My friend and fellow writer, Uriah Young, has an excellent post over at one of his blogs regarding writing groups. It’s worth the read, and you can check it out by clicking here.
His commentary regarding feedback, networking, and building support is sound advice. I will admit that I don’t belong to a writing group that meets frequently, but I certainly have pillars of support that have fostered my writing throughout the years. Anyways, go check out his post!
This week, as the calendar turned to 2015, long-time broadcast journalist Bill Moyers signed off the air. For years, Moyers had a regular show on PBS that not only covered politics, but also offered a space for novelists and poets. Throughout the 1990s, his show covered the Dodge Poetry Festival, and since then, his show has featured interviews with Adrienne Rich, Maya Angelou, Robert Pinsky, Sherman Alexi, Amiri Baraka, and countless other poets. What’s especially saddening about Moyers’ retirement is that it leaves one less space for public discourse regarding the written word.
Here’s one of my favorite interviews Moyers ever conducted. It’s with Adrienne Rich:
More recently, Moyers focused on issues of wealth disparity, climate change, and the influence of money in politics. On his final show, he said to young activists, “Welcome to the fight.” Thank you, Bill, for your decades of broadcast journalism, your belief in the democratic process, and grassroots mobilization. Thanks, too, for all of the interviews with poets you conducted in the years, many of which I’ve used in my classroom. To watch Moyers’ final broadcast, which featured legal school/climate change activist, Mary Christina Wood, click here.
My friend and fellow writer/activist/educator, Uriah Young, just posted an interview with me over at his blog. Check it out here, and follow his blog because he does great author interviews with folks from around the tri-state area. We talked writing, social justice issues, activism, and my latest book of poems, All That Remains.
Thanks, Uriah!
If you’re in northeastern, Pennsylvania this weekend, and you’re looking for something to do, then come out to the Old Brick Theatre in Scranton this Sunday. I’ll be reading poetry with Rich Howells, founder/editor of NEPA Scene, and we’ll be joined on stage by jazz musician Doug Smith, among others. The event starts at 6:30 p.m and it’s $5 for the general public, $3 for students. I’ll have copies of my latest book of poems, All That Remains, with me.
In other news, my poem, “Surviving Winter,” has been published in the new issue of Two Cities Review. The full issue is available online here.
Over the last few years, some of America’s most well-known poets have passed, including Adrienne Rich, Amiri Baraka, Galway Kinnel, and now, Mark Strand, who, at 80, passed away this last week. I have certain memories associated with each poet. Adrienne Rich and Amiri Baraka, for instance, taught me how to write an effective political poem. Galway Kinnel taught about poetry’s quiet moments. Mark Strand is especially important to me, however, because his books, along with Charles Simic’s work, were loaned to me when I was an undergraduate student at West Chester University. At the time, I was writing cliché poems about spookhouses and midnight howls. My professor introduced me to the Deep Image school, namely Strand and Simic, to show me how to effectively write a surreal poem that could have bizarre-o themes, but also some basis in reality. I took home Strand’s Selected Poems and Simic’s The Voice at 3 a.m. and read them cover to cover, while trying to decipher my professor’s notes on the margins.
It’s been a long, long time since I’ve read Strand’s work, but I did so this week. As a very young poet, I was especially drawn to his surrealist poems, such as “The Tunnel” and the odd twists and turns his lines and images offered. While revisiting his work this week, I was impressed by the range of his subject matter and the tone, including the familiar surreal poems I loved years ago, but also the softer, tender poems, like “The Coming of Light.”
Looking back on my early poetry workshops, I think my professor recommended Strand to show me how to write a poem that incorporates the weird and bizarre, but also one which avoids the cliché. I think she also wanted to show me how diverse a single poet’s work could be, how there should be no boundaries regarding subject matters or forms. Thank you, Mark Strand, for teaching me that.
This year, the National Book Awards ceremony was actually noteworthy because of Portland writer Ursula K. Le Guin’s acceptance speech upon winning the 2014 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. She used the speech to spear Amazon and American capitalism as a whole.
Here is one of my favorite parts of the speech:
Developing written material to suit sales strategies in order to maximize corporate profit and advertising revenue is not quite the same thing as responsible book publishing or authorship. Yet I see sales departments given control over editorial. I see my own publishers in a silly panic of ignorance and greed, charging public libraries for an ebook six or seven times more than they charge customers.
and this:
I think hard times are coming when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies. We will need writers who can remember freedom. Poets, visionaries—the realists of a larger reality.
Here’s a link to a video of the full speech, and it’s well-worth checking out!
I wanted to share this article written by Jaswinder Bolina and published by The Poetry Foundation. It’s a bit long, but it’s well worth the read, especially in the context of the M.F.A. debate, academia, the culture of privilege, and labor issues. Here are some passages that I think are especially striking and raise some of the various class issues regarding pursuing an M.F.A. and being a poet.
Jaswinder on his parents feelings towards poetry: “Poetry wasn’t a bad idea in the abstract to either of them. It might even be a noble pursuit, but it also seemed a thing better left to the children of the wealthy than to the son of working-class immigrants. ”
On class issues, education, and career decisions: “Where the working classes are regularly forced to take pragmatic action out of necessity, the privileged are allowed to act on desire. My parents’ money, modest as it was and still is, did more than pay for the things I needed. It allowed me to want things they couldn’t afford to want themselves. ”
I think the second point I posted is one to ponder, specifically the idea that graduate school is mostly limited to only a select group of people with at some privilege, namely decent economic circumstances. Furthermore, even those that have access to graduate school don’t necessarily land a full-time, tenure track teaching job at a university after completing the degree, so why do so many people keep signing up for M.F.A. programs? Is it simply about career ambition, and how detrimental is that to the poetry at the national level if much of what is written and published is done so by M.F.A. and Ph.D. students and graduates? Beyond open mic nights, slams, and other community events, how does poetry break out of its insular culture of privilege?
The website Flavorwire just composed a fairly impressive list on films about writers. This list is worth sharing because while there are some well-known films on here, including Bright Star, Shakespeare in Love, Poetic Justice, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, there are a lot of indie films that slipped under the radar. Read the full list here. I will admit that I’ve only seen about half of these films, and I’ve added several to my list of films to watch soon. Out of the films they chose, Bright Star is my favorite, especially the scenes in which Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish) reads John Keats’ (Ben Wishaw) actual letters. I’ve always said that the letters Keats penned for Fanny are as noteworthy as some of his poems.The film also references some of Keats’ important poetic theories, including Negative Capability. I’ll add that Wonder Boys is a close second favorite on the list. Anyone who has taught creative writing before can probably relate to Prof. Graddy Tripp’s (Michael Doulas) plight in the film, which includes departmental politics, writer’s block, and mentoring his creative writing students, including James Leer (Tobey Maguire) an outcast with a lot of raw writing talent.
All That Remains
It’s hard to believe it, but my first full-length book of poems, All That Remains, came out one year ago tthis week! It’s been a wild road post-publication, with readings in Philly, New York City, New Jersey, Washington, D.C., and all around various literary communities in PA. The book also picked up a nomination for the Tillie Olsen Award by the Working Class Studies Association, and one of its poems, “After School Drives,” was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. The best aspect of the book’s release has been connecting with folks from all over different cities/communities. I hope, in time, some of them can read here in NEPA.
If you want a copy of the book, you can order it here. If you want a special 25 percent discount on the book, drop me a comment here and I’ll give you a discount code.
Now it’s time to continue working on the follow-up and begin organizing the next manuscript. Onward!
One of my favorite contemporary poetry/fiction/art magazines is Chiron Review, which is based out of St. John Kansas and founded by Michael Hathaway in the 1980s. Over the years, the editors have published some impressive names, including Marge Piercy, Charles Bukowski, William Stafford, Edward Field, among others. A few years ago, I was fortunate enough to have some poems published in its punk issue. What I’ve always liked about Chiron Review is not only its creative themes, but also its format. For years, the issues, including the punk one, were published in a tabloid format, a bit similar to American Poetry Review.
A few years ago, however, the magazine went on hiatus, sharing the fate of a lot of other print magazines in the country. Fortunately, however, publisher Michael Hathaway announced earlier this year that it would be returning in print format. Recently, the fall issue (97) was published, and my poem, “Listening to Springsteen on I-81,” is included in its pages. I hope that this issue marks a renewal for Chiron Review, especially in the uncertain world of publishing. Its mark on contemporary American poetry has already been made, but here’s hoping for many more issues!
If you have a few dollars to spare, order a copy of the new issue, or even better, make a donation to the magazine. Make a donation to other magazines like it that you enjoy reading so they can keep publishing.
Brian Fanelli 