Tag: Poetry

Upcoming Readings

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It’s a new year, and to kick things off right, I’m doing a few readings this January, one in NYC, and one in Harrisburg.

Here’s is the info:

Wednesday, January 8
7-9 p.m.

KGB Bar, 85 E. 4th Street, New York City

This event is part of the At the Inkwell reading series, and I will be one of four featured readers. Here is a link to the event.

Thursday, January 9
7-9 p.m.

Almost Uptown Poetry Reading

Midtown Scholar Bookstore, 1302 N. Third Street, Harrisburg, PA 17102

This event will include an open mic, and I will be the featured reader.

Furthermore, I recently did an online radio interview wit my publisher, Annmarie Lockhart of Unbound Content. You can listen to that interview here.

Teaching Poetry

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No matter the writing or literature class I teach, I usually present at least one unit of poetry, even in a composition class, especially when teaching a compare/contrast paper. However, teaching poetry to non-English or writing majors can be difficult. In fact, one student told me the other day that, “Poetry is weird” and he has to read a poem several times before he understands it. This is often a common idea among students. They think poetry is odd and that they can’t understand it. Others may dislike it because their only contact with it has been dissecting the meter of Emily Dickinson poems on the chalkboard in high school (which, by the way, I had to do in 11th grade. I’m still surprised I turned out to be a poet).

However, there are several ways to make poetry interesting to students, so I thought I would share some techniques I use in the classroom.

  • Teach contemporary work. My poetry units are often broad, and I’ve covered everything from Shakespeare to Keats to John Ashbery before. However, I usually work in contemporary American poets, including Kevin Coval, a slam/hip-hop poet from Chicago, Terrance Hayes, winner of the 2010 National Book Award in poetry, Kim Addonizzio, current U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Tretheway, and several others. I will sometimes even start with contemporary work and then work backwards so students can see how language and poetry have changed and how these poets come from past traditions, or at least react to previous movements/traditions. Students like reading something in a language they can understand.
  • Group the poems by theme. Whenever I teach poetry, especially in introductory level classes, I group the poems by theme and content. For instance, I will teach Carl Sandburg’s poem “Chicago” next to Kevin Coval’s poem “Miss Chicago,” so we can talk about different approaches and techniques to writing about a specific place.
  • Use music if possible. I usually do a unit on poets writing about music, so, for instance, I’ll cover Frank O’Hara’s wonderful elegy about Billie Holiday, “The Day the Lady Died,” and play a Billie Holiday song or two for them. I’ve also taught a number of William Matthews’ elegies to jazz musicians, as well as David Wojahn’s collection of rock ‘n roll sonnets from his book Mystery Train. Usually, I pick the one about the Sex Pistols. I’ve also taught some of Langston Hughes and Natasha Tretheway’s blues poems and talked about the origins of blues, while playing some songs for them so we could look at how the blues form has been used in poetry.
  •  Ask them what they think. Too often, students feel like they can’t figure a poem out, that there is some great mystery to poetry. However, if you ask them what they think about the poem, you’ll be surprised to hear what they have to say, and usually, they will have a back and forth about the poem’s form and content.
  • Ask them to write a poem. Even during a literature unit, you can build in a little creative writing, which can be a nice break from pure academic writing. Ask students to mirror a poem’s content or form. 

Press Round-Up

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I wanted to share some links to some various press that my collection All That Remains has received over the last few weeks. Boston Literary Magazine just ran an interview with me about the book. You can read that here. Electric City also ran an interview with me, which you can read here. Finally, you can hear a radio interview I did with WVIA here.

I’ll continue posting more info about readings and reviews over the next few weeks.

Launch Day!

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Well, today is the day! My first full-length book of poems, All That Remains, is out through Unbound Content. If you want a copy of the book, you can order it through the publisher by clicking here or through Amazon here.

To celebrate, I’m having a launch party tonight at The Vintage Theater, 326 Spruce Street in Scranton. The event starts at 7, and I’ll have books available. I’m also reading next week, Friday, Nov. 1, at the Seeley Memorial at Lackawanna College. That event starts at 6 p.m., and it is part of Scranton’s First Friday. There will also be student artwork, a student open mic following my reading, and live music.

It’s Getting Closer!

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Only two weeks remain until my poetry collection, All That Remains, is released through Unbound Content. I am getting more anxious with each passing day, but after seeing the proof copy earlier this week, I feel more at ease. There is nothing like holding the book in your hand, flipping through pages of poems you labored over.

The official release/launch party will be held on Friday, Oct. 25 at 7 p.m. at the Vintage Theater in Scranton (326 Spruce Street). The event is free, and I will have books available for sale and to sign.  Following the launch party, I am doing readings in NJ, NYC, the Philly area, and pockets of Pennsylvania. All scheduled readings can be found on my main website.

Meanwhile, I did interviews with some of the local papers around here as well as Boston Literary Magazine, Poets Quarterly, and The Write Life. Those interviews will be posted in a week or two, and I will share the links when they become available. There should also be some reviews posted soon by PANK and At the Inkwell.

 

 

Why People Hate Poetry

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I came across this article (http://mobile.onmilwaukee.com/ent/articles/poetryhate.html) posted on the website OnMiluakee.com. It attempts to answer why people hate poetry. Some of the reasons given are simplistic, such as poetry is hard, but I do think the article comes up with some sound explanations, including that people have been exposed to a lot of bad poetry. Ed Makowski, the author of several poetry collections says, “There’s a lot of bad poetry. Much of it sounds like written down babble from a support group that somebody got on stage to talk at people. ‘I’ve got my five minutes here on this open mic and I want to make sure I confess every failed relationship or each time I was disappointed in my life, thanks for sitting there and taking it.'” I’ve been to too many open mics where this is true, where the poetry was written five minutes before sign-up time, or the reader goes way, way over the allowed time.

The article also provides some good advice for those unsure about poetry. Jennifer Benka, the former managing director of Poets & Writers, says, “It’s helpful to think about a poem as more like a painting. It is an art object that requires reflection, which requires a willingness to investigate and empathize and time.” Her quote is probably my favorite piece of advice given in the article. Yes, poetry does require a lot of reflection and time. Don’t expect meaning after one shallow glance.

There is one explanation left out of the article that I wish was explored, and that is the way poetry is taught. Too often, especially in high school and sometimes in college, poetry is taught like a math equation, where it is reduced to a mere series of beats and meter, pinned to the board and dissected. I have found this teaching method to be used by teachers or professors who have very little knowledge of poetry, but still have to fit it into the curriculum, so they teach nothing contemporary and reduce the craft to pure technique and equation. A few times I have taught an intro to literature course, and my students groaned when I told them we would be spending weeks on poetry. When I asked them to write about their experience with poetry, they wrote down horror stories of previous college classes or high schools classes in which all they did was dissect meters or circle metaphors in poems. No discussion of how they could or could not relate to the poem. No background given on the poet. Nothing taught to them other than the typical canonical poets. No opportunities given to write their own poems.

There are so many poetic schools out there that it’s likely something will click for the student and reader after more exploration. As poetry professor Susan Firer says, “There are many poetries. When someone tells me they don’t like or ‘get’ poetry, I just assure them they haven’t found their poetry yet.”

Writing about Weather Catastropes

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Within the last few months, I’ve written work based on weather-related catastrophes for different publishers. I wrote a poem entitled “Evacuation” for a flood-themed issue of Word Fountain, a literary journal published through the Osterhout Library in Wilkes-Barre. The editors acquired grant money to make the issue glossy and larger than past issues. All of the money will go to flood victims of Luzerene County, many of whom lost their homes in areas without the levee system during Hurricance Irene in 2011. More recently, I was notified about a project Unbound Content is doing to benefit victims of Hurricane Sandy. The editor of the press (which is also publishing my first full-length book of poems late this year) is seeking creative work about the Jersey Shore.  The money from sales will be donated to hurricane victims.

These two projects led me to write more poems  about weather-related calamities caused by global warming and the massive harm we’ve been doing to the environment. I would eventually like to put together a series of poems weather-related, including poems from the point of view of the victims, maybe even politicians. As far as I know, there haven’t been many collections like this, other than Patricia Smith’s book Blood Dazzler, all about hurricane Katrina.

I foresee this being a long, slow process, especially since I’ll have to do readings for my new book later in the year, and I’m starting Ph.D. coursework, but perhaps as part of my creative dissertation, I can take on this project and really do research, looking at photos and articles about these events to generate ideas for other poems.

If you’re in the area, you should come to the Word Fountain premiere taking place this Saturday from 2-4 p.m at the Osterhout Library.  Contributors to the flood-themed issue will read their work, and copies of the journal will be on sale.

Looking for Poetry Books This Holiday Season?

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Every year, the poetry conference/festival/organization Split This Rock offers its recommended poetry books to close out the year. A lot of other organizations and publications do this, but out of all of them, I enjoy Split This Rock’s  recommendations the most. Like other years, this year’s selection is diverse, featuring a wide range of voices and styles; however, the presses/publishers are well-known and include Norton, Graywolf,  and the Pitt Series, among others. Some of the poets are just as recognizable, including Adrienne Rich, Lucille Cifton, Patricia Smith, and current Poet Laureate Natasha Tretheway, but there are some writers I’ve never heard of, including Eduardo C. Corral, whose book, Slow Lightening, was published by the Yale Series of Younger Poets. That is one I plan to purchase, along with Looking for the Gulf Motel by Richard Blanco.

These books make great presents, and for the most part, you’d be supporting an indie press/publisher. If you want to read the full list and descriptions about each book, click here. It’s well worth you attention!

What’s the Matter with Poetry Today?

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Today, I came across an interview with John Timberman Newcomb on Inside Higher Ed. The interview centers around Newcomb’s new book, How Did Poetry Survive? The Making of Modern American Verse. I haven’t had a chance to order the book yet, and I’ll have to save for it, since it’s currently available in hardcover only and $75. However, the subject fascinates me, and I’m glad someone is exploring what has caused the current status of poetry and why so few Americans read it.

That said, I disagree with a lot of what Newcomb says in the intervew. Near the end of it, he makes the argument that part of the problem with contemporary American poetry is that it fails to address historical and world issues, and what he calls, “ordinary life.” He states, “Don’t turn your back on the world around you, or on history, or on ‘ordinary  life.’ I am not an expert in very recent American poetry so it’s presumptuous  for me to say so, but some recent verse I’ve read seems primarily or entirely  concerned with the inner life of the poet — his or her responses to the natural  world, to works of art, to somewhat rarefied emotional states.” He also says, and this part I do agree with, that some contemporary American poets and scholars feel poets writing now should not address the political. Is this advice given to ensure young poets aren’t just writing diatribes?

There are plenty of contemporary American poets that address the world around them. Terrance Hayes, Major Jackson, Brian Turner, Kim Addonizzio (her most recent book, Lucifer at the Starlight), Patricia Smith are only a few examples, and there is the generation before them, Carolyn Forche, Adrienne Rich, Maxine Kumin, and SO many more. Jackson, Hayes, and Smith do an excellent job addressing race. Turner has two collections out about the war in Iraq. Forche, Rich, Kumin, and others have a long history addressing feminism and gender roles. Last year’s poet laureate, Philip Levine, is a champion of the working-class, so again, I don’t understand Newcomb’s statement, and it makes me question how much contemporary verse he has read.

I think several other reasons exist for poetry’s problems, the least of which is the content currently offered. It is sometimes a challenge to get young people to read much of anything, let alone a collection of poems. Furthermore, there is the issue of bad poetry, meaning people that get up there at open mics with very little practice, having read very little poetry, and as a result, the work is melodramatic and cliche, rife with too many worn-out references to Greek myth, or it sounds like it was written in the 19th Century. One bad reading can turn a lot of people off. There is also the issue of how poetry is taught in schools, especially  middle schools and high schools, where it is reduced to a disection of meter and form, nothing more. Yes, those elements are important to know, but poetry is not a math formula. Restricting poetry to only a formal aspect squeezes all pleasure out of it.

I am eager to purchase Newcomb’s book and understand more his views on contemporary American poet and how it got to the state it’s in.

A Few Announcements

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This week, the NYC-based journal Yes, Poetry released its fall issue, and I have three poems in it. You can actually download a copy of the journal by visiting the website.

This Friday, Art Seen Gallery, located at 21 Public Square in Wilkes Barre, will host slam poetry veteran Elizabeth Gordan, who also teaches creative writing at Renssalaer Institute. A limited open mic will follow. The reading starts at 8.

Finally, if you’re interested in the #OccupyWallStreet Movement, come down to the Lackawanna County Courthouse anytime this weekend for another rally. There was a good turnout last weekend and folks of all ages and backgrounds attended and shared ideas of how best to fix our economy and political system.