Michaela Eaves (my book cover’s artist) has created my first ever broadside…
http://corvida.livejournal.com/252559.html#cutid1
Narrative Poetry for the iPod Generation, Comic Book Plots for Poems: or, Is Poetic Narrative Dead?
Ron Silliman’s blog has a long post about how Ron is tolerant of narrative in film but intolerant of it in poetry. I made a short comment about how narrative should still be celebrated, but it could be that the narrative type transforms every generation – so, for the generation growing up right now, texting each other and downloading scenes of television on iPods, reading manga – how will they define narrative? What kind of narrative structure will they need or want? But in the end, people are hungry for communication, for structure and story, for emotional and intellectual connection – perhaps it may look different, but at its heart, that is why we turn to poetry.
I just got finished writing an article about how pop culture may become more dominant for the new generation of poets…because it is the new universal language, because this generation have been taught to be constant consumers of media…for a lot of reasons. I have been thinking about Matthea Harvey’s Modern Life a lot, maybe because it represents a way of talking about serious subjects in pop culture language, avoiding the personal narrative for a surreal type of narrative, making ridiculous leaps and at the same time, keeping the reader emotionally invested.
I don’t believe, myself, that narrative will ever be dead, any more than poetry will ever be dead – it will be continually reborn in new ways, with new voices, in new modes.
Thoughts? Arguments?
5-Alarm Weather
Yes, we are safe, though the apocalyptic weather continues here in the Northwest. 15 inches of rain in something like 24 hours and high winds have caused quite the ruckus. Today, we didn’t really think about the weather, until, running errands, my 6-foot-4 200+ pound husband suddenly found it hard to walk in the wind – a few minutes later, trying to drive to Target, we drove past a huge downed tree leaning heavily against a power line, and then we had to turn around in the middle of the road where it was washed out and a car in the street was up to its windows in flood water. It turned out that if Glenn had been trying to get home from his work to our old apartment today, instead of working from home, he wouldn’t have been able to – the entire highway system back to our old place was blocked by mudslides and floods, the streets were parking lots or flooded, and the bottom of our old street – we lived on the top of the hill – is currently underwater. The little condo we rented for a couple of years – right on the banks of the flooding Sammamish river – and the Chateau St. Michelle wineries – also lowland on the banks of the same river – are both being threatened by rising water. And it hasn’t even rained for 40 days and 40 nights! Just a couple of days of heavy snow followed by heavy rain.
I’m thinking good thoughts for my friends in Seattle, especially North Seattle, Kent, Kirkland, and Woodinville, tonight. The street above beautiful Golden Gardens park has completely collapsed into sinkhole and mud. The highway I-5 to Portland is impassable by train or car because of mud and flooding. Many families had to be rescued by airlift and raft from their homes. Turns out the ocean is, in this case, safer than the rivers.
We’re grateful we have power on and that our house is dry.
- At December 02, 2007
- By Jeannine Gailey
- In artists, blizzards, Centrum, windstorms
0
Blizzard! And the arts!
Had a great time meeting and getting to know my fellow Centrum Young Artists Project art faculty (a couple of drama folks, visual artists, videographers and dancers) but did not so much love this afternoon’s activity – trudging around the Centrum Fort Ward buildings for an hour in 20+mile an hour winds and blizzard-levels of snow with freezing hard rain – they wanted to acquaint us with the spaces which I had already seen, and of course, as a writing teacher, don’t really need like the drama or dance teachers might. I have asthma and I had to sneak into the different buildings and take an inhaler twice (so embarrassing having asthma attacks!) and tonight I am coughing and hacking. Stupid lungs! Also the wind broke my umbrella that has survived over five years of Seattle weather.
It was really fun to sit around and talk about art with all these people who have sacrificed and worked so hard to practive their various art work, committed and dedicated and intelligent folks who all care about sharing their excitement about art with kids.
If you live in the Seattle area, and you have children in middle school or high school that you think might enjoy a spring-break or summer week of arts studies in creative writing, music, drama, and visual arts, check out this link: http://www.centrum.org/youth/yap-workshops.html They have scholarships for kids who need them. I think the middle-school kids might need to sign up through their school. It’s a pretty incredible program. And I’m teaching a class called “Superheroes, Mythology and You – Creative Writing” for two weeks in March and a week in June. Most of the time, Centrum’s campus is postcard beautiful and they have very nice, mild weahter. Not mostly blizzards.
Even more weather news – we are expected to have 70 plus mile an hour winds and storms tomorrow…maybe I’ll stay in with a nice hot gallon of ginger tea…
Writing Prose About Poetry, AWP Prep, and Snow on the Ocean
Lately I’ve lucked into several simultaneous assignments to write about poetry. This is usually good, but I find when I have several articles due all at the same time, I feel unable to write poetry and must stick with my prose assignments til they are all finished, which inevitably crumples any inspiration I had at all for any type of writing, my enthusiasm dulls, and my usually crackling wit and charm dry up. I know some of you churn out poetry-related prose like nobody’s business, writing tome after tome of criticism and keeping up your poetry work too. How do you balance your prose about poetry with your actual poetry writing?
This weekend I’m going to a 48-hour intensive planning session at Centrum at Fort Warden, where I’ll get to hang out with a lot of other kinds of artists and talk about collaboration among the arts (cool!) and lesson plans (hmmm…) and basically get it in gear for our sessions in March and June. Hopefully all that work will shake up the old brain. It usually does. And I’m reading books on teaching poetry to high school and junior high kids as well as resources on teaching mythology and some comic book-related stuff as well.
Finally registered for AWP officially and made some hotel reservations (not as cheap as the room rates for the conference, sadly, but less than the non-conference rate for the Hilton) and now will have to look up airline tickets to NYC. Strangely, it is much cheaper for me to fly to New York City than to see my family in Ohio (I pay around $500 for bad coach seats to see them in Cinci while apparently I can get to NYC for around $300 if I’m not too picky) even though there must be more fuel involved getting to NYC than to Ohio from Washington State? Anyway, I swear I’m looking forward to the conference this year – even though it is at the worst time of year to visit anywhere in the general area of New York – I don’t always feel this excited. I think because I miss New York, the cute hole in the wall restaurants, the rush-rush attitude which I totally embrace when I’m there, the wonderful museums and Central Park…I feel like myself in NYC, one of the only other cities that happens in besides Seattle. I could totally see myself living there (I turned down a publishing job there about ten years ago, and have just always wondered “what if…”) someday. Someday after I win the lottery, perhaps.
In my tiny-town-by-the-sea, it is snowing. I don’t think anything will stick, but it does encourage the thinking about Christmas (I have yet to do much shopping, or get a tree, or make plans…) My Dad asked if I was getting much writing done, now that I’m in the ideal place for it. Well, with all the move-related shenanigans, doctor appts, and trying to get my freelance assignments done, I haven’t had time (or brainspace) for many picturesque walks by the beach, or visiting with my friends who live reasonably close, or, writing or sending out poetry at all. I hope this will change and the muse will visit soon. I’m sort of cranky when I’m not writing poetry. However, little half-grown deer all over the place, everywhere I drive, there are little deer on the road, deer in the yards, four or five at a time! It’s hard to be cranky looking at these little animals. No whales or bald eagle sightings yet, but I know they’re out there…
And PS Thanks for the great discussion on pop culture on the last post. Very helpful! I wish I could just fly everyone out to my house to sit around and talk about poetry for a few hours.
Earthquakes, My Publisher’s New Book, and Pop Culture and Poetry
Yes, my friend, almost one week after we moved in, we had a 4.0 earthquake near our new home. Now, the Pacific NW ain’t California, but it’s no earthquake-free zone. This one didn’t even rock our plants, although the cats were acting crazy about the time of the quake.
My publisher, Steel Toe Books’ Tom C. Hunley, just won the Holland book prize from Logan House Press for his newest MS, Octopus. Congrats Tom!
So, I’m writing a little article about pop culture and poetry, so I’m curious to get some discussion going and hear your thoughts…
What do you think about artists like Denise Duhamel, Bob Hicok, and others who drop pop culture references (from Pepsi to baseball blayers to Barbie) in their poems? What role do you think pop culture plays in the “high arts” ie painting, poetry, music, etc? Should it play a role?
Has advertising language penetrated our minds and souls?
Is there a way to subvert the culture while participating in it?
Are superheroes the new Greek myths?
Grumpy post deleted.
More cheerful post replacing the grumpier post…
Let’s just say this day (which included getting a needle in the arm, a somewhat dubious traffic ticket for my husband while he drove me the 2.5 hrs to the UW medical center where my endocrine specialist was, driving in dark, cold, freezing rain) could have gone better.
But, on the other hand, things could have been worse. I will just have to remember that.
And I will say, things will get better.
My Thanksgiving List of Things to Be Grateful For
–Good friends who are there when you need them. And supportive families when you are freaking out about moving and finances and why you became a poet in the first place.
–Baby seals sleeping on the beach. Are they dreaming about swimming?
–Deer in people’s yards, eating blackberry leaves, in the middle of the day for no reason.
–Sunshine in November in the NW – high 45, sunshine all day expected!
–Upcoming Poetry Books to look forward to from people whose poetry you really like (Yay, Suzanne Frischkorn!)
–Pomegranate 7Up – a little too sweet, but you know what? Awesome! And real pomegranates at every market too!
–To everyone who publishes and buys poetry and grant-giving organizations and artist colonies that support poets. Thanks!
–Renting three videos in case the DSL goes out (again!) and not feeling guilty about watching them because it’s a holiday darn it!
–My husband’s cooking Thanksgiving dinner!
Happy Thanksgiving! And the holidays and Christian Humanism (or, I John 4:12 and the Greatest Commandment)
So, Jessica Smith and The Poetry Foundation Blog have got me thinking about the kind of Christianity I could really embrace. Jessica mentioned that she’s not religious, but that the verse “No one has seen God at any time; if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us” ( I John 4:12) pretty much sums up what a religion should be about.
Ange Mlinko on the Harriet Blog talked about how Auden got in trouble with Christian friends and Rationalist friends alike for valuing the commandment “Love your neighbor as you love yourself” above the rest of the cannon or the Church (which, as Ange points out, Jesus said in a related verse could be used to replace entire Old Testament Law.)
These days, Christianity has a terrible rep in America, as a bunch of smug, self-righteous people trying to start another set of crusades (cough, President, cough.) But I think of back when I read the Bible myself at 12 or 13 (complete with rainbows and Jesus-hugging-sheep pictures!) that I was really struck with I John 4:12, and that I thought, that is really a God I could picture and get behind, a God who, crazy as it sounds, is love. I think the verse in I John goes onto say something about “God is love. He who does not love does not know God…he who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.” (This is a paraphrase, I don’t have it memorized.) It really puts that religious stuff in perspective – listen, if we can’t get be kind and stuff to all the crazy people around us (our families included – and they’re the craziest of all, usually) then we don’t have any business going around saying how much we love God.
In high school my Honors European History class studied Christian Humanism, and several pieces of work by Erasmus (In Praise of Folly was a really witty piece of writing I still enjoy reading) and Blaise Pascal. Like Auden, they were intelligent, educated people who didn’t believe the Church was really acting for the good of the average person, and encouraged people to 1. think for themselves, read the Bible for themselves, which was pretty radical in the 1500’s etc. and 2. do that thing where you love your neighbor instead of doing a lot of religious rituals.
Hmm. Must be all the Christmas music in the air, but that all sounds good to me. I’m basically a selfish person, and tend to forget that the people around me (the slow person in line, or the idiot weaving over both lanes going 40 in a 55 mph zone) are real people, with internal lives and struggles, just as valuable as me. It would be good for me to remember more often that the best way to be a spiritual person is just to be decent to the person next to me.
Pshaw. What will happen to my Villainess reputation if I keep up this kind of talk. Bah Humbug I say! Poison apples (and pumpkins) for all!
Plus, I just got done watching A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. If that doesn’t make you all sentimenal for your high school history theology-studying days, I don’t know what will.
Notes from the small-seaside town:
Today I was walking on the beach with my husband (don’t be TOO jealous, it was grey, about 30 degrees and super windy) and there was this sign that said “DONT BOTHER THE SEAL PUPS.” And then four feet away, looking exactly like a piece of moldy driftwood (or, conversely, a very gray human baby) was a tiny new baby seal with its eyes closed, breathing really fast and twitching in its sleep. I tried to convince Glenn it was cold and needed me to hug it keep it warm, but he pointed out the sign again. I think it would play really well with the cats.
In other news, I found my roasting pan, and put my bookshelves together. Also had to go to the eye doc after something during the move flew into my eye and my eye swelled up and got all red and they had to get it out with a suction cup thingy they put on your eyeball (ow!) and run an IV (eye-V?) bag of saline through to rinse out your eye. Like a big plastic contact lens. Not something I’d recommend for fun, especially if you’re a little eye-squeamish (I am!) In future, my father tells me, I should wear protective “Lab Goggles” when I move. Especially in the 60-mile-an-hour winds and a truck full of tiny particles of dust, mold, fiberglass, feathers, and God knows what else was in there from previous moves…Hey, when I was in organic chem, we had the eye safety center, which was basically a big water fountain, and that was good enough for us. No frou-frou-plastic-suction-eye-wash crap for us! No sir. Such overkill these modern doctors!
Also, I bought Thanksgiving food, including a branch of brussel sprouts. I don’t know exactly how to cook them on a branch. Should we just throw it in the over and gnaw at it? I did not buy a pie, though they looked good, because, what are two people going to do with a whole pie? If we want pie, you can go to the coffee shop the day after Thanksgiving. I’m sure we’ll be hungry again by then.
One more carload of stuff in the old place to get tomorrow…
Jeannine Hall Gailey served as the second Poet Laureate of Redmond, Washington and the author of Becoming the Villainess, She Returns to the Floating World, Unexplained Fevers, The Robot Scientist’s Daughter, and winner of the Moon City Press Book Prize and SFPA’s Elgin Award, Field Guide to the End of the World. Her latest, Flare, Corona from BOA Editions, was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. She’s also the author of PR for Poets, a Guidebook to Publicity and Marketing. Her work has been featured on NPR’s The Writer’s Almanac, Verse Daily and The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. Her poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Poetry, and JAMA.
