Dispersal

Remember the garden as mud
                 before grass unrolled its green,

and tiny bodies wove white
                 hammocks below the kitchen sill:

we marveled at coiled filaments on vines
                 before we even knew how sound carried

along trellises of wire. A cut of lime 
                 coud freshen the dank air and rub

clear spots on a pane of glass. We thought
                we could tame beetles by whirring them

on bits of string, then set them in wars of our
               terrible devising. Little seed pods cracked  

against the teeth, their sound seething smaller  
               echoes of thunder. But we were not 

banished from this world— something called,
               and we simply needed to answer.

Visionary

Sam Pepys and me

To my Lord at his lodging, and came to Westminster with him in the coach, with Mr. Dudley with him, and he in the Painted Chamber walked a good while; and I telling him that I was willing and ready to go with him to sea, he agreed that I should, and advised me what to write to Mr. Downing about it, which I did at my office, that by my Lord’s desire I offered that my place might for a while be supplied by Mr. Moore, and that I and my security should be bound by the same bond for him. I went and dined at Mr. Crew’s, where Mr. Hawly comes to me, and I told him the business and shewed him the letter promising him 20l. a year, which he liked very well of. I did the same to Mr. Moore, which he also took for a courtesy. In the afternoon by coach, taking Mr. Butler with me to the Navy Office, about the 500l. for my Lord, which I am promised to have to-morrow morning. Then by coach back again, and at White Hall at the Council Chamber spoke with my Lord and got him to sign the acquittance for the 500l., and he also told me that he had spoke to Mr. Blackburne to put off Mr. Creed and that I should come to him for direction in the employment.
After this Mr. Butler and I to Harper’s, where we sat and drank for two hours till ten at night; the old woman she was drunk and began to talk foolishly in commendation of her son James.
Home and to bed.
All night troubled in my thoughts how to order my business upon this great change with me that I could not sleep, and being overheated with drink I made a promise the next morning to drink no strong drink this week, for I find that it makes me sweat and puts me quite out of order. This day it was resolved that the writs do go out in the name of the Keepers of the Liberty, and I hear that it is resolved privately that a treaty be offered with the King. And that Monk did check his soldiers highly for what they did yesterday.

painted sea
like a promise
to burn

drink puts me out of order
in the name of liberty


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 9 March 1659/60.

On Remedies

I still cannot really fall 
asleep with ease: constant  

dreams of looking for a bathroom, opening 
door after door in unfamiliar houses; 

my hand, laying a night-
blooming flower across my own gravestone 

—But when I rose this morning I gathered 
the fragments of the last 

few years in my hands and looked hard 
at them. Does any one of these 

really resemble my heart, your heart? 
On the stove, a hot water kettle boils 

because it must. The urgency for release 
comes in many other forms. Let 

the last of those tears fall, and after that 
tend to the earth where we are.



White supremacy

Sam Pepys and me

To Whitehall to bespeak some firing for my father at Shott’s, and likewise to speak to Mr. Blackburne about Batters being gunner in the “Wexford.” Then to Westminster Hall, where there was a general damp over men’s minds and faces upon some of the Officers of the Army being about making a remonstrance against Charles Stuart or any single person; but at noon it was told, that the General had put a stop to it, so all was well again. Here I met with Jasper, who was to look for me to bring me to my Lord at the lobby; whither sending a note to my Lord, he comes out to me and gives me direction to look after getting some money for him from the Admiralty, seeing that things are so unsafe, that he would not lay out a farthing for the State, till he had received some money of theirs.
Home about two o’clock, and took my wife by land to Paternoster Row, to buy some Paragon for a petticoat and so home again. In my way meeting Mr. Moore, who went home with me while I ate a bit and so back to Whitehall again, both of us. He waited at the Council for Mr. Crew. I to the Admiralty, where I got the order for the money, and have taken care for the getting of it assigned upon Mr. Hutchinson, Treasurer for the Navy, against tomorrow. Hence going home I met with Mr. King that belonged to the Treasurers at War and took him to Harper’s, who told me that he and the rest of his fellows are cast out of office by the new Treasurers.
This afternoon, some of the Officers of the Army, and some of the Parliament, had a conference at White Hall to make all right again, but I know not what is done.
This noon I met at the Dog tavern Captain Philip Holland, with whom I advised how to make some advantage of my Lord’s going to sea, which he told me might be by having of five or six servants entered on board, and I to give them what wages I pleased, and so their pay to be mine; he was also very urgent to have me take the Secretary’s place, that my Lord did proffer me.
At the same time in comes Mr. Wade and Mr. Sterry, secretary to the plenipotentiary in Denmark, who brought the news of the death of the King of Sweden at Gottenburgh the 3rd of the last month, and he told me what a great change he found when he came here, the secluded members being restored. He also spoke very freely of Mr. Wades profit, which he made while he was in Zeeland, how he did believe that he cheated Mr. Powell, and that he made above 500l. on the voyage, which Mr. Wade did very angrily deny, though I believe he was guilty enough.

white peak
like a face in a well

as far away
as tomorrow

white dog that brought
news of death

secluded in red
a land above


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 8 March 1659/60.

Morse Code

I thumb the hollow 
mortar of mango wood

where nailheads of pepper
will detonate under force

This too is a study

in uneven compression
I don't understand 

the lesson yet 
or when it is complete

Some hearts will swell

as if to bursting
That much I know 

Some bury their solitude
like crystals

Room with no window or door



Fables

Is it true

whatever spills out into the universe

                     is never lost             and will always

return


And is it true

no exhalation or cry 

                      is never a surrender            of nothing


How long does it take

for those ends                        to meet


                      For salt to crystallize            into a fine-

                                       feathered thing

Problematization

Sam Pepys and me

(Ash Wednesday.) In the morning I went to my Lord at Mr. Crew’s, in my way Washington overtook me and told me upon my question whether he knew of any place now void that I might have, by power over friends, that this day Mr. G. Montagu was to be made ‘Custos Rotulorum’ for Westminster, and that by friends I might get to be named by him Clerk of the Peace, with which I was, as I am at all new things, very much joyed, so when I came to Mr. Crew’s, I spoke to my Lord about it, who told me he believed Mr. Montagu had already promised it, and that it was given him only that he might gratify one person with the place I look for. Here, among many that were here, I met with Mr. Lynes, the surgeon, who promised me some seeds of the sensitive plant. I spoke too with Mr. Pierce the surgeon, who gave me great encouragement to go to sea with my Lord. Thence going homewards, my Lord overtook me in his coach, and called me in, and so I went with him to St. James’s, and G. Montagu being gone to White Hall, we walked over the Park thither, all the way he discoursing of the times, and of the change of things since the last year, and wondering how he could bear with so great disappointment as he did. He did give me the best advice that he could what was best for me, whether to stay or go with him, and offered all the ways that could be, how he might do me good, with the greatest liberty and love that could be. I left him at Whitehall, and myself went to Westminster to my office, whither nothing to do, but I did discourse with Mr. Falconbridge about Le Squire’s place, and had his consent to get it if I could. I afterwards in the Hall met with W. Simons, who put me in the best way how to get it done. Thence by appointment to the Angel in King Street, where Chetwind, Mr. Thomas and Doling were at oysters, and beginning Lent this day with a fish dinner. After dinner Mr. Thomas and I by water to London, where I went to Herring’s and received the 50l. of my Lord’s upon Frank’s bill from Worcester. I gave in the bill and set my hand to his bill. Thence I went to the Pope’s Head Alley and called on Adam Chard, and bought a catcall there, it cost me two groats. Thence went and gave him a cup of ale. After that to the Sun behind the Exchange, where meeting my uncle Wight by the way, took him with me thither, and after drinking a health or two round at the Cock (Mr. Thomas being gone thither), we parted, he and I homewards, parted at Fleet Street, where I found my father newly come home from Brampton very well. He left my uncle with his leg very dangerous, and do believe he cannot continue in that condition long. He tells me that my uncle did acquaint him very largely what he did intend to do with his estate, to make me his heir and give my brother Tom something, and that my father and mother should have likewise something, to raise portions for John and Pall. I pray God he may be as good as his word. Here I staid and supped and so home, there being Joyce Norton there and Ch. Glascock. Going home I called at Wotton’s and took home a piece of cheese. At home Mr. Sheply sat with me a little while, and so we all to bed.
This news and my Lord’s great kindness makes me very cheerful within. I pray God make me thankful.
This day, according to order, Sir Arthur appeared at the House; what was done I know not, but there was all the Rumpers almost come to the House to-day.
My Lord did seem to wonder much why Lambert was so willing to be put into the Tower, and thinks he has some design in it; but I think that he is so poor that he cannot use his liberty for debts, if he were at liberty; and so it is as good and better for him to be there, than any where else.

my question
made me new

I am among the seeds
of the sensitive plant

wondering how
or whether to love

a falcon
is the best angel

a cat and the sun
meet in the street

I make a god
to go home to

and wonder why the poor
cannot be there


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Wednesday 7 March 1659/60.

Fire place

Sam Pepys and me

(Shrove Tuesday.) I called Mr. Sheply and we both went up to my Lord’s lodgings at Mr. Crew’s, where he bade us to go home again, and get a fire against an hour after. Which we did at White Hall, whither he came, and after talking with him and me about his going to sea, he called me by myself to go along with him into the garden, where he asked me how things were with me, and what he had endeavoured to do with my uncle to get him to do something for me but he would say nothing too. He likewise bade me look out now at this turn some good place, and he would use all his own, and all the interest of his friends that he had in England, to do me good. And asked me whether I could, without too much inconvenience, go to sea as his secretary, and bid me think of it. He also began to talk of things of State, and told me that he should want one in that capacity at sea, that he might trust in, and therefore he would have me to go.
He told me also, that he did believe the King would come in, and did discourse with me about it, and about the affection of the people and City, at which I was full glad. After he was gone, I waiting upon him through the garden till he came to the Hall, where I left him and went up to my office, where Mr. Hawly brought one to me, a seaman, that had promised 10l. to him if he get him a purser’s place, which I think to endeavour to do. Here comes my uncle Tom, whom I took to Will’s and drank with, poor man, he comes to inquire about the knights of Windsor, of which he desires to get to be one. While we were drinking, in comes Mr. Day, a carpenter in Westminster, to tell me that it was Shrove Tuesday, and that I must go with him to their yearly Club upon this day, which I confess I had quite forgot. So I went to the Bell, where were Mr. Eglin, Veezy, Vincent a butcher, one more, and Mr. Tanner, with whom I played upon a viall, and he a viallin, after dinner, and were very merry, with a special good dinner, a leg of veal and bacon, two capons and sausages and fritters, with abundance of wine. After that I went home, where I found Kate Sterpin who hath not been here a great while before. She gone I went to see Mrs. Jem, at whose chamber door I found a couple of ladies, but she not being there, we hunted her out, and found that she and another had hid themselves behind a door. Well, they all went down into the dining-room, where it was full of tag, rag, and bobtail, dancing, singing, and drinking, of which I was ashamed, and after I had staid a dance or two I went away. Going home, called at my Lord’s for Mr. Sheply, but found him at the Lion with a pewterer, that he had bought pewter to-day of. With them I drank, and so home and wrote by the post, by my Lord’s command, for J. Goods to come up presently. For my Lord intends to go forthwith into the Swiftsure till the Nazeby be ready.
This day I hear that the Lords do intend to sit, and great store of them are now in town, and I see in the Hall to-day.
Overton at Hull do stand out, but can, it is thought, do nothing; and Lawson, it is said, is gone with some ships thither, but all that is nothing.
My Lord told me, that there was great endeavours to bring in the Protector again; but he told me, too, that he did believe it would not last long if he were brought in; no, nor the King neither (though he seems to think that he will come in), unless he carry himself very soberly and well. Every body now drinks the King’s health without any fear, whereas before it was very private that a man dare do it. Monk this day is feasted at Mercers’ Hall, and is invited one after another to all the twelve Halls in London!
Many think that he is honest yet, and some or more think him to be a fool that would raise himself, but think that he will undo himself by endeavouring it.
My mind, I must needs remember, has been very much eased and joyed at my Lord’s great expressions of kindness this day, and in discourse thereupon my wife and I lay awake an hour or two in our bed.

I get a fire talking
like some thin state

that would have me believe
in the affection of the people

for a butcher
with a violin

and a leg of veal
dancing with swift hips

but all that nothing
to believe in

every body private
as a nest of kindness


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 6 March 1659/60.

A Little More

Your fingernails are tinted red—

red deep as the heart inside 
a lacquered Shokado box

into which the cook has nestled

three perfect lengths of roasted
eel on steamed rice. This close

to death, the body still 

wants to sink into some bed
of pleasure; remembers how

it gave itself so many times,

ate and drank as if all the birds
still carried in their mouths

the keys of tomorrow. 

How they chimed 
but nothing bled or hurt,

dusk to dawn, dawn to dusk.

Poetry Blog Digest 2023, Week 9

Poetry Blogging Network

A personal selection of posts from the Poetry Blogging Network and beyond. Although I tend to quote my favorite bits, please do click through and read the whole posts. You can also browse the blog digest archive or subscribe to its RSS feed in your favorite feed reader.

This week, there’s even more of a focus on books than usual—March 2 was World Books Day. From harbingers of spring to the borders beyond breath, it’s a very full edition of the digest. Enjoy.


The days are lengthening. Harbingers of spring
pierce through resistant soil; spikes of daffodils

and early tulips mingle, tight buds sprinkle
thin syringa stems. A few oak leaves linger,

crisp-curled and dead, rasping in the flowerbed –
but death is a stranger now. Pale hellebore

blushes shyly, fern fronds prepare to unfurl.

Marian Christie, February’s Garden

I dug out an old book over the weekend – Speak To Me, Swedish-language Women Poets, edited & translated by Lennart and Sonja Bruce, published in New York in 1989. Every so often I flick through this one but in previous readings I hadn’t noticed a comment by the Swedish poet Madeleine Gustafsson. She says: “..It is poetry that discovers/ scrutinizes/ explains me.”

It set me thinking. How far does poetry explain the poet, to themselves or to others? Sure, I walk about my life, talking to people (here and there…) and am, when the mood takes, or circumstances dictate, social enough. I get unnecessarily animated while watching football, like to watch Test Match cricket, enjoy the company of my wife, children and grandchildren, talk to my hens and pigs, spend time pottering about doing jobs in our woods, pass through the world, I suppose. Life is full.

Is this what I am? Or does my poetry suggest something more that stays hidden through the habits and rituals of the days?

Bob Mee, ‘MY POETRY EXPLAINS ME’

March is here – my favorite month of the year. (And my birthday month.) Although the Spring equinox is on the 20th, the climate here in New Orleans says Spring is here now. I have garden planning and planting fever so I’ve been consulting my notes from last year as to what new things I want to experiment with in my planting. […]

I have a tiny essay in Still: The Journal called Moon Sick, which was reprinted from my Substack post in December. Many thanks to the wonderful editors at Still for believing this little piece was worthy of their wonderful journal.

It’s Saturday afternoon now and I’m going out into the backyard to cut off dead banana tree leaves and trim back my HUGE in ground Asparagus setaceus fern. And, of course, check on the Sweet Peas.

Charlotte Hamrick, I’m in Love with March

A fellow poet introduced me to the American poet Ted Kooser, now in his early 80s. His style is accomplished, yet extremely simple. My current bedtime reading is his poetry collection Winter Morning Walks: one hundred postcards to Jim Harrison (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2001).

In the late 90s Kooser developed cancer. He gave up his insurance job and writing. When he began to write again, it was to paste daily poems on postcards he sent to his friend and fellow writer Jim Harrison. In the preface, Kooser tells us ‘I began to take a two-mile walk each morning. I’d been told by my radiation oncologist to stay out of the sun for a year because of skin sensitivity, so I exercised before dawn, hiking the isolated country roads near where I live.’ These country roads are in Nebraska.

The poems cover a period from 9 November until 20 March. In the poems Kooser doesn’t directly talk about the illness. He does so through metaphor. All the poems include a brief description of the weather. The clear and precise observation gives them a haiku quality.

Fokkina McDonnell, Books, books, books…

This posthumous collection is a work of impressive artistry and depth.

It was written under the shadow of a terminal diagnosis of laryngeal cancer and after the removal of Satyamurti’s voice box and part of her tongue. Some poems refer to these things. The way in which they do so reflects one of the qualities that make Satyamurti’s writing so attractive. Whatever may have been the case for her as a person, as poet she approaches her situation in a way virtually purged of ego.

We see this in ‘Small Change’. It opens:

This must be the room of last resort,
this half-lit passage under the dripping bridge
where, on the only route to the Underground,
you pass four, sometimes more, rough sleepers
strung out at intervals against the wall,

the same, day after day, week after week.

The tone is masterly. The language is unemotive, almost prosaically plain, suggesting a pedantic concern for factual accuracy by the pausing over ‘four, sometimes more’. And yet from the first line the scene has the compelling resonance of symbolism and myth. And line 6 seems to ache with empathy, not through emotive language but because the effect of its repetitions is heightened by the stanza break. What’s involved is a very skilful use of poetic technique to make facts seem to speak for themselves. They’re made to feel immediately present (‘This must be’) and the reader is drawn into a direct confrontation with the sleepers (‘you pass’). Keeping herself out of the picture, the poet makes us face the horror without distraction. And what we see is how for these rough sleepers the real has taken on the extremity of myth.

Edmund Prestwich, Carole Satyamurti, The Hopeful Hat – review

Far Field is the final part of a trilogy Jim Carruth has been working on for the last twenty-five years, and forms a magnificent culmination to what feels, for more than one reason, like a life’s work. Like its predecessors, Black Cart and Bale Fire and the standalone poetic novel Killochries, it deals with farming life in rural Renfrewshire, but this volume is more personal than the others. It focuses on his own family life, the family farm, the handing on of skills, property, and tradition. […]

In the final section, Stepping Stones, we move out to the wider community, to the landscape, to memory, and reflections of the future, and the book closes with Planting Aspen Saplings, father handing on the tradition and the responsibility to son. Aspen is an endangered species, but an important one to the Scottish landscape:

You tell me of the tree’s offer
To gall midges, birds, hare, deer

The importance of relationships
The interconnectedness of everything

They do not thrive in shade, need light
And space to grow.

Planting aspen saplings,
Son and father.Planting Aspen Saplings

The echoes of Seamus Heaney I find in these poems do not feel derivative, but establish a connection between two poets aware of the influence of landscape and farming on their work, but each with their own different and unique perspective on it. An Irish/Scottish tradition which enriches us all.

Elizabeth Rimmer, Far Field by Jim Carruth

Last week, a long train ride and poor internet connection gave me the chance to re-read two recent Forward Prizes anthologies, properly paying attention to each poem rather than flicking through the pages which is what I’d previously done. In particular, from the 2020 book, I loved ‘Partition’ a prose poem about the complexities of identity by Fatimah Asghar from her book If They Come for Us (Corsair, 2019) which begins

you’re kashmiri until they burn your home. take your orchards. stake a different flag. until no one remembers the road that brings you back. you’re indian until they draw a border through punjab. until the british captains spit paki as they sip your chai, add so much foam you can’t taste home.

I also loved the poem ‘Argument of Situations’ by Shangyang Fang which you can hear the poet reading here (amazing what you can find on the internet!). The poem begins

I was thinking, while making love, ‘this is beautiful’ – this
fine craftsmanship of his skin, the texture of wintry river.
I pinched him, three inches above his coccyx, so that he knew
I was still here, still in an argument with Fan Kuan’s
inkwash painting, where an old man, a white-gowned literatus,
dissolves into the landscape as a plastic bag into clouds.

I liked the fact that the two people in this poem are talking about and arguing about different interpretations of a painting. This happens so often with any kind of artistic work, sometimes these conversations take place in one person’s head (they do in mine).

Josephine Corcoran, February Update

You drop into the little terrarium world of a story or poem.
There is a talking clay dinosaur in it. You look familiar, you say.
She grunts and steps over the broccoli-tufted forest. Trust
means you can be fully here, next to a citizen of Mesozoic
time, and also exist outside the glass. All I want to do sometimes
is sleep, you sigh; or read. Every now and then, the shadows
of flying pterosaurs stretch a fleeting canopy that blots out
the sun. You’re convinced the writing residency you heard
about is here, somewhere beyond the teaspoon-sized pond
ringed with moss and breadcrumbs.

Luisa A. Igloria, Retreat

13 – David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?
I think knitting has influenced my process a lot in that sometimes one must unravel an ugly or misshapen or just not right thing, despite hours of work. To acknowledge that the hours of work spent weren’t wasted but a learning process toward something better, that seems very applicable to writing, drafting, editing, and letting go of the ugly or misshapen things we write. I also love drawing and reading graphic novels, but I think because I don’t feel like my expertise is in this area there is more room to play and learn and once again, make something ugly or misshapen. I mentioned her before, but Lynda Barry is a major inspiration to me and her work helps me to embrace the weird and unknown.

14 – What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
I think returning to teachers and peers who taught me gets me really excited to make things and teach. I’ve loved reading Ross Gay’s essay collections, Ellen Hagan’s fiction and novels-in-verse, Joy Priest’s poetry and essays, Nikky Finney’s poetry and ephemera, and the debut poetry collections of my dear friends like Anni Liu (Border Vista), Su Cho (The Symmetry of Fish), Kien Lam (Extinction Theory), Jan-Henry Gray (Documents), and Marianne Chan (All Heathens). I also love to return to Ai, Lucille Clifton, Aracelis Girmay, and Ruth Stone, for teaching students and myself.

rob mclennan, 12 or 20 (second series) questions with Danni Quintos

Since March is Women’s History Month, I thought I’d take some time to let readers know a few ways that the following poets have impacted my life’s journey in poetry and teaching. I’m ever grateful for their mentorship and support over the years. Please take some time read about the influence of these amazing poets and read (and buy) their work (I’ve included links to make it easier for you):

Carol Frost – Carol is first on my list. During my four years of collegiate undergraduate work in Upstate New York, Carol opened up so many opportunities for me to connect with the poetry world. Now Rollins College Professor of English and Director of Winter With the Writers, a Festival of the Literary Arts, Carol continues to write and teach and inspire. It was Carol who mentored me in my undergraduate years as both a poet and fiction writer, introducing me to Donald Justice, Brigit Pegeen Kelly, and many, many more in the late 1990s. I even visited her once at Bread Loaf, where she introduced me to one of my fiction-writer heroes, Charles Baxter. She always believed in me as a student writer, and it was through her guidance and kindness that I kept up with a writing life well after college. As far as her poems go, her imagery and syntax dazzle. Her most recent collection is Alias City (2019). Carol is an exceptional poet and teacher, says everyone in the poetry-biz, not just me.

Scot Slaby, Celebrating the Women Who Have Nurtured My Poet-Teacher Life

“Imperfect Beginnings” is an exploration of rootlessness both of refugees and adopted children. The poems ask difficult questions about security a sense of belonging when those roots are absent and whether it is actually possible to settle into or create somewhere that feels like home. Viv Fogel also touches on intergenerational trauma. She didn’t inherit her adoptive parents’ trauma but was very much aware of their experiences and how those experiences informed their behaviour towards her. The later poems look at founding a mother/daughter relationship without a role model to create one from and whether it is possible to break away from the negative patterns learnt from those who failed to provide safe environments for children to grow in.

Emma Lee, “Imperfect Beginnings” Viv Fogel (Fly on the Wall Press) – Book Review

Though Vogel’s adoptive mother was a refugee living in a new country, it is clear she had not truly escaped the Holocaust. Parts Four and Five develop the notions of escape and repair. There is a hint of what is to come in Practical un-English when the poet writes: ‘Her pain became my art and then my craft.’ The act of writing is Vogel’s way of understanding and resolving such issues. In Practical UnEnglish, though the poet does not shy away from describing her adoptive mother’s cruelty, underpinning the poem is an understanding of why she acted in this way. There is also a desire to see her in the round, to recognise her strengths and as a result, towards the end of the poem, there is even a touch of warmth towards her: ‘And yet/ she baked, her Powidltascherl and Apfelstrudel were divine.’  In this understanding there is the beginnings of forgiveness on Vogel’s part that her adoptive mother was never able to feel.

Nigel Kent, Review* of ‘Imperfect Beginnings’ by Viv Fogel

Lynne Jensen Lampe’s debut collection, Talk Smack to a Hurricane (Ice Floe Press, 2022) concerns mother-daughter relationships, mental illness, and antisemitism. Her poems appear in many journals, including THRUSH, Figure 1, and Yemassee. A finalist for the 2020 Red Wheelbarrow Poetry Prize and Best of the Net nominee, she lives with her husband and two dogs in mid-Missouri, where she edits academic research. Visit her at https://lynnejensenlampe.com; on Twitter @LJensenLampe; or IG @lynnejensenlampe

How do you know when a poem is finished?

It depends on the poem. In general, a poem is done when I read it aloud and feel the energy in my voice stay strong until the last word. Sometimes I can feel that in my body, other times I need to listen to a recording. Conversely, I know a poem needs work when I hear or sense a vocal weakness, a softness that doesn’t derive from the content. Places I stumble over words. The revision and just sitting with the poem can take months. A few times, though, I needed to write a quick draft in time for my critique group, think I have nothing like an actual poem, and they tell me to send it out. Or I submit a poem over and over, all of a sudden decide to change the last word, and the next journal accepts it.

Thomas Whyte, Lynne Jensen Lampe : part one

Clare Best’s new project, End of Season/Fine distagione (Frogmore Press, 2022), is a delicious portrayal of the tensions that run through life, yoking them to poetry so as to burrow down to the core of feelings.

To start with, as indicated by the title itself, there are linguistic tensions, each poem in English placed on the opposite page to its corresponding piece in Italian (written by Franca Mancinelli and John Taylor). Rather than translations, these feel like two independent texts that establish dialogues: views of Italy in English, then also in Italian but filtered through an English perspective. Languages, cultures and societies rub up against each other and generate further insight into how we view the world around us.

Matthew Stewart, Delicious tensions, Clare Best’s End of Season/Fine di stagione

One book I read recently and enjoyed immensely was Liz Berry’s The Home Child, a ‘novel in verse’, which is actually launched in two days’ time. I got hold of an early copy in order to prepare for interviewing Liz on Planet Poetry. We had a lovely chat about it yesterday, and the episode will go out some time in late March or early April.

I sometimes wonder if listeners think that Peter and I are awash with complimentary copies of poetry books thanks to all the poets we’ve interviewed. Well I’d like to crush that idea once and for all – I think this is the first book I’ve been sent from the publisher. I generally go out and buy a poet’s books, if I can’t get them in the local library.

I love public libraries and support them as much as I can. But the poetry offering is always minimal, and don’t get me started on trying to find novels by subject matter.

Robin Houghton, Been reading and about to read…

Even though I can get all the resources I need electronically, I occasionally cross the campus to the library.  I feel sorry for all those books, so neatly shelved, almost never checked out.  I do wonder how long the school (and schools across the country) will continue to dedicate themselves to the task of tending books that are never used.

I’m not talking about the censorship campaigns happening in parts of the country.  Those libraries that are being decimated have been in use.  I go to the physical library at my seminary, and I am almost always the only one in there who is not library staff.

A few weeks ago, I made this Facebook post:  “When I’m in the seminary library, I have to resist the temptation to check out the books that haven’t been checked out in awhile (that is to say, most of them)–in part to make the books feel loved, in part so that they won’t be culled, if the library is called upon to do such things.”

I love the smell of the library, even though I know I’m smelling the slow, slow crumbling of books turning to dust. […]

I’ve been sending out poetry submissions this morning, thinking about their passage in the world.  Will they find a place between covers in an old-fashioned book or periodical?  Why do I do this anyway?

Kristin Berkey-Abbott, Publication and Preservation

My 4th manuscript has been a finalist/semi-finalist in about half of the very few places I’ve sent it, so I think it is pretty close to ready. The thing is, it’s about my daughter Kit, who died at six months old from a rare genetic condition and heart defect, and I am incredibly protective of this manuscript and reluctant to let it go.

I wrote it to be read–and to share her story and the story of our grief for her–at the same time, it is difficult to let that project be Completed and out into the world.

And then I have questions like “how could I ever manage a reading from this book?” (without dissolving into tearful Anne Sexton level dramatics)

I suppose that is a question for my future self to handle.

As it is, I can get in there and enjoy crafting the manuscript as a separate thing, an art, rather than the emotional ties I have to it (reading it aloud to people would be a whole nother matter).

Renee Emerson, visions and revisions

This is not an unboxing video, this is a post-unboxing video so I could be at least somewhat composed. You Could Make This Place Beautiful is here! I still can’t get over the touching secret hiding underneath the book jacket: my handwriting on the spine. I had no idea! I love it.

Thank you to my editor Julia Cheiffetz and the whole magic-making team at One Signal and Atria, who’ve been with me through Keep Moving, Goldenrod, Keep Moving: The Journal, and now this memoir. Special thanks to Jimmy Iacobelli for this miracle of a cover. I can’t get over it.

Maggie Smith, The book is here

By virtue of social media algorithms and clicks, I keep encountering some articles by a tik tokker who has been talking up “Bare Minimum Mondays” as a way to combat weekly burn-out, the Sunday scaries, and the general feelings of overwhelm [with] which most of us greet the week. It’s something other people I know have mentioned as a way to combat these things, starting off slow and then with a more productive push toward the middle of the week that winds down to Friday. […]

That same tik tokker also talks a lot in her reels about monotasking, which I guess I’ve never considered that word for it, but this makes such a difference for me. It was one of the best things about working the night shift even when I was at the library–very few interruptions and spans of time to actually get stuff done without interruptions and phone calls and e-mails coming in. […]

When I first branched off on my own, it took a while to find and establish the rhythms, but even with the press work, I find it helpful to devote each day to one aspect. Mondays are slower and more-admin days. Tuesdays are layouts and Weds are cover design. Thursdays are edits and finalization of galleys, while Fridays are website work and updates. Saturdays are usually just e-mails that require more in- depth responses and printing loads of author copies. Sundays are for shop orders & assembling books. This way I can cycle through the things that need to get done without feeling overwhelmed by so much and switching gears.

Kristy Bowen, the virtues of monotasking

The other thing to know and possibly do, which I have absolutely not done, but will perhaps increase my efforts — is to “spend three years” marketing the book that you wrote over the same or longer span. Makes sense right? I learned this at Writing Quietly and promptly forgot it. :) And the thing is, you can take these things in, modify them, use them for what works for you. I’m not going to mention my book every day for 3 years, but also, a book (or painting) is not a loaf of bread. It doesn’t go bad. Your followership changes, grows, and forgets. The book I wrote published two years ago, might now again resonate with someone.

With anything that I’ve done on the internet, especially blogging, which I’ve done for the longest period of time, I try to not “promote” myself per se. I try to ask myself, what do you have to give? What do you know or what have you seen that might be of interest? Sure yes I’ll succumb to the “please buy my X” formula from time to time. But primarily, I’d rather lure you in with whatever it is I might have that’s of interest, haha. Then we can go from there. If I can be a wee bit inspiring and then you want to look into my wares, so to speak, that’s cool. That said, sometimes we have to make things easy for people! Tell them the price, where to buy. Offer a link. We’re all busy, man! Make it as easy as possible! Don’t be shy about that part.

Shawna Lemay, Social Media for the Soul

I want to say something about ambition. A word derived from “go around,” that is, go around seeking votes or support. Which sounds a bit embarrassing to me. But why? What’s wrong with wandering around seeking support for your position? Is the shame I feel around it a female thing? Is it the prospect of the closing door? The closed?

I want to say something about desire, a word meaning coming down from the stars. Which sounds a bit silly to me. Wishing upon, and all. As if.

I want to say something about striving, which comes from battle, or strife. Which sounds unpleasant.

Something about success, a word meaning to go next to something that yields. Which is a funny thing, making success more a verb than a noun, but succeed more an appreciation of a yield than a gathering of it.

Marilyn McCabe, On the edge of town: or, Some Thoughts on Striving

Do we need

a witness for every moment? For every sigh? Is it
more worthy, a life lived in the sunlight? What name

do you have for things growing in the shade? Inside
a second-class compartment, lovers lie on opposite

berths, feigning sleep. Between them space, depth,
strangers, doubts.

Rajani Radhakrishnan, Part 36

Mr. Shannon told me to put the pencil on the paper and then never look down again. Draw exactly what you see. He never explained himself. But I still believe sensitivity of the line is far more interesting than the perceived gesture. I think of Schiele and how he stripped his work of the ornamental influence of his teacher Klimt. I’m not considering Schiele’s narrative, mind you, but his lines which are a translation of sensation. Touch – with the eyes opened and closed at the same time. Much later, in college, a professor told me that the trouble with my drawings were that the parts didn’t work together to create a whole.

Maybe that was my unconscious goal. Parts are potentials and prompts and promise, the whole is as inescapable as a closed circle.

When I run, sometimes I close my eyes for dangerous seconds. I listen to the soft snap of twigs on the trail. How would one draw that? How would one translate the sensation that is simultaneously a drop in the pelvis and a rise in the chest? And a hatch-working of browns. And there is a smell in the foreground. Moss-greens, sticky translucent sweets.

That things can smell sweet may be the first order of synesthesia.

Yesterday, the air temperature barely above freezing, and a fat bumble bee attempted to fly. It sounded like death and I will argue that is synesthesia not simile.

There is pleasure in the unfocused life. There is discovery.

Ren Powell, Done with Genres

I wanted to expand on the voice and I also thought that I took too much time getting to the gist. My aim is always to be as concise as possible. I also think that too much frame around the poem detracts from its impact. You need to interrogate every word, does it really need to be present? What does it bring? Does the poem work without it? 

Paul Tobin, A TURN UP FOR THE BOOKS

Yesterday I attended a Zoom event featuring Alexandra Fössinger. There was discussion between poet and publishers with just a few poems, then a Q+A session. I think the format worked well.

She revealed that there was a significant backstory to her recent book, “Contrapasso”. Does knowing the backstory help with appreciating the poems? Not especially, but I was interested to know that she had felt the need to conceal details, and distance herself from the story (by writing in English, etc). She said she hadn’t realised that she’d concealed so much and had made an effort during rewrites to be less obscure, but she liked the idea of leaving areas that readers might get lost in. A difficult balance.

Whenever a poem is driven by intense emotion it must be hard for the poet to assess its effect on the reader. I don’t trust my evaluation of such poems that I write, and am wary of sending them away – justifiably in most cases, in retrospect. But achieving that objectivity can take years. Might as well let editors make earlier decisions.

Tim Love, Cephalopress Writers in Conversation: Alexandra Fössinger

Chalkboard poems continue. Reading continues. I read a sort of magical realism short novel, The Crane Husband, by Kelly Barnhill because the description reminded me of a poem I had written a couple years back where a woman marries a sandhill crane. This was darker than that, though the poem is also about a cryptid, the Mothman, who might actually be a sandhill crane. I love my life, but it is sometimes hard to explain to people who are not me. Let’s just say I used to live in Kearney, Nebraska, and also passed through there on a trip west during sandhill crane nesting season.

I think there was more I meant to tell you, but it’s Friday, it’s snowing, and I am already drinking wine (in hopes of a nap…have I mentioned my weird sleeping patterns during the pandemic?)

Kathleen Kirk, Real ID

The collection I finished reading yesterday is by Robert Wood Lynn, whose amazing work I found a couple of years ago through Shenandoah submissions. Since then, he won the Yale Younger Poets Prize for Mothman Apologia, a collection strongly rooted in Appalachia. It contains a series of poems from the perspective of Mothman, a West Virginia cryptid, which gives the book a weirdness that always appeals to me; I’m also moved by how it addresses the urgent subjects of poverty, drug crisis, and environmental damage. I’d call it lyric in mode, like [Cynthia] Hogue’s work, which to me means sound-driven and personal (even when the poems use persona). Especially for a first collection, it’s startlingly good. And it turns out he lives very near me, although he commutes to NYU as he completes his MFA.

Lesley Wheeler, Poetry reading (and readings: here comes AWP)

A lot of times writers don’t talk about the difficulties involved with the work of being a writer, which includes things like public speaking, publicity, attending conferences. If you have a disability—I use a cane for short distances, and a wheelchair for longer distances, which is obvious, but I also have problems swallowing, breathing, even things like vision and memory, which are less obvious. I also have an immune system deficiency that puts me at high risk for “bad outcomes” as the scholars write—with covid. I’m not ignoring any of that when I say I’m excited about AWP, because I am excited for a chance to see friends, to share my work, to meet my publishers, and all those good things.

Jeannine Hall Gailey, Where I’ll Be at AWP, A Rhysling Nomination, Managing MS Symptoms and Anxiety Before Big Public Events: AWP Edition

In Minneapolis I arrived the day before the conference. I was six months pregnant and stiff and tired from the plane ride. I found a yoga studio nor far from where I was staying and inexpensive compared the east coast prices I was used to. The teacher was phenomenal. To this day it remains one of the best such classes I’ve ever taken.

In Chicago I spent over an hour in my room chatting with one of the hotel’s housekeepers. There was a hotel staff strike taking place down the street. This woman was more than eager to talk to me, and she gave me all the details of the strike and her job generally. It was an invaluable perspective to the space we were all gathering in and enjoying for the weekend.

All of this is to say, the best advice I can give anyone attending this conference is: Be okay with where you are. Don’t panic.

If you have a couple of good conversations, meet new people, get to know new magazines and/or presses, attend an interesting panel or two, then you’re doing great. If you pick up cool journals that you’ve never seen before and think you might like to submit to, then you’re just fine. If you come up with new ways to attempt to resolve a craft problem, good on ya.

Don’t worry about doing everything. Take breaks as you need to. Walk, rest, talk to people outside the literary world, stare into space.

Becky Tuch, What is AWP and how do we survive it?

I’m especially pleased to have this poem out in the wild; it’s one I intend to have in my pamphlet…and one that’s been accepted in what I think is its final form. Last week saw the long listing of another poem that should make it into the pamphlet, but I had to commit that cardinal sin of asking if they’d let me update the version they had. Thankfully, they said yes, but there’s a chance it may change (slightly) again before the pamphlet is out.

It’s always interesting to think of versions out there. I’m sure I heard it mentioned in a podcast recently (possibly Craig Finn interviewing Maggie Smith) about how interesting it is to read the mag version versus the final version of a poem. I’ve sort of stopped submitting for a while to keep the versions under wraps, and to hopefully have some back that haven’t been published before—although your move to the various mags that still have poems—either longlisted, or unreplied to yet.

Mat Riches, Toting Up The Velocities

The latest in my series of winter charcoal drawings of upstate and central New York is this one, of a pair of old trees in a field – probably apple trees, I’m thinking. They touch something in me; perhaps it’s the way they are still growing in spite of losing limbs and, in the case of one, practically its entire original trunk. Maybe it’s because they look like a pair. But it’s also because finding old trees like this feels typical of such a place, where people have been farming for a long time. Perhaps there was once a homestead nearby. I like the way these trees, with their individual personalities, stand in the foreground, set off by the indistinct woods in the little gully behind the hills; it makes me want to walk there, climb up the hill behind, see if there’s a stream.

Beth Adams, Old Apple Trees

I could have been quaint
and asked a stranger about those drooping
white blossoms, pointed leaves and slender stems,
flowers upside down, dripping like milk.

Instead I tasked my phone and asked
a stranger stranger, who gave me fifteen
fast photos of the flower before my eyes.
Snowdrops.

Jill Pearlman, Hey, Stranger Stranger

Jean Cocteau wrote that “A great literary masterpiece is simply a dictionary in disorder.” But a work of literature doesn’t use all the words of the dictionary. Is it possible that by looking at the parts of the dictionary that were not used, you could reconstruct the literary work? The work is both the words that were used and the words that were not used.

Or to put it another way, everything that Gertrude Stein’s dog doesn’t know isn’t Gertrude Stein and so by knowing what the dog doesn’t know, you could figure out who Gertrude Stein is. By knowing something about the hole, you know something about the donut. More and more, I’m figuring out who I am by figuring out who I’m not. 

It’s a kind of dead reckoning, a system of navigation that doesn’t rely on absolute position but on. figuring out where to go and where you are by measuring the distance and direction from where you’ve been. 

Who I am is both inside and outside my life. In my life. Around my life. Through my life. During. Despite. Because of. What is the apt preposition?

Gary Barwin, THREE SIDES TO EVERYTHING

Time braided into breath. Chiseled and stacked into monuments marking the span of human existence.

Time sublime, time unwind. Time a psalm, time a qualm.

All borders beyond breath, any lands we may discover in an eternity beyond us, let them be no less real because we cannot touch or name them at this time.

Time the bountiful, time bereft. Time desirable, time so desolate.

Perhaps there exists rest within breath—a majesty that dwells in the spaces between inhales and exhales.

Rich Ferguson, Breathology