Category Archives: Poetry

Leopard Aesthetics

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I’ve been reading more poetry lately.  For a while it I read all Regencies, all the time, because I want to write more Regency novels, but the last one I read was really bad.  Like, I’ve been half-way through it for two months and am wondering if I—gasp—dare not finish.  Life is too short to read bad books, I believe, but I also hate to leave a book behind.  So instead of tossing it out altogether and starting a new one which will hopefully be more engaging, I’m reading poetry. It’s good to have a break anyway because even when poetry is “bad,” there’s always something to be learned from it—some new connections with language and thought and creativity to be made.

Last December I ran Atlanta Review’s first ever chapbook contest, and we received 115 chapbook submissions, all of which I read.  Some of the poems were wonderful, some were dreck, and some weren’t poems at all (at least, not what I’d call poems), but reading 115 chapbooks was quite the enterprise and it often entertained or moved me.  It certainly reinvigorated me as far as reading poetry goes—even though it was just part of my job.  And it reminded me that writing books of poetry really is something lots of people do—it’s not just the few of us living in our ivory towers, but it’s insurance salesmen, and accountants, machinists, nurses, software engineers, fast food workers, and teachers.  It’s not just MFA-ers trying to publish their theses, and that’s beautiful that the poetry community is so broad these days.

I don’t remember if I mentioned my friend Ed before, whom I met last year at the Tinker Mountain Writer’s Workshop, but he and I started a book club—Leopard Aesthetics Book Club to be exact—with the goal of reading contemporary books of poetry and spending 3 hours on a Saturday morning discussing it.  So far we’ve read We Contain Landscapes, by Patrycja Humienik, The Parachutist by Jose Hernandez Diaz, Happy Everything by Caitlyn Cowan, Nocturne in Joy by Tatiana Johnson-Boria, and Slaughterhouse for Old Wive’s Tales by Hannah V. Warren.  We may have read one or two others, but those are the ones that I’m remembering right offhand.  We meet at Marietta Coffee Company on Roswell Road and we just hang out and dish poetry. MCC has great iced caramel macchiatos which I syphon down in a snap as Ed and I go through the poems of the book, make incisive (or inane) comments about what we’ve read, and generally spend a lot of time laughing and talking. 

We get together about once a month and I become so energized by our discussion that it makes me hungry for the next time we visit.  I realize I don’t have a “poetry friend” group, not anymore, and so I feel really lucky to have met Ed and to have formed a great friendship with him.  He’s a neat person—generous, funny, and interesting—and we text  and share poems too.  It would be wonderful if Leopard Aesthetics would grow a community of poets and poetry readers around it, but so far neither Ed nor I have branched out like that. There’s still time, but for now, Leopard Aesthetics is just the two of us.

And if you’re wondering why “Leopard Aesthetics,” it has to do with a conversation we had where we were discussing different writing “schools” and the different aesthetics they espouse.  We couldn’t think what our aesthetic was, so we each came up with a list of names for our book club that somehow represented what we thought our aesthetic should be. Ed chose my top suggestion and we became Leopard Aesthetics.  We haven’t determined what that is exactly, but it’s becoming clearer the longer we hang out.

Anyway, our next book club selection is Real Phonies and Genuine Fakes by Nicky Beer. Dolly Parton graces the cover which I’m taking as a good sign.  I’m hoping Ed and I can meet soon.  I think this book is going to be great.

I know I took a year off from writing my blogs, but I promise it won’t be that long before I write again.  After all, I’m going to Scotland again this summer—and you know I’ll have plenty to say about that!

Writing and Summering at Home

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A water color picture of daisies

from the NY Public Library Digital Collections

I’m not in Scotland this summer for REASONS, and while I am sad about it, I’m dealing. Of course I think about Scotland all the time—last night I was dreaming of Outlander of all things, even though all I ever watched was the first season.  I really think it’s my spiritual homeland, like I am meant to live there some day.  I was even looking at real estate in Edinburgh and the rest of Scotland for a while, and found some places that didn’t look too expensive.  (Of course, they didn’t look too big either, but that is beside the point.)  Anyway, the point of telling you this is so you know not to expect a travelogue from me.  Of course, I haven’t written since last year, so you probably don’t expect anything from me!

Now for the update.  Writing and I had been at loggerheads for a while. I hadn’t really had a chance to write anything because of those same REASONS I mentioned a second ago.  (And I’m sorry to have to Vaguebook, but suffice it to say there are some real meanies out there who wish me ill.  But writing about that is for another day, if at all.) So of course, not writing poems was making it harder and harder for me to be ok. If I’m not writing, what am I even doing?

But the summer has been really productive for me, writing-wise.  I tasked myself with writing a villanelle every day for May (while I didn’t quite get 31, I got 26), so I worked on that project.  Some of the villanelles turned out better than others, but it felt really good to produce that work.  (Most still of course need to be revised, but there’s always time for that.) One of the ones that did turn out well got picked up by Midsummer Dream House, and you can read “Heart-bird” here.

And now I’m working on a Regency romance on Wattpad (currently #51 in Regency) called A Duke for Lady Ellen. I’ve published nine chapters so far, and am looking to publishing about 25.  This is my “gateway” novel—to see if I can start writing romance novels in earnest.  So I’m not worried about finding a “real” publisher or getting an agent or anything like that.  This book is an opportunity for me to try something new, to push myself in a new direction.  I’m enjoying it so far. Chris, for whatever reason, is really proud of me, although he has not read it so far.  (Well, I’d hardly expect him to read a romance novel, even if I wrote it!)  But it’s nice to have him cheering me on. I hope you’ll give A Duke for Lady Ellen a glance.  Even if you don’t like Regency romance novels, I’d appreciate any feedback you’d want to give it. I want to improve!  It will probably take the rest of summer to write it, but I will work on poems as well, so at least my writing “dance card” is full for the foreseeable future.

In other news, my friend Sarah Carey is coming out with her first full-length collection, The Grief Society Minutes, from St. Julian Press (sometime later this year, I believe) and I’ve got an ARC.  I’m so happy for her, and I’m looking forward to reading some quality poems!  I’m really surprised this collection has taken so long to find a publisher, especially because about 2/3 of the poems are published in quality journals—but finding a publisher is always a numbers game—you just gotta keep sending it out and sending it out.  I’m glad that she found a press for this book—now, onto the next one, Sarah! 😉

Other than all that, things in my life are ok. I’m glad it’s the summer, even if I don’t have Scotland.  At least I can write and feel happy about what I’m doing.

Return to Rockvale Writers Colony

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An antique brown wood secretary desk with a brown chair, lamp, and a window behind it.

My desk

I am at Rockvale Writers Colony again, working (as ever) on Medea on the Bayou.  I am in the Giles Hill room, which has a four poster bed with curtains, tasteful furnishings including a wonderful antique writing desk, and a huge bathroom and wardrobe. It has been a lovely quiet week, and I’ve gotten both writing and revising done.  Maybe not nearly as much as I would have liked (it always takes a little while to adjust to being in a “room of my own”) but I am pleased with my progress overall.  What I really need right now is a beta reader (or two!)—someone who can give me real, structural-level and poem-level critique.  I’m not sure what the book needs right now.  I have some thoughts about how to make it more Louisiana-ish, but it’s unclear what the book needs to actually be good.

Look, I know I have a confidence issue, but this isn’t that.  My concerns have more to do with how individual poems work as poems.  Sometimes it feels like they are really just prose in disguise.  And that’s problematic for a number of reasons:

  1. This is meant to be a novel-in-verse. Emphasis on verse.  I don’t want to write prose.
  2. Prose is fine as a thing, but the world doesn’t need a novelized version of Medea. (But to be honest, I’m not sure the world needs a book of poems about a play that was already written in verse.)
  3. If I’m not writing poetry, what the hell have I spent the last 3 years doing? (I guess it’s possible that I’ve written another hybrid piece… and we know how well loved those are (not).

A chubby marmalade cat balances on a fence.

Oliver sits on the horse fence.

Anyway, you can see my dilemma.  For the most part, these poems haven’t seen the light of day (though I’ve sent many out, and even published a dozen of them) so I don’t know if they are working.  By the fact that so many of them have been rejected, one could say “they’re probably not working, JC.”  Or maybe they just don’t work as stand-alone poems.  Which is altogether another problem.  I want them to work as stand-alone poems, but sometimes you need exposition, and exposition isn’t very poetic.

The thing I tell my students about writing adaptations is that you have to honor the original source, but in the end the adaptation is a new piece of writing and it’s only about itself  I’m trying to do that; I honor Appolonius of Rhodes and Euripides by recreating scenes from The Argonautika and Medea, but I’m also adding new characters and new scenes and new information so that readers get a fuller image of Medea as a person. And I’m also trying to maintain a strong narrative voice.  How well I’m succeeding, I can’t be for sure.  But I’m trying.

An image of a lean and handsome black cat.

Pip the shy but sweet black cat.

One of the ladies I’ve met here at the colony (Jen Knox, check out her new book, We Arrive Uninvited, available as a signed copy here) read What Magick May Not Alter, which I had left a copy of the last time I was here.  She said she liked it (yay!) especially because of its strong narrative voice.  And I think that’s true about WMMNA—it does have a strong voice and it’s good with character development—but then it should be, because I invented everything.

Here with Medea, I’m not sure I’m delivering on the promise of creating something new and I’m not sure about the narrative voice.  She’s already a known quantity as a character—am I revealing something fresh about her by writing about the early part of her marriage (as well as the plot of the play), or am I just…wasting readers’ time?  I ask myself:  why should anyone read my Medea when Euripides’ play is so perfect?  My go-to answer—“Because I wrote it”—is not what you’d call a particularly compelling response.  Do I think that someday professors teaching a classics and adaptations class will teach my book (this is assuming it finds a publisher)?  Not particularly.  But it would be really cool if they did, right?  Who’s the audience?  People who like poetry and people who like Medea for sure…but is there a broader audience for it?  What if there isn’t?

A tortie cat (black and orange) standing on a wooden deck.

Lucy making a bee-line for my legs to wrap herself around.

I’m not sure what’s brought on this little crisis of faith.  I think it’s because I’m seeing the whole collection (it’s about 96% done) together finally and I’m worried that if it doesn’t work as a collection (or if it’s prose-in-disguise), then I will have wasted my precious writing time writing something that isn’t worth a damn.  Well, ok, it’s worth at least a single damn, but you know what I mean.

I am afraid I might have another albatross around my neck.  Last year, I didn’t sell one copy of WMMNA—not one single, solitary copy.  (In fact, Madville took a net loss of two copies, which were apparently returned.)  I don’t want Medea to be in the same situation. I want her to find an audience.  I want people to know her as someone besides a child-killer. I think my book shows her in a rich full way…I think.  (But what if it doesn’t?)

Anyway, that’s where I am with this project.  I say I’m 96% done because I have a few plot holes that need to be addressed, but I think the collection—whatever it is—is really coming along. (There’s still revising to do, which drops my percentage down to 46% done, but I’m working on that too.)

In other news, tomorrow is Mother’s Day (probably not Medea’s favorite holiday), so make sure that you tell your Moms how much you love them.  They do so much for us—mine is perfect—and they love us just as we are.  Even when what we are is a confidence-lacking, attention seeking, desperate-to-be-adored-by-the-masses writer of poetry.

P.S.  The cats are Rockvale’s super-sweet barn cats.  (Doesn’t it figure that’s what I’d take photos of?)

A large orange marmalade cat with piercing green eyes.

Oliver

A sleek black cat sits in the middle of the grass.

Pip the Panfur in the grass

The Poetic Stylings of Chat-GPT

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A newspaper drawing of a wild cat

Le Chat Sauvage, from NYPL Digital Collections

Goofing around with Chat-GPT (the chat sauvage?), I asked it to “Write a poem in the writing style of JC Reilly.” First, it didn’t know who I was (ugh), but when I gave it a link to one of my poems, this is what it came up with:

In this moment, I am but a flicker
A mere flame in the grander scheme
My life, a mere fragment in the picture
Of the endless and infinite dream

I am a creature of light and shadow
Walking the tightrope between day and night
With each step, I sow a seed to grow
Towards a future that’s ever so bright

I take comfort in the impermanence
Of all things that exist and persist
For I am but a brief remembrance
In the memory of what will persist

The sun rises and sets, the tide ebbs and flows
A rhythm of life that moves ever on
I embrace this dance, as the story goes
For in each moment, I am reborn

So let me be a spark in the darkness
A beacon of hope in a world of doubt
Let my light shine forth, with no less
Than the radiance that life is about

For in the end, all we can do
Is to live, to love, to dream, to be
And let our light shine, ever true
As a reminder of what it means to be free.

I think it goes without saying that I would never write such drivel. I might write some crap poems, but at least they are original crap. Among the things that bother me about this “poem” include the fact that it uses “persist” as a rhyme for…”persist.” Like, please try harder, Chat- GPT.  Also, the clear amount of cliches included strikes me as incredible.  You’d think a computer would have a lot more language to draw on, which could lessen the cliches.  That said, I do like the slant rhyme of “ever on” with “reborn.” I wouldn’t think to make that choice, and I kind of like it.  But the rest of the poem hurts my soul.

I also asked it to write a poem in the style of Ilya Kaminsky and honestly even if I had never read Deaf Republic or Dancing in Odessa, I can be sure it’s nothing like his writing.  Still, it’s a much better poem than what Chat-GPT wrote for me (and by “better” I mean “being incrementally not as bad”):

A poem in the style of Ilya Kaminsky:

The night sky is a canvas of stars
Each one a beacon, a guidepost
In this world of darkness and uncertainty
A reminder that there is light in the darkness

But what of those who cannot see the stars?
Whose eyes are shrouded by the fog of war
Or the darkness of the soul?
Do they too have a guidepost to follow?

Perhaps it is the sound of a loved one’s voice
Or the touch of a hand, warm and reassuring
Or the memory of a time when all was right
And hope burned bright, like a flame in the darkness

For even in the darkest of nights
There is a glimmer of hope, a spark of light
That can ignite a fire, a passion
And lead us out of the darkness, into the dawn

So let us hold onto that flame, that spark
And carry it with us, wherever we may go
For though the night may be long and cold
There is always the promise of a new day.

The second stanza is pretty decent (minus “the darkness of the soul”). Still, some achingly bad abstractions (“darkness and uncertainty”) and worse cliches (“the touch of a hand, warm and reassuring;” “lead us out of the darkness, into the dawn” “glimmer of hope”) doom this piece to the trash bin.

I’m not too worried that poetry is dead now that Chat GPT can write poems, because all it can write is really bad poems.  And I think most teachers are savvy enough to spot crap poetry when it’s presented to them.  Honestly I also think students wouldn’t want to turn poems like these in because they inherently know they’re bad as well.  If I were teaching poetry, and a student turned in some work like this, I wouldn’t get mad.  I’d just get really NITPICKY about their revision work, and they’d have to write a new poem because I’d mark all the places where the poem fails. (Which is about 95% of places.)

Here’s one more:

This one is supposed to be à la Billy Collins:

The world is full of mysteries, he said
As he looked out the window, lost in thought
Like the way a tree knows when to shed
Its leaves, or how a bird knows when to take flight

And there are secrets lurking in every corner
Like the way a cat curls up in a sunbeam
Or the way a flower turns to face the sun
Or the way the moon appears in the sky

And then there are the things we take for granted
The everyday wonders that we barely notice
Like the way a pen glides across paper
Or the sound of a kettle as it comes to a boil

But there are also the things we cannot explain
Like why some things are meant to be
Or why we find ourselves in certain places
Or why we feel a certain way at a certain time

And yet, even with all these mysteries
The world still manages to spin on its axis
And we still find moments of joy and wonder
As we journey through this ever-changing world.

This one at least has a few good images (“like the way a pen glides across paper/ or the sound of a kettle as it comes to boil”).  But it’s also not funny, and I think of humor as being a hallmark of Billy Collins.  Still, over all, the poem is kind of lifeless, and that last stanza is so leaden it may as well be made of concrete.

I think “lifeless” is the operating word here.  These are poems by something that clearly has no life of its own, and can only replicate what it thinks a poem is.  But it must have really bad models to produce examples such as these. This seems hard for me to believe when there are hundreds—maybe thousands—of years of poetry available online.

What is also surprising to me is that it doesn’t actually borrow lines from the poets—lines that must be floating around the internet.  That at least I could understand—a little plagiarism.  Maybe I’m even a little nostalgic for plagiarism—there is a certain art to doing it that is completely bereft in what Chat-GPT does.  Plagiarism at least requires the plagiarist to look things up to copy; Chat-GPT just makes it all up.

But I can’t be too hard on Chat-GPT.  It gave me this great recipe…which looks pretty legit:

Carrot cake is a delicious dessert that many people enjoy. Here’s a recipe for a classic carrot cake:

Ingredients:

      • 2 cups all-purpose flour
      • 2 teaspoons baking soda
      • 1 teaspoon baking powder
      • 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
      • 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
      • 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
      • 1/2 teaspoon salt
      • 4 large eggs
      • 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
      • 1 cup vegetable oil
      • 2 cups grated carrots
      • 1 cup chopped pecans
      • 1/2 cup raisins (optional)
      • Cream cheese frosting (recipe below)

Directions:

      1. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Grease and flour two 9-inch cake pans.
      2. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and salt.
      3. In a large bowl, beat the eggs and sugar together until thick and pale yellow, about 2-3 minutes. Gradually add in the oil and mix until well combined.
      4. Add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture and stir until just combined. Stir in the grated carrots, pecans, and raisins (if using).
      5. Pour the batter into the prepared pans and smooth the tops with a spatula.
      6. Bake for 30-35 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean.
      7. Allow the cakes to cool completely in the pans before removing and frosting with cream cheese frosting.

Cream cheese frosting:

      • 8 oz cream cheese, softened
      • 1/4 cup unsalted butter, softened
      • 2 cups powdered sugar
      • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
      1. In a medium bowl, beat the cream cheese and butter together until light and fluffy.
      2. Gradually add in the powdered sugar and vanilla, and beat until smooth and creamy.
      3. Use immediately to frost the carrot cake.

Enjoy your delicious homemade carrot cake!

Love and Other Ironies

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It’s February, and our attention turns naturally towards hearts and flowers.  At least, mine does.  Complain all you want about Valentine’s Day being a “Hallmark holiday,” but I have always been a fan—even when I didn’t have someone to dote upon or celebrate with.  This gets me to thinking about something I noticed when I sent off a submission today:  I write about love.  A lot.  (For instance, four of the six poems I sent out focus on love in a variety of ways. That poor first reader, when they open that submission.)

I find this surprising, because I wouldn’t consider myself a particularly achy heart stardusty lovey-dovey type person (although, I suppose I was once upon a time…late teens, early 20s, like everyone else).  And when I think of great love poems (“How do I love thee…” etc.), I for sure don’t think of my own work.  Yet I constantly write about the heart, and love, and the way these things interact with my very odd brain—it’s never truly “hearts and flowers”—there’s usually something rather off.

Here’s an example from my first book, La Petite Mort (arguably my favorite love poem that I’ve written):

Dystopic Love Poem
 

If I were to hand you my heart,
once you scraped away the fatty tissue,
arterial plaque, and congealing blood,
you’d find it’s really just a valentine
more Discovery Channel than Hallmark,
a bit ill-used, still serviceable,
and as full of love as it gets.  After
you got past the horror, you’d find
it has its uses:  keep it as a talisman
in your pocket, display it in a jelly jar
by the window—or add shallots and butter,
a hint of merlot.  Bon appetit.

 

It’s definitely heart-felt, but it’s also kind of gross.  Which, admittedly, is part of its charm. But also there’s a lot of irony there—and I think that’s what’s twisted my love poems.  They can never just be romantic—they have to be ironic.  And I wonder if that means that deep down, I’m just… damaged.  Or maybe it means my poetic voice won’t let me write something that’s too twee and sweet because I am, let’s face it, neither.

Here’s a more recent poem, still really drafty, this one about the end of love:

Paper Heart
 
On Valentine’s I cut a paper heart
and wrote the words I meant to share.
(In another year we’ll fall apart.)
 
Say what you will:  it was a start
on making amends. Don’t you care?
On Valentine’s I cut a paper heart
 
that I cut and cut and cut apart
until it fell like confetti in the air.
(In another year we’ll fall apart.)
 
So many strange days; I can chart
them all, caught as I was in your snare.
On Valentine’s I cut a paper heart:
 
a shabby thing, no piece of art,
it makes the abhorrent seem fair.
(In another year, we’ll fall apart.)
 
Where have we gone wrong, what part
of us shriveled, shed love so rare?
On Valentine’s I cut a paper heart.
Another year passed. We fell apart.

 

See what I mean?  Here the irony is in yo’ face:  (“what part/ of us shriveled, shed love so rare”)—that’s just… bald.  No subtlety, I guess, and that in itself is ironic (because poems should be subtle), especially if you know me (and my dear five readers, I know you do!).  My point is I can’t write love poems or out-of-love poems that don’t fundamentally out themselves as an exercise in “poetic praxis” (e.g. “Look at me, look at me, I’m a POEM!”)  This is not to say I wouldn’t like to write a real love poem (and by real, I mean “good”)—I would someday, but it might just not be in my nature/wheelhouse/skillset. I might just be doomed.

But as I was saying, love does figure prominently in my writing.  If I want to get psychological about things, I might say the reason I write about love is because I don’t really feel loved.  (I am not saying this for sympathy! Intellectually, I know I am loved.)  But writing about love is a way for me to try to connect with those feelings that I…er…don’t feel.  Maybe if I write about it enough, I can crack my ironic little heart wide open and begin to actually feel it.  (But I don’t know—years of therapy about this very issue has not cured it—I continue to live too much in my head and not in my heart.)

As I think about it…it’s kind of ironic to consider oneself very good at loving others (family and friends and all kind of creatures, especially kitties), but to feel a void when that love is returned. I don’t know…is that some kind of next level shit?  Probably.

Well, putting aside my very screwed up brain, let me say this:  I love you for reading my posts.  I love you for supporting me and cheering me on.  I love you for you.  I am hearts and flowers in love with (most of) the world.  And maybe that’s why I write love poems, flawed as they are.  Maybe that’s why we all write love poems now and then, to express the expansive love that resides in all of our collective hearts.

And on that note, I’ll leave you with this little haiku:

It’s Valentine’s Day
candy hearts speak sugar truths
Luv u 4 Ever

A Different Approach to My Writing Process

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from the NYPL Digital Collections

After the revelry of December, January always shows up with austerity.  People make promises to get more healthy or to take hold of their budgets or to institute any number of changes to one’s life to ostensibly be “better.”  But habits in personal improvement take time to form, and what seems like a good idea on January 1st by January 20th seems like a pipe dream.  This year, I made no resolutions of austerity.  This year, I’m embracing abundance in creativity and experience.

It’s a different approach.  We are used to starting new years with denying ourselves what we want, but I feel last year was austere enough, especially when it came to creativity.  As you know, I had a huge bout of writer’s block and depression which made writing so difficult.  I can’t say that I’m over it—just because the calendar turns over doesn’t mean we turn over too—but I’m trying to be open to creativity and new experiences in a way that maybe I wasn’t so before.

What does that actually mean?  It means cultivating my poor stagnating heart, plucking off the dead leaves and twigs to allow new growth to happen.  It means letting go of negative self-talk (or trying to), and setting some realistic goals about writing.  It means living with wonder and courting coincidence and making time to be a creative person.  It means going back to making Friday a day designed solely for writing and reading, and foregoing meetings and interruptions as much as possible. And it means to relearn myself as a creative being—something I’ve not been in a long time.

That all sounds like a lot, doesn’t it?  It does to me too.  And I know it requires giving myself permission to be creative.  I think last year I let the fear of “forgetting how to write poems” become so much a part of me that I did, actually, forget how to write them. How can that be? you ask.  Well, to be a writer, you have to be willing to fail.  A lot.  And I think I let that fear rob me of any joy I could take in poetry.  So anytime I sat down to write a poem, all I could think of is how bad what I would write would be, so I just stopped writing.

I also plan to read more poetry this year—I sloughed off last year—and to try new forms. Most of the poetry I read last year was Atlanta Review submissions, and that’s not the same thing as reading whole, curated collections with literary arcs and motifs.  It’s good practice to be exposed to new poetry but a lot of the submissions are raw and not fully developed yet, whereas whole books of poetry are more thematically driven, vibrant, and polished. They speak as a collection.

I think I sort of forgot that.  Hence, more poetry reading in store for me.

Maybe this smacks too much of “resolution”—and we know what happens to most of those—but I think in my case I’m just going to try and see what happens when my approach to writing is different. I’ll let you know how it’s going. 😊

April’s None So Cruel

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Earlier in the month, my Mom asked me if I had ever heard the expression “April is the cruellest month” and of course I had to laugh.  Any poet (or student of poetry) worth her salt recognizes that is the first line of T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland, and it’s the first thing I think of when it turns April.

I’ve also been thinking it every day, since this is the first Poetry Month that I’ve chosen to participate in National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo).  I’ve been struggling to write a new poem every day—some days it’s been easier, and I’ve even written one or two poems that I think are pretty good.  The majority of them though are, at best, exercises in the practice of writing poetry.  Which is to say, they are poems, but not very good ones!

Still, having the discipline to write every day (or nearly every day…I missed a few days which I swear I went back and made them up!) has been illuminating.  For one thing, even if the quality of the output has not impressed me much, the habit of writing has been a kind of comfort to me.  It’s as if I can’t say I’ve forgotten how to write a poem (which sometimes I think when it’s been a while between poems), because this time I know I wrote a poem the day before.  For another thing, I’ll have 30 poems on the 30th that I can maybe go back to and work on revising.  That feels like an accomplishment.  Whether some of them are worth going back to is debatable, but the opportunity is there, should I choose to take it.

A few times I have stared at the computer and written “I have nothing I want to say.”  Then I write something down anyway, and remove that line.  It’s been liberating, especially the last few days which have been hard for me to come up with something new.  A few people on Twitter suggested I write poems about not knowing what to write, and so I sort of amended that idea to admit on the page that I didn’t have anything to say—then forced myself to write something anyway.  Again, not great art for sure, but I satisfied the NaPoWriMo requirement of a written poem.

You would think with all that’s going on right now—the continuation of Covid, the horrible and escalating war in Ukraine, the worsening climate change, I’d have a lot to write about.  But it’s hard to write good political poetry.  I can’t do it well, because such writing should be subtle so it remains art.  When I write on such things it comes out screed-like and dismal—too tell-y and not show-y enough.  It’s something I’d like to get better at though—and I suppose to get better at it, you have to practice.  And you need to read political poets.  I should do an investigation and find some contemporary political poets to read.

For the time being though, I will continue writing poems for April, just so I can say I did it. And at some point I’ll have fresh eyes to look at the work and see if some of these “exercises” are better than I remember.  Revising can be a fun part of writing, although as we all know, it’s hard work.

Anyway, all this is by way of saying April isn’t that cruel at all—at least not in my little corner of it.  I’m writing poems, looking forward to the end of the semester, and maybe even have a trip to Scotland in the offing.

And I still have plenty of copies of Amo e Canto which I’d love to sell you and donate the proceeds to the Ukraine war effort.  CashApp:  $Aishatonu or PayPal:  paypal.me/aishatonu.

Amo e Canto is Out in the World!

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Nearly two years after the announcement that it had won the 2020 Sow’s Ear Poetry Chapbook Prize, my collection Amo e Canto (Italian for I Love and I Sing) has been released.  Because it came out as Issue 30.1 of the Sow’s Ear Poetry Review (and was sent to all subscribers of the Review), it’s not conventionally available for purchase.  However, I am selling extra copies, postage paid, for $13.50 via my CashApp, $Aishatonu.  Hit me up if you would like to buy a copy.  (Put your address in the “For” line so I’ll know where to send your book!)

Amo e Canto is a collection of “poemoirs”—half poems, half memoirs about a trip I took to Venice in 2014. The poemoirs focus on typical Venetian sights, like churches, canals, pigeons, and art, and tangentially examine a relationship with a missing love.  It’s a really different kind of writing from what I normally do (which tends to be mostly narrative, women-centered writing), so if you’re interested in Italy and hybrid forms (or you just love me), this collection is for you.

I’m really proud of this work, and it’s a beautiful collection.  The cover includes an absolutely lovely painting by Alex Ghizea-Ciobanu called I Will Take Venice with Me that as soon as I saw it, I wanted it for the cover.  (Actually, I’d love to own the actual painting!)  The ecru paper is smooth and silky and not insubstantial.

It may have taken longer than I hoped for Amo e Canto to manifest, but it’s wonderful that it exists now. (Patience is a virtue, and all of that.)  I’m so grateful to Sarah Kohrs and Kristen Zimet at Sow’s Ear Poetry Review for all they’ve done to bring this collection into being, and I’m grateful to Sam Rasnake for choosing it as the winner.  I’m also thankful to the journals who originally published some of these poems, especially Rowan Glassworks, which nominated five of them for Pushcart Prize in 2015.

I have many to sell and would love to get one into your hands!

A Little Bit About Rain, a Little Bit About Writing

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It’s so rare to be enjoying a thunderstorm here in my part of Georgia (Marietta)—usually it rains for 10 minutes and then stops, and the humidity jacks up to 600%.  (To be fair, once this storm is over, the humidity will probably reach 600%, but that’s neither here nor there.)  The point is, I’m not being disturbed by neighbors working on their yards and stirring up a racket with power tools.  It’s tapering off a little now, but I don’t mind, as long as the sun doesn’t try to hack its arrogant way through the gray sky.  (Which is so rude!)

Why am I talking about the weather?  Shouldn’t I be talking about writing?  I think I am.

Writing, sometimes, is like a storm, and sometimes like a drizzle (not to be all binary in my thinking, but…).  Since I’ve returned home from Rockvale, it’s been bone dry.  I don’t say this with a “waaaahh, feel sorry for me” warble in my voice.  I have put the time to good use—supporting my writing by researching venues and submitting work to a number of places I’ve never heard of before but that look interesting.  I’ve also been working on a couple of applications for future residencies, which would be wonderful if at least one panned out. As I was telling myself the other day, publishing is a numbers game—you just gotta keep sending out work to places and hope it hits.

It takes stamina though to submit work.  I know several writers who only submit a few times a year, and then I know a guy on Twitter who bragged about having 266 active submissions in his Submittable queue.  (Not gonna lie, that’s definitely something worth bragging about.)  The highest number of active submissions in my queue ever was probably 75, but I was kind of a submitting machine in 2019, and since then I manage around 30-35.  Of course, logic says, if I believe publishing is a numbers game, I should be submitting more, and I do think that for sure, but I also know that you can’t do everything.  As much as I’d like to have 75 subs in the queue, I will be happy if I maintain a goal of 30-35, replenishing as needed as the rejections (and hopefully acceptances!) roll in.  I can do a lot of submitting over the next four months…you know, assuming those pesky job responsibilities don’t impede me too much.  😊

*****

Recently, I’ve been assisting a new-to-poetry writer.  She found me on Poets & Writers, and just cold-emailed me about helping her develop poems, talk about craft, and work on process and revision options.  It’s been so much fun.  We’ve been meeting via Zoom, and I’ve kind of based my work with her on the creative writing tutorials I’ve run for graduate students at Georgia Tech.  The difference is, she’s older, she has earned an MFA in fiction (so she’s not new to creative writing or the heavy-duty commitment it entails), and she seems really invested in poetry.  (She took poetry up during Covid; she said that coming up with long-form fiction was too difficult with the world so askew, and so she decided to try poetry instead.)  We’ve only been working together since the end of June, and I don’t know if this is a short-term gig or long-term project, but I’m really enjoying it. I bet all writers could use a coach at some point.  I’m sure I could have any number of times.  Hopefully, she’s finding our sessions productive, and the comments I make on her poems to be useful.  It’s definitely been useful to me…now, if I could just remember some of the “nuggets of wisdom” for myself that I’ve passed on to her!

In other—but somewhat related—writing news (related by coaching, that is), I recently became one of the inaugural members of the Georgia Tech Faculty Writing Fellows, a program through GT’s Office of Professional Development.  This honor comes with coaching sessions, writing retreats, and writing exchanges.  It will be a lot of work, but I’m really looking forward to the opportunity.  Of course, most of the writers in the program are tenure-track researchers—I’m probably the only creative writer—but hey, extra eyes on work are always a good thing.  And while I work on this next book I can use all the eyes I can get.  Plus, it’s nice to have a fellowship on the old CV, you know?  Even if it’s just something through work.

Ah well, the sky is getting lighter and I see sun reflections off cars and the cul-de-sac puddles.  And now a blaze of sun.  The storm was lovely while it lasted.

I hear a mourning dove somewhere outside cooing.  I think she liked the rain too.

New Poems in Hole in the Head Review

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Well, sadly, I may be back in The ATL again, after my wonderful time at Rockvale, but some good things greeted me on the way back:  Jenny (of course!), and five new poems up in Hole in the Head Review.  So very grateful for their support of writers and their belief in my work!

The poems are kind of a mixed bag–they all belong to several different collections I have going on at the same time.  I was really surprised and delighted they took all of them, especially because they are basically unrelated to each other.  So anyway, if you want to see a range of new work, check out my new poems.

I hope you like them!