World Class Poetry Blog

I waited a long time before I decided to publish this review of 100 Sonnets. Honestly, I really hate to write negative reviews. But I felt like it was an honor issue. The poet sent the book expecting a review. He put out an expense in doing so - in giving away a free copy and in mailing costs. The least I could do was to give my honest opinion.

Some publications will not publish negative reviews. I, however, believe that negative reviews serve a worthwhile purpose. For one thing, an insightful poet can read the review and learn a thing or two - not necessarily the poet being reviewed, but any poet reading the review. If anything, a good negative review (I’m not saying my reviews are any good) can cast some light on the subject of poetics and lead readers to a deeper understanding of the issues that poets have to deal with when crafting their poems. And if that leads to better poetry being written overall then I say bring on the negative reviews in droves.

Still, I’d much rather write positive reviews. Even middle-of-the-road reviews.

Why I Offer To Write Book Reviews
I initially offered to write poetry book reviews because I wanted to share insights into poetic philosophy with my readers. I believe there isn’t enough honest discussion about poetics, particularly among independent poets who publish their own work. I thought, when I started reviewing books, that most of my reviews would end up being of independently published authors, and I was right. I was hoping they’d end up being better poets. But one doesn’t always get what one asks for.

Occasionally, however, I do find that rare gem of a poetry book that I love to tell people about. And that’s why I write reviews.

For instance, Jeff Rath’s The Waiting Room at the End of the World is one such book, though it isn’t a book of sonnets nor is it self published. Patrick Carrington’s Thirst is another book (actually, a chapbook) of non-sonnets I can recommend.

As for books of sonnets, The Poets Don’t Write Sonnets Anymore by Robin Ridington is an excellent book I don’t mind recommending, not so much for the poetry, but for the commentary that goes along with it.

I wouldn’t exactly call Ridington’s sonnets “sucky”. But they don’t make me kick my heels together either. Nevertheless, I loved reading the commentary/memoir mixed with thoughts on a myriad of topics important to Ridington that encompassed the poems. I think Ridington did well in putting together his book of sonnets and prose lead-ins. It’s a great book if not great poetry.

One Sonneteer I’d Recommend For The Poems
Truth be told, the sonnet is not exactly my favorite form. I’ve never been really good at writing them myself. That may be because I just haven’t taken the time to honestly practice the form. There are other forms I’ve done well with because of the practice. But the sonnet isn’t one of them.

Still, I love reading a good sonnet when I find one. And one person who writes sonnets that I think are just golden is a poet by the name of Barry Ballard.

Barry Ballard’s Green Tombs To Jupiter is an amazing collection of Petrarchan sonnets written in blank verse. They cover a wide range of topics, but they remind me of the metaphysical poets, only they deal with subject matter from the late 20th century, subjects that John Donne would not have imagined.

I used to read with Barry in Fort Worth, Texas when I lived down there. His delivery is as astounding as his pen and that’s another reason I’d recommend his poetry. I don’t know why his book sells for $173.91 at Amazon. That must be a typo, but it is definitely worth a read if you can get it for less.

If you’re going to write sonnets, it helps to read a few from classical and contemporary poets who write them well. Barry Ballard should be on your reading list.

I just wrapped up the finishing touches on the longest poem I’ve ever written. I’ve been tinkering with it now for about three years, off and on. Some of that time has been spent ruminating, not writing, which is still writing.

It’s the kind of poem that some people will read and say is too wordy. But they fail to see the form for what it is. I’m not sure I can describe it adequately. You could call it an epic burlesque and that would be accurate. But I hesitate to use the word “burlesque” as you might get the wrong idea.

At 2,568 words, the poem stands at 524 lines. Not a bad clip, and from beginning to end it reaches to nearly 12-1/2 pages on 8 1/2 X 11. Certainly not a Canterbury Tales and no Homerian apple pie, but a long poem nonetheless.

So What Took So Long?
One may be wondering why it took so long to complete the poem. It’s a good question. I couldn’t tell you how many hours that is in real time. If one asks a pilot how long he’s been flying you might get an answer like “35 years”. Well, we all know that his 35 years didn’t consist of continuous flying. He slept, spent time with the family, golfed, traveled as a passenger a few times, and likely drove a car a number of times as well. He may have only actually put in 10,000 miles hours of flying time over the course of that 35 years.

This is how poems are written. A poet who has been writing for 20 years may spend 10,000 hours of writing time penning hundreds or thousands of short poems or may spend that time writing a few long ones. I guess I’ve done both. But “The Sandbox” is the longest to date.

How I Know It’s Finished
I suppose I could go on revising. It is really easy to find a few imperfections, and the longer the poem the more of those there will be, but this poem says what I needed it to say and says it in all the ways I intended for it to be said - and then some. There were elements that I’d planned and I worked on until I got them right, then there were those I hadn’t thought of that just fell into place. Que sera, sera.

The poem started out - if you saw my first draft you’d say it was a different poem altogether - in a completely different form. It was rather contrived. But I allowed myself to break out of the “planned” version and to just let the poem work itself into what it wanted to be, so to speak. I think that is the best way to go about writing anyhow. But when I did that the poem took off in unexpected directions. Sometimes those new directions were compelling and interesting and other times they were mere distractions. But after countless hours of revising, ruminating, regurgitating, scrapping, taking things out, putting things in, taking back out and putting back in, I’ve finally arrived at a stopping point. The end is here. How do I know?

I’m reasonably sure I can take nothing out and improve it. If I put anything else in I’ll ruin it. The poem says what it needs to say. Nothing more. Everything I wanted in it is in it. What didn’t need to be in it has been removed. Is it perfect? Likely not. But I feel it. I’m satisfied.

To me, the end of the poem is intuitive. I feel it in my gut. It’s done. Now it’s time to start marketing.

Guest Post:

By Elizabeth Kirschner

This is what I’ve been up to lately, mentoring poets of all ages and stages through a program called: Wise Eye: Creating Poetry That Soars. In this way I become the student of words that are not my own while seeking to kindle passion in those who bring poems to me. I believe, after writing for some thirty-five years, in Eugene Montale’s dictum, “that genius is one long passion” and that the harvest which comes from cultivating that passion is rich indeed.

As mentor I must teach other lovers of the poem to let it have, as Juan Ramon Jimenez insists, both roots and wings. These roots must have wings and the wings must have roots. A good poem levitates just above the page with lines that delicately delineate its root system thus letting the words fly in. That’s when it sings. A paradox then, the poem is silence that sings.

I also think that poems are embodiments of soul and our souls need to be in motion in order to cause movement, a waltz of words across the page. Roots and wings, song and dance, all done via the scripture of language. This scripture can be taught, must be taught because the illusion of poetry is to make it look effortless and sound like natural speech. This does not come naturally. Thoroughly crafted entities, simple or ornate, all poems are little houses of prayer.

Poets are the givers of attention to the least of things: moths flying into the flame, tiny mirrors reflecting deep, deep waters. I awoke last night thinking about what I deem as the articulate detail, one that speaks within and beyond itself. Details are fireflies alighting on the tip of our tongues. Thing-ness is all-ness and the difference between statement and implication is a crucial one to understand.

This, too, does not come naturally to the poet. Detail enlarged into image enlarged into metaphor takes mega-power. Plath called poems “monuments to the moment.” Those monuments are not abstractions, but intuited by the senses as they are what make the universe tangible.

I know I can help other poets create their own wings without neglecting the need to be rooted. Simone Weil wrote, “to be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the soul.” Yes, yes, indeed. As one little girl stated, “silence reminds me to take my soul with me wherever I go.” Soul-traveling then sets the poem in motion.

The white space surrounding our words is, ultimately, our piece of sky to soar in and may it be heavenly. These words are very near us. They are in our mouths and in the roots of our heartstrings. Let us tug and pluck, sing and flap like fledglings into the proper dwelling each poem mitigates. In essence, we are all writing God’s poem created by roots that fly and wings that take root in the forever fecund field of the pure, white page.

Author Bio: Elizabeth Kirschner has published three books of poetry, Twenty Colors, Postal Routes and Slow Risen Among the Smoke Trees, all by Carnegie-Mellon University Press. In addition, she has a CD released by Albany Records with her own poetry set to Robert Schumann’s Dichterliebe, now titled The Dichterliebe in Four Seasons. She’s now participating in a WOW Blog Tour with her latest book. My Life as a Doll is a survivor’s tale, a memoir in verse about child abuse, madness and recovery. To learn more about Elizabeth’s work, visit www.elizabethkirschner.com, and for upcoming dates on her blog tour visit www.wow-womenonwriting.com/blog.

For the last week I’ve been frustrated. I’ve tried to publish the May 2009 issue of my Twitter poems chapbook, but I’ve been running into some challenges that have held up the process.

For starters, I bought a new laptop, an Acer AspireOne. It’s a tiny little Ferrari of a laptop, but it really is a cool toy. But of course, Microsoft and Acer have teamed up to force me to purchase Microsoft Office or be relegated to using it the complimentary X number of times and be without. I downloaded OpenOffice instead, the committed cheap ass bastard that I am.

I spent three days trying to figure out how to convert from OpenOffice to .pdf. I couldn’t do it. My .pdf converter doesn’t recognize OpenOffice files and won’t convert text files properly. Nor would it work correctly with Microsoft Word 2007, which is the format I was saving my OpenOffice files in. I finally had to save it in MS Word 2003 then go to my desktop computer, which I gave to my six year old so he could play his games on, and open the document in Word to convert it to .pdf.

I thought that had solved all my problems. I didn’t.

It took me another two days to figure out why the .pdf converter was melding every document I’ve converted to date into one file. At first I didn’t recognize that was what was happening. The front cover of the .pdf document was the cover of HardSoftwood.

After scratching my head for a couple of days it finally dawned on me that I had used the combine documents feature of my .pdf converter on the HardSoftwood project and never turned it off. Duh! So besides being a cheap ass bastard I am now a dumb ass bastard. Two for one.

At any rate, long story short, I fixed that issue and now am ready to present to you the 13-page chapbook titled Twitpoems. You can download it for free with the World Class Poetry Toolbar.

There’s another top (whatever list). This time it’s the top 10 poetry books. Followed by the top 10 20th century collections.

Honestly, I agree with Leaves of Grass (though I might put that one in the top 3) and Lyrical Ballads. But those are just my preferences. Again, we’ve got a list that makes proclamations without any defense whatsoever.

It is really difficult to make a list like this because what’s the criteria? Who’s to judge? I’m sure we’d all have our favorites but there should be some kind of across-the-board criteria for disqualifying certain works on an objective basis. Bear in mind that I’m using the word ‘objective’ rather loosely. There is no true objective in judging a creative work.

For instance, if we said we were going to only pick poets who were not living then we’d disqualify Seamus Heaney. His work is fine (I like his poetry), but he can’t be included because his work hasn’t met the time standard. He may eventually be as canonized as Shakespeare or Pope, but until several generations have passed he is merely a hopeful and therefore should be left out of the running.

Another way to judge could be to leave out any work that is not yet in the public domain. That would disqualify Philip Larkin. Fine poet. But should he have anything listed in the top 10 of all time? Possibly. But who’s to say?

I’m merely making suggestions. The criteria could be something else entirely. One could say by judging from the list that the person making the call on this one has already made exclusions, but we haven’t been told why. This particular list is exclusive of any Eastern poets. Where’s Basho? Rumi? Tagore? Were they considered?

How about the avant-gardeists? They don’t appear to be represented either. It seems the author of this list has an unspoken rule about them as well. Perhaps we’re only talking about poets of the English canon and their descendants.

We don’t know. All we have is a list with no defense. No criteria, either subjective or objective. Just a proclamation. And that’s the problem with most lists of this nature.

My question to you is this: How would you judge such a list? What criteria would you impose on a list that promised to name the top 10 (50, 100, ?) poetry books in history? Would you draw a line somewhere? Where?

From time to time I get another publication to submit its name to the World Class Poetry Publications list. The latest of these is Lilluput Review.

I have been letting publications submit themselves to the list rather than go out and actively recruit them, but this is a list I’d like to grow faster. What do you think? Should I be more aggressive in growing this list or keep it the way it is and let publications submit themselves without any prompting?

Quick announcement: Hyperbole e-zine/newsletter is now accepting submissions for free classifieds.

Have you subscribed?

While browsing this afternoon I happened upon an article that supposedly was written to teach people how to write an epic poem. Seriously, it made me laugh. Just before it made me croak.

eHow has grown into quite a successful website, with short how-to articles on just about everything. And nearly all of them that I have read have been as ridiculous as the one on How To Write An Epic Poem.

This is the kind of article that causes me to wonder who can sleep at night knowing they’ve created such a production. I’d imagine it could be one of those freelance writers who end up writing gag lines for the opening monologues of late night talk show hosts. But I could be wrong.

The opening paragraph attempts to define epic poem, but rests its epic laurels on the classic definition all the way down to the obligatory chain mail gauntlet:

An epic poem is a long narrative centering around a single hero, presenting his or her adventures within a suitably heroic framework. An epic hero is usually a person of great strength, wit or skill whose adventures usually contribute to the development of a particular race or nation.

Not bad. If you accept that what you learned in high school English is the gospel truth. And the folks at About.com don’t do any better:

Definition: A long and highly stylized narrative poem celebrating the heroic achievements of its hero. Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey are usually regarded as the first important epic poems and are considered to define the form.
Examples: The most important epic poem written in English is “Paradise Lost” by John Milton.

Who defines “most important?” What are the criteria for such a distinction?

But let’s get back to eHow. The humorous anecdote about your dog Champ is an obvious literary device meant to make the post more interesting to the eight year olds who will take this article at face value. The writer quickly advises would-be epic writers to “invoke the Muse”.

Huh? Come again?

I’m not going to give a play by play of eHow’s silliness, but I believe this sage advice is at least 300 years old or so.

Say Good-Bye To Deus Ex Machina
I’m willing to accept that the Muse, as used in this eHow article, may be another literary device. But probably not. Anyone who advises to praise the Muse then ask her “to aid you in the writing of your poem” is probably more into sackcloth and ashes than hyperbole and irony. And given the attempt to bring Champ into it and the final hail mary wisdom of asking the gods to intervene, well, this article doesn’t really inspire me.

I will say that the concepts of in media res and building a framework for your narrative are solid advice on building plot, which is a necessary component for any work of narrative literature, poetry or prose. Particularly if the work purports to be epic. Even then, some contemporary authors have managed to dispense with plot and focus on other storytelling elements.

The real wrinkle in this quilt are the final two bits of how-to ankle wash -

Confront your hero with dangerous monsters and other incredible adventures. Include vivid and explicit descriptions of warfare (particularly weapons and combat).

and

Use the supernatural to get your protagonist out of tough situations. If your hero or heroine is in a no-win situation, simply send in a god or goddess to help out at the last moment.

While I admit that lightsabers and big gorillas with godzilla complexes can be entertaining, those elements are not necessary for a compelling epic. The article misses a whole range of epic devices that can be deployed apart from the traditional storytelling techniques, and the ancient ones, this author encourages.

Nevertheless, the worst advice of all is the idea that a divine interventionist should come to the rescue. Not in this curtain call.

In contemporary literature, it’s typically best to leave Deity out of it unless it is done as characterization to show the state of mind of the players involved. Sure, there may be exceptions to that rule, but serious epic writers have not used deus ex machina for ages and we can thank the Holy Trinitarian God for that.

If you’ve been waiting to get your free copy of Gary B. Fitzgerald’s digital chapbook HardSoftwood then now is your chance. It is available for download right now.

HardSoftwood can best be described as a dual chapbook - two chapbooks in one. Each section features a selection of poems from two of Gary B. Fitzgerald’s books Hardwood and Softwood. The digital chapbook gives you a chance to preview Gary’s poems before buying his books.

HardSoftwood is the first chapbook in the World Class Poetry Promotional Chapbook Series. Designed to help poets promote their books in print, each chapbook will present a small selection from the poet’s published book of poems and provide a link for readers to purchase the book if they like what they read. All the chapbooks will be free downloads.

If you are a poet and think you might be interested in having your published book of poems promoted in this manner then read our submission guidelines and send us your published book for review.

If you enjoy good poetry and just want to experience Gary B. Fitzgerald’s poems then I invite you to download his dual chapbook HardSoftwood for free.

Went on a 4-day vacation to enjoy my youngest step-daughter’s high school graduation in my home state of Texas. When I returned I found a notice that I’d been included in a list of the top 100 poetry blogs.

Flattered and honored, I can’t help but note the subjectiveness of such lists, which is why I seldom do them. One poet’s top 100 is another poet’s bottom feeder net. But I do say I am in some good company.

Other poetry blogs that made the list include:

• Ted Kooser’s American Life In Poetry at No. 2
• Harriet: The Blog (The Poetry Foundation) at No. 4
• Read Write Poem at No. 9
• DIY Publishing at No. 15
• Poetry Hut at No. 16
• 32 Poems Magazine at No. 20
• Paul Hoover at No. 23
• Silliman at No. 25
• One Poet’s Notes at No. 32
• Very Like A Whale at No. 41
• Mark Doty at No. 50
• Mike Snider at No. 52
• PoemShape at No. 72
• Jack Prelutsky at No. 80

While I’d order these blogs in a much different way, I do agree with most of the selections. There are some irritations with this list, however.

For starters, Harriet is not a blogger. It’s the name of The Poetry Foundation’s blog and is written by a team of contributors. University Reviews Online could have done a little more homework. MetaCafe and WCBN-FM are not poetry blogs. While they include poetry videos and programming as a part of their public offerings, it’s a stretch to call them poetry blogs. While I appreciate the intent in including them on the list I’d much rather see blogs like Robert Lee Brewer’s, a real poetry blog, make the list. And I’m saddened by the absence of The Kenyon Review’s and Ploughshare’s blogs.

Nevertheless, I’m honored to be listed among the 100. Any idea where I fall? Not that it matters, but right behind Poetry Hound at position No. 29.

BTW, many of the blogs on this list can be read through the World Class Poetry Toolbar.

And if you’re interested, there’s a new book review at WCP. Ever wanted to learn how to make a living as a poet?