Sherry Chandler

The nectar in the bottom of the cup

I am not sure how a person is supposed to read a poem in Alicia Ostriker’s collection The Crack in Everything (Pitt Poetry Series, 1996) — a poem for example like “The Boys, the Broom Handle, the Retarded Girl,” and then turn a page and read another poem.

There is so much anger and pain in these poems that reading just one is difficult. Reading another and then another is devastating.

Harold Schweizer in Literature and Medicine 16.2 (1997) 273-277 considers what he calls Ostriker’s “poetics of pain” and finds redemption:

It is a redemptive, but paradoxical principle that structures the poetic vision of this book. The incurability of history, the violence of cities, the randomness of illness, the incomprehensibility of pain: these are the cracks. And while they elicit Ostriker’s warning against “the old myth that suffering is virtue” (“The Russian Army Goes into Baku,” 27), in her poem titled “The Class” the light nevertheless gets in:

Against evidence, the teacher believes
Poetry heals, or redeems suffering,
If we can enter its house of judgment.

So the redemption is in the act of poetry itself, the writing of it, the reading of it, the witness. Poetry heals the poet. The last section of this fairly long collection is titled “The Mastectomy Poems.” It’s a series of 12 meditations on Ostriker’s mastectomy, from diagnosis to a sort of tremulous reconcilation. The question here for Schweizer is:

. . . how will her own cancer speak, how will she follow its instructions?* Has she learned the lessons she wanted to teach her students? Can she decipher the hieroglyphs of pain? Can she believe against all evidence that poetry heals or redeems?

The answer I think is yes.

Tucked into all this pain are a few moments of joy. Dogs playing in the surf “For absolutely nothing but joy.” A depiction of a sweet biracial marriage called “The Vocabulary of Joy.” Right after “After Illness*” comes “Middle-Aged Woman at a Pond”

. . . This is the nectar
In the bottom of the cup,
This blissfulness in which I strip and dive.

Let my questions stand unsolved
Like trees around a pond. Water’s cold lick
Is a response. I swim across the ring of it.

A few days ago at the Green River Writers’ retreat, I picked up a copy of the latest issue of The American Poetry Review. On the back cover was a long poem, “Relax,” by Ellen Bass which incorporated a tale of a woman running from predators who goes over a cliff. She catches herself by a twig growing out of the cliff. Looking down, she sees more predators snapping at her heels. Then she sees that mice are chewing on the little plant she clings to. And, growing in a cranny in the cliff, she spies a single strawberry. I am recounting this from memory and have lost details but I did jot down the poem’s ending lines;

She looks up, down, at the mice.
Then she eats the strawberry.
So here’s the view, the breeze, the pulse
in your throat . . .
Oh taste how sweet and tart
the red juice is, how the tiny seeds
crunch between your teeth.

Forgive me for quoting (badly) one poet to gloss another, but this is, I think where we are with Ostriker’s The Crack in Everything. We are grabbing these moments of sweetness when we can.

Suffer we all must, but as Schweizer says:

. . . Ostriker’s poems, thus, become a plea for the right to suffer and mourn in one’s own time and on one’s own terms.

____________
*A reference to an earlier poem in this collection, “After Illness,” in which the speaker has gone on retreat with a few swiftly chosen books, looking for

the mind’s gradual
Deceleration, as if I
Took my foot off the gas
And the Buick rolled to a stop.

It’s a four-page poem in three sections that ends with the poet lying on a blanket at the edge of a woods:

Hush. Quiet the mind. Leap motionless.
The Tao that can be spoken
Is not the true Tao.

. . .

Look, I’m just going to turn
Over on my back, on the blanket, nothing
Between here and the sky,

What I want
Is to listen, what I want
Is to follow instructions.

Kestrel

I am very pleased to tell you that my poem “Without Shoe or Stocking” is now published in Kestrel #24. The issue for Spring 2010 contains nearly 150 pages of prose and poetry on the subject of “Border States” both geographic and emotional.

As usual, Kestrel 24 is a lovely book with eleven black & white photographs by David R. Cerbone. including a very evocative series of photos of bridge pilings at McGrath, West Virgina, a series immediately followed by Ellen McGrath Smith’s poem “The Bridge,” a lovely description of the kamdharasana or bridge pose of yoga, with, what else? an epigraph from Hart Crane (I cannot do justice to the formatting of this poem in the space I have):

The water we knew once with all of our skin
                                                                             is what lifts you, though you . . .

                                                — think your limbs are the pylons, the forces
that make water safe again, are the laborers
                                                                   holding their breath
                                                                         long enough to forget

how their wages can't stretch from bank to bank.

It’s a wonderful playful poem from a poet who teaches in the Carlow University Madwoman in the Attic program (talk about your border states).

The issue also contains a ten-page excerpt from When the Water Came: Evacuees of Hurricane Katrina, a collaboration of poetry and photography from Cynthia Hogue and Rebecca Ross due out this year from UNO Press. Hogue’s poem is an “interview poem” with artist Emily Dygert. Here’s a short excerpt:

2.
My house was two blocks off
the intersection of St. Charles and Napoleon
on the river side of St. Charles.
I went to the Contemporary Arts Center,
where I taught, and that’s where
I slept during the storm.
Sixty-eight windows broke.
It flooded. Brick buildings crumbled
around it. So that was, in short,
my evacuation.

Lots of other great stuff in these pages, including, I hope, my poem, which is one of my dramatic monologues from the frontier period of Kentucky, a poem in the voice of a slave woman who “kept the camp” for Boone’s crew as they cut the Wilderness Road across Cumberland Gap.

2010 Ruth Redel Poetry Prize

The Heartland Review has put out a call for submissions for the 2010 Ruth Redel Poetry Prize

First Prize – 250 dollars and publication in the fall 2010 issue of the The Heartland Review.

The Review asks for a tax-deductible 3 dollar contribution to support the contest and the publication. Please make checks out to The Heartland Review. Send a cover page with titles of poems, author’s name, address and a short biography (75 words, maximum.)

Names and addresses should NOT appear on the poems themselves. Poems should be typed and should be no longer than 30 lines.

Post mark deadline for entries is August 15, 2010.

Winners will be announced in October and invited to read at the Morrison Gallery Poetry Series.

Send a self-addressed stamped LEGAL size envelope in order to receive results.

Mail entries to:

Ruth Redel Poetry Contest
c/o Mick Kennedy
Elizabethtown Community and Technical College
600 College Street Rd
Elizabethtown KY 42701

Questions? Contact Mick.Kennedy@kctcs.edu

Still: The Journal announces first annual literary contest

The Editors of Still: The Journal announce the first annual Still Writing Contests in Fiction, Poetry and Nonfiction. Contest entries should follow the submission guidelines, which state that “we want to feature writing that exemplifies the Mountain South or that is written by an author with an established connection to the region.” Prizes of $100 will be awarded to first place winners of fiction, poetry and nonfiction. Judges are acclaimed writers Ann Pancake (fiction), Maurice Manning (poetry) and Janisse Ray (nonfiction). Deadline for entry is August 15, 2010. $8 entry fee. Complete guidelines for submission can be found on the Still website: www.stilljournal.net/contest.php. Inquiries or questions can be directed to: contest@stilljournal.net.

Still: The Journal, an online literary journal, was founded in 2009 by Silas House (fiction editor), Jason Howard (nonfiction editor) and Marianne Worthington (poetry editor) with the mission to offer the finest in contemporary literary writing of Central Appalachia, or the Mountain South. Still: The Journal is published three times a year in October, February and June. In the three issues published since its founding, Still has featured emerging writers as well as national and regional award-winning writers Pamela Duncan, Steve Holt, Ron Houchin, Irene Latham, Karen Salyers McElmurray, Jim Minick, Elaine Fowler Palencia, Mark Powell, Joshua Robbins, Dana Wildsmith, and Neela Vaswani. Each issue also contains an in-depth interview with an Appalachian artist and a multi-media presentation by an Appalachian artist.

Community

Over at Very Like a Whale, Amy King answers Ten Questions on Poets and Technology, with advice on using Facebook, Twitter, blogs, etc. She begins like this:

Technology offers a variety of platforms for disseminating one’s work. Some are difficult to master, but most are not. Poets who don’t want to spend tons of time convincing a handful of big-name publishers their work is worthwhile should master just a few platforms like blogs (I prefer WordPress.com) or writer-friendly DIY sites such as Red Room and She Writes, and even the self-publishing mediums now readily available like Lulu.

Women in particular might consider knuckling down and forego the fear of “going public” independently (i.e. no publisher to do your PR, which is rare anyway). We’ve been modest and quiet far too long. We need more women’s voices, styles and revelations in that literary landscape, from what I’ve seen.

And then this:

Poetry survives because it’s primarily about human connection and interaction as mediated by words and what that entails (the latter being a complex multitude I cannot possibly outline here). Technology is making it possible for us to get the word out, in a variety of formats and styles, to more people daily. Some of us plug away at proliferating poetry. I do. I’m invested in setting an example of someone who does not apologize for wanting others to engage with her through the poetic. Poetry is transformative, where culture can stagnate and water down to the lowest form and function, if you let it. So why not use that technology to spread the poetic? Technology is neutral; it’s what we do with it that’s going to make or break us, so to speak.

If you’re a poet looking for community, check out Big Tent Poetry

Big Tent Poetry aims to create a fun, inspiring, motivational and supportive community for poets at all levels of writing. In addition to a weekly writing “Prompt” and a weekly “Come One, Come All” gathering for poets to share their work, Big Tent Poetry provides writing challenges, revision activities, columns and reviews

One of the interesting features of this new site is a forum of blogging poets, the sideshow barkers, who will inlcude Robert Peak, James Brush, and Dave Bonta, among others. As Dave says:

[My ideal would be a] decentralized internet where we all have our own sites (whether blogs proper or sites on Tumblr, StatusNet, etc.), subscribe to each other’s feeds, and link and comment back and forth with the enthusiasm now reserved for Facebook and Twitter.

O.K., that day will probably never come. But Big Tent Poetry’s mode of operation definitely contributes to the dream of a decentralized social web. Carolee, Deb and Jill have made the wise decision not to try to line up a bunch of regular columnists, but instead get a bunch of us to agree to send along links whenever we write something poetry-related, and let them decide whether to feature it on the site. They have dedicated a whole third ring (the circus kind, not the Dantean kind) to collect such contributions, and I’m pleased and honored that they chose my piece about Poetry Reading Month as the second entry there. I like the idea of Via Negativa as sideshow and me as its barker. And I’m in good company — see the complete list of barkers on the site’s About page.

Illustrating another form of community, Poemeleon has released their collaborative issue, which explores various permutations of collaborating — poet with artist, poet with actress, poet with poet (with poet with poet), even reviewer with reviewer. the issue aslo includes two fine essays on collaboration by Martha Deed and Millie Niss and by Marilyn Taylor. Marilyn begins:

One of the most rewarding things about being a poet is, for many of us, the pure pleasure of discovering and getting to know other poets. Our relationships often have a way of blossoming into a remarkably supportive community– a flock of enthusiasts who find joy in talking poetry, reading poetry, arguing poetry, and sharing with one another the poetry we’ve written.

I’ve found, in fact, that if a poet hangs around long enough with kindred souls, chances are excellent that somebody, sometime, is going to suggest a poetry collaboration project. In other words, someone will decide that if two or more of us team up, pooling our talents and energies, the result will be something wonderful, publishable, and more than the sum of its parts.

That person will be wrong.

Well, maybe not entirely wrong. I admit to possessing a strong sense that the odds are stacked against the true success of most poetry collaborations—at least in terms of their real artistic merit, and the likelihood of their being read and appreciated by others.

Why do I come to such a grumpy, unsubstantiated conclusion?

Read the essay to find the answer to that question and also to find some examples of collaborations that Marilyn considers successful.

And, because poets are part of the community at large, I recommend you read Robin Kemp’s Dispatches from Saints & Sinners 2010: Part 1 The Oil Spill

Back in my hometown of New Orleans, I’m sitting at Rue de la Course at the corner of Carrollton and Oak, shaking off the late-night arrival and waking up to continued universal agitation over the oil spill in the Gulf. As a former CNN newswriter and environmental reporter for Gambit, I’m in the unhappy position of reading some of my poems, grounded in this city and its surrounding wetlands, through this new lens.

. . .

National coverage of this story has been spotty at best. The spill’s impact began to seep into CNBC’s consciousness yesterday—as a story on possible seafood price increases in New York—as if the question of what the spill means for all Americans were not one of benthic depth. We tend to think of North and South, East Coast and Gulf Coast, as universes apart, yet our lives are far more interdependent than regional allegiances would have us believe. The hundreds of thousands of dead baitfish I saw (and smelled) yesterday at low tide in Ocean Springs, MS have everything to do with Saints and Sinners, with our literature, with queer survival, with human survival. Our coast has been queered, and not in a good way. Some people don’t care whether we live or die. From the point of view of those who live and work in New Orleans and the Gulf South, who “we” are has spread its dark sheen across a far wider surface in recent weeks.

Stuff # 7

By way of Kate Bernadette Benedict, I have discovered this SpokenVerse channel at YouTube, at which I was immediately attracted to this reading of “A Conservative” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Don’t let the picture of Glenn Beck defer you. Play it at YouTube to cut out the middle man of embedded streaming.

Speaking of Kate, there is a brand new issue of Umbrella up. I invite you to explore.

Kate also has an incisive poem in the green issue of Soundzine, as do my friends Antonia Clark and Mary Meriam. I invite you to explore there, too.

Meanwhile, qarrtsiluni has completed its Health Issue, which includes my poem “Relics” and a bunch of other good stuff. Look around there, too. Co-editors Susan Elbe and Kelly Madigan Erlandson write in their summary:

Our hope was to focus on and highlight health — both the radiant, full-bodied, energetic variety, and the various ways health is impaired or depleted. We struggled to balance the issue, hoping to equally include pieces that celebrate the joy we experience in health and that explore the grief in our disease and dying. We were continually surprised at how difficult this was, as the majority of submissions we received focused on ill health.

We wondered why the focus seemed more on our dis-ease than on our vibrancy. Is it that we use writing to, as Gregory Orr says, “(sing) the pain back into the wound?”

Revealing of my age and health status that I tend to want to read that last sentence “sing the back pain into the wound.”

Rumors have reached me that the Dead Poets Society of America is planning a second annual Dead Poets Bash in Lexington Cemetery on Wednesday, May 5, at 3:30 p.m. If/When I know more, I’ll let you all know.

Celebrating Kestrel 23

In the Penthouse of Wallman Hall, Fairmont State University, April 23. What better way to celebrate the Bard’s birthday.

Editor-in-chief, Donna Long:

Ry Collins:

Lesley Wheeler:

Poetry Editor, Elizabeth Savage:

Sherry Chandler:

Sally Rosen Kindred: