Let's be honest. Poetry is a hobby to me, an important hobby, but a hobby nonetheless. It's not putting food on the table and I have no illusions about my stature or talent, except perhaps for the illusion that I have no illusions. I'm good at it. I publish and can probably continue to publish. Beyond that, who knows? I'm probably not the worst poet in America, and certainly not the best (whatever that means). I am neither convinced of my own "genius" nor of my own "immortality".
The question then is why I write at all. Why one writes at all. I mean, why bother? If one is not convinced that one is contributing in an essential way to culture or humanity, what is one doing and why is one doing it? I have always written. I started writing in Third Grade and haven't stopped. That may be a complete answer, but still an evasion.
It may simply come down to a combination of laziness and stubbornness. Really. Writing, I think, is a kind of shortcut to life. It takes this complex impossible task, living, and reduces it to two-dimensions. That is, it provides substitute aesthetic satisfactions for the hard-won real satisfactions of life. I can only speak for myself, but I have no desire to "get ahead" in life. None. Writing is a way of getting ahead OF life without getting ahead IN life. An odd use of one's time, if you ask me. It is, in many ways, of course, self-contained. Its rewards, for me, nonetheless, are spiritual, in a very broad sense of that word. Writing is an exploratory experience which also allows me to confirm my basic ideas about who I am and what's important to me.
Don't get me wrong. I like clean sheets and hot meals and paid bills. I have had periods in my life when I didn't have any of those things and I don't romanticize that insecurity. I'm just saying that, if that is all there is or if getting more of those things than someone else is all there is, I'm not extremely motivated to get out of bed. I am lazy and unambitious in that way. I don't care so much. Perhaps, for this reason, I will never be a "successful" writer.
I like the pretend world better. The world of music and words and ideas. The world of synthesizing all those things into something I call a poem.
The stubbornness? Persisting despite constant discouragement, disappointment and doubt. Somehow, at an early age, I came to believe that writing is important, and despite the evidence of reality, I won't let go of that ideal. Pure stubbornness and laziness.
Saturday, October 13, 2012
Sunday, September 16, 2012
An Amateur at Art
I understand, I think, why my manuscript is not getting any traction with potential publishers, despite the fact that a lot of the poems in it have been published in very good literary magazines. For those of you who don't know, most books of poems are published through contests, where the entry fee pays for the publication (and perhaps partly for the distribution) of the book. So, I have been entering my manuscript in contests. I am fortunate that we have the financial resources to pay the fee and absorb the other costs. The manuscript contains about 65 poems and about 25 of them have been published in journals. So far, the manuscript has been summarily dismissed, never making it past the first cut, often being returned even before the deadline for submissions has closed.
The explanation for this distaste is outside of my knowledge, of course. I have no real idea of who is doing the thinking and what he or she is thinking when they take a look at my work and say, "ugh," or "nah". A possible explanation did occur to me, however, and I think it is worth kicking around a bit. I start with an analogy. I have an acquaintance. We haven't seen each other for years. She is extremely bright, a Harvard grad, and, more importantly, an extremely skilled painter. She did not go to art school, but she has spent her life painting. Her paintings are beautiful and skilled. They are representational. She doesn't belong to a school of painting, but, if I had to give her work a name, I would call it post-post-impressionist. If you just glanced at them, you would think that they are not unlike a lot of work that one might see at a craft fair or local art show. In fact, her work far surpasses the stuff where one would instinctively place it, but there it is. That's where she shows. She is not part of the New York or any other art scene. She is an "amateur". She paints beautiful, careful, representational, post-post-impressionist paintings. They are just extremely good.
That's the problem. Now, I don't claim that my work, especially my most recent work, which is what I am really talking about, is on par with this painter's work. Nonetheless, there is something in the analogy. My new work has departed, intentionally, from the kind of post-New York School, post-modern, surrealism, that used to be my trade, and has been making attempts to use very plain, subtly tuned, language, in what often appears to be a confessional mode, i.e. based on personal experience, in a narrative style. Not always, but there's a lot of that. Certainly, at first glance, someone might revolt from the easy rhythms, the use of internal and end rhyme, the first person singular, and dismiss the work as the work of an amateur. I do not, as far as I know, belong to a school. Although, I have an MFA from a good program, it is in fiction, not poetry. Although I read lots and lots of contemporary work in journals and anthologies, more often than not, I am appalled at the lack of musicality, the pretentiousness, and most importantly, the sophomoric thought that passes for profundity. I can see why, in contrast with this work, I seem like an amateur.
In my own defense, I want to say just a few words. One, I am an amateur, I suppose. And gladly. I am outside academia, which, I think, has given me the freedom to write in a way which does not conform to current expectations or taste. Two, given that freedom, I have decided not to hide behind my education and reading, but to try to create substantial work that is not meant to impress anyone, but to get done, what I conceive admittedly, is the work of a poem, that is, carry a "thought" that can only be expressed through the fusion of poetic art (music, diction) with imagination (metaphor, rhetoric). So, what my poems do is meant to look straightforward: I often use form, and I try mightily to let the poem do the work, not me. In other words, I try not to beat the reader over the head with what I call the argumentum of the poem, try not to beat the reader over the head with my erudition or my cleverness, but make something very hard look very easy. I don't want to be part of a movement or a school. I want to write poetry. In fact, I can't help but write poetry. I think there's a lot more than meets the eye in my poems, but easy dismissal may be the price I pay for the path I have chosen. If, at first glance, my work looks like the work of an amateur, I understand.
The explanation for this distaste is outside of my knowledge, of course. I have no real idea of who is doing the thinking and what he or she is thinking when they take a look at my work and say, "ugh," or "nah". A possible explanation did occur to me, however, and I think it is worth kicking around a bit. I start with an analogy. I have an acquaintance. We haven't seen each other for years. She is extremely bright, a Harvard grad, and, more importantly, an extremely skilled painter. She did not go to art school, but she has spent her life painting. Her paintings are beautiful and skilled. They are representational. She doesn't belong to a school of painting, but, if I had to give her work a name, I would call it post-post-impressionist. If you just glanced at them, you would think that they are not unlike a lot of work that one might see at a craft fair or local art show. In fact, her work far surpasses the stuff where one would instinctively place it, but there it is. That's where she shows. She is not part of the New York or any other art scene. She is an "amateur". She paints beautiful, careful, representational, post-post-impressionist paintings. They are just extremely good.
That's the problem. Now, I don't claim that my work, especially my most recent work, which is what I am really talking about, is on par with this painter's work. Nonetheless, there is something in the analogy. My new work has departed, intentionally, from the kind of post-New York School, post-modern, surrealism, that used to be my trade, and has been making attempts to use very plain, subtly tuned, language, in what often appears to be a confessional mode, i.e. based on personal experience, in a narrative style. Not always, but there's a lot of that. Certainly, at first glance, someone might revolt from the easy rhythms, the use of internal and end rhyme, the first person singular, and dismiss the work as the work of an amateur. I do not, as far as I know, belong to a school. Although, I have an MFA from a good program, it is in fiction, not poetry. Although I read lots and lots of contemporary work in journals and anthologies, more often than not, I am appalled at the lack of musicality, the pretentiousness, and most importantly, the sophomoric thought that passes for profundity. I can see why, in contrast with this work, I seem like an amateur.
In my own defense, I want to say just a few words. One, I am an amateur, I suppose. And gladly. I am outside academia, which, I think, has given me the freedom to write in a way which does not conform to current expectations or taste. Two, given that freedom, I have decided not to hide behind my education and reading, but to try to create substantial work that is not meant to impress anyone, but to get done, what I conceive admittedly, is the work of a poem, that is, carry a "thought" that can only be expressed through the fusion of poetic art (music, diction) with imagination (metaphor, rhetoric). So, what my poems do is meant to look straightforward: I often use form, and I try mightily to let the poem do the work, not me. In other words, I try not to beat the reader over the head with what I call the argumentum of the poem, try not to beat the reader over the head with my erudition or my cleverness, but make something very hard look very easy. I don't want to be part of a movement or a school. I want to write poetry. In fact, I can't help but write poetry. I think there's a lot more than meets the eye in my poems, but easy dismissal may be the price I pay for the path I have chosen. If, at first glance, my work looks like the work of an amateur, I understand.
Saturday, August 18, 2012
An Email to a Poet
Jeff:
Thanks for sending the poem. I feel remiss that I never have anything to say, except gushing compliment, but perhaps if I explain the way I read other people's work, you'll understand. My first rule is I don't try to make it something it is not. I don't belong to a "school". In other words, whenever I read anything, I try as best as I can not to look for what's not there or what could be there. At the macro level, this discipline means that if someone gives me a poem or story about a dog, I don't say, you know, dogs are okay, but what if it was about a cat. Obviously, the temptation that requires resistance is more often centered on the argumentum of the poem, not the subject, but you get the idea. [I should hastily add that I have no quarrel at all with either the subject nor the argumentum of this poem, or any of your poems, that's not what I am saying. I am thinking more of other occasions, other writers, but even then, to be frank, I am extremely open-minded and am almost universally delightfully surprised by what other people write about and where that subject leads the poem. The poem you sent is no exception to that general experience. This poem does what, I think, poems do best. It takes a "simple" image drawn from regular life and fills it with beauty, music, love, and grace.]
Instead what I look at are the technical aspects of the poem. How does this poem set out to do what it wants to do? Is there anything out of place, a stylistic detour that jars? Is it ham-fisted or tinny? Does the thought leave the poem at any point to grab some easy substitute, like cliche or sententiousness, etc.? Those kinds of things. And Jeff, your poems never do any of those things. You are skilled and exact. To the point, in fact, where the skill and exactitude seem like a kind of easy going looseness (the hardest and best thing to do.)
This last rule is going to seem weird. I don't expect poems to be "perfect". You know, the Golden Bowl rule. Only an idiot would want to patch the cracks where humanity, humility and grace shine through. Think in terms of meter and rhyme. Nothing is more horrible than perfect iambic pentameter with inflexible masculine end rhymes. I strongly believe that the same is true for every other aspect of a poem.
So, when someone shows me a poem that is skilled, yet human, that comes from love and humility, that doesn't miss a step, yet still seems like a casual stroll, that embraces its own tentativeness and incompleteness, yet leads us to a place of wonder, all I can say is : It's great. Jeff, it's great. I love it.
Keith
Thanks for sending the poem. I feel remiss that I never have anything to say, except gushing compliment, but perhaps if I explain the way I read other people's work, you'll understand. My first rule is I don't try to make it something it is not. I don't belong to a "school". In other words, whenever I read anything, I try as best as I can not to look for what's not there or what could be there. At the macro level, this discipline means that if someone gives me a poem or story about a dog, I don't say, you know, dogs are okay, but what if it was about a cat. Obviously, the temptation that requires resistance is more often centered on the argumentum of the poem, not the subject, but you get the idea. [I should hastily add that I have no quarrel at all with either the subject nor the argumentum of this poem, or any of your poems, that's not what I am saying. I am thinking more of other occasions, other writers, but even then, to be frank, I am extremely open-minded and am almost universally delightfully surprised by what other people write about and where that subject leads the poem. The poem you sent is no exception to that general experience. This poem does what, I think, poems do best. It takes a "simple" image drawn from regular life and fills it with beauty, music, love, and grace.]
Instead what I look at are the technical aspects of the poem. How does this poem set out to do what it wants to do? Is there anything out of place, a stylistic detour that jars? Is it ham-fisted or tinny? Does the thought leave the poem at any point to grab some easy substitute, like cliche or sententiousness, etc.? Those kinds of things. And Jeff, your poems never do any of those things. You are skilled and exact. To the point, in fact, where the skill and exactitude seem like a kind of easy going looseness (the hardest and best thing to do.)
This last rule is going to seem weird. I don't expect poems to be "perfect". You know, the Golden Bowl rule. Only an idiot would want to patch the cracks where humanity, humility and grace shine through. Think in terms of meter and rhyme. Nothing is more horrible than perfect iambic pentameter with inflexible masculine end rhymes. I strongly believe that the same is true for every other aspect of a poem.
So, when someone shows me a poem that is skilled, yet human, that comes from love and humility, that doesn't miss a step, yet still seems like a casual stroll, that embraces its own tentativeness and incompleteness, yet leads us to a place of wonder, all I can say is : It's great. Jeff, it's great. I love it.
Keith
Friday, July 27, 2012
Vote Now
I used to only write poems like this one. Now, I hardly ever write poems of this ilk: allusive, abstract, difficult, whimsical. You know, New York School, y'all. They were my teachers, after all. Is this regression? I thought I'd leave it to a vote. Let me know if you approve or disapprove. Yea or nay. If the response if positive, I will not crawl about the room in despair. If negative, meh.
Machines Made of Meat
The origin of everything is nothing.
In some versions of reality,
You are reading this poem.
In others, you are still in bed.
One is led, therefore, into difficulties,
Except, of course, for Li Po.
That wily bastard is riding a surfboard,
Dangling on the lip of a wave,
Just as his cigarette dangles from his lip,
While he points at an empty space
In the cloudless sky as he sidles by,
Where the moon would want to be,
If it happened to be following along.
Everything is liable to decay.
If someone, traditionally called the observer,
Happened to be following along,
That person would be engaged
In a shameless act of poetry:
Did your friend,
Chang, dream
That he was a
butterfly, or did
The butterfly dream
that it was he?
Nobody knows what’s behind door number three.
Keith Dunlap
Thursday, July 26, 2012
You Don't know What You Don't Know
I feel as though writing poetry has been shanghai'd by people who can't write having their revenge against those who can, much in the same way politics has been taken over by people who can't think, having their revenge against people who can. (I don't really think that, but it makes a good polemic for what follows.) I think writing is intuitive, but it comes with a lot of practice and hopefully a good editor. I know I have written a lot of bad stuff and continue to write a lot of bad stuff, but I've done it so much that I can tell when I've hit my standard at least, so that I am prepared to turn it over to someone else's set of critical eye, because, and this last point is essential, there will always be things I cannot see, good and bad. The worst attribute for a writer is a kind of American Idol defensive righteousness about one's one work. One needs a thick skin, of course, and some detachment from the success or failure show, but there is nothing sadder and more obnoxious than the neophyte convinced of his own posterity. (I should know, having been that guy.) Nothing is harder and more uncertain than good writing.
Sunday, July 1, 2012
Simultaneous Submissions
I am now mostly submitting to magazines that do not accept simultaneous submissions. Why? Not why am I submitting to these magazines (they are generally higher echelon magazines,) but why don't they accept simultaneous submissions? I mean, really. What's the big deal? It is okay for writers to experience constant rejection, but not magazines? In other words, are these magazine's egos so precious that if they accept a poem, and then learn that the writer had neglected to tell them that the same poem had been accepted somewhere else a month earlier, it is an affront that can't be countenanced? I actually accidentally submitted simultaneously to a magazine that does not take simultaneous submissions and the magazine sent me a scathing letter barring me for life from submitting to it (because of an honest mistake). Really? I still laugh about that to myself once in a while. Perhaps magazines do it to simply limit the number of submissions they receive. Really? Does it work? It seems self-defeating: why would you want to limit the number of submissions you receive? Having edited two magazines myself, it seems quite easy to eliminate (for whatever arbitrary editorial reason you espouse) about 95% of the submissions one receives on a quick read; sometimes just the first line tells you everything you need to know (sorry, the very human mind at work). But, if, for whatever reason, (and I suspect the only real reason is because the big magazines can do it,) a magazine does not take simultaneous submissions, I think a necessary concurrent policy is that the turn around time should not exceed four weeks, six weeks at the most. Otherwise, you put writers in the extremely difficult position of not getting poems published until years after a poem is written, if at all. If "magazine a" takes six months to a year to respond to a submission, and then so do "magazine b" and "magazine c", etc., by the time "magazine g" sees the poem, the poet will have evolved, the world of poetry will have evolved, and a very good poem may have become stale, either in the eyes of the poet or the world. Any policy other than accepting simultaneous submissions or not accepting them but promising a very rapid turnaround is only inconsiderate and insecure. It is certainly not writer friendly.
Saturday, June 30, 2012
The New Self by Steve Gehrke (reprinted without permission)
Are you or are you not of brain, matter's boss/ or its crevasse, are you the body itself,/ or more than that, immortal you, crouched/ in flesh, like a vampire packed into a bat?
The entire poem is too long to replicate here, but everything I love about this poem is in this first stanza: the music, beautiful end rhyme and interior rhyme driving the poem into unexpected places; the thought, complex without being pretentious (love crouched instead of couched). Just great. One of many fine poems in the latest issue of Poetry.
Are you or are you not of brain, matter's boss/ or its crevasse, are you the body itself,/ or more than that, immortal you, crouched/ in flesh, like a vampire packed into a bat?
The entire poem is too long to replicate here, but everything I love about this poem is in this first stanza: the music, beautiful end rhyme and interior rhyme driving the poem into unexpected places; the thought, complex without being pretentious (love crouched instead of couched). Just great. One of many fine poems in the latest issue of Poetry.
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