Emerging Writers Network

National Poetry Month - John Rybicki

As noted in an earlier post, the issue of The Quarterly that I received in the mail today (#13) has two poems by John Rybicki.  I have been fortunate enough to have had Peter Markus giving me some reading suggestions the past few years and John was one he told me I both needed to be reading, and needed to see read aloud somewhere.  I was happy to have had the pleasure, it must be two years ago now, to see Rybicki read a couple of differnt nights over the course of 3 or 4 days.  He read two completely different "sets" too which added to my own enjoyment.

One of the poems from this issue is:

While She Sleeps

If I could hurl backyard apples
beyond city lights, would you hear
them knuckle down your roof
like a hand tapping at your chest?

And if my arms could sway like branches,
would you feel them lean across town,
lift you from your bed and ease you
down through the trees, wind still rustling
the flannel of your gown?

By the time I eased you back,
school children would be racing
beneath my arms, your heart
tapping out its small buds,
a river of yellow roses.

One thing that strikes me about Rybicki's work is that he constantly seems to strive to capture emotions in his stanzas.  His oeuvre runs the full gamut from lust to loss, love to heartbreak, pride to passion to pain.  There is a rawness to his work that I invariably find in each of his poems.

National Poetry Month - Beth Ann Fennelly

Beth Ann Fennelly has long been one of my favorite writers (note, I didn't say favorite poets--given the choice to read her poetry over many fictions, I'd select her poetry) and if there's a poem of hers I find myself looking for on a fairly regular occasion, it would be "The Kudzu Chronicles."  Published originally in Blackbird, and then included in her collection, Unmentionables, it's a poem broken into thirteen sections of various lengths and styles and it is very easy to get lost within time and time again.

1.
Kudzu sallies into the gully
like a man pulling up a chair to a table
where a woman was happily dining alone.  
Kudzu sees a field of cotton,
wants to be its better half.
Pities the red clay, leaps across
the color wheel to tourniquet. 
Sees every glass half full,
pours itself in. Then over the brim.
Scribbles in every margin
with its green highlighter. Is begging
to be measured. Is pleased
to make acquaintance with
your garden, which it is pleased to name
Place Where I Am Not.
Yet. Breeds its own welcome mat.

It starts off in what appears to me to be a pretty straightforward poetic style, as well as in the way it simply describes Kudzu.

6.
Isn’t it rather a privilege to live so close to the cemetery that the dead can send us greetings, that the storm can blow bouquets from the graves to my front yard? Yes, the long spring here is beautiful, dusk brings its platter of rain to the pot luck and the centipede grass is glad and claps its thousand thousand legs, oh once last May I flung open my door to the rain-wrung, spit-shined world, and there it was on my welcome mat, red plastic carnations spelling: MOM.

Section 6 is more similar to a standard prose poem than the previous sections. 

9.                    
           When I look back on Illinois,
I see our little house on the prairie, the bubble in the level. I see
           tyrannical horizon, each
solitary human pinned against the sky less like a Spanish exclamation mark
           than a lower case i. 
One had perspective enough to see the ways one’s life was botched.

           When I look back, it is always
winter, forehead cold against bedroom window, below me the neighbor’s
           shredding trampoline
offering its supplicant eyeful of snow month after month after month
           to the heedless white carapace of sky.

           It was either
the winter of my father’s slow drowning in liquids clear like water
           but fermented
from the dumb skulls of vegetables—potatoes, hops, and corn—

Then section nine (this is only the beginning) has a style all its own, where the appearance matters seemingly as much as the words themselves.  The other ten sections are as different from each other as they are from this trio.  The poem itself, as a whole, has me seeing Fennelly as comparing herself to Kudzu--she coming from Illinois to Mississippi and Kudzu coming from Japan--that they have some similarities beyond their seemingly being out of place, yet fitting in so damn well.

A recorded version of this poem (albeit shortened) had Fennelly read aloud to a bit that the United States Artists put together.  Up on YouTube, you can see it here:

 

National Poetry Month - Brent Goodman

Devil's Lake is a fairly new journal, two issues in as Fall 2010.  It's produced at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and one of the poems from the Fall 2010 issue is Brent Goodman's "What This Poem is All About."

Now this is just teasing me, right?  After I bare all yesterday and admit to having difficulty truly believing I understand the poetry I read, here comes a poem announcing that it is going to tell me what it is about. 

The poem begins:

I won't believe in god
but agree every soft machine

deserves a creator. Given the choice
I'd cremate all my clothes

because I long to escape
the velocity between my skin

and every mirror. I've sealed
the windows for winter, set

the clocks back. What dies in
this poem is a small fish

leaping to the carpet.

 

Which makes me go back to that word, tease, as I have NO idea what this poem means, but have to say that I absolutely love "Given the choice I'd cremate all my clothes because I long to escape the velocity between my skin and every mirror."  That, and the "small fish leaping to the carpet" makes me think of Faith No More's video for "Falling to Pieces."

You can read the rest of the poem here and maybe let me know your thoughts on it.  I liked it, really like most of the lines and images they provoke.  I'm just not sure that if I put all those images together that I will understand the show.

National Poetry Month - Sandra Kolankiewicz

I'm going to dip into National Poetry Month with a poem that fits my poetry reading style--that is, one that is at least pretty straightforward in its approach to what it is saying.  That's to say, I'm a pretty horrible reader of poetry.  I need poems that grab a 2x4 and hit me over the head so it's plain and clear what they are saying (though I also always assume this means that there are 2 or 3 brilliantly executed underlying meanings that I'm completely glossing over).

Sandra Kolankiewicz's chapbook, Turning Inside Out, was published not too long ago by Black Lawrence Press.  It contains nineteen poems, including one titled "Keeping Pigeons."  This poem was inspired (per the footnote at the bottom of the page) by an article that Kolankiewicz read from the February 13 and 20, 2006 issues of The New Yorker, authored by Susan Orlean.

Once you begin to read the poem (and I've typed out the first of four stanzas below), I think it becomes clear that there is a very specific thing being written about--pigeons and the keeping of them, and the things that if you knew before you began that might actually keep you from ever beginning to raise them.

Keeping Pigeons

 

If you knew about having to keep the loft,

how they need perches, baths, enriched feed,

fresh water twice a day or else they weaken,

Would you ever get started?

If you had been warned that the bright

feather speckles on those white grizzled chests,

that product of all that breeding,

would forestall vacations,

sometimes bring disease,

or that raising them would fall under threat of regulation,

even become forbidden,

against the law in some places,

like Chicago

 

While there is still a nice rhythm when this poem is read aloud, there is also what appears to be a simple purpose behind the words as well.  Again, I may certainly (and most probably am) be missing some underlying ideas as well, but was able to enjoy this simply if it's only a poem about keeping pigeons.

Poetry Month - EWN Classic Book Review - Grayscale by David Huddle

Another of my favorite authors that writes poems, stories, essays, novellas and even the occasional novel - David Huddle is a writer's writer.  Mention the name to writers 40 and over at AWP and they nod knowingly.  Younger writers should as well.

Originally emailed to EWN members on February 14, 2005
Grayscale by David Huddle
2004 by LSU Press, 56 pages
(I always buy David Huddle books as soon as I hear they’re coming out – did so with this one too)

In this, his fifth, collection of poems, David Huddle continues his exploration of family, and memories and how we fit into the world.  As well as he does this throughout the collection, he might best do it in the poem, Myself in Retrospect:

     Last night as I was making what I thought
     was a funny dinner-table remark,
     it happened again – I imagined Lindsey
     and Molly recalling what I’d just said
     years after my death:  Do you remember
     that time dad…

The continuation of the poem has Huddle discussing how oddly comforting this thought is – knowing that even after his death he and his family will be able to joke around the kitchen table.

Throughout the rest of the collection, Huddle remembers things about his days as a child, about older generations of family members while looking at their photos, and occasionally looks into his future. 

Huddle seems to have challenged himself within this collection – looking for the ability to create shapes on the page while maintaining the skills he’s shown in the past for finding just the right words and no more than that.  Within the collection, there are poems that are perfect squares, perfect triangles, serpentine walls, circles, etc.  No matter the shape though, the poem reads as if it were put on the page in a straightforward manner.

While these shapes create interesting appearances on the various pages, it is still Huddle’s writing that will keep the reader coming back to this and his other poetry collections.  He brings a certain nostalgia to his work – looking back, as he does, on his life and those of his family.  He gives the reader something to think about in regards to their own families, and that just adds to the joy of reading his words.

4.5 stars

Poetry Month - EWN Classic Book Review - Elegy for the Southern Drawl by Rodney Jones

I give this one classic status as it shows my absolute incompetence.  I just couldn't get into this collection.  Why is that incompetent (well, besides the "logic" employed in the review)?  It was a finalist for the Pulitzer that year and a Chicago Tribune Book-of-the-Year.  Way to go Dan!

Originally sent via email to EWN members on December 8, 2002
Elegy for the Southern Drawl by Rodney Jones
1999 by Houghton-Mifflin, 112 pages
(I bought this from the Berkeley Borders in MI)

Rodney Jones sixth collection of poetry, Elegy for the Southern Drawl, is broken up into five sections.  The middle section is the title poem by itself and it is a ten page effort broken up into 12 sections.

Within the collection, Jones writes about many different topics including football, DDT, owls, and his penis.  His skill level is apparent as he writes in various forms, and does so with seeming ease.  As somebody who isn’t well versed in poetry, or the big name poets of the past, I had the feeling that Jones was having his way with words in poems that he recalled some of those names of the past.

Seeing his recalling of Whitman, Williams, Pound, Keats, Singer, et al, and doing so in different forms and structures led me to believe he was showing his ability to write of them within their own styles.  I would have to do further research of these writers and their works to verify this however.

The problems that I had with this collection were, I believe, my prior lack of reading or studying poetry.  The collection seems to be written for those who have done so.  I’ve read most of the poems at least two times and still had no idea what Jones was doing in many of them.  While I believe the title poem is about language and the various uses of it - there are still two or three sections that made no sense at all to me.

In terms of looking at how a poet can use different forms, and write lines and sections that flow off the tongue with incredible sound, this was a great experience.  In terms of being really happy that I read a collection because of what the writer was saying, this was pretty frustrating.

3.5 stars

Poetry Month - EWN Classic Book Review - The Determined Days by Philip Stephens

Things should be deep into AWP now - maybe a quick post from Denver, maybe not, depends on internet availability.  Even if not, here's another celebration of National Poetry Month!

Originally sent via email to EWN members on May 28, 2003
The Determined Days by Philip Stephens
2000 by Overlook, 92 pages
(I bought this one on the advice of Elwood Reid – a genuinely smart man when it comes to literature – not to mention damn good writer)

Philip Stephens writes poems both in a manner, and about subjects, that one does not see often.  He writes about the disenchanted, those who perform hard labor, if they have jobs at all, and those who most often get avoided by others on a day to day basis.

Those speaking to us in his poems include – two homeless men playing chess in a library until their discussion of missionary homes gets too loud, a couple trying to check into a motel late at night, suffering the pornography watching of the motel clerk, and a little girl who social workers have nearly given up one, she no longer acts in any other manner than the one people want her to after years of being abused, on film, by her step-father - she learned how to be what the other person wanted so well that they can't reach her.

The manner that these individuals speak to the reader is the same manner they speak to each other.  Stephens uses dialogue in his poetry, even more than narrative.  The conversations go back and forth, from stanza to stanza, with something as simple as starting the stanza from the left, or halfway across the page to ensure the reader knows when the point of view has changed.

What Stephens does best is show his readers how people in such scenarios get through each day, when all they have to look forward to is another day of the same.

From the opening Ditch Digging, comes the following:

 Quite senselessly, we pick some earth apart,
 And put it back, almost like before.
 Nothing changes.  Nothing.  Nothing more
 Except when day ends.  Rome might tell a joke,
 And we'll drink coffee, chew, or have a smoke,
 Turning our backs on the little sinking scar
 Of broken dirt that leads to where we are.

Ditch Digging, the first poem in the collection, and Climbing, the final poem from which the following comes:

 'Well, boys, it's Friday,' Smith's compelled to say,
 But Rome calls down, 'Know what that means'  One day
 Closer to Monday.'

    'That's the fucking shits,'
 Smith says.  We laugh at him;  he turns and spits.

are two of a few poems about a groups of ditch diggers named Hondo, Hawk, Smith, Sandoval and Rome.  They embody most of what Stephens is writing about and with his placement of these two particular poems, at the beginning and end of his collection give the reader enough cause to read this collection straight through.  At 92 pages, it is a quick, but powerful read.  One that those from all straights of life should look into.

4 stars

Poetry Month - EWN Classic Book Review - Among the Believers by Ron Rash

I currently have Ron Rash's latest book, a collection of stories titled Burning Bright, sitting near the top of my pile of books to be read.  He's one of the few writers I've seen go from poems to stories to novels and back and forth (not to mention sliding in a children's book) and do them all extremely well.

Originally emailed to EWN members on March 21, 2005
Among the Believers by Ron Rash
2000 by Iris Press, 96 pages - this book would have been ordered online, probably via www.abebooks.com

Ron Rash’s first collection of poems centered on telling the story of his grandfather’s life.  In Among the Believers, his second collection, Rash tells the story of the mountains from which his family hails. He tells the story of Appalachia.

His poems grab different spans of time and scenarios and in each, he perfectly captures and describes what it is that makes the western Carolinas unique.  There are newlyweds dreaming of flowers blooming in the hands of a dead man, Jones Funeral Home fans, a wife who hung herself from her barn’s highest beam, writing spiders and catamounts (though none officially seen for decades).

There is also, as the title might suggest, a plethora of religion or spirituality.  This can be seen in various titles such as:  A Preacher Who Takes Up Serpents Laments the Presence of Skeptics in His Church, Sunday Evening at Middlefork Creek Pentecostal Church, Foot Washing, The Language of Canaan, The Afflicted, and The Preacher is called to Testify for the Accused.

There are seven poems where Rash was inspired to write based on his readings of other work such as David Fisher’s Albion’s Seed, and William Trotter’s Bushwackers:  The Civil War in North Carolina.  From these, he has taken a single line, altered it slightly and then written a poem to get to this alteration.

Even moreso than in his first collection, Rash seems very keen on making sure he uses evenly metered couplets and stanzas in these poems.  Most often, he uses seven syllabled lines throughout complete poems.  Limiting himself to this tight line structure has seemingly forced Rash to be even more selective with his word choice – frequently ending lines on syllables that push the reader towards the next line.

The collection is much larger in scope than Rash’s first collection, but he is more than up to the challenge, moving from topic to topic and era to era with ease and pulling the reader to each with interest.  As well written and interesting as Rash’s Eureka Mill was, Among the Believers tops it both in story and skill.

4.5 stars

Poetry Month - EWN Classic Book Review - After the Lost War by Andrew Hudgins

Please understand that by EWN Classic I certainly do NOT mean it's a classic review.  Not by a longshot - some of these older reviews induce enough cringing to hurt my shoulders.  No, it's intended to re-highlight a fantastic collection of poetry during National Poetry Month.  As I'll be at AWP and probably not reading a full collection each day and posting about it, I'm trying to figure out the means of having posts appear daily while I'm gone, and if successful, they'll be similar to this - retro posts/re-posts of reviews written in the past of collections I really loved.

Originally sent to EWN members via email on December 18, 2002
After the Lost War by Andrew Hudgins
1990 by Houghton-Mifflin, 134 pages
(I still remember buying this one from Shaman Drum in  Ann Arbor, MI)

 

In After the Lost War, Andrew Hudgins has taken on the persona of the poet, Sidney Lanier.  Through his acknowledgements and preface, Hudgins shares with his readers that he has read all of Lanier’s writings, as well as biographies about him.  He has taken this information and allowed it to flow through his mind long enough to allow him to write a series of poems that, to paraphrase Hudgins, allows him to live his life through that of Lanier’s.

 

The book is broken up into four sections:  The Civil War, the period of time afterwards, the years Lanier was the Flauto Primo for the Peabody Orchestra in Baltimore, and the last years of his life, when he was physically unable to play his flute.   Hudgins introduces each section with a small bit of prose, allowing the reader some of his knowledge about that portion of Lanier’s life

 

Hudgins uses repetition of small events or attributes of Lanier’s life to give the reader a steady view of his life.  An example is the constant reminder of Lanier’s health.  Sidney had never been the healthiest of individuals and after suffering through the rigors of war was captured and held prisoner, in an area with brutal conditions, at Fort Lookout in Maryland for three months.  This poor health is brought into the various stages of Lanier’s life.  It is this poor health that is the cause of many of Lanier’s actions in life including leaving his family for a period of time to live in Texas, and eventually moving the entire clan to North Carolina in a last ditch effort to lengthen his lifespan.

 

Hudgins also varies the forms of his poems throughout the collection.  A small few of the poems are shorter than one page in length while many involve multiple sections.  Impressively, the longer poems are just as intense as the shorter work.  The multi-section poems are well done, showing consistency in certain aspects of Lanier’s life over time.

 

What Hudgins has done is effectively put his reader into the Civil War time period as a soldier, a family man, a flautist, and a man who knows his time is coming to an end.  He has done so through usage of simple images, repetition of fact, and a straightforward narrative.  Hudgins brings the possible events of each stage of Lanier’s life into light with such clarity that one can sense the war around them while reading through the first section - and so on, until feeling what it might feel like to be dying amongst your loved ones.

 

This collection will be brought up when discussions of poetry collections as narratives come up - and it will be brought up as one of the best examples of such.  Look for it.

 

4.5 stars

Poetry Month - An Old EWN Interview with Beth Ann Fennelly

With AWP looming and packing not having started, there will not be a full book review today for National Poetry Month.  Instead, I've got more of an All-Time EWN post to share.  Going into the Way-Back Machine, I've gone back nearly 8 full years to dig up one of my earliest interviews with a poet (yes, some of the questions DO IN FACT make me cringe).

The following is an interview that was conducted for the EWN back on July 1, 2002 with Beth Ann Fennelly.   She has since published another couple of excellent books that should be looked for and read.

The following is an interview with Beth Ann Fennelly.  She is the author of two collections of poetry, A DIFFERENT KIND OF HUNGER, winner of the 1997 Texas Review Chapbook Competition, (2002-031, 4 stars) and OPEN HOUSE, winner of the 2001 Kenyon Review Prize in poetry (2002-047, 4.5 stars).  She is married to fiction writer Tom Franklin (POACHERS 2001-007, 3.5 stars) and has a daughter, Claire (no known publications to date).

 

Dan

Hello Beth Ann.  Thank you for breaking away from your work and family to answer a few questions.

 

Beth Ann

My pleasure.

 

Dan

What is it about poetry that drew you to it?

 

Beth Ann

I’m drawn to the primal pleasure of music, of hearing music, of feeling music in my mouth. 

 

Dan

There are obviously many different forms of poetry.  Your collections prove this point.  How important is it to you to have a solid structure behind your poems?

 

Beth Ann

I’m guessing that by “solid structure”--because I think all good poems have a solid structure, otherwise they wouldn’t be good--you mean something like “received form,” or patterned poetry, like a sonnet or sestina.  If I understand your question, I would say I use a received pattern when the poems seems to call for it.  Say the material is very personal--it might benefit from having the trellis of blank verse to tether itself on, or the strictures of a syllable count to rein itself in.  But I also like to write poems that seem to demand the creation of a new form, or new to me, at least. 

 

Dan

You write of many different events, people, etc.  Are these topics of your poems things that you have a general interest in, or snippets that you hear of that pique an interest?  Or is it possible that you have a particular format in mind (say a poem written as a letter) that you are able to use somebody or an incident from history that fits your need?

 

Beth Ann

When I first began writing, I would get an idea for a poem and try the material out in different forms--saying, I wonder how this would look as a sonnet, I wonder how this would work as a dramatic monologue, etc.  The subject matter would precede the form.  But as I’ve continued writing, that has changed.  Now, when an idea comes to me, it seems to bring with it its own form, music, even line length, somehow.  If  I’m paying attention, it’s all there in the original impulse.

 

Dan

Some of the poems that appeared in your chapbook, made it into Open House.  How did you go about deciding which ones were going to be included?  How did you go about putting a semblance of order into Open House?

 

Beth Ann

Selecting from the poems I’d written and ordering those poems was a very difficult job for me.  My manuscript went through many, many different arrangements.  I think I found it so hard because I have, as you mentioned, several kinds of poetry in the book--lyric, narrative, dramatic, some personal, some concerning characters from history, etc.  So, unlike some poets, I couldn’t merely arrange poems in chronological order to tell the story of my past year or two.  It just couldn’t work that way.  But the house becomes an important symbol throughout the book, so eventually I began to see the book as a house, with separate sections functioning as “rooms,” each room having its own characters and uses, and I arrived at the current organization, which I think makes sense.  I left out some poems from the chapbook because I didn’t like them as well as my more recent poems, and I left some others out because they didn’t seem to fit.

 

Dan

Who are some of your favorite poets, both current and from the past, and why?

 

Beth Ann

I adore Shakespeare and John Donne and Elizabeth Bishop and Marianne Moore.  My favorite contemporary poets change sometimes, but I always am in the mood to read Jack Gilbert and Alice Fulton.  Recent collections by Lynn Emanuel, Louis Gluck, Stephen Dunn, and Denise Duhamel really inspire me. 

 

Dan

Do you read much fiction, or do you concentrate mainly on poetry?  Does having a fiction writing husband have much influence on your reading ratio?

 

Beth Ann

I read fiction constantly.  I always have a book of fiction going, usually a novel. I will say I read poetry and fiction differently, and at different times of the day.  Tommy and I have a one-year-old daughter, Claire, and he takes her in the mornings.  So that’s my writing time, and I read poetry and write it (or try to write it) until about 11:30.  We eat lunch as a family, and then Tommy writes in the afternoon while I hang out with Claire.  I find reading poetry more challenging and tiring then reading fiction, so I read poetry when I’m freshest.  In the afternoon, evening, and before bed, I read fiction, but more to relax.  I think that’s why I prefer good, old fashioned, traditional fiction, instead of meta fiction or experimental stuff--because I’m really looking for a solid beginning, middle, and end.  Something I can get lost in, and stay lost in, for awhile. 

I love to read Tommy’s writing--we’re each other’s first readers, as a matter of fact, and that’s a wonderful thing to share.  I also read a lot of fiction because we have a lot of friends who write fiction.  That, too, is pretty wonderful.

 

Dan

I think a misnomer in regards to poetry, is that you probably finish a poem much faster than say a short story writer completes a story – based on the lengths involved.  How would you respond to such a claim?

Beth Ann

I think that question would be different for every writer, and every piece of writing.  I’ve finished poems in twenty minutes, and finished others in six years.  There’s a twenty-eight page poem at the center of Open House that took me a year to write.  Writing that poem felt like what I imagine writing a novel would feel like--in other words, I couldn’t hold it all in my head at once, and, unlike writing a short poem, I didn’t have a sense of completion when the day’s work was over, because I knew I was still a ways off from finishing a draft.  I learned that I really like that feeling of completion that comes from finishing a draft, and I miss that when I work on longer poems.

 

Dan

Did you have this past year off from teaching while you and Tom were in Mississippi (where he is the John Grisham Writer-in-Residence)?  If so, how did it help your writing?  What about teaching did you miss?

 

Beth Ann

Yes, I had the year off, and it’s been great.  I took an extended maternity leave from my job at Knox College, in Galesburg, IL.  It was really wonderful to get to spend so much time with Claire.  I really just love watching her, holding her, touching her.  I love being a mom.  Also, I’ve had a lot of writing time, and I’ve used that time to write mostly about Claire!  I’m pretty well into another book now. 

I start teaching again this fall and, while I’ll miss the big chunks of writing time, I’m eager to get back in the classroom.  It’s funny, but after 9/11 I started dreaming about my old students, and I had several dreams in which I was teaching.  I think the classroom is a place where one can still talk about things that matter; I think teaching well is a moral act.  I miss being around students and talking about poetry.  I’ll look forward to being part of that again.

 

Dan

Have you done many readings from your work?  I know there are some photos of you reading at the University of Notre Dame at your website (note - no longer a website).  What type of crowds have you found?

 

Beth Ann

Oh, I love to read, I read every opportunity I have.  In some ways writing can be very isolating, so for me, reading is the reward, because it’s so great to share poems with people if they enjoy them, if they find them moving or funny or provoking, or anything at all, really. 

The number and quality of audience members varies, of course.  I’ve read at a lot of big universities, often with Tommy.  But we’ve also read at some smaller, unusual places.  Probably my most moving experience giving a reading was with the H.I.V. positive inmates at the Julia B. Tutweiler prison in Alabama.  Those women listened with everything that had.  They took notes.  They were amazing.

 

Dan

How important do you believe it is for poetry to be heard, or at least read aloud, and not just read silently?

 

Beth Ann

It is of the utmost importance.  I tell that to my students all the time.  There’s not a lot that can help them get better, quicker, than reading poetry aloud, their own and others’, every day.

 

Dan

For those who have not been to your website, how has the book been reviewed?

 

Beth Ann

I’m happy to say Open House has been received well so far, thank God.  It was eight years in the making, so if it wasn’t being reviewed well, I think I’d be eyeing tall buildings to jump off of.  The commentaries that have probably meant to most to me were made by  poets I greatly admire.  First, former poet Laureate Robert Hass read my long poem while I was in a workshop in Sewanee, and I guess he really liked it because he offered to write an introduction for it, as it had just been chosen to be a “New Voices” feature in The Kenyon Review.  Also, David Baker blindly chose the manuscript to win The Kenyon Review Prize for a First Book, and he wrote an introduction in the front of the book that is incredibly gratifying to me, thoughtful, and generous.

 

Dan

Having absolutely no idea, I have to ask, what is considered a good number, in terms of copies sold, for a book of poetry?

 

Beth Ann

Did you have to ask?  That’s such a depressing question--poetry is so pathetic, especially when I compare it with fiction, which is easy to do because I live with Tommy.  The press run for Open House was 2,000, which, believe it or not, is considered good for a first book.  I haven’t received any figures on how many have sold yet.  My chapbook, which came out in 1997, originally had 500 copies printed.  They sold out, and the Texas Review Press published another 500.  I understand that second editions are rare for chapbooks--well, all books of poetry, I suppose--so I was pleased.  I hope Open House sells well, too.  We’ll see.  My Mom is doing her part; all her bridge club friends get them as hostess gifts.

 

Dan

What changes, if any, do you see occurring in poetry as a genre of writing?

 

Beth Ann

I think this is a great time to be a poet.  There is a lot of freedom right now, a lot of different styles being practiced and embraced.

 

Dan

In his introduction, David Baker writes “Beth Ann Fennelly’s Open House stands out from the poetry of most younger American poets with their sober self-confessions or, conversely, their sarcastic throw-away wit.”  Do you share his opinion that these two poles exist?

 

Beth Ann

Yes, I think contemporary poetry’s worst excesses lie in precisely those two areas.  We have a lot of post-confessional poetry that seems to do exactly what the confessionals were doing, but without the innovation.  These poems seem to me to get tied up in the poet’s identity--often, the poet’s identity as a suffering soul--and seem to lack playfulness and imagination.  On the other hand, we have some poets who’ve run from confessionalism so far that they reject any naked or sincere emotion in favor of a glibness, a hipper-than-thou attitude that can entertain but rarely move a reader.   

 

Dan

How has getting married and having a daughter affected your writing?

 

Beth Ann

The same way it affects all mothers--by eating up their writing time!  But the truth is, I’ve never felt like I’ve had more to write about than right now.  And being married and having a child does make me feel more connected to the rest of the human race, more empathetic, more vulnerable--all of which helps the writing.

 

Dan

Almost done.  If you were a character in Fahrenheit 451, what work(s) would you pick to memorize for posterity?

 

Beth Ann

Well, in grad school I memorized a Shakespeare sonnet a week, and I loved it and I think it helped my writing.  I would pick Shakespeare, and I would also probably try to tackle Bishop’s Complete Poems.

 

Dan

Beth Ann, thanks again for taking so much time away from your schedule to give me another poet’s perspective on writing and the industry.

 

Beth Ann

My pleasure, Dan.  Thank you.