Incendiary Lit

La Mesa, California, in Grossmont Center’s Barnes and Noble at 7:30 for the “Third Wednesdays” poetry reading on 6/17/09 featuring Steve Kowit (Author of the wonderful writing ‘textbook’ “In the Palm of Your Hand” as well as great books of poetry and prose) and Terry Hertzler (publisher of Caernarvon Press and a great poet, and though I haven’t read any of his prose yet I’m sure its also very good). They’re both really great poets, and there’s an open mic afterward too for more local flavor. I just may have to clear my throat a few times and try reading again. Anyway, go to this reading if you’re anywhere in the area at all. If you’re in a poetry reading or writing class you can probably even talk your teacher into giving you some extra credit for going and writing a little essay about it.

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Even though it has little to do with his fondness for poetry, (Robbie Burns isn’t a favorite AND I’m majoring in poetry) Craig Ferguson has long been my favorite late night talk show host, and yes that’s including Conan. Don’t get me wrong, I love Conan, but the format of Craig’s show just gets e a bit more these days. I’m sorry. I am glad to be shed of Leno (though until Jimmy Fallon gets his stride, its a step back. But Leno’s a leap back from Carson, and he’s still occasionally hilarious, so let it be). These asides are confusing even me. So let’s get to it. A little while back Jessica and I were with some friends and convinced them to change the channel after a number of consecutive Fallon awkward moments to Ferguson, whom they’d never seen (aside from the Drew Carrey Show, which I still feel is kind of like Carrottop. Easy to make fun of and laugh at secretly. Come on, they’re puns, and we, as word nerds, should love them). And randomly he not only spent the entire monolog talking about poetry (and making fun of poetry as a subject of higher education– and rightly so, I guess. But one comment that really helped set me in my ways was from a History professor, who interrupted tangents about the history of beer and of flipping the bird (of which he was writing a book about), to share a short anecdote about a good friend of his, with a PhD in history who happily manages a Pizza Hut. The anecdote was lost on me, but the concept was not. And I hated the idea, but still couldn’t shake my want to learn more about writing. So I gave in. What is this? This is an introduction to two Craig Ferguson Monologues about poetry. Kind of. Why Two? Because when I searched for Craig Ferguson poetry Burns, I get a link from 2009 and I almost posted it unwatched. It was from the very beginning of the year, a separate monologue, which focused highly on poetry. So I have to post them both. They make me laugh a lot.

via videosift.com

and
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The show we’d seen originally.
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Willow Springs is a sweet literary journal from Eastern Washington University that publishes accessible and excellent poetry and prose. They’ve recently started a feature on their website that has the poet writing (at decent length) about their poem. Dorianne Laux is one of the best contemporary poets, and you should all be more familiar with her work. Dagnabbit. Here’s her feature at Willow Springs for her poem “S. Sgt Metz.”

ENJOY

That You Arrive, Eventually, At the Insufficiency Of Just-Having-Been

by Anne Caston

The black-clad Amish walk, this August morning,
to the widow’s farm for the belling of the new bull.

Their daughters sing, their dogs bark
sharply, their sons strike stones with long sticks.

They pass her solemn house, its drawn shutters, black
hunting bunched at the gatepost, the porch

rail, the door. A rogue almond tree burns
gold and bronze beside the barn; the killed hog

swings from a bough of oak. Stiff sheets
sail on the line. The cock, sour

in his spurs, crows at nothing
and rushes the dogs.

And in her garden going to ruin: the shameless
blue stars of the morning glory blaze.

—

Amidst all the drabness implied, and the dark drab of the black bunting, this dreary colored poem contains some wonderful images and lines, but none better than the final image of the blue flowers against that mourning (this August morning). How shameless indeed! Wonderful. This poem was in Anne Caston’s collection Judah’s Lion which won the 2006 Cider Press Review Book Award. She is a core member of the faculty at University of Alaska at Anchorage’s low residency MFA program.

Thank you yet again Cornell University. Here for your listening pleasure is an audio interview with Charles Simic from earlier in October (2008) on the Writers at Cornell blog.

David Allan Greer’s Maya Angelou impersonation has returned! And surprisingly, Chocolate News isn’t as horrible as I was expecting. I shouldn’t be surprised, he was hilarious on In Living Color. Click the jump to see his PE-props-heavy rant about hip hop. I feel your pain DAG, Fight the powers that be… but I gotta say, I don’t have a *bad imitation of Flavor Flav commences* Goddddd Complexx.

(more…)

Alex Lemon’s poetry collections include Hallelujah Blackout (forthcoming from Milkweed Editions), Mosquito (Tin House Books 2006) and the chapbook At Last Unfolding Congo (horse less press 2007). His memoir is also forthcoming from Scribner. His poems have appeared in numerous magazines, including AGNI, BOMB, Denver Quarterly Gulf Coast, Kenyon Review, New England Review, Open City, Pleiades and Tin House. His translations (with Wang Ping) of a number of contemporary Chinese poets have appeared in Tin House, Artful Dodge, New American Writing and other journals. Among his awards are a 2005 Literature Fellowship in Poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts and a 2006 Minnesota Arts Board Grant. He co-edits LUNA: A Journal of Poetry and Translation with Ray Gonzalez, and he teaches writing at Macalester College in Minnesota. And he’s a badass. You’d better believe that.

Zebulon Huset: Do you have a favorite two-word color?
Alex Lemon: Butter-blue.

ZH: Do you have any tricks that you use when a particular word in a poem just doesn’t feel right?
AL: I open a new document, type the word, and then stare at it. If nothing happens, I stop writing and read. I like dictionaries, especially The Historical Dictionary of American Slang.

ZH: If you were stranded on a desert island what three movies (or books or CDs) would you bring (with the island’s magical cd/dvd player in mind, I guess)?
AL: It really depends on who I wake up as in the morning, so day to day, this would change. Today, let’s say I’d bring Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, Cormac McCarthy’s Suttree and this afternoon, I’d like to watch Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus. Tomorrow, Nina Simone, CD Wright and Herzog’s Wheel of Time. Oh yeah, and then the newest Brother Ali album, The Undisputed Truth would appear with John Hammond’s Wicked Grin and the largest dictionary in the universe.

ZH: If an actor was to play you in a movie, who would you want it to be?
AL: Jesse Sawyer asked me this question in an interview for The Mac Weekly and I think I answered Seal, but I’d like to revise my answer, and say a group-cast of Daniel Day Lewis, Forrest Whitaker and Ben Kingsley.

ZH: Do you have any tips for writers just beginning to submit their work for publication?
AL: Read the journals you want to submit to, and always think about your writing’s relationship to the many aesthetics that are out there. Don’t get demoralized if your work is rejected—there are so so many good writers and so few places to publish. Lots of good work doesn’t get accepted (for numerous reasons). It doesn’t always mean that your work is not good because an editor declines it. That idea of worth is a tricky thing for writers; but in a pure way, it would be ideal (and maybe impossible) to judge your writing by an internal barometer and not an editor’s thumbs-up or thumbs-down.

ZH: If you could only ever read the books of one author again, who would it be?
AL: Shakespeare or Funk & Wagnalls.

ZH: Do you have any guilty pleasure books/movies?
AL: I like Richard Price books a lot, but I’m not sure that counts. I watch a ton of baseball.

ZH: What was the last book (or poem) that you’ve absolutely loved?
AL: I loved the Matt Donovan poems in AGNI 67. Adam Clay’s new poems are knock-outs.

ZH: Have you found the process of writing a memoir very different from writing poetry and short fiction?
AL: Yes. It’s been very, very hard. Much more challenging than I had first thought. I had to really work at peeling the just-right amount lyrical veneer away from my early drafts of prose. My M.O. can be abstract and imagistic and lyrical and sometimes that sacrifices narrative and clarity. I’ve had to acknowledge my tendencies and learn how to work with and against them. I feel fortunate to have an amazing and helpful editor. But it’s been a harrowing and wonderful thing.

ZH: Do you have any advice for students applying to the writing MFA program at the University of Minnesota, or elsewhere?
AL: Before you apply to a MFA program make sure it’s what you really want to do. It’s a terrific thing if one takes advantage of it. Apply to the programs where you think you’ll be able to learn and read and write. There are so many variables to the MFA experience, all of which are clouded by expectations, and I was lucky. The U of MN was ideal for me.

ZH: Young-poets?
AL: I had the pleasure of reading at the Sarah Lawrence Poetry Festival this spring, and while I was there I got to listen, and then read a lot of student work. That place is packed with wonderful poets.

Another Argument About the Impossible
by Lawrence Raab

Even if we agree in principle that a poem can be
about anything, you still want to claim
it cannot include space aliens,
since by their very nature (you insist)
they are silly. And even if belief
is a subject that’s stood the test of time,
a poem about a man who believes in space aliens
will be a poem about a man who is either
silly or demented. Belief requires
a world of consequence all around it:
men, women, nature, history, and so on.
Reality, of course, is another matter, but see
what happens (you continue) when these
are put together, as in: “My work
concerns the nature of reality, belief,
and space aliens.” It would be different
if we knew they were there, but we don’t,
and a poem cannot afford to adopt
such a wait-and-see attitude toward the world
which, after all, has provided so many
more compelling subjects. No (you conclude),
not even a poem that argues against them
can survive their presence,
not even if the aliens never appear,
never do or say anything, never threaten us
with their neutron blasters, never steal our women
to populate their planet, not even if their ships
remain hidden, and we are never taken up in them
to be probed and instructed, dazzled and released.

–

from his collection The Probable World, and also collected in Visible Signs; New and Selected Poems. Buy them both for under $2 at amazon. You won’t regret it. They’re great. Very easy to read, and very entertaining.

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Cool huh? I bet most people have something to say to the speaker about the concept of extra-terrestrial life, or you laughed and thought “yes,” *sniff from the snifter of cognac* “a poem about an alien, how wickedly absurd.” Then the cackle that can only be made with a glinting gold monocle string dangling in front of the left cheek. But, that is covered in the poem. Because although it’s a discussion about discussion about unknowable (and therefore impossible to prove or disprove) things, it leaves a back door by saying “It would be different / if we knew they were there, but we don’t,” because of course, now, the concept of at least some form of alien life in the incalculable depths of space seem all but assured. However, by including that statement, it recalls the time before modern space research when aliens were Metalunans in shiny silver suits and massive foreheads– like the speaker in the poem says “silly.” So a poem that argues for aliens, and against aliens can’t survive the reality of aliens… if they float down one day in their ship with a computerized Rosetta Stone and open the world of earth in on a galactic empire, everything will change. But this poem isn’t arguing for or against aliens. It’s arguing for the argument, and for the concept of a discussion about unknowable things.

The poem is one I’ve come to associate closely with Raab’s style. Very conversational, even including dialog, presents a question in an anecdotal fashion, and ends with a series of images. Not a bad way to lay out a poem if you ask me.

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Writing exercises:

Write a poem that is your take on aliens. Place it in an anecdotal, or at least loosely narrative setting. Raab’s poem uses poetry to root the discussion in the real, for your poem use current events. Be it high or low culture, root this opinion about aliens in a very specific time, so that even if they do descend, this poem could possibly survive as a ‘pre-alien’ historical document. Or, at least a glimpse into a specific time with an alien tilt.

Write a poem that follows the general pattern of this poem. A narrative poem that digresses a number of times, that presents an argument, or concept that is left somewhat in the air for debate, that is very conversational in tone, and ends with an anaphoric word and series of 3-4 images.

Yes, those composition books she writes all her wonderful words in are also decorated. Here’s one that she posted on her blog A Century of Nerve.

Here is an in-depth (and interesting) article by Meghan O’Rourke from Slate.

and here is a link to the fabulous Poets.org where they have Kay Ryan reading a number of her poems (right hand side of the page) including the “Home to Roost” pre-911 poem that caused a little controversy post-9-11. Such an odd way to mark time when you consider other atrocities that (numerically, but not patriotically) far exceed the deathtoll of the attack on the twin towers. Closer to home causes caustic magnification, regardless of location or nationality. Hey, is that a poem? Haha.

And with this little section done, I just want to say, I heart Kay Ryan. Word up. Her poems (not entirely unlike Charles Simic, whom she took over the Poet Laureate position from) are small, interesting glimpses into a scene, a psyche, a world slightly askew, not quite how one normally looks at the world, and what more can you ask from a poem, really?

Now, the sonic density and oddness of images may remind you of a certain woman in a white bonnet… Ms. Dickinson, and Kay Ryan’s reclusive life only back up the similarities. Ryan, however, is getting more recognition in her lifetime that Emily Dickinson. In fact, know it or not, she’s your current poet laureate. That’s right. So, verse yourself a little bit (hehe) on this positioned poet. She’s taken over Charles Simic’s position as of a couple weeks ago, so learn something. Here’s an interview/story from the New York Times, here’s a short thing from the New Yorker, and here’s an audio clip of her talking about writing from NPR. There, now you can feel like you’re still learning over the summer.

(Also, I hope this isn’t offensive, but doesn’t she look vaguely like a feminine Dudley Moore?)

His manuscript “Kurosawa’s Dog” beat out hundreds of others to win. Congratulations. For information on how to enter the 2009 Field Poetry Prize wait for a few months then click here.

Dennis Hinrichsen’s other books include Details from the Garden of Earthly Delights, Rain That Falls this Far and The Attractions of Heavenly Bodies. Of his most recent, Details… Yusef Komunyakaa said Hinrichsen’s work  “achieves a classical tone within an experimental shape, as the poems meander through a pulsating labyrinth of nuanced imagery.”

Field’s an example of a journal that I originally submitted to,*looks around to make sure no one overhears* without reading first. And I of course got rejected. But, undaunted, I made a wise move and entered the 2006 (or 2005, I forget which) book contest, and though the entry was completely wrong for them, I got a subscription and read the journal and saw the error of my ways. It’s a bit more edgy, experimental. Cerebral I guess is a good way to put it, but it’s not indecipherable either. So now I know that I should send the mostly poems with that cerebral slant to them, which I think most serious writers will write at least occasionally. Just something to keep in mind: read journals whenever you can before you submit your work to them.

Robert Lee Brewer’s Writer’s Digest blog Poetic Asides, which is quite the title, has an interview with Denise Low up now.

I mean, I knew that there had to be a poet laureate in Kansas, or, there most likely was one unless the position had been dissolved like New Jersey’s, but it’s just kind of odd to think of Kansas, at first, as something other than pastoral. But there’s Wichita, Kansas City, Topeka all with at least over 100,000 people… there are metropolitan areas… maybe I’m just subconsciously area-ist against those from Kansas because I don’t know anyone from there. The only people I’ve known from Kansas City were from KFC, Kansas F*$%ing City… Missouri. Hmm. Very odd.

Emma Bolden is a poet, playwright, teacher and editor. She holds a BA from Sarah Lawrence and an MFA from University of North Carolina, Wilmington; her poems have appeared in MARGIE, Verse, and Briar Cliff Review among others (including winning the Georgetown Review’s 2007 fiction prize); her newest chapbook The Mariner’s Wife was published in 2008 by Finishing Line Press, and first chapbook How to Recognize a Lady appeared in the chapbook quartet Edge by Edge; and her her one-act, Drinks, was selected as the winner of the American Theatre Co-Op’s Winter 2004 Contest for Original One-Act Plays. She will be assuming poetry editorship of the Georgetown Review this fall. And, she updates the world on her life and writing and whatnot at A Century of Nerve.

Zebulon Huset: Do you have a favorite two-word color?
Emma Bolden: Pearl gray.

ZH: Do you have any tricks that you use when a particular word in a poem just doesn’t feel right?
EB: Sometimes, I just sit and stare at the word for a very long time.  Sometimes, I change it, and then sit and stare at the new word for a very long time.  This process tends to repeat itself ad infinitum, until I finally find a word that feels right.  When I can’t find a word that feels right, even after said process repeats itself ad infinitum, I do have a few tricks up my sleeve.  I am sadly dependent upon the online thesaurus.  I have a collection of odd books lying around, most of which are very old, and I’ll sometimes pick a word randomly from one of those books.  It’s a trick I picked up from OuLiPo, and often shakes the text up enough so that I can see where things need to go, or it gives me a new vision for the work.

ZH: If you were stranded on a desert island what three movies (or books or CDs) would you bring (with the island’s magical cd/dvd player in mind, I guess)?
EB: The three movies I’d bring are Spinal Tap, Dr. Strangelove (Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb), and The Graduate.  The three CDs I’d bring are Bob Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde, George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass, and Radiohead’s OK Computer.  The three books would be Emily Dickinson’s complete works, T.S. Eliot’s complete works, and Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping.

ZH: If an actress was to play you in a movie, who would you want it to be?
EB: Oh, Emma Thompson.  Definitely.

ZH: Do you have any tips for writers just beginning to submit their work for publication?
EB: Read the magazine!  I know it’s the most common piece of advice, but I think it’s the most important.  At the very least, read the work samples on the journal’s website.  It can tell you a lot about what they’re looking for.

ZH: If you could only ever read the books of one author again, who would it be?
EB: Hm.  This is an especially difficult question, so I think I’m going to have to cheat.  If I could only ever read the books of one poet again, it’d have to be Emily Dickinson — I’ve read her poems hundreds of times, but am always surprised by something new — or Anne Carson, who I think is one of the most brilliant minds at work today, if not the most brilliant.  If I could only ever read the books of one fiction writer again, it’d be Margaret Atwood.

ZH: Do you have any guilty pleasure books/movies?
EB: I have to admit that I absolutely love Jacqueline Susann’s Valley of the Dolls and Once Is Not Enough.  I also loved the Joan Crawford movie Straight Jacket.

ZH: What was the last book (or poem) that you’ve absolutely loved?
EB: Louise Gluck’s Averno – it’s a powerful, affecting, complicated, and gorgeously written collection.  I read it months ago and am still wrestling with it, which is when I know a book is really doing its job.  I also loved Beth Ann Fennelly’s Tender Hooks, which is powerful and unflinching and beautifully done.

ZH: What is the best title you’ve come across (actual work notwithstanding)?
EB: Sad Little Breathing Machine — and the actual work is even better than the title.

ZH: Writers are notoriously neurotic, do you have any particular writing-related tics, or have you seen any interesting tics in fellow writers?
EB: The most interesting tic I’ve ever heard about — though this might be a myth (I almost hope it is) — is of a writer who could only write while eating green apples.  That sounds like a stomach ache waiting to happen to me.  I write poetry long-hand, which many people think is crazy.  I always write with a particular kind of pen (Pilot Precise V5 Rolling Ball Pens, Extra Fine, to be exact) and in a particular kind of notebook (those old school composition books you can find for 90 cents at an office supply store).  I tend to write at night, and I have to be alone, in a quiet room.  I never actually realized how particular I am about writing until I answered this question …

ZH: As a Master of the Fine Arts, do you have any advice for writers planning on applying to MFA programs this coming winter?
EB: Steel yourself.  Remember that the most important part about an MFA program is developing your own voice and learning, for yourself, what it means to be a writer.  Remember that this means “for the rest of your life” — only a fraction of your life as a writer will be spent in an MFA program.  Therefore, I think the most important thing to learn as an MFA student is how to work independently — that is, learning and developing the patterns of life and of mind that will allow you to work as a writer after the MFA program.  As important as my classes and workshops were, I think that the most essential work I did as a graduate student happened outside of the classroom, as I studied and wrote and revised on my own.

ZH: You’ve successfully navigated the path from MFA to teaching, do you have any tips for current MFA students who are hoping to teach?
EB: I’d encourage them to remember that good teachers are immersed in their subject, in and out of the classroom — in order to teach well, it’s important that you’re immersed in the work you’re meant to teach.  I’d advise them to not be overwhelmed by the day-to-day problems that occur in the classroom.  There will be challenges, and those challenges will be significant, but I am grateful for each and every problem that’s popped up in the classroom, as it taught me more about what it means to be a teacher, and how to teach effectively.  Remember that your students are human beings, just like you, with their own interests and issues and challenges and concerns.  And don’t be afraid to be a human being in the classroom yourself — in writing classes, I’ve often found that the most helpful thing for a student is to share your own struggles with them.

Why not, right? Go to Poetry Blog Rankings and start up an account, then go here and vote for Incendiary Lit as the greatest, of allllllll time. Word to your mother. We’ve finally gotten relocated, so the posts should be picking up soon.

After reading a great deal of literary magazines I’ve come to hope that if I enter enough of the Indiana Review contests that I’ll eventually accrue a lifetime subscription. Every issue there are amazing poems, fiction, and even art. Also, ever since Sydney Brown’s creative nonfiction workshop I’ve had a soft-spot for the flash-fiction. The short short. Not sure who to blame for my prose poem affinity. Maybe Campbell McGrath. Yeah, I could probably safely blame my love for prose poems on his first book Capitalism.
The bastard.
Anyway, the Indiana Review 1/2K Prize is another one of those self-explanatory contest title names like “First Book of Poetry” or “Who can fart the bonfire started with a lighter?” though I’ve been told first prize for that last one isn’t quite as much as the hospital bills the second place winner receives, so it’s a gamble. The prize is for prose poems or short-shorts that are 500 words or less. 1/2 of 1K, 1,000. Yeah. 1000×0.5, even.
Entry Fee: $15 ($27 overseas)- which includes a year’s subscription to IR. Definitely well worth it. Consider it a bonus gift for subscribing, you’re entered into a sweepstakes where you could win $1000 and critical acclaim! HOORRAYYYY! But really, you never know who’s going to like your style, your flair for story structure, your unique image sets, so why not spend the $15 and ensure yourself two 200 page collections of poetry, fiction, nonfiction and reviews that I personally guarantee you’ll enjoy at least 1/3 of. If you don’t I’ll personally apologize in a form-email that I’ve already composed.
Deadline: June 9th! That’s right, very soon. That’s the postmark deadline. You can also submit online for the Indiana Review 1/2k Prize here.
Final Judge: You know the deal, the regular readers for the Indiana Review sort through the hundreds or thousands of pieces submitted, and narrow them down substantially. Then they move onto the senior editors who narrow it down to a reasonable number for the guest judge. Or it goes from readers to judge, depends on the contest, but if you make it past the early screening your prose poem/short short will be judged by none other than Russell Edson. I think Webdelsol summed up his biography best so I’ll shamelessly copy-paste that here for convenience: Russell Edson was born in Connecticut in 1935 and currently resides there with his wife Frances. Edson, who jokingly has called himself “Little Mr. Prose Poem,” is inarguably the foremost writer of prose poetry in America, having written exclusively in that form before it became fashionable. In a forthcoming study of the American prose poem, Michel Delville suggests that one of Edson’s typical “recipes” for his prose poems involves a modern everyman who suddenly tumbles into an alternative reality in which he loses control over himself, sometimes to the point of being irremediably absorbed–both figuratively and literally–by his immediate and, most often, domestic everyday environment. . . . Constantly fusing and confusing the banal and the bizarre, Edson delights in having a seemingly innocuous situation undergo the most unlikely and uncanny metamorphoses. . . .
I mean, it’s not a biography, but the pertinent information for someone who’s judging a writing contest. I first read Edson in Stand Up Poetry, Charles Harper Webb’s kick ass anthology. So send in to the 1/2k prize. What were you going to do with that $15 anyway? Buy two drinks at dinner? A frappuccino for yourself and two friends? 1/2 of a shirt? Get some good literature and an extra reason to be excited to see the mailman.

Here’s an interesting little series of interviews with Santa Fe poets about love poems… it was funny seeing Jon Davis (aka Chuck Calabreze) quote the one Pablo Neruda book as bad, and Artur Sze quote it as good… though I did use the same line Sze quoted as the little epigraph for my poem On Dog Mountain, but it’s still unpublished, so who knows… maybe it was a bad place to start from. Anyway, check it out, it’s not terribly wrong, and it’s always interesting to hear poets’ opinions on poetry…

The Cremation of Shelley
by Lawrence Raab

August 15, 1822

All around was scenery–
the ocean and its islands, watchtowers
along the coast, mountains
glittering like marble. Trelawny imagined
the spirit of his friend soaring above him.

And he thought, We’re no better
than a pack of dogs
dragging him back into the light.
Three white wands
marked the place where he’d been buried,

lime thrown over him, the yellow sand
shovelled in. And now
they had to dig him out. Who could speak?
Even Byron was silent.
When they heard the hollow sound

of iron on bone, Byron asked
if Trelawny would save the skull for him,
but remembering that he had formerly
used one as a drinking-cup, I was determined
Shelley’s should not be so profaned.

After the fire was lit they poured
wine over the body, causing the flames
to glisten and quiver. Then the corpse
fell open, and the heart
was laid bare. Byron turned away,

walked back to the beach,
swam out to his boat. Leigh Hunt
stayed inside his carriage. Everything
turned to ash, but what surprised us all
was that the heart remained entire.

The poet’s heart! Of course
it should resist the tire.
But why? As fitting that it burn,
if brighter than the rest.
Trelawny reached in and snatched it out.

No one saw him do it,
though his hand was badly hurt.
Every detail, he would write,
of the life of a man of genius
is interesting. But no more

about the heart–how much
he wanted it. I collected
the human ashes and placed them in a box.
Buried in Rome
with the appropriate ceremonies.

–
I really liked this poem from his awesome book The Probable World (under $1 used at amazon), and kept trying to remember where I knew the story from, years after first reading it. Then I kept mixing it up with Galway Kinnell’s wonderful poem “Shelley” which deals with Shelley’s life detached a bit from his work.

Writing exercise: Find a good biography of a favorite writer. Or check wikipedia. There’s a ton of authors with interesting biographical information available. Write a poem about that interesting fact. Poems that teach the reader something interesting that they didn’t already know are always more resonant.

I’m posting mine, but please, anyone writing a Poem a Day with Poetic Asides, the Writer’s Digest blog, or just on your own, please post into the comments, we’d love to read what everyone else is writing for this festive holiday month.

Jessica and I are working on an independent study class right now that involves reading as many 2007 journals that we can find, and pick the ones we like the most. The project still has a ways, but I’ve really started noticing some of the same names, especially in the smaller journals like Cairn and the Pacific Review the Willow Review and the like. Patrick Carrington, Sean Kilpatrick, Jonathon Wells, Emma Bolden, Geof Hewitt, Gary Nowacki, and Marilyn Ringer. This, of course, is merely coming from some guy who thinks he’s learning to become a poet, so take it with a grain of salt. The names may be terribly familiar, or new, but check out their poems when you come across them, at very worst they’ll be decent poems. I guarantee it.