Top Ten Poems Today

(Though these may implicate me as a big squishy Romantic with a capital R. I really am very edgy and um, urban, and post-post-modern.)
In no particular order:
“She Tells Her Love While Half Asleep” – Robert Graves
“My Father in the Night Commanding No” – Louis Simpson
“Somewhere I have never travelled” – e.e. cummings
“I could not live with you” – Emily Dickinson
“The Wasteland” (Yes, that’s right. I enjoyed it. Okay, really only the first half.) – T.S. Eliot
“Parsley” – Rita Dove
“Not the Moon” – Margaret Atwood
“Midnight” – Louise Gluck
“Life, Friends, is Boring” – Dream Song 14 – John Berryman
“I knew a Woman” – Theodore Roethke/”Why I am Not a Painter” Frank O’Hara

Carol Ann Duffy and pop-culture post-feminism – can you tell that I’ve been steeped in homework the past two days? With all this enforced bed rest at least I’m getting my reading done. Today and yesterday I’ve been studying Brit poet Carol Ann Duffy, who frightened me because of her scarily similar tactics in poetry to my own – do you ever have that experience, where you think you’re doing something really different, then you read someone else who is doing it already, maybe (probably) even better than you? She writes these direct dramatic monologues in the voices of women from fairy tales and mythology in the book “The World’s Wife.” Her poems remind me a little of Plath with their sing-songy rhymes coupled with feminist persepctive, but more contemporary – a lot of slang and pop culture references. Anyway, I like her, but am afraid of reading any more of her.
Then I read two books that examine the place of the pop culture post-feminsist heroine (aka Wonder Woman, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Sydney Bristow et al, Witchblade et al.) Some really interesting arguments in a book that is a collection of essays called “Action Chicks: New Images of Tough Women in Popular Culture.” These essays use a variety of academic theories to talk about the stuff that I’m pretty much obsessed with, like – is it empowering to watch powerful, sexy women do violence, or destructive? What’s the downside of Lara Croft? Are these women really doing anything that different from heroines of the past? Do these women trangress cultural norms or reinforce stereotypes? I think I’ve come down on the side of yes – these characters do have a positive impact. But, then what would you expect from me? It’s also intesting how little pop culture has permeated the seemingly outdated content membrane of “literary” poetry (aka Paris Review, Poetry, most books by big poetry publishers – especially weird when you think that, for my generation, anyway (X-er and proud of it) pop culture may be the only common cultural experience? I mean, how many poems about gardening can you read before you’re like, yeah, now how about some poetry about something relevant? Not that poems about gardening are neccessarily bad, but I mean, there are movies and music and the internet and science fiction and video games and you may hate the television and the Xbox but they are currently the dominant icons of today’s kids, who are tomorrow’s poetry readers, right? I was reading on someone’s blog – Jim Behrle’s maybe – that “Grand Theft Auto is tomorrow’s Proust.” Which I thought was fairly apt.
Agree? Disagree? Think I’m evil? Leave a comment – I’d love to hear other people’s thoughts on this.

Hey everyone! A quick service announcement – if you’ve sent me any mail from my webbish6 site contact form in the last month, I just found out it was being automatically deleted without any notification to me – so I wasn’t ignoring you on purpose! Please re-send your messages. I’ve switched how the form is being delivered, so it should be working now. Sorry about that!

Doing the happy dance…because my poem “Wonder Woman Dreams of the Amazon” is up on Verse Daily today!

Having lately been enmeshed in dealing with the tedious business of attending to my many, various, and “surprising” (see previous post) health problems, I have started looking for the upside. Remember the character Mr. Glass, played by Samuel L. Jackson in “Unbreakable,” the supervillain with brittle-bone syndrome? Perhaps I too am destined to become such a supervillain. Then I started thinking, researching – what are the basic requirements for becoming not just a villain(ess), but a supervillain(ess)? I mean, these bizarre phsyical disorders I’ve been born with must mean that this is the next glamorous career route I should be looking at. Let’s see, besides these surprising defects of anatomy I just learned about (including something called a horseshoe kidney!) – I grew up next to secret nuclear weapon testing site, had an eccentric robot scientist father, and I love spandex. Just kidding. I really hate spandex. I do have the requisite collection of high-heeled boots, however. Also, supervillains are obsessed with superheroes. Remember Mr. Glass’s comic book art collection? And I have a chapbook devoted to female comic book superheroes. See the similarities?

OK, here’s my list of job requirements for a supervillain. Do you have any to add?

Job Requirements for Supervillain-dom

1. Growing up near secret nuclear testing site.
2. Father (or mother) eccentric scientist of some sort.
3. Isolated childhood, possibly due to dangerously high IQ (preferable: someone at sometime in your life has referred to you as a “super-genius,”) exclusion from childhood activities due to physical limitations or appearance-or-personality-oriented prejudices, etc. Multiple traumatic incidents welcome.
4. Physical limitations such as a serious disease or deformity, due to mutation, or, just as acceptably, an accident involving the creation of powerful new scientific weaponry and/or interaction with superhero, preferred.
5. Adult antisocial behavior and unwillingness to participate in group activities, such as religious, civic, or therapy meetings.
6. Dangerous lack of respect for authority figures, especially physically-extra-capable authority figures, such as superheroes, police and world governments.
7. A fashionable knack for skin-tight costumes, accessorized with masks, hooks and utility belts for men, masks, high-heeled boots and long nails for women.
8. Evil laugh and/or flamboyant criminal signature (branding, flowers, lopped appendages) optional. Ability to deliver lines like “Beware my Doomsday Device” without giggling a must. Unless it is an evil giggle.

Frankly, there have been far too few memorable supervillainesses imho. I always liked Poison Ivy because of my previous life as an orchid-cross-fertilizing, tomato-cloning botany student. If you were a supervillain, who would you be?

In the words of my favorite animated robot, “Bender’s back, Baby!”
Note to self: check for rare bleeding disorders BEFORE undergoing surgery. That saves time and effort for all involved. Life is a learning process! Also, it’s very bad to surprise your surgeon. You don’t want a surgeon saying something like “I’ve never seen anything like that before!” However, I’m mostly just happy I woke up. That is the most important part of any surgery.
Finally mentally alert again, getting all the scopolamine and anesthesia out of my system, though still low on physical energy. Fashion mags and poetry blogs were my sustaining entertainment for about three days, along with various episodes of Futurama (home of my favorite animated robot) and the Simpsons. Got the new issue of Poets and Writers and vow to read the whole thing today. Am totally behind in work-work (you know, the paying kind) and my MFA homework right now, but those things can wait until I’m better. Husband Glenn has been great, feeding me soup and ginger ale and jell-o. Overall, I’m feeling…thankful. Besides the angelic nature of the husband, many good friends have been writing and praying and thinking good thoughts and lending me family heirloom chaplets and doing remote Reiki and giving me medical advice and all kinds of overall good things. Thanks to everyone!

Thanks for everyone’s kind thoughts and prayers! Surgery is tomorrow morning at 9 AM. Hopefully I’ll be back to blogging soon 🙂

A Week o’ Poems in Print

One of those rare weeks when serendipitously three poems appear in print…In the mail, the Fall 2004 (!!)
Diner appeared (which included not just my poem but two wonderful poems by Natasha Moni) as well as the new American Poetry Journal,which was chock-full of good poems, a lot of them by people whose names I recognized from online communities – Paul Guest, Steve Mueske, C.J. Sage, and Ilya Kaminsky. Wondering through Barnes and Nobles my husband picked up a copy of the Spring 2004 Puerto del Sol, which happened to be the issue my poem was in – as well as a great poem by J.P Dancing Bear, who publishes American Poetry Journal. (Eerie twilight zone music here.) It was strange to get these journals after all my recent weeks of not submitting very much.Maybe it’s the universe’s way of telling me to send poems out. I’ve been writing more, which feels good, anyway, but I’ve been having strange nightmares – possibly these things are connected?
To balance out the warm fuzzies, I also got four rejections on one day this week, which is always bracing – I’m feeling discouraged about my first book manuscript, which is still making the rounds, 19 months now. Especially after you shell out $20 a pop for a one-sheet winner announcement, you start to feel like the game is playing you, instead of the other way around. I’ve sent to a couple of publishing houses who publish without running contests (Gray Wolf, Carnegie Mellon University Press) but I should probably send to even more. Although, to counter-balance that, I’ve had really good responses from people on the poetry in my chapbook, which makes me think, maybe what I’m writing is worthwhile after all, that someone besides my mom, husband, and four best friends wants to read the weird stuff I write. I even have to order more copies for my next two readings! The surprising thing is that, after the chapbook came out in January, I had four different journals contact me about publishing work that was in the chapbook. Has this happened to other people? Hey, believe me, I’m not complaining, just curious.
Also, a quick report from ComicCon, which, yes, I went to and enjoyed immensely. (ComicCon, if you don’t know this from listening to the dialogue of the O.C., is a big comic book conference that tours big cities once a year, including Seattle.) I had a great time wafting through the crowds of girls in Goth getups and many, many young men in their twenties – I really enjoyed looking at all the work by the comic book artists, it was a little like going to a museum where everything is for sale and you can get it signed! The artist at Top Cow, Mike Choi, who does beautiful, baroque work was absolutely swamped with fans, and there was this booth where hopeful comic book artists could get people from Marvel to evaluate their work and tell them what they needed to do to get published in the industry. Wow, wouldn’t that be great if at AWP there were some top publishers and writers at a booth where you could walk up with your poems and they’d be like, “Yes, focus on blank, which is your strength, and cut out your adverbs, and then we’ll take a look at your manuscript!” Seriously, I thought it was a warm and supportive atmosphere for creative folks, and I recommend a visit for poets who need to channel their inner superhero. Also, to accompany my poem about Wonder Woman fighting Nazis (see “Wonder Womans Dream of the Amazon” in the American Poetry Journal and, of course, the chapbook, “Female Comic Book Superheroes”) I now have a huge poster of Wonder Woman fighting…Nazis! I mean, how great is that! I recommend Superhero posters for every poet’s writing nook. My husband’s getting it framed for me for Valentine’s Day. Isn’t it romantic…

The universe must be trying to cheer me up…

Got an acceptance from 32 Poems Magazine, one of my all-time favorite journals. Hooray!

Sorry I haven’t been posting here much – I’ve been depressed, what with the upcoming surgery (fifteen days now and counting) and I feel like I’m wearing a sign that says “Thank you, no, I won’t be able to have children after that. Nope. Not ever. No chance.” It’s been hard to pick out clothes from the closet in the morning, much less which poetry journal to submit to…(my poems are lined up and stamping their feet impatiently. Well, you’ll just have to wait!)

But last night at my writer’s group I read a poem I had written about this experience, and felt better, especially after all the kind comments from my friends. I was like, hrmph, maybe there’s something therapeutic about this poetry thing after all. And it’s good to have a group of writers you can trust to bring anything to.

I turned in my first new packet of poems, essays, etc to my new advisor, and I am nervous and hopes she likes them. Honestly, it’s like being in fourth grade – “I hope the teacher likes me/my poems!” Especially since I’ve been writing lately with my “neurotic” edge rather than my “funny” or “feminist” edge.

I have a reading this Saturday with my good friend and great poet, Natasha Moni, at this tiny coffee shop in a tiny town. Sometimes those readings feel the best, I don’t know, more intimate, more like the crowd is with you rather than there by chance and resenting it, you know? I’ve been going to and giving readings a lot lately, because of the new chapbook. It’s kind of weird to go out and be extroverted when you really want to curl up in a cave and grow thick fur.

On another note, I felt ashamed of myself for complaining earlier in my blog about what a pain it was to vote (I had some red-tape issues this year) after I saw the pictures of Iraqi women holding up purple fingers, who went out to vote even with threats of beheading and the chopping off of hands. Those women are way braver than I will ever know how to be. Seriously, not to be all corny and whatnot, but I was crying when I saw those pictures.

And, on a still less related note, if you haven’t already seen them, there’s a great series of essays up at the Academy of American Poets site, all by “younger” writers. http://www.poets.org/almanac/index.cfm

I just loved reading this stuff. Perhaps soon I will be able to write “manifestos” about poetry. I like debating topics like these. What are my responsibilities as a young writer to “make it new?” (Dana Levin.) Is personal narrative dead? Lord, I hope not. (Aaron Smith) And, after dissing Wordsworth and Whitman like a punk, I am humbled by reading the excellent use of each in essays by Tom Thompson and Richard Tayson. PS – Also read the spirited defense of MFA programs by Arielle Greenberg. Okay, though, seriously, read all of them. As much fun or more than reading the “letters” section of Poetry Magazine!