are the authors, in probable order of appearance.
Erin M. Bertram is a fellow and instructor at Washington University in St. Louis, where she also plays the accordion, and edits shadowbox press. She is the author of four chapbooks: Alluvium (dancing girl press, 2007); Body Of Water (Thorngate Road, 2007) which won the 2007 Frank O'Hara Award; Here, Hunger (NeO Pepper Press, 2007) with Sarah Lilius; and micro-chapbook Wise Raven (Big Game Books, 2008). New work is forthcoming in Forklift, Ohio; Knockout, and So to Speak.
Here is an excerpt from Erin's forthcoming Cherry Pie chapbook, The Urge To Believe is Stronger Than Belief Itself. The poem is an extended and compressed meditation. It takes the form of closely linked sections of prose poem, poetry, etymology and science as it explores the hard and soft edges, the interior and exterior of relationships among mother and daughter and breast cancer.
Niki Nymark is a writer and cafe poet with a unique sense of humor. She says she often writes very personal love poetry, to the embarrasment of her grandchildren. She has been published in several anthologies and been awarded poetry prizes by some of the usual organizations, as well as some unusual ones (and so far she hasn't elaborated on what those might be!).
Here's an excerpt from Niki's poem "Saving Daylight"--
Erin M. Bertram is a fellow and instructor at Washington University in St. Louis, where she also plays the accordion, and edits shadowbox press. She is the author of four chapbooks: Alluvium (dancing girl press, 2007); Body Of Water (Thorngate Road, 2007) which won the 2007 Frank O'Hara Award; Here, Hunger (NeO Pepper Press, 2007) with Sarah Lilius; and micro-chapbook Wise Raven (Big Game Books, 2008). New work is forthcoming in Forklift, Ohio; Knockout, and So to Speak.
Here is an excerpt from Erin's forthcoming Cherry Pie chapbook, The Urge To Believe is Stronger Than Belief Itself. The poem is an extended and compressed meditation. It takes the form of closely linked sections of prose poem, poetry, etymology and science as it explores the hard and soft edges, the interior and exterior of relationships among mother and daughter and breast cancer.
Last night I dreamt a bat, sonorous & without charge. Her toes were to be
trusted, a row of tiny nails, the way a nail, driven into a wall, can hold many
times its own weight. She hung herself by a high branch of a conifer with the
others, her leathern wings folded just so across her matted chest.
Niki Nymark is a writer and cafe poet with a unique sense of humor. She says she often writes very personal love poetry, to the embarrasment of her grandchildren. She has been published in several anthologies and been awarded poetry prizes by some of the usual organizations, as well as some unusual ones (and so far she hasn't elaborated on what those might be!).
Here's an excerpt from Niki's poem "Saving Daylight"--
....he runs his hand
along my side,
rubs my shoulder blade
as if it were a seashell he just found,
trying to tease out the shape.
I'm sure her grandchildren are squirming, but the rest of us can enjoy the poem mightily.
And Mary Ruth Donnelly follows, indirectly, the adventurous footsteps of her mother, who skipped school to see Cab Calloway. Mary Ruth has hiked the cliffs above Chaco Canyon and retraced the Missouri River segment of Lewis and Clark’s journey, by car and partially by canoe. Her poems move out and move around – on the rivers and roads of the Midwest and the West – the woods, mountain, badlands, gardens, and cities. In her work, you'll see a search for permanence, for bedrock among the shifting post-modern mindscape and the accidents of life. You'll also see a wide variety of poetry forms, and a quietly strong and sustained voice that will draw you back, again and again.
In her “Coming Back to Mountains” she declares it's
not yet time to forget the mountains
the way they handle space
and nurture aspen
for a while
then break above them,
anthracite peaks piled on each other,
the solace of their jagged silhouette.
She's a surprising poet with a surprising range. Perhaps picking up on that heritage of slipping away to see Cab Calloway, she appreciates the art of dance in all its complicated geometries. From “Tango Pantoum”--
Your eyes are lined in red; my head turned right and down.
Tangueros keep their bodies straight as knives.
The street is dark, a dim bulb lights the narrow stairs.
The floor we rush along is smooth as Gardel’s lament.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Keep your poems safe: Part 2
I've improved my backup and cleanup strategy a little, and greatly simplified it (again!).
Earlier I'd crowed about the security scan at http://www.secunia.com/, and I'm still crowing but they've added a significant upgrade, and still (for now at least) it's free. Secunia offers Secunia PSI, which you can download and run from your computer (instead of just from their website). Secunia PSI adds some significant handy stuff -- you can configure it easily to run at startup or whenever you want, and after the initial download and first-time scan it performs seamlessly, quietly, and does so without hogging the system. It displays links for updating software, clear indications of whether the software you have is dangerously outdated or is merely obsolete, and allows you to say "ignore" if you know it's obsolete but want to keep it anyway. It provides links to the vendor website for software that is obsolete, so you can look for replacement software.
What does this have to do with poetry? Ah, not much. But if you're reading this blog, you are probably writing and storing poems on your computer, so you'd best keep that system in good shape. Secunia PSI is a first-rate way to do that. If you let programs such as Java (which you probably have, even if you aren't aware of it) or Adobe get outdated, you've left the barn door open and nasty little viruses may come creeping in to do unspeakable things to your computer. Secunia PSI requires one download, and from there you can let it do its thing, and it will politely and unobstrusively inform you when any program has been updated, or has gone obsolete and needs a spruce-up.
That leaves....backups! I still use http://www.box.net/ and highly recommend it, for quick file backups and for file sharing. I have also started using MozyHome (http://www.mozy.com/) which, like Secunia, requires a free download, one initial setup and run, and then purrs like a kitten in the background to keep your system forever backed up. MozyHome requires patience the very first time you run it -- you tell it what you want backed up, and it does your complete backup, telling you how much of the available free online space you are using. My backup took about 12 hours, and included quite a lot of documents and spreadsheets and photos. After that first run, I've set MozyHome to run backups every week, quietly in the background, and it does so obligingly and quietly and very quickly, since it picks up only files that have changed since the last backup. It also will let you restore individual folders or files quite easily. It's a dream. It is, in fact, much easier to use than http://www.box.net/.
So, for 0 dollars -- zip! nada! -- I have two reliable backups, with one of them covering all documents on my computer and regularly backing up any changes. And for the same great price I have a scan, thorough and now ongoing, to make sure my virus-prone applications don't get outdated and vulnerable. Secunia PSI and MozyHome are both easy to download, easy to configure for when you want them to run, and after the initial setup are reliable, pain-free, and best of breed. Even the technologically faint of heart can use them without breaking a sweat.
Earlier I'd crowed about the security scan at http://www.secunia.com/, and I'm still crowing but they've added a significant upgrade, and still (for now at least) it's free. Secunia offers Secunia PSI, which you can download and run from your computer (instead of just from their website). Secunia PSI adds some significant handy stuff -- you can configure it easily to run at startup or whenever you want, and after the initial download and first-time scan it performs seamlessly, quietly, and does so without hogging the system. It displays links for updating software, clear indications of whether the software you have is dangerously outdated or is merely obsolete, and allows you to say "ignore" if you know it's obsolete but want to keep it anyway. It provides links to the vendor website for software that is obsolete, so you can look for replacement software.
What does this have to do with poetry? Ah, not much. But if you're reading this blog, you are probably writing and storing poems on your computer, so you'd best keep that system in good shape. Secunia PSI is a first-rate way to do that. If you let programs such as Java (which you probably have, even if you aren't aware of it) or Adobe get outdated, you've left the barn door open and nasty little viruses may come creeping in to do unspeakable things to your computer. Secunia PSI requires one download, and from there you can let it do its thing, and it will politely and unobstrusively inform you when any program has been updated, or has gone obsolete and needs a spruce-up.
That leaves....backups! I still use http://www.box.net/ and highly recommend it, for quick file backups and for file sharing. I have also started using MozyHome (http://www.mozy.com/) which, like Secunia, requires a free download, one initial setup and run, and then purrs like a kitten in the background to keep your system forever backed up. MozyHome requires patience the very first time you run it -- you tell it what you want backed up, and it does your complete backup, telling you how much of the available free online space you are using. My backup took about 12 hours, and included quite a lot of documents and spreadsheets and photos. After that first run, I've set MozyHome to run backups every week, quietly in the background, and it does so obligingly and quietly and very quickly, since it picks up only files that have changed since the last backup. It also will let you restore individual folders or files quite easily. It's a dream. It is, in fact, much easier to use than http://www.box.net/.
So, for 0 dollars -- zip! nada! -- I have two reliable backups, with one of them covering all documents on my computer and regularly backing up any changes. And for the same great price I have a scan, thorough and now ongoing, to make sure my virus-prone applications don't get outdated and vulnerable. Secunia PSI and MozyHome are both easy to download, easy to configure for when you want them to run, and after the initial setup are reliable, pain-free, and best of breed. Even the technologically faint of heart can use them without breaking a sweat.
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Day Job
Some poets have one; some don't -- the "day job." Recently, a long and interesting discussion on the WOM-PO newsgroup list centered on how writers who have a "day job" (a non-poetic, non-academic job in the business world) balance work and art. I wonder.
I do feel like an oddity when the topic comes up. I've always had a day job, and all along have made the conscious choice to not use art to feed spirit and pocketbook at the same time. I am amazed by folk who are able to make a living from their skill with words -- generally indirectly by being a teacher of literature or writing -- and can still summon up the magic of creation when it's time to write. They have my admiration and respect. They are probably less schizophrenic than I am.
Keeping spirit and pocketbook separate does present problems, even though it's the only form of balance I feel capable of. At work, poetry is nearly always there, but unvoiced. It's a ray of light glazing the edge of the windowsill in the copy room. It's a story a coworker tells, some dialect or tone in it that surfaces as a song. I pocket the moment, write it down later. It is an exercise in finding the extraordinary within the ordinary.
It frees me up to keep career-related ambition, fear of poverty, and drudgery out of the poetry sandbox. Of course, the downside is that it's more difficult to be connected to the world of writing, and to keep poetry a priority when things get hectic or when work imposes pressures and deadlines.
Of the five authors published in the Cherry Pie series so far, two work in an academic literary setting, one in an academic nonliterary setting, one is a retired elementary teacher, and one is raising a child and working part-time in a medical office. Three of them have worked (unpaid of course) as editors of either poetry or fiction publications. My own jobs have included medical copyediting and computers (programming, now quality assurance).
Poetry comes in so many guises. It has no uniform.
I do feel like an oddity when the topic comes up. I've always had a day job, and all along have made the conscious choice to not use art to feed spirit and pocketbook at the same time. I am amazed by folk who are able to make a living from their skill with words -- generally indirectly by being a teacher of literature or writing -- and can still summon up the magic of creation when it's time to write. They have my admiration and respect. They are probably less schizophrenic than I am.
Keeping spirit and pocketbook separate does present problems, even though it's the only form of balance I feel capable of. At work, poetry is nearly always there, but unvoiced. It's a ray of light glazing the edge of the windowsill in the copy room. It's a story a coworker tells, some dialect or tone in it that surfaces as a song. I pocket the moment, write it down later. It is an exercise in finding the extraordinary within the ordinary.
It frees me up to keep career-related ambition, fear of poverty, and drudgery out of the poetry sandbox. Of course, the downside is that it's more difficult to be connected to the world of writing, and to keep poetry a priority when things get hectic or when work imposes pressures and deadlines.
Of the five authors published in the Cherry Pie series so far, two work in an academic literary setting, one in an academic nonliterary setting, one is a retired elementary teacher, and one is raising a child and working part-time in a medical office. Three of them have worked (unpaid of course) as editors of either poetry or fiction publications. My own jobs have included medical copyediting and computers (programming, now quality assurance).
Poetry comes in so many guises. It has no uniform.
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