Photo of the Week: "December Morning, Lake Michigan"

I remind all interested that many of my photographs are available at a daily photo blog. I invite everyone to visit the blog and to click on the photographs to examine them in high resolution or to magnify them for a detailed look.

John Ronan: "Wallpaper"

The VPR Poem of the Week is John Ronan�s �Wallpaper,� which appears in the Fall/Winter 2012-2013 issue (Volume XIV, Number 1) of Valparaiso Poetry Review.

John Ronan�s recent book, Marrowbone Lane, appeared in 2009 (Backwaters Press). His work has appeared in numerous journals, including Folio, Threepenny Review, The Recorder, Hollins Critic, New England Review, Southern Poetry Review, Louisville Review, Greensboro Review, and Notre Dame Review.

Tuesday of each week One Poet�s Notes highlights an excellent work by a poet selected from the issues of Valparaiso Poetry Review, except when other posts with news or updates preempt the usual appearance of this item, with the recommendation that readers revisit it. 

"All my life" by Sarah Broom

So we sat, and the waves
crashed in like gifts, or insults,
and the children played,
digging trenches to defend
against the sea, and then a head
bobbed up and down
in the waves, a bit too far out,
and an arm waved, and again,
and a friend walked the beach,
waving the head in, and we sat
and said to each other
do you know that Stevie Smith
poem, not waving but drowning �
yes, and why is it still

Photo of the Week: "December Evening in Valparaiso"

I remind all interested that many of my photographs are available at a daily photo blog. I invite everyone to visit the blog and to click on the photographs to examine them in high resolution or to magnify them for a detailed look.

Thomas Alan Holmes: "Dish"

The VPR Poem of the Week is Thomas Alan Holmes�s �Dish,� which appears in the Fall/Winter 2012-2013 issue (Volume XIV, Number 1) of Valparaiso Poetry Review.

Thomas Alan Holmes, a member of the East Tennessee State University English faculty, lives and writes in Johnson City, Tennessee. Some of his work has appeared in Louisiana Literature, Appalachian Journal, Seminary Ridge Review, Florida Review, Blue Mesa Review, Black Warrior Review, and The Southern Poetry Anthology Volume III: Contemporary Appalachia, with work forthcoming in Cape Rock Journal, Stoneboat, Connecticut Review, Emerge, and Noctua Review.

 

Tuesday of each week One Poet�s Notes highlights an excellent work by a poet selected from the issues of Valparaiso Poetry Review, except when other posts with news or updates preempt the usual appearance of this item, with the recommendation that readers revisit it. 

Lines for a New Year by Sam Hunt

I like the branch
I find myself on

a view over the garden
all the way down to the beach

the family below me
gathered in the garden

debating where I�ve gone.
My father�s got a theory.

I like the branch
I find myself on.

_____


You know how it is

to give up the piss
a week to the

day before Christmas

you know how it is

to fall over sober
safe in some spot,

come to later

Photo of the Week: "Dune Ridge"

I remind all interested that many of my photographs are available at a daily photo blog. I invite everyone to visit the blog and to click on the photographs to examine them in high resolution or to magnify them for a detailed look.

Risk & Point of View

In the last couple of weeks, I've been asked to talk a lot about point of view in poems. In workshops I often question whether the poem has enough risk or urgency. There are many ways to heighten tension in a poem. Some are thematic, e.g. alluding to backstory. Some are syntactical, e.g. phrasing a sentence as a question. Some are formal, e.g. breaking lines at a critical junction, or enjambment between stanzas. 

But I think point of view is undervalued as a determinant of tension. The POV you choose helps shape the risks your poem can take. 

First Person: Here, the central risk is one of discovery. The speaker's understanding of something, or the reader's understanding of the speaker, should change across the course of the poem. That doesn't mean the subject might not also do something. But keep in mind that you've chosen a POV that privileges his or her perception of that act/experience, a version that may or may not be reliable, versus focusing on the act/experience itself. 

Second Person: Here, the central risk in one of disclosure between parties. A secret is being revealed or created by those present in the world of the poem. If the "you" is being addressed through a series of imperative commands, then he or she should be asked to do something counterintuitive to what we know of that identity. 

There are a ton of Second Person poems being written right now, in part because it is a shortcut to intimacy with the reader. But it's frustratingly static when "I" tells "you" a story, across the course of the poem, that in reality would already be known and complete between the two parties. It's a gimmick, much like when the character in a short story pauses on a doorstep and flashes back to an entire romance right while her finger is pressing the theoretical buzzer. 

Third Person: Here, the central risk is dramatic. These are characters, and you control their stage, even if your writing is inspired by contemporary or historic events. A compelling Third Person poem, whether bird's-eye (in which you're battling the drag of expository language) or omniscient (in which you're tackling the beast of authenticity), is an awe-inspiring thing; I wish more people would try their hand at them. 

Ask yourself why your draft uses its particular point of view. Try envisioning the same poem in First Person, Second, Third. What does an outside view reveal or emphasize about your "characters" and their dynamics? What secrets would one tell the other? How do you newly sympathize (or not) when an antagonist becomes the speaker?

When the poem finds its destined POV, it will cling to it. Your favorite moments won't work in the other modes. You can try the same thing with verb tense: rotate the poem through past, present, and future. And I always create an intermediate draft in which all line and stanza breaks are erased. I massage the syntax as a prose-paragraph, then I break again. Sometimes this results in the same visual format. Sometimes not. 

When the poem starts to fight back, to commit over and over to certain aesthetics, that's when I know I'm on my way. And I'm wrestling with one right now, so wish me luck.

VALPARAISO FICTION REVIEW: Winter Issue Released

I am delighted to announce release of the Winter 2012 issue of Valparaiso Fiction Review,the national (international) literary journal published by the Department of English and Christopher Center for Library and Information at Valparaiso University. This issue of the journal contains compositions of short fiction by Bryan Shawn Wang, Jessica Roeder, Alan McMonagle, Nathan Gower, Joel Hans, and Tony Van Witsen. At nearly 200 pages, this is the largest issue of VFR thus far, and it is the first to present an international author.

Co-Editor Jon Bull and I are also pleased to announce Doretta Kurzinski has joined the staff as Associate Editor. We invite everyone to examine this third issue of VFR to read the fine stories, and we encourage all to pass along word to others who might be interested:

http://scholar.valpo.edu/vfr/

Valparaiso Fiction Review (VFR) is now accepting submissions of original short fiction by new, emerging, or established writers for the Summer 2013 issue. Authors are encouraged to visit VFR and follow the guidelines for submission.

Tuesday Poem: Nature Writing 101 by Catherine Owen

Our minds can turn anything romantic.
Is the problem.
The sewagy mud of the Fraser a quaint muslin & the spumes

pulsing out of chimneys at the Lafarge cement plant look,
at night, like two of Isadora Duncan�s scarves, pale, insouciant veils,
harmless. The trees are all gone but then aren�t our hearts

more similar to wastelands.
We can make it kin, this pollution, children one is

Photo of the Week: "Sunset Beyond Pond"

I remind all interested that many of my photographs are available at a daily photo blog. I invite everyone to visit the blog and to click on the photographs to examine them in high resolution or to magnify them for a detailed look.

Permissions

Last night, my wonderful and very cold-ridden boyfriend came over after getting off his late work shift. We talked over tea, he dosed himself with Nyquil, and we curled up in bed. After a couple of hours I woke up, restless in the too-hot apartment, the bright blue-fairy light of my computer speakers blazing from the distant wall. I tried to find a good arm position. That failed. I tried to balance my desire to snuggle with my desire to avoid his fevered, germ-laden breath. That failed too. 

When I'm trying to fall asleep, my mind wanders toward projects in progress; in this case, a book proposal I've been been considering since my January VCCA stint. Last night, I realized an idea for a narrative arc--one that resonated with life decisions I'm in the thick of right now. For the next 40 minutes, my mind poked and prodded. This could work. Episodes that had previously felt like nothing more than dissonant essays began to cohere in my mind as sequences, chapters, a braiding of memories with experiences that could be researched and reported. 

Well into my second hour of wakefulness, I jumped out of bed. It was 5 AM. I grabbed my notebook and used the last match in the box to light a votive, wary of the kitchen's fluorescent glow. I poured a small glass of carrot juice, and tipped into it a swallow of vodka leftover from earlier. I scribbled until the clouds began to lighten outside.

The spell was broken, energy vented. I crawled back into bed. He wrapped his arms around me and rested his lips on the nape of my neck. That's when it hit me: this man, who also came into my life during that January VCCA stint, is in the story going forward. He is both high spire and brick foundation. He is part of the adventure.

An adventure that I will, one way or another, commit to the page. The Author rejoices in having a witness, a trusted and funny voice in dialogue for the ride. The Girlfriend wonders: Is this something we talk about? Do I ask permission?

This is a memoirist's problem. I don't face this with poems. Though we sense the texture of inspiring truth, it's understood we talk about the poem as invention. In readings, even those most revealing poem is one among many. There are other things to talk about afterwards. 

I once had a man forbid me from writing about him in any form. It was stifling. It spooked me out of drafting for months. Another, an artist himself, would say "It's all material." I wonder if that maxim has ever been tested with him on the other end of the art. The first question I got after reading a personal essay at Frostburg State University this past summer was, "So, how much of that is true?" My flustered response--"um, all of it"--flip-flopped in my stomach as I considered the shady activities committed by a central (albeit unnamed) character. Right now, that essay is a finalist for a contest that offers a reading in the town where said "character" lives. It's one thing to write honestly about our weaker moments. It's another thing to deliver them to his doorstep. 

Sometimes students and aspiring memoirists ask me about the risk of writing about real people. I have no problem defending the ethics. There are very few cases where someone is at legitimate risk of lawsuit for libel or slander. What you are really worried about is making your dear ones mad at you. And I can't assure you that won't happen. 

"Isn't everyone flattered to see themselves in print, deep down?" No. Writers say things like that to each other, forgetting that we're writers. Our worldview is warped. My principle is that nothing is off limits, as long as 1) I've made my best effort at being truthful, and 2) I'm as hard on myself as anyone else in the scene. I stand by that. I remind myself of the revelatory nonfiction that I've read over the years, which meant so much to me, that may have been hard for that author's dear ones to see themselves in at the time. But principle is cold comfort when you lose someone over creative work.

If I could go back in time, are there pieces I'd spike, paragraphs I'd strike? No. That makes me feel selfish, but no. Second-guessing yourself as a memoirist is the worst pesticide. You don't just kill a weed; you contaminate the soil.

All of this is to say that when we woke up, puttering around the apartment and drinking orange juice, I did not ask.

Writers don't get a pass from the social pact. We have to give as good as we get--which might mean suspending judgment, cheering on a friend's decision that you'd never make for yourself, letting your own less-than-flattering moment go up on someone else's canvas. But when you surround yourself with the right people, those who go the distance of a lifetime, they recognize the capacities that you have to exercise to thrive. It is inseparable from their love of you. No permissions necessary. 

Kim Bridgford: "Tightrope Walker"

The VPR Poem of the Week is Kim Bridgford�s �Tightrope Walker,� which appears in the Fall/Winter 2012-2013 issue (Volume XIV, Number 1) of Valparaiso Poetry Review.

Kim Bridgford is the director of the West Chester University Poetry Center and the West Chester University Poetry Conference.  As editor of Mezzo Cammin, she was the founder of The Mezzo Cammin Women Poets Timeline Project, which was launched at the National Museum of Women in the Arts and will eventually be the largest database of women poets in the world.  The author of five books of poetry, including Hitchcock's Coffin: Sonnets about Classic Films, she has recently traveled to Bhutan with her collaborative partner, visual artist Jo Yarrington, to complete a three-book series on journey and sacred space.  She has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and on NPR.

 

Tuesday of each week One Poet�s Notes highlights an excellent work by a poet selected from the issues of Valparaiso Poetry Review, except when other posts with news or updates preempt the usual appearance of this item, with the recommendation that readers revisit it. 

"Pandora" by Rhydian W. Thomas

� Rhydian W. Thomas, 2011. The poem first appeared in Hue & Cry Issue No. 5, and is reproduced with permission of the author.

Editor: Sarah Jane Barnett


Ever since reading "Pandora" the poem has stayed with me. I thought it would make an interesting Tuesday Poem as it's quite unusual. For me, I can't think of another poem that has

Rhythm

Spotted on one of my favorite blogs for visual innovation, Colossal: Arizona artist Ernie Button, is creating a series of photographs that show the bottom of tumblers after that last drop of single-malt scotch is drained. "It�s a little like snowflakes in that every time the Scotch dries, the glass yields different patterns and results," he says. "I have used different color lights to add �life� to the bottom of the glass, creating the illusion of landscape, terrestrial or extraterrestrial." 

There is an ew factor--these are close-ups of dirty glassware--but I find the visual rhythms here beautiful, more so knowing how they're made. Above is "Macallan."

I've been thinking a lot about rhythm this week. It's only a month (!) until I take up residency at Lenoir-Rhyne University, and so I'm saying Yes to every RSVP. Most days include multiple destinations; in particular I've been on the circuit of the Writer's Center, the Folger Shakespeare Library (for both the Hardison Poetry Series and PEN/Faulkner), and the Arts Club of Washington. I see someone at a dinner party one night, and the two days later they grab a chair in front of me for a reading at Politics & Prose. The cumulative effect of these repetitions is that makes DC feel like a neighborhood instead of a city. It's ironic that the anticipation of leaving has reminded me what it's like to really live here. 

The poetry manuscript is still getting turned inside out, as every new draft seems to displace as many pages as it adds. A trusted reader pointed out, "You've got a series of series." Do you present those series in discrete sections, or braided together?  Unity is appealing; monotony is not. Can there be an emotional arc if the narrative is always changing hands? These are good questions, hard work worth doing, but good lordy. If I Was the Jukebox was composed in one-month sprints, this book is the marathon. 

Poetry made an unexpected cameo in the food coverage of the Washington Post today, when Jim Shahin posted Jake Adam York's wonderful BBQ poem "Grace" on the All-We-Can-Eat blog. Last fall, Jake and I talked poetry, food, and the rituals of the holidays in a four-part interview for Southern Spaces. It's worth a listen (I hope); the site is carefully edited, very search-friendly, and an invaluable resource for students.

I'll leave you with Ernie Button's "Dalwhinnie"...a bottle of which waits on my shelf, ready to be poured when I get home from tonight's Story League show.

So There by Robert Creeley

for Penelope Highton


Da. Da. Da da.
Where is the song.



from Hello by Robert Creeley (1926 - 2005) . Hawk Press: Taylors Mistake, 1976


Click here to hear it read by Robert Creeley at the NZ Electronic Poetry Centre and read it yourself here.




Editor: Madeleine Slavick



I found Hello on
my third visit to New Zealand. A small, worn book, at 28 pages, beautifully handset
and

Photo of the Week: "Limbs Overhanging Pond"

I remind all interested that many of my photographs are available at a daily photo blog. I invite everyone to visit the blog and to click on the photographs to examine them in high resolution or to magnify them for a detailed look.

On Narwhals

Lookee here!

I was delighted to spot a narwhal tusk on the wall of the Folger Shakespeare Library's Great Hall--part of their "Very Like a Whale" exhibit, on display through January 6. I am quite fond of narwhals; not on the scale of capybaras, maybe, but close. Like capybaras, they make a cameo in a poem of mine, "The Editor of the Encyclopedia Britannica Regrets Everything," which was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Black Warrior Review way back when, as part of the chapbook "Bitch and Brew: Sestinas."

In case you know little about this creature, let me introduce you...

NARWHAL

Monodon monoceros


NARWHALS AHOY

In recent years, narwhals have achieved the cultural ubiquity shared by penguins, pandas, and small vanity dogs. Key indicators include the founding of �Narwhal Vs. Narwhal,� a powerpop ensemble based in Portland, Oregon; foodie-blog buzz over the �bacon chicken narwhal," two chicken breasts wrapped in bacon, fried, and detailed with pepperoni fins and a tusk carved from pepper jack cheese (recipe here); and the �Avenging Narwhal Play Set,� complete with baby seal and Koala bear figurines readied for impalement.


WHAT IS CASUALLY KNOWN 

�It�s weird they have that one tooth,� he says. �Gross.� 

�What�s wrong with a tooth?� I ask. �We�ve got even more teeth. Are we �gross�?�

�No, but theirs is freaky long�and always on the same side, left incisor. Isn�t it just the males? I only remember because it�s freaky.� 

A MYTH, A SCAM, A GUESS, AND AN UNKNOWN 

Nar is old Norse for corpse; Scandinavians named this arctic whale the �narwhal� because its gray, mottled body resembled that of a drowned sailor. Inuit myth claims the creature originated when a wicked woman, tricked into anchoring her son�s hunting line, was dragged into sea by a harpooned beluga. In her dying struggle, the harpoon�s shaft tangled in her hair and fused to her spirit-self, forming the narwhal. 

By Medieval times the narwhal tusk was thought magical, synonymous with the unicorn horn. The Vikings delightedly jacked up their export prices. Neighboring royalty took to drinking from cups made of hollowed-out tusk, believing the cups neutralized poisons. In 1638, the Danish scholar Ole Worm (a.k.a. �Olaus Wormius�) exposed unicorns as a scam. It took another century before British physicians stopped prescribing powdered tusk for everything from erectile dysfunction to the plague. 

Seafarers have long wondered why narwhals surface, rear up, and rub horns in a display known as �tusking.� Are they friendly? Conspiratorial? Jousting? Naturalist Charles Darwin decided their tusks were a secondary sex characteristic, akin to antlers�handy for showing off, not good for much else. His educated guess was soon accepted as fact.

Narwhals are exceptionally elusive to field study; none have survived in captivity. And so, there is no known record of narwhals feeding. Scientists theorize their diet from posthumous stomach dissections that yield halibut, cod, shrimp, squid, and rocks. The rocks are probably accidental. 

WHAT IS ACTUALLY KNOWN 

Narwhals frequent the waters of Greenland, Canada, and Russia. Each weighs between one and two tons, averaging 12 to 15 feet in body length. They dive deep and fast. Really deep: 2,400-4,500 feet. Really fast: they make the round trip in 25 minutes.

Around 75,000 narwhals live in the wild. Their predators are orcas, polar bears, and humans. The latter is under increasing regulation. In 2004 Greenland banned tusk exportation, setting hunting quotas to subsistence levels. Inuits prize raw narwhal flesh, mattak, sliced and dipped in soy sauce. The taste is termed �hazelnutty.�


THAT FREAKY LONG TOOTH

The Narwhal tusk may spiral up to 10 feet and is usually found in the upper left jaw of the male narwhal. One in 500 males sport a second tusk. Only three percent of females ever grow a tusk. 

It was a 2005 study that revealed the tusk is really a pulped tooth, containing an astonishing 10 million nerve endings. Narwhals use their tooth to detect subtle shifts in salinity, temperature, and other environmental factors. This casts new light on the purpose of tusking. Perhaps it is collaborative form of tooth-brushing, scraping away algae and barnacles that block nerve tubules. 

In all likelihood, tusking also generates pleasure. In contrast, the human penis contains only 4,000 nerve endings�less than half as many as the narwhal tooth. If only humans could multitask in such spectacular fashion, gingivitis would soon be a thing of the past. 

Narwhals! And that is our Wednesday serving of awesome. 

These are busy days--I hope to see some folks at the VQR event tonight, and also at the Story League showcase next Tuesday, both at the Arts Club--not to mention that I'm fighting off a cold. But how could I not emerge from my hibernation to talk narwhals?

Announcement: Publication of Fall/Winter 2012-2013 VPR

I am pleased to announce publication of the 27^thissue of Valparaiso Poetry Review:

http://www.valpo.edu/vpr/

Contents:

Featured Poet: Thomas Reiter

Additional Poets: Claire Bateman, Scott Brennan, Kim Bridgford, Patricia Caspers, George David Clark, Susan Cohen, Philip Dacey, Michael Dobberstein, Amy Eisner, Gary Fincke, Laura Davies Foley, Kate Fox, Elizabeth Harlan-Farlo, Judith Harris, Elise Hempel, Thomas Alan Holmes, Athena Kildegaard, Judy Kronenfeld, Mercedes Lawry, Diane Lockward, Joanne Lowery, Austin MacRae, Greg McBride, Marilyn McCabe, John McDermott, John A. Nieves, Angela Alaimo O'Donnell, Darlene Pagan, Rose Postma, Doug Ramspeck, John Ronan, Joannie Stangeland, Mark Thalman, Shari Wagner

Reviews: A.E. Stallings Reviewed by Jeremy Telman; Judith Vollmer Reviewed by James Spears; Martha Collins Reviewed by Paul David Adkins; Mary Makofske Reviewed by John Siegel; Pamela Uschuk Reviewed by Lori Desrosiers; Cover Art Commentary on George Ames Aldrich by Gregg Hertzlieb

Cover Art Commentary; Gregg Hertzlieb on George Ames Aldrich

Recently Received and Recommended Books

Transport, by Riemke Ensing