Possibilities of Breath: Charles Olson

ink drawing by Megan Herbert

ink drawing by Megan Herbert

Charles Olson, an American modernist poet who prefigured the Beat poets and the L-A-N-G-U-A-G-E poets, was very interested in the quality of breath in poetry. There’s been a lot written about this, much of it scholarly or dense, but at its base, it’s intriguing.

One slam poet explained that she writes lines as long as her actual breath, what her mouth can get out before she gasps for air. When she’s spent, she begins a new line.

Okay…, everyone can grasp that notion better than a discussion of meter or syllable counts, etc. But let’s turn to Olson’s theory, written into a manifesto entitled “Projective Verse” in 1950. Continue reading

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When My Brother Was an Aztec

I spent part of today immersed in a new book from Copper Canyon Press, When My Brother Was an Aztec. Author Natalie Diaz has a strong voice, a voice filled with despair and rage and sadness about life on a reservation, and the effort of loving someone who might be hurting you.

The entire middle section of the book is devoted to her brother’s meth addiction, and she describes — in great surreal detail — what it is like living with someone whose head has been rearranged by substances. She’s surreal in this writing because it’s appropriate. Because you can’t communicate with someone in an altered state without, after a while, becoming uncertain whether your own state is normal. Continue reading

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Jane Hilberry: In Love with a Dark, Hairy Mammal

Awww… what a surprising and cheerful poem… a clear reason for letting your imagination run away with you…

Jane Hilberry
Crazy Jane Meets a Bear

“I’ve been looking for you everywhere,”
she says when she finally meets him.
She has been chasing the bear, but the bear
is smart. He kneels down
to brush over his tracks with the soft
branch of a fir. He catches a hint
of her scent, and is gone. It’s not
that he’s afraid of Jane, he just
doesn’t want to meet her by himself
in the woods. No one knows
what she might do, if provoked. She
has no fear of bears. She’s always wanted
a dance partner taller than herself.
Sometimes she carries a bag of berries,
a slab of ham, to attract the bear,
preferably a grizzly. If she’s going
to go to all this trouble, she wants
to find a big one. She knows
he could rip her apart with those strong hands,
knows he could lift and toss her
out of his path, but she’s used
to the risk. She muses to herself,
“Can a girl propose?”
She decides not to stand
upon etiquette. He is afraid
she would embarrass him
if he introduced her to his friends.
She never did have much fashion sense.
“I am divorcing my husband and moving in
with a bear,” she announces at a party.
Then she plunges her hand
into a pot of honey. “Some sweets
I reserve for him,” she says,
licking her own fingers.

“Crazy Jane Meets a Bear” first appeared in Grrrrrr: A Collection of Poems about Bears, edited by C.B. Follett, (Arctos Press, 2000).

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Living in a Monstrous World: Follow-Up Prompt

This week in class, I asked my students to write super-short news poems. Read the parameters for the prompt, then read on.

Of course, students are anxious and skeptical about elements of the world situation — yet, what matters is different for each of them. Maurice Sendak’s death hit hard. Another student, a new graduate from a college in North Carolina, was absorbed by the overwhelming recent opposition to the same-sex marriage amendment in that state.

There are crises of ethics and power all over the place. What can we do about these things? Use our voices. Write. In my opinion, telling it slant and small is like a quick undressing, and much more scintillating than headlines and news copy.

Below are some of the gems from that quickly wrought and very pithy exercise. Continue reading

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Magic Hours, Corn and Judgment

"Corn Series" by Barbara Byers (ink and watercolor pencil on paper, 4”X 6”)

"Corn Series" by Barbara Byers (ink and watercolor pencil on paper, 4”X 6”)

I’ve just finished Tom Bissell’s essay collection, Magic Hours (Believer Books, 2012). I already knew Bissell’s writing from a New Yorker article on Jennifer Hale, the woman who voices video games. I was entranced by the way he led me through a subject (video games) I was pretty sure I had zero interest in.

Many of the essays in the book are compelling, and I laughed out loud at the story of filmmaking coming to Bissell’s rural hometown:“Escanaba’s Magic Hour.” But it was his essay on writer Jim Harrison that pleased me most. Continue reading

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Knowing When to Stop: Dottie Grossman

One of Los Angeles’ finest brevity-based poets, Dottie Grossman, died two days ago. The thing about Dottie was that she could compress her thoughts into something small, and still be incisive — astoundingly. That’s a skill… knowing when to stop, and being able to do so in a little capsule of a poem.

Dottie Grossman 3

Dottie Grossman 3 (Photo credit: michaelz1)

Here’s an example:

Dottie Grossman
Pieces of a Mirror

All day,
at the window,
I sit next to the weather,
studying shadows,
like an indoor cat,
until dusk,
when the sky
walks me home.

My friend Mark Weber created a wonderful tribute to her.

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How Dustin Hoffman Connects to Poetry

Do you write because you already know what you have to say and you just need to get it down? … or do you write to figure it out?

In a New York Times Magazine article from March 4, 2012, actor Dustin Hoffman (now in his 70s) avers, “If I had one wish, it would be to live long enough to get to a point where you know yourself. Is that ever possible? Well, you won’t and you don’t. But you have to retain a sense of wonder.”

In my creative writing, I almost don’t want to know myself exactly. I want to find myself in each poem. I’m willing to wait for the kernel of truth to appear. This takes time, effort, patience and distance. Continue reading

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