2 Odious Things in Recent Poetry

The poetry one likes is so much a matter of personal taste. But in some recent books highly praised, recommended, etc., I saw some incredibly stupid lines. Example:

Who can see a stranger's wrist/ and not have regrets? (Immediate response: "Me, that's who!")

And You know what else? Caught myself doing this: TOO MANY POEMS today are written addressing "You," but they don't mean the reader. What's going on? I suspect poets have been shamed out of saying "I" -- too egotistical. "You" is a displacement. It may help camouflage the fact that "You" is too often the poet's mom, dad, boyfriend, or somebody else too unimportant to have any identity besides that of a vehicle for, or target of, the poem. I am trying to remind myself to have a very good reason not to use "he" or "she" or "Celia."

Wash. U. Summer Writers Institute 2010

Please let every writer know that applications will be available shortly for:

The15th annual Washington University Summer Writers Institute, in St. Louis June 14-25, 2010. Workshops will include fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, and the Young Writers Institute (for high-school sophomores, juniors and seniors). See the Writers Institute website, or telephone (314) 935-6720.

Instructors for 2010 are: Poetry, Sally Van Doren

Fiction, Rebecca Rasmusssen

Creative Nonfiction, Kathleen Finneran

Young Writers Institute, Mathew Smith.

The keynote speaker will be poet and SLU professor Devin Johnston.

Read what Summer Writers Institute Alumni from past years have been publishing, winning, and so forth.

The Young Writers Institute is a workshop for high-school sophomores, juniors and seniors who write poetry or creative prose.

Adult and youth writers meet in group workshop sessions, held Mondays through Fridays in the mornings. In the afternoons accomplished writers and editors from Missouri and Illinois read from their work and discuss writing and publishing. Participants have weekends free for writing. Traditionally, Institute participants finish up the two weeks with an open-mike reading of their own work. Tuition this year is $845 noncredit or $1795 to earn three college credits. Is that a lot? I guarantee it won't get any cheaper! Maybe this is your year!

Which is More Important: Action or Results?

A beautifully simple rearrangement of reality from a seminar on "making a living from your self-published books," a St. Louis Publishers Association event attended 28 December:

Speaker, asking the audience: "Which is more important? Taking action or getting results?"

Audience: "Hmm, well, sort of -- results?"

Speaker: "No. It's taking action! Imagine two authors who want to sell their books. One tells himself, 'I'm making 10 cold calls today.' The other vows, 'By the end of today I will find three hot leads.' Then it's 2 p.m. The first author has made his calls (he hates cold calling, but he did it). He's free now to go to work on his next book. The second guy is sweating and stressed -- calling and calling he hasn't gotten even one of the hot leads he wanted! And gosh, his day won't end until he has three!"

Remember, said the speakers, you can control your actions -- but you can't control results!

The Hardest Thing

My first "freelance writing" teacher, a novelist, said: "The hardest thing about writing is placing your butt in the chair." Age 18 then, I'd never heard that and didn't understand.

Sitting down and writing -- to express myself, be somebody on paper -- that was an indulgence, a privilege; fun, and not a pain; sort of a bubble bath for the mind! I did it as often as I could.

Over the years I heard "how hard it was" repeated by teachers and then by fellow writers, until I accepted it. My first artificial difficulty! And I let it govern me, this First-World, fey statement of the grossly overprivileged: "The hardest thing about writing is sitting down to it." Much worse, I repeated this false "truism" to others, who should have jeered me! Who should have said, "Oh, really big life-threatening problem, that one!"

Electronic Rights Means More Money for Authors

It sure do, honey. Check out NYT story on how upset Simon& Schuster is that one of their biggest authors (Stephen R. Covey, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (1989) & sequelae) has sold his electronic book rights to a company that'll give him 50 percent when people buy electronic versions of his books. You think Amazon.com taking 50 percent is outrageous? Well, Simon & Schuster would have taken 75 percent.

"Ever since electronic books emerged as a major growth market, New York’s largest publishing houses have worried that big-name authors might sign deals directly with e-book retailers or other new ventures, bypassing traditional publishers entirely." (Poor publishers; now they suffer they way WE did when THEY bypassed fairness to writers!)

I specifically claimed all electronic rights to the text of Meet Me just for that reason; and when you sign book contracts -- be a highly effective person and do the same!

Parting with Students

Dear Class:

You were beginners. A seasoned writer would sputter, "That's impossible!" if assigned in 16 weeks to produce and craft a package of 3 to 5 poems, a personal essay, and a short story. But you did it. Congratulations. I am proud of you.

Each so different, age 17 to 55, you got along beautifully because you were generous and vulnerable and imperfect -- and in order to get you that way I had to be that way first, and it was a BEAR, because those are traits I don't like to display; I never planned to become a teacher. . . I think I was sent into it so I would learn humility. Thanks for teaching me.

You wrote some freaking awesome things and you know it.

I hope there's at least one helpful thing about writing that you discovered in here that you will remember, whatever that might be.

Here's my card, and let me know how you fare and how your writing goes, and if you need a reference. I've been teaching this class for 12 years and apparently am not going anywhere, so if you need to look me up you know where I am.

Go get 'em,

Catherine

If You Sign Your Book

If you sign your name in your book, you’ve “autographed” it. Putting a personalized note in your book, and then signing your name (example: “To Florence, best wishes, Catherine”) is called “inscribing” it.

In Meet Me (the book is coming soon) I mention that poet Jane O. Wayne said she’ll autograph but won’t inscribe her books – having once found for sale a used copy she’d inscribed to a very close friend. Picture sending a heartfelt Valentine e-mail to your love. Imagine that he or she forwards it as a Valentine to somebody else.

If you send books out into the world, these things happen. It is part of authorhood. It’s recycling. It’s all good.

I too sent an old dear friend a book inscribed to her. Now she’s selling that copy online at secondhand. Because of the inscription she’s charging rather more than double the cover price. Like, which of us should feel embarrassed?

Never Say Never

In 2001 I published in The Missouri Review an essay I'd worked on hard and liked a lot. Titled "I Want You, I Need You, I Love You," it was all about Elvis Presley's recording of the song by the same name. After it was published I never heard any response; not a single comment except for jokes after I mentioned I'd written about Elvis.

Later I learned that Stanley Elkin advised writers not to try describe music; it couldn't be adequately done. And I looked at what I'd written and published to no account, and thought it a noble failure.

Well, a friend found on the Missouri Review site a college instructor's comment: "As model essays I use several examples from TMR’s [The Missouri Review's online] archives. . . .“I Want You, I Need You, I Love You” by Catherine Rankovic is a lesson in how to describe the nearly impossible—Elvis’ phrasing and singing voice."

And then a paragraph from that essay appears in the Elvis entry in Wikiquote. I didn't put it there but I did correct the misquotations when I found it...

Maybe The King might have liked that some college professor gal took him serious... Moral of the story is, as musician Miles Davis put it: "Don't fear mistakes. There are none."