Poetry Publishing Basics: Like House Painting, Preparation Is the Real Work

This is information I presented to the Kansas Authors Club District 2 meeting last week, and I was asked to post it. Good luck with the publishing/reading/writing/thinking/ego part of po-biz.

• Get Poet’s Market or International Directory of Little & Small Presses for MS basics.
• Learn grammar well. Learn style—read Strunk & White’s Elements of Style.
• Educate yourself. Read! Take classes and attend conferences. Lawrence Arts Center. KU non degree-seeking student. River City Book Fair Oct. 14, sponsored by Lawrence Public Library. Kansas Book Fair Oct. 5-6. Read Poetry and American Poetry Review.
• Be part of a writers’ group—online or in person—and get feedback.
• Write for your community. Poetry is a communal art form, so start locally. Write for organization newsletters, Lawrence JW, your writers’ group (Lawrence Housing Authority anthology, for ex.).
• Be part of the book culture. Buy books. Check books out of the library. Download book podcasts. Read. Read. Read. Read.
• Cultivate a variety of tastes. Learn the different movements in poetry: surreal (Charles Simic & Victor Contoski); deep image (Ted Kooser & Robert Bly); formalist; etc.
  Appreciate the arc from beginning to journeyman to mastery of writing. It takes years, and each stage has its joys. There are very, very few writing prodigies. Expect to put in 10 years. Try to learn from those ahead of you and help teach those behind you.
• Know your audience: buy the magazine(s) you want to publish in or books from the publisher(s). Become familiar with their style and needs. Get online and read guidelines.
• Use Kansas (or local) internet resources. Kansas poetry site- http://www.kansaspoets.com/ Ad Astra blog- http://deniselow.blogspot.com/. Washburn “Map of Kansas Literature” - http://www.washburn.edu/reference/cks/mapping/index.html
• Use national sites: The International Library of Poetry - comprehensive poetry site. The Internet Poetry Archive - Selected contemporary poets. Poets House - Poetry Info and Resources. Poetry Daily – Daily poem, news, archives. Poetry X - devoted to reading, analyzing, and discussing the best in classic and contemporary poetry. The Poet's Bookshelf - American poets, biographies & poems. Poetry Slam Incorporated - the official website of poetry slams.
• Join professional associations: Associated Writing Programs. www.awpwriter.org/ Poets & Writers. http://www.pw.org/. Poetry Soc. of America http://www.poetrysociety.org/ . Academy of American Poets http://www.poets.org/.
• Learn about self-publishing and print-on-demand. Literary presses are stressed, run by volunteers, & flooded with MSS from professors needing tenure. Self-publishing is quick, cheap, and convenient, plus if there is profit, you get it. http://www.lightingsource.com/ is the POD I use, and there are others. It’s about $300 to set up and publish a book and then about $6@. You can reorder any time. It goes on Amazon.com automatically.
• Don’t get caught up in the fame game. Examine your reasons for wanting to write and publish. Some are gallant; some are not. Be honest. You’ll be a lot happier if you find your own personal satisfaction in the act of writing…which can spill over into sharing.
• Writing can be a path to personal and community transformation. The new Transformative Language Arts movement has academic programs and an organization: http://web.goddard.edu/~tla/ - Goddard’s resource page for degrees in Transformative Language Arts. See also the Transformative Language Arts Network: http://www.tlanetwork.org/ . Goddard’s site is very, very good!

Stanley Banks New Letters on the Air Interview Available Until Aug. 15

I've been an admirer of Stan Banks since we published together in a volume Mid American Trio, a collection of 3 chapbooks by Stan, Greg Field, and myself. Dan Jaffee edited this for BookMark Press. Stan continues to be a leading figure in the KC area and beyond. New Letters on the Air has an excellent interview with him. Angela Elam brings out the best in her subjects. She also does her background research.

I have learned how to listen to these online podcasts and also download them, and what a luxury it is to hear the author and have the opportunity to acquire this interview free until Aug. 15. Treat yourself to this conversation between Stan Banks and Angela Elam. Here is the New Letters description and link:

"Stanley E. Banks’ poetry explores the segregated Kansas City of his youth and some of the difficulties of growing up in his black neighborhood. In this program, he discusses how he overcame racial prejudice to find success in the unlikely arena of poetry. A literary child of the earlier Missouri poet, Langston Hughes, Banks reads from Blue Beat Syncopation, the collection that captures the first 25 years of his career."

http://www.newletters.org/onTheAir.asp

Jane Ciabattari Interviews Former WSU Writer James Lee Burke

One of my favorite people at WSU, years ago when I did my MFA, was James Lee Burke. His son had been my student when I was teaching at KU, so pere JLB and I had an instant connection. He was a struggling creative writing professor, trying to teach full time, write, and get his novels published!

Burke writes beautiful, vivid and violent prose about New Iberia, La., and Montana.This interview focuses on Katrina, and he describes it very powerfully. His latest Dave Robicheaux book is set in post-Katrina New Orleans.

My thanks to sister Jane, who conducted this interview.
http://bookcriticscircle.blogspot.com/

For further information, here's the official James Lee Burke site.
http://jamesleeburke.com/bibliography.html

Press Release from Library of Congress: Simic Appointed U.S. Poet Laureate

This is from the government site: http://www.loc.gov/today/pr/2007/07-154.html

"Librarian of Congress James H. Billington has announced the appointment of Charles Simic to be the Library’s 15th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry.

"Simic will take up his duties in the fall, opening the Library’s annual literary series on Oct. 17 with a reading of his work. He also will be a featured speaker at the Library of Congress National Book Festival in the Poetry pavilion on Saturday, Sept. 29, on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

"Simic succeeds Donald Hall as Poet Laureate and joins a long line of distinguished poets who have served in the position, including most recently Ted Kooser, Louise Glück, Billy Collins, Stanley Kunitz, Robert Pinsky, Robert Hass and Rita Dove. The laureate generally serves a one- or two-year term.

"On making the appointment, Billington said, "The range of Charles Simic’s imagination is evident in his stunning and unusual imagery. He handles language with the skill of a master craftsman, yet his poems are easily accessible, often meditative and surprising. He has given us a rich body of highly organized poetry with shades of darkness and flashes of ironic humor."

"Simic is the author of 18 books of poetry. He is also an essayist, translator, editor and professor emeritus of creative writing and literature at the University of New Hampshire, where he has taught for 34 years. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1990 for his book of prose poems "The World Doesn't End" (1989). His 1996 collection "Walking the Black Cat" was a finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry. In 2005 he won the Griffin Prize for "Selected Poems: 1963-2003." Simic held a MacArthur Fellowship from 1984 to1989.

"In addition to his memoirs, titled "A Fly in the Soup" (2000), he has written essays; critical reviews; a biography on surrealist sculptor and artist Joseph Cornell, known for his collage boxes; and 13 translations from Eastern European works. Simic’s own works have been widely translated.

"Born in Yugoslavia on May 9, 1938, Simic arrived in the United States in 1954. He has been a U.S. citizen for 36 years and lives in Strafford, N.H.

"I am especially touched and honored to be selected because I am an immigrant boy who didn’t speak English until I was 15," he said. Simic’s mastery of English has made his work as appealing to the literary community as it is to the general public.

"Simic’s childhood was complicated by the events of World War II. He moved to Paris with his mother when he was 15; a year later, they joined his father in New York and then moved to Oak Park, a suburb of Chicago. Simic was graduated from the same high school as Ernest Hemingway. Like a previous laureate, Ted Kooser, Simic started writing poetry in high school to get the attention of girls, he has said.

"Simic attended the University of Chicago, working nights in an office at the Chicago Sun Times, but was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1961 and served until 1963. He earned his bachelor's degree from New York University in 1966. From 1966 to 1974 he wrote and translated poetry, and he also worked as an editorial assistant for Aperture, a photography magazine. He married fashion designer Helen Dubin in 1964. They have two children.

"Simic will publish a new book of poetry, "That Little Something," in Feb. 2008. His most recent poetry volume is "My Noiseless Entourage" (2005). In reviewing the tome in Booklist, Janet St. John wrote, "Simic's gift is his ability to unite the real with the abstract in poems that lend themselves to numerous interpretations, much like dreams. Whether using the metaphor of a dog for the self, or speaking to sunlight, Simic, original and engaging, keeps us on our toes, guessing, questioning, and looking at the world in a new way."

"In another critique of "My Noiseless Entourage," Benjamin Paloff wrote in the Boston Review that Simic's "predilection for brief, unembellished utterances lends an air of honesty and authority to otherwise perplexing or outrageous scenes."

"Simic’s first collection, "What the Grass Says," (1967) was noted for its surrealist poems. Throughout his career, he has been regarded for his short, clear poems in which the words are distilled and precise. His poem "Stone" often appears in anthologies. It begins "Go inside a stone / That would be my way. / Let somebody else become a dove / Or gnash with a tiger's tooth. / I am happy to be a stone …"

"Among his earlier books, "Jackstraws" (1999) was named a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times. "Classic Ballroom Dances" won the 1980 di Castagnola Award and the Harriet Monroe Poetry Award, and "Charon’s Cosmology" was a National Book Award for Poetry finalist in 1978. He has also received the Edgar Allan Poe Award, the PEN Translation Prize and awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the National Institute of Arts and Letters. He was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2000. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts."

New Mikrokosmos Includes Music CD

I just received my new copy of Mikrokosmos, published by Wichita State University's MFA in Creative Writing program, and it is a beautiful production: full-color cover and art; nice paper; great design; and a back pocket that includes a CD of original music. This is a showcase for student and alumni work. Notes indicate this has been published in conjunction with the MFA since 1958--surely one of the oldest continuous literary publications in the country. The program is just a bit younger than the Iowa University program.

The writing is commendable. I was honored to judge the poetry contest, and I can attest to its quality. I published in this blog one of Craig Blais's poems (March 26), and I recommend you look for it! Other works are non-fiction and short stories. Dietrik Vanderhill edited it.

I spent happy months working on my MFA at WSU, so I have a biased viewpoint here. But do look at the line-up of writing faculty: Albert Goldbarth, Margaret Dawe, Jeanine Hathaway, W. Stephen Hathaway, Richard Spilman.

Congratulations on fine work.

New Letters on the Air Denise Low Interview Available to Aug. 8

Angela Elam of New Letters on the Air did this interview a few weeks ago, broadcast July 13. If you download this, you have a chance to win a free copy of my book Words of a Prairie Alchemist.

You may download the radio program free of charge until Aug. 8. After that, it is available for purchase on CD or cassette. My thanks to Angela and Dennis Cosgrove and Bob Stewart and everyone at New Letters!

Podcast Denise Low interview site: http://www.newletters.org/onTheAir.asp
New Letters On the Air podcast subscription site: http://www.newletters.org/feeds/podcast.xml

Lawrence Journal World: An Online Chat

This July 5, 2007, chat took place 1:30-2 pm. This is available online through the Lawrence J-W site: http://www2.ljworld.com/chats/2007/jul/05/denise_low/

Lawrence writer Denise Low assumes her post as Kansas Poet Laureate on July 1. The interim dean of the College of Humanities and Arts at Haskell Indian Nations University will take questions about her new role: supporting other Kansas writers and developing an appreciation for the writing and reading of poetry. M0derator: Hi, everybody. Denise is here to answer your questions about her position of poet laureate, and about poetry in general. I'm Terry Rombeck, a features reporter here at the J-W, and I'll moderate today's chat.

Denise Low: Hi, and I appreciate the J-W's sponsorship of this e-chat about poetry and the laureate position.

Moderator: First off, please tell us a little about the poet laureate program.

Denise Low: Sure. 37 states have a poet laureate, as well as the U.S., which changed the U.S. Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress to a Poet Laureate Consultant in 1986. Kansas began its poet laureate position in 2005. Jonathan Holden is the first poet laureate. He established a great website http://www.kansaspoets.com/ and held teleconference Shoptalk programs throughout his tenure. I plan to continue the website. In addition, I will provide an electronic page about a Kansas poet biweekly, to be sent to Kansas libraries and other places. I'll also post this on my blog, http://deniselow.blogspot.com/. These may be used for educational purposes. Then we'll publish this, through the Washburn Center for Kansas Studies. Tom Averill nominated me for this position, and more information is on the Kansas Arts Commission website.

nativekansan: Hi, Denise, First, congratulations about becoming the Poet Laureate. I'm a poet and have a pile of poems ready to send off for possible publication -- but am clueless about where they should be sent. Are you, in the future, possibly going to run seminars on poetry writing, including publication?

Denise Low: Thanks for your good wishes. Coming up in the near future, August 11, 9:30 at the Lawrence Public Library, I will be the guest for an open meeting of the Kansas Authors Club. I will be happy to address this question in more detail then. I have held such discussions in the past and attended many. The best quick advice is to look in a recent copy of Writers Digest-Poetry (or whatever your genre). They have very, very good lists of how to prepare a manuscript, places to send work, agents, etc. They do a great job. My own advice beyond what they tell you is: Get involved in a writers' group Take a class through the Art Center, KU, or wherever. Try publishing in local organizations--the LJ-World, for example, publishes poetry. My first publication was a newsletter.

mhb: What are some ways that libraries can help promote an appreciation for poetry?

Denise Low: Excellent question, and I think I know who this is... how about the River City Bookfair, Oct. 14, I believe (that weekend anyway--stay posted), where many area writers including Jo McDougall, Barry Barnes, and myself, and many more will present free discussions of writing and reading. I noticed the Lawrence library at one time had open mics for high school students. That's a great idea. I really am impressed with the number of contemporary poetry books in the library, but I'd like to see more local writers' works. And how about a nook for Kansas literary journals? First Intensity, Midwest Quarterly, Cottonwood, and others?
jniccum: Area musicians and filmmakers have to constantly defend the fact that they're from Kansas. Does the same thing happens to you within the poetry community?
Denise Low: Oh boy yes. I cross the river to KC even, and I'm bucolic. I have come to appreciate that my regional dialect is different from the mainstream one, my aesthetic is different, and my reasons for writing are different. My experiences are not in the national memory bank, either: most Americans--like 80% or more--live within 100 miles of an ocean coast. So when I write about prairie burning, it's very abstract to folks outside the area. Wes Jackson has a very nice riff in Altars of Unhewn Stones about how urban Americans LEFT the rural life (1900 American was 90% rural; now less than 10% of America is rural), so the old, discarded place is the Midwest, while the urban coastal area is the Promised Land.

monkeywrench: you mention poetry discussions. what about workshops/clinics?

Denise Low: Conferences are a great learning experience, and also any workshop or clinic you can find. Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg does great ones, including one with Kelley Hunt. Her website is http://www.writewhereyouare.com/. Also, Gov. Sibelius has initiated a state-wide book fair, to be in Wichita this fall, also. I'm not good at remembering dates, but I have these events posted on my blog. My former mentor Carolyn Doty, a novelist, used to say it takes 10 years to learn how to write a novel. I'd say the same is true for a book of poetry. However, attendance at workshops, classes, and other instructive situations will shorten that time. In short, yes, there is some talent involved, but also writing poetry is a lot about a craft, which can be learned.
Moderator: I know you're starting a resource for introducing people to Kansas poets. Are there other books or resources out there you would suggest for reading Kansas poets' work?
Denise Low: The best resource right now is the index of poets, and their books, at http://www.kansaspoets.com/. also, Washburn is sponsoring a Kansas Literary Map, which comes up if you Google that title. And George Laughead at the Kansas blue skyways site has a great index of poems. Right now, the best resources are online! I edited several anthologies of Kansas poets in the 70s and 80s, respectively, but these are long out of print. Folks talk about how hard it is to sell poetry, but both of these anthologies went through several printings, and both sold out. The Ad Astra Poetry Project that I am working on should be a great new resource. Also, the Washburn Center for Kansas Studies has some relevant publications. Woodley Press at Washburn publishes Kansas area or Kansas-related writers, including poets.

Moderator: That does it for today's chat. Thanks for all your questions and thanks, Denise, for coming in to answer them. Good luck to you as your start your two-year appointment.
Denise Low: I appreciate your interest. This is an interesting time for journalism--for example the Chicago Tribune has shifted much of its book review section to online. The video clips, audio clips, interactive chats, and almost unlimited archival space online are changing how we get news and interact with cultural news. This was fun!

John Mark Eberhart's blog on book reviewing and news

John Mark Eberhart, books page editor for the Kansas City Star and a find poet with a the book Night Watch from Mid-America Press, has a fine piece on the importance of book review space in newspapers, at http://bookcriticscircle.blogspot.com/ .

Here is an excerpt:

"I personally think it would be terribly lamentable for the nation's newspapers to diminish books coverage. To do so would be to put a knife to our own throats.

"But the most disturbing aspect of this whole thing is the larger cultural question. Are newspapers, in cutting books coverage, really just reflecting a society that cares less and less about books? Are we becoming a nation of people who prefer what I call "garbage" information -- inaccuracies or inanities or both -- over information that is factual, imaginative, truly enlightening?

"If so, then we are in big trouble. If that's not the case, then newspapers that are giving up on books coverage are trying to impose a shallower, more harried, and less interesting view of the written word upon their readers."

Eberhart is also featured poet at Prospero's Bookstore's website: http://prosperosbookstore.com/index.php?page=poem .

Both of these sites, and others if you google his name, are worth spending time with on a quiet, hot July afternoon!

Here is an Eberhart poem, reprinted with permission:

Stranded

I see it this way:
The evening would be
coming on. Snow would
start making fenceposts
taller. Ice would sculpt
the trees into sentinels.
We'd hear reports of roads
being closed. I'd whisper
into your ear, "see, you
can't drive home tonight."
And all this white wrath,
winter woe for other folks,
would make both of us smile.

Walt Whitman on Kansas:

". . . CHANTS GOING FORTH FROM THE CENTRE FROM KANSAS, AND THENCE EQUIDISTANT,SHOOTING IN PULSES OF FIRE CEASELESS TO VIVIFY ALL."-
"Starting from Paumanok," lines 43-44.

Here's a quotation for this fire-filled July day in Kansas.

New England Poet Philip Booth Dies at 81

The Bangor, Maine, newspaper has an obituary at this link:
http://bangordailynews.com/news/t/lifestyle.aspx?articleid=151686&zoneid=14.

The New York Times obituary author Roja D writes of Booth:

"The sense of privacy that made poetry lovers appreciate Mr. Booth’s work ultimately cost him fame. He spent hours upon hours writing and revising in his room, Ms. Booth said, drawing material from deeper and deeper within his emotional landscape. He rarely traveled on book tours or did readings for large groups."
The rest of the article is at this link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/09/arts/09booth.html?_r=1&ref=obituaries&oref=slogin


Philip Booth scoured his landscape to find the details that turned him inward, and I remember a good afternoon with his book Relations, 20 years ago. Here is an example of his inward-outward swinging gaze, with images that reverberate:


Post-Equinox Spectra
by Philip Booth

Still weeks to ice-out
in upcountry lakes. Here
on the coast, salt-ice

gets lifted off coves
by gales and steep wave-
lengths. Tides flow hard

between the mainland
and islands. Out in
the Thorofare, two fish-

boats, blurred in thin rain,
march back and forth like
small boys' small toys.

Off Stump Cove, a red boat
and yellow boat slowly
wallow, dragging the bottom

for scallops. Across
old tides, Deer Isle and
Little Deer loom tall as

spruce, dark as deer in
their winter coats. At
the end of whatever day

this still is, a sky
like pleated gray silk
begins to glint withthin

gold caught behind it:
this last day of March
or April Fools' first.

Copyright Philip Booth
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/post-equinox-spectra/
All information has been reproduced here for educational and informational purposes. No commercial or for-profit use is allowed.