Just what does a Poet Laureate do?

I was looking over the works of W.S. Merwin the other day and it occurred to me that I’m not sure exactly what a U.S. Poet Laureate is supposed to do. Maybe the trouble is that there is no set responsibilities laid out by the Library of Congress. Perhaps there should be.
Merwin was named the country’s 17th poet laureate last week replacing the outgoing Kay Ryan. I’m not suggesting this is a bad choice. Merwin certainly deserves the honor. Born in New York City in 1927, a currently residing in Hawaii, Merwin has won just about everything a poet can, including two Pulitzer’s, the National Book Award,  a Governor’s Award, the Pen Translation Prize and the Lila Wallace Reader’s Digest Award.
He is part of a great group of modern poets, all born around the same time, a contemporary of Robert Bly, Adrienne Rich, Robert Lowell and Allen Ginsberg. And like those poets, his most influential work (mostly about the Vietnam War) came in the late 1960s and early 1970s, including The Carrier of Ladders, which won him his first Pulitzer.
His second Pulitzer came just last year, for The Shadow of Sirius, a somewhat perplexing collection about memory and age and the limits of life. In fact, much of Merwin’s later work involves the theme of memory, and time – likely an influence of his affinity of Eastern tradition and an almost Zen-like introspection of work.
In one lovely piece from The Shadow of Sirius, Merwin reflects on his own poetry, but of course “Worn Words” is an allegory to his own later years: “The poems are the ones / I turn to first now / finding a hope that keeps / beckoning me.”
Still, just a year after winning the Pulitzer, after having served as a poetry consultant for the Library of Congress, and being of a certain age, the Laureateship feels more like a final reward than an actual, active job, at least in Merwin’s case.
In a New York Times story on the announcement, Dana Gioia, the former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, said that Merwin was “an inevitable choice” for poet laureate implying that if a poet can just last long enough the award will be his.
That hasn’t always been the case. Robert Pinsky was in his 50s when he was Poet Laureate from 1997-2002 as was Billy Collins, 2001-2003. But the role of the laureate has always been a bit mysterious.
First, the laureate receives $35,000. At one time, that was a lot of money and could conceivably allow the poet to dedicate the rest of his life to his art. Now, that amount is just a stipend.
The poet is also given the responsibility of overseeing an ongoing series of poetry readings at the Library of Congress.  Not a bad gig, but in reality the poets don’t have the time or money to go shipping back and forth to Washington. Merwin isn’t going to be leaving Hawaii anytime too soon, so the readings will ultimately be put on by the library in the poet’s name.
Other than that, the poet’s are charged with “promoting poetry.” Given that promoting poetry is something they have likely already been doing for most of their lives, that responsibility just plain seems silly.
So, here’s a suggestion: how about the Library of Congress actually become a patron of the chosen poet. Instead of just throwing a couple bucks at him and setting him off to promote poetry, the Library should promote the poet itself – like a publisher would or a promoter. They are already giving him $35,000, why not use that money to promote his books? After all, if the poet is ostensibly picked because he’s done so much good for poetry, why not take that poet public so to speak.  Wouldn’t that do more to bring these great voices to the public? Let’s face it, local poetry presses are usually universities to begin with and they can’t push a poet’s work like a Random House can.
Poets and the institutions that highlight them like the Library of Congress need to break out of the self-masturbatory trap of promoting poetry from within. All this glad-handing does little other than stroke a poet’s ego. Let me ask you this: W.S. Merwin, arguably one of our greatest living poets has been writing and publishing since 1952. Have you heard of him? Maybe the Library of Congress should stop handing out rewards and start promoting their poets before they are 82 years old.
W.S. Merwin has published more than 30 books of prose and collections of poetry, along with about 2 dozen translations. Here’s a short list of his best:
The First Four Books of Poems (2000) Merwin’s first four books individually are hard to find. Try this instead.  It includes A Mask for Janus (1952), The Dancing Bears (1954), Green with Beasts (1956), and The Drunk in the Furnace (1960). Merwin’s early work is moving, raw and highly expressive.
The Second Four Books of Poems: The Moving Target / The Lice / The Carrier of Ladders / Writings to an Unfinished Accompaniment (2000) The collection brings together Merwin’s most accomplished works, including his Vietnam books and The Carrier of Ladders, which won his first Pulitzer Prize.
The Shadow of Sirius (2009) – No punctuation and a single first capital letter. Merwin is seasoned here and this time-themed collection is both elegant and weighty. He won his second Pulitzer for this collection.

The Typewriter is Holy: The Complete and Uncensored History of the Beat Generation, by Bill Morgan, Free Press, 2010, 250 pages

In honor of the New Hampshire slam poets’ marathon, why not look back on the poets who started it all? The poetic pedigree of today’s slammers is the Beats, and Bill Morgan knows a thing or two about the Beats. A librarian by trade, he was the bibliographer of most of them, including Allen Ginsberg, who was his friend. In fact, Morgan is pretty much the Beat historian, having written or edited dozens of books on the Beats.
The Typewriter is Holy is an early comprehensive history of the formation of the Beats, from their early friendships to their cultural impact to their deaths.
In his introduction, Morgan makes the connection between the beat circle of Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, Neal Cassady and others to the transcendental movement of the 1840s with Emerson, Thoreau and their crew. It’s an apt connection.
But to Morgan, whereas Emerson was just one of many transcendentalists of the time, Ginsberg is crux of the Beat Generation. “The Transcendental movement wouldn’t have been as tasty without Emerson,” Morgan writes, “but the Beat Generation never would have existed with Ginsberg.”
And so it goes, with Ginsberg the center of this ever circulating wheel, constantly pulling and pushing poets, writers and thinkers into and around this circle.
The point of the book is to give a basic history of some of the writers who created the hippie movement, drug experimentation, slam poetry and youth culture in this country. It’s well annotated and informed. It’s not anything terribly new, however. Plus, because Morgan is so close to the subjects, much of the drug abuse and crimes committed by these folks are either ignored or simply waved off as the foibles of smart guys creating art.
If you are just beginning to explore the Beat Generation, this is a fine book to begin your journey. If you’re looking for a deeper, more complex look at this very complex movement, keep looking.

Slam Free for 7 days

As you read this, in a kitchen in Manchester, seven poor and no doubt hoarse slam poets are attempting to set a record. It’s a record that won’t be recorded as such, even though technically it appears it may be a Guinness-worthy attempt. If they succeed, they won’t win a prize or even make the local news.
They are following a long tradition in American poetry — begging and asking for help. If you’ve ever attended a reading at Bridge Café — even if you hated it — you should check this out.
On Wednesday, July 7, at 7 a.m., the seven-member 2010 Slam Free or Die Manchester Team began a week-long, 24-hour-a-day poetry reading. The marathon is a fundraiser to get the team to St. Paul, Minn., in August to compete in the National Poetry Slam. They’re looking to raise about three grand.
Not much in the grand scheme of things, but for seven poets all under the age of 30, standing in a kitchen, reading to the fridge, that’s a mighty large amount of cash to raise.
So, the marathon.
Look, I’m not a fan of slam poetry, but I am a fan of desperate and crazy ideas. Staging a 168-hour-long reading seems a throwback to what turn-of-the-century poetry excelled at — outrageousness. From the Victorian salon, where poets served tea and cake to potential sponsors, to the milk crate on the ground in Central Park, you have to hand it to this team.
You have to love poetry to do this. Also, I imagine you have to love pizza, coffee and Ramen noodles.
Not to mention the fact that even if this team wins in St. Paul, they are still in the hole. After a $500 registration fee, plus airfare, hotel, food etc., the winning team takes home $2,000. And a trophy.
The team’s coach, 27-year-old Mark Palos, says there’s something bigger than money at stake: bragging rights. Palos, whose moniker is The Colonel, told me that many of the poets who make it to the finals are able to go on national tour just based on that notoriety.
So, seven team members, seven days. Each will have a day. During their day, each featured poet will not sleep, and he or she will read for two hours, then get a 15-minute break. During those breaks, the team is looking for fans and supporters to sign up and fill in the spaces. They will read their own work, and some of their favorites of other poets. There will likely be some prose thrown in there as well.
How will they make money? Well, you can always just give them money. They have a PayPal account set up through Facebook. Or you can pay a couple bucks to fill in the break slots with your own work. Or you can pay to make requests.
This is all live, at The Colonel’s house, and also via streaming feed. So you can just tune in at 2 a.m. if you can’t sleep and watch this group go.
Here’s a brief schedule of who’s up and what you might expect:
Wednesday, July 7, Beau Williams, 22, of Dover, mix of humor and deeper philosophy.
Thursday, July 8, Sam Teitel, 23, of Somerville, Mass., specializes in autobiography.
Friday, July 9, JeFF Stumpo, 30 Portsmouth, experimental.
Saturday, July 10, Tim Veilluex, 30, Portsmouth, wry humor and satirical current events.
Sunday, July 11, Mark Palos, 27, Manchester, surrealism, humor, study of extremes.
Monday, July 12, Mckendy Fils-Aime, 22, Manchester, high dramas and epic notes.
Tuesday, July 13, Krista Mosca, 28, Nashua, intense personal introspection.
So, stop by The Colonel's kitchen at 363 Lake ave., Manchester or check out the live video feed through the Slam Free or Die Facebook page at www.facebook.com/#!/slamfreeordie. If you can’t find it, or are not a Facebook addict, drop me an e-mail at danszczesny@gmail.com and I’ll direct you there.

Poetry’s finest non-poet passes, leaves legacy of NH's Frost Place

Don Hall said of the Frost Place that it was a special place dedicated to poetry, not to poets.
It’s an important distinction to make in the wake of the passing of Donald Sheehan, founding director of the famous poetry sanctuary in Franconia. Sheehan died May 26 at his home in Charleston, S.C. He was 70.
For those who label themselves poets, but have never pilgrimaged to Frost Place, shame on you. Robert Frost and his family lived and then spent summers at the old farm in Franconia from about 1915 to 1940. The famous front porch, where frost wrote, overlooks the White Mountains.
For New England poets and lovers of poetry, it’s a place of serene quite and thoughtfulness, and worthy of a day trip. With its old mailbox with “Frost” painted on the side, to the trails in back where Frost walked, it’s a monastery of poetry.

And its fame is due mainly to Donald Sheehan. From 1977, Sheehan served as the Frost Place’s executive director. Each summer, the Frost Place awards a fellowship to an emerging American poet, including a cash stipend and the opportunity to live and write in the house for several months. In addition, The Frost Place has sponsored an annual Festival and Conference on Poetry.
Sheehan was not himself a poet. But he knew a good poem when he read one! He was also a teacher and critic at Dartmouth. Put bluntly, Frost Place, and New England poetry would not be what it is without Sheehan.
Sheehan’s vision was simple? It’s about the poem, stupid. No matter the standing, or the ego, of the resident poet, poets abided by their words. Nothing else mattered. Follow that simple rule, a Sheehan would write one of his legendary introductions for you, hold your hand through the poetry universe and be your greatest supporter. Cross him, dare to put on airs, and you would not be asked to come back.
The lessons of Sheehan’s Frost Place can be applied today. Poetry is non-hierarchical; words matter, focus on the poem, not the poet, and all poetry will be better off. Poetry is community-minded; poets are the philosophers of art, a poem is there to provide insight and depth to the human condition, not to the poet’s condition. Poetry should be informal, but serious; learn to laugh at yourself and your work will take on deeper depth. Poetry should be rejuvenating; even when a poet goes to a dark place, the reader should understand his own life better and act on that understanding. A poet is accessible; no one is better than you, no poet stand taller than the rest.
Sheehan was a deeply spiritual man, who took humility and strength of character seriously and personally. Visit Frost Place. Visit quietly, and reverently, like it’s a church or temple. Listen to what Sheehan’s Frost Place tells you. Then shut up and write.

In honor of Donald Sheehan, here’s a short list of Robert Frost books. If you are a poet, wish to be a poet, or enjoy poetry, Frost’s first five collections should be on your shelves.

A Boy’s Will (1913) Published in England, the book has few famous poems but allowed Frost to enter into the circle of poets, including Ezra Pound. Read: “Mowing”

North of Boston (1914) The big one, one hit after another. Frost begins early to cement his style and fame. Read: “Mending Wall,” “After Apple Picking”

Mountain Interval (1916) The most famous modern English language poem is released. Read: “The Road Not Taken”

New Hampshire (1923) Frost’s ode to the Granite State won him the Pulitzer. Read: “New Hampshire,” “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening.”

West-Running Brook (1928) The famous title poem stood out, but Frost’s mature style makes this collection memorable. Read: “Spring Pools,” “Tree at My Window.”

FLASHBACK: Wislawa Szymborska (1923- ), View with a Grain of Sand, Harcourt Brace, 1995, 214 words

This week, we look back on great works by poets little known in the United States, but widely acknowledged as literary giants elsewhere.
This magnificent collection from Polish essayist and poet Wislawa Szymborska likely contributed to her winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1996. View with a Grain of Sand, a selection of her work spanning 1957-1993, hits most of the highpoints that made this poet one of the most popular in Europe.
Her fame as a poet is even more amazing considering her poetic output is fairly slim, about 250 poems total to date.
View with a Grain of Sand captures selections from seven previous volumes, though the focus is on later work such as The End and the Beginning (1993) and A Large Number (1972).
If there is any one theme of Szymborska's poetry, it's the grandness of life's small moments. She best known for employing literary devices like irony and understatement to illuminate great philosophical obsessions, and this collection does a fine job of providing a reader unfamiliar with this poet a window into those major themes.
The title poem, from her collection The People on the Bridge (1986), is an ideal example of both Szymborska's use of irony and her existential focus on the everyday. In it, the narrator explains that nature - sand, lakes, sky - are connected to us only through our own experience, that nature itself has only the interest or concern for us as we apply to it. She writes of a grain of sand: "Our glance, our touch mean nothing to it. / it doesn't feel itself seen or touched. / And that it fell on the windowsill / is only our experience, not its."
The reader can also come away understanding Szymborska's amazing growth as a poet. Her early work is tentative and immature. In Calling Out to Yeti (1957) Szymborska is too careful, stumbling over her metaphors. In "Nothing Twice," a poem about fleeting life, she forces clumsy rhymes: "It's in its nature not to stay: / Today is always gone tomorrow."
The volume does leave out any mention of her two earliest collections, no doubt to avoid any controversy among the Nobel Committee considering her for the reward the following year. She was a loyal Stalinist in Poland in the early 1950s. And though she walked away from her Socialist ideology and renounced her early political work, a complete picture of this poet would have included her poems dedicated to Lenin and the glories of industrial construction.
For the reader interested in the human condition, Szymborska has been around long enough to know what she's talking about. View with a Grain of Sand is a worthy collection from one of Europe's most popular poets.

Poetry dishonors our fallen servicemen

So, it’s Memorial Day next Monday, May 31, and in my quest to find the poetry in everything, I started thinking about the relation between poetic dialogue and remembering the American war dead.
Yeah, I know, too much time on my hands.
Anyway, since it’s pretty much a truism that everything has had poetry written about it, it seemed at first blush like a simple task: find good poetry dedicated to Memorial Day. As it turns out, “good” is the key word in that sentence.
Because while there are reams of poems about dead soldiers – no I mean thousands, hundreds of thousands, likely more poems about fallen soldiers than actual fallen soldiers – it turns out that painfully few are actually worthy of the sacrifice those soldiers made.
Before we get into the pitiful details, a history lesson. Memorial Day is really a holiday custom made for poetry. Early incarnations of Memorial Day centered around post-civil war Decoration Day, honoring Union dead. The name was changed in the 1880s to Memorial Day to make it more palatable to the South, but it didn’t become common until after World War II. In fact, despite that fact that it seems like Memorial Day has been around forever, it was only in 1967 that it became official.
I put the call out to two friends steeped in poetic language and university and asked them if they could unearth some Memorial Day poetry worthy of mention. From one, I got a simple message, nothing that wasn’t over-the-top or depressing. The other, a professor in Michigan, reminded me of a whole host of early American memorial poetry. Whitman in particular wrote eloquently about the Civil War, most famously in “O Captain! My Captain.” Melville wrote some decent lines and Robert Lowell.
But the vast majority of Memorial Day poetry sounds like this, from William Henry Clay Dodson:
“And in this sunny land of ours, / Now sleeping side by side, / The Union Blue and Southern Gray / Lie buried side by side.”
Here’s another verse from “Freedom Is Not Free” by Kelly Strong:
“I heard the sound of taps one night, / When everything was still / I listened to the bugler play / And felt a sudden chill.”
It’s as we need simplistic patriotism to lessen the terrible cost of celebrating such terrible things: not the sacrifice of soldiers but the fact that they had to be sacrificed at all. Those early poets came straight at the cost of war, the honor of the dead and gallantry of the sacrifice. Now, it’s just crass platitudes and blind flag waving.
Evoking 911 is a cheap substitute for actual dedication.
But maybe that’s just the nature of poetry in relation to our modern Memorial Day – you know the weekend that starts summer, which the Indy 500 is run over, that used cars and mattresses are sold. Ugh. Maybe we deserve the poetry we get. The soldiers who died so that we could celebrate this day, however, certainly deserve better.

On Purpose, Nick Laird, Norton, 2010, 65 pages

Nick Laird’s poetry is like a Robert Parker novel: spare and raw, but dignified. Like an old boxer who still has a wicked right. On Purpose is fast and merciless. It works, mostly on adrenaline, and that’s ok.
In “Hunting is a Hole Occupation” the Irish poet offers a flurry of images from squatting toads to being beaten in the forest and finishes his machine gun diatribe with, “I’ve come alone and naked, aching / liking my hands after eating, waiting / to learn if God exists, I hate him.” Read that out loud and listen to the matching of aching and waiting. It’s perfect timing.
Most of this slim volume works at that level with short, powerful punched that the reader rarely see coming. Sometimes, it backfires, but mostly the punches land.
B+

In defence of the worst poem ever written

It’s the Plan Nine From Outer Space of the poetry world. Remember that Monty Python sketch about a joke so funny it could never be told for fear of harming the listener? This poem is like that.
It’s a poem (and a poet) that few actually know, but nearly everyone has heard some variation, some parody or song or take on it.
It’s Joyce Kilmer’s “Trees”, and I’m here to tell you that it is the worst poem ever written. But that doesn’t mean Kilmer was the worst poet. Nor does it mean we should forget it. In fact, it’s important to remember.
First, it’s not just me saying it’s the worst. It really is the worst. It is held up in popular culture and academia as the most over sentimental, most archaic, most painfully traditional English poem ever written. I know you have heard this poem. Here’s the first lines:

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast

There is so much wrong with this poem’s imagery, its meter and its personification of earth’s breast feeding the tree its life. Kilmer concludes that “Poems are made by fools like me, / But only God can make a tree.” The poem was a giant hit in when it was first published in 1914. Kilmer gained instant fame and notoriety. The criticism also began almost immediately, with other poets like Ogden Nash penning parodies. Everyone from Our Gang to Victor Borge to Walt Disney got in the act. The poem was set to song, put in musicals and repeated in universities as the example of what a good poem should not be.
And what did Mr. Kilmer have to say about all this? Not much. He was killed by a sniper in the Second Battle of the Marne in 1918 at the age of 31.
Of course, there’s a point to all this. I lived in New Jersey for a while. (Come on, it wasn’t that bad!) If you spend more than 20 minutes in New Jersey you are likely to wonder just who the hell this Kilmer guy is. Alfred Joyce Kilmer was born in Jersey. There’s a museum there, his birth house, a bunch of schools named after him and some buildings on Rutgers University. Most importantly, there is a Rest Stop along the Jersey Turnpike named in his honor. In New Jersey, that’s the equivalent of being crowded king in most eastern European countries.
But that’s not all. He has a park and a square in Brooklyn, a memorial in St. Paul, an intersection in Chicago, and a Memorial Forest in North Carolina.
He also has an annual Bad Poetry contest named after him at Columbia University.
Ed Wood does not have any intersections named after him.
So, how does the worst poet ever (or eveh for you Jersey readers) get such respect, not to mention naming rights? There’s a few reasons for this. First, Kilmer isn’t defined by that one poem. He was a powerful literary critic and lecturer. He was a brilliant journalist. In fact, it’s one of the reasons he died. He went to France to write about the war. Had he not died, he may have had the time to overshadow that one poem.
Second, he was also a deeply faithful man. At the time, he was known as the poet laureate of the Catholic Church. I’m not saying faith makes you a better poet. But maybe, sometimes, it’s not that bad just being a sentimentalist. Like his poem or not, Kilmer was earnest, he wrote what he felt.
Finally and here’s the real point, there was a time when it was ok to be a poet. The guy was a soldier. His oratory skills were compared to G.K. Chesterton. In other words he was no pantywaist, and yet, he wrote the most simplistic, overwrought poem of all time. And they still named a Rest Stop after him.

Shakespeare Makes the Playoffs, by Ron Koertge, Candlewick Press, 2010, 170 pages

Here’s the conceit; teenage Kevin Boland like baseball, poetry and his girlfriend Mira. Then he meets Amy at a poetry reading and likes her to. What’s a tween to do? Why write in his story in his poetry notebook of course in a series of sonnets, prose and quatrains.
And just like the first book in the series, Shakespeare Bats Cleanup, Ron Koertge makes it work. A little cheesy, sure, but it’s nice to find a smart young adult book that isn’t about vampires or wizards. Koertge’s story is direct, his protagonist appears realistic, and for a teenager who likes poetry, Kevin Boland is decent role model. There’s also emails between teachers and Kevin to move the story and provide some poetry lessons.
If you’re looking for a way to get your sports obsessed kid into poetry, this may be it.
B+

The Waiting Room Reader, by the editors of CavanKerry Press, 2010, 87 pages

I like CavenKerry Press. I review their books often, because they know poetry, they respect it and they are one of the few publishers printing and promoting new poets’ works. I generally stay away from compilations, however. It’s too risky to take a stand on most compilations given the typical wide variety of styles, themes and poets. Usually there’s something for everyone, and something everyone will dislike as well.
That’s true of The Waiting Room Reader, but I decided to mention it because it comes from a press doing good work, and I’m a sucker for CavenKerry.
This is really a collection of CavenKerry poets disguised behind the conceit, literally, of a waiting room collection. We spend a lot of time sitting around hospital and doctors’ waiting rooms. So, instead of reading bad, outdated magazines, why not browse through a collection of, generally, uplifting poems of all different styles and forms. There’s no overriding theme, just a bunch of poems divided into categories like Food and Home and Daughters and Sons. Some of it’s good, some is not, but the presentation is pleasant and the idea is sound.
It’s all part of CavenKerry’s GiftBooks outreach program and copies of The Waiting Room Reader are given out to underfunded hospitals. You can buy one as well, and you should if you are interested in a decent cause. If not, at least ask your doctor to stock it instead of US magazine.
Unrated but A for idea

The Superbowl of Slam and other musings

I’ve been hard on the slammers, I know. And while I don’t feel particularly bad about it, our local performance poets deserve a shout out for their hard work last Friday at the Bridge Café in Manchester. The New Hampshire team, named Slam Free of Die, will be one of 7 teams throughout New England heading to St. Paul in August for the National Poetry Slam.
The HippoPress's readers’ third favorite poet in the state, Mark Palos, aka The Colonel, will be coaching the five-slammer team and I’ll let him describe the atmosphere at the Bridge as the competitors vied for the five spots:
“As far as how finals went, it was one of the closest bouts I've ever seen. You could not have predicted who was going to make the team at any point. There were a couple of people who took a strong lead at the beginning and then fell back to eventually not make the team at all and two people got terrible scores in the opening round and then had huge come-from-behind recoveries to end up making the team. Very exciting. The judges were consistent (which is good) but also consistently gave low scores (which makes a loss all the tougher for those that didn't make the team). The spread between all the people who ultimately made the team was mere tenths of a point. This was one of the most blood-and-guts slams I've ever seen. Every poet had to work incredibly hard for every point. In the end, we also had to have a tie-breaker for 6th place, which is the alternate spot (since we are probably actually going to need to utilize the alternate and we didn't want the two people who were tied to have a tie-breaker later with a different panel of judges, that would not be fair). All-around, it was an edge-of-your-seat night from beginning to end. Everyone brought their very best work and the poetry as well as the performances were all top-notch.”
I like Mark Palos. I like that he came in third in the voting of state’s best poet behind Robert Frost and Donald Hall. He competed in the national competition in 2008 and 2009, and I like that he has friends on his Facebook page named Damage Manch-Vegas, and Jazzman Lewis and Laura Yes Yes. It’s all very exciting and creative.
So, kudos to the new team. You can check out updates on their Facebook page, Bridge Poetry, and once The Colonel works out the details, we’ll feature some of the winners in this column and see if their work is as interesting as their names.
In other reward-driven poetry news, the Library of Congress just this week announced that nominations are open for the Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Poetry Prize. I know what you’re thinking, who the heck is that? She was LBJ’s daughter, and she liked poetry and she worked at the Library of Congress and blah, blah, blah... who cares. The point is that every two years the library gives $10,000 to an American poet for the best book published in the last two years.
Sounds great right? Well, the nominations have to come from publishers. That’s a ton of money for poets, and it seems a little disingenuous to put those choices in the hands of the publishers who will likely use the notoriety of the award as a way to push an author they want to sell more books. Asking a publisher to nominate the best book is like asking a dad to nominate a favorite child. What do you think the odds are that the dad is going to pick somebody else’s kid? Seems a bit obvious.
On the other, any reward is a good reward to a poet.

Happy birthday Mr. Corwin

Ever heard of Norman Corwin? Me either, though I feel foolish for not. Mr. Corwin celebrated his 100th birthday Monday. There were a few stories here and there – NPR mostly, as it turns out Corwin did series of radio plays for NPR when he was a mere youngster in his 80s.
Norma Corwin is a name pretty well lost in the annals of time now, which is a shame I guess. I mean just a quick Google search lists his Academy Award, Peabody Medals, Golden Globes and Emmys. He is an inductee into the Radio Broadcasting Hall of Fame, and that’s where he fits into this column.
When it comes to the Golden Age of Radio, Corwin is a peer to Orson Wells. He was an inspiration to Rod Sterling and Norman Leer. His nickname is the “Poet Laureate of Radio.”
He is most famous, in fact, for a poem. The 65th anniversary of the broadcast of “On a Note of Triumph” is Saturday. That single broadcast, which celebrated the Allied victory in Europe on VE Day was broadcast to 60 million people. Guys like Studs Terkel and Carl Sandburg heard it. Sandberg called it the most important radio broadcast ever.
Folks from that generation can quote whole verses. It brought people to tears. It made them proud to be an American. It helped them remember the terrible toll of World War II. It did everything a poem, and a poet, is supposed to do – it created a moment of collective consciousness, when regular people from New York City to New Mexico came together in a moment frozen forever in time.
It is also a dreadful poem. The verbiage is overwrought. The lofty patriotic verses literally smother the grandiose metaphors. Here’s a typical verse:

Lord God of trajectory and blast
Whose terrible sword has laid open the serpent
So it withers in the sun for the just to see,
Sheathe now the swift avenging blade with the names of nations writ on it,
And assist in the preparation of the ploughshare.

So it got me thinking about the lesson for today. And that is, what is eternal art anyway? This poem, so important then, is barely remembered today. It’s no longer a poem, it’s history; a literary footnote. (To be fair to Corwin, his body of work is deep, complex and worth study.)
Yet Whitman’s Leaves of Grass for example, also deeply American, also overwhelmingly popular, also able to move readers to emotional depths, is considered one of the classics, a poem among poems. High art.
I'll tell you why with an example. A few years ago, at the start of the Iraq war, a collection of anti-war poetry was released, and many modern poets contributed. I forget the title right now, but it’s no matter. The poems were forgettable. Why? Because poetry is not supposed to address you directly – it is not supposed to look you in the eye and stare you down.
Oh you’ll remember it for a while if it does, just as people remembered “On a Note of Triumph” for many years after. But a word of advice to all you “anti” and “pro” poets out there – anti-war, anti-government, pro-America, pro-religion.
Poetry should circle around. Poetry should be seen out of the corner of the readers’ eye. A poem should sink in, not shout out. It should be worn like an old hat, not saluted like a crisp flag. It should be about something, and about everything, and about anything.
Years after you read a good poem, you may be sitting at a traffic light, eating at a restaurant, playing catch with your kid, when you remember. NPR should not have to remind you.

Is that a poem in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?

If you’re reading this on Thursday, April 29, you’re in luck. Today is National Poem in Your Pocket Day! You won’t get a day off. You likely won’t even have a BBQ. But it’s an important day anyway.
To be honest, when I first heard about Poem in Your Pocket Day, I rolled my eyes. Ugh, I thought, another cheesy, over sincere attempt to force poetry relevance down the poetry doubter’s throats. But you know what, after reading some of the Poem in Your Pocket celebration suggestions, I’ve changed my mind. It’s actually kind of anti-establishment, and I like it!
Before I get into the why, how about a little history? I make a lot of noise about the importance of language, the adherence to tradition and respecting the classic form and style of the poem – all things most modernist poetry and slam is sadly lacking.
I’ve written a lot the past couple weeks about what poetry should not be. It is not about some guy shouting at you at a coffee house. It is not about hating your parents. Or a starving artist. Or being shocking. Or vampires.
It’s bigger than that, and whether it’s classical or modern, the poem’s the thing. The great masters don’t actively try to be different. They just are different. Above caring. Poetry – the really good poetry that makes you change your life – is like that.
What I do like about modern poetry is its spirit. The best slammers – like Jack McCarthy who is well known in New England, or Sierra DeMuldar from St. Paul – are theatrical, yes, but there’s a spirit in their poems that elevates the work beyond the individual. They give over to the language – it’s like speaking in tongues, a
delirious surrender to meaning greater than the everyday world. That’s why it matters. Blake did it. And Whitman. Eliot, Frost and Atwood.
Their work simply overshadows the writer, and that’s where the Poem in Your Pocket celebration comes in.
It’s actually so ridiculous, so giddily insane that it elevates the art form.
Here’s the conceit. Pick a poem you love, carry it in your pocket, then randomly share it with strangers. Just whip it out and read it on the street. Today, on your way home, stop at the 7-11, pull out your poem and read it to the guy behind the counter.
My only suggestion would be to pick short poems so you can get out of there before the cops come.
Some further suggestions for celebrating Poem in Your Pocket month are equally bold.
For example, urge businesses to offer discounts for those carrying poems. This is fantastic! The heck with Health Care, this is real Socialism my friends – paying for your coffee with a poem. If somebody read me a poem out loud, on the street, apropos of nothing, I’d buy them a coffee too.
Here’s another: project a poem on a wall, inside or outside. Multi-media! Of course, in Manchester, only graffiti gets to stay for any length of time on a wall, everything else is immediately painted over, so that might not work.
One more: text a poem to friends. I’m going to do this. No explanation, no warning. All my friends are just going to get the following message – “So much depends upon a red wheel barrow, glazed with rain water, beside the white chickens.” Let them figure it out! Fun, right?
Happy Poem in Your Pocket Day my fellow rebels. Feel the power!

Trying to find something that isn't there

In college, I knew it as erasure poetry. Now it's called found poetry. But really it's like that big square of letters you used to puzzle out as s kid, where you had to find the “hidden” words and the remaining letters spelled out the answer to some puzzle.
Only this is National Poetry Month, so I'd expect to find this “not” poetry form in the coffee shops and alternative presses and college dorms after midnight. Where I did not expect to find it was The New York Times.
Yes, our esteemed brethren to the south is in the middle of a Found Poem contest. The Times describes a found poem as “poems that are composed from words and phrases found in another text.” Guess whose text the Times suggest using to create these poems? If you said the New York Times, Bingo!
Where do I begin without just shrieking? I'm going to ignore the Times here for the moment. It's possible that they are just the messengers – the unwitting lackeys in this battle for the heart and mind of poetry. Instead I'd like to lay today's blame squarely at the feet of Stephen Dunning and William Stafford, two guys from the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) that the Times use as a point of reference to justify their lazy and ridiculous contest.
Here's some jewels from Dunning and Stafford's article describing found and headline poems:
– the “nice thing” about found and headline poems is you don't have to start from scratch.
– Found poems celebrate ordinary prose.
– They are “against fancy language. Words with too many syllables”
– Found poetry is a reaction against “poetic language”
– You should not search for found poetry in sources such as song lyrics or poetry. Why? “They're both already poetry.”
Who wrote this, Sarah Palin? How's that fancy shmancy book learnin' workin' out for ya?
This is the source material the New York Times used for their contest. This is a English teachers’ organization. I have an idea for a great contest for the Times.
It's called the Write a Poem Contest. It's where readers actually sit down and think up words based on how they feel, then they write them down, then they arrange and edit them INTO A POEM.
Have we disconnected so completely from our inner mechanisms that we have to “create” poetry off cereal boxes? (Another suggestion by Dunning and Stafford by the way.)
Or, is the pace and contemplative nature of the poem unable to compete with today's world?
The found poetry crowd argues that this technique allows the writer to think simply, to “discover” direct meaning from unneeded and unnatural hollow words. Nonsense. There’s no reason to treat students like they have blunt head trauma. The joy of poetry, both writing it and reading it, is not from finding meaning in someone else words, but to create meaning from your own experience, and inner language.
Shrug off this lazy and self-serving attitude. If you want to look for the real reasons why so many people feel poetry is elitist and out of touch with reality, here it is. I'll take your poetry blog about unicorns and wizards any day over this clueless and, ultimately dangerous, approach to poetry.

Swag, swag, swag, swag, swag, swag, swag

I love swag. Pens with a little scroll that runs down the side. Erasers in the shape of famous buildings. Tote bags, lots and lots of tote bags. I have a tote bag, in which I keep all my tote bags, because you never know.
Businesses have swag. Whole industries have swag. You don’t see the estate of John Wayne or James Dean having any issues with plastering those icons’ faces all over your kids’ underwear.
It’s branding, pure and simple. Get that image in the faces of people and those people buy the movies, music, etc.
So it got me thinking. Why is poetry any different? Why is there no poetry swag? Heck, half the famous poets have been dead so long, it’s likely all public domain anyway. I mean, we’re in the middle of National Poetry Month, people. Why are we not inundated with guys dressed like Shakespeare selling us fast food?
So I went straight to www.poets.org looking for an answer. In case you don’t know who they are, poets.org is run by the Academy of American Poets. I know, I know... snore. Anyway, they are the ones who attempt to keep the poetry torch lit in America by highlighting poetry landmarks, holding readings and working with schools.
I was pleased to discover a Poetry Store on their Web site. Swag, here I come! Was I disappointed. Sure, there’s the standard audio recordings of guys like Robert Graves and plenty of mugs and T-shirts, but anybody can do those. I wanted more. I dug a little deeper in their store and found ... an Emily Dickinson necklace? For $68? An Emily Dickinson baby doll T-shirt? I don’t even know where to begin on how off the mark that is.
Anything here that isn’t Dickinson-related?
How about Four Chinese Poets: The National Tour Broadside for $30? Sheesh. Maybe a T.S. Eliot “Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock” brooch? How do you even begin to explain that at a party? Do they know what that poem is about, even?
Fine, enough of this. Why perpetuate the myth that poets are humorless literary dandies? It is a myth, right?
Here are a couple suggestions for poetry swag that I would buy:
-Pablo Neruda aphrodisiacs. Here was a short, pudgy, balding man who actually had women throwing their undergarments at him at readings. So why not a series of ginseng-like energy drinks (different flavors, of course) to sell at checkout lines and corner bodega counters? Call it Pablo Power Drinks.
-Elizabeth Barrett Browning word puzzle books. Just how many ways does Browning love thee? Is the depth, breadth and height that her soul can reach one way or three? Like Sudoku only more difficult to figure out and even when you have the answer it always changes.
-Robert Frost good neighbor rocks. You remember Pet Rocks? Well, how much fun it would be to fence off your office cubicle from the rest of your co-workers with a traditional New England stone wall, as a pretense to getting along better. Brilliant!
-Sylvia Plath Easy-Bake Ovens. Too soon? I’m just thinking of ways to get the younger generation involved.
You see where I’m going here? Though all the poets.org swag did not turn me off. My order has already been placed for the Iambic Pentameter tote bag.

Would Frost go viral?

If Robert Frost were alive today, would he have a blog? The guy was a marketing dream – folksy, approachable, famous in his lifetime, but not a snob in public. Most important, he was accessible. And what's more accessible in today's culture than having a blog?

Well, if you know me you know where this is going, but I want to back up for a moment and explain how this thought even crossed my mind. If you've been breathing in New Hampshire the past week, I'm sure you've seen every media outlet positively fall over themselves to bring you the “news” story about Granite State of Mind, the You Tube Jay-Z music video parody going viral. It's a funny video, made by a group of local film and video makers calling themselves the Super Secret Project.

What stood out for me, though, was that a whole verse of the song was Frost's “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening.” If you don't know the poem, stop right now and either go read it, or turn to the News of the Weird. (What's wrong with you that you don't know that poem?) Anyway, recasting one of the most popular poems in the English language to a rap actually worked! This I think was due to both the film-makers obvious affection for the poem, but also because Frost's work is melodic. It lends itself to all types of reimaginings because it is so good – insightful, perfectly structured language.

So, I thought, if Frost stands up to a rap, and sounds good on You Tube, think of what he'd be able to do with today's technology. You really want my opinion? No way Frost would have a blog. To come to this conclusion I searched out the blogs of other current well known poets. Robert Pinsky. No blog. Billy Collins. Nope. Our own Donald Hall or Maxine Kumin. Zip. Now, Pinsky does have a web site for his Favorite Poem Project and Collins has a cool poetry/video site called Billy Collins Action Poetry. (Great name by the way.) But the real masters, the ones who depend on words, not wiz bang, don't need it.

So... blogs. I started looking, and reading. I Googled and Googled poetry blogs till my eyes hurt. I checked local stuff, international stuff. I read blogs by 12 year olds and 95 year olds. Blogs with poky dots and blogs with flowers. Blogs where the parents Haiku about their infants, and blogs where spinsters write eulogies to their cats. And now, my friends, I'm done with that. Here's a bold statement – of the millions and millions of poetry blogs out there, they all stink.
Prove me wrong. Write to me, here, at this paper. I'll leave my email at the bottom. Find me a good poetry blog. If you do, I will highlight it. I will sing its praises. I will take it out for tea and crumpets.

Here are the rules, based on my completely scientific and deeply insightful 30 minutes spent on line:

1. The blog must not reference unicorns, or any mystical creatures. Mythology is ok. Think the Iliad, not Clash of the Titans.
2. No vampires. Enough with the vampires.
3. No fan fiction – I'm talking to you Harry Potter. That goes for any universe starting with “Star.”
4. No blogs about how great the Cure is/was. You'd be amazed at how much poetry there is out there about bands.
5. Finally, no depression poetry until you have facial hair and/or a job.

Got it? Good. Now go find me a good poetry blog. My email is dszczesny@hippopress.com

5 Ways Poetry Immolates

Happy National Poetry Month! Wait, wait don't stop reading!
I know poetry has a bad rap.You saw the word poetry in that first line and you rolled your eyes, didn't you? I'm here to tell you that it has to end. This column will be a metaphorical line in the sand. More poets need to understand what a metaphor is anyway. There used to be a time when poetry mattered, when poets were looked to for insight into the human condition. And yes, were respected. Sadly, today, poetry more often than not deserves that bad rap. So, in these pages, each week, we'll deconstruct what's gone wrong, and how it can be fixed.
We'll start with the basics - just where has poetry gone off the tracks? Here are five reasons poetry shoots itself in the foot:

5) The Form Itself. What makes so many people cringe at the thought of poetry? Easy. So much of it is bad, because everybody thinks they can write one. Well you can't, so stop trying. Being able to finish the follow line "There once was a man from Nantucket...." does not make you a poet. Nor does anything to do with unicorns, wizards or France. And just because you know what iambic pentameter is does not make you Shakespeare.

4) Everyone Can Publish It. Yes, I'm going to say it. The Internet. Those damn tubes allow ANYONE to publish their badly written poem about a turtle. It's like the Internet is the worst kind of enabler. And that goes for novel writing, scanning your crappy art, and taking pictures of bees on flowers as well. The Internet can give you immediate access to readers. What it cannot do is edit your poem. Find an editor. Until then, keep your poem off the tubes.

3) Slam Poetry. I've said it before and I'm thrilled to have a forum to say it again. Bad poetry does not get any better if it's yelled at you. Poetry is about language. Slam is about theatrics. Save it for the theater. Frost did not need to swear, shout or wave his hands. Why? Because he knew how to write a poem.

2) Pretentious Publishing Styles. Printing a poem about a bird in the shape of a bird is irritating. Period. So is printing a poem sideways on the page. So is having a page fold out. Also, printing an already published essay and blocking out the words to create a "new" poem is lazy, not poetry.

1) Sylvia Plath. If only Sylvia had confided her hatred for her father in a good psychiatrist instead of unleashing her mopey, boo-hoo prose on generations of teenage girls, we wouldn't have Twilight. That's right... connect the dots people. Until poetry sheds its sticky, glittery glaze of sad teenagers who apparently no one understands, it'll only get the respect it deserves.