60 Second Commencement Speech

(ie an anecdote that serves as a metaphor for how you should live your adult life):

This morning, running in the rain and struggling with the new barefoot technique, I noticed a chaffinch accompanying me through the meadow. She was lighting on the stalks of buttercups, each eventually bowing under her weight just as she lifted off toward the next; never quite landing, but making an effortless transition from resting to moving to resting.

The chaffinch is not just my running coach, but my life coach.

You have lived roughly twenty years now. In that time you have learned the names of things. You learned to say them. You learned to walk before you could even stand still, trusting in forward momentmum.

You learned your times tables and the rules for football. You have learned to love and hate and forgive. Some of you have faced death, betrayal and all those other abstract ideas, as experiences. Some of you have had good sex and bad sex and broken hearts and already know what exactly what bittersweet memory tastes like.

But if you are lucky, and the odds are good you will be, you have only lived less than a quarter of your life. All the space you have had for growing these twenty years you have three times over.

This morning when I was leaving the meadow I noticed a tree with moss hugging the trunk, like panicked sloths clinging to the stumps of phantom branches. Going nowhere, watching the leaves bud above them.

Follow the chaffinch. Trust forward momentum.

So. You Want to Publish Your Poetry.

You “love poetry”, and you want to know where and how to get a book of poems published.

Seems people want my advice, until they get it. Disclaimer: when - all those years - people would interrupt me in the middle of an anecdote to say, "You should write a book," it was only because no one had yet thought to say, "Tell someone who cares."

At any rate here is honest advice, but it starts with a single question that isn’t always easy to answer: Why do you want to publish your poems? Really?

Do you want to become a “poet” in the traditional, literary sense? Do you hope and dream of your work appearing in Norton anthologies and being accessible to readers for generations after you are dead? Are you a serious literary poet?

1. Do you know the differences between books, chapbooks and anthologies?
2. Can you list 10 contemporary poets and a book title for each one?
3. How many poetry books (not anthologies) have you read in the past 6 months?
4. How many poetry books (not anthologies) have you purchased in the past 6 months?
5. Can you name 5 print literary journals?
6. Can you name 5 online literary journals edited by university programs?
7. What does Bloodaxe make you think of?
8. What does Copper Canyon make you think of?
9. What is a pushcart?

The best advice I ever got as a writer was probably the most painful. Albert Goldbarth once stormed out of class after a passionate rant about the narcissism* of people who claimed to “love” poetry, but don’t bother to read it.

He’d asked each of us (workshop students) to bring in a book by our favorite contemporary poet - and not one person did. In fact, not one person could claim to have read an entire collection by a single, living author. I was so ashamed I stayed away from poetry for a few years. When I returned, I did so humbly – reading and not writing. Learning. Really learning to love poetry, and not (just) my own poetic words.

If you don’t read contemporary poets, why would you think contemporary poets would want to read your work? (From the necessary supply and demand point of view of publishers: if you “love” poetry but don’t buy books by contemporary writers, what kind of poetry lover do you imagine is out there to buy your book?)

Few people would enter a room full of people, deliver a monologue, and leave. The poetry community is like a room full of people engaged in a conversation, one that began long before you showed up.

If you are someone who reads poetry and knows what is published and where, then the odds are you know exactly what to do to get published and are sending your work out there with the help of duotrope.com or newpages.com, and collecting rejections along with the occasional acceptance – just like other poets. You don’t need advice, really, just courage and a hug. Have you looked into solutions like Nic Sebastian’s nano publishing model?

But maybe you are the kind of poet who does genuinely love poetry, but isn’t particularly moved by the kind of poetry published by independent presses or in the academic journals. Blue Mountain poetry speaks more directly to you than the L*A*N*G*U*A*G*E poets.**  Poetry isn’t “work”, it’s self-expression and an expression of love. Maybe your desire to publish is driven by a desire to engage directly in conversation with other poets: to share feelings and observations about the world. If so, the good news is that there are dozens of great online poetry communities, sharing and sometimes critiquing each other through bulletin boards or blogs.

(**update based on comments: I put Blue Mountain and Language poets out there as extremes on a continuum, not as two options. There are worlds between, with varying interest in craft, "accessibility", tradition and readerships.)

One of the gifts of the internet age is the re-democratization of poetry by creating space for communities that are not limited by geography. With the help of publishing on demand, poets can create anthologies for limited readerships, books that focus on topics too narrow for established publishing houses to take on for financial reasons.

Check out places like Writing Our Way Home and The Writer’s Island. (I hope people will add links in the comments.)

Maybe you are already involved in a community – say, a support group for families touched by Alzheimer’s disease – why wait for a publisher to put out an anthology of poems that speak to you? Send out an invitation for poems from your community and contact a print on demand publisher. Poetry can be more than a means of expression; it can be a tool for community building.

Or maybe you aren’t the kind of poet who’s interested in communities. You really aren’t interested in other people’s writing. Period. You just want to be able to tell the couple at the cocktail party, or the stranger on the bus, that you are a “published writer” and you don’t have time to hammer out a novel. You want to be a poet because women will rip off their shirts, or the Old Spice guy will drop his towel at your feet. (Because, yeah, that kind of thing really happens to poets all the time).

If this is you, go directly to lulu.com; do not pass go; (And, just like the rest of us) do not collect 200 dollars. You are the only one guaranteed to get exactly what you want. You can update your Facebook profile immediately.

* I am not sure that Goldbarth actually used the word narcissism, and I no doubt remember it thus because of the chord his rant struck in me.

Ten Women Working

When my co-teacher and I put ten female students together to devise a production – an homage to Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls – students and teachers alike broke out into choruses of onomatopoetic commentary worthy of Marvel Comics. You’d think we’d told them we’d caged caffeine-infused rats in a shoebox.  The experience left us wondering about self-fulfilling prophecy, the bizarre willingness to accept stereotypes and embrace “common sense” that diminishes women’s talents.

Now that the production is history, we are confident we did these young women a favor by forcing them to examine their manipulation negotiation tactics. Maybe it is true that a large group of women with generate more overt conflicts than a mixed gender group. But I believe it is because many women have underdeveloped communication skills for an all-women environment. At the risk of projecting my personal experience on women in general, I believe most of us are entirely unconscious of the ways in which we negotiate social hierarchies. It can be surprising when we discover where and how privilege is hidden.

When I was 18 my best friend took me to a bar with a floorshow.  Problem was, I couldn’t see because I was wedged behind a brawny guy in a sailor suit*.  I tapped him on the shoulder and informed him with a smile that I couldn’t see. He shrugged.

And I thought he was incredibly rude.

And I thought that for quite a while. Maybe it was alcohol that slowed the uptake of the epiphany, but a few days later I realized how ridiculous it was for me to assume that my vagina and a smile would afford me a front row spot at a drag show.

If it is true that the “pretty women” have more trouble in all female groups, it may not be attributable to being any kind of perceived threat to other women, but to their own reliance on the communication techniques with which they successfully negotiate mixed gender hierarchies, but aren’t particularly effective in an all-female group.

Ah, but it is so much easier to say we are envious of each other, isn’t it?

*I don’t think the guy was in a sailor suit. I can’t remember what he was wearing. But apparently my subconscious thinks the sailor suit is appropriate ironic embellishment.



When We Were Younger

I start to write about a family photo, “When the boys were younger,” as though I wasn’t or having changed since then. I don’t think it is uncommon, but I am unsure what is behind it: a fear of aging, an insecurity causing me to think I was as mature then as now. God, I hope not.

I have reached the point where I count the years ahead, conscious of how quickly it will pass, how much I will need to put an effort into growing now—an effort in discovering the same train ride each morning is never the same train ride.

Maybe earnestness is what keeps the spirit limber.



Bringing the Experience of an Old Coot

This week I saw a swan picking on a duck. Nowhere near a nest, the swan, puffed and stiff, ran her clear off the lake and into the air.

I stopped liking swans years ago when I’d just become the mother of a toddler and took him down to feed the birds, only to witness swans killing the ducklings.

Beautiful, arrogant and ruthless.

They don’t like me either. Some days they block the running path and hiss. If a swan has ever attacked you, you understand the myth of Leda and the Swan differently than you did before. Experience changes the stories that never change.

I think that is the challenge of poetry. Providing the experience to give our familiar stories new meaning.

This week I also watched the black water birds with white beaks and foreheads. I never knew what they were called. There must be half-a-dozen kinds of ducks at the lake. And terns and gulls and crows. These ducks distinguish themselves in their awkwardness. In the incongruousness of their formal beauty and their chugging, ungainly swimming: heads reaching first, like pigeons, or exhausted perimenopausal women lugging themselves uphill after an 8 mile run.

I looked them up in one of my birding books. Fulica atra. The Eurasian coot.

So this is what an old coot looks like. (I find it hilarious that this video has been uploaded by someone who calls themselves Discogirl).

Maybe poetry should only be read by adults who can bring experience to the table, so that the words and metaphors can do the work of poetry. What a shame to hear that love is like a red rose newly sprung in June before ever having experienced a full summer’s blooming and withering. I suppose it is really a reader’s challenge to approach poetry again and again from a point of ignorance. Not the ignorance of inexperience, but the ignorance of understanding.  

What does a poet do when all the truths leads her to write a lyric poem in which the speaker likens herself to a coot – when “coot” brings to mind Walter Matthau rather than Fulica atra?

But I never knew this about coots: when they dive, they dive deeply and disappear entirely under the surface. They don’t leave their backsides waving in the air like the swans do.



Interview about Mercy Island (1)

The writer and coach Fiona Robyn interviewed me for her blog Planting Words...

Paul Farley had described your poems as “strange women doing strange things…” and you also said you thought of yourself as a strange woman. I wonder if you feel society sees you any differently as a strange woman than they might if you were a strange man? Do you feel that you have been accepted/respected by the poetry world as a strong female voice?

 Read the interview here.

Review of Mercy Island (3)

Nic Sebastian reviewed Mercy Island at Very Like a Whale (and goodreads).

"The narrator in this fine collection is explorer and cartographer of a multitude of emotional, spiritual and international landscapes. Whether ruthlessly illuminating even the darkest corners in the rooms of herself, or putting on the lives of other women like so many beautiful garments, with tenderness and respect, Ren Powell’s narrator holds our attention and enriches our thinking."

Read the whole review here. ... And while you are there, check out Nic's blog in its entirety!

Review of Mercy Island (2)

Carolee Sherwood gave Mercy Island an unconventional treatment: sharing her reading experience as a stream of consciousness:

These poems all have secrets.
*
And sexy. These poems are sexy. And if I say dangerous, too, you’ll get the wrong idea. It’s not the danger and sex we’re used to from action heroes or rock stars. It’s something like the edge of the world.

My favorite part was where she wrote that my poems were "showing me things I may not know how to talk about" because that is what I believe is the purpose of a poem. I don't think a poet could ask for more satisfying evidence of being heard.

Read the whole review here. 

Review of Mercy Island (1)

I'm being optimistic and giving this post a title with (1). 

From Velveteen Rabbi's blog review: "I seem to be citing the poems which most made me  clutch at my heart. But there is also tremendous beauty here, and somehow the beauty is even more striking for its juxtaposition with the suffering.... This is a gorgeous collection of poems." 

You can read the whole thing here.  - And while you are at it, check out her blog. I really enjoyed 70 Faces (still, actually, because the poetry collection lead me back to the Moses books to reread before I will return to the poems again... call it a personal, gentile midrashim of sorts?)

A New Publishing Paradigm

Nic Sebastian has launched her new poetry collection Forever Will End on Thursday. Her creative solution to avoid the pit-falls of self-publication has been to collaborate with the editor Jill Alexander Essbaum on a nanopress project.

Perhaps an even more creative move is the variety of platforms she is utilizing to distribute her poetry: the collection is available for free via PDF, MP3 (43min/40MB), EPUB for most e-readers and MOBI for Kindle. And this no-profit press (Lordly Dish Nanopress) also makes it possible for you to purchase a print edition or CD.

I think this project can be seen as an interesting transition paradigm for the future of publishing.

Although not everyone agrees with me, I believe there have always been and will always be gatekeepers. I believe hierarchies are an unavoidable fact of human nature. While democratic access to distribution channels may mean a diversifying of history and of (necessarily) literary communities, each community's tastes will be shaped by alpha critics (or in writing communities that reject criticism in all forms, alpha personalities).

While traditional publishing has always had an element of "you tell me I am wonderful/I tell you you are wonderful", it has also has a track record of challenging itself. The suspicion of literary nepotism forces the initiated to protect their reputation, i.e. not blurbing every book that comes their way, not signing their name to projects that aren't going to stand up to the school of criticism in which they earned their own reputation... questioning. I am not claiming all cream rises, but it is self-regulating in a fashion.

In a recent survey on Goodreads less than 10% of the respondents said they cared who published a book. I realize not all writers put as much stock into the endorsement of publishers as I do, but am I really the only one who still raises her expectations when she sees a Copper Canyon Press or Tupelo logo on the spine? Who sees Lulu and thinks "grab bag" and looks for blurbs and credentials before she hits the place order button?

After spending most of my adult life aiming to join the ranks of poets of traditional publishing and finally getting within shouting distance (at least formally), I find that the ranks are branching apart.

Case in point: Jill Alexander Essbaum is "endorsed" by the Poetry Foundation, a traditional authority of "quality" in American poetry. This fact implies a critical legitimacy in her work with Nic Sebastion. Essbaum has a reputation to protect and expand upon. Of course, Sebastian has already created a reputation for herself through her previous publications and associations, but this nanopress project gives a further "formal" or "traditional" aura of legitimacy to her work, in the same way Dave Bonta, a champion of alternative publishing, recently announced on facebook that his "Temptations of Solitude" poems "are about to become the second Via Negativa series to make it into print!" (Emphasis mine)(*see Dave's clarification in the comments).

Two years ago I spent over 200 USD on entrance fees to book competitions held by publishers I would be thrilled to be associated with. Then, like Nic Sebastian, I decided there were too many factors for it to be much more than a lottery.  I admire the creativeness, but especially the integrity of Sebastian's solution. In my mind, exercising the humility required to work with an editor is testimony to a commitment to poetry as an art form.