Five Days In...

My teaching job offers me such wonderful opportunities to indulge my love for poetry--and my odd desire to talk about it. Talk about a wonderful way to kick off National Poetry Month: Caldwell Community College and Technical Institute has a 23-year history of putting on a Writers Symposium and bringing in some top-notch writers. Some garnered much fame after they visited our campus; some were already well-established. The plaque in E Building that holds the list of their names, and it's impressive.

This spring, we chose a poetry focus and it's lasting all month. We kicked off, though, with current NC poet laureate Cathy Smith Bowers and her friend and predecessor in the post, Kathryn Stripling Byer. In order to entice our students to attend, I'm using as a supplementary text The Language They Speak Is Things to Eat, edited by UNC's Michael McFee. Not only are Byer's poems included but Fred Chappell, James Applewhite, Robert Morgan, Heather Ross Miller, the late Reynolds Price and more, all NC poets.

My students are assigned to keep a chart of the poems they read during this unit in Lit, with an eye toward a formal essay on the works of one living poet (or only recently deceased) and an informal paper, one Carol Jago shared, her Goldilocks project--Find one poem that's too easy for you, one that's too hard, and one that's just right. I'm keeping my own chart and finding so many great poems. I've also read Tim Peeler's Checking Out, a collection of poems set in and around a local hotel where he once worked the night shift. Great character development!

I'm reading Bowers' Like Shining from Shook Foil, her latest poetry collection, which includes two poems I especially love, "Syntax" and "The Napkin."

The best part of the NPM celebration at school is the increased likelihood that others will have read the poems I have--or have heard them read by the poet.

Another exciting part of the celebration for me has been the chance to encourage others to write. I've visited the Early College high school located on our campus and presented poetry-writing workshops, and I've also taken part in a similar workshop for any of our college students interested in writing poetry.

I'm most pleased that after lots of years of talking about poetry, I'm right in the middle of a whirlwind of poets and readers, practicing what we preach.

Five Days In...

Fiddling with Form

As I'm reading the poetry collections in my own library this month, the ones acquired in the last year especially, I am also teaching poetry in my Literature-Based Research class. Today as we discussed fixed form in contrast to free verse, I talked about the challenge not only of using the framework established by a fixed form such as a sonnet or sestina, but of creating something clever, original, or even beautiful in the process. After all, isn't that what drew Renaissance poets to the sonnet?

Two poets have achieved just such a feat with quite original constraints in the past year. First, Fred Chappel succeeded in his book Shadow Box to create a poem within each poem. At readings, his wife sometimes reads the inner poem as he reads the outer lines, reminding me of the power of poetry out loud.

In a quite different turn, Mike Smith's book Multiverse uses anagram in a most original way. The first section, entitled "A Bestiary," uses the same exact letters--no more, no fewer--to create each poem. His titles range from "Ape" to "Zebra" and all in between. The section section "Anagram of America" rearranges the letters of poems by famous poets to create something new, often in response to the original. He creates anagrams of Auden's "The Unknown Citizen," Bishop's "Filling Station," and Whitman's "O Captain, My Captain."

I cannot comprehend the tediousness of Smith's accomplishment, but I can certainly admire it--and I can enjoy the results, since he has succeeded in creating something new, endowed with meaning and message. He and Chappel make villanelles and sestinas look like a piece of cake.

Fiddling with Form

An Encouraging Word about Chapbooks, Take 2

Friday before I left the office for the long weekend break, I tried to publish a post about poetry. Never having had bad luck on this blog, I didn't think to save what I was posting, but when I clicked Publish, it all went away. Although I can't possibly remember everything I wrote, I'm going to try again.

Whenever I start spouting off about National Poetry Month--or poetry in general, I am either dismayed or disappointed at the number of reading friends who never consider poetry. In a way, I think Billy Collins may have been correct when he said that "high school is where poetry goes to die." I've tried not to be one of those teachers, but I do remember crossing paths with the ones who inflicted poetry on students rather than tantalizing us with it.

I've always loved poetry, but in the last few years, as I have been writing more, I have also been reading more. My suggestion to anyone who is reluctant or intimidated about reading poetry is that you start with a chapbook. These slender volumes usually have only 25-30 poems, usually focused on a central theme. The investment in time and money is minimal, but the payoff is often quite wonderful. This month, I've committed to read some of the chapbooks I've accumulated this year. I've dipped into a few, but I want to read the whole book at once to get the full effect.

I've started with Breathing Out by Bruce Niedt, a friend I've not actually met. Bruce participates in Poetic Asides, the online poetry community where I've been writing for two years now. In Bruce's work, I recognize a kindred spirit, and I enjoy his approach to a writing prompt. I'm not sure if his blog title Orange Peel inspired the first poem in his collection, a sensuous poem called"How to Peel an Orange," or vice versa. In "The Little Shoplifters, the speaker of the poem observes birds feasting on a spilt bag of seed at the home improvement stores. Another favorite of mine from this chapbook is "All the Clocks in My House are Set to Different Times."

Chapbooks are available in many places. If you check the poetry section of a book store, especially the indies, you may find volumes by local or regional poets. If you keep an eye out for readings in your area, you can usually pick up books published by the poets reading. Several presses that feature poetry have an online presence, even on Facebook.

Before ruling out poetry altogether, I suggest you try it again, this time with no essay to write, no multiple choice test to take. Read for the pleasure. That's why poets write, you know. As William Carlos Williams said, "If it ain't pleasure, it ain't a poem."

An Encouraging Word about Chapbooks, Take 2

On Anticipation of National Poetry Month

I know I am home. Today when, at lunch, a table full of my colleagues, my friends, spent our time voluntarily making plans for celebration of National Poetry Month, I knew I was with my people. I do my best each spring to synchronize my lit class syllabus with the calendar as well, introducing poetry just past mid-April, hoping that by the time April Fool's Day rolls around, I've managed to light a spark or two at least.

Today was that day. Never do those fifty minutes of class time fly faster than when I'm teaching poetry. Even without the bell, I know when my time's nearly up by the rustle as obvious as hymn books scraping out of the racks as the preacher winds down his sermon and offer the altar call. I want to say, "Oh, sit back down. Let's blow off your math class today and just talk poetry." I've had wonderful teachers who loved poetry and passed that love on to me. I've also had teachers who firmly believed they held the answer key to all of the literary canon. For Mrs. Hopper, my fifth and sixth grade teacher, I am grateful for her willingness time and again to read to use Longfellow's "Skipper Ireson's Ride."

My family also passed along a love for poetry--nothing over the top. We just managed to be surrounded by it--Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses, "The Duel"--the dreadful tale of the gingham dog and the callico cat, "Abou Ben Adhem" ("may his tribe increase"). Since Daddy's still preaching, he'll occasionally call and ask me to help him find a particular poem that's on his mind. I feel sure, too, that with a little prodding, he can still quote the last stanza of "Thanatopsis."

This month, I will keep reading as voraciously as ever, but I will be deliberately reading poetry. I have a backlog of chapbooks of friends and of friends I've never exactly met. That's where I intend to start. I'll be tuning in and sharing some of the best.

On Anticipation of National Poetry Month

A Poem a Day?

Last April, I participated in Poetic Asides' Poem a Day challenge. Moderator Robert Lee Brewer posted a prompt every day in April, along with a poem he had written himself especially for the prompt. The goal was to write a first draft of a poem each day. We could take May to revise if we wished.

In a short time, a little community developed. We had no time for writer's block because we had another prompt tomorrow. In addition to posting our poems, we responded to those that touched us or tickled us. When the month ended, we wanted to continue. Robert graciously agreed to post a prompt every Wednesday throughout the year. In November, when the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) was underway, he issued a "Chapbook Challenge": again he posted daily prompts, but when we completed the month, we had time to select from the poems we had written those that would work together, ideally with a single theme, in a chapbook. He and his new bride Tammy (also a poet) served as judges.

Over the past year, those of us who have continued to write regularly have come to know a little bit about one another--as least as much as our poetry and our comments make transparent.

Now that a new PAD challenge has begun, we have been stunned by the response. The last time I checked over 900 postings appeared under yesterday's first prompt of the month. Since Robert grew ambitious and planned an e-book of the poems judged (by professional poets) the best, he now has a huge job ahead. For the participants, trying to read all the work by our fellow poets is also challenging, but sifting for the nuggets of gold should provide a month of poetry pleasure.

A Poem a Day?