World Class Poetry Blog

Poetry and dance marry up for a unique performance.

Cheerios to donate childrens books.

The Georgia Review wins.

Love, American style.

Telling stories at 100.

On Luna Park.

My poet can beat up your poet.

How to turn a newspaper into a poem.

Shel Silverstein has a nephew?

Those young’uns have no sense of culture.

Five lessons for poets - from Henry Rollins, no less.

Conjunctions.

All Girls’ School.

My regular readers know that I spent 12 months in Iraq in 2005. In September of that year I took a 15-day R&R leave and met my wife in Frankfurt, Germany. We toured the country by train. During that trip I managed to kick out a handful of poems based on the experience and put them into a chapbook titled Going Dutch.

You can get a preview of Going Dutch at World Class Poetry. You’ll love the video of me reading the poem “Siege” from that collection.

But before you go and watch the video, here’s a little note on the cover photo used for Going Dutch:

That’s me standing in the center of the photo looking like an idiot (those are my wife’s words). The funny thing is she made me stand there for five minutes without telling me she had taken the photo and when I finally asked her to take it already she told me, “I took it five minutes ago. I just wanted to see you standing there looking like an idiot!” I felt like an idiot.

Wives can be so cruel. What can you do?

If you’re wondering whose bust that is over my head, it’s the poet Goethe. He has quite a history with the Heidelberg Castle where this photo was taken. I chose this photo for the cover of Going Dutch for its metaphorical qualities. No. 1, Goethe represents German literary excellence, which goes along well with the theme of the chapbook. But if you’ll look at the other two persons in the photo, they are both moving in the opposite direction; in a sense, they are “going dutch.”

I don’t know who those men are. They just showed up in the photo and I thought it made sense and seemed to fit in with the Going Dutch theme. A sort of “synchronicity.”

Before, I was offering Going Dutch as a poetry chapbook in electronic download for $3. But I’ve reduced the price. You can get the .pdf download for just $1.49, or if you’d prefer the print copy, which sells fairly well at open mic readings, then you can get it mailed to you for $3 plus postage. That’s a good deal. Feel free to drop by and watch the video of “Siege” and if you want a real Going Dutch experience, invest in the chapbook as well.

Have you ever sat in a poetry reading after signing up to read and deciding mid-way through that you just didn’t feel like reading? That happened to me tonight. I don’t know why. It could have been the heat or it could have just been a fickle feeling of gloom. But I waited and waited and waited and the reading spirit didn’t urge. I finally did allow myself to read, however. I was the last reader in the open mic period and wouldn’t you know that after the reading I received the most sincere compliment from someone who had never heard me read before. And I had read two poems that I had never read in public before. Both were poems that are included in the book I am revising, Rumsfeld’s Sandbox (working title), all poems I wrote while in Iraq in 2005. It just goes to show that reading is not always for me.

On a side note, the featured reader was a friend of mine and a local poet I admire, Rebecca Gonzalez. Rebecca is promoting a new book, Sonata for Rain, which I will be reviewing, but for now I’d just like to sing a word of praise. Sonata for Rain is published by Iris G. Press, who introduced me to the work of Jeff Rath.

Becca is a Pushcart nominee, which is impressive on its own, but if you’ve heard her read a poem out loud, her sensitivity to language and rhythm are incredible. She is fluent in two languages and the beauty of her lyrics in both is astounding. I am looking forward to getting lost in Sonata for Rain and bringing it to my readers.

Here’s an interesting project, and a revolutionary way to market poetry. What do you think?

Here’s a bird poetry contest.

Speaking of birds, meet Amy Clampitt.

Poet Laureate Charles Simic’s swan song.

Gary Snyder wins $100,000 poetry prize.

More on birds:

How about loons?

This week I’ve published a review of Variations on a Natural Theme: A Loon Year by Hugh Hennedy. Here’s a poem from the selection (you can read another one in the review):

On the Surface Loon
In no apparent hurry
To dive out of it
He rides and bobs in sun

Standing now he bathes
Wings spread wide for balance
His white breast in air

Sometimes, a religious poem isn’t a religious poem at all. It can strike a particular anti-religious feel, or take a stand against a particular religious dogma. Such is the case with today’s religious poem.

Diane Lockward takes a hard stand against the traditional Biblical understanding of the Genesis account of Eve’s deception and Adam’s sin. The great forbidden fruit that led to the Fall of Man is the issue. And she is quite hard in making her point, which is the mark of the effectiveness of the poem.

In her poem “Eve Argues Against Perfection,” Diane Lockward makes us confront our own beliefs about this ancient legendary tale, and the epigraph is quite fitting as well:

                              And the woman said, The serpent
                              beguiled me, and I did eat.
                                                –Genesis 3:13


Beguiled, my ass. I said no such thing.
You say I lost the gift of Paradise.
I couldn’t lose what I never had.

You say the serpent tempted me to eat.
You omit that he entered the Garden
on two legs and walked like a man.

And here’s what your story always ignores:
I had pure gold, rare perfume, precious stones,
but Adam hadn’t touched me all those years.

Perfection in the Garden didn’t mean that way.
Not having it and not wanting it
was God’s idea of perfection, not mine.

So when that serpent strolled up to the tree,
all upright and fine, he threw off the balance,
and I began to pray, Oh let him be mine.

When he held out the apple, so round and lush,
when he stroked it to a keen red glow,
I didn’t fall to temptation - I rose to it.

Beautiful!

I like the way Diane Lockward executes her blasphemous extended finger to God. The poem starts off strong, “Beguiled, my ass.” Perfect start for an anti-religious testament to womanish idolatry. Then the poet immediately jumps into her denial of having said that. What more could we expect?

The final line sums up the rest of the poem succinctly and in perfect brevity. Temptation wasn’t a fall at all. It was a rise to the occasion. In other words, someone had to do it; why not me?

Diane Lockward’s poem, “Eve Argues Against Perfection,” is available in her book titled Eve’s Red Dress. And, by the way, it’s a fabulous read through and through!

If you haven’t noticed by now, many of the religious poems in this National Poetry Month series are poems that are not religious in the strict sense word. Rather, they are religious in the broad philosophical meaning of the word “religious.” What I mean is, they inextricably advance a worldview that is tied to a particular religion or allude to a religious philosophy through imagery or language. “Because We Are Water” by Brian Michael Tracy is such a poem.

I could have chosen one of several poems from Driving With Dante to be the religious poem of the day. Upon reading this chapbook from a versatile and creative poet, the logical and most obvious choice would have been “Visions of Saint George.” But I am not very fond of the obvious. I prefer subtlety in most cases and when subtlety isn’t proper, a good swift kick in the … well, let’s just leave it at subtlety.

“Because We Are Water” is about as subtle as you can get. It fits in with Brian Michael Tracy’s meditative tradition of yoga, which he is well into. All through Driving With Dante, you can see hints of Brian’s philosophy, the Eastern notion that nature is truth, truth is beauty, and beauty is nature’s song.

There is a universality to Driving With Dante, and even more so to “Because We Are Water.” That’s why I have chosen it as today’s religious poem. It may not be overtly religious, but it is religious in the philosophical sense. It is religious in the sense that Man is nature and nature was made for Man. “Because We Are Water” speaks volumes and in the molecules of the ocean, if you pay attention enough, you can see your own sweet reflection.

Because We Are Water

Out on the horizon you can see the waves.
They play with one another as brother and sister
conceived from the same watery womb.
Once at shore they close their eyes and fall
leaving passion and foam behind for the others,
those running in polka dot suits
blue shovels in hand
knees and toes in mud
running at the waves and their rhythm
their coming and going
going and coming
at their feet    beyond their feet
then back again.

Standing knee deep in its clammy calm
with their polka dots and blue shovels
they seem to understand the ocean's ardent returns
for they themselves are water
because they too feel the pull of the tides,
they too shall be forever caught
between the seduction of the horizon
and a strange devotion to shore.

Read a full review of Driving With Dante or buy the book from Amazon.com.

When I first read Thirst by Patrick Carrington, I was blown away. His verse is free, but tight. The images, the language, the spirit, it all flows like a fountain of holy water. I’m not sure what the state of his soul his, but I can take a guess at his background based on his poems. There are gems in Thirst. Lots of them. “First Lessons In Grace” is just one of those. And I love the lines

like that gang at the sacred supper
that hung from our dining room wall.

First Lessons In Grace

One night in a red pool, or purple
maybe, it was over. It all seemed
so quick and simple. Dusk, death.
And later, even forgiveness.

A priest took the bottle from father’s
clutching hand. With the sign
of the cross, he eyed the ceiling
as if watching the ghost of his project
rise and seep into heaven
through cracks in the plaster.

I had always thought it complicated,
becoming holy. In the end, perhaps
whiskers and wine are all you need,
like that gang at the sacred supper
that hung from our dining room wall.
Maybe that’s why daddy buried
his razors and uncorked the port,
because he understood salvation. But

I think the ticket to forever might be more
along the lines of an ample supply
of 100-watt bulbs, the sheer volume
of light to discern differences -
grin from grimace,
venial from mortal,
tonight from the rest of your life.

I’m sure I could use that improved
discrimination. Of aura, of sin,
the weight of sudden change.
Even something as simple as color.
I question whether the drops
of a bleeding heart are really red

at all. That night, they looked more
burgundy in the uncertainties
of sundown, like the wine bruises
he gave my mother, still clear as
her arm tensed in a cloud of smoke.

Thirst is easily the best chapbook of poems I’ve read all year and poems like “First Lessons In Grace” are the reason why. Every poem in the chapbook is that good. Some are better. None of any less crafted. Patrick Carrington takes religious poetry to a new level. In fact, the poems are so full of poetic craft that it is a sin to refer to them as religious for they are much loftier than that and deserve much more divine love.

Some print-on-demand publishers are upset with an Amazon.com policy that will require them to use BookSurge, owned by Amazon.com, as their printer or lose the privilege of selling through the online reseller. That sucks!

The issue isn’t so much that these publishers won’t be able to do business through Amazon.com. They will be. But they will have to jump through hoops to do it and there may be some missed opportunities along the way. That doesn’t bode well for the POD market because most POD publishers are self-publishing authors or small publishing houses. That effectively makes Amazon.com a bully.

Now, as an economic conservative, I believe Amazon.com has a right to run its business anyway it wants, and I’m sure Bezos and Gang believe that this policy will mean more business for BookSurge. The truth is, it may lead to more business for the online printer, but it likely will also lead to more resentment among POD publishers and that will lead to the niche market players seeking healthy alternatives. Will they be able to find them?

Many poets and small presses operate through POD. That means, if they want to sell through Amazon.com then they will have to play the Amazon.com game. Otherwise, they’ll be left out in the cold. Since Amazon.com is the largest online bookseller (and the most successful to date), that makes it a rather difficult decision. It’s no wonder POD publishers feel as if their hands are being tied. That’s because they are.

POD publishers will still be allowed, under the policy, to sell their books through the Amazon.com Advantage program, which is for third-party sellers. You offer your book for sell, Amazon takes the order but never touches the product. Instead, they notify you of the sell and you ship directly to the customer. Not bad, but having Amazon handle the full process can be a satisfaction in itself for publishers who do it on their own.

It’s going to be interesting to see how this plays out in the long run - for Amazon and for POD publishers. Personally, I’m cheering for the small guys.

Here’s a nice review of Larry Woiwode’s poetic memoir.

Kudos to Deborah Ager for finding this video of Galway Kinnell reading “Black Milk of Daybreak”.

But what’s up with this cameraman?

Yes, I believe poetry videos are the future, but I believe they must be much more creative than some guy standing on a stage reading from a book. How about some interpretive moving images?

Oh, and can you imagine that Bukowski’s books are the most stolen from bookstores? Tragic, but funny.

If you like reading reviews of poetry books, I just had a review published at Rattle, my favorite journal by far. I reviewed a book by Patrick Carrington. The title is Thirst.

The first paragraph of the review reads:

Rarely does a poet glow with grace on every page, but Patrick Carrington is no every day poet. Carrington won the Codhill Poetry Chapbook Prize for 2006. In 2007, Thirst burst forth a tall glass of water. Cool, refreshing, clear as cubes of ice.

To read the entire review, click here, go to Rattle.