Random Thoughts from the Poetess

A collection of random thoughts for your perusal:

I painted my toes for the first time this season and am breaking in new sandals, which has resulted in blisters on the tops of my feet. This is likely caused by the fact that my feet are spoiled by Danskos. *sigh* At least my ruby-tipped toes are cute. The color, by OPI nail lacquers, is "I'm Not Really A Waitress." Heh.

On the non-creative writing front, I'm trying to bang out a chapter titled "The Haves and the Have-Nots: Class, Race, Gender, Access to Computers and Academic Success" for a forthcoming book edited by Vib Bowman and Robert Lackie of the library and education world. I am excited about this for a number of reasons - first, um, it's a book chapter. A book with an ISBN. W00T! Looks good for tenure, and the book, which the editors have titled The Myths, Realities, and Practicalities of Working with Gen M: A Handbook for Educators and Librarians, is actually something I'm interested in - education and media literacy issues for Gen M kids. It's integrally related to my day job as a reference and instruction librarian. Plus, the publishing credit is something I can use in my bid for tenure, whereas my creative writing, not so much.

I am also kicking around a few ideas for books. Not that I have the time to write a scholarly-type book in my current state of OMGWTFBBQDEADLINES!!1!!!1!!eleven!!, but it is something I want to do eventually, so I'm considering what sort of topics would capture my interest for long enough to write an entire book. So far, I've got:

The "G" Spot: How Academic Librarians Affect Graduation Rates and Student Retention

Hey, I'd read that. It also might not be a bad start for a dissertation topic, given that I'm eyeballing starting the EdD program once I complete my MFA (November 2009) and MA (expected 2010). Best to have an interesting and useful academic library related topic.

I came into the office today to work on this book chapter, and haven't been able to rein in my brain to buckle down and do it. I have a sketch of the abstract, which is due to the editors Wednesday, so I do believe I'll be back in tomorrow to tackle it.

What is on my brain is this Lilith collection. (My brain has been usefully parsed into two parts: dayjob librarian work brain, and night-time and weekend creative writing brain. Apparently weekend brain is jealous of its space and wants little to do with librarian writing.) While reading my articles to form this book chapter, I was struck by the sudden desire to write in negative space and see if it turned into something compelling. I like it, but am sending it over to my trusty experimental fiction dude Drew, who is quite the poet himself and has some serious sense when it comes to revision suggestions. He's getting MFA-ed in May, so if you're hiring, you should contact him. Anyway, back to topic, Lilith on the brain, trying to keep it interesting, working in negative space from the starting thought of "I was never tempted by an apple." (That's not how it appears in the poem, but that's where the idea-seed came from - is it possible to write about not-something, and keep readers fascinated by all of the possibilities it leaves open? I think so, if it's done well, but it's a hell of a challenge.)

Also: more from me on the multiple-personality split of creative vs. not-creative writing. I hate to call it "uncreative" (and even "not-creative" is sort of insulting), and I don't want to call it "professional" writing, since a paid poet is a professional. I'll let this one marinate a bit and post on it soon.

Random: does it freak anyone else out that Firefox's spell-check suggestion for my mis-typed version of "something" is "thigbone's"? I mean, I wasn't really that far off, and it didn't look anything like "thighbone's"...

A Series of Late Nights

It has been quite the interesting past few days. Oh, not from anyone else's viewpoint, I'm sure. For them, my life looks as dull as usual. Work, home, walking the dog, making dinner, turning on the tv and the laptop. All pretty ordinary. What is *not* ordinary is that I'm averaging 3 poems a day for the past, oh, eight days.

I'm not saying I'll keep them all. I think some of them are good, and some of them are ordinary and will have to be torn up and remade. The deluge is nice though - it's like trying to drink from a firehose, there's so much I want to write.

The result has been interesting. I compiled a full-length collection that had the theme of a daughter coming of age and dealing with her father, and I titled it Carving Your Name. Thrilled to have a complete book, I schlepped it off to about three competitions. Then, in a bit more than a weekend, I wrote a chapbook in Lilith's voice and titled it "I Will Not Lie Below," and sent that one out. I broke Carving Your Name into two chapbooks, one concentrating on seasonal themes called "Summers in Bay Shore," and one concentrating on the theme of coming to terms with grief titled "Carving Your Name." (I know, unoriginal of me to keep the same title as the full-length, but it tickled me and seemed right.)

That made me feel productive enough that I could forget my early-in-the-year dry spell. But that wasn't all. I decided that since there was such a heavy daughter/woman theme in Carving Your Name that I thought I might combine the more heavily femme-themed pieces with the Lilith chapbook, and I titled that full-length collection Disobedient Daughters. I farmed that one out to another four poetry book contests.

And then I decided there was too wide a gap between just the daughter pieces and the pieces that were overtly in Lilith's voice in Disobedient Daughters, and that Lilith really deserved her own book without my diluting it with poems that were really meant to go in a different direction. So I've been walking around in Lilith's crimson stiletto peep-toe pumps in my head at night (which is the footwear I imagine her enjoying), and her meager chapbook has grown to twenty-eight poems and counting, tentatively titled God in my Throat.. As I said before, not all of them are strong enough to stay, and they'll need revision and some slight reordering, but it's a project I'm enjoying.

Now I'm struggling to make sure the voice doesn't get stale. Trying for different angles, different approaches for the narrative, different images, trying not to let a vivid character fade to pale through too much retelling.

Finally, playing off an email I sent to a friend, I thought I'd put some of my more, um, interestingly-toned poems into a chapbook called "Muse Made Me Her Bitch." Struggling to fill it out, but in a good way, like stretching muscles I haven't used in too long. Sometimes I get dissatisfied when my tone becomes...not complacent, really, but not harsh and surprising enough to satisfy me. "Muse" gives me the outlet I need to experiment with some things.

And then there's "The House That Falls Down" (also occasionally titled "Warsongs"). It's a collection of poems on war broken into three sections - the war, the women, and the homecoming. I was going to write it off, but I have an affection for it - I wrote the bulk of it while my brother was a Marine deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, and he said he liked the collection, and that the guys he shared it with enjoyed it. It came in as a semi-finalist in competition (though that could be due to a dearth of entries, I'm sure). It hands together oddly, every single piece needs severe revision, and war is a tough thing to write about and get right. I should trash it. But I'm keeping it. Selfish and sentimental, but whatever. it'll be my fixer-upper project.

In good news, I looked at the packet mailing schedule for my MFA program for the Spring 2008 semester (which starts at the end of May), and noted that it called for volunteers for folks for the full-manuscript workshop for the Spring 2009 residency. A few emails later, and I'm in! I'll likely be the only poetess in the group, since it's apparently the folks with novels who take advantage of that workshop, but hey. I write in the hopes that regular folks will enjoy my poems, and receiving critique from non-poets (or, as writers, merely poets of a different stripe) may actually be more helpful, since I'm getting accustomed to getting most of my critique from poets. Anyway, it can't hurt, and I can at least sound off of some people to see if they find it as interesting as I do. I'm afraid the folks that have read the bits I've shared may be biased because we're pals, though they've shared some good critiques. Heh, okay, I admit it. I wonder a little bit if walking in as the only poetry manuscript is like coming in as an underdog where it's more than likely that folks with actual coherent fiction and CNF stories will think that I'm inherently inferior because I work in smaller clips, and don't have their sort of stamina.

Okay, so I have a teensy inferiority complex. But I'm good humored about it. *grin*

Anyway, it's been a series of very late nights (particularly since I'm accustomed to going to bed at 10pm. Half past midnight makes morning an absolutely shitty time to be me, but I think it's worth it. Hell, I *know* it's worth it - I'd burn out terribly fast if I did my scholarly stuff both at work *and* at home, and I'm trying desperately to keep home as my creative sphere for personal work. Now what I wish I had was a group - one where we exchange manuscripts, make candid comments, and slug it out good naturedly surrounded by Kinko's-bound nearly-finished masterpieces and beer. Until then, though, I'll continue writing. And if you want to volunteer to make some margin-notes, I will snail-mail you a copy of whichever manuscript you're interested in *grin*. For now, though, I am going to bed.

Right after I finish a piece called "Witness."

Working the Manuscript

Instead of doing actual work this weekend, after a long week and fulfilling my semester requirements for both the MFA and the MA programs, I decided to put in a bit of time on my full-length manuscript, which is taking shape quite well. I'm having a tough time finding a thread that runs through the pieces - I rarely write on one theme exclusively (I'd bore myself to tears), though I have discovered that seasons and place (mostly Kentucky and Long Island) get mentioned quite often.

As of right now, I am tentatively titling the collection "A Stranger in Tornado Country." I don't know why, but I like the ring of it, and I like the poem it comes from, so for now, that's the winner. I hate sending things off half-cocked, and there's nothing worse than a collection with a lackluster title, especially with all the volumes of poetry being written. I don't want editors and judges bored before they get past the table of contents.

I've culled the collection to only polished pieces, and pieces I'm very fond of. Right now that puts me at fifty, with my new poem "Summer Sings," though there are about five or six I may take out because they're weak and/or obviously don't fit the rest of the tone of the collection. For instance, I happen to be in love with my new poem "Love Letter from a White Woman," but it's jarringly different in both tone and style, and relies more on rhythm than most of my other pieces do. I want it to be as strong as possible, but I also don't want to wait until the end of the MFA program (November 2009) to start submitting the manuscript.

My goal is to submit the full length manuscript to at least 4 competitions this year, as well as to some open reading periods at places like Tupelo Press, where the editor sends a handwritten note and critique for their open reading period. For poets, a full length manuscript is generally between 48 and 100 pages. Chapbook competitions are markedly shorter than that, requesting manuscripts of about 16 to 30 pages (and often shorter than that). There are tons of competitions, but it gets rather expensive after awhile, since most are about $20 a pop, with the full length competitions running closer to $25. Then again, I need to remember to ask if I can write those off...

My next daunting task, after writing a few more pieces that will round out the manuscript, will be to figure out what order they should be in. I haven't found a decent software program to do this (I've heard Scrivener is great, but I don't work on a Mac), so I'm seriously considering doing it with index cards and a giant corkboard. Any other ideas or suggestions are, as always, welcome and encouraged.

Does anyone have much experience putting together a successful poetry manuscript? What say ye?

Required Reading: Richard Hugo's 'The Triggering Town'

In a timely side-reading, I have found a book that answers many of the questions I have about writing (and which may have prevented my previous posts, had I read it a week ago). The book addresses the importance of language for language's sake, how much you should think about whether the audience understands, and the relationship between the "triggering subject" you write on, and the words you write. (More about this in a moment.)

This little gem is Richard Hugo's slim volume The Triggering Town: Lectures and Essays on Poetry and Writing. I happened to buy it used to save money; I can already tell that in a few months it will be dog-eared with copious notes scribbled in the margins. (Yes, a terrible habit for a librarian to have, but a useful one for a writer.) There are far too many pearls in the book for me to detail them all here, so let me bring just one or two into the blogosphere to discuss. The primary focus of the book, and what I found most interesting, most useful for my future writing, and most liberating was this:

"Somehow you must switch your allegiance from the triggering subject to the words." (p.12)

I have lately been working with poems that have very specific triggers, dealing with people, places and feelings, and have struggled with when to let go of that solid-ness, that comfortable space, and that damned same-ness that weighs me like an anchor after the first few lines. Have you ever been there? You are writing about your mother, and while the first few lines please your eye and ear, after line four if you write another thing that is actually related to your mother, you feel suffocated, robbed of your colorful vocabulary and a traitor to the shine on the water tower you want to include but don't, because though you feel it needs to be there, you are concerned. It belongs, you know it in your gut. But what would the reader think about this random throw-in? Will they understand why it needs to be there? Are you a traitor to your original subject if you drop it and keep writing?

Note: I will admit that I suffer from this because I dislike poetry that intentionally sets out to mystify and confuse the reader, leaving them in the dark as to the subject and emotion of a poem. When this is deliberate, I find this to be the utmost insult: snobbery wielded as a weapon against the very people you purport to 'communicate' with through your language. Snobby poetry makes me stabby. Then again, I tend to be bourgeois like that...

Hugo's wisdom, which may be obvious to some, is that the thing that triggered you to write may not be what you wanted to write about at all. It called to something deeper, that delicious author-part of you that you barely understand, and not following it is traitorous to your well-being as a writer. Will the reader understand? Perhaps (and probably) not. But if it belongs, they will understand the feel of the poem and your need to place it there, which is enough. And if they don't, what of it? Hugo admits later in the book that occasionally he goes back to an old poem he wrote years ago and doesn't understand it himself, but that he felt that overwhelming need and rightness at the time. It is this 'rightness' that counts and enlivens the poem.

This actually comes back to the subject that begins the book: should truth conform to music, or music to truth? Hugo argues for the former, both to justify creative writing, and because he notes that if truth conforms to music, "those of us who find life bewildering and who don't know what things mean, but love the sound of words enough to fight through draft after draft of a poem, can go on writing..." (p.4)

The importance of this for my own writing? It gives me the permission I needed to bend my truth to the music of my words, rather than forcing my words to conform to some set, preconceived notion of Truth. I feel a bit freer, as though my shackles have been loosened (though admittedly I placed them on myself). As a writer, we impose limits on ourselves - it is inevitable. What we want to do is often too large, and overwhelming, and so we assign ourselves small bites to survive that need to write. It would be a good idea for us all to make a note of what restraints we use, though. Since they are often unconscious, we will only find them when we find ourselves dissatisfied with a piece of writing, or staring at a blank page and demanding something specific of ourselves.

The entire book is worth reading, is full of dos and don'ts (along with Hugo's admission that everything he purports to teach is likely wrong for anyone but himself). But having these recommendations is quite the gift: we can shed light on how we've already been doing it, which is our unconscious construct. Constructs, by definition, are limiting, and his defining what HE uses allows us to say, "Ah, yes! I actually do X instead of Y, though..." The value? You learn your process, and there may be things you can change about it that will improve your writing.

Strive for improvement, though never perfection. Perfection is boring. Learn what your 'triggering towns' are...use them as a touchstone of comfort and to ground you. And then leave them.

Haunted by Rhyme

Have you ever had a line worm its way into your brain, and refuse to leave? It sets up residence, like a sing-song piece of hell lodged between your ears just begging to be birthed onto paper. "Type me and I'll leave you alone," it pleads, even though you know you'd be tempted to write something around it to lock it down, to give it somewhere to belong. "I know I'm no good - write me and get me out of your head," it beckons, enticing you with the promise of sweet abandonment once you've labored it into actual physical being.

This is my topic today, because I have a hell of a singsong line in my head. Right now. It's been following me around since Saturday, though I've done everything in my power to avoid it. I could type it into my hugely unwieldy poetry document in Word, and let it languish with my other fragments. But it irks me. It irks me because it rhymes. I am haunted by the small book of poetry I wrote when I was young, and have been forever scarred by my juvenile ABCB-DEFE-GHIH rhyming. I know very few poets who can pull off rhyme well. Most of them are dead, and nearly all did it well only within a formal structure like the sonnet (which which I have an ongoing love/hate relationship).

So, what's the problem? you might ask. Well, the problem is I like the sentiment behind this annoying snippet. Here, let me share:

forging something out of nothing when there's nothing to be had

as much the realm of poets as it is that of the mad.

*Sigh* I love it a little bit. It's even got a good beat to it. I bet Dido could pick it up and toss it whole-made into one of her melancholy songs on what would have been a B-side, if CDs or mp3s had 'sides.' A better poet than I would simply write it into something beautiful and haunting, an ars poetica for the ages. And all I can do is stare at it, and listen to it running in circles in my head, and wish it didn't rhyme. Rhyme undoes me, and leaves me on shaky, newborn foal-legs, afraid to stumble around and land on my ass. I will admit that I am poor at prosidy. I've never counted feet, I know what the definition of iambic pentameter is but likely wouldn't be able to identify it. And while I realize that rhyming well is a matter of skill and practice, and that I will simply have to work with it, I find myself recalcitrant. (Note: recalcitrant, adj. - Marked by stubborn resistance to and defiance of authority or guidance.)

Why? Because I have been inculcated up to this point that rhyme is predictable and hokey. Rhyme is a child's game, and not worthy of a poet(ess) who actually wants to write something good that will eventually be published, according to some. Mostly, I know that I personally find it hard to create surprising, refreshing, and meaningful rhyme, and the thought of it wearies me (am feeling a tad lazy and grumpy today).

Perhaps it's also a little bit because of the sentiment. Forging something out of nothing, indeed! Likening a poet's need to create to madness! Not at all an original sentiment of course, others have said it, and just as well or better (and within entirely finished poems instead of fragments, natch). Byron, Shelley, Poe, Dickinson, Plath...if I do go mad, at least I will be in good company, though likely less remembered. I rarely ask myself "What's the point in writing?" The point is obvious, to me. I write to improve myself and my way of communicating and my dexterity with language. I write in the hopes that someone, somewhere, will read something of mine and find a piece of themselves they hadn't been able to articulate in quite that way. I write to capture and cage my demons, as it were, to a page, where I can lay them out and conduct autopsies on my fears and passions. I could list infinite reasons, and so I am unable to simply dismiss my desire to write as 'worthless.' So why does it upset me so?! Mostly because I want others to see it as a fruitful endeavor as much as I do, and not think me loony for spending hours cramped over a legal pad or laptop; I want someone to nod wisely and attach some worth to what I do. There. I said it. I want to be valued as a writer. I want to be vindicated of this obsession!

That is unfair, of course. I have some wonderful writerly friends who not only pore over my work and offer critique, which is a depth of commitment from a friend few can claim, I also have a great mentor within my writing program, the opportunity to workshop with talented writers, and some editors have been kind enough to pick up some of my children and present them to the world - or at least, those who cared to see them. I am just occasionally overwhelmed and want to whine that it shouldn't be this difficult, why can't things just fly, golden-right and perfect, straight from my pen/keyboard/mouth? I am overwhelmed by the angles I could take on this! I could write something funny about we crazy-ass drunken poets, or I could craft some type of mournful elegy around it, and make it a dirge that self-sacrificing poets could quote to prove their outsider status. Whining, I know. And the process is what improves us as writers, after all; our work matters little if we haven't found ways to improve upon it.

Is it possible to be overwhelmed with responsibility? The responsibility that you know something could be crafted into something gorgeous and sleek, but you also know that your clumsy hands will most likely crack it, or bludgeon it into something not nearly resembling the sublime thing you had envisioned? I'll admit, this is the sort of thought that keeps those blank canvases staring at me in my kitchen, with the lids tight on my paint, and my sketchbook closed on the clumsy drawings that hold the miscarriages of what I can see so clearly in my head, but can't get onto paper. This sort of thing rarely rears its head in my writing, though. I believe in the power of revision, after all, and a mighty fix is just a keystroke or a cross-out away, isn't it?

Isn't it? Or does making a faulty stroke in the beginning leave that marring to bleed up to the surface, eventually? I believe that people do not change, but I always thought I knew that ideas were fungible and flexible, and if we are writing our own, we have all the space we need to make the sort of fundamental changes we can't effect in the physical world.

Perhaps I am mad. Of course, the admission is the first step to the nut-house, so I'll have to keep it between myself and the internet. I could always hold it as proof of my poet-hood, I suppose.

What a rambly post this has been! All of this from a snippet of a rhyme that was birthed full-formed in my head on a walk with the dog. I haven't yet decided whether I'll hide these lines in the body of a poem somewhere or actually tackle it within a form. Feel free to use it as your own prompt, as you please, and let me know how you like your product.