Joseph P. Wood and Clancy Martin read in Lawrence Jan. 23

Clancy Martin is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. His first novel, How to Sell, was released in May from Firar, Straus, & Giroux, and will be translated into five languages. His fiction also has appeared in journals such as NOON, 5_Trope, and Parakeet. He has authored, translated, edited several books on 'existential' philosophy. He lives somewhere near Kansas City with his wife, three daughters, and 4 toy poodles.

He read 3 narratives, both fictive and memoir, although the verisimilitude was such that all sounded equally plausible. He writes about family life with precision--not always pretty, but always compelling. He took me back to the intensity of parenting, the primal, critical times when someone's life was in my hands.

Joseph P. Wood is the author of the forthcoming collection of poems, I & We (CW Books), and of five chapbooks, including the forthcoming Gutter Catholic Love Song (Mitzvah Chaps), Urgency (Cannibal Books) and A Severing (Cinematheque Press). New poems can be found in BOMB, Boston Review, Cannibal, Hotel Amerika, Poetry London, Sycamore Review, Verse, among others. He teaches at the University of Alabama, co-edits Slash Pine Press, and coordinates the Slash Pine Poetry Festival.

Wood started out as a normal guy but shifted into overdrive for a performance stabilized by rocking and regular intakes of breath. He started with a story about his Italian grandfather, a roofer, who fell into a vat of hot tar & died at age 35. This and references to culture were embedded within sheets of images and syntax. It created its own web, and it is hard to pull out single pieces to describe.

Pamela Alexander's SLOW FIRE is a poetry find.

At my local used bookstore last week, Dusty Bookstore, I found a 2007 copy of Pamela Alexander's latest book of poetry, her fourth (Ausable Press). Her name seemed vaguely familiar, but I couldn't place her. The biography on the back cover says she won the Yale Younger Poets prize and was nominated for a Pulitzer. She now teaches at Oberlin. The "glamour shot" author's photo was not glamorous: It shows her in a parka and headband on a mountain--pretty disguised. But the poetry was not camouflaged. It was stunning, like the first stanza of "What the Trail Says":

First, prepositions. Up, alongside,
under. Then noun: rock,
tree. Lizard.

Sentences take time. (p. 30)

I also like her ability to take my mind on a carnival ride with just a few phrases, like the first line of "Sonoran": "Sky tilts, the south enlarges." She also has one of the best jazz poems I've ever seen, "Couple at the Club," which begins:

The bass goes it alone. The bass goes
by subway. The trumpet shines and swerves,
yellow taxi breaking from the light.

There is more. This poet has been biding her time, spending time in Ontario as well as Ohio, and developing her own voice at her own pace--four books in 25 years. This is a poet.

AD ASTRA POETRY PROJECT #43: ROBERT DAY (1941 - )

Robert Day is best known as a masterful prose writer. His novel Last Cattle Drive is a classic of contemporary American frontier literature. Less well known is the fact that Day received his M.F.A. from the University of Arkansas in poetry writing. The grace of his style indicates serious study of language. Whether he writes essays, articles, novellas, or poetry, he understands aesthetics of style—balance, invention, and timing.

In “Teal Hunting with Two Old Uncles,” season and place are clear. The poem’s speaker has an easy assurance, inviting readers into his low-key drama. The young narrator contrasts with older uncles, as he performs the heavy work of sodding the duck blind. The early autumn day reflects the uncles’ mellow old age concerns of storytelling and casual drinking. For them, their weapon of choice is a “rolled up” magazine. They create their own oral history compendium, a parallel to the magazine, as the young hunter goes about business. Years later, like the uncles, the narrator remembers exactly what he shot on that trip, the “Blue wings” and “Cinnamon.” With his uncles, he becomes like “old hunting dogs loaded with dreams,” not so concerned with the hunt for meat as for the distillation of memories into fine narratives.

TEAL HUNTING WITH TWO OLD UNCLES
September’s never cold enough for ducks and whiskey.

I shoot in Tee-shirt and moccasins

as green wings hustle from pond to pond

in the yellow morning.

My uncles miss chances, drinking
on the bench deep in the blind

swapping stories about Cheyenne Bottoms

and Snow Geese bigger than the moon.

In the afternoon I work shirtless, laying

strips of sod on the blind’s roof,

careful as my mother tiling her kitchen counter.

My uncles sit on campstools whacking at wasps

with rolled up Ducks Unlimited.

That evening I shot two limits: Blue wings

came in low over the decoys. I dropped

a lone Cinnamon at sundown. My uncles

napped on their bench, twitching.

Like old hunting dogs loaded with dreams.

______________________________________

Education: Robert Day received his B.A. and M.A. degrees in English (University of Kansas 1964, 1966) and M.F.A (University of Arkansas-Fayetteville 1970). Career: Day has published We Should Have Come by Water (Mammoth 2009), The Committee to Save the World (Western Books 2009), Speaking French in Kansas (Cottonwood Press 1989), and The Last Cattle Drive (Putnam 1977). He taught at Fort Hays State University, Washington College in Chestertown, Iowa Writers Workshop, University of Kansas, and Montaigne College, The University of Bordeaux.
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©2010 Denise Low AAPP 43 ©2010 Robert Day “Teal Hunting with Two Old Uncles”

John Hoppenthaler Curates Women's Poetry for Connotation Press

In 2009, Publisher’s Weekly excluded women from its list of Top Ten Books. This inspired John Hoppenthaler to edit a special collection of women’s poetry for online journal Connotation Press http://http//www.connotationpress.com/index.php/a-poetry-congeries-with-john-hoppenthaler/january-2010/252-a-poetry-congeries-with-john-hoppenthaler-january-2010

This issue features Maxine Kumin and Alicia Ostriker; I am honored to have poems in this e-zine (http://connotationpress.com/index.php/a-poetry-congeries-with-john-hoppenthaler/january-2010/257-denise-low-poetry), along with Claudia Emerson (Pulitzer Prize), Fleda Brown (former Del. Poet Laureate), Annie Finch (founder of WOM-PO, the Discussion of Women’s Poetics listserve), Allison Joseph, Janice Harrington, Lola Haskins, Amy Newman, Martha Rhodes, Maureen Seaton, Erinn Batykefer, Joni Wallace, and Anna Akhmatova. Please visit this website, and many thanks to John for his “Poetry Congeries-January 2010.”

See Legendary Harley Elliott in a Rare KC Area Performance

Harley Elliott is one of the most influential Kansas-Great Plains area poets and writers. He has published 20 books, including publications with Hanging Loose Press, Crossing Press, Juniper, and Woodley. He seldom reads or performs outside of Salina, his hometown. Jan. 22 & 23 Bride of Actors' Ensemble presents: "Easy Writers Harleys Elliott & Marshall in Born To Be Mild" 8 pm at the YWCA of Greater Kansas City, Ks at 6th & State. The Ensemble writes: "Experience the heart-wrenching story of identical twins named Harley--born four moths apart, kidnapped by gypsies and forced to write poetry and stuff--who have been reunited at last. What are the odds? This is heavy. And funny too." For reservations, call 913-371-1105.

Poetry Animations Are Worth a Look!

Hi, the latest techno-gizmo for poetry is animation of poet photographs to make it appear that they are talking, so we can have Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and others appear to speak their poems. Here's the You-Tube link:

http://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJ1MWYAJbWs

AD ASTRA POETRY PROJECT # 42: STEPHEN MEATS (1944 - )

Stephen Meats was born in LeRoy, Kansas, and raised in Concordia. Foremost of his contributions to Kansas literary culture is his service as poetry editor of Midwest Quarterly. In that role he has curated special issues of regional poetry, including one devoted to the first Kansas poet laureate Jonathan Holden. He is able to fulfill this poet’s poet role because of his own fine verse. His book Looking for the Pale Eagle is a rare poetry best seller—the first printing sold out quickly.

This poem “My Advice” gives directions for enjoying the countryside of Kansas. Meats describes a typical prairie road—not spectacular, but small joys unfold He suggests that his readers stop and collect “chat,” or roadbed gravel, to reposition at home. The reflective moment of collection is when sky, birds, and landscape are noticed. The rock is for remembering that moment. Like stone soup, after the recipe is complete, the stone can be discarded. As a catalyst, its purpose is fulfilled. Poems are like such stones.

My Advice

You say you want to find yourself. You’ll need
a piece of gravel. Drive any rocked road
in Kansas and you’ll hear pieces by the dozen

knocking in your wheel wells. For once, stop
and get out of the car. Take a minute to look
at the sky—flat bottomed clouds shadowing

the pastures. You’ll hear the meadowlark
on the fence post before you see him fly.
Pick up your piece of gravel. If you’re far

off the main route, a handful of chat, or even
road sand will do. Cup it in your palm while your
tires hum away the miles on the asphalt highway.

Warm it in your pocket as you drink your coffee
at the café counter in the next town, and stay
a while to look at the faces and listen to the talk.

Then take it home with you and right away
put it in your garden or your flower box or drop
it in the driveway. It doesn’t really matter
You’ve already got your answer.

Education: Stephen Meats attended Kansas State University for three years before transferring to the University of South Carolina, where he earned his bachelor’s (1966), master’s (1968), and doctoral degrees in English (1972).
Career: Meats is University Professor and English Department Chair Pittsburg State University. Since 1985, he has been poetry editor of The Midwest Quarterly. Meats has published Looking for the Pale Eagle (Woodley Press, 1993). His poetry, articles, and fiction appear in Kansas Quarterly, The Little Balkans Review, Albatross, The Quarterly, The Laurel Review, Blue Unicorn, Tampa Review, Arete, Hurakan, Flint Hills Review, Prairie Poetry, Dos Passos Review, and others.
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©2009 Denise Low AAPP 42 ©2008 “My Advice,” Stephen Meats, in Dos Passos Review

Keith Waldrop Wins National Book Award in Poetry

For more information about the new NBA winner and sample poems, see the National Book Foundation site:
http://www.nationalbook.org/nba2009_p_waldrop.html
Judges were Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, A. Van Jordan, Cole Swensen, and Kevin Young


Keith Waldrop, Brooke Russell Astor Professor of Humanities at Brown University, has published more than a dozen works each of original poetry and translations. His first book, A Windmill Near Calvary, was shortlisted for the 1968 National Book Award. Recent books include The Real Subject: Queries and Conjectures of Jacob Delafon, with Sample Poems, The House Seen from Nowhere, and a translation of The Flowers of Evil by Charles Baudelaire.

SUGGESTED LINKS

EPC/Keith Waldrop Home Page
A resource of the Electronic Poetry Center, an edited site devoted to the presentation of full-text resources for innovative writing.
http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/waldropk/index.html

Keith Waldrop Wikipedia Entry
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Waldrop

Keith Waldrop page at Poets.org
http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/1575

Judith Roitman will read Nov. 19 new poems: here's her new form

Judith Roitman writes this about her latest poems, which she will read from Nov. 19 in a joint reading with Jim McCrary:

"About 9 or 10 months ago I started writing poems in couplets about unrequited love (which, if you know me, is truly bizarre). They were sort of ghazals (an Arabic form) but without the more formal elements. Here is the first one:

Tongue

My beloved calls me at home
and I tell him: don’t do it.

I will be thrown into the bat cave.
My money will no longer work.

My tongue will be given to birds
and yours glued to the lamppost.


"They were okay, but felt a little glib. For example, the first line of the last stanza is a mashup of something from a Buddhist precepts ceremony, and the last line is the urban legend about what happens on a winter day if you touch your tongue to metal. They didn’t go deep enough. Reading them I felt like a sculptor looking at a block of stone: there’s something inside and my job is to find it. So I started playing with random generators (input a text and it will rearrange it semi-randomly) and the translation program Babelfish (input text in one language and translate it into another) to shake things loose and see what came out. This gave me raw material derived from the original text, like the separated bones of a skeleton. How do you reassemble it? So I went into collage mode and put things together to get this:

Tongue

Beloved! says to him
from that house shouting.

Thrown with the bat oyster:
qualitative thing.

Money unable to operate.
Lamppost and tongue binding.

Glued to birds:
don’t do it.

"You can see how the translation program changed things: “bat cave” becomes “bat oyster;” “no longer work” becomes “unable to operate.” Somehow the added strangeness gives depth: an oyster is like a cave, and the juxtaposition makes the bat into its own cave (although I don’t expect anyone to consciously think this — I didn’t until I wrote this); “unable to operate” is a more desperate state than “no longer working;” “binding” is stronger and less derivative than “glued.” And you can also see the effect of collage. For example, “birds” is split off from “tongue” and stands alone (the only noun) in the last stanza, together with the imperative — don’t do it — originally in the first stanza. I don’t know how “qualitative thing” appeared, but am grateful it did. Also, freed this way, I could get rid of many (not all) instances of the smoothing parts of speech — prepositions, connectives; freed from narrative I could get rid of many (not all) verbs, which in turn frees the reader from thinking she needs to create a narrative or, even, the illusion of coherent meaning. "

Jim McCrary Interview & Podcasts available at LJW website

The Lawrence Journal World has an online interview with Jim McCrary and podcasts at this site: http://http://www.lawrence.com/news/2009/nov/15/mccrary/.

Jim is releasing his collected chapbooks in a volume, All That (Many Penny Press). He is an original writer with oblique perspectives that illuminate the larger cosmos. Reading his work reminds me of squinting so I can see periphery and direct images at once. He has an MA from Cal. State U.-Sonoma; he's been publishing, editing, slamming, and proclaiming poetry for about 40 years, I figure.