I keep thinking about the LA fires. Today is the first day I woke up and didn't see the fires at the top of my newsfeed. I hope that's a good sign. I've been thinking of all the LA poets I admire, hoping they are safe. I thought I'd post a poem by LA poet, Rick Bursky, in honor of these nightmarish times. Here We Go Again by Rick BurskyIt’s hot. The empty sky begins to melt. In the shade of a tree, a peregrine falcon Is eyed nervously by a pigeon. An old barber chuckles to himself as he searches The backroom for bloody rags And someone’s mother sweeps up the broken mirror. When the sun sets, all hell will break loose. After all, this is the end of world, The credits are about to scroll on the clouds. Whoever is left will have to start over — A new pocket protector for their shirt, A hunting rifle useless until gunpowder is invented again. from 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 129 PREVIEW Continue reading

It was on this day a few years ago that my son had major GI surgery. A wet snowstorm had glazed the roads with ice, and Covid was raging across the state. No visitors were permitted in medical facilities, but I had been granted special permission. After all, my son had almost died in the same hospital the summer before when a medical team failed to take his situation seriously. (A nurse had insisted for four days that his pain meant nothing—then his insides burst.) Needless to say, I pulled every string I could find in order to be there. The surgery was successful. It marked the end of our time in Purgatory. For two years we had lived in and out of hospitals, in and out of hope and despair, in and out of that place where time slows and sometimes pauses, where the souls of the almost-dead and almost-born share elevator rides, where dread and relief walk hand-in-hand, where there are no hours, no weeks or weekends, no months, and certainly no holidays, where every door is guarded, where every window displays a view of another hospital wing, where once we watched a patient life-flighted in, where angels airlifted others out. I still dream I am in the hospital beside my son who is lying in a bed, tubes up his nose and throat, monitors beeping and humming, nurses and doctors entering and exiting . . . Oh, how he wished for sleep back then. Real sleep, not the drugged-induced brand. I wished I could give it to him--which now makes me think of this untitled poem by David Keplinger: I made this paper boat for her, who finds it difficult to sleep. She imagines she is floating on its little stern, here, under her sleeping mask, under the covers. All you’ll need is one plain sheet. It’s folded like the beak of a bird. With your fingers, pry the wide beak open. You are opening the beak. You are climbing inside. The world is so strange when you come back from Purgatory. (Sometimes I wonder if I ever fully returned.) Nothing makes sense: the news, social media, everyday conversations. My mind was a blur. I couldn’t write. Or rather I couldn’t write coherently. The humorous poet I was had disappeared. Not only that, I couldn’t stand her poetry. Slowly I began to write my forthcoming book, Son of Bird, a Memoir in Prose Poems. When I read it now, I feel the presence of Purgatory, the mix of memory and dreams. And sadness, a salty, bitter aftertaste. Sometimes, I look for books or poems that describe that feeling/space I lived in for those years. Murakami comes the closest. I keep reading his work, underlying whole paragraphs. There is also this poem by a Danish poet, Carsten René Nielsen, that describes the hunger I feel when reading, expecting or hoping to find something in particular. And the overwhelm I experience when I succeed. Book by Carsten René Nielsen,... Continue reading

I hate Christmas. Every December, the seasonal blues hit as soon as Thanksgiving ends. I wish I could fall asleep on the last weekend in November and wake up on January 2. A friend of mine, who is in AA, suggested that I should try faking it until I make it. So, I have been dressing in a red sweater and green leggings and wearing a little red cap. I look like an aging Christmas elf. (I despise Xmas outfits, so I am going all-out.) I even have a holly berry pin in my white hair and a blinky tree brooch on my sweater. If anyone looks at me funny, I smile and say, 'Tis the season. And if they ask how I am, I say, “Jolly, very jolly, thank you so much. Are you jolly, too?” Well, are you? Right now, how could I (or anyone) not be jolly when listening to Maria Carey sing “All I Want for Christmas." Or Bobby Helms sing “Jingle Bell Rock” or Andy Williams croon “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year.” Or Michael Bublé, “Have a Holly Jolly Christmas.” Who can resist singing along with them? And by golly I do feel almost jolly imagining a world in which I am someone else, someone who loves all the music and manic shopping and traffic and decorating and cooking and office-partying and fruit cakes and eggnog (I think fruit cake and eggnog should be outlawed) . . . If I were someone else, I might even write poems about this other life/world in which I can become someone else. Which is exactly what Denise Duhamel does in her hilarious and brilliant new chapbook, In Which. Reading her poems, I feel less like a grinch and more like I am in the company of a kindred spirit. Oh, Denise, I think to myself as I read, your poems are a gift to the world. POEM IN WHICH I PURSUED MY DREAM OF DOING STAND-UP by Denise Duhamel When articles I read in 1980 demanded a woman comic make fun of her appearance, I went for it. I embraced my fat because John Waters thought fat was hilarious. In fact, I ate so much I doubled my size and wore small, unflattering T-shirts to highlight my stomach rolls. I wasn’t afraid to be raunchy or gross. I even farted on stage, becoming a caricature of everything ugly I dreaded inside me. I teased my frizzy hair to make it even frizzier. I took my cues from Joan Rivers and Phyllis Diller—On my honeymoon I put on a peekaboo blouse. My husband peeked and booed. I tried to repel men as much as possible with my awesome, non-conforming physicality. I didn’t care if I embarrassed my family. I didn’t care anymore about diets or dates. I ate whole cakes and didn’t even think about throwing them up. I went to late night open mics, wisecracking through the jeers and booing until audiences got used to... Continue reading

Drive-by animals, we called them when I was a girl—the dogs and cats dumped off on our farm by passing cars. The cats took up residence in the barns. One year our farm had over fifty barn cats. The number changed all the time—a lot of strays didn’t survive. They crouched in the alfalfa field when the mower swept by. Or they caught distemper or were killed by the dogs. The animal-dumping practice is ongoing. I currently live on a dirt road in Virginia, and just this fall, my neighbors and I have adopted three black roosters, two barn cats, and a puppy, all left on the road. The chickens were hard to catch, but several of my neighbors were well-versed in the art of rooster-catching. “Dive for their feet or tail feathers!” they yelled as they grabbed for their claws and landed in the tall grass. Turns out a rooster can turn into a rocket and fly straight up in the air, thus avoiding capture. The cats didn’t need help finding shelter—they simply moved in to the closet barns. The puppy, a six-pound poodle-mix, flung from a BMW on a freezing Saturday afternoon (a hunter witnessed the event) was clueless. Looking bewildered, she shivered in the middle of the road. The puppy has now taken over our home. What causes people to see the countryside as a dump? It’s not just unwanted animals you can find here. Old mattresses, toilets, air conditioners, and sofas land in the creeks, fields, and woods. There’s a rusted-out school bus deep in one of the valleys. An armchair used to sit on a hillside, as if someone dragged it there to watch the sunrise. One summer day I thought of sitting on it before bees and mice came buzzing and squealing out of it, and a rat snake slid across my path, pursuing its next meal. I’m not one to be overly romantic, but I am a fan of poets like William Wordsworth, Robert Frost, Wendell Berry, Sydney Lea, John Lane and Nickole Brown, among others, who celebrate the natural world. I recently enjoyed this essay on Robert Frost by Sydney Lea. The poem, “The Peace of Wild Things” by Wendell Berry speaks of how I find solace in times like this. The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free. That said, I’m not one to find the natural world... Continue reading

NA: I thought of you, Grace, when I attended an interview with Amore Towles, conducted by Jim Ryan, the president of the University of Virginia. The interview was such a disappointment. Ryan’s questions were so generic and uninspired, I wondered if he had even read Towles’ work. I kept thinking, if only Terry Gross or Grace Cavalieri were doing the interview. You are the Terry Gross of poetry. Afterwards, I began to think about what goes into a good interview. How much research do you do for your interviews? GC: I read everything the U.S. POET LAUREATES have ever written before interviews, and for other poets, I know their latest book(s) thoroughly. NA: It’s remarkable, this skill you have as an interviewer. What is the secret to conducting a good interview? GC: I taught a course on radio once in Foxhall College and the whole course was based on one thing: Only ask questions if you REALLY want to know the answer. Nothing else works. NA: One thing I love about your interviews: there is often this moment when you are telling the poets something they don’t know about their own poems. You surprise them. In your interview with Lucille Clifton, for example, you tell her that jazz influenced her work. And how. She responds that she loves jazz but has never thought about it. She asks you to explain. And you do, of course, so brilliantly. In that interview and others, I felt the bond you have with the poets/poetry. There is a similar moment in your recent interview with A. B. Spellman, when you correct him about the quality of his early work. GC: Thank you. So very much. NA: What was it like to interview Lucille Clifton? GC: Lucille, one of the GREATS of our generation, yet, always acted as if she were being noticed for the first time—although she had been an icon early on. Her poetry was very important to her, and its inclusion in “the Canon” was something she was vigilant about. Her life had been one overcoming racial obstacles; so anyone paying attention to her work was always rewarded with her warmth and generosity, and a complete giving of “self.” NA: Then there’s your interview with Louise Glück. I imagine she was more difficult to interview. I felt as if I understood her better after reading your interview. I loved this exchange: Grace: I have often said you do something no other poet does as well . . . You can take the emotion, the very fragile feeling, and you build a scenario around it. You build a house around the feeling. Now that sounds like something everyone does, but no one does it exactly as you do. It is misunderstood as autobiography sometime, but it is fiction, except for the feelings. Where did you get your confidence in story? Louise: Well, that’s a quite curious question. Grace: It’s like fairy tales for adults. Louise: It’s actually a rather profound question, and I... Continue reading

NA: As you know, I’m a huge fan of your work—your poems, paintings, interviews, memoir, plays. Sometimes, when I can’t remember how to write or what to ask in an interview, I will google your name. Or if I am just feeling blue—moseying along like a lost soul on a dark street. Your poems are like lit houses I can look inside, their glow spilling into the night. Like "Reversal" from your collection, Owning the Not So Distant World. Reversal This poem can do whatever it wants— It can change the past and make it new— It can make hollyhocks bloom again in my mother’s yard, pink and white against the wall where I sit in the safety of summer mornings. These words can take away the scarlet stab of blood that entered my mother’s brain as she slept. Here, take this porcelain cup, blue and white, And stir some memories for faces no longer seen, then wander with me to pines that never grew, to the cottage that was not there because this poem can leap over any cold moon rising, over any landscape looming to make this the happiest day of our lives. The book, like this poem, is mystical and instructive. I am wondering if you could say a few words about it. GC: You know Nin, as you are a poet, that the imagination is a safe back yard. No stress lives there—no shame— We can go into memory or make believe and create such safety. We are magicians, poets are magicians, who can make flowers grow in the snow just by making the image. We can bring people back to life!! What power. Aren’t we lucky. NA: You have written many poetry books over the years, and from beginning until now, your poems are consistently lyrical, smart, narrative, heart-felt, and, like your name, full of grace. When I don’t have your books on hand, I will sometimes google and reread your three poems on the Poetry Foundation website. Those poems take me back to my girlhood and an era of great optimism and promise. Of course, it’s easy to idealize the past. But I noticed in your poem, “The Shakedown,” from your book, The Not So Distant World, you are not romanticizing about those days. The Shakedown With this silver spoon I tell the truth I came from a land where love was spare parent better off not paired affection stripped to its essentials a film I run and can turn off because from a sea of pure abundance comes the trumpet of happiness sweeping me into this place more golden than birth. Could you talk about that poem? About the “sea of pure abundance”? GC: Well, there was discord in my home, A beautiful mother who was not well, a father who had just love enough for my sister. But the invisible world held everything I needed…‘the sea of abundance.’ I could envision other worlds, enter other books, become characters on stage. Everything I... Continue reading

I keep trying to figure out how we arrived here, and what country and planet we are now living in/on. When did this all begin? I grew up in the 60's in the midst of massive social change with integration and women's liberation and the Vietnam War protests and Martin Luther King and JFK and Joan Baez and Bob Dylan and the Beatles and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and Ram Dass and Timothy Leary. It was the Age of Aquarius, of peace and love and expanded consciousness. It was also the beginning of the end of the New Deal Republicans. I remember Barry Goldwater, whom my parents described as a political outlier with his extremely conservative and libertarian agenda and his opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 . . . I love this poem that takes me back to the 60's. For the Slip’N Slide by George Bilgere For the WHAM-O Manufacturing Company which in 1961 invented the Slip’N Slide. For Brenda Harris’s shady back yard with its long fairway of soft grass where she and her sister whose name is now lost set up the Slip’N Slide and attached it to the hose under the burning summer sky of East LA. How Brenda and her sister and I ran in our swimsuits, took a flying leap, and skidded, screaming bloody murder on our tummies. How we did this ten thousand times, howling our Tarzan cries and never tiring of it. For Brenda, who invented the Double Decker, whereby the two of us would run, Brenda just behind me, and I would belly flop onto my stomach and she would land on my back and we streaked across the yard out of control and smashed into her mother’s hydrangeas. For her mother, who didn’t get mad. Who at lunch time put out a pitcher of iced lemonade or Kool-Aid and a bunch of Velveeta and Wonder Bread sandwiches on the table under its green umbrella and we kids sat there eating like royalty. How nothing was better than those Wonder Bread sandwiches. For the Safeway supermarket down the road, which employed Brenda’s father in the produce department, where he earned the salary that paid for the Slip’N Slide. How he would fill a couple of shopping bags with day-old lettuce and carrots and oranges and onions and radishes and potatoes destined for the dumpster behind the Safeway and leave them on the front porch of our house where my mother would find them when she got home from her job as a guard at Fontana Women’s Prison, the only work she could find after my father died of booze and left her with the three kids and a falling apart little stucco house. How accepting the day-old produce hurt her even more than working at the women’s prison and collecting food stamps because in her former life as socialite wife of a well-to-do drunk she had employed people like Brenda’s father, who entered from the back door when they... Continue reading

I went out to eat this week with several friends, and I couldn't believe how complicated it was to complete our order. One friend has celiac; another is lactose intolerant; another is on a low fiber diet; yet another is allergic to peanuts. And then I have a friend with alpha gal syndrome. In these parts, someone always has alpha gal. But ordering was the easy part. We had all promised not discuss politics. So we decided to talk about food instead--the foods we love and can eat. They asked me what my favorite food poem was. Of course, there are too many delicious food poems to choose from, but my first thought was of this one by Diane Ackerman. THE CONSOLATION OF APRICOTS by Diane Ackerman Especially in early spring, when the sun offers a thin treacle of warmth, I love to sit outdoors and eat sense-ravishing apricots. Born on sun-drenched trees in Morocco, the apricots have flown the Atlantic like small comets, and I can taste broiling North Africa in their flesh. Somewhere between a peach and a prayer, they taste of well water and butterscotch and dried apples and desert simooms and lust. Sweet with a twang of spice, a ripe apricot is small enough to devour as two hemispheres. Ambiguity is its hallmark. How to eat an apricot: first warm its continuous curve in cupped hands, holding it as you might a brandy snifter, then caress the velvety sheen with one thumb, and run your fingertips over its nap, which is shorter than peach fuzz, closer to chamois. Tawny gold with a blush on its cheeks, an apricot is the color of shame and dawn. One should not expect to drink wine at mid-winter, Boethius warned. What could be more thrilling than ripe apricots out of season, a gush of taboo sweetness to offset the savage wistfulness of early spring? Always eat apricots at twilight, preferably while sitting in a sunset park, with valley lights starting to flicker on and the lake spangled like a shield. Then, while a trail of bright ink tattoos the sky, notice how the sun washes the earth like a woman pouring her gaze along her lover’s naked body, each cell receiving the tattoo of her glance. Wait for that moment of arousal and revelation, then sink your teeth into the flesh of an apricot. Continue reading

These days I don’t want to read the news. I don’t want to turn on NPR. I don’t want to check my phone and read all those annoying political texts. Instead, I want to turn to my favorite things. Poetry, of course, is number one. Every morning my inbox is full of those poem-a-day emails. My favorite, Poetry Town, is sent out by George Bilgere whose choice of poems, commentary, and accompanying photographs are always a delight. Here's a poem and commentary from Poetry Town that was posted on October 15th. Myrtle by John Ashbery How funny your name would be if you could follow it back to where the first person thought of saying it, naming himself that, or maybe some other persons thought of it and named that person. It would be like following a river to its source, which would be impossible. Rivers have no source. They just automatically appear at a place where they get wider, and soon a real river comes along, with fish and debris, regal as you please, and someone has already given it a name: St. Benno (saints are popular for this purpose) or, or some other name, the name of his long-lost girlfriend, who comes at long last to impersonate that river, on a stage, her voice clanking like its bed, her clothing of sand and pasted paper, a piece of real technology, while all along she is thinking, I can do what I want to do. But I want to stay here. From Notes from the Air: Selected Later Poems, Ecco, 2007. Why I Chose This Poem Over the years I’ve learned the hard way not to fall into the trap of trying to explain what a John Ashbery poem “means.” Many a student of mine has dozed off while I stood floundering around at the lectern in a vain attempt to make sense of that canny old wizard. And while his poems can and often do drive me crazy, there is also something wonderful about the teasing way they almost always almost make sense, the same way Mae West almost always almost let you see it all. A second favorite thing that helps me through times like this: essays. This week, my favorite is an essay from The Georgia Review called “The Essay as Realm” by Elissa Gabbert in which Gabbert describes the architectural qualities of her writing as well as her love of books on architecture. She writes: “I think this is important: memories and ideas happen in a place. An essay is a place for ideas; it has to feel like a place. It has to give one the feeling of entering a room.” “Architecture books are full of good writing, and they’re also full of good writing advice. Venturi writes that he likes buildings that are 'boring as well as ‘interesting.’  He puts interesting in quotes, but not boring—interesting is the more suspicious category. I feel the same about books—I don’t trust books that aren’t a... Continue reading

I wouldn't call this a comic exactly, but I've been thinking about revisions a lot lately. In the last month, two friends sent me their manuscripts that had already been accepted for publication and announced, "I want to change everything! What do I do?" I would call this a poet's problem, but then I remember reading that Hemingway rewrote the ending of A Farewell to Arms 39 times. Dorothy Parker said it took her months to write a single story because if she wrote five words, she edited seven. Amor Towles submitted his most recent book, Table for Two, and then took the book back to work on it some more. He also edits his books between the hardback and paperback editions. Continue reading

I am always fascinated by the questions poets and writers are asked in interviews and at readings about how they write--as if it's a mystery, or as if there's a recipe. At the same time, I love some of the answers poets and writers give to the question. I like to imagine a student going home and doing whatever these famous writers were said to have done. Continue reading

Usually when a friend sends me a book in the mail, I pretend to be happy. I say, I can’t wait to read this! But I’m lying. I do wait. I let the book serve as a paper weight on my desk for who knows how long. Sometimes I have a little stack of gift books—an extra-large paper weight. I don’t like to admit this, but I am suspicious of books I don’t select from the local bookshop myself. Books that I didn’t open and flip through, read a few lines, and say, I want you. I’ll pay whatever you ask to spend time with you. But recently, this book arrived in the mail by the poet, Tom C. Hunley, and I didn’t let it sit. Instead, I flipped it open and was immediately swept away. I read it once, and then, I read it again. I found so much to admire—from funny persona poems featuring rock, paper, and scissors to personal poems about aging and raising an autistic son to heart-breaking poems about adopting a teenage daughter . . . I will post one here. I had a hard time choosing just one. Adopting a Teenager Via Sate Foster Care by Tom C. Hunley We want a daughter, we say. We have a girl, say the ladies with clipboards. She’s about to be hit by a bus. She’s been in many wrecks. She’s always got a break or a bruise. She’s about to be hit by a bus? we echo. The ladies with clipboards point at the teen girl, arms outstretched towards an advancing bus. We run to her. We wrap ourselves around her. We can’t stop the bus. It hits all three of us. We wake in the hospital. We’re your parents now, we smile. I hate you, she says. That bus was my boyfriend. He buys me stuffed animals. He says he loves me and would never hurt me. He photoshopped our faces over a bride and groom and he’ll be sneaking into my window at night. We’ve got ourselves a daughter, we say. Continue reading

I was thinking of doing a series of comics on the things poets think but don't say. But then, I was reminded of this conversation that took place on an airplane between a surgeon and the much-loved, late poet Jack Myers. I love that Jack actually SAID that. Continue reading

I drew this after talking with Tim Seibles about the questions and comments people make at readings or in interviews, or when they just find out you're a poet, and the answers you think---but never say. Continue reading

Ever since I saw the review copy of I Eric America, I've wanted to interview you about this stunning collection. There is so much to love about this book. I especially admire the mythic quality of your writing. I love origin stories. I thought we’d open this interview with your first poem. In this origin story, the moon crowns three people: the mother, her children. In the original glory a girl might birth her own brother. In this roiling storehouse: relics from Delos, Sicily. Safe vests for travel to Mars. In origin-storage: bloodroot. Wet bulb. Torsi. Here and there worry seeps in to rewrite the corm of the fathers. In its oaring through woe, the tale will take in some deer. A dog. This story’s original flora count locusts. Dogwood. Fir trees. This tale refers to the genus of shrub artemisia, holy mother of absinthe. Don’t you just love how absinthe abs its way right smack into the in the—exactly how epics start out: In the beginning, maybe a girl ago, an original glory brined everyone kin— DR: Not sure if I am supposed to say anything in response to this poem. It’s fair to say it represents a tendency of mine in poetry: I sometimes feel that I have to reinvent everything in each new book of poems—start the whole world over, create a new myth, reinvent language, reimagine new and better ways of being in community with fellow sentient beings. It is sometimes a debilitating expectation. The cover is so beautiful as well. And it goes perfectly with the book. Who is it by? DR: The cover is by a French artist Julien Tromeur; the title of the piece is "A Person Standing in the Air with a Star in Their Hand." I love the title of the photo as much as I love the photo. What was the first book of poetry you read and then thought, I love this. I want to write like this . . . Can you say what it was about that poet/poem that inspired you? Maybe quote it here? DR: I am very much influenced by the poetry, prose, and critical writings of Adrienne Rich. I return to her books often, inspired by the growth of her work and with it, the expansion of her soul and poetic vision. I love rereading her early poems in Diving into the Wreck. I am equally enraptured by her prose, in which she reminds us that poetry is a vastly underused national resource; she offers up the following wisdom for its possible utilities: I want a kind of poetry that doesn’t bother either to praise or curse at parties or leaders, even systems, but that reveals how we are — inwardly as well as outwardly — under conditions of great imbalance and abuse of material power. How are our private negotiations and sensibilities swayed and bruised, how do we make love — in the most intimate and in the largest sense — how (in... Continue reading

In my last post, I talked about Zoom classes, about advice (or lack thereof) that I have offered to MFA students. I decided to add a part 2 because I avoided the topic of revision. It’s my least favorite subject. Of course, students always ask if I revise and how and . . . I wish I didn’t have to revise. I am unspeakably envious of poets like Frank O’Hara, who was famous for not revising. Of A. R. Ammons [pictured, left] who could write a poem like “City Limits” in one sitting. Of Max Jacob who composed in a notebook while walking through Paris and wrote: “The ideas I found in this way seemed sacred to me and I didn't change a comma. I believe that prose which comes directly from meditation is a prose which has the form of the brain and which it is forbidden to touch.” (From an interview with John Ashbery in the Paris Review) Alas. I revise and revise up to the last minute before a poem or book is published, and then I keep on revising. As to advice? I like George Saunders’ advice: Also found here And Jane Hirshfield’s list. Laure-Anne Bosselaar, a brilliant teacher and poet, teaches a systematic approach to revision in which one examines every part of speech in a poem. One of my favorite teachers, Sydney Lea, said “that if he writes 13 drafts of a poem, he often ends up going back to the 11th.” If only I had just 13 drafts to deal with. I might write 60 drafts and need to go back to the 20th. Sometimes an entire poem is lost when I can’t find my way back to the moment before I killed it. Gregory Orr once told me my poems were like flowers that had lost their stems and leaves and sometimes their petals. They were, he remarked, kind of bald. An early draft is like an overdressed woman. I slowly remove layer after layer of her clothes. By draft 15, she is naked. Then I open her further—it’s sort of like opening a Russian doll. I want the inner woman. The one the others (who are just shells after all) are huddled on top of, protecting her secrets. But there’s always a risk of taking off too many layers and ending up with that little wooden bowling pin at the center—a faceless, colorless, genderless alien. The bald thing Gregory Orr beheld. In the end, I agree with Paul Vaery who said, “a poem is never finished, it is only abandoned.” There comes a time when abandonment of one’s work is a relief. Even a cause for celebration. A time when Gaylord Brewer’s advice comes in handy. Advice on Burning Manuscripts by Gaylord Brewer A simple charcoal grill for a simple task works best, rickety and self-assembled. Bear in mind a manuscript of even moderate ambition makes a dense sheaf, so an igniting fluid will be necessary. Set beloved pages gently onto... Continue reading

Recently I’ve had the honor of being asked to Zoom with several graduate poetry classes. It’s been a while since I’ve been in a classroom by Zoom or otherwise, and I’m less practiced at answering the predictable questions such as—how/when/why do you write and where do you find inspiration, and what is your writing process, and what advice do you have for young writers, and . . . In one class, a fellow guest-teacher and poet offered the advice: write from the heart. And don’t wait around. Life is short. Such good advice! I thought. But I began to wonder, Do I do that? Or do I just write out of habit? Wasn’t it Flaubert who said inspiration comes from sitting at the same desk at the same time of day every day? Or do I write from anxiety? Or existential discomfort? Like Anne Sexton, I’m always trying to get rid of the rat inside me. But what about those days when inspiration never happens? And the rat keeps running and running on its little wheel? I was reminded of the Amor Towles story, The Ballad of Timothy Touchett, in which Timothy Touchett dreamt of literary fame but discovered he had nothing to write about. He blamed his lack of suffering. “How could one expect to craft a novel of grace and significance when one’s greatest inconveniences had included the mowing of lawns in spring, the raking of leaves in fall, and the shoveling of snow in winter?” “Timothy’s parents hadn’t even bothered to succumb to alcoholism or file for divorce.” So instead of writing, Timothy studied the habits of famous writers. Like Timothy Touchett, I enjoy studying other writers' habits. I want to know what kinds of sorcery they employ. As a result, I can tell you that John Updike ate so much when he wrote, he didn’t like to go out to lunch and worried about his figure. He was partial to oatmeal cookies. Joan Didion edited at the end of the day with a drink in hand (Liquor, of course, played an important role for a lot writers—no need to list them all here.) John Ashbery enjoyed a nice cup of tea and classical music when he wrote, which was usually in the late afternoon. Charles Simic enjoyed writing when his wife was cooking. Eudora Welty could write anywhere—even in the car— and at any time, except at night when she was socializing. Flannery O’Connor could only write two hours a day and her drink was Coca Cola mixed with coffee. Simone de Beauvoir wrote from 10AM-1PM and from 5-9PM. Louise Glück found writing on a schedule "an annihilating experience." A. R. Ammons wrote only when inspiration hit—he compared trying to write to trying to force yourself to go the bathroom when you have no urge. Anne Sexton took up writing after therapy sessions. Jack Kerouac had various rituals at different times—one was writing by candlelight, and another was doing “touch downs” which involved standing on his... Continue reading

When I woke this morning my Amazfit (a cheapo fitness tracker) informed me, Your sleep score is lower than 80% of users. Did you eat before bed? Exercise? Drink? I noticed an elevated heartbeat in the middle of the night. Yes, let me explain, I start to tell it. I know, it’s not normal to talk to your devices. But ever since I completed my memoir, I have a recurring dream of my father repeatedly beating his horse. Afterwards I can’t fall back to sleep. The dream is a replay of a scene I witnessed as a girl. No matter what I do in this dream, I am helpless to change it. If I scream, my words are soundless. If I run towards them, I become smaller as I run. The recent leaked video of the ex-Olympian and dressage champion, Charlotte Dujardin, whipping a horse, might have triggered the dream as well. It's just a dream, I tell myself when I wake, soaked in sweat. If only the horses could fly away. Like Pegasus, the winged white horse that was born from the blood of Medusa, a woman who turned men into stone. A therapist once said the dream is a metaphor for abuse. A metaphor? I asked. But my mother insisted, That never happened. You have an over-active imagination. Maybe you saw it in a movie or maybe it was someone else . . . My mother was a Greek scholar who read me the myths over and over, and thanks to her I learned odd details such as: Pegasus’ hoofprints created a spring of fresh water—those who drank from it became poets. But my mother could have been right. My father was not the only one I witnessed beating a horse. A lot of horse trainers, like Dujardin, find the whip a useful tool. And I am still haunted by a scene in D.H. Lawrence’s Women in Love in which a man rides a mare towards an oncoming train, forcing it to gallop towards the roaring locomotive. The horse rears and whirls, whinnying in terror as the rider whips and beats her side with metal stirrups until her flanks bleed. Two women watch this scene. One seems aroused by it. The other screams, Stop it! A college English professor described this scene as a depiction of male virility and domination. He pointed out that the rider took pleasure in the horse's suffering. (Where is Medusa when we need her?) I think of all the mythic horses, usually white horses: Pegasus, Muhammed’s Burāq, Siddhartha’s Kanthaka, and the phrase in the Bible, Behold a white horse, associated with Christ. Add to that the tale of the white unicorn in Eden, the first named animal by Adam, the divine animal that was given the choice by God to stay in the Garden or follow man to earth, to a life of suffering and death. The unicorn, like a Buddha, chose to follow man out of compassion, devotion, love. Sylvia Plath’s Ariel... Continue reading

Last night I dreamt I was back in my college dormitory. I had an exam the next morning in Linear Algebra. But I had never been to class. I hadn’t even bought the books. I didn’t know the professor’s name or where his office was. Or what building the class was in. To make matters worse, I’ve always been terrible at math. How would I be able to graduate with an F in Algebra? I know—it’s common to have this kind of anxiety dream in which there’s some kind of test you are doomed to fail. Afterwards, I woke up thinking I should go back to college, start all over again. College education is wasted on the young. All of this reminds me of the brilliant and witty poet, Karen Schubert, who completed her college education when her children were teenagers, and went on to earn an MFA and start Lit Youngstown, a thriving literary organization in Youngstown, Ohio. Non-traditional Student by Karen Schubert I changed my major at 40, stuffed everything I’d need to survive on a desert island into my new backpack and joined that tribe of nomads, The Undergraduates. The professors were my age, remembered Johnny Quest, Joni Mitchell, told jokes. Like summer camp for grown ups, the way they made us sit down and read in the middle of the day. It was the most fun I’ve ever had. At graduation I put on the long black dress, we looked like a thousand mourners, the speaker told us we were like eagles. I believe I can fly sang the p.a. system. I whispered to the guy next to me, Wasn’t that the theme song of Icarus? He asked, Who? and I remembered that we only know a little more than we used to know. He’s itching to find a job in the Real World. I’m staying as long as I can. Continue reading

I've been worrying a lot lately. On a global scale, I've been worrying about . . . well, just about everything. On a personal scale, I've been worrying about my forthcoming memoir, Son of a Bird. I feel I might have spoken too freely in it . . . My father used to say, “Only the artists are free.” It was his answer to Rousseau’s “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.” A wannabe artist himself, he gave my siblings and me drawing pencils and pads as children, as well as drawing books—the kind that taught you how to draw a horse or a cow or a cat by starting with a circle. Yes, everything can start with a circle—or series of circles. At night the family would sit by the fire, drawing. Sometimes he would give a prize for the best picture. Two sisters were extremely talented. One could draw horses that leapt off the page. Another, an ocean that lapped at my feet. Whatever they drew, my father would correct. I watched as his pen come down on their pictures, and the horses froze. The ocean, too. One mark, and the pictures died. The marks were technically correct, but they were also disturbing. They drained the pictures of magic. “Do not touch my picture,” I said when he checked on my work. “Okay,” he said with a shrug, adding, “You could use some help. But it doesn’t matter—you aren’t exactly gifted.” I agreed with his assessments. My father was a man who told the truth, even the cruel truth. Later, when I began writing, and I first published a poem in The Paris Review, he called to tell me my poem was embarrassing. Women, he said, shouldn't write like that. If I chose to continue, I should think about whether or not I wanted to publish. I saw his point. I did think about it. I decided yes, I did want to publish poems like that. After our conversation, I leaned into embarrassment. This was back in the early 1990’s, and I didn’t know other women poets who were writing about sex. The Vagina Monologues had not been published. I didn’t have an MFA. I hadn’t read Kim Addonizio or Denise Duhamel or Molly Peacock or Sharon Olds. But I did feel a certain creative energy and power in leaning into my own discomfort. People ask me now if I ever winced at my work. Yes, I did. If I received creepy calls from men. Yes, I did. If I lost friends. Yes, I did. If women responded to me oddly, too. Yes. (I had one woman ask me after a reading to tell her how to have an orgasm.) If I have any shame about my body of work. Sometimes. I still have poems I’ve held back, poems with titles like “Don’t Look Now” and “The Magic Pussy.” But they would not be startling by today’s standards. I have always admired poets who feel... Continue reading

I flew from the coast of Maine back to Virginia yesterday—a long day thanks to the delay in LaGuardia “due to inclement weather.” Outside the sky was neon blue. “It’s so hot, the planes can’t fly,” a Delta representative explained. I pictured the plane melting. I thought of Icarus, his wings dripping beeswax. Then I thought of all the great Daedalus and Icarus poems, poems by Edward Field, W.H. Auden, William Carlos Williams, Jack Gilbert, Anne Sexton, Stephen Spender, Robert Hayden, Joseph Brodsky, Stephen Dobyns, Muriel Rukeyser . . . Reading the myth, I’ve often wondered about the character of Daedalus, a shady guy who murdered his first apprentice, Talos, when he realized Talos was more talented than he was. What did he really think of Icarus, his son by a slave woman? I know—Ovid suggests Daedalus loved Icarus, that he kissed him and wept and warned him to travel the middle path, that he grieved his loss. But how many adolescent boys travel the middle path? Daedalus was like a father giving a son, who has never driven, a Ferrari race car, telling him, “Don’t speed.” Later, when my plane finally took off (though the day had only gotten hotter), I wondered, what happens to over-heated planes? Do they catch fire? Seated by the emergency exit, I imagined opening the metal door, tossing it to the wind, passengers leaping into the air, filling the sky like wingless Icaruses. I love all the poems I've mentioned about this myth. This morning I discovered this brilliant poem by Saeed Jones. Daedalus, After Icarus Boys begin to gather around the man like seagulls. He ignores them entirely, but they follow him from one end of the beach to the other. Their footprints burn holes in the sand. It’s quite a sight, a strange parade: a man with a pair of wings strapped to his arms followed by a flock of rowdy boys. Some squawk and flap their bony limbs. Others try to leap now and then, stumbling as the sand tugs at their feet. One boy pretends to fly in a circle around the man, cawing in his face. We don’t know his name or why he walks along our beach, talking to the wind. To say nothing of those wings. A woman yells to her son, Ask him if he’ll make me a pair. Maybe I’ll finally leave your father. He answers our cackles with a sudden stop, turns, and runs toward the water. The children jump into the waves after him. Over the sound of their thrashes and giggles, we hear a boy say, We don’t want wings. We want to be fish now. Continue reading

"Why poetry?" My parents asked when I told them I might want to be a poet. “Nobody reads poetry—at least not for pleasure.” I think of this now that it’s the season of beach reading—of easy plot-filled novels to enjoy while lying in a hammock or sitting beneath an umbrella and sipping a cool drink. I had wanted to become a novelist, but I suspect my parents' dislike of poetry was one of several reasons I chose it. My parents were intellectuals who read and knew everything. Except poetry. Poetry could be mine and nobody’s. Emily Dickinson’s nobody. But I’ve often wondered, what made others choose poetry? Or is it the other way around? Does poetry choose the poet? The first person I asked this question to, ages ago, was my parents’ friend, the late southern poet, Eleanor Ross Taylor. She said she’d planned on becoming a fiction writer before she married Peter Taylor. “You can’t have two fiction writers in one household,” she explained. “Besides, after marrying and having babies, I barely had time to write. Poetry was all I could manage.” She also told me that when Peter had writer's block, he could not stand to hear her typing. I think about that now, years later, after rereading my favorite short story by Peter Taylor, "The Gift of the Prodigal." Whenever I read his stories, I can hear him talking in our living room about his Tennessee heritage—endless tales about various relatives and families and their demise. Peter had what he himself called the gift of gab. I can also see Eleanor watching, listening, softly commenting. She was his background music: beautiful, elegant, ever-present. But when I read her poems, I think poetry must have been her calling. Terse, lyrical, other-worldly, she is often compared to Emily Dickinson. I particularly love her early poems like "Painting Remembered." I find in the poem an endearing sense of existential angst and spiritual questioning. Nevertheless, a part of me wonders if her marriage, or rather her view of marriage, made her into a smaller, tighter, quieter voice—terse and fragmented, sometimes sharp-edged, darkly witty, always brilliant. Painting Remembered Wake, girl. Your head is becoming the pillow. In the other room Your husband writes a letter. The mirror is waiting to hold you. The books at your side Are dreaming, are murdering, are kissing, The ticks are stuck to the dial. You’re too late too early. Continue reading

A few years ago, I discovered the poet, Leona Sevick’s first collection, Lion Brothers, when I was reading for the Virginia Festival of the Book. I was so impressed; I called the director of the festival to rave about the book. Now, her second collection, The Bamboo Wife, is coming out with Trio House Press in July. Again, I am smitten. Sevick, to my mind, has a magical power—a way of weaving her cultural identity and everyday world into the mystical. Or maybe it's the other way around. I particularly admire her dark and sometimes witty insights into the female experience. The Bamboo Wife If one bright day you find yourself moving through the rooms of the Jeju folklore museum, you might pause at the domestic exhibits, wonder at the strange, closed basket as wide as a drum and as long as a yardstick. They call it “bamboo wife,” and carefully printed signs tell you that in warmer months, men would wrap their arms and legs around her cage-body to sleep, her ribs free from flesh, the air moving through her to cool the sleeper. Perhaps you think this a strange marriage: the wife stiff and silent, her spouse breathing into her the stale air of sleep, arms locked in a tight embrace around nothing. Where has she gone, living wife? Out to the paddy field in search of a soft breeze, the cold water cupping her feet as she reaches for the sky. Continue reading

My father believed in routine. Every day, the same schedule. Every week, the same menu. Every weekend, the same social hours with the same people. Routine, my father said, is the secret to success. Sometimes, when I look at my watch, I think of what he’d be doing if he were still alive. It’s 6:30 AM, I think, he’d be horseback riding right now. It’s 9:00 AM, he’d be listening to classical music and working on blueprints in his architectural office. It’s 5:00 PM, he’d be pouring his first cocktail. It’s 8:30, he’d be reading a mystery before going to bed. When I told him I wanted to be a writer, he said I just needed to be disciplined; success would follow. But I needed more than that. I needed to learn how to bypass his voice—he was a mean critic who had no faith in my talent—or his own, for that matter. Whatever I wrote, he let me know I had failed him, or worse, embarrassed him. “What will people think?” he’d ask. After he retired, he decided to fulfill his dream of becoming a sculptor. He bought a chunk of soapstone and planned to shape into a piece of modern art. “How hard can it be?” he said, exuding confidence. It was a lovely, soft gray stone. The man who sold it to him promised it would be easy to sculpt into whatever vision my father had. For days, weeks, months, my father visited the stone every afternoon from 1:00-3:00 PM, but he never touched it. Instead, he took long naps. My mother began to tease him. She named the stone, your father’s pebble. One day my father asked for the soapstone to be taken away so he wouldn’t have to look at it anymore. The other day, on a walk, I found my father’s pebble in a brush pile on the family farm—a gravestone for my father’s dreams. My father’s relationship with his pebble reminds me of all the talented writers and artists I know who don’t practice their craft anymore. Several of the students I thought were the most likely to succeed in my MFA program, who drew the loudest applause at readings, have never published. Others published stunning first books and then stopped. Where did they go? On that note, I was delighted to discover recently that the amazing Shivani Mehta, whose first book, Useful Information for the Soon-to-be-Beheaded, I so admired, has a second book coming out from Press 53. My father’s pebble also reminds me of W.S. Merwin’s wonderful prose poem, “Tergvinder’s Stone” and of Vasko Popa’s poems, translated by Charles Simic, about the little box. In both cases, objects serve as metaphors for our relationships with others and our art. In the case of W.S. Merwin’s poem, a man brings a boulder into his living room and begins to bond with it, much to his wife’s chagrin. In Popa’s poem, a little box contains/becomes everything and nothing at once. The Little Box... Continue reading

I was trying to write the other day when our gun-loving neighbors who live on a farm across the road began their monthly target practice. Blam-blam-blam. My neighbors aren't hunters, but they maintain that having a gun and knowing how to shoot is a necessary skill. When I first moved back to a farm in Virginia, I thought about purchasing a gun. I was afraid of the wildlife in a way I had never been, mostly because the animals weren’t afraid of me. Bears toured the outside of our house and pressed their paws against the windows. They played with the lawn furniture, and once, tried to open a door, leaving claw marks in the wood. On autumn evenings they lay back on the hillside above our house, tossing acorns in their mouths like popcorn. Coyotes strolled down our dirt road in the middle of the day and looked at us nonchalantly, as if to ask, “Why are you here?” They kept us up at night with their yip-yip howls. One day, a fox walked so close to me when I was gardening, I was afraid it might have rabies. Another day a skunk ambled up to me and hissed, as if to say, Get out of my way. Needless to say, I did. Then there was the copperhead that nested in my compost. I quickly made another compost heap, only to have it settle there instead. The man who leased our fields said he wasn’t comfortable with me not owning a gun. He came by one day with a carload of what he called “my babies” and proceeded to teach me how to shoot. "Now this one is my pretty girl," he said about one. "And this here is my son." The lesson didn’t go well. I didn’t know he was handing me a loaded gun. We were lucky no one got killed. Before he left, I told him guns and poets don't mix. I was thinking about local poet, Gregory Orr, who accidentally shot his brother when he was a boy. Then, a few weeks ago, I picked up the book, Baltimore Sons, by Dean Bartoli Smith. Based on his Baltimore childhood, Smith’s collection reminded me of the TV series, The Wire. I don’t think I’ve ever read so many gun poems—poems with titles like: “The Stickup,” “Pistol Range,” “Cap guns,” “Pure Shooter,” “Bullet Fragments,” “.45,” “.375,” “Snipers,” “Shooting Gallery,” “My Father’s Shotgun Sale,” “Shotgun,” “One Blow to the Brain.” Nevertheless, I read the book from cover to cover without pausing—it’s a surprisingly tender read. The poems tell stories of a broken childhood, a broken city, broken American promises and dreams. And the love of guns. Cash for Guns, 1975 Sunday mornings, bitter cold— my father turned in the Remington 700 deer rifle he’d won selling spark plugs in an Esso sales contest. Before the divorce, I’d sneak into my parent’s closet, unzip the rawhide sleeve and lift the rifle out. Peering through the scope, I aimed the... Continue reading