April Ossmann: "The Mechanical Home Care Bed"

The VPR Poem of the Week is April Ossmann�s �The Mechanical Home Care Bed,� which appears in the Spring/Summer 2012 issue (Volume XIII, Number 2) of Valparaiso Poetry Review.

April Ossmann is the author of Anxious Music (Four Way Books, 2007), and has published poetry in journals and anthologies including Harvard Review, Colorado Review, and From the Fishouse; and her awards include a Prairie Schooner Readers' Choice Award. Formerly the executive director of Alice James Books (2000�2008), she owns a consulting business offering manuscript editing and publishing advice to poets. She is among the inaugural faculty members for the new, low-residency MFA in Creative Writing Program at Sierra Nevada College at Lake Tahoe, and teaches private tutorials and poetry workshops using a method she developed to teach poets to revise their work objectively. She has also taught at the University of Maine�Farmington and Lebanon College, and lives in Post Mills, VT.

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.

Photo Friday: "Forest Path on Arbor Day"

I remind all interested that many of my photographs are available at a daily photo blog, which I began at the start of the year. 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 loo

Write What You Know...Kinda

This past weekend I took part in both the Bethesda Literary Festival and the Annapolis Book Festival. At the latter I got to take part in two panels. One was on "The Politics of Food" (super-interesting, and nice to draw on the science/policy research I did for DKTBG) and one that asked "Can Creative Writing Be Taught?"


This is invariably a rhetorical question when five writers who teach weigh in (the event was hosted by the Writer's Center). There was still enjoyable variety in what we had to say. I particularly loved hearing from Ron Capps, who works with veterans who are often coming to the table without even -wanting- to write. But at one point the old saw of "Write what you know" came up, and because of time constraints I didn't speak up to complicate that advice. I regret not doing that, so I'll do it here. 

Write what you know, yes.

But know things beyond your own navel. 

Too often we use "write what you know" to justify solipsism, an indulgence of the "I,"a family story or personal narrative offered without context in the larger world. 


When I sit down to write, it is often in the key of loneliness. So I could write about what's right in front of my face: a failing relationship, a 14-hour drive, a warm scotch on a cold night. All things I know. But I am also lucky enough to live near the National Zoo, where I take weekly walks to clear my head as I ruminate on these things. There I visit with platypi, capybaras, peacocks--creatures whose habits and personalities I perceive in a visceral way that is then expanded by a few hours of research into their genetic lineage, their anatomy, their role in human history. In sitting down to write a somewhat confessional poem, yes, I'm writing what I know. But in sitting down to write an ode to peacocks--which you will find in your May issue of Poetry, such a huge thrill--I am also writing "what I know." 


My point is, what you know extends far beyond internal monologue. Write about the history of a Shenandoah National Park trail, not just a fight you had with your boyfriend as you hiked it. Write about how to make a perfect pie crust, or how to dock a sailboat with one knot. Write about fights your parents had over money when you were a kid, but look up what the actual state of the economy was at the time--how much did a loaf of bread cost? a house? what was the living wage?--and include that too. 


I'm not preaching from on high; I struggle with this. As a memoirist, part of me wanted to curl up in the safe zone of my own story, which couldn't be easily contradicted. But I knew my book had to look to the larger realms of science, cultural analysis, and public policy, even at the risk of getting something wrong or entering an argument. I wrote a chapter on peanut allergies although I'm not allergic to peanuts. I interviewed allergic women my age who decided to become mothers because, though I have not, that is an important part of the story.  And I think (I hope) it's a better book for all that. 


Tomorrow I head up to New York for back-to-back readings in Brooklyn: the paperback launch for Don't Kill the Birthday Girl at BookCourt on Wednesday, April 25, and a reading with Yusef Komunyakaa and Thomas Sayers Ellis to celebrate the redesign of American Poet at the DUMBO powerHouse Arena on Thursday, April 26. Then I dash to make an afternoon flight on Friday out of BWI; from there on to the "Experience Poetry in Vicksburg" festival--a return to my beloved Mississippi!--on April 28 and a reading at SCAD's Atlanta campus on Tuesday, May 1. Home just in time for a Vienna memoir conference on May 3. I might just barely break even on all this. Oh: and then we throw a reading/extravaganza/birthday thingie on May 5. You should come.


In another news, my sister is awesome. She is truly a friend to the sea turtle, both the fleshy and beanbag variety. And she'll be bartending at Cinco de Sandra.

Valerie Wohlfeld: �A Dare�

The VPR Poem of the Week is Valerie Wohlfeld�s �A Dare,� which appears in the Spring/Summer 2012 issue (Volume XIII, Number 2) of Valparaiso Poetry Review.

Valerie Wohlfeld's first collection of poetry, Thinking the World Visible, was chosen by James Dickey for the Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize. Her recent book, Woman With Wing Removed, was published by Truman State University Press. Her poems have appeared widely in journals and magazines, including New Yorker, New England Review, Antioch Review, Yale Review, Partisan Review, Poetry, Prairie Schooner, Ploughshares, The New Criterion, New Letters, Chelsea, Epoch, Western Humanities Review, Denver Quarterly, Quarterly West, Greensboro Review, Indiana Review, and North American Reviewchapbooks. Her poems have also most recently appeared in Crab Creek Review, Iota, Ascent, and San Pedro River 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.

Photo Friday: "Spring Trees Along the Lake"

[Click Image to Enlarge]

I remind all interested that many of my photographs are available at a daily photo blog, which I began at the start of the year. 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.

Where You Should Be in DC on April 30

So, here's the thing: I was already going to tell you that this reading coming to the Folger on April 30 is the most important poetry event to go to in DC in the remaining days of April. I'm so sad I don't get to go. I'll be en route from the "Experience Poetry in Vicksburg" festival to a reading at SCAD's Atlanta campus. As I said to a friend: remind me, this time next year, to leave days free to go to readings instead of giving them. 


At least I'll see Thomas Sayers Ellis in New York. He is joining me and Yusef Komunyakaa for a reading to celebrate the redesign & release of American Poet on Thursday, April 26 at the DUMBO powerHouse Arena. With that lineup, it's gonna be epic. 


Anyway, back to DC and April 30. A funny thing has happened ...Tracy K. Smith won the Pulitzer for Life on Mars. Go Tracy! So not only is this the place to be, you better get your tickets in advance. If you want a sneak peek of what you might expect, here's a report from their initial reunion reading in Chicago. 

O.B. Hardison Poetry Series presents

�Nothing Personal: The Dark Room Collective Reunion Reading Tour�

Renowned African American Poets Look Back on 25 years

(WASHINGTON, DC)  The O.B. Hardison Poetry Series at the Folger Shakespeare Library presents an evening of poetry with The Dark Room Collective on Monday, April 30 at 6:30pm. Nothing Personal features Collective members Tisa Bryant, Thomas Sayers Ellis, Major Jackson, John Keene, Tracy K. Smith, Sharan Strange, Natasha Trethewey, and Kevin Young. In 1996 The New Yorker deemed them ��a group that could turn well out to be as important to American letters as the Harlem Renaissance.�  The evening will also include a discussion moderated by Meta DuEwa Jones and a reception with book sales and signing. Tickets are $15 for adults and $7.50 for students and may be purchased at Folger box office, 202.544.7077, or online at www.folger.edu/poetry.

Founded in Boston in 1987 by Thomas Sayers Ellis and Sharan Strange, The Dark Room Collective began as an informal community of African American poets. Poet and member Major Jackson described the Collective as �a group of aspiring black writers and artists who spanned outwards with large arms to embrace any black writer who had a sophistication and commitment to art and artfulness.� The group has gone on to distinguished careers, winning awards and marking literary achievements for their exuberant works.

Tisa Bryant works with innovative hybrid formats, including essays, prose poetry, cinematic novels, and ekphrastic writing. She explores the relationships between artist, art, and viewer with a focus on ethnicity, sexuality, identity, and myth. She wrote Unexplained Presence and Tzimmes, and is co-editor of War Diaries, an anthology of black gay male desire and survival, which was nominated Best LGBTQ anthology by the LAMBDA Literary Awards. She is a faculty member at California Institute of the Arts.

Multi-talented Thomas Sayers Ellis is a poet, photographer, and co-founder of The Dark Room Collective. �The fine and noble tradition of protest poetry is in safe, strong hands with this latest collection,� wrote the New York Journal of Books about Ellis� recently published SKIN, INC.: Identity Repair Poems. Ellis is the author of The Maverick Room, which won the John C. Zacharis First Book Award, and was a recipient of a Mrs. Giles Whiting Writers� Award. Ellis is an assistant professor at Sarah Lawrence College, a faculty member of the Lesley University, and a Caven Canem faculty member.

With his story-telling poetry, Major Jackson celebrates the complexities and subtleties of the American landscape, its people, and their environment. He has written several collections of poetry, including Hoops and Leaving Saturn, which was winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize and finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award. Jackson is a professor at University of Vermont and a core faculty member of the Bennington Writing Seminars. He serves as the poetry editor of the Harvard Review.

John Keene explores identity and its many facets, from race and social class to sexuality, with the rhythmic craft of his poetry and prose. He is the author of the award-winning novel Annotations and of the poetry collection Seismosis. He has received many fellowships, a 2005 Whiting Foundation Award in Fiction and Poetry, and a 2008 Fellowship for Distinguished First Collection from the inaugural Pan-African Literary Forum. He is an associate professor of English and African American studies at Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences, Northwestern University.

Tracy K. Smith�s poetry questions love, loss, and social justice, as well as examining God, death, and the impact people have on each other and the planet. She has written three books of poetry: Life on Mars, Duende, and The Body's Question. Smith is the recipient of the 2002 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, a 2004 Rona Jaffe Writers Award, a 2005 Whiting Award, and the 2006 James Laughlin Award of the Academy of American Poets, and was Literature prot�g� of the Rolex Mentor and Prot�g� Arts Initiative. She is an assistant professor or creative writing in the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University.

With Southern wit and direct eloquence, poet Sharan Strange describes the beauty and pain of life, family, neighborhood, childhood wonder, and innocence lost. Strange, a co-founder of The Dark Room Collective and a contributing and advisory editor of Callaloo, is the author of Ash, a collection of poems. Strange has been a writer-in-residence at Fisk University, Spelman College, the University of California at Davis, and the California Institute of the Arts. She is a professor of English at Spelman College in Atlanta, Ga.

Pulitzer Prize winner Natasha Trethewey writes about the working-class in the South, showing personal journeys in the landscape of history, and drawing on her own experiences for enrichment. Her first collection of poetry, Domestic Work, was the winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize for the best first book by an African American poet and won both the 2001 Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Book Prize and the 2001 Lillian Smith Award for Poetry. Trethewey�s other works include Native Guard, which received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, Bellocq's Ophelia and a book of creative non-fiction, Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. She is a professor of English at Emory University.

Kevin Young draws inspiration from African American music and American history in his poetic tales full of sorrow and insight. The New York Times Book Review described his book Black Maria as �highly entertaining, often dazzling, and, as book reviewers like to say�but rarely about contemporary poetry�compulsively readable.� Young has written seven books of poetry, including Ardency: A Chronicle of the Amistad Rebellion and Jelly Roll: A Blues, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and winner of the Paterson Poetry Prize. He is a professor of creative writing and English, and curator of Literary Collections and the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library at Emory University in Atlanta.

Moderater Meta DuEwa Jones, Ph.D specializes in poetry of the 20th and 21st centuries, particularly in relation to gender, sexuality, performance, and music. Her book, The Muse is Music: Jazz Poetry From the Harlem Renaissance to Spoken Word, was noted as �an important addition to the growing literature about jazz poetry� by Choice. Jones is co-director of the Texas Institute for Literary and Textual Studies, as well as an associate professor of English and African American studies at University of Texas at Austin.

DATE & TIME: Monday, April 30 at 6:30pm
LOCATION: Folger Shakespeare Library
201 East Capitol Street, SE, Washington, DC
TICKETS: $15 adults / $7.50 students 
Purchase at the Folger box office, 202.544.7077, or www.folger.edu/poetry
METRO: Capitol South (blue/orange lines), 4 blocks
PARKING: Street parking in neighborhood

Publication Announcement: Spring/Summer 2012 Issue of VPR

I am pleased to announce publication of the 26^th issue of Valparaiso Poetry Review.

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

The Spring/Summer 2012 issue (Volume XIII, Number 2) of VPR includes Patricia Clark as the featured poet. In addition, 33 other poets are represented in the new issue of VPR. The issue also includes reviews of recent poetry books and a commentary on the cover artwork by Kara Walker.

Contents:

Featured Poet: Patricia Clark

Additional Poets: Walter Bargen, Nancy Botkin, Debra Bruce, Jared Carter, Robin Chapman, Liz N. Clift, Rachel Dacus, Lucille Lang Day, Teneice Durrant Delgado, Myron Ernst, Patricia Fargnoli, Timothy Gray, Daniel Henry, Miriam Kotzin, Len Krisak, Peter Makuck, Al Maginnes, Greg McBride, Ron McFarland, Travis Mossotti, April Ossmann, William Page, Jon Palzer, Ron Paul Salutsky, Peter Serchuk, Floyd Skloot, Karen Skolfield, Larry D. Thomas, William Walsh, Laura Lee Washburn, Charles Harper Webb, Lesley Wheeler, Valerie Wohlfeld

Reviews: Ingrid Wendt Reviewed by Janet McCann; Wendy Videlock Reviewed by D.A. Jeremy Telman; Rachel Contreni Flynn Reviewed by Paul David Adkins

Cover Art Commentary on Kara Walker by Gregg Hertzlieb

Recently Received and Recommended Books