The Right Hand does not always appreciate the role of the left hand.
At the risk of creating or renewing an old controversy, we need to come together as one society. In no arena is this more poignant than in the life of just one small child.
A recent episode in the media involves a Democratic consultant named Hilary Rosen who made a comment on a stay-at-home presidential candidate’s wife, Ann Romney, as having “never worked a day in her life.” In fairness to Ann Romney her child rearing success with her children is not part of the controversy, at least not yet nor how she managed the success (her book is due out if timely done assuming it will and should be written).
It is generally agreed by all including the Obama White House that the Rosen comment was unfair and without factual basis. Her comment provided more grist for the mill on single parents as a problem in our society however, and not just the inequities of the wealthy affording one parent’s staying at home for the sake of child rearing, as opposed to third party child care for small children while both parents work outside the home on their careers (which is the ideal value in the discourse of the equality of the sexes at least as it is termed nowadays and the related topic of tax advantage for married couples with children).
I for one wholly applaud the wealthy for a primary allocation of family assets for the child by providing in home parenting (by the parent mother or father). The wealthy of course can afford third party child care to support the stay at home parent as well. So in no arena of American society is the uneveness between the rich and poor more exaggerated and responsible in large measure for the great inequities that result when a child reaches the school house door. But I still applaud the wealthy who put the family first.
As an aside but one very germain to my point here: let’s not forget though that inequities in the workplace in particular dealing with income and career advancement for women are due in large measure to the employee or professional who not only has to succeed at work but in role as single parent at home with the worry and expense of affordable day care while she is at work and later for after school care before she should reach the door of her home.
I am very grateful for the mother of my two daughters and her mothering and homemaking skill set. She was always on and present in our married life to see to the children and to the next task. She had to stretch our income from my teaching job a very long way and then with even less when I worked construction in the summers.
As our children got older, she worked outside the home and is a high performer in work world too. We have not been married now since 1988, but our daughters have turned out extremely well. I know sacrifices are made by parents but I never appreciated it quite so much until I'd lived through it myself.
Our marriages do not always survive but that doesn't mean the joy and compassion of being parents can not always be held in common. I agree that the family is under attack in society, and the attack is often fueled by selfishness. But the family is the unit where we belong and selfishness is self defeating there, especially when the loved ones deserve better and we have to be just our very best selves.
The real threat to the family is not single parent families, it’s the economic duress which often accompanies that family unit. Plus, so many who have children are too slow on the uptake of coming through for an infant and of providing the safe haven which ideally is always afforded every child.
I for one believe that every child deserves a support system to augment whatever effective parenting the child should have. Nowadays, one child’s support system can look vastly different from another child’s support system even though they might live in the very same community and neighborhood. It has never been more true that “it takes a village to raise a child.”
Note bene. The use by Hilary Clinton of the phrase as a title for her book of 1996 popularized this expression, but she I’m sure does not take credit for its originality (indeed she failed at the time to credit her partnership with ghostwriter Barbara Feinman (aka Barbara Feinman Todd after her marriage)). More importantly, related wisdom says that “a single hand cannot carry a baby” and “a single hand cannot bring up a child” which also make the point but these formulations lack the centrality of focus for a village, a child’s well being. See wikipedia article noted below with more details than noted above:
See (at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Takes_a_Village). “It Takes a Village: And Other Lessons Children Teach Us is a book published in 1996 by First Lady of the United States Hillary Rodham Clinton. In it, Clinton presents her vision for the children of America. She focuses on the impact individuals and groups outside the family have, for better or worse, on a child's well-being, and advocates a society which meets all of a child's needs.”
Friday, April 13, 2012
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Beware, Poet Gregg Brings Cantaloupe and Machete to Her Every Reading
Note. The following review was written in July 2010 and held as I’d hoped to speak with the poet of her book and its creation. That has not happened but perhaps she when searching the web will come across my review of her book. I offer it to my readers with appreciation for her accomplishment. RJH. Thursday, April 12, 2012.
Beware, Poet Gregg Brings Cantaloupe and Machete to Her Every Reading
by Richard J. Hilber
The concept of fruition should be a kindly warm feeling to those in senescence as life has treated one with success and one can savor the rewards (hopefully not indulging in self-satisfaction). Keep in mind the word "fruition" and this collection may work for you. The title of this collection is Suddenly Autumn (to purchase this collection see note at the bottom of this review). That title suggests autumn could sneek up on us, or for that matter old age could sneek up on us. Can it? (I know for me its cumulative and overlapping my years of maturity which overlap still active moments of immaturity.)
The theme of this collection is an appreciation of one's having come into one's senescence (see "Senescence" the poem at page 30 of the collection). The focus then would be on an understanding of how one grows worse with age, mentally and physical, or not, as it's likely uneven. Some would experience a growth in spirituality as they reclaim it having either shed it or parse it to death in living through adolescence and adulthood.
The poet conceptualizes this time in her life (presumably age 62 at time of composition) as a time of new beginnings (see the title poem which presents first). The placement of the poem entitled "Suddenly Autumn" first in the collection signals this collection of poems is meant to be thematic. So the tennis net is in place and the success of this undertaking in play. The poet is not to be let off the hook upon which she would hang her proverbial cap!
The theme is revisited in the poem "September Getaway" (p. 35). The poem is everything I expect of lyrical poetry. It has scope and depth of feeling and appreciation of one's relationship to beauty and to nature. Enough said. Buy the book if only to read this poem and treasure it.
As the reader soon grasps, the poet Gregg is a poet of the globular fruit school. This is fortunate for the theme because fruit is typically to be harvested in autumn. So perhaps the poems in the collection using fruit will deserve a free pass (but not if I can help it, they won't). If a poem uses the imagery of fruit, does it advance the thematic fullness (or its opposite) of senescence, or does it not?
To show we readers that she knows her gig (this poet is also a stand-up comic),
by the fourth poem in the collection she rewinds a biograhic anecdote of Cezanne and his penchant for apples in his paintings. She infuses the anecdote with a supposition. Cantaloupe, while stunning when at first sliced apart, fails the artist's need for repose during his artistic efforts. This would be the equivalent of a model, let's say Twiggy, who manages the perfect imp smile but only fleetingly and so quickly as to not indulge the camera's lens speed (even when increased to the hummingbird at a stand still speed). Modeling does have its place in these poems (see "The Nudes" at page 24) and how the realist succeeds in art that comes to life, leaps off the page back into life.
This poet is sure of her fruit ("Cezanne can have his apples, I'll have my cantaloupe.") By the time the reader catches up to the poet, the poem to catch is on page 17, and is entitled "Thoughtful Voyeur: Woman and the Cantaloupe." This is one of the poems selected by Keillor for performance and publication. Its persona is the woman, every woman, in her kitchen attuned to the beautiful in the disclosure of the innards of a cantaloupe. As a man, I'd like to say, it's a persona that is the woman inside all of us who have to go about the mundane chores persisting in experiencing the world with our sensuous longings for beauty while we do so. For a manly man to want to slice open such a fruit he might want to do it behind closed doors and hopefully not have mistaken his true love for a cantaloupe (sorry about the macabre elicited by slicing fruit; it's the mischief latent in all the globular fruit imagery, right?).
Globular fruit poets if they are smart mix it up a bit. They throw in bulbs, as in onion and garlic bulbs, vegetables not fruits. So in "Winter Garlic" (p. 32) she mixes it up a bit! The poem's persona is the woman in her kitchen again but this time the empathy she feels is palpable for the separating of cloves of the garlic reminds her of orphans alone and apart from parents and siblings. One is reminded that fruits are evocative of passion and vegetables of compassion. I can not picture a senescence in which I have not evolved in my empathy for others. This poet is a free range chicken poet. She will go where she has to go, literally speaking in the kitchen, to find the meanings of senescence such as in the imperatives of savoring beauty as our days in number decrease. Also, our true fear of aging should be a dotage marked by sterility, of a life without empathy for others. (Belief in afterlife provides no relief to those without empathy be ye Buddhist or Christian, Muslim or Jew [atheists get a pass on this one and possibly theists].)
What more is there to do with the word fruit than to deal with its exuded self: fruition. One of her poems upon a subtle reading will disclose the tendency in the poet's work to exude as from the repose of fruit, fruition. See in the poem "Absence" (page 36) that personal loss of the loved one in which the pain is often palpable as a globed fruit is found not in a fruit but in the globe of the persona's human heart, the residence of the ache (in the geography of the emotions, not to be found in dissecting cadavers). I want to say this poem begs the need for an amputation of something. It has to do with absence, of a limb missing from our self which was made whole by conjoining with another. The nerve endings are raw and we suffer loss. That's heart rending and imagine coming into senescence and not have experienced such a loss. Would one not have missed out on the experience of what it means to be alive and to suffer the loss of fullness, of having become more fully realized as a person? This awareness of loss is part of living. See especially her poem "Purple Heart" (p. 49) if you need to see any further into the truth of experiencing fullness in life.
This brings me to my second favorite poem in the entire collection: "Sympathy Card" (p. 42). Aunt Lina has survived her adult daughter and things are out of all bounds, sad. Can a sympathy card even broach the subject without being maudlin and cheap emotionalism? I note that the persona niece in the poem is careful of her detachment from the suffering while not incapable of a matched empathy for her aunt, honestly sympathetic in her reserve. Acknowledging loss of another takes courage, a courage not usually required of etiquette. In this context a carelessly mailed sympathy card is as likely to tear out the heart of the bereaved as not. Better keep the language spare and remember to check in on her when all the brouhaha of wakes and funerals has passed.
Now my favorite poem follows from this one, the metaphorical celebration of the private psyche: "Aunt Rose" (p. 51). In this the persona's relative, we find the exemplar of the hidden life of those in senescence. Beauty is masked and the container is labeled severe (like the husk of a cantaloupe, my dear), but inside is the fullness of life, the enduring possession of what has a life of its own, beauty.
[A]t night she looses
over the pillow,
a sudden autumn
against winter's
coarse, muslin white.
And so we now know that the poets appreciation of the aging process is inclusive of not just loss of physical and mental capacity, of relationships gone awry, but also of the empathy which makes life ever so bearable and livable and suicide is no solution for one who feels empathy and would keep company with those who also live long and would do no less than our forebears who chose life minimalized, but no less to be lived. Odd that the maximizing of our years as a corollary includes a minimizing of our capacities.
As I said earlier: "Globular fruit poets if they are smart mix it up a bit." Poet Gregg continues to look for other globular images, not just fruits and vegetables. In "K-Mart Map" (p. 37), she uses the poet's own persona who buys a three ring binder for her poems the cover of which is a flattened out into a globular map (projection of regions in cloves of the surface of the planet). The wisdom of this poet is that she knows the map may help her gloss the evening news of mishaps and tragedies a world away, but her poems inside this cover focus on the appreciable experience of beauty. It's where we all should be so lucky to go when woes and travail about swamp our lives with no life preserver or oars but yet the prospect of beauty (which in this poem is about perusing and reading from the page in collected poetry with the poem about the three peaches in the sunlight). We have to be careful of escapism, but a healthy psyche requires too that we stay balanced between not just good and evil, but also futility and beauty. I do not believe this poet is into escaping consequence of mortality, of loss, or of one's own proclivity for endurance into one's old age (senescence in the calendar sense).
Afterword. Finally, without glossing every poem's place in this collection, I can answer the question as to whether Poet Gregg can hang her cap on this collection of poems as a unified collection of superb poems. Time has not changed that for me as I reflect back to the time I read her poems during a wonderful summer afternoon in advance of autumn on a screened deck. I had a very pleasant evening reflecting on her success as I wrote this review last July 10, 2011.
Richard J. Hilber, Thursday, April 12, 2012.
Beware, Poet Gregg Brings Cantaloupe and Machete to Her Every Reading
by Richard J. Hilber
The concept of fruition should be a kindly warm feeling to those in senescence as life has treated one with success and one can savor the rewards (hopefully not indulging in self-satisfaction). Keep in mind the word "fruition" and this collection may work for you. The title of this collection is Suddenly Autumn (to purchase this collection see note at the bottom of this review). That title suggests autumn could sneek up on us, or for that matter old age could sneek up on us. Can it? (I know for me its cumulative and overlapping my years of maturity which overlap still active moments of immaturity.)
The theme of this collection is an appreciation of one's having come into one's senescence (see "Senescence" the poem at page 30 of the collection). The focus then would be on an understanding of how one grows worse with age, mentally and physical, or not, as it's likely uneven. Some would experience a growth in spirituality as they reclaim it having either shed it or parse it to death in living through adolescence and adulthood.
The poet conceptualizes this time in her life (presumably age 62 at time of composition) as a time of new beginnings (see the title poem which presents first). The placement of the poem entitled "Suddenly Autumn" first in the collection signals this collection of poems is meant to be thematic. So the tennis net is in place and the success of this undertaking in play. The poet is not to be let off the hook upon which she would hang her proverbial cap!
The theme is revisited in the poem "September Getaway" (p. 35). The poem is everything I expect of lyrical poetry. It has scope and depth of feeling and appreciation of one's relationship to beauty and to nature. Enough said. Buy the book if only to read this poem and treasure it.
As the reader soon grasps, the poet Gregg is a poet of the globular fruit school. This is fortunate for the theme because fruit is typically to be harvested in autumn. So perhaps the poems in the collection using fruit will deserve a free pass (but not if I can help it, they won't). If a poem uses the imagery of fruit, does it advance the thematic fullness (or its opposite) of senescence, or does it not?
To show we readers that she knows her gig (this poet is also a stand-up comic),
by the fourth poem in the collection she rewinds a biograhic anecdote of Cezanne and his penchant for apples in his paintings. She infuses the anecdote with a supposition. Cantaloupe, while stunning when at first sliced apart, fails the artist's need for repose during his artistic efforts. This would be the equivalent of a model, let's say Twiggy, who manages the perfect imp smile but only fleetingly and so quickly as to not indulge the camera's lens speed (even when increased to the hummingbird at a stand still speed). Modeling does have its place in these poems (see "The Nudes" at page 24) and how the realist succeeds in art that comes to life, leaps off the page back into life.
This poet is sure of her fruit ("Cezanne can have his apples, I'll have my cantaloupe.") By the time the reader catches up to the poet, the poem to catch is on page 17, and is entitled "Thoughtful Voyeur: Woman and the Cantaloupe." This is one of the poems selected by Keillor for performance and publication. Its persona is the woman, every woman, in her kitchen attuned to the beautiful in the disclosure of the innards of a cantaloupe. As a man, I'd like to say, it's a persona that is the woman inside all of us who have to go about the mundane chores persisting in experiencing the world with our sensuous longings for beauty while we do so. For a manly man to want to slice open such a fruit he might want to do it behind closed doors and hopefully not have mistaken his true love for a cantaloupe (sorry about the macabre elicited by slicing fruit; it's the mischief latent in all the globular fruit imagery, right?).
Globular fruit poets if they are smart mix it up a bit. They throw in bulbs, as in onion and garlic bulbs, vegetables not fruits. So in "Winter Garlic" (p. 32) she mixes it up a bit! The poem's persona is the woman in her kitchen again but this time the empathy she feels is palpable for the separating of cloves of the garlic reminds her of orphans alone and apart from parents and siblings. One is reminded that fruits are evocative of passion and vegetables of compassion. I can not picture a senescence in which I have not evolved in my empathy for others. This poet is a free range chicken poet. She will go where she has to go, literally speaking in the kitchen, to find the meanings of senescence such as in the imperatives of savoring beauty as our days in number decrease. Also, our true fear of aging should be a dotage marked by sterility, of a life without empathy for others. (Belief in afterlife provides no relief to those without empathy be ye Buddhist or Christian, Muslim or Jew [atheists get a pass on this one and possibly theists].)
What more is there to do with the word fruit than to deal with its exuded self: fruition. One of her poems upon a subtle reading will disclose the tendency in the poet's work to exude as from the repose of fruit, fruition. See in the poem "Absence" (page 36) that personal loss of the loved one in which the pain is often palpable as a globed fruit is found not in a fruit but in the globe of the persona's human heart, the residence of the ache (in the geography of the emotions, not to be found in dissecting cadavers). I want to say this poem begs the need for an amputation of something. It has to do with absence, of a limb missing from our self which was made whole by conjoining with another. The nerve endings are raw and we suffer loss. That's heart rending and imagine coming into senescence and not have experienced such a loss. Would one not have missed out on the experience of what it means to be alive and to suffer the loss of fullness, of having become more fully realized as a person? This awareness of loss is part of living. See especially her poem "Purple Heart" (p. 49) if you need to see any further into the truth of experiencing fullness in life.
This brings me to my second favorite poem in the entire collection: "Sympathy Card" (p. 42). Aunt Lina has survived her adult daughter and things are out of all bounds, sad. Can a sympathy card even broach the subject without being maudlin and cheap emotionalism? I note that the persona niece in the poem is careful of her detachment from the suffering while not incapable of a matched empathy for her aunt, honestly sympathetic in her reserve. Acknowledging loss of another takes courage, a courage not usually required of etiquette. In this context a carelessly mailed sympathy card is as likely to tear out the heart of the bereaved as not. Better keep the language spare and remember to check in on her when all the brouhaha of wakes and funerals has passed.
Now my favorite poem follows from this one, the metaphorical celebration of the private psyche: "Aunt Rose" (p. 51). In this the persona's relative, we find the exemplar of the hidden life of those in senescence. Beauty is masked and the container is labeled severe (like the husk of a cantaloupe, my dear), but inside is the fullness of life, the enduring possession of what has a life of its own, beauty.
[A]t night she looses
over the pillow,
a sudden autumn
against winter's
coarse, muslin white.
And so we now know that the poets appreciation of the aging process is inclusive of not just loss of physical and mental capacity, of relationships gone awry, but also of the empathy which makes life ever so bearable and livable and suicide is no solution for one who feels empathy and would keep company with those who also live long and would do no less than our forebears who chose life minimalized, but no less to be lived. Odd that the maximizing of our years as a corollary includes a minimizing of our capacities.
As I said earlier: "Globular fruit poets if they are smart mix it up a bit." Poet Gregg continues to look for other globular images, not just fruits and vegetables. In "K-Mart Map" (p. 37), she uses the poet's own persona who buys a three ring binder for her poems the cover of which is a flattened out into a globular map (projection of regions in cloves of the surface of the planet). The wisdom of this poet is that she knows the map may help her gloss the evening news of mishaps and tragedies a world away, but her poems inside this cover focus on the appreciable experience of beauty. It's where we all should be so lucky to go when woes and travail about swamp our lives with no life preserver or oars but yet the prospect of beauty (which in this poem is about perusing and reading from the page in collected poetry with the poem about the three peaches in the sunlight). We have to be careful of escapism, but a healthy psyche requires too that we stay balanced between not just good and evil, but also futility and beauty. I do not believe this poet is into escaping consequence of mortality, of loss, or of one's own proclivity for endurance into one's old age (senescence in the calendar sense).
Afterword. Finally, without glossing every poem's place in this collection, I can answer the question as to whether Poet Gregg can hang her cap on this collection of poems as a unified collection of superb poems. Time has not changed that for me as I reflect back to the time I read her poems during a wonderful summer afternoon in advance of autumn on a screened deck. I had a very pleasant evening reflecting on her success as I wrote this review last July 10, 2011.
Richard J. Hilber, Thursday, April 12, 2012.
Availability Note. Suddenly Autumn by Cindy Gregg is available for purchase. See
The Poetry We Publish
[The following essay is written for poets who would publish (and contest administrators and publishers as well) that we all have the target clearly in mind: poetry to be heard and to be read by those seeking and relishing successful vicarious experience through one of the language arts, poetry.]
Recently, I did a vanity search for a woman I've befriended in the past and wanted to check up on as I admire her still and her persistence at living life on her terms as she is both able and capable. The result of this search was learning that Garrison Keillor had published on two separate occasions two of her poems.
Well, to have had the Minnesota Bard read your poems in his whimsical sonority is certain fame. I note that following his readings and publication of these poems they were both picked up by food blogs and published anew to the world.
It's mind boggling to realize that we still do publish poetry, even if it's just not selling except to help market food recipes (largely assuming the food bloggers paid a stipend for a poem's use). This is not to say I do not appreciate the blog publications and the Writer's Almanac dosage of poetry pre-read and selected by the Bard's staff person (I hear there is one who does this). I also believe the two poems definitely belong on the Writer's Almanac and I salute my friend for having won publication there (a gatekeeper of the poetry art has a weighty job for which I hope he or she is compensated copiously and ironically).
My friend has worked at seeing her poems otherwise published as magazine verse, which is admirable and praiseworthy. Based only on supposition and on one of her poems, I believe she has also submitted poetry to at least one competition with an annual prize in the thousands of dollars. This is is a much larger undertaking as the poems selected have to be so stunningly good and the collection of the poems so unified that the judge of the competition can not sidestep the "duty" to find this book a publisher. And on the scale of the Daisy Rifle that even if the collection is itself not to be awarded the prize (would that be for political reasons?) the judge of the contest finds the collection a publisher. The Poetry Foundation appears to have a concern for publication of efforts of note which makes the process redeemable for all of us who enter (even those of us who are short of being one's own editor).
One wonders if contests of note actually have this regard for quality collections and poems when they process the submissions. Do they, as we assume truly keep the authorship blind until after the point of selection of thee finalist. Some mask the violation of the principle of the blind entry by deciding multiple award recipients once the poet's are unmasked. The reasons for this are not legend. A prize of note builds its reputation on marketability. Plus, other factors beyond the control of the entrant are at work. I believe, as I believe you do, that marketability and objective judgement are mutually beneficial to the publisher of poetry. It's the reality of the marketplace. So read the contest rules with eyes to see what the task really is and how you can affect the outcome, but accept you do not control it, except by the quality of your submitted work. Hopefully, you will stay in the vineyard working the winepresses and bottlers.
Recently, I read the historical rendition of the Yale Younger Poets contest series. The insider's view of how the "winners" came to be is a real page turner for us who have labored in the optimistic pursuit of meritorious publication of our poems and collections. It should be noted by all entrants and contest advertisements as well that if a submission is not in fact a unified collection of superbly crafted poetry, it will not be further agonized over by the readers for the contest. I say this because a prize of note should require this as the base line for consideration. (Don't we love it when the announcement of the winner is accompanied by an apology to the losers: "The quality of the work of entrants was such that the selection of the winner was arduous and edifying for me as the judge." This makes the payment of the entry fee [read reader's fee] more tolerable the next time we enter.)
Consequencially, I urge poets before making submissions to have at least one other who has skill and experience become a reader with not only critical skills but the willingness to foster change and growth in the quality of results for submission. Writing programs offer this, but I for one do not think academia should be the situs of our art and craft (except that it should not be prohibited from being a situs).
We have to be somewhere on the timeline of fruition with our poetry. Early efforts can show promise and even a new direction but it's not unusual for the poems without promise to actually embrace a new direction in poetry (especially if they seem out of control) and for poems with promise to be mirrors of the mature work of established poets (they meet our expectations for modern verse).
Imitation and borrowing is not to be scorned (attribution in text or otherwise noted of our borrowings is due though, in all honesty, which is not to say that subtlety in giving obeisance is not appreciated). I also believe that the allusions whether historical or literary should be handled with panache, either by obvious mistaken representation by a persona in a poem (a la George W. Bush) or with regard for capturing the truth as that truth is to be had. In some cases, truth is not to be purchased by any amount of study or regard for it; and so poets be careful in your wordchoice because readers of poetry are rightly not a forgiving class of persons, typically widely read and capable of doing the research on his or her own. Wouldn't it be a bit odd to hold our politicians to a higher standard of accuracy in allusion and reference than we do our poets?
I am an advocate of the school for genius being the person's own mind and imagination. That's the whole game in a nutshell. You could pay tens of thousands of dollars for a masters of fine arts and fall short of the mark. The integrity of the process though is in the creation of original work and products worthy of readers. The work must be respectful of readers and trustworthy of the integrity and intelligence of persons who should read our poetry. The pedantic and the obstreperous (think bombastic and ego-centric professor) may yet have a place in our poetics but rarely do we find their poetry readable unless they take on a persona in opposition to their public person persona. This is not to say that the persona in a poem speaking in first person can not irritate or irk us, but that had better be by design of the poet whose sense of dramatic and situational irony is not lacking.
Finally, to my fellow poets on the quest, I have some hard won advice to give in addition to what is offered above. Be wary of padding your submissions. A small collection of superb poems in a unified collection deserves publication. Be strong in your conceptualization of a collection (quantity is second to quality). Do not shun the humble undertaking. Do shun the grandiose which leaves itself open to that host of critiques that follows a too ambitious undertaking (unless you are Cervantes's Don Quixote, in which case, press on). Keep in front of you what comes next and deal with the problems in front of you. A poem with a problem is a jewel unshined. See the problem and the solution should follow (so sleep on it). Unvarnished truth too can be stunning especially in the vernacular (so be careful what you take a shine to).
Ultimately, you will have to weather the critics. At least make sure you are the first critic in that line of well-wishers who may take time to critique one's efforts. A mean spirited poetry critic may have incorrectly assessed our effort, but like one's mad aunt still value the truth in what he or she has to offer and trash the rest of verbiage. Oh yah, have a little lighthearted laugh when a poem is finished and has taken on a life of its own. It's why we should bother to write poetry.
Richard J. Hilber
Recently, I did a vanity search for a woman I've befriended in the past and wanted to check up on as I admire her still and her persistence at living life on her terms as she is both able and capable. The result of this search was learning that Garrison Keillor had published on two separate occasions two of her poems.
Well, to have had the Minnesota Bard read your poems in his whimsical sonority is certain fame. I note that following his readings and publication of these poems they were both picked up by food blogs and published anew to the world.
It's mind boggling to realize that we still do publish poetry, even if it's just not selling except to help market food recipes (largely assuming the food bloggers paid a stipend for a poem's use). This is not to say I do not appreciate the blog publications and the Writer's Almanac dosage of poetry pre-read and selected by the Bard's staff person (I hear there is one who does this). I also believe the two poems definitely belong on the Writer's Almanac and I salute my friend for having won publication there (a gatekeeper of the poetry art has a weighty job for which I hope he or she is compensated copiously and ironically).
My friend has worked at seeing her poems otherwise published as magazine verse, which is admirable and praiseworthy. Based only on supposition and on one of her poems, I believe she has also submitted poetry to at least one competition with an annual prize in the thousands of dollars. This is is a much larger undertaking as the poems selected have to be so stunningly good and the collection of the poems so unified that the judge of the competition can not sidestep the "duty" to find this book a publisher. And on the scale of the Daisy Rifle that even if the collection is itself not to be awarded the prize (would that be for political reasons?) the judge of the contest finds the collection a publisher. The Poetry Foundation appears to have a concern for publication of efforts of note which makes the process redeemable for all of us who enter (even those of us who are short of being one's own editor).
One wonders if contests of note actually have this regard for quality collections and poems when they process the submissions. Do they, as we assume truly keep the authorship blind until after the point of selection of thee finalist. Some mask the violation of the principle of the blind entry by deciding multiple award recipients once the poet's are unmasked. The reasons for this are not legend. A prize of note builds its reputation on marketability. Plus, other factors beyond the control of the entrant are at work. I believe, as I believe you do, that marketability and objective judgement are mutually beneficial to the publisher of poetry. It's the reality of the marketplace. So read the contest rules with eyes to see what the task really is and how you can affect the outcome, but accept you do not control it, except by the quality of your submitted work. Hopefully, you will stay in the vineyard working the winepresses and bottlers.
Recently, I read the historical rendition of the Yale Younger Poets contest series. The insider's view of how the "winners" came to be is a real page turner for us who have labored in the optimistic pursuit of meritorious publication of our poems and collections. It should be noted by all entrants and contest advertisements as well that if a submission is not in fact a unified collection of superbly crafted poetry, it will not be further agonized over by the readers for the contest. I say this because a prize of note should require this as the base line for consideration. (Don't we love it when the announcement of the winner is accompanied by an apology to the losers: "The quality of the work of entrants was such that the selection of the winner was arduous and edifying for me as the judge." This makes the payment of the entry fee [read reader's fee] more tolerable the next time we enter.)
Consequencially, I urge poets before making submissions to have at least one other who has skill and experience become a reader with not only critical skills but the willingness to foster change and growth in the quality of results for submission. Writing programs offer this, but I for one do not think academia should be the situs of our art and craft (except that it should not be prohibited from being a situs).
We have to be somewhere on the timeline of fruition with our poetry. Early efforts can show promise and even a new direction but it's not unusual for the poems without promise to actually embrace a new direction in poetry (especially if they seem out of control) and for poems with promise to be mirrors of the mature work of established poets (they meet our expectations for modern verse).
Imitation and borrowing is not to be scorned (attribution in text or otherwise noted of our borrowings is due though, in all honesty, which is not to say that subtlety in giving obeisance is not appreciated). I also believe that the allusions whether historical or literary should be handled with panache, either by obvious mistaken representation by a persona in a poem (a la George W. Bush) or with regard for capturing the truth as that truth is to be had. In some cases, truth is not to be purchased by any amount of study or regard for it; and so poets be careful in your wordchoice because readers of poetry are rightly not a forgiving class of persons, typically widely read and capable of doing the research on his or her own. Wouldn't it be a bit odd to hold our politicians to a higher standard of accuracy in allusion and reference than we do our poets?
I am an advocate of the school for genius being the person's own mind and imagination. That's the whole game in a nutshell. You could pay tens of thousands of dollars for a masters of fine arts and fall short of the mark. The integrity of the process though is in the creation of original work and products worthy of readers. The work must be respectful of readers and trustworthy of the integrity and intelligence of persons who should read our poetry. The pedantic and the obstreperous (think bombastic and ego-centric professor) may yet have a place in our poetics but rarely do we find their poetry readable unless they take on a persona in opposition to their public person persona. This is not to say that the persona in a poem speaking in first person can not irritate or irk us, but that had better be by design of the poet whose sense of dramatic and situational irony is not lacking.
Finally, to my fellow poets on the quest, I have some hard won advice to give in addition to what is offered above. Be wary of padding your submissions. A small collection of superb poems in a unified collection deserves publication. Be strong in your conceptualization of a collection (quantity is second to quality). Do not shun the humble undertaking. Do shun the grandiose which leaves itself open to that host of critiques that follows a too ambitious undertaking (unless you are Cervantes's Don Quixote, in which case, press on). Keep in front of you what comes next and deal with the problems in front of you. A poem with a problem is a jewel unshined. See the problem and the solution should follow (so sleep on it). Unvarnished truth too can be stunning especially in the vernacular (so be careful what you take a shine to).
Ultimately, you will have to weather the critics. At least make sure you are the first critic in that line of well-wishers who may take time to critique one's efforts. A mean spirited poetry critic may have incorrectly assessed our effort, but like one's mad aunt still value the truth in what he or she has to offer and trash the rest of verbiage. Oh yah, have a little lighthearted laugh when a poem is finished and has taken on a life of its own. It's why we should bother to write poetry.
Richard J. Hilber
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