If you’re a fan of former U.S. poet laureate Billy Collins then you’ll like these videos. I’ve seen hundreds of poetry videos online and none come close to the quality and originality of Billy Collins’ animated poetry videos. And I’m not a huge fan of Billy Collins poetry.

I like his videos because they are high quality productions that are more than just a man standing at a microphone reading from a book. There may be a place for that, but in my mind a quality poetry video must have some element of visual aesthetic that adds to the poetic experience beyond the written and oral delivery of the poem. Billy Collins provides that in just about all of his videos, but particularly in his animated poetry videos.

The four poems represented by Billy Collins at World Class Poetry are:

• Forgetfulness
• The Dead
• The Country
• Sweet Talk

I hope you’ll take some time to enjoy these videos from former poet laureate Billy Collins.

Should you enroll in an MFA program?

Google Books Saved My Soul
I love Google. Most people are entirely unaware of Google’s super powers, among them the ability to locate a book anywhere in the world and help you get it sent to you at your local library. Here’s how I did it (and how you can do it too). NOTE: You have to be a member of your local library. It’s free.

1. Go to Google Books.
2. Search for the book you want by title or keyword. You can do this in one of two ways. You can type the title or keyword into the search box and click the search button or you can click a genre link in the left sidebar and search that way. Example: I clicked on the Poetry link and typed in “Komunyakaa”. Google showed me two links asking me if I wanted books by or about Komunyakaa. I clicked “by”. A list of book covers appeared. I clicked on the “Cien Cai Dau” cover.
3. This is where it gets incredible. Google Books has a sampling of the contents of the book that I can read through, but it doesn’t give me access to the entire book. There are links in the right sidebar that allow me to learn more about the book, search the table of contents, write a review, or add it to my personal library. I’ll add the book to my library. I can also search the book, buy the book from one of the bookstore links just below the search box on the right, or find it in a library.
4. Click the “Find this book in a library” link.
5. You will now be transported to another website: www.worldcat.org. You should be looking at what appears to be a digital version of a card catalog. That’s precisely what it is. You should see the name of the book, the author’s name, publisher’s information, ISBN, and some other information. Below that, you’ll see a search box asking for your location. Type in your city, state, or country, and click “Go”. You’ll get a list of libraries that carry the book.
6. Being that I’m in Adams County, Pa., the book I’m looking for is located in Carlisle, one county over, so it’s fairly close. Click the link to the library that you are interested in getting the book from. You’ll be transported to another page within WorldCat to show whether or not your book is available. If it isn’t available, hit the Back button on your browser and click another library. Repeat that step until you find the book available.
7. Good, my book is available at Dickinson College. I’ve ordered books from Penn State this way. It works like a charm. Now, this is where the ordering process will vary depending on your local library system. In Adams County, Pa., we have a county-wide system. In DFW, Texas the library system is set up as a city-wide system. If I’m ordering a book from within Adams or York County then I have a localized way of performing an interlibrary loan, but if I go outside of these two counties then I have to use the statewide system. It looks like that’s what I’ll have to do. You need to find out what the interlibrary loan policy is at your local library and what the process is for ordering books that way. Some libraries may let you do it yourself from their website. Others may require you to make a phone call or to visit the library in person. Either way, you need a library card. Once you find out what your library’s process is for making an interlibrary loan you’ll have to provide them with the information to get the book you want. Here’s what you should have at hand:
   • The name of the book
   • The author’s name
   • Publisher
   • Card catalog number
   • ISBN
   • Where you found the book, as in which specific library

   The more information you have about the book you want to order, the easier it will be on the librarian, or the electronic system, to help you find it.

8. And that’s about it. Now you wait.

It will probably take 2-6 weeks for you to get your book, depending on how far it has to travel to get back to you. It will be clearly marked as an interlibrary loan and you’ll have to keep the paper marker that comes with the book and the book together. That way, when you return the book to your local library they will be able to get it back to its home library much easier.

See, isn’t Google Books wonderful?

P.S. OK, you got me. You can just search WorldCat directly and bypass Google Books, but I figured I’d take you the scenic route.

If we can say that the poet laureate position is a reflection of the soul of the nation then it begs the question: Why Kay Ryan? Why? Why? Why?

Who Appoints The Poet Laureate Anyway?
Billy Collins said the question he answered the most when he served as poet laureate was who appointed him. I think he actually said that he cleared up the notion that the president is the Appointer. Well, he may be the decider, but he doesn’t decide who is appointed to the poet laureate position. That honor is reserved for the Librarian of Congress.

But what difference does it matter who appoints the poet laureate? I think it matters a great deal because whoever does the appointing will undoubtedly bring to the table their own set of preferences and prejudices. I can’t imagine who the poet laureate might be if George W. Bush were president. Dr. Seuss? Dick Cheney’s cousin? That Greek guy, what’s his name?

Facetiousness aside, the current Librarian of Congress is Dr. James H. Billington. He was sworn in to that position in 1987. Born in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, he went on to graduate valedictorian of the 1960 Princeton graduating class. He received his doctorate from Oxford University where he was a Rhodes Scholar. He has taught at both Princeton and Harvard and was the director, for a time, at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. In addition to all of that, he has served on the editorial advisory boards for both Foreign Affairs and Theology Today. He is also currently on the Board of the Center for Theological Inquiry and is a member in good standing of the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In a word, he’s no intellectual lightweight.

All of these positions, past and present, serve to inform Dr. Billington on his poetic preferences as well as his obligated appointments. But who appoints him? Well, that would be the president of the United States, with the advice and consent of the Senate. And to answer your question before you ask it, No, G.W. had nothing to do with. Since Dr. Billington was appointed in 1987, it would have been the Gipper, Ronald “Trickle Down” Reagan.

While there is no term length established for the position by law, it is tradition that the position be held by life, so there is no real pressure to lean in any direction politically. But you can be assured that tradition and history play a big role in the duties and decisions of the office, which of course, tend to be on the conservative side. No one in a traditional role in U.S. life would dare to stray too far from an honored tradition. That would be anathema to the sensibilities of the public spirit.

Poets Laureate Since 1987

Ron Silliman likes to point out that there has only been one poet laureate who wasn’t a member of Silliman’s pejoratively-monikered “School of Quietude” – the hero of postmodern poetics, William Carlos Williams. If I believed in the SofQ, I’d agree with him. Tradition and history seems to be the primary relation to almost all of the poets who have served in that capacity. I think we can count Amiri Baraka and Sharon Olds out of the running.

When Dr. Billington took over as Librarian of Congress, Robert Penn Warren was the poet laureate of the U.S. He was the first person to serve under that title, which had previously been called Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. He was appointed in 1986 and served through 1987. That would mean Dr. Billington’s first appointment would have been Richard Wilbur. He served for one year and was replaced by Howard Nemerov, who served from 1988-1990. Both poets are firmly entrenched in the New Formalism school of poetics popularized by the current head of the NEA Dana Gioia and a few others. You can’t really get any more conservative than that.

Dr. Billington also appointed another New Formalist poet in 1992 by the name of Mona Van Duyn. After that, during the Clinton years, came a string of more liberal poets, but none of them were so liberal as to break completely with recognized traditions. Their politics may have been liberal, but their poetic philosophies were entrenched in historical traditions as recognized broadly by academics who would know.

In 2001, though, something happened. Dr. Billington began appointing a different type of poet to the position of poet laureate. The shift wasn’t a major shift. It wasn’t a shift in poetics per se, but a shift in focus. The first poet laureate to serve after the World Trade Center attack was Billy Collins, who has been likened to Robert Frost so many times you would think he was Frost’s only son. Collins was the first recipient of the Mark Twain Award for humorous poetry and has been an inspiration to thousands of other poets who aspire to be the Jerry Seinfeld of poetics. Collins was an uncanny instigator of a movement. Reading Collins’ poems is like sail boating with Bozo the Clown and his satirical other.

Following Collins, we have quite a slate of light verse operators who don’t really write in a strict, traditional “light verse”, but who tend to write in a witty style that is admired by people who don’t much care for the “heavier” topics like death, sexuality, and violence. Here are Collins’ successors:

• Louise Gluck – 2003-2004
• Ted Kooser – 2004-2006
• Donald Hall – 2006-2007
• Charles Simic – 2006-2007

I’m not sure if this trend has more to do with who our current president is or if it has more to do with the tragic consequence of our Federal government allowing a grab bag full of lunatics through the immigration loopholes. Maybe Dr. Billington just thought it was time for a laugh or maybe he chooses his poets laureate on the basis of some odd sort of reflection of the current presidential administration and the mood of the country. But each of these poets, except for Collins and Simic, and many of the previous ones, represent one of two subcultures within the macro-culture of America. They represent either the Ivy League set or the rural heartland. One of these cultures, the Ivy League, represents the part of America that is beyond reach of most Americans, but that also represents a shiny veneer of traditional values. The other represents that part of America that is accessible, but is raw and dirt-filled. Charles Simic is neither, but he has another problem.

When he was appointed to the poet laureate position, Charles Simic said that he didn’t need to promote poetry. Nevermind that is the chief responsibility of the poet laureate position. He felt it wasn’t necessary because he had attended a poetry reading with 740 attendees. Evidently, that was a large gathering for him. I recently read an interview with Sam Hamill who said he reads to audiences of 3,000 people. Maybe we should appoint him to be the poet laureate.

All of that aside, however, there is a strain of commonality among the poets selected for the poet laureate position: They have all been winners of either the Guggenheim Foundation fellowship or a National Endowment of the Arts fellowship and most of them have won both. Ryan also is the recipient of both fellowships. It’s almost as if these awards are precursors to the laureateship position, which would exclude many poets on the basis of style alone.

Simic may have been the most successful of all the poet laureates poets laureate. He sought to do nothing in that position and he accomplished his goal. The only thing that could have made him more representative of our presidential culture is for him to have worked extra hard to screw something up. But if the poet laureate position isn’t a reflection of who is in the highest office in the land then it at least is a reflection of the people who elect the highest ranking lawbreaker. The poet laureate may not be our soul, but he represents it like the flag represents freedom, only maybe more truthfully.

These Are Times That Try Men’s Souls – Not!

We live in a Billy Collins culture. There is a war going on, but in the heartland you wouldn’t know it. I read an article in my local newspaper a couple of weeks ago that said our president has taken more vacation days than any other president in history. The Great Decider, war hero, liberator of unappreciative sheepherders, Dick Gepetto’s wooden boy. And the rest of the country is smoking and joking, playing golf on Fridays, channel surfing in their underwear, and generally oblivious to anything going on outside of their living rooms. At least, they were until the beginning of this year when fuel prices started going up. Now, suddenly, they realize that it’s time to sell the SUV.

This it folks: America, land of the free and the brave. Only the brave believe that war anywhere and everywhere is necessary as long as someone else foots the bill and breaks a sweat. Who, me? Oh, no, I’m too good and important.

They may not be saying it, but they are thinking it and their actions reflect it. And this is the Simic mentality. We don’t need to promote poetry. Even if that’s what I’m supposed to do. It’ll promote itself. And the war will win itself. Just ask John McCain.

For all practical purposes, I don’t see the appointment of Kay Ryan being too far different from that of Billy Collins and Charles Simic. The string of soft poets known for their wit and traditional poetics that have followed on the heels of Collins, who is really a bit of a parody of himself much the same way that G.W. is. And here we are, arriving at the place where we choose an “outsider” who is both a lesbian and, seemingly, a poet just like all the others.

Kay Who?
Kay Ryan. Who is she? No one knows. Well, no one except a few of the enlightened ones – Dr. Billington, Dana Gioia, and Carol Adair, her lover.

Now let’s go ahead and get this out of the way: Her poetry is good. There’s no doubt. The little bit that I’ve read in the last week or so has been excellent. I like it. But that’s not what the poet laureate is about. We really don’t care if their poetry is good. We hope it is, but it isn’t necessary that it should be. Their position is a promotional position, to make poetry more accessible to the culture and try to get more people to read it. Plain and simple.

But is that all? I don’t think so. I think in a broader sense the position is symbolic. It’s symbolic of the heart of our culture. We are in election year – change. For the first time in history, an African-American is leading a major political party to the final race that will decide who is the most powerful elected leader in the world – change. And you can bet that one of the big issues of the next four year years, especially if Barack Obama is elected, will be the civil rights of homosexuals, and it’s not just one issue. It’s several issues: Gay marriage, gay adoption, openness in the military, and countless other derivative issues that may follow. Change. Big change. And who best to represent that change than “an outsider?”

One other thing that represents change in our culture is the position of Americans on the Iraq War. On the eve of the war in March 2003, most Americans were for it. The polls were something like 60%-70% in favor of it. Today, that figure is reversed. The only people still saying that the Iraq War was the right thing to do are die-hard Republicans who will never admit that they were wrong – and Joe Lieberman. But the rest of us know they were wrong, and some of us were wrong right along with them.

Change. That’s what Americans want right now. We are ready for change. And that’s what Kay Ryan represents, a change. Not a real change. But a symbolic change. A change we can live with. Maybe not the change that needs to happen, but the kind of change that we can negotiate and get a compromise on by some of the people who resist it.

In a real sense, the poet laureate is not a political position. But then, poetry cannot be apolitical. And neither can poets. In a real sense, the position is not political, but in a technical sense – in a soulful, hearty sense – the position is a symbol of our national politics and cultural values. While certain factions within our society have not accepted homosexuality as an acceptable lifestyle, most Americans are willing to accept it.

If Barack Obama is elected and the Democrats do get a chance to inflict an exit wound upon the conscience of Traditional Values America then who will be better than a lesbian poet to offer up the victory verses and sing a song of sixpence with her pocket full of wry? Dr. Billington certainly has his finger on the pulse of America and certain parts of it may be losing circulation, but I’m sure he didn’t select Kay Ryan for her sexual orientation, and likely not in spite of it. He likely never gave it a thought. He really didn’t have to. All he really had to do was look into the heart of America and take note of the direction into which it is leaning. He couldn’t have done better if he’d been reading tea leaves.

Actually, he took a play from one of my latest playbooks – the e-mail interview. He was quite good at it, especially the open ended part.

Michael Hoover is a columnist for the Hanover Evening Sun and he’s also the Hanover, Pa. poet laureate. He asked me to be a guest columnist and I agreed. This interview and rather interesting (if I say so myself) story is his way of introducing me. Honestly, if I didn’t know me a little better than I do, I’d say the person Hoover is writing about here is one damned interesting individual – at least, he sure made it seem that way. That’s the mark of a good interviewer.

Meet the fake Frank O’Hara.

Meet Ron Silliman’s clone (but don’t laugh).

Meet the new declinists.

Meet Kay Ryan’s travel agenda.

What’s going on at the National Mall in September.

The accountability of the artist.

Poetry tagged.

That’s all for now. Goodbye.

Tilt Press is looking for a few good poets.

What the blogosphere is saying about the new poet laureate, Kay Ryan. What Edward Byrne has to say. And Ron Silliman. Stay tuned. I’ll have some thoughts in the next few days.

An interview with David Biespiel.

Manufacturing America.

Obama and The New Yorker.

How about that Abalone Moon?

I hope ya’ll had a good weekend and I hope you’ll have an even better week.

Praise for Rattle’s visual poetry section.

NaPoReMo? Isn’t this really getting out of hand?

Why John Hewitt and I might have children together: Our firstborn will be named Blogging.

The rise and fall and rise of Longfellow.

Let’s hear it for the woman.

The Poe Museum in Richmond.

Is The Critic dead, or did he just say “fuck you” and leave?

Meet the poet laureate of Poetic Asides, Sara Diane Doyle.

Billy Childish, 3 poetry books published in one month.

How to change the world with a poem.

Naomi Shihab Nye says “Losing Bedrock Farm” is the perfect poem.

A fight between the literati ensues:

I’m disturbed by the notion of lit mags as “a preserve for the elite.” For one thing, that seems like the last place finisher who says he never really wanted to win anyway. It’s easy to justify your lack of success by saying you have smaller ambitions, but that just sounds like an excuse for mediocrity to me. But even if you’re going to set small goals, why make that goal “a preserve for the elite”? A preserve is just this side of a zoo, if you ask me, and I’d rather not accept my cage quite yet, if it’s all right with you. I’d rather run wild a bit longer with the people who prefer not to think of themselves as “the elite.” That’s too sanctimonious, too self-satisfied for my tastes. Elitists tend to like things the way they are. I’d prefer writers who have the power to imagine the world better than it is and the determination to use their talents and sweat to get even an inch closer to that ideal.

I agree with Ted Genoways on both points: Journalism is suited to any medium willing to put in the hours and the sweat necessary to produce great reportage; and secondly, lit mags are not a “preserve for the elite”. Howard Junker is wrong. Lit mags should engage the culture, not look down their noses at it. And if you give a shit, read the rest of Genoways’ post.

As a former local newspaper editor, I’d have to agree with John Hewitt on the fate of newspapers.

Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore has been published.

R.I.P. James B. Hall.

A new poetry forum.

Now this (read below) is pure poetry:

If you want to believe that America is a governable country of informed citizens and not a nation of ignorant, Fox News-watching sheep, the single most depressing fact to come out of the Bush years is that vast numbers of Americans continue to believe that Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the 9/11 attacks. According to a 2003 Washington Post poll, nearly 70 percent of Americans believed that. And in a poll taken last September, 33 percent of Americans still believed it — presumably the same 30-odd percent of Americans who will vote for a Republican even if he is running on a platform of sacrificing all the nation’s firstborn children to Beelzebub.

Call it the Dumbshit Factor, the Nobody Home Problem, the Absentee Ballots from Mars Issue. Whatever you call it, it’s the Republicans’ built-in advantage this fall.

That’s just frickin’ rich! ROFLMAO

Ho, hum. Of course, Shakespeare didn’t have to compete with action/adventure films and MP3.

PennSound featured resources.

Finally, listen to “Daddy” by Sylvia Plath:

I sent my poems to all the wrong magazines; places that didn’t publish work in the same vein as mine — or places I wasn’t familiar, never read. That’s a recipe for failure and I cooked with that pretty much my entire 20s. Some people have to learn the hard way. I’m one of those people. Now I send poems out only to places I read and admire and sometimes to places that solicit work.

I think most of us go through this phase of sending out manuscripts to the wrong places. In truth, it’s hard to find compatible avenues for your poetry. It’s like dating. You have to go through hundreds of losers, whiners, ugly first cousins, loquacious snobs, self-centered eye-batters, silent prigs, and really awful date places in order to find one relationship that makes sense. When you do find a poetry journal that you really like, support it. Read it. Devour it for a while before you jump in and submit your work. Really make sure it is something that excites you and if it does, submit your work.

On “What would you do differently if you had to start all over again?”

I would save my money and not send to any book contests whatsoever. Bye bye $1500. What do I have to show for it? A handful of the “winning” books, most of which I don’t even care for. I could have published two books for that amount. Also, as I mentioned above, I would be more selective and knowledgeable where I send my work in general. Bye bye hundreds of hours of my life.

Geez, do I know how she feels. Not about the money. I’ve never been a big contest person. Though I’ve submitted to a few, I haven’t made a life of it. But I have wasted countless hours sending work to places I never should have been sending my work to, either for the prestige or for the self-congratulatory pat on the back, or because So-and-So did and I thought I should have that honor as well. It’s not worth it. Write what you write and find those journals that will publish it. Don’t waste time sending out work to schmucks.

That’s the beauty of ch(e)apbooks. I guess I don’t really understand the question of whether or not chapbooks are good or bad. Some books are good things, others not so much. I don’t see how length, distribution or the production process has any determining factor in that. Unless the pages are made from the skins of kittens.

When I discovered the power of chapbooks, I decided it was the way to go. One poetry reading can lead to the sale of four or five chapbooks, which pays for gas to and from and a snack, usually. Though now it probably just pays for gas. But you have to offer your chapbooks sparingly. Don’t publish a new one every week. If you publish too often then people will just think you are a money hound. Only publish a new chapbook when you know you’ve got one worth selling. Then hawk it for all it’s worth.

If you’re worried about trends, fashion or popularity, for God’s sake, don’t waste your time with poetry.

No kidding. Did she really need to say that? Yeah, if you are the trendy kind of person, try writing a memoir. Or write fiction and call it a memoir.

Poems don’t make anyone money. So when you’re creating your book, listen to your inner artist, not your inner capitalist. If your inner capitalist knew what he was talking about, he’d be telling you to write a self-help book or something for Penthouse Forum.

Hah! Funny one, that. Perhaps I should query Penthouse Forum about my poem on capitalism!

All jokes aside, she’s right. Poetry isn’t for capitalists. But that doesn’t mean you can’t take money for it.

If you mean do I do readings, speak on panels, link to my books from my websites, try to cajole people into reviewing my books, send out e- mails asking friends and family to buy them, agree to participate in interviews such as this one — then yes, most certainly. I do it because I want people to buy my books. I want people to read them.

And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.

On another note, Tony Brown is the newest Poet Laureate of the Blogosphere. Congratulations Tony!