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.
I have been fortunate in my time at the University of Baltimore to have some wonderful teachers who helped guide me in shaping my writing and developing my voice. One of the greatest things about this program is that it encourages its students to play-work, or plork, as we like to call it, and try new things to stretch our imaginations and our writing so that we can grow in our craft. And that same willingness to experiment and explore is evident in the faculty. Today I want to share the writing of Kendra Kopelke and Steve Matanle with you.
Kendra Kopelke
Kendra is a poet willing to tackle any subject, and I have seen her poems range from reflections on life-changing surgeries to explorations of the paintings of Edward Hopper. As a teacher she has an uncanny ability to give her students what they need. I know that in this last semester she has been invaluable to my efforts with my thesis, by turns encouraging, listening, and cheering me on. And when I read her poetry, I can see her, the Kendra-ness, come through. She has a clarity of language that I envy, a way of saying what needs to be said but in a beautiful way that pushes you to read on. Here’s an excerpt from one of her poems. Read it (and a couple others) in its entirety here.
I am one week post-op and sitting beside
a window that plays nothing but steamy
rush hour traffic, a sky hovering like a foul odor,
and for starters I count thirteen black
electric wires crisscrossing the street, a portrait
of the intensity and congestion that dogs old Baltimore.
~from “Pissaro’s Pontoise Post-Op”
Steve Matanle
Steve is a quiet, unassuming man who challenges his students, pushing them to take their writing further than they might think possible. He was the first teacher who asked me and my classmates the question, “Should we revise our poetry?” He wasn’t urging us to think one way or another, just inviting us to actually think about this thing we’ve always been told to do; to consider what it means and make the decision for ourselves. And his writing has a raw, honest quality about it that leaves the reader feeling like they’ve been there, standing next to the speaker. I love its plain-spoken elegance, the way a trip to the laundromat or the tiny bell above a shop door become things of beauty. I particularly enjoy this poem, which you can read in its entirety here.
. . . Our life sounded like someone
blowing into an empty bottle, although once in a while
it sounded like music, hollow ballads of love and estrangement.
Sometimes we would go to the Laundromat at night
and dump our clothes in a couple of washing machines, then go
down the street to a bar and forget about them, returning later to find
the damp tangled clothes piled on a folding table.
~from “Just This”
I’ll end with a question for my readers. We’ve all had teachers who have changed how we think or how we do things (and I’m not just talking about writing here). Which teachers stick out in your memory, and what did they do or say to make you change your way of doing things?
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I haven’t set too many guidelines for myself in this month of poetry blogging, but one guiding idea was to highlight lesser known poets, or at least the poets who aren’t known and anthologized all over the place. So this week, I thought it would be fun to highlight poets I’ve known, either as teachers, classmates, or friends. There is something about knowing the poet that brings the writing to life. And, when you have the opportunity, meeting great poets–whether they’re sitting next to you in class or reading from a lectern,–just makes this all more real. The idea of “Poet,” the iconic image of this grand master of language, falls away a bit and you understand that it’s the life lived and the time put into writing that makes poetry.
Also, as a note, I considered breaking it into the Baltimore and the Cape Girardeau Schools (sorry, I couldn’t help it), but I think I’m going to let them mix and mingle.
Today, I wanted to focus on two poets whose words have gripped me and made me wish I could do what they do: James D’Agostino and Valzhyna Mort.
James D’Agostino
I met Jamie when I was in my last couple of years at SEMO: he taught classes and became a fixture around the English Department. I didn’t know him very well, but when his book, Nude With Anything, came out, I was startled (in the way that good poetry has of startling) by the amazing way he had of pairing words and his ability to break lines exactly where they wanted, needed, to be broken.
a little storm on which the sun was kind
of shining made a monochrome
of many things, and silver light, day
enough to feel assured we fully understand
the impact of skin on raindrops…
-from “Against Vanishing”
The broken shade of huge pines
describes a husband and wife
driving through it, less simple
than the central problem
of their snowscape, namely,
the August it was every morning…
-from “The Darling of the Mining Town”
Valzhyna Mort
Valzhyna is one of my teachers in the MFA program at the University of Baltimore. Originally from Belarus and only 2 years older than me, she’s had an amazing amount of success and has been called a “risen star of the international poetry world” by the Irish Times. She’s one of those poets whose writing seizes you by the throat and only lets you back down at the moment you’ve given up on breathing. And though her poetry is wonderful to read, it’s best to hear her read it. Here are a few of my favorite lines from her poems:
your body is so white
that it falls on me like snow
every night is a winter
-from “your body is so white”
the air died
strangled
between two bodies
-from “was it your hair you lost”
And because I mean it when I say you need to hear her read, here is a poem that she reads over an animation done by the Poetry Foundation:
Note: As usual, I’m playing catch-up today, so consider this the post from Friday.
Over the course of this month, I’ve tried to bring you a range of poets–those I like and have learned from–without too many restrictions or rules. But I have had couple guiding ideas, and one was to try to mention lesser-known poets. But today I bring you a poet it’s hard to imagine never having heard of: Pablo Neruda. At first, I resisted the idea; Neruda’s so well-known, and I didn’t know what I could add to what’s already been said. But then I remembered this isn’t about me. It’s about great and beautiful poetry, pure and simple, and I couldn’t think of a better way to close out the week on Spanish-speaking poets.
Pablo Neruda (Chile)
I recently picked up Neruda’s Odes to Common Things. It’s a gorgeous book with a simple design and pencil illustrations by Ferris Cook. I connected to it instantly because it shares one of the themes of my MFA thesis: the idea that the everyday things contain a wonderful beauty and can inspire awe just as easily as the most exotic of items or experiences. So I’m going to share some lines with you from “Odes to Things”:
Amo
todas
las cosas,
no porque sean
ardientes
o fragantes,
sino porque
no sé,
porque
este océano es el tuyo,
es el mío:
los botones,
las ruedas,
los pequeños
tesoros
olvidados,
los abanicos en
cuyos plumajes
desvaneció el amor
sus azahares,
las copas, los cuchillos,
las tijeras,
todo tiene
en el mango, en el contorno,
la huella
de unos dedos,
de una remota mano
perdida
en lo más olvidado del olvido.
Ilove all things,
not because they are
passionate
or sweet-smelling
but because, I don’t know,
because
this ocean is yours,
and mine:
these buttons
and wheels
and little
forgotten
treasures,
fans upon
whose feathers love has scattered
its blossoms,
glasses, knives and
scissors– all bear
the trace
of someone’s fingers
on their handle or surface
the trace of a distant hand
lost
in the depths of forgetfulness
I’m also very excited to announce that the last week of this month I’ll be featuring a fantastic line-up of guest bloggers who will share their favorite poems/poets with you. The blogs have started to roll in and I can’t wait to share them with you!
Today I’m breaking with my theme, but only just: this week has been about Spanish-speaking poets from Nicaragua to Spain. Today, it’s about Chicano poets who grew up living split lives.
The two poets I want to focus on are Alberto Ríos and Michele Serros. He’s from Arizona, she’s from California. Both grew up in a between place, a borderlands. Gloria Anzaldúa has a fantastic book, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, that explores this idea, and as she writes:
…the Borderlands are physically present wherever two or more cultures edge each other, where people of different races occupy the same territory, where under, lower, middle and upper classes touch, where the space between two people shrinks with intimacy.
The Chicano experience varies widely: Ríos was punished by his teachers for speaking Spanish at school. Serros was harangued for her inability to speak Spanish. Both carry their “shifting and multiple” (to borrow a phrase from Anzaldúa) identities into much of their poetry. I love both poets equally not only for what they say but how they say it. I am smitten with Ríos for his song-like qualities, Serros for her frank sense of humor.
Alberto Ríos
An excerpt from “Day of the Refugios,” which comes from one of my most favorite books of poetry, The Smallest Muscle in the Human Body:
I come from a family of people with names,
Real names, not-afraid names, with colors
Like the fireworks: Refugio,
Margarito, Matilde, Alvaro, Consuelo,
Humberto, Olga, Celina, Gilberto.
This is an excerpt from “Mi Problema,” a poem in Serros’ book Chicana Falsa and other stories of death, identity, and Oxnard:
My skin is brown
just like theirs,
but now I’m unworthy of the color
’cause I don’t speak Spanish
the way I should.
Then they laugh and talk about mi problema
in the language I stumble over.
A white person gets encouragement,
praise,
for weak attempts at a second language.
“Maybe he wants to be brown
like us.”
and that is good.
April may (I love that this sentence requires a phrase that puts April and May next to one another) be half over, but don’t forget to stop over at Poets.org or the Poetry Foundation or, for that matter, your local library’s web site to see what National Poetry Month events may be coming your way.
I’m smack dab in the middle of putting together my MFA thesis. It’s a manuscript of my poetry. But here at UB, we take it a step further. I didn’t just write the manuscript. Nope, I’m turning it into a book. That means designing, printing, and hand binding it. I have to have an edition of 12 done by May 5, but my personal goal is 20-30 by then. So if I seem a little short, a little tired (ok, who am I kidding, exhausted), or to have disappeared from the face of the earth, don’t worry, it will all be over soon.
Despite the late nights and occasional frustration with a misprinted page or a miscut page, things are going pretty smoothly. Ave has been a huge help with cutting the pages and explaining how the printer works. I have the guts for 15 books printed and folded. And Ave, as I mentioned, has been busy, so there are many more sheets of paper ready to go through the printer.
Right now, I’m in the midst of sewing up a couple books, trying to perfect my technique a bit more (I ran into a smidge of trouble with my spine allowance when I made my mock up). And tonight I made myself a low-tech book press that should help keep things nice and flat and even during the sewing/gluing/casing-in process.
But as well as things are going and though I’m not at full-on meltdown stage yet, I can tell I’m stressed–my skin is a disaster, I can’t remember what I looked like without these enormous dark circles under my eyes, three cups of coffee and a Coke don’t have enough caffeine to keep me going, and I’m grinding my teeth worse than I have since my senior year of college. I can’t wait for that weekend in late May when, for the first time in three years, I get to relax without worrying about school.
But despite my body’s not so subtle hints that it would like a break, I still feel pretty great. It’s been thoroughly awesome to see my book (not to mention all my classmates’ books) come together, and when I have time to stop and breathe, I’m so glad to have had the opportunity to attend this program.
I suppose the reason I’m even posting this, which I’m sure is rather dull to most of you, is that I want my friends and family to know that things are going okay and I will eventually resurface. I’m going to keep my poetry blogs going, and I’ll even try to post some pictures of the bookmaking process, assuming I can ever remember to take any. In the meantime, if you can figure out where the time keeps going, please let me know.
I don’t like to name favorites of anything, not books or movies or songs or pairs of shoes or hair colors. I can’t ever pick just one. But I have to admit that if I was stranded on a desert island/moving to the moon/running out of my burning house and I had to pick just one book of poetry to take with me, it would be Devoured by the Moon by Rafael Pérez Estrada. I’ve dogeared this book, it’s sprouting rumpled post-it notes, it’s pages are getting wrinkled and worn where I’ve curled it in on itself, and it’s spotted with various shades of blue, black, and gray where I’ve made notes or underlined my favorite stanzas or phrases.
To look at it, you would never know it was something special. The book is a plain perfect bound and the design is, to be generous, not exactly impressive. The cover features a man wearing thick plastic glasses in a suit and tie. He has obvious patches of gray at his temples and his face, thought not fat, is fleshy. It’s hard to believe that such a man wrote such wonderful poems.
Without further ado, here are some samples:
From “De la Naturaleza de los Ángeles/On Being an Angel,” a list poem:
“Los ángeles de la noche americana se adornan con alas de neón. . . . Espera el ángel su resurección en forma de papagayo.”
“At night, American angels adorn their wings with neon. . . . Angels hope to be reincarnated as parrots.”
From “Crónica de la Lluvia/Chronicle of the Rain,” another list poem:
“Nunca escribas estas palabras en una misma línea: tigre y paloma, pues es fácil que la primera devore a la segunda.”
“Never write the words “tiger” and “dove” in the same line, for the first may devour the second.”
From “Cierta Asimetría/A Certain Asymmetry,” a prose poem:
“Una tarde me habló de la nube, y no quise creerla hasta que me condujo a una habitación destartalada, luego, abrió el espejo de doble luna y me la eseñó. Allí, en la obscuridad del armario, apretujada entre las perchas de madera y la ropa inservible, estaba quietecita la nube. ‘Si quiero llueve,’ me explicó con la fatuidad de un domador de circo; incluso hizo una reverencia, tal si esperase un aplauso.”
“One afternoon she told me about the cloud. I didn’t want to believe her until she led me to the disheveled room, opened up the double mirror, and showed it to me. There, in the darkness of the armoire, squeezed between the wooden hangers and useless clothes, was a quiet little cloud. ‘If I want it to, it rains,’ she explained, as self-assured as a lion tamer at a circus. She even bowed, as if expecting applause.”
Seeing as my weekend was eaten by the “Lotsathingstodo” monster, I’m going to do a round-up here of the last three days worth of poets.
I’m heading in a slightly different direction this week by focusing on Spanish-speaking poets. It’s a group near to my heart because of my study of their language and the time I spent in Spain and New Mexico. Spanish is a language that can be both sonorous and staccato; that can lisp across the tongue or curl and tuck itself along the cheeks, depending on where the speaker comes from. And when that language is put down on the page, it’s beauty becomes even more clear. I’ll be posting both the original Spanish and the English translation (when available) so you can get a sense for both.
Gabriela Mistral (Chile)
I found Gabriela Mistral in college, when I was required to write a paper for a Spanish literature class. I don’t think I fully appreciated her then, but I did know that her language was beautiful. She is of particular note as the first Latin American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Read more about her.
Below, a stanza from her poem “The Abandoned Woman,” found in the book Mad Woman, translated by Randall Couch.
Me he sentado a mitad de la Tierra
amor mío, a mitad de la vida,
a abrir mis venas y mi pecho,
a mondarme en grande viva,
y a romper la caoba roja
de mis huesos que te querían.
I have sat down in the middle of the Earth,
my love, in the middle of my life,
to open my veins and my chest,
to peel my skin like a pomegranate,
and to break the red mahogany
of these bones that loved you.
Octavio Paz (Mexico)
I can’t remember the first time I read Paz. It was likely in a literature class in college. But I do remember buying The Collected Poems of Octavio Paz, 1957-1987. A rather plain book, I’d been visiting it at the book store for months, thumbing through its pages, wanting to take it home, but I was strapped for cash and couldn’t afford the $22.95. But, as always happens with me, I could only walk away so many times, and finally I gave in. I walked out of the bookstore clutching the book to my chest, and I remember hauling it around with me for some time, reading pieces at random here and there, falling in love over and over with his starkly beautiful language. Here, a selection from “Interior.”
Pensamientos en guerra
quieren romper mi frente
Por caminos de pájaros
avanza la escritura
…
Con medias rojas y cara pálida
entran tú y la noche
Warring thoughts try
to split my skull
This writing moves
through streets of birds
…
With red stockings and a pale face
you and the night come in
I love Gioconda Belli because she is frank and honest. She is not afraid to write what she feels, even if it’s a little uncomfortable. I wish I always felt so comfortable in my own existence as she seems to. Her poem “And God Made Me Woman” is a great example of this blunt beauty:
Y Dios me hizo mujer,
de pelo largo,
ojos,
nariz y boca de mujer.
Con curvas
y pliegues
y suaves hondonadas
y me cavó por dentor,
me hizo un taller de seres humanos.
And God made me .
With the long hair,
with the eyes,
the nose and mouth of a woman.
With the curves
and folds
and soft hollows.
God carved into me a workshop for human beings.
I can’t remember how I discovered Kathleene West, but I do know when: not long after I moved to New Mexico. I ordered two of her books, used copies, the kind that come with other people’s receipts, bookmarks, and photos* tucked away in them, forgotten. And I remember reading her books on Saturday mornings (that was my ritual then; I got up early, got a cup of tea, and read and wrote away my weekends), and feeling like she had written me. Hers were words I could identify with; her emotions her the same ones I felt.
I’ll be the first to tell you that beautiful language is to be cherished in and of itself, but what makes poetry truly wonderful is when you find a piece of yourself in the writing; when the poet puts down something you’ve thought or felt but in a way you could never have come up with. That’s one of the reasons poets do what they do: they want to express something common in a new and beautiful way, with words that surprise and delight themselves and their readers.
Here are a few lines from Kathleene West that still strike me as much as they did then:
I waste, like paper, in your absence,
insistent ribs and blades
straining toward the surface.
You could label me like a skeleton
on bones pale and lingering
as a street light… ~from “Pining Away as an Erotic Activity” in Water Witching
I can’t find much about Kathleene online, but I did find out that she has a Facebook profile. And that she lives in New Mexico and teaches (or did) at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces. This site has a brief bio and a couple more of her poems.
*No kidding, I found this photo Christmas card squirreled away in the back of her other book, Land Bound:
RSS
Kendra is a poet willing to tackle any subject, and I have seen her poems range from reflections on life-changing surgeries to explorations of the paintings of Edward Hopper. As a teacher she has an uncanny ability to give her students what they need. I know that in this last semester she has been invaluable to my efforts with my thesis, by turns encouraging, listening, and cheering me on. And when I read her poetry, I can see her, the Kendra-ness, come through. She has a clarity of language that I envy, a way of saying what needs to be said but in a beautiful way that pushes you to read on. Here’s an excerpt from one of her poems. 
Steve is a quiet, unassuming man who challenges his students, pushing them to take their writing further than they might think possible. He was the first teacher who asked me and my classmates the question, “Should we revise our poetry?” He wasn’t urging us to think one way or another, just inviting us to actually think about this thing we’ve always been told to do; to consider what it means and make the decision for ourselves. And his writing has a raw, honest quality about it that leaves the reader feeling like they’ve been there, standing next to the speaker. I love its plain-spoken elegance, the way a trip to the laundromat or the tiny bell above a shop door become things of beauty. I particularly enjoy this poem, which you can 
Valzhyna is one of my teachers in the MFA program at the University of Baltimore. Originally from Belarus and only 2 years older than me, she’s had an amazing amount of success and has been called a “risen star of the international poetry world” by the Irish Times. She’s one of those poets whose writing seizes you by the throat and only lets you back down at the moment you’ve given up on breathing. And though her poetry is wonderful to read, it’s best to hear her read it. Here are a few of my favorite lines from her poems: