Susan Rich's Blog, page 57

Reviewers Wanted for Fire On Her Tongue

The first ever e-book anthology of women's poetry. It's cool and it's historical.Someday future poets and critics will point to Kelli Russell Agodon and Annette Spaulding-Convey as the first women to create an e-book anthology of women's poetry.  A book without glue or paper - without a trace of a carbon footprint. Instead of pioneers of the prairie they are pioneers of the page. Both are excellent poets and highly respected for their work -- but in this endeavor they've concentrated on other women's work.


There are over 400 pages of poetry by Jane Hirshfield, Nin Andrews, Patricia Fargnoli, Natasha Saje, Aimee Nezhumatatil, January O'Neil, Patricia Smith, Annie Finch, Alicia Ostricher,  and many many others. And because paper price was not a consideration, you can read many poems by the same poet -- not just one or two. 


I just heard tonight from a lovely man in North Carolina who bought his copy and then downloaded a  copy for the bookshop screens where he works. My sense is that this book is going to really gain momentum as readers see that it is possible to read poetry on an e-reader (Fire On Her Tongue is available for ipad, kindle, and nook.) 


And for the sake of full disclosure I should mention that I'm one of the poets represented here as well. If you buy one e-book of poetry this year, it should be this one. 

Finding a New Poet: Katy Lederer

Perhaps I am the last poet on the block not to have heard of Katy Lederer. Or perhaps I heard her story of famed poker player to hedge fund executive and decided this wasn't the poet for me. Based on the two poems below (and these are the only Lederer poems I know) I was wrong. Her syntax, tone, and wonderful word patterns are reminiscent of Oleana Kalytiack Davis.  I don't know that I can point to exactly where these two poets intersect, but in my muddled poetry brain they do. 


Both women's biographies point to them as "fearless" and while I don' believe anyone is fearless - there is a brutality of truth that I admire in their work. In order to write strong poems I believe one needs to live in a certain way - either by choice or circumstance. However as I get older, I am no longer traveling to war torn countries or changing my address every 18 months --- and that's okay. But it's the bravery of these voices that I believe result in such new ways of writing. 


I've been working on an essay I'm writing for a new anthology The Poet and the World to be published jointly by the Poetry Foundation and McSweeneys . Fourteen years ago I spent 18 months on a Fulbright in Cape Town, South Africa. 


I've been returning to images of poets I met and the odd life I had as a sanctioned outsider. One of my friends summed up life as a Fulbrighter as "Peace Corps with status" and he was right. What he didn't mention was how lonely that status could be. And that's what these poems remind me of. 



Love
by Katy Lederer

After Duras

"We go back to our house. We are lovers.
We cannot stop loving each other."

I come to confiscate your love.
What will you do?

Small shrubs grow in the blackened yard.
Sun, which is yellow, shines in through the windows, now barred.

You were watching me eat.
Put your tongue in my mouth then retract it.

We were waiting for our recompense.
But everyone knows love is bankrupt.

On the billboard in front of us: breasts.
The empty middles of the mannequins that peered out through the glass.

Reprehensibly, I mouthed the words: I love you.
[image error]




That Everything's Inevitable by Katy Lederer
That everything's inevitable.
That fate is whatever has already happened.
The brain, which is as elemental, as sane, as the rest of the processing universe is.
In this world, I am the surest thing.
Scrunched-up arms, folded legs, lovely destitute eyes.
Please insert your spare coins.
I am filling them up.
Please insert your spare vision, your vigor, your vim.
But yet, I am a vatic one.
As vatic as the Vatican.
In the temper and the tantrum, in the well-kept arboretum
I am waiting, like an animal,
For poetry.

New Year's Resolution Number 1 - Poets On the Coast Writing Retreat

Please consider joining us for Poets on the CoastLast year at this time Kelli Russell Agodon and I were just beginning an exploration as concrete dreamers. If we offered women a chance at a new kind of retreat experience, would there be interested takers? What we found out: Yes, yes, and yes. Our first POETS ON THE COAST: A WRITING RETREAT FOR WOMEN took place last September and now we are ready for our second event from September 7th - 9th at the Sylvia Beach Hotel on the Oregon Coast.

What do we do differently? Each poet receives a one-on-one meeting with either Kelli or myself. We conduct the overall retreat with a focus on your needs and then structure the classes based on what you want. Last year we created a magical experience for each participant. This year we expect to do this and more.
Start the year with a gift to yourself. If you register now you will receive our lowest price of $273 for registration as well as a one year subscription to the northwest literary journal Crab Creek Review.
We focus on poets who are new to poetry and poets who are well published. The classes are structured for poets of all levels. Please feel free to read over the FAQ for Poets on the Coast or leave me a message here. I hope you can join us. 

Waving Good-bye to 2011 - And Looking Forward to 2012

A warm good-bye to 2011

In Life It's Not Where You Go, It's Who You Travel With (Thanks, Mitch)

In Life, It's Not Where You Go, It's Who You Travel With 

Some of my favorite things: poems, book arts, and mystery

The Prague Municipal LibraryWhat is it about towers of books? Or really, any art objects made from books? A few months ago I posted about the gorgeous book sculptures that were showing up in Edinburgh libraries and other municipal buildings. There seems a magic to them that goes beyond repurposing pages and bindings. As if the new book object makes manifest the imagination in a new way.  You can see more of the Edinburgh sculptures here.

[image error] "This is for you" The Banksy of the book world has left these lyrical sculptures all over Edinburgh

The Prague Municipal Library is now home to a spiraling tower of hundreds of carefully stacked books assembled by Slovakian born artist Matej Kren. Dubbed Idiom, the staggering installation reaches up to the ceiling, and Kren installed a mirror inside the funnel to create the illusion of a magical, unending spire of books.


Another story that made me glad I'm alive today is the npr piece about the harried parent who has decided to read a poem a day. In the kitchen by the toaster, in the car, even in the port-a-john this parent has found peace by spending a minute each day being transported by poetry. What would the world look like if we all did this? Maybe even for one day?



A Poem A Day: Portable, Peaceful And Perfectby ALAN HEATHCOCK
EnlargeiStockphoto.com

December 26, 2011Alan Heathcock is the author of Volt.I hadn't slept well, had to get my three kids to three different schools in three different cities, had deadlines piled on deadlines. I leaned my head against my bookcases and there, at eye-level, was a book of poetry by Mary Oliver.I randomly opened to the poem "Egrets." Like magic, I was pushing through catbrier to the edge of a pond, where I watched "a spindle of bleached reeds" become egrets and "unruffled, sure, by the laws of their faith not logic, they opened their wings softly and stepped over every dark thing."I closed the book, transformed, bolstered from the inside out.May you enjoy these images and ideas --- and hopefully they will spark ideas in me or in you that are  practical, transformative, and magical as well. Happy December 28th


Read more: Matej Kren's 'Idiom' Is a Spellbinding Tower Made From Hundreds of Books | 

Happy Everything to Everyone!

Is it a film? A flock of birds? An animated painting?

My favorite piece in the current exhibit, "Luminous"
Tonight I found a youtube video of this amazing art installation which is part film, part sculpture, part magic. It seems right to post it here tonight in this season where so many people yearn for something luminous. I watched this piece over and over with a kind of wonder I hadn't felt since a child needing to see it just one more time... This video gives a real sense  of the piece. May it bring you a few moments of wonder tonight.
"Suh's installation, titled Gate, was commissioned exclusively for this exhibition and transforms one of the artist's existing fabric pieces into a screen for projection as well as a space of transition."Like the moment of enlightenment in Zen Buddhism, passing through a gate takes only a split second, and then it's over," Suh explains. "But so many things happen in such a short period of time. With this work, I wanted to extend that moment of passage, to delay it, if only for an instant, to provide the viewer that moment of insight.""Our notion of emptiness is quite different in the East," Suh explains. "The void is not empty or bleak but charged with meaning."

Thank you California Journal of Poetics - The Alchemist's Kitchen Reviewed

Giving Thanks to the California Journal of Poetics Tonight!
   It's been a long day of putting words on paper and then scratching them out again. Sometimes, and this is true more and more the last few years, it feels impossible to write poems that I am really proud of. Maybe it's that I live in a constant state of self doubt and the more years on the planet, the more time those doubts have to coalesce.Don't get me wrong, I also believe that any good writer needs self doubt in order to improve - sometimes I just wish that the voice that taunts "so you think that's a poem?" might take a bit of a holiday. 
Let me also thank  Carrie MONIZ  who I have never met for her thoughtful and spot on reading of my work. Reviewing poetry is an act of generosity and I am thankful for my book falling into such kind hands. And if you are still looking for a holiday gift for yourself or a poetry loving friend, you can order The Alchemist's Kitchen from my website where I will add in Cures Include Travel if you purchase The Alchemist's Kitchen before December 31.
Here is the beginning of the review. To read the entire peace click here
The beauty and musicality of the English language cannot be overlooked in Susan Rich's third book, The Alchemist's Kitchen(a finalist for the Washington State Book Award and the Foreword Poetry Book of the Year). She invents new forms and reinvents the tried and true, exploring every device and tool with a keen ear and deft tongue.

Rich has an incredible ability to articulate the essence of a moment or emotion in few words—especially through the use of striking similes and metaphors. In the poem, "The Never Born Comes of Age," the slow pace of time is described as "hours / hunched like dogs no one could move." This image alone, in the context of the poem (a mother mourning her pregnancy which ambiguously ends in "loss streaming across cow dung and thistle"), is enough to make the reader grow heavy with the speaker's emotional burden—the heartache felt by an "almost mother."

Mahmoud Darwish
photo from the Palestine MonitorIn "Re-Imagining My Life with Lions," which meditates on the epigraph by Mahmoud Darwish—"There is no death, only a change of worlds"—the speaker reveals that he or she "want[s] to live another life—a poplar tree in a row / of blue pine along a cobbled road," though it isn't for lack of beauty in this world. The lines, "Each day unfurls, fragrant / as a botanist's notes from the road," are so saturated with the enduring passion one has for the world—the lingering scent, the cataloguing and acute observations—that only one sensitive to life's ephemeral nature could articulate such a comparison. The speaker's desire to live another life does not evoke thoughts of pity or disparity. Rather, it continues to evoke To continue reading click here

There's a Certain Slant of Light

December 21, 2011

There's a certain slant of light,
On winter afternoons,
That oppresses, like the weight
Of cathedral tunes.

Heavenly hurt it gives us;
We can find no scar,
But internal difference
Where the meanings are.

None may teach it anything,
'Tis the seal, despair,-
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the air.

When it comes, the landscape listens,
Shadows hold their breath;
When it goes, 't is like the distance
On the look of death.  


           Emily Dickinson