Tara's comments (member since Aug 16, 2008)

Tara's comments from the ¡ POETRY ! group.

I really enjoyed reading the anthology: "Legitimate Dangers" ed. Michael Dumanis and Cate Marvin. There's about 85 poets represented in this volume, all "new" contemporary writers doing something different in their work, taking risks of some sort. I say "new" writers but some of them are quite renown like Terrance Hayes and Suji Kwock Kim. Erica's advice to mimic is great; or use a line from one of the poems to jump start something new. Many of the poems in this anthology have strange and new forms, so you could try those, too. Also, look into the author Dan Beachy-Quick (one example is his book "This Nest, Swift Passerine" or "Forge" by Ted Mathys. You could try "Lyric Postmodernisms" ed Reginal Shepard or No Boundaries: Prose Poems by 24 American poets. Enjoy!

Nina wrote: "Hi, Ruth and all you poets--I haven't been on since mid-summer--just got swamped with fiction revsisions, but wanted to mention a great read:

The Neighborhoods of my Past Sorrow
by Jesse Mill..."

Thank you Nina, this sounds so awesome! I've also been away from goodreads (though I am looking forward to returning very soon) but I'm glad I caught this rec., it sounds right up my alley.

And Ruth, I've heard such wonderful praises of Wislawa Szymborska, you've given me a great reminder to purchase one of her volumes. Thanks!

Stephen wrote: "i sent six poems to poetry SZ. They took the batch. Oranges & Sardines (poets & writers) accepted a poem of mine. & I'm waiting to hear from Mudlark. If Mudlark gives me the thumbs up, I'll be 100%..."

That's awesome, too! O&S is one of my favorites EVER, did you do the self-portrait issue?

Mary wrote: "As a modification of Ruth's idea about writing a response: sometimes I will take another poem and write its opposite, line for line, and see where that takes me."


That's an awesome suggestion--thanks so much!

Jan wrote: "Take your fifteen or so best poems. Put the best one first and the second-best one last. Now take the strongest six. Put three in positions two, three and four, and put three in positions second-fr..."


Jan! Wow! Thank you so much for this. I read "Ordering the Storm" a year or two ago and I remember liking it okay, but what you've just said here is possibly the best advice I've heard yet. I've had a really hard time ordering my nascent chapbooks but this I'm going to try, I have a great feeling it'll work (finally!) You could perhaps write a little poetry manual of your own, hm? :)

Ruth wrote: "Three of my poems, The Season of Dogs, How to Make an Exquisite Corpse and Fire, Fire have just been accepted by Sugarhouse Review, a new publication whose inaugural issue will come out this fall. ..."

Three at once thrilling indeed! Congrats, Ruth! And thank you for the new journal, I'm excited to check it out.

Sandra wrote: "Unfortunately I'm best at collecting books and not reading them"

I am, too, Sandra :) Because I literally ran out of room in my apartment to keep and store books, I put myself on a buying hold for the month of July, August, and I think I'll do the same for September. I'm finally reading books I own, some of which I've had for more than six or seven years!:D It sounds crazy but it's working ok. It's just the matter of all the new and suggested books that I come across meantime...it does test the will!

Erica wrote: "That's awful, Tara! I can only imagine that happening to me. There are people I have told really personal things that I (at least at this point in my life) cannot possibly tell my family. It also h..."

Thank you for your understanding and support, Erica. :) It was definitely a learning experience for me. A kind of loss of innocence, in a way. Or shall I say, naivete. I'm such an idealist in general that it was an extra hard blow. On the upside, I have better boundaries now, so yay for that! :)

Amelia wrote: "Had a doh moment this weekend. A friend made the comment that I mainly read science fiction and fantasy and yet I am writing a murder/mystery with no fantasy or science fiction. I laughed and agree..."

Sounds like you found your niche--that's super great!

Gail wrote: "Message 14 Tara. Thanks for your comments. You wrote; I have a hard time giving my characters dramas to play out. Problems. But that's what fictions is about, some sort of conflict, something b..."

Thank you so much for your kind post! It really made me smile :) After failing so much with fiction, that's how I figured out the thing about conflict/stakes. Years and years of failure for me to finally go--duh! And I still don't entirely get it. It's really a long process of learning and practice, huh? :)

Thanks for the links, Wendy. I'm moving from Oklahoma to Minneapolis in less than two weeks. You've given me a good start on my new city.
Blessings,
Tara

p.s. Kristy Bowen is awesome, thanks for including her quote

Amy wrote: "but poetry always stops me. I mean I love fiction, I know fiction, but my attempts "devolve" into poetry ....


Just wondering how common this is and what is the cause, doc? So thought I'd ask..."

Thanks for bringing up this topic, Amy. I've always wanted to write fiction. When I've thought of myself as a writer in the past, I imagine writing novels. It's just something I've always wanted to do. So when I first started writing, I took fiction classes and of course began with the short form. So I have no pieces of novels sitting in my desk drawers, but I have tons of stories. None of them very (or any) good. So what gives?

I remember my first creative writing class my teacher pulled me aside afterwards one afternoon and told me I was a poet. I didn't really want to hear that. I was working so hard on my stories but it was my poems that were succeeding. Over the years I've continued to try and write fiction but my efforts invariably fall short. To be honest, they're just not that interesting. It's like, maybe in a poem I can touch a deep emotion, a human truth, but in fiction my characters end up a little boring--or even unbelievable. I have a hard time giving my characters dramas to play out. Problems. But that's what fiction is about, some sort of conflict, something being at stake for the characters.

I'm not sure why this is easier to do in poetry. Because of course something is at stake in the poem as well as in the story. Maybe the poetic form is less logical, less cause and effect layering of plot. To be honest, I'm not really sure. Nor have I given up trying to write fiction even though I'm a much better poet! Maybe the difference between fiction and poetry is something akin to working with oils vs watercolors in painting. Maybe some mediums work better for others given their...natural abilities or perceptions??

Thanks so much for the list, Stuart--so many good books to check out, you've made me so excited! Best, Tara

I totally love this poem! It's amazing--the narrator pulls back and tells us about this kiss, for two whole stanzas all there is is this amazing kiss and all the people who are watching it, and then--boom!--in the third stanza, we get this very emotional truth, we get to see maybe a piece of the person who is speaking:

as your mother must have looked at you, no matter
what happened after--if she beat you or left you or
you're lonely now--you once lay there, the vernix
not yet wiped off, and someone gazed at you
as if you were the first sunrise seen from the Earth

It's so unexpected, this opening up or going inward of the speaker. She makes us a part of that, too. So that we maybe remember what our mothers did to us, or how we are wounded emotionally. It's so well crafted. You never expect it so it lands a punch.

Thanks Juliet :)

Hi Juliet, so nice to see you here! What is the URL of your blog? I'd love to read it. This is a great place for poets--welcome. :)

James wrote: "Glad to see people talking up The Poet's Companion: I'm teaching with it next fall and haven't gotten around to reading it yet! I'm so convinced of Kim Addonizio's brilliance, I didn't feel as if I..."

I dusted off the Poet's Companion just last week--it was my trusted friend in my early twenties when I first started writing poetry. I wrote some of my best early poems (not good now, but good for then!) from that book. It's been about 4-5 years since and I'm in a place right now where I want to write a new body of work. The Poet's Companion is the first book I took off the shelf to get me going.

Also, I just wanted to say, James, that I totally loved your poem. Admittedly I voted for myself but I kind of wanted to vote for you :P ;) I thought it was the best. Do you have poetry other places I might read?

I'm enjoying this conversation very much, I'm happy that it came about. I have two cents to put forth, the first cent being that, ultimately, I think it's okay not to enjoy prose poetry and to prefer to read traditional verse. It reminds me a little of my husband who loves to read novels but generally sticks to the classics and some contemporary novels written prior to the 1960s and 70s. I, on the other hand, love contemporary novels--and not only that, I jump at not just the new thing, but the new-new-new thing. Granted, the new-new-new thing doesn't always turn out , but sometimes it does and the reason why I like that is the writing quickens something, makes me excited. That's not true for everybody. If you like rhyming or any kind of formal (form) verse, there are lots of contemporary poets who still do this in some of their work--Ed Hirsch jumps to mind. And though I don't personally know a lot about contemp. literary journals that primarily publish formal verse, they do indeed exist, just as other journals love to publish free verse and prose poems.
My second cent is, if you like formal verse but you're curious to know more about the prose poem as a form--where it came from, what it is, where it is going--there are several books on the subject (I don't know much about web resources). One such book is "The American Prose Poem" by Michel Delville (University Press of Florida, 1998).

Trish Lindsey wrote: "June wrote: "Tara wrote: "BLISS (a prose poem)
That's a great suggestion, Trish. I've tried to put line breaks into this poem so so many times and it never seems to work out right. But I will try again--you never know, maybe I'll break through it at some point.
Warmly, Tara