Rainy Day Woman

I have really been enjoying Melissa Friedling's series of "video posts" over at the Harriet blog. But they don't generating much of a comment dialogue, and I worry that means they'll be construed as having failed. Why the radio silence?

Maybe poets are finding the answers (to the question "What is poetry?") a bit banal. A few excerpts:

Tomas (in translation): "Poetry is an elegant way of defining things like love, a flower, a landscape. It's the language use by people that, you could say, have very deep thoughts."

Joe (a sidewalk artist): "Poetry, to me, is an observation of life that exponentially reinforces the magic of life."

Sarah (from Louisiana): "It's raw emotion. It can be a lot of rambling words thrown together that a lot of people don't understand, but it's art."

Nirali (a classical Indian dancer): "I really like poetry, but I don't know much about it."

Not exactly an in-depth critique of Oulipo; there aren't even many poets cited by name. Nothing worth picking a fight over, which seems to be the underlying motive of so many Harriet commenters.

It's a very human drive to surround oneself with kindred spirits, and in this internet age it's possible to maintain a constant chit-chat in poet mode. Your junkfood reading can consist entirely of poetry blogs. You can make a joke about villanelles in your Facebook status, and eight people will joke right back at you. With this kind of saturating access to fellow artists, the grandmother or boss or neighbor who doesn't "get" poetry becomes the outlier figure in our minds, the exception to an otherwise dominant community of readers and writers.

But the reality is that your grandmother, boss, and neighbor are the majority. The people in these videos? They're the people I'm trying to win over. As much as I love the congratulatory note from a poet I admire, it's the email from the systems engineer in San Diego that really gets to me.

In the last month I have read poems to a class full of bored art students, a group of ladies who lunch, and a packed room at the Mexican Cultural Institute (for some of whom English was a second language). Each time I encountered people like the ones in these videos. People open to poetry, but not engaged by its crafts. People who say "I like it, but I usually don't get it." Or just "I usually don't like it."

Each time I go in knowing that subtleties will be lost in translation (whether literal or cultural). So I provide a generous narrative context beforehand. I revise on the fly, repeating identifying nouns and pronouns that I'd cut from the written page. I exaggerate my delivery, placing a hand to my chest when the metaphor is one of a heart.

Are these compromises a form of pandering? Maybe, but they work. What's the alternative? Maybe the audience on display in Melissa Friedlander's videos is a readership that 9/10 Harriet commenters are uninterested in reaching. But that's a damn shame.


*

Though I am hoping to get nonfiction work done today, at 5 PM I'll be breaking away to head downtown for a light dinner at Sonoma before the Library of Congress reading with Lucia Perillo and Tony Hoagland. Perillo is great--I heard her read the year she won the Kingsley Tufts Award. Her humor is a bit on the dark side; yours would be too, if you'd gone from life as a park ranger in the Cascade Mountains to being confined to a wheelchair by MS. That said, I'd hide behind her in a knife fight. The woman is fierce. I've never heard Hoagland read. My expectations of his demeanor are entirely based on this author photo to the right, which was taken by Dorothy Alexander.

There's only one more enviable event on my radar, and it's this one with Daniel Nester, Stephen Elliott, and Nick Flynn. If I could make the 8-hour drive up north, I would. So much gorgeous cynicism in one room! A girl could swoon. When I spent my month at the Millay Colony, The Spotty Dog in Hudson was one of my favorite places to seek civilization (a.k.a., graphic novels and porters on draft).

Luckily, I'll have the celebration of the 120th anniversary of Poet Lore to keep me busy here in town on Saturday night. This reading--featuring Myra Sklarew, Gary Fincke, and John Balaban--will take place (fancy setting alert) at the Historical Society of Washington, complete with a champagne toast to follow. Get the details and RSVP here. It's a free event, open to all.

Someone once asked me how many readings I go to each month. Unless I'm traveling or on deadline, I try to go to at least one a week, and two when I can. This is what happens when you are nearing 30 without kids. Or pets. I have a peace lily that droops when it isn't watered by 7 PM, but that's it.

Playing Dress-Up

You may notice that the blog has a new look--one that may continue to evolve over the next week or so. The greenery of old had started to feel worn out, and this matches the aesthetic of my website. The links are only temporarily gone, as the upgrade to my template requires adding them back by hand. And just in case you've been wondering, looky here--it's a bird...it's a plane...it's a cover design:

Confessions

I tell the story of leaving my job over at "The Education Of Oronte Churm," one of the blogs hosted by Inside Higher Ed.

Here is the opening of my essay, "Let It Rain":

I just snarled at my boyfriend over a piece of fruit. More specifically, my last banana, which he tried to claim for his lunch. “I’ll buy you another one,” he promised, and he would. He’s good that way.

The problem is that I’d wanted to eat that banana within the hour, and he tends to pick under-ripe produce. So I’d end up running to Safeway myself, which means getting dressed and stepping outside. At which point, I’d remember oh! the envelope I need to mail and oh! the birthday card I need to buy for my mother and oh! I need to make photocopies of an essay and oh! I’ve got a 3 p.m. coffee date—might as well head over early with this copy of Real Simple and read until she gets there.…

“Don’t mooch,” I snapped at him, with the ferocity of someone defending no mere piece of fruit, but hours worth of work. That’s right: the act of putting on pants can derail an entire day’s productivity. Welcome to the life of a full-time writer.

You know the drill. When someone asks what you do, you trot out whatever workhorse pays the rent—in my case it was “scholarship coordinator,” then “personal assistant,” then “magazine editor”—before arriving at your true destination. “I’m really a writer.”

This elicits a respectful head nod or, if talking to a fellow writer, a bittersweet shrug. We know the odds. And you swear to yourself Someday, the answer will be, I’m a writer. No hyphenating. No qualifying.

I quit my job. I quit so that for the next year I can live off the combination of an advance on a nonfiction book, periodic freelance gigs, and honoraria attached to two poetry collections. I am a full-time writer with the bathrobe and sparse cupboards to prove it.

Yet the “what do you do?” exchange is no easier than before. The respectful head nod has been replaced by a quizzical tilt. The bittersweet shrug has been replaced by a narrowing of eyes or, worse, a nauseated smile.

“Really?”
“So you, um, you don’t work anywhere?”
“How are you covering health insurance?”
“That’s pretty brave.”

Yes. No. COBRA. Hmm.

It’s not as if I had been deveining shrimp for a living. I worked as an editor at a national magazine of arts and commentary, the kind of venerated place one settles in for a lifetime (literally: two supervising editors had, combined, over 50 years experience on staff). People all around me—including my best friend, including my boyfriend—have been laid off in their professions. Meanwhile, I walked out on a steady income with full benefits and three weeks annual vacation.

Is “brave” codeword for “idiotic”?

#

Read the rest here.

Next Week: Two Readings!

Next week holds a couple of outstanding two readings in DC--prose and poetry--both too promising to be missed. I'll be hosting one and drinking wine at the other. (Well, maybe drinking wine at both.) Please come on out!

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 10

"The Last Sailing Oystermen": Christopher White and Skipjack

7 PM / The Arts Club of Washington / 2017 I Street NW
Free and open to the public, reception to follow.

On Tuesday, November 10, the Arts Club of Washington will host Christopher White in celebration of Skipjack: The Story of America’s Last Sailing Oystermen, just out from St. Martin’s Press. White will read from this gripping nonfiction account, set in the nearby Chesapeake Bay, and take questions afterwards. This event is part of an ongoing series at the Arts Club.

SKIPJACK: THE STORY OF AMERICA’S LAST SAILING OYSTERMEN (St. Martin’s Press) is the saga of three unforgettable men who captain oyster boats in Chesapeake Bay—the only wind-powered fishing fleet in America. Though their traditions run strong, their legacy has been jeopardized by trends in overfishing and mismanagement. During a pivotal season, they encounter storms and slim catches. Trying to survive to another year, the skippers put rivalries aside to preserve their way of life in the last days of the Age of Sail.

“A compelling story about how the wisdom of the past can help us protect the future of our fisheries,” says Trevor Corson (The Zen of Sushi). “If you savor seafood, White’s chronicle of the gritty life aboard America's last sailboat fishing fleet is a tale you need to hear.”

CHRISTOPHER WHITE is an author, filmmaker, and naturalist. He was born in Baltimore, Maryland, and spent much of his youth exploring the waters and wetlands of the Chesapeake Bay; he later earned a degree in biology from Princeton University. His three books include the best-selling Chesapeake Bay: Nature of the Estuary, and he has written about science and natural history for National Geographic. A mountaineer, he has climbed Mt. Rainier, Mt. St. Helens, Grand Teton, Glacier Peak, and the Matterhorn, among other summits.

THE ARTS CLUB OF WASHINGTON is at 2017 I Street NW, near Foggy Bottom/GWU and Farragut West metro. Headquartered in the James Monroe House, a National Historic Landmark, the Club was founded in 1916 and is the oldest non-profit arts organization in the city. The Club’s mission is to foster public appreciation for the arts through educational programs that include literary events, art exhibitions, musical and theatrical performances.

-->And just two days later....

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 12

- Tony Hoagland and Lucia Perillo -

at The Library of Congress Madison Building
6th floor / Montpelier Room / 6:45 p.m.
101 Independence Avenue, SE, Washington, DC

The reading is free and tickets are not required; a book-signing and reception will follow.

"Here are a few lines from each guest poet, just to whet your appetites..."

*Tony Hoagland, from "Candlelight" in DONKEY GOSPEL:

Crossing the porch in the hazy dusk
to worship the moon rising
like a yellow filling-station sign
on the black horizon....

you have to decide what
you're willing to kill.


*Lucia Perillo, from "Sylvia Plath's Hair" in INSEMINATING THE ELEPHANT:

In Bloomington, Indiana, the librarian lugged it from the archive
in a cardboard box, the kind that long-stemmed roses come in--
there was even tissue paper she unfolded
like someone parting a lover's blouse....