Can't Stop Listening To...

this fabulous Chrisette Michele song, Is This the Way Love Feels.

We need more female vocalists moving in the old tradition--using their voices as intruments and perfecting the swing between piano and forte, the slide into and out of crescendo.

Love the instrumental bridge/breakdown. The music reminds me of Prince, and Michele's howl is a soul-blues-gospel mesh.

Love it. Praising it for helping me make my way through a poem about the changing of the seasons today.

Yes, Yes and Yes

"To live in this world, you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go."

--Mary Oliver


let it go-the
smashed word broken
open vow or
the oath cracked length
wise-let it go it
was sworn to
go

let them go-the
truthful liars and
the false fair friends
and the boths and
neithers-you must let them go they
were born
to go

let all go-the
big small middling
tall bigger really
the biggest and all
things-let all go
dear
so comes love


--E.E. Cummings

If truer words have ever been spoken, I have not yet heard them. Each of us would do well to keep these things in mind. If we all could, really could, think of the world we'd live in, the forgiveness we'd carry with us each day.

POEMS/POET OF THE MONTH

How sad that I'm only managing a few posts a month rather than the few a week I aspired to when I began blogging. Time does slip away...


Anyway, this fantastic ghazal was featured on Poetry Daily and I thought I'd share it, since I've been working with formal verse quite a bit:


By Accident

First she gave me the wound by accident.
Then the tourniquet she tied unwound by accident.

Your friend may want to start running.
I gave his scent to the hounds by accident.

Balloons on the mailbox, ambulance in the driveway.
Bobbing for apples I drowned by accident.

Did someone tell the devil we were building Eden?
Or did he slither on the grounds by accident?

I said some crazy things, but I swear, officer,
I burned her place down by accident.

Only surfaces interest me.
What depths I sound I sound by accident.

"What should we look for in a ghazal, Amit?"
Inevitabilities found by accident.

--Amit Majmudar


While I was copying this poem, I realized that the poet's name sounded familiar. More than a year ago, I saved another poem that a friend sent to me because it was sharp and had such lush imagery. As it turns out, it's by the same poet. Here it is:

Riches

My mother when she feared that we might starve
would give us candy taking up her violin
and playing each of us a bar
My mother when we danced the winter from
our boots and kicked the walls of circumstance
would write the needed letters over newsprint
and crinkle crackling fire till our hands
came back to us attracted to her gift
My mother painted us a still life and we peeled
and ate the fruit for lunch my mother sculpted
my sister earrings out of pebbles sculpted me
out of abandonment and earth my mother said
you are not poor until you’re at a loss
for worlds you are not rich until like Alexander
you’ve conquered foreign languages
somewhere a rich man pokes his fireplace
reminding it to give him heat she said
somewhere a rich man’s hand lunges in search
of sweetness down his horn of plenty
but there is not a fruit his fingers recognize

--Amit Majmudar

It is quite a gift to be able to write with humor on one hand and devout seriousness on the other. I'm now on the look out for more poems by the brilliant Dr. Majmudar. Here's all I could dig up on him:

Amit Majmudar is a resident physician in diagnostic radiology living in Cleveland, Ohio. Check out his website for a bit more info.: http://web.mac.com/majmudar/iWeb/Site/Poetry.html

Reading at JMU on Thursday, 11/8, @ 7:00 PM

I'm reading with Hermine Pinson and E. Ethelbert Miller at the Furious Flower Poetry Center next Thursday. The reading is part of Cave Canem's The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South anthology reading series. I'm not sure if anyone is in Harrisonburg, VA or is close to it, but if so, please come out to hear some poetry.

If you haven't heard of the Furious Flower Conferences or Dr. Joanne Gabbin, you are missing out on a huge part of American literary history. I was fortunate enough to attend the second Furious Flower Conference in 2004. I remember sitting in a room before one of the big readings began and seeing a force of nature everywhere I looked. Elizabeth Alexander was sitting behind me, Amiri Baraka was walking up the aisle, Thomas Sayers Ellis was across the row to my left and Lucille Clifton was right down front. It was a remarkable conference and Dr. Gabbin is the only reason it ever happened and happened again.

Click here to check out the Gwendolyn Brooks poem that Dr. Gabbin says
inspired all of this:

http://www.groovdigit.com/authors/brooks/warpland2.html

Who Reviews Reviews???

A few days ago, I was very excited to find that my book had been reviewed in the Fall 2007 edition of The Antioch Review. This was exciting for a number of reasons:

1.) I really like The Antioch Review.

2.) I've only had two other book reviews.

3.) Those two other reviews were both written by people I know.

4.) The review published in The Antioch Review was done by a complete stranger.

5.) I would have never known the review was done had my press not sent it to me in the mail. Therefore, it was a nice surprise.

After I'd read the review and got excited about it and told my dad and my friends, I started thinking about the value of book reviews. This is an on-going conversation in the poetry world. In fact, I can recall having spirited conversations with the eternal laureate Rita Dove and Mr. Uprock himself Patrick Rosal about book reviews in the past year or so.

Ms. Rita was a guest at Cave Canem and spoke at length about what book reviews--good and bad--meant to her, which was, basically, nothing. She told us a story about a review that ripped one of her books to shreds and was published in a very, very reputable magazine. She said she agonized about it for a while, but eventually tried to forget it. What was strange was that she said people always remembered that she had been reviewed in the reputable magazine, but never, ever recalled that it was a bad review. I guess the incident kind of falls into the 'all publicity is good publicity' category, but it made me think about why some writers value reviews and if they can actually help or harm your career? One bad review certainly didn't hurt Ms. Rita's.

E. Ethelbert Miller once told me that I should write a book review for every book I read and try to publish each review. Ethelbert gives great advice, but I haven't published a single review and I certainly don't write one for each book I read. I'd never have time to write poems if I did! I think he had a valid point, though. He was encouraging me to analyze each book I read and condense my critical analysis to a few hundred words, so I'd have a snapshot view of what I thought of each book. Critical analysis is wildly important as a poet, even if just to find out what you like and why you like it, but how accurate or important is someone else's opinion of a book for the poet who is being reviewed? To make a long rant longer, this and these other questions about reviews have been plaguing me for the last five days:

1.) Who reads book reviews?

2.) Are book reviews important to publishers?

3.) Does a string of 'good or 'bad' book reviews truly reflect on the quality of the writing in the book?

4.) What value is there in poets reviewing books of poetry?

5.) Who is a better reviewer, someone who is primarily a literary critic or someone who is primarily a creative writer?

6.) Why do journals publish reviews without informing the writers that their books will be reviewed?

7.) Can a negative review ruin a literary career? Can a positive review make one?

There Is Always Music

to write by. I have been in a strange writing rut and haven't been revising like I usually do. I've been on 'house arrest' for a few days because I sprained my ankle pretty badly on Saturday, but still no writing. The music saved me tonight.

Early in the day my lovely mother came over and we watched movies. Watching Diana's Oscar-worthy performance in "Lady Sings the Blues" always inspires me to seek out more music, more of the lush voices of the women who are often forgotten in our discussions of jazz and blues. I spent the evening listening to Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Carmen McRae and finally settled on Cassandra Wilson.

Wilson's version of "Time After Time" is stellar, pristine. She takes a classic and makes it more moving every time you hear it. Her inflection and pacing is better than most of the best poets I know. I guess that's why pitch perfect music inspires me. I never had Cassandra' tension, her silk, on or off the page and still don't, but tonight she helped me write a poem that's been just on the cusp of memory. This is music's gift and why I find myself referring to it so much on a blog that's supposed to be strictly about poetry. Music keeps me sane, but poetry is like air. I can't live without one, but I'd go mad living without the other.

Reading at ODU on Tuesday, 10/16 @ 12:30 PM

Old Dominion University's Women's Studies Department is holding their annual "Love Your Body" Poetry Reading next week and I'll be sharing the room with Til Cox, Nan Byrne, Lynne Downs and Andrea Nolan. The reading will be in the newly renovated Batten Arts and Letters Building (Room 9024), where I spent nearly my entire undergraduate career at ODU, so I'm looking forward to checking out the new digs :-)

The reading is in celebration of Love Your Body Day and in conjunction with the 2007 Love Your Body Campaign. Find out more about the campaign by visiting www.nowfoundation.org.

Hope to see you there!