Birthdays, teaching Poetry, The Big Poetry Giveaway

Yes, blowing out thirty-seven candles makes one philosophical – and wishing this month I had written thirty-seven poems. This morning, the blue sky over Napa had reappeared, the birds chirping happily at my window. My stomach’s been acting up again (mysterious autoimmune tummy problems, boo!) so I couldn’t have the usual birthday-related food celebration but I have so many other things to be thankful for: wonderful friends, a really cool family, nice weather returning, and my husband waking me up with presents! My mother bought me a beautiful reading notebook from Mayapple – but she went above and beyond by having it custom-done in hot pink leather with my initials on it. And, by chance, my husband bought me a beautiful pair of sandals in hot pink to match (by the way, these are the first sandals I will have worn since the foot-breaking incident, so, yay for increased shoe-wearing options!) I got a boatload of books – on poetry, the Manhattan Project, Supergirls…and a couple of nifty kitchen things that I wanted. We had also recently hit a library book sale and therefore have way more books than I can possibly read in reasonable amount of time, plus all my bookshelves are already overflowing.

Over the last two years, teaching at National University’s MFA program officially and doing poetry consulting unofficially, I’ve thought about how difficult it is to really share anything about poetry. Some things – specifics versus the vague, surprises versus cliche, and form – those are the easy basics. But other things – the exact way a manuscript should come together, for instance, is full of nuance, or the key to finding a way to each poet’s unique way of looking at the world and getting that into their poetry – are trickier. They’re more empathetic, intuitive. And how to steer around your own poetry prejudices, which you might not even be aware of? It’s an art, not a science – I just can’t have people go off and memorize facts, though I can (and do) encourage them to read, read, read, to get poetry into their brains. Maybe that’s the most important thing you can do as a mentor – get people excited about the poems you’re excited about, and help them see why they are exciting.

Tomorrow is the drawing for the poetry book giveaway, so if you haven’t already entered, today is your last day.

PS I believe it is also a Pink Moon. So the pink presents are doubly appropriate!