Latest Posts in the Sanity Bubble

Mental Health for Writers has moved here to the Sanity Blog. New posts worth your while include:

On Giving Up My Land Line (July 15)
I've Had Enough of "You" (Second Person Plural) in Poetry (June 16) (gosh; this one's really popular!)
Two "Things" That Will Improve Your Poems (June 9)
What's "A Rhetorical Poem"? and Why Nobody Tells You About Them (June 7)
A Rare Look Inside the Writer's Cabin (June 4)
"Blue" Material (May 29)

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."

Animated Poems by TextFlows

Try poems by Yeats, Dickinson or (maximum fun) "Casey at the Bat" as animated words using Textflows. Cut into bite-size pieces, the poems materialize on your screen at a readable pace that lets the words "sink in." Opinions range from "great for teaching poetry" to "it ruins the integrity of the line," and riposte, "the line is an artificial construct anyway developed by the printing industry. . ." This link comes from poets.org. At Textflows.com you can try reading textflow of Obama's inaugural address, King's "I Have a Dream" speech, or The Bard.

Competing Readings: What to Do?

Tonight, Nov. 11, there are 3 competing literary readings, and it's a difficult choice as personal friends are involved in all of them:

• Jennifer Kronovet, Stephanie Brown, and Heather Treseler--three acclaimed poets hailing from the East Coast, the West Coast, and the Midwest--will read from their work at 8 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 11, at the Schlafly Bottleworks on 7260 Southwest Ave. in Maplewood. Admission is free.
• Poetry, Prose and Pints Nov. 11 starting at 7:30: Come one, come all for a pint and a listen to where voice and admission are free! 419 N. Euclid in the CWE at Dressel's Pub in the Gallery Above. Readers: Jon Dressel, David Lloyd, M.K. Stallings, Julia Gordon Bramer, David Lucas, Phil Goumis. Music: Nathan Ponzar.
• Join the Chesterfield Writers Guild for River Valley Readings the second Wednesday of every month from 7 to 8:30 pm, September through May. Enjoy a chance to mingle with fellow authors and literary enthusiasts in a casual setting. November 11, 7 - 8:30pm: Kathleen Finneran, nonfiction writer, and Shane Seely, poet. Free.
  

Two weeks ago I attended two readings on one night by seeing the first half of one and second half of the other; unsatisfactory on all counts. Showing up at readings is an act of support for fellow writers: I want to support them all. So organizers must meet and put their heads together. Lots of St. Louisans would love to attend each of these readings -- and should -- but if they're all scheduled on one night...!?!

Brown Study

My book's not out as promised. I haven't even seen galleys yet. A disappointment, but that's print publishing. Meantime, I'm reading recent literary journals and books, to fuel the illusion that I'm moving forward even if the cherished book is stuck in production. I have been impressed by these new self-published books:

Vocal Folds (poetry) by Stephen Koritta
MYnd mAp (poetry and art) by Gaye Gambell-Peterson

Be Kind to Your Mind

Last night I told myself the thing I'd drafted wasn't a poem: Real poems take long stressful craft sessions, and are serious, and this one entertained me so vastly I read it aloud several times laughing. Then I invented excuses for it: "It's kind of a theater piece," or "You could work on this so it'd be in couplets and then it'd be good," & c. Told myself everything in the world except, "Hey, you just drafted a 60-line poem -- that alone is pretty great; congratulations."

Making some kind of trivial mistake ("What'd I come in here to get? Can't remember") I have been catching myself calling myself "Stupid!" "What a dodo-brain," "Nobody else would be so incompetent," etc.

Have I sat myself down today and said, "You rock! You're doing a pretty good job with your life. You are so well-read, so together, and a creative artist! What discipline, what fire," and so on? I've got a good mind. Why am I not kind to it -- as kind and generous as it has been to me?

Sylvia Plath and the Tee-Shirt

Wore this today to town and to the gym. This tee-shirt (I thought) was in bad taste on any occasion -- I mean, a depressed poet, dead by suicide -- so I owned it for two years before I finally wore it to a buncha-writers dinner party, but today it was the only clean shirt, so I wore it to town: to the Christian café (it has wireless), to the gym, the post office, and pharmacy. The lone comment came from pharmacy technician. Squinting at the image she said, “Is that one of those shirts that they give you at high-school reunions, showing what you used to look like back in high school?” Sylvia’s my main lady, but I never expected to be mistaken for her.

22 Poems in Two Days

The notebook exercise, done the past two Fridays, yielded first drafts of 22 poems (!!!!). There were more but I chose to transcribe only those. Got my crafting and editing work cut out for me for probably the rest of '09. So nice to have something on paper.

I Feel a Draft Coming On

Two or three days of quietude, plus the reading of some poetry, stir me to compose drafts. It happened this past weekend for the first time in many months. I drafted 5 poems.

Per the book The Artist’s Way, I try to think of myself as a channel. Not a channel for poetry, but a channel for first drafts.

It’s the quiet and getting centered in it. It’s shutting off the ringer on the phone. It’s sleeping late enough to heal lingering tiredness, and poaching salmon and laying off the chocolate chips (straight from the bag). In short, it’s treating myself like someone whose well-being matters. It’s telling myself, when assailed by painful thoughts and distractions: “Be Kind To Your Mind.”

On second thought, I might have to credit the digital changeover on June 12, because my TV hasn’t worked since.

More Good Quotations

"Each line in a poem should be better than the last."

"Somebody smarter than I once said, 'A bad title is like a dunce-cap on a poem'."

"As poets we can't be stewards of everyone's issues, but we have to be aware of them."

"About ampersands: I asked Yusef Komunyakaa why he uses them. He says it's because he doesn't like what the word 'and' looks like."

-Gems from Adrian Matejka, critic at Sunday's St. Louis Poetry Center workshop.

News: 6 Samples of Video Poetry

Poets & Writers sent me a link to six samples of "video poetry." Yes, the day has come: video poetry. Check it out. Thylias Moss, if that name rings a bell, contributed two of them.

They look like YouTube videos. The best part is the poetry, if you can hear it (some poems are barely audible). The worst part is the visuals.

Video poetry is not very good yet. It's like those 1970s paintings that include the painters' "poetry" scribbled on the canvases. Like painters who write flaky poetry, writers are using flaky video images: blurry, trippy, "haunting" or surreal. I like it best when I can watch the poet reading his poem.

I sense that video poetry, to be appealing, will have to be short. I found I couldn't wait 4 minutes and 50 seconds for a poem. I wanted my poetry fix.

"Poetry is a mere drug, Sir." --George Farquhar, 18th-century playwright

Donald Finkel, 1929-2008; Link to Interview

The poet Donald Finkel, a beloved artist and teacher and my MFA thesis adviser, died two weeks ago and I just heard. The memorial gathering takes place Dec. 12, 11:30 a.m., at the Women's Building on the Washington University Danforth Campus.

In 1994 I interviewed Don for The Riverfront Times in St. Louis. Because I knew him well it became more than an interview; rather, it's a portrait of the artist at the last major juncture of his career: the end of 30 years of teaching, and the beginning of "retirement." Click here to read the interview.

O he was wise.

Ships Start to Come In

This week I got multiple payoffs for hard work done long ago. Book about women's health care, the anthology Are We Feeling Better Yet? Women Speak Out About Health Care in America (Penultimate Press), including essays by myself and former writing-group buds Cathy Luh and Janet Edwards, will be published on schedule and launched at the University of Missouri - St. Louis on November 19. Editors are writers Colleen McKee and Amanda Steibel, who spent 2 years seeking a publisher.

Then comes in the mail today the contract for two poems of mine to appear in as-yet unnamed anthology of St. Louis poets, edited by Matt Freeman (author of the admirable poetry collection Desolation on Delmar).

Introduction to Creative Writing, in the Washington University night school, had its first-ever workshop session Thursday. This one treated poetry by all 8 of my students -- some of whom had never before written a poem. Successful workshop on all counts. Next week a guest poet will read for the class and speak about her work: Susan Grigsby, former student in that same class in the Fall of 1997, who went on to a career as a poet for both adults and children.

Learned a lot in my poetry group tonight. It's a group of women called Loosely Identified. I've been going to the monthly meetings for little less than a year. They passed around a photo of the group as it looked 25 years ago. Some of the same people in the photo still attend meetings!

Helped another writer polish up a grant application. Sure hope she gets the $17,000 she's aiming for!

And I hugged a writer today. If you see one, please hug one.

How to Anger a Poet

Now, I know enough to PICK my battles, but for Christ's sake PLEEZE, America, cut me some slack and don't show me any more course descriptions like this one I saw today:

"POETS AT HEART": We’re all poets at heart. In this course we will address several poetry forms and devices. Class reports will be made defining these forms and devices and each week we will write and read poems (our own and other poets’). Our goal is to gain a greater understanding and appreciation of poetry, along with enhancing our abilities to write poetry. Remember, anybody can write poetry. (Text: Poetry For Dummies.)