Diane Lockward

Diane Lockward's poem "Linguini" was recently featured at Garrison Keillor's radio show "The Writer's Almanac". With generosity and good humor, Ms. Lockward writes at her blog about the poem. Here is an excerpt:

The idea for "Linguini" came when I read a poem called "The Blended Family," by Carol Potter. I found Potter's poem in [Winter 2003] Prairie Schooner. What I noticed about that poem was that each line ended with the word "spaghetti." I started thinking that I'd like to write a poem about linguini. Initially, I tried ending each line with that word. But soon I abandoned that effort as the poem took on its own life. It, too, wanted repetition, but the repetitions are scattered throughout the poem and in the different forms of pasta that appear. I seriously doubt that anyone would draw a connection between the two poems, but I remain grateful to Potter for her poem which served as my muse.

And now I'm thinking I might like to try a poem about ravioli.
Read the full blog entry at blogalicious.

Read a nice interview with Diane Lockward at Eclectica.

Message from the Partnership of English Majors

The following originally aired on A Prairie Home Companion on Saturday, November 25, 2006.

Garrison Keillor: And now, a message from the Partnership of English Majors.

(audible TABLEWARE)

Sue Scott: Oh, Frank. This is so wonderful — I never went to a steakhouse before.

Tim Russell: Yeah, well. No biggie.

SS: You suppose they have salads here?

TR: Heck yes. Whatever. — Here, I got you something.

SS: What's this? A little bright blue box wrapped in a white ribbon—

TR: Yeah, the way I see it-- our information-gathering phase is over and it's time to move the relationship into third gear. So I'd like to gift you with this box.

SS: Sorry, you'd like to-what?

TR: Gift you. I'm gifting you here.

SS: Oh. Oh dear-I don't know--

TR: So what do you say, Jessica? Are you in or out?

SS: I like you, Frank...but— when I hear you use "gift" as a verb—

TR: Whatcha talking about?

SS: Gift is a noun, Frank. It shouldn't be used as a verb.

TR: Oh please. You're not going to be one of those people, are you?

SS: I am one of those people, Frank. I'm an English major-I thought you understood that.

TR: I thought you'd get over that, Jessica.

SS: Frank, being an English major is not something you get over. It's who I am. Language matters to me.

GK: Would you two like to see the dessert menu?

TR: Listen, mister, bug off, we got something going on here.

SS: Please, Frank—

GK: We have an audacious cheesecake tonight that is refulgent with cheese, a shimmering and resplendent dessert with plump, one might almost say Rubensesque, cherries on top.

TR: Hey, did you hear me, creep? Amscray.

SS: Did you say "Rubensesque?"

GK: Yes, of course.

SS: Most people would say "Rubenesque"—

GK: I know, but that would be wrong.

SS: Exactly. It refers to the painter. Peter Paul Rubens.

GK: Of course.

SS: You're the first person I know who has used that word correctly. I want to cry.

GK: Please. Here's a fresh napkin.

SS: For a moment, I thought you might be— but o no, I'm being silly—

GK: You thought I might be what?

SS: You're a waiter, but somehow I thought you might be a poet—

GK: I have a book of poems coming out next month. It's called "A Small Salad On The Side".

SS: Oh my gosh.

GK: It's my first collection.

SS: I'd give anything to read it!

GK: It's back at my apartment.

SS: Let me get my coat.

TR: Guess I'll take this ring and get out of here.

SS: Goodbye, Frank.

TR: I could've offered you a lot, Jessica. A lot.

SS: Maybe so. But there was no poetry, Frank.

TR: What????

SS: Poetry. (ROMANTIC VIOLIN) I could never be happy in that enormous condo of yours. That expensive furniture. The pool, the Jacuzzi. You forgot something, Frank.

TR: What was that?

SS: A bookshelf. There were no bookshelves. —Come.

GK: I'll get your coat. And here, sir.

TR: The bill. Oh thanks a lot.

GK: You're welcome.

TR: Don't expect a big tip, bozo.

GK: Eighteen percent. It's included.

TR: Curses! (MUTTERS OF RAGE)

GK: A message from the Partnership of English Majors.

There's more where that came from. Here you can order two compact discs featuring two and a half hours of Messages from the Partnership of English Majors and the like. No kidding!

Baron Wormser Revisited

Earlier this year (June 6) I blogged here about a poem by Baron Wormser that Garrison Keillor read on his Writer's Almanac show. Well, Garrison has done it again. Only this time he's selected a poem I like.

Melancholy

by Baron Wormser

Weakness—the pale succumbing to loneliness,
Refusing to admit anyone else, indulging
The blue perquisites of adolescence
Long past their sensible deliquescence.

He knew it but went on drinking and regretting,
Not calling his friends and regretting,
Making scenes over nothing and regretting.
It helped to make him despise himself,

Which was, he sensed, what he wanted. He was
Then, in his oblique way, at ease to wander
The city's brazen or quiet streets, conjuring
Random lives and how the slim arc
Of emotion was pulverized. Back home, he put
On some Monk, lay down, half-cried.

"Melancholy" by Baron Wormser, from Scattered Chapters: New and Selected Poems. © Sarabande Books, 2008. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

Here we have a clear look at victim mentality and what it can do to a person. It's hard for me not to see in this character something of the Byronic hero character. Wikipedia lists the characteristics of the Byronic hero as

• highly intelligent and perceptive
• cunning and adaptive
• often sophisticated and highly educated
• self-critical and introspective
• mysterious, magnetic and appealing
• struggles with integrity
• seductive and sexually attractive (sleeps with many women, claims them as his own, etc.)
• dominant: in sexual relationships and interaction with people
• conflicting emotions bipolar tendencies, or moodiness
• a distaste for social institutions and social norms
• being an exile, an outcast, or an outlaw
• has "dark" attributes not normally associated with heroes
• a lack of respect for rank and privilege
• a troubled past
• being cynical, demanding, and/or arrogant
• often self-destructive
• loner, often rejected from society
• 
  

Perhaps we are beginning to expect something of poetry that we have not expected before. We are beginning to expect poetry to psychologically understand us and our position in this world of complexities. As we live our human lives, we look to relationships, education, painting, sculpture, music, literature etc. to explore the possibilities of what it means to be human.

I like "Melancholy" because there are people who don't respect themselves, and the poem shows what can result from that. The nameless character of "Melancholy" is something like Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Ancient Mariner which we all remember from our high school days.

Good Poems

Recommended reading:

A heart-lifting new anthology to inspire the world-weary

When Garrison Keillor published Good Poems, he touched a chord in readers across America. The anthology of poems he selected for their “wit, their simplicity, their passion, and their utter clarity in the face of everything else a person has to deal with” inspired thousands to buy what was for many their first book of poetry.

Now, in Good Poems for Hard Times, Keillor has pondered over the archives of his beloved Writer’s Almanac radio show to select a batch of consoling, rousing, and truthful poems guaranteed to raise flagging spirits or to inspire those in need of a dose of wisdom or honesty. But these poems are not about suffering. They’re intended to reach us and stricken friends by holding out a picture of the grace of ordinary life. Above all, this eclectic anthology, including works from Raymond Carver, Emily Dickinson, Charles Simic, Billy Collins, Robert Frost, Kenneth Rexroth, and many more, fit Keillor’s definition of “good”: memorable, beautifully worded, and accessible. They’re not highbrow. They’re not stuffy. But when hard times send us skidding into the meridian, the poems collected here are what we need them to be: just plain good.

Excerpted from the publisher, http://us.penguingroup.com/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,0_9780670034369,00.html#, accessed 3/15/08.

Our group has a story associated with Good Poems. One of the people who frequently joins our group bought this book as a way of getting reintroduced to poetry. He mentioned Lisel Mueller, and found her birthday. I had never heard of her before, so I was glad to find a new poet. When we met to read her poems in February 2008, we signed and sent a store flier indicating our event to her c/o the Poetry Center of Chicago. She wrote and sent a delightful Thank You card to the River Junction Poets c/o Andrew Christ. This was one of the more memorable events for me in the 2+ years of doing this.

-- "It is our goal to appreciate and improve our talents, to share our own work and to communicate the joys of poetry with others. Everyone's poetry is valued."

River Junction Poets Mission Statement

Garrison Keillor Performs in Saginaw

A SIGH FROM SAGINAW

By Garrison Keillor

Tribune Media Services

I have rather low self-esteem, which is a handicap for a man in this line of work whom you, dear reader, expect to give you 750 words in the strike zone about the economic stimulus package and all those little government checks going out to 130 million of you in hopes you'll go buy candles to light against the darkness and maybe a rod and reel so you can teach a man to fish, but I can't and it's too late to rebuild self-confidence.

I write these words in a Ramada Inn in Saginaw, Michigan, hometown of the poet Theodore Roethke, who wrote a poem that began, "I knew a woman, lovely in her bones, when small birds sighed she would sigh back at them." I came here to give a speech and afterward a man said, "Thanks for coming. It's so hard to get first-rate speakers to come to Saginaw." Which was sort of crushing to me.

Evidently they'd tried to get Alan Greenspan to come and read tea leaves for them and, failing that, had to settle for me. Oh well. Probably if Roethke himself had come to Saginaw, they'd have said, "Nice of you to come, Ted. We tried to get Louis Jenkins but he was asking too much money and demanded a first-class hotel."

My speech is entitled "Aging: The Opportunity of a Lifetime" and at twenty-five minutes it's a little long. The audience was rather subdued, and who can blame them? Saginaw is sagging, along with the rest of Michigan, and you see guys sliding into the bars at 9 a.m. and you see the For Sale signs and feel in your gut the pain of people whose houses are their IRAs and you want to pull into their driveway and give them a hug, but nobody wants a tall guy with glasses and low self-esteem to throw his arms around them unless he is a buyer with his checkbook out and a ballpoint pen.

I almost said, "I suffer from low self-esteem," but I've met people with high self-esteem and that is a real affliction - the big honkers barreling through airports hollering into their cell phones, who have less self-doubt than the average caribou, galloping around and making a big impression - guys who used to attend my sales seminar, "Why Not Be the Best, Earn Buckets of Money, and Retire Before You're Fifty to a Beach House on Barbados?" I remember them well. They paid $1,000 apiece to hear a whole string of clichés revarnished and covered with cat fur and afterward they said, "Thanks for your ideas. It's so hard to find inspirational speakers who really inspire you."

I'll tell you one thing. I wish I'd written "when small birds sighed she would sigh back at them" - such a fine thought, and what did Alan Greenspan ever say in ten words that moves you so much as those, assuming you have known a gentle woman with lovely bones who is so attuned to the world that she can hear the sighing of birds - and I admire Saginaw for producing Roethke and for celebrating his centennial in May and preserving his boyhood home at 1805 Gratiot Avenue.

It will be a reminder to Saginaw that out of suffering come gifts of great beauty. Roethke suffered from bipolar disorder, was alcoholic, came back to Gratiot Avenue several times to recuperate from breakdowns, and died at fifty-five. But he was a brilliant teacher. And he wrote "My Papa's Waltz" and exquisite poems about his father's greenhouses in Saginaw and the poem about the woman who sighed at birds.

You can sit in the Saginaw airport, as I did, waiting for persons unknown to you to ask you to carry something aboard the aircraft, worrying what they might do if you report them to the nearest authorities, and think of that woman lovely in her bones, when small birds sighed she would sigh back at them, and your mind is carried to thoughts of various women whose bone structure you have known and whose sighs, which you had imagined were about you and your finesse as a lover, were actually meant for nuthatches and chickadees, and that is an interesting idea to carry with you to Lincoln, Nebraska, the next stop on the tour. My new lecture is entitled "Discover Yourself Through Vegetable Gardening" and I am generally available for booking all through March, April and May. Rates are negotiable.

(Garrison Keillor's "A Prairie Home Companion" can be heard Saturday nights on public radio stations across the country.)

(c) 2008 by Garrison Keillor. All rights reserved.

Kay Ryan

Kay Ryan Thinks the River Junction Poets Are Great - She Told Us So Herself

On Thursday, September 7th, 2006, I was among seven people who met to read poems by Ms. Kay Ryan. Although we live in mid-Michigan and Ms. Ryan lives in northern California, we met on the occasion of her birthday. Some of the group are regular members of the River Junction Poets, the poetry group in Saginaw (Michigan). We met at the Barnes & Noble bookstore on Tittabawassee Road. We met from 7 to 9 p.m. and learned a little about Ms. Ryan and her poetry. For instance, we learned that she enjoys teaching introductory writing at a college in northern California. We learned from Garrison Keillor's new show that she has a 'literary friendship' with Dana Gioia. And we observed that Ms. Ryan has a wide variety in her poems. Her poems sometimes have humor and sometimes they are philosophical. We read enough to see that much and more.

While we were there, we bought and signed a birthday card to send to Ms. Ryan. I took the card with me, and the next day I found her address online. I addressed the envelope and put the card in the mail. On September 15th I received a response from Ms. Ryan in my mailbox. How cool is that! Ms. Ryan addressed her card 'to the River Junction Poets c/o Andrew Christ.' She writes:

To the River Junction Poets of Saginaw - What a wonderful birthday surprise! I think you're great. Thanks. (signed) Kay Ryan 9-12-06

I particularly enjoyed that she underlined the word 'great' twice. On the other side of the card she added

'(This is a spare page from a fine-press book made by printing students in San Francisco.)'

On one side of the card is a poem titled 'Crustacean Island,' and on the other side of the card is a poem titled 'A Cat/A Future.'


Crustacean Island

There could be an island paradise
where crustaceans prevail.
Click, click, go the lobsters
with their china mitts and
articulated tails.
It would not be sad like whales
with their immense and patient sieving
and the sobering modesty
of their general way of living.
It would be an island blessed
with only cold-blooded residents
and no human angle.
It would echo with a thousand castanets
and no flamencos.



A Cat/A Future

A cat can draw
the blinds
behind her eyes
whenever she
decides. Nothing
alters in the stare
itself but she's
not there. Likewise
a future can occlude:
still sitting there,
doing nothing rude.



Thank you Kay Ryan - no longer a stranger - another friend we haven't met yet.

"It is our goal to appreciate and improve our talents, to share our own work and to communicate the joys of poetry with others. Everyone's poetry is valued."
River Junction Poets Mission Statement