Upcoming Readings

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My summer has mostly been spent reading and working on new material, but there are a few events coming up I want to share. This Friday, July 26, I will be the featured reader at the Dietrich Theater, located at 60 E. Tioga Street in Tunkhannock. This is a wonderful venue and a great reading series, so I’m thrilled to be a part of it. There will be an open mic from 7-8 p.m., and then I will take the stage at 8:15. I am going to read some poems from my forthcoming book, All That Remains, and a few even newer poems, as well as some oldies. Please come out if you can!

I also wanted to share information about a new reading series at the Hoyt Library in Kingston. The reading will take place this Thursday, starting at 6:30. The featured readers include my friends Lauren Stahl and Scott Thomas. There will be an open mic as well, and I hope this will turn into a long-running series.

Meanwhile, I am in the process of booking some readings in the fall surrounding the release of my new book. I already have some readings scheduled in Doylestown and Reading. I will post more info about upcoming readings as they draw closer.

Good News for Bookstores?

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Over the last year or so, Poets & Writers has been profiling different indie bookstores around the country, while running a few feature stories about the return of the bookstore. One of the bookstores they profiled was Parnassus Books, run by best-selling novelist Anne Patchett. After I read the article and the nice write-up in The New York Times a few years ago, I thought, well, it’s great that Patchett’s Tennessee-based bookstore is doing so well, but is the success simply because Patchett is famous?

There is a recent poll, however, that should be good news for bookstores. Rasmussen recently found that 75 percent of American adults would rather read a print book as opposed to an e-book. It has yet to be determined whether or not this will translate into success for bookstores and perhaps the growth of small, indie bookstores in communities, but it does prove that despite the e-reader fad of the last several years, people like reading print. The poll also found that 66 percent would rather read a newspaper in print as opposed to online. What is unclear, however, is whether or not this would be true for younger people. The poll was mostly conducted through LAN lines, and most younger people only have cell phones. It would be interesting to conduct another poll, say on people ages 18-30. Would the results be different?

At the very least, the poll provides some good news for bookstores. People still like print!

Joyce Carol Oates Gives Writing Advice in 140 Characters

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Edinburgh International Book Festival 2012 - Portraits
Acclaimed writer Joyce Carol Oates recently took to twitter to dispense some sound writing office. All of her tweets can be read here. My favorite tweet is “The first sentence can be written only after the last sentence has been written. FIRST DRAFTS ARE HELL. FINAL DRAFTS, PARADISE.” This advice should be included in the syllabus of every undergraduate creative writing class and MFA class. I also like her advice to “Be your own editor/ critic. Sympathetic but merciless” and to “Read, observe, listen intensely!–as if your life depended upon it.” The last piece of advice is especially important as a way to cure writer’s block. I find myself most inspired and ready to write after reading and observing, which require space, time, silence, and patience. To add to Oates’ tweet and to paraphrase T.S. Eliot, poetry is words on the page surrounded by silence. So, if you’re been in a writing funk lately, dig into a book, or go somewhere and observe a scene. It will help, I promise.

New Issue of Poets’ Quarterly

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The new issue of Poets’ Quarterly just launched late last week. I’m thrilled to have an essay published on the influence of Ezra Pound on William Carlos Williams’ and T.S. Eliot’s poetry. My essay can be read here. The magazine also published my review of Martha Collins’ latest collection of poems, White Pages, one of the most provocative, interesting books I have ever read in regards to race and class. You can read that review here. In addition, they published my review of Jim’ Davis latest collection of poems, Assumption. Davis is the editor of North Chicago Review.

Check out the complete issue. There is a wonderful interview with National Book Award finalist Stanly Plumly, an essay on what not to do when submitting your work to literary journals, and over a dozen other reviews.

The Ghost of Form

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I have been spending a good portion of this summer doing a lot of reading for my first Ph.D. field exam, which is focusing on William Carlos Williams and T.S. Eliot. What I have always liked about these poets is their differing views on approaching poetry and form. Williams felt that American poetry should sound distinctly American, and he aimed to capture the American vernacular in verse, and to his ire, Eliot was more of a traditionalist who often referenced Shakespeare, Dante, Greek mythology and other classicist literature, while using more traditional forms in his work, especially in his later work. Williams famously said that The Wasteland set American poetry “back 50 years” for its references to classic literature and its reliance in certain sections on traditional meter. Yet, as experimental as Williams was, certainly more so than Eliot, he did not believe that verse could ever be truly free. In the book William Carlos Williams’ Paterson, by Joel Conarroe, the author makes a great point that for Williams free verse did not exist because poetry requires some sort of measure. This is a little different, however, from Eliot’s belief that behind free verse there lurks a ghost of meter. Williams believed that the measure had to reflect the times and not necessarily rely on tradition. Thus he believed in trying to capture American speech in verse as he heard in such speech a musicality, a sense of measure.

Eliot and Williams’ views on free verse and form are important, especially to anyone teaching a creative writing class. These are two of the most influential and experimental poets of the 20th Century, yet they did believe in establishing some form and structure, though they approached that task rather differently. Whenever I have taught intro to creative writing and even upper level creative writing class,  I have encountered students time and time again that believe in no rules.  So what separates their poetry from chopped prose? A good exercise regarding form is to take a free verse poem by Williams, or even Walt Whitman, and find some structure in it. Look at the line lengths. Count the syllables. Look at the stanzas.  I have done this before, and it helps students to understand that even free verse needs some sort of measure and some backbone of structure.

New Visions Writers Showcase Summer Edition

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If you’re looking for something to do this weekend, then stop by New Visions Studio and Gallery in Scranton to attend the next installment of the New Visions Writers Showcase. We have quite a line-up, and I’m eager to hear these wordsmiths share their work. As always, the event will begin at 7 p.m. on Saturday. It is free and open to the public. Here is the list of this month’s featured readers:

Stacy Ferguson is a senior at Keystone College, working on her Bachelor’s degree. She has had two poems and two short stories published in the school’s literary magazine, The Plume. She lives in Northern Pennsylvania with her husband, two sets of twin children, two dogs, and one cat.

Victoria Seamans is currently completing her Bachelor’s degree in communications at Keystone College. She has written several short stories, poetry, and for her graduation project, she authored five stories for children that she is seeking to have published. Her college publishing credits include two articles published in the school newspaper, The Key, and a poem that was published in the school’s literary magazine, The Plume. She also served on the editorial staff of The Plume in the spring of 2013.

Amye Archer has an MFA in Creative Writing from Wilkes University. Her work has appeared in [PANK], Twins Magazine, Provincetown Arts, The Ampersand Review, H_ngm_n, Boston Literary Magazine, and Hippocampus. Her first chapbook No One Ever Looks Up was published by Pudding House Press in 2007. Her latest chapbook A Shotgun Life was published by Big Table Publishing in 2011. Her first novel, Fat Girl, Skinny, is represented by the Einstein Thompson Agency. Her first play, Surviving, was produced locally as part of the Jason Miller Playwright’s Project. She is the winner of the first Scranton Storyslam and she hosts the reading series Prose in Pubs.

Jen Gittings-Dalton’s poems have appeared in No Barriers, Zephyr, Front Street Journal, and she has published articles on arts and cultural affairs in various electronic and print media. Her chapbook Bird in the Overhang was published by FootHills Publishing in 2007. Jen is active in the Berks Bards, a non-profit group dedicated to “promoting the living art of poetry” in the Greater Reading region. She lives with her husband along the Antietam Creek in Exeter, PA.

Elizabeth Stanley has loved poetry since she was six. She holds a Bachelor’s in English from Gettysburg College, and an MA from Bread Loaf School of English in Middlebury, VT. She also attended one summer at the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference. She taught junior high English and ESL with students from Taiwan, Vietnam, Cambodia, Cuba and Puerto Rico. Since 1998, Stanley has hosted the Bruce Stanley Memorial Poetry Series, Poetry@Six, at Reading Area Community College, featuring local, regional and national poets, sponsored by the Foundation for RACC. She serves as president of Berks Bards, a grassroots poetry group that promotes the lively art of poetry in Reading and Berks County through hosting First Thursday Poetry events at the First Floor Cafe’ in the GoggleWorks. Stanley hosts poetry events for Bard Fest every April, and for the Berks Literary Festival and Kinetic Poetry in October. Several of her poems were published in Fledgling Rag, Iris G. Press. She lives on a curved street with a Turkish Van named Bear.

Along with writing poetry, Mischelle Anthony is Associate Professor of English at Wilkes University specializing in poetry and eighteenth-century literature. She has a poetry collection,[Line], available from Foothills Press. She is also founder and coordinator of Luzerne County’s Poetry In Transit program that places local writing and visual art on public buses. To keep her feet on the ground, she volunteers year-round at her local Domestic Violence Service Center hotline. Mischelle is currently working on a second book of poetry, Tramp, and would like to create a garden on the roof of her garage.

Curtis Smith’s stories and essays have appeared in over seventy-five literary reviews and have been cited by The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Mystery Stories, and The Best American Spiritual Writing. He is the author of five story collections, three novels, and an essay collection. His most recent book is the story collection Beasts & Men, just out from Press 53. His next book will be a novel from Aqueous Books in 2015.

Harper’s Gripe with Contemporary American Poetry

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Mark Edmundson is not happy with the state of contemporary American poetry. His article “Poetry Slam,” published in the latest issue of Harper’s Magazine, takes Seamus Heaney, John Ashbery, W.S. Merwin, and other modern lionized poets to task for not writing enough about contemporary issues, including 9/11, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the growing class divide. In the article, which is only available in print, Edmundson states, “I often think that our poets now write as though history were over and they were living in a world outside collective time. They write as though the great public crises were over and the most pressing business we had were self-cultivation and the fending off of boredom.” He goes on to say, “Many of our poets are capable of work that matters. There’s a lot of talent in the room. But we need them to use it and to take some chances.”

Throughout the essay, Edmundson heaps praise upon the post-World War II-era poets, especially Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath, who, according to Edmundson, did not shy away from confronting serious issue. I agree with him there, but I can think of several well-known contemporary American poets who also do not shy away from confronting issues. Our current Poet Laureate, Natasha Tretheway, for instance, often addresses the complexities of race, especially in her Pulitzer Prize-winning collection Native Guard and her latest collection, Thrall. The previous Poet Laureate, Philip Levine, has never avoided addressing serious issues, considering he made a name for himself writing about class issues and the blue-collar Detroit factory workers. There are several younger poets, such as Terrance Hayes and Major Jackson, who have confronted a number of issues in their work. Even W.S. Merwin has frequently spoken about climate issues and the environment during interviews throughout the years.

Meanwhile, several journals frequently publish special issues dedicated to a particular topical issues. Red River Review, for instance, is currently seeking submissions about any topical issue. They just accepted one of my poems about climate change. FutureCycle Press is also seeking submissions about climate change for a special anthology as part of the press’ Good Works Project. Epiphany just published a wonderful war-themed issue, edited by Brian Turner, an Iraq vet who has won numerous poetry awards and whose first two books deal with the war in Iraq and the post-9/11 world.

I do agree with one main point in Edmundson’s essay, however. He lambasts the proliferation of MFA programs and states some MFA students just want a degree, then a volume of work, then a job as assistant professor. So focused on careers, they fail to take any risks, to really challenge language, or to really address any serious issue.

If you’re a poetry lover, the essay in Harper’s is well-worth the read. I’m eager to see the reaction from various poetry publications over the next few days and weeks.

The Letters

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In the age of social media, we’ve forgotten about the art of writing letters. As a way to honor that art form, I’ve added several collections of letters by poets to my summer reading list. Currently, I’m reading Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell. The collection is an 800-words opus, but it is well worth the time for anyone interested in 20th Century American poetry. The letters begin early in Bishop and Lowell’s career, when Lowell was being mentored by William Carlos Williams. What I especially like about the collection is Bishop and Lowell’s comments on American poetry giants. Lowell refers to Williams’ third book of Patterson as “the best poetry written by an American.” He later refers to Theodore Roethke as large, but “elfinlike” man, a poet who began every day with “a shot of bourbon.”

The letters grow haunting in tone by the period of the 1960s, when Lowell remarks on the assassination of J.F.K. and describes staying inside all day, crying, watching the news. This is the same decade when many of Lowell and Bishop’s contemporaries died. After Randall Jarrell died from walking in front of a car, which Lowell and many others suspected was a suicide, he writes, “Oh, but he was an absolutely gifted, and noble man, poisoned and killed, though I can’t prove it, by our tasteless, superficial, brutal culture.”

They also have several letters back and forth about Sylvia Plath’s suicide and John Berryman’s suicide. Bishop refers to Plath’s death as “a tragic loss,” but then admits she can “scarcely bear to read her poems through, they are so agonized.” She also refers to Plath’s work as a bit formless, but “really a talent.” Bishop is less kind to Anne Sexton’s poetry.

The letters include a lot of funny moments too, especially Bishop’s complaints about teaching at Harvard and other schools. She gripes about the creative writing students refusing to read and wanting to tell her about their LSD trips. Then she complains that their poems are “competent and so DULL,” before joking that she’ll issue “dexedrine or pot.”

Words in Air is a great account of American poetry in the 20th Century, especially in the 1950s-1970s, the peak of Bishop and Lowell’s careers. The letters offer detail about their relationships with some of the most prominent poets of the last 100 years, and insights into their writing and revision process, their struggles with alcoholism and mental breakdowns, and the loss of their contemporaries. If you are interested in that period of American poetry, I also recommend the memoir Poets in Their Youth by Eileen Simpson, which recalls the tumultuous years she was married to Berryman. The book offers a fascinating perspective into the relationship among Lowell, Berryman, Jarrell, and Delmore Scwhartz, and like Words in Air, it is a reminder of a time when poetry occupied a larger space in the public sphere.

Next up, I plan to read the collection of letters from T.S. Eliot, published about a year ago.

Scranton Zine Fest!

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There is yet another wonderful literary/art event happening in northeast, PA this weekend. Stop by New Visions Studio and Gallery in Scranton for the third annual Scranton Zine Fest this Saturday. The event begins at noon and will feature dozens of zinesters from as far as MA to as close as Wilkes-Barre. The event will also include art for sale and a poetry reading beginning at 5:30. The featured readers include Rachael Goetzke, Steve Keating, Maggie Craig, Stanton Hancock, Jim Warner, and I.

At some point in the day, I’m  taking part in a panel discussion on publishing. Maggie Craig, a novelist, will discuss self-publishing, while I discuss the traditional route of publishing through literary magazines and small presses. It should make for an interesting discussion, especially for writers seeking to get their work out there.

For more about Zine Fest, including a full list of participants, visit the website and pick up The Weekender tomorrow for an in-depth article about the event.