Please come out and support me and my classmates. We’ve all worked really hard this semester, and we can’t wait to share our beautiful new books with you. In addition to getting to hear us read some of our work, we’ll also have our books for sale, so bring some cash or your checkbook.

As you are surely aware at this point (because I haven’t stopped talking about it for almost a month), my thesis project required me to write, design, and hand-make a book. It’s been quite a learning process, but I’m mostly done, with 30 copies just waiting to be hauled to the reading this Friday.

I plan on sharing the “making of” the book in a later post, but for now, The Mockingbird’s Song by the numbers:

• 3 years of writing
• 39 poems
• 30 copies (in a run that I may extend to 40, depending on interest)
• 15 pads of 14×7 drawing paper cut into 600 pages
• 3 pots of glue
• 10 brushes totally destroyed
• 1,440 inches of linen thread
• 1 handpainted water color egg

More photos of the book can be found on my flickr site.

The Details

On May 7, 2010, I will present and sell my MFA thesis project, a book of poetry I have written, designed, and handmade, at a public reading.

On May 16, 2010, I will graduate from the University of Baltimore with a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing and Publishing Arts. After three years of honing my writing skills and learning book arts and design, they’re ready to set me free.

Why am I telling you?

Because I hope that you’ll be able to join me as I celebrate this achievement. If you’re local and you’d like to come out for the reading at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, May 7, I’d love to see you there (email me for directions/details).

And while I’m only allowed five guests at the graduation ceremony, we’re having a party at my house afterward. If you can make it, we’d be thrilled. That’ll be Sunday, May 16, at 4:30 p.m. (invitation to follow with location). If you’re from out of town, no worries. Just send some happy thoughts my way. It means so much to me just to know you’re thinking of me on my special day.

The first time I read Jason Schneiderman, I was sitting in a scratched-up wooden desk in a tiny college classroom in western Pennsylvania. I was taking a poetry class (and [I'm] most definitely a fiction writer) and feeling uneasy. His work was some of the first that opened me up to poetry – a late bloomer – but better late than never.

I had an opportunity to see Schneiderman read in a Pittsburgh warehouse of sorts in 2007. Driving up to the city, my friend Eric and I didn’t really think that the Gist Street Reading Series was actually on Gist Street. It was. We got lost, showed up right before he spoke his first word and somehow managed tight seats in the first row. After the reading, I bought his book, and he signed it: “To Rose: Doctor Who is better than Titanic! Your friend, Jason Schneiderman.”

To this day, I still think we’re friends.

Here is “Sublimation Point” from his book “Sublimation Book,” published in 2004:

Sublimation Point (for M.B.)
The answer is entropy – how smell works -
little bits of everything – always spinning
off from where they were – flying off at random
into the world – which is to say into air.

There are other ways of solid to gas -
they’re substance specific, like iodine,
or dry ice – how I felt when I saw you -
straight to a new state without passing
through expected ones – as though enough
of me left at the moment you appeared that
I could never be whole without you – apply
heat – I turn straight into ether.

]]> http://meredithpurvis.com/2010/04/rose-huber-on-jason-schneiderman/feed/ 4 http://meredithpurvis.com/2010/04/dave-kiefaber-on-wallace-stevens/ http://meredithpurvis.com/2010/04/dave-kiefaber-on-wallace-stevens/#comments Thu, 29 Apr 2010 17:35:56 +0000 Meredith http://meredithpurvis.com/?p=460 Today’s guest blogger is Dave Kiefaber, who I think is especially fantastic because of his collection of punk flyers and his poetry podcast series.

Wallace Stevens was, to judge by appearance, the photographic negative of what people expect a poet to be; a lawyer and insurance executive who looked like Dwight Eisenhower, complete with matching politics (Stevens was a conservative Republican). Throw in several drunken altercations with the likes of Ernest Hemingway and Robert Frost, and Stevens comes off as a bit of a thickie, certainly not someone to whom whimsy came easily.

And that’s where you’d be dead-ass wrong. Stevens wrote some of the goofiest poetry ever. He wrote “13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” which has become the mantra of UB’s writing/publishing program, but my personal favorite of his is “The Emperor of Ice Cream.” Let’s look at the first six lines of it, shall we? Right.

Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month’s newspapers.

Note the jaw-breaking consonance he uses to slow the reader down, to build a rhythm. Free verse poetry withers and dies without rhythm, in my opinion, and Stevens was right up there with Walt Whitman in terms of anchoring his work on the page with sound.

“Emperor” examines contemporary mourning rituals and how mundane they are in the face of what they’re supposedly preparing the deceased for; note “last month’s newspapers” and the dresses “as they are used to wear.” Ritual has become routine, which is by nature unthinking and unemotional. In the face of the afterlife, it does all seem rather shallow  But there’s a giddiness to this poem that I can’t put my finger on, most likely because I’m not a poet, that keeps it from being a downer or a wooden morality play about how to properly grieve the dead. Maybe it’s the pace that’s eventually set by the diction employed here. Maybe it’s the imagery of ice cream, long celebrated as a confection and associated with youth and innocence and joy and thoughtless consumption. No great political or philosophical points were ever built on a hill of ice cream. It’s soft and sweet, far removed from the finality of death.

Whatever it is, it works for me. I like vivid, unorthodox imagery. I like playfulness and absurdity. I like poems that aren’t total self-gratifying inside jokes between the poet and maybe three other people he/she knows. Wallace Stevens satisfies these things in ways that, honestly, not very many other poets do. That and he punched Ernest Hemingway. In the face. Awesome.

Today’s guest blogger is Jenny O’Grady, whose poetry I shared with you last week. She’s a professor at the University of Baltimore, where she teaches Literary Publications and Electronic Publishing. For her post, she’s sharing one of Mary Karr’s poetry. And now, without further ado…

I wasn’t a mother when I first read Mary Karr’s “A Blessing From My Sixteen Year’s Son,” but that didn’t matter. I loved how the violent first lines gave birth to the story of her offspring’s growth and all the uncertainties — hers, his — that seem to orbit naturally around teenagers. I loved the last line, spoken plainly by an unassuming cop. I read it over and over again from a dog-eared copy of 2005’s “The Best American Poetry.”

Now that I am a mother, I approach it with even greater awe. I feel a mother’s relief knowing her son has not only survived the car crash, but that he has become a man of backbone, strong of character at a most fragile moment. As a poet, I appreciate Karr’s direct language, her lack of mushiness, her containment of emotion in solid words and actions. She makes it seem so easy — the writing, not the mothering.

Two excerpts from “A Blessing From My Sixteen Year’s Son,” the beginning and the end:

I have this son who assembled inside me

during Hurricane Gloria. In a flash, he appeared,

in a tiny blaze. Outside, pines toppled.

Phone lines snapped and hissed like cobras.

Inside, he was a raw pearl: microscopic, luminous.

Look at the muscled obelisk of him now

pawing through the icebox for more grapes.

* * * *

The cop said the girl in the crimped Chevy

took it hard. He’d found my son

awkwardly holding her in the canted headlights,

where he’d draped his own coat

over her shaking shoulders. My fault,

he’d confessed right off.

Nice kid, said the cop.

* * * *

Read the full poem or hear Mary Karr read it here.

Lew Welch had no luck. Roommates with Gary Snyder and Philip Whalen. Championed by William Carlos Williams, he failed to catch any serious attention.

After a nervous breakdown, he moved to Chicago where he wrote ad copy. He was there in Chicago at the night of the famous poetry reading at the Six Gallery in San Francisco.

Although active in the Beat scene, he missed the first wave but tackled the life of a working poet in San Francisco. On May 23, 1971, he walked out of Gary Snyder’s house in the mountains of California. His body was never found.

The Basic Con

Those who can’t find anything to live for
always invent something to die for

Then they want the rest of us to
die for it, too.

These, and an elite army of thousands,
who do nobody any good at all, but do
great harm to some
have always collected vast sums from all.

Finally, all this machinery
tries to kill us,

because we don’t die for it, too.

I pulled out my old files tonight and looked through my notes and writing from EN275, Intro to Creative Writing, and took some time to remember where I started.  While it’s simultaneously slightly embarrassing and a lot amusing to look at how far I’ve come since then, I can see, through my drafts, how Susan helped me shape my writing and I can recognize those lessons she taught me that still echo in my mind every time I write or revise my poetry.

So, tonight, I wanted to share some poetry by my mentor, the woman where it begins.

First, from her book  Freaks:

In the dusk of my heart there are
no safe places. Thin-skinned
winged emotions flap their blind
interior paths and sometimes scream
just to let themselves know where
they are. That they are.

~from “Nightfall Brushes Her Hair”

From her book Uncommon Ground, inspired by her time in Honduras:

Citrus trees grip the mountains, birthing
lemons the size of small melons
and limes so shining you want
to rub them over your body.
At the top of the village road,
the orange grove shimmers,
even the leaves look succulent:
cavern-green of Lorca’s dreaming.
Hard nipples of fruit that swell
in sunlight practice their pendulous droop.

~from “Fence” in Uncommon Ground

Note: I’m excited to bring this month of poetry to a close with some awesome guest bloggers, starting tomorrow. First up is Andy Livingston, so keep an eye out for that.

When I was living in Cape Girardeau and going to school at Southeast Missouri State University, I was lucky enough to fall in with a wonderful group of poets. We would meet up every week for a workshop in someone’s living room or at a restaurant that would let us hang out if we bought a plate of fries and some coffee. We put on readings in bars and even an old church and published chapbooks. We called ourselves Prescription Strength Poetry.

Looking back, I know how important that time was for me. I began to find my voice, to take more chances in my writing, and to actually become a writer, thanks to the advice and encouragement those amazing poets offered me. So tonight I’m pulling out the old chapbooks and Balancing on a Bootheel: New Voices in Poetry from Southeast Missouri, a book put out by Southeast Missouri State University Press, and picking out some of my favorite poems. This means that in most cases I can’t link to the full text online, but it doesn’t make the poems any less awesome.

Doc Bertram

My favorite thing about Doc, aside from his curly hair and aviators, was his quick, bitingly sharp wit. Here, an excerpt from “Thus Spake Millard Fillmore”:

She caught me off-guard
and I never forgave her for it.
I was into her for all the wrong reasons,
and we were both okay with it.

I was attracted to her for the same reason
I’m attracted to Joan Baez and David Bowie,
and I’m not sure that’s healthy.
And when speaking of responsibility,
I quoted Millard Fillmore;
and she asked if he was an obscure poet.
Realizing she was serious,
I just replied, “Yeah, he was.”

Mandy Henley

Mandy is my best friend in the whole world, and someone I know I can always trust for an honest opinion of my work. Her poetry is elegant and strong. An excerpt from “The Phoenix”:

I know it’s time when my skin
fatiques so thin that I glow red.
Blood surges against barrier,
friction of life against a too-worn body
sparks flame. Arms parallel to the Earth,
head pointed into her, I stand alone
and erupt into fire-hell,
demand respect from a world
bogged in greens and blues
as I suffer all-consuming fire
until I am only ashes.

Ben Marxer

Things I remember about Ben–his hermit crab named the Kraken and that he taught me you should never chintz on your pizza deliver boy’s tip (they know where you live). His poetry can be brutally honest or sarcastic, and it never lets you off the hook. Here’s an excerpt from “The Square Root of Negative One Equals 1″ (you can actually hear him read it here):

I’m fairly certain
that the band Phish
doesn’t exist
I see people wearing the emblems
concert T-shirts proclaiming loudly
that they were there
that they bore witness

However, I have never heard a Phish song
I’m not even sure what kind of music they play
I heard that they toured with The Dead
which serves only to support my point
I’d never trust a doped up Dead head
to cut through the memory haze
far enough to certify whether actually they saw them
or not

Shawn McLain

Shawn’s poetry has a lucid, accumulative quality that is something I am always striving for in my own work. His poem “Father’s Wood Shop” is a beautiful collection of images, some of the every day, some of the slightly off or broken. An excerpt:

You told me a good carpenter hides his mistakes, like that missing nail
that caused a shaky shelf, the foundation, you contended, was intact

….

I would ask why not measure twice, cut one; you told me this was how
you learned, this was how to work, to frame with human hands

Dustin Michael

I remember the first time I ever heard Dustin read his poetry. A group of grad students came in to do a reading for my Intro to Creative Writing class. I’ll never forget how energetic and funny Dustin was. He showed me that poetry can run the full gamut, from serious to humorous. Here’s excerpt from “I Am Catfish” (read the rest here):

I recently sent my girlfriend’s dad
a postcard
with a fish on it.

The postcard had
Get hooked on fishing in Missouri
printed on the front.
My girlfriend had seen it and said,
Ha! You should send that to my dad!
So I did.

I didn’t know what to write
on the back, so I put,
I am Catfish. Remember me.

Nikki Owens

Every time I read Nikkie’s poetry, I think to myself, “this woman knows exactly how I feel.” Her work doesn’t beat around the bushes, doesn’t bother to make sure the reader is comfortable, it just puts it all out there. It’s a quality I admire, as I am prone to shy away from the uncomfortable in my work. An excerpt from her poem “Chunky”:

apparently, I’m not fat.
at least, not to paige,
jc penney salesgirl of the month.
through paige’s eyes,
i’m not “chubby”
or “round”
or “plump”
or “curvy”
or “heavy.”
i’m not even “thick.”

nope. it seems
i am decidedly
“chunky.”
thank you, paige.

Jon Thrower

No one can perform poetry like Jon Thrower. I’ll never forget his thesis defense where he stomped and yelled and, if memory serves, threw McDonald’s cheeseburgers into the crowd. I can’t read his work without imagining his voice–it’s not fully alive until he reads it. And when he does, it grabs you by the shoulders and shakes you, maybe even slaps your face, and you don’t forget it, not for a long time, if ever. An excerpt from “The Barge Worker’s Common Law Wife, A Letter.” (Read the full poem here. You can also hear him read another poem here).

You biked out from County Road 213
heavy metal t-shirt and small-engine forearms,
catwalked all the way to the creek, you said.
Before any of us left the big wheel,

before the ancient pains crouched
in my thighs and my flower,
before the white cars came and the men
with hubcaps pinned to their hearts.

]]> http://meredithpurvis.com/2010/04/prescription-strength-poetry/feed/ 0 http://meredithpurvis.com/2010/04/436that-lady-on-the-bus-ate-a-bag-of-peanuts-check-jenny-ogrady-adam-robinson-and-kate-wyer/ http://meredithpurvis.com/2010/04/436that-lady-on-the-bus-ate-a-bag-of-peanuts-check-jenny-ogrady-adam-robinson-and-kate-wyer/#comments Sun, 25 Apr 2010 13:36:28 +0000 Meredith http://meredithpurvis.com/?p=436 Note: Dear readers, Forgive the stuttering timing of my posts of late. I have the best of intentions (we all know how those go), but I have to admit that the thesis project eats up pretty much all of my time. I’m going to try to be better as we finish out the month, which should be helped by the series of guest blogs I’m super excited about featuring. Thanks for bearing with me, and enjoy!

In my time at the University of Baltimore MFA program, I have had the great good fortune to meet some unbelievable talented writers, book artists, and publishers. They are the kind of people who inspire with me with their creativity and drive. Today I want to focus on three people who not only write amazing poetry but also help further the art through a publishing endeavor.

Jenny O’Grady

I’ve known Jenny for several years now; we first met by coincidence at a poetry reading/launch party for an issue of the Little Patuxent Review. And she’s been in my life in one way or another since as friend, mentor, professor, and even my boss at UMBC. In that time, I’ve learned that her poetry is by turns whimsical, documentary, and heart-wrenchingly honest, but always beautiful. This is an excerpt from a prose poem recently published in the “What You’re Writing” section of the Urbanite (read it in full–it’s about 3/4 of the way down the page)

When we married, we were barely into our 20s. Yet, we knew what we wanted; we knew what we needed to do. We checked things off our checklists, lickety-split. We earned our degrees. Check. We grew our careers. Check. We bought a little house with a green, sloping yard and an extra bedroom. Check.

In addition to her wonderful poetry, Jenny is a book artist–she was featured in the Bonefolder’s 2009 Bind-O-Rama–and she just recently started an awesome online journal called The Light Ekphrastic. The journal pairs writers and visual artists who trade something they’ve already done. Then each one creates something new based on the piece they were given. It’s produced some really fun, inspired work. You should visit the site and check it out; she’s actually accepting submissions for the August issue as we speak. And be sure to check out Jenny’s own website, Kinetic Prose.

Adam Robinson

Adam is graduating this year from the MFA program, and it was fun to watch his manuscript and book come together. He’s the type of poet I’ve always envied for the seeming ease he has in creating poetry that simultaneously lulls its reader while barring its teeth. He has a way of mixing everyday language and the mundane things of life into something surprising. He just had a book, Adam Robison and Other Poems, put out by Narrow House Press here in Baltimore. Here’s an excerpt from his poem “I’m going to have SEX with these people,” which you can read in its entirety here.

This lady on the bus
could pass for a man

She chewed half a
cigarette in her mouth

Had jowls

She did knitting

From the back of the
bus I loved this lady’s
what is it

In addition, Adam is also the man behind Publishing Genius Press, which produces full-length paper back books, the Chapbook Genius series, isReads (an outdoor journal of poetry posted in public spaces), and EveryDay Genius (an online journal updated everyday Monday through Friday). He’s put out some amazing things, which you should go and learn about on the press website and blog.

Kate Wyer

Kate is a poet I have followed closely and admired since I met her a few years ago. Her writing has a lucidity and strength of voice I envy. She has an ability to make her reader accept what she writes as fact, no matter how impossible it is in real life. This is an excerpt from her poem “Peanuts,” which you can read in its entirety here.

The moon gave us a bag of peanuts.
We took them in our aluminum fists.
The moon did not know us by sight,
by our flags. She spoke, Da?

We were silent.

Kate is also in the midst book arts project that I’m fascinated with. The book, called And, Afterward, is a take on the exquisite corpse games of the surrealists. Kate has a collection of writers and artists passing around a book she made and each adding a spread. I’m lucky to be doing one of the spreads, and I’ve fallen in love with what everyone else has done. You can see photos of the book and the spreads here.