Monthly Archives: January 2015

Thoughts on Assignments as Inspiration

v1p003-foliated-initial-letter-s-q75-422x500

Well, when I arrived home yesterday afternoon, my film studies roommate asked if I would be willing to act in a video he and his friends were making. There would be no words, just actions and facial expressions. I thought, why not? While eventually the film will have copious voice-overs to cover our action, it did remind me of the classic drama/film exercise of the Scene Without Dialogue, which is wicked difficult to write and teaches writers a lot about body language and the unimportance of words, contrary to what most of us believe.

This reminded me of a poem that I wrote as a similar kind of exercise.

 

On the Difficulty of Avoiding S

 

There I am, trying to write a quiet

poem, trying to give the reader an idea

of what winter can be: the quiet

that can cover everything, the quilted

feeling of white hovering over, covering

everything. A mood. A moment.

A lifetime. But every word I look at

struggles and fights me. Verbs insist

on using that S, all the nouns bring

friends (not one, but several), and even

silence itself simply refuses to take this

kettle off the stove, and I am, not caught

but stuck, shedding S’s like snakes in spring.

…

Spilecki, Susan. “On the Difficulty of Avoiding S.” Byline. Oct 2002: 19.

A Turn in the Conversation

convo

Well, I have been rereading my previous posts and I feel a little like you sometimes do at a party when some poor innocent stranger asks what you do and, in your enthusiasm, you talk their ear off until that blessed point (from their point of view) when you suddenly notice the glazed look on their face and you turn the conversation to them (this also allows you to take a bite of your canape or a sip from your drink: enlightened self-interest).

So I know the things I would like to talk about in this blog and I have a list of other things I want to cover eventually, but here is a question for you, O GENTLE READERS: What questions do you have about poetry? What topics make you curious or annoyed? What forms are you interested in? What poets have you read? What kind of poets would you like me to recommend (or warn you about)?

Let me know in the comments section, and I will squeeze in requests between my small, humble, illustrated rants.

Inspiration Tip: Revisiting Old Friends #2

chiyo pond hiroshige

When I want to write and have no ideas for topics, I often turn to visual art, particularly, as I mentioned a while back, Japanese woodblock artists like Hokusai. A few days ago, as I was digging through old journals that I was published in, I found a poem I had forgotten about that was based on one of Hiroshige’s pictures that I could not remember. So I went and dug up my Hiroshige books, couldn’t find it and so, of course, requested some books from the library. And I fell in love again.

Ando Hiroshige (1797-1858) worked part-time for many years as a firefighter at Edo Castle, so those of us who are artists with day jobs shouldn’t feel too alone!

Greatly influenced by Hokusai, whose landscapes were wildly popular, Hiroshige produced Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji and Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido Road, but it is the series One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, that he did towards the end of his life, that I like best. (Edo is the old name for Tokyo.) In this series, he used bright colors and vertical orientation, often with some larger piece of what I would normally think of as background in the foreground and large, like a tree branch or a banner, so that you have to look harder to see the people and figure out the story that is playing out. The following poem appeared in Ekphrasis and was nominated for Pushcart Prize XXIII: Best of the Small Presses in 1997.

…

The Mother Takes Her Teenage Daughter to Chiyo’s Pond

(Hiroshige, “Chiyo’s Pond in Meguro,” 1856)

…

Little One, we fold too many stories

between silk and our hot skin, we coil

too many expectations in our hair,

pinning them with pointed lacquer hopes.

…

Long ago, Lady Chiyo made this pond

her final resting place, doused the coals

of love for her husband, killed in battle.

These cherry trees did not grow here back then.

…

Had their pink branches rustled above her

slow steps, they might have taken her to task,

displayed limbs wrapped in feminine hues,

and whispered, Here we stand in the bright air,

 …

resplendent and giving ourselves despite

the approach of wilting summer and the falling

rains. Look at their smoky reflections

on the pond’s surface, rippling cherry wisdom:

…

Night comes, soon enough, we disappear.

And you, with your young warrior now gone,

have lost, you think, your future blossoming.

Why not, you ask me, simply float and fade?

…

Look up! See the water throwing itself

down into its own wet element in steps

clear white and frothing as the very day.

Your aunt, walking behind us, would say, This

 …

water is your starting place. Begin

to wash out expectations, not drown hope.

Your brave one is dead, but another walks

somewhere, teeth flashing, not knowing he waits.

…

Still water does not suit you. Remember him,

but throw yourself, my daughter, into life.

…

Spilecki, Susan. “The Mother Takes Her Teenage Daughter to Chiyo’s Pond,” Ekphrasis (1997) 1:1.

A Poem about Food

Thinking about what I said last week about writing about food, I came across an example from a long way back that is also a good example of concrete poetry, a poem that is written in the shape of its subject. I do not use this style often (and in the digital age, issues of formatting for audiences on a variety of platforms can be tricky), but I think this is a great example of form following function, since I am trying to say something not only about a piece of fruit but also about women and body image. This was published in Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies. The title comes from a line of a poem by Robert Pack (with whom I studied at Middlebury College), “Guardians” from his book Keeping Watch: “What can the half-grown pears say? ”

 What the Pear Says

 …

Now you see

me: chartreuse skin,

ample convexities of

hip, abdomen, buttocks

curving, tapering, as I sit

regarding your twitching

fingers, watering mouth, and

indecisive eyes. Am I heavy?

Not at all. A mere handful. I have hips,

yes, but then so do love’s roses. Oh, I know.

This is not a shape you’ve been taught to desire.

No matter. Slide your hand around me,

pull me close. To taste me

is to love me.

 …

Spilecki, Susan. “What the Pear Says.” Frontiers (1997) 18:1.

What NOT to Do at a Poetry Reading, Rant #1

chickenreading

For those of you who have gained enough renown that folks are actually asking you to do real time readings of your poetry, I have tons of advice.

(These are also known as rants, because apparently what is obvious to me is not obvious to everyone else. It is kind of like how climate change is not being equated with gravity: the love rocks have for the ground, which for most of us is Super Obvious.)

I will eventually talk about the Mechanics of Reading in Public, and cover the Problem of Random Microphones, etc. But right now I feel the need to explain why you should never feel the need to explain too much. Archibald MacLeish once said, “If the poem can be improved by the author’s explanations, it never should have been published.” So never spend more than a few seconds explaining a poem. We want to hear the poem, not your explanation.

Do not hunch over the microphone. Your posture should be the posture of a professional human, not of a sloth.

When in doubt, do ask, “Can every one hear me?” In my experience, unless it is a Very Intimate Setting, the folks in back cannot.

And do, PLEASE, show respect for your audience by PLANNING ahead on what you are going to read. Do not just say, “Gosh, I wonder what I will read.” That is just an egotistical time-wasting lack of respect. Alvin Ailey dancers never go on stage saying, “Gosh, I wonder what dance I am going to do.” The New York Met does not congregate on stage saying, “I wonder what opera we should do tonight. Do we have any requests?” Prepare your reading. Hell, you might even want to practice it once or twice!

And, for those of you in our Studio Audience, if you have been dragged to a poetry reading by your (probably female) significant other, at least do us the favor of trying hard to pretend to stay awake.

Much obliged.

…

Image by Doug Savage.

PS: To catch one of my recent poems, go to this blog.

The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Writer

lonelypanda

In the end, we all write alone.

As a performing introvert, sometimes I revel in the solitude and sometimes I get edgy and want to talk to other people about the things I am writing about. Not imaginary people, like editors of journals and their subscribers. Real people with faces and names and opinions. At least, that is what it feels like.

I don’t know a lot of poets these days. Working in academia, I know a lot of fiction writers, scholars, science writers, bloggers and at least two recovering journalists. This is usually enough, as the issues we all face in terms of writing process and simply putting down the right words in the right order are ubiquitous regardless of genre. Having some writer friends is not only helpful; I would argue that it is necessary for your long-term happiness as a working writer. There are some things that only other writers understand:

  • the habit of leaving a notepad in the bathroom for 3 am inspirations
  • the frustration with having thought of the almost-right word (no, that is not good enough, dammit)
  • the victory of writing 1665 words a day for more than two weeks in a row
  • scribbling the lyrics to a new song idea on the inside of your Dunkin Donuts bag, sometimes before you get around to eating the donut
  • those white-noise days when you stare at page or screen for hours and produce nothing
  • the feeling of “Damn, I’m good!”* when you finish an exquisite bit of writing even you didn’t know you were capable ofdamnfinemug

You can experience the joys and pains alone, but it is exhausting, especially when you are also submitting work to those imaginary editors out there in Journal Land and receiving form rejections back in a much higher proportion than the acceptances. And, alone, you can solve the obstacles in your writing—the clunky transitions, the fifth draft ending that still sucks—but it will go faster with a friend.

When I think of this, I think of otters, who sleep on their backs on the water, holding hands so that they don’t get separated. Sometimes, you just need a buddy.

otters

* A college friend of mine had a mug that said this. I have always thought it would be a great mug for a writer. George Eliot at the least would have found it invaluable.

Inspiration Tip: Revisiting Old Friends

sign

One way I rev the engine of creation when I am stuck in neutral gear is to go back to one of my favorite poets, often Marge Piercy, Billy Collins, or Nancy Willard, but occasionally someone less famous. A while back I was updating the Publication section on my Curriculum Vitae, which entailed digging through contributer’s copies. During the 1990s, I published a lot of my poems about art in a then-new journal called Ekphrasis, which means–get this–poems about art.

It is still around, a great little journal, and one of the best things about it is that it publishes some really cool poetry/poets. One of the poets I discovered there was Simon Perchik, who writes these skinny little poems with lines that just blow my mind. His line “or perhaps your shadow overflowing again” (from “D111”) inspired a poem about a panic attack; “today is missing/the ground is missing” (from “D180”) inspired a poem about an anxiety attack on a hot summer day. I cannot find some of the other poems; they were not all about mental health!

The ending of one of my favorite Nancy Willard poems was put on postcards several years back in a Poetry in Public sort of program. This is from “The Hardware Store as Proof of the Existence of God.”

“In a world not perfect but not bad either

let there be glue, glaze, gum, and grabs,

caulk also, and hooks, shackles, cables, and slips,

and signs so spare a child may read them,

Men, Women, In, Out, No Parking, Beware the Dog.

In the right hands, they can work wonders.”

Willard, Nancy. Water Walker. New York: Knopf, 1989.

Voice: Made from Eyes and Heart and Some Legos

midd

I was just reading Ann E. Michael’s blog post about voice and it got me thinking. She quotes Stanley Kunitz, who thought images from childhood were a key part of voice, but I am not completely convinced. I feel like I did not find an outer landscape that matched my inner landscape until I went to college in Vermont. If I were to write with my childhood imagery, there would be a lot more fireflies and dragonflies in my writing, more lilacs and sunflowers, small islands in the center of small lakes, and cloud animals.

Instead, I have a deep love of the passing seasons, the colors of mountains changing as the color of the trees changes, rolling hills, flashing waterfalls, and somewhere a cow or two hanging out. Living in Japan also affected my poetry strongly. The Japanese often represent the seasons in their visual arts and literature. And I think the complex process of translation that is living in a very different culture also changed the way I hear my voice. Also, the moon: there is a famous Japanese poem written while the poet was working in China as a sort of ambassador and missed his wife, something like how we all walk beneath the same moon. I still find that comforting and I think that is why the moon comes up often in my poetry.

One of the interesting things I have learned from studying singing is that I can feel where my voice is in my body. The high parts resonate in the head and the low parts resonate in the chest. It seems to me very important to remember that we write from the body. It is not enough to have a brain and hands.

And of course part of voice/style is always going to be technical, how you put the words together in a way that conveys your personal music. You keep rearranging the parts until it comes together the way you want it.

lego_yellow3-6001-522x442

Writing about Food

Dramatic_Woodchuck_by_HankaBanka

Back in the 1990s, when I taught creative writing in Northeastern University’s old night school, I found similar problems with the poetry and the autobiography students: cliché and vagueness. The poets wrote things that sounded like bad pop love songs and the autobiographers covered large swaths of time with things like, “I would go to school and then I would come home and after I would do my homework, I would go out with my boyfriend…”

Q: How much would would a wouldchuck chuck if a wouldchuck could chuck would? A: None. Smart Writer Woodchucks use simpler tenses and more riveting detail.

To solve this dilemma, I had both classes write about food before they took on any other topic (and, following the advice of a colleague, I said they were not allowed to write about Love until they had earned it). Food is a great topic for a few reasons. Everybody eats, everybody has an emotional connection to food (both positive and negative), and food stimulates not just the visual sense, but also the smell, taste and tactile senses. It is the perfect topic.

During these years, the English department of the night school sponsored an April poetry reading every year to showcase the teaching poets in honor of National Poetry month. One year I read a poem I had written about a tomato, sunning itself on my windowsill like a Buddha.

After the reading, a student came up to me goggle-eyed, and said, “I am never going look at tomatoes the same way again!”

Without thinking, I said, “That is the whole purpose of poetry.”

And the more I have thought about it, lo these many years, the more I believe I was right.

Tomato-on-Windowsill