Updated…
Jeffrey’s poem can be found here and my fellow Steel Toe Books author Martha Silano has a poem up on Verse Daily here.
Thanks to all for your kind words and wishes on the Verse Daily thing. Especially Paul for sending me a heads-up e-mail about it. And Kelli who posted the announcement on the Wompo list. I think Jeffery Bahr may be up tomorrow!
I promised quotes from the Tony Hoagland reading and Q&A session from the SAL series, which made me label him as a New Sincerist. I didn’t take quite as many notes as I’d hoped, so I apologize for the brevity.
My favorite quote of the evening:
“If you’re not using your imagination, someone else will.”
Tony is an interesting writer in the discursive/narrative vein, somewhat like a meaner spirited Billy Collins. I generally like some of his work (especially his critique of consumer culture in poems like “America”) but some poems I’m not sure exactly how to take – especially his poems about race and women. He seems like he wears a veneer of irony over his admissions of racism and – if not misogyny, at least a deep fear of women. It seems like honesty wanting to be admired for honesty’s sake. With humor. Sometimes unhumorous attempts at humor. What do you all think?
Anyway, here is the quote, which won’t be surprising for those of you who read his essay in Poetry about his discomfort with the unpopularity of narrative in the current poetry culture:
“There’s a strong experimental impulse right now in the poetry world, in which the conversation of aesthetics has eclipsed all other interesting conversations. And the conversation has become very insular, sincerity and direct statement are seen as misguided, naive.”
He also described himself as halfway in between Sharon Olds and Frank O’Hara – between the confessional and the sociological.
So, old New Sincerist? Or just a practitioner of the old sincerity? Or is he sincere at all? I admit to questioning the sincerity of his impulse towards sincerity when I read his work…
I’m going to see one of my female poetry heroes, Mary Ruefle, read on Monday, so I’ll post notes on that as well.

Thanks Verse Daily! The poem today is “Femme Fatale” from the journal The Eleventh Muse. Stay tuned to this week’s Verse Daily episodes to see if Jeffery’s poem is from the same journal – I think it may be…
I dragged myself to the Tony Hoagland reading last night and he made some comments that make me want to write an entry called “Tony Hoagland: New Sincerist?”
Back to your regularly scheduled programming…

Note: Bloggers taking over Verse Daily –
Wasn’t just a week ago Paul Guest and Matthew Thorburn were rockin’ out on Verse Daily? Well, I just got the Verse Daily newsletter, and apparently, this week, Jeffery Bahr and I are going to be making appearances. I don’t know which poems yet…stay tuned…
So, it’s a little early for my birthday (April 30th) but a nice birthday present nonetheless – thanks Verse Daily! Cake for everyone!

Speaking of taking over, props to Peter P. for being singled out on “American Life in Poetry”

PS – For those of you who have been in contact with me lately, sorry I’ve been a little stressed out/grumpy. My advice is not to start volunteering at a new university-based literary magazine during your essay semester at school while you’re also trying to write six reviews by May and do enough freelance work to support your expensive poetry habit. Anyway, I’ve been a little overwhelmed but promise to be back to my nice, normal self. Soon.

Up to my ears in theoretical essays while working on my MFA-required ever-growing essay on persona poetry in Gluck, Atwood, and Lucille Clifton, along with other more sundry assignments, but wanted to quickly echo Jordan and say how much I enjoyed The Eleventh Muse. This is no keeping-up-the-status-quo, quiet, epiphany-having-nature-walk poetry journal – idiosyncratic, sharp, edgy, weird – I liked almost every poem I’ve read so far in it. One copy is not enough! Seriously, this magazine is in my new top ten lit mag lists. Check it out.
Shoveling through submissions for Silk Road, trying to keep my head above water. Not enough time in the day!
Note: For an interesting take on Louise Gluck, look up Elizabeth Dodd’s essays on her work. The whole “personal classicim” – ie writing autobiography in persona poems while embedding it within larger archetypal/mythological narratives – description is worth the price of admission. I wish I’d had that phrase in my vocabulary earlier in my life. Plus, raise your hand if you agree that Gluck totally cops HD’s stylings and her work with mythic personas and floral personas? I said that fifteen years ago, and I still think it’s true, even if Gluck disavowed, to my face, when she visited our classroom, any knowledge of HD. Did she dissemble?

Saw Adrienne Rich read last night with Seattle Arts and Lectures. I had seen her really burn it up two years ago at the ASU Writers Conference, so I was surprised to see her so frail at this reading, a little more subdued. I heard she’s sick. But I still hope to have such a kickass reading voice when I am her age. The work she read was less political than usual too, more subtle and poetic, although she had a great line in one poem echoing the “You Go to War with the Army You Have Line,” describing patients at a war amputee hospital, “You come back from war/ with the body you have.” A lot of people said after the reading that they liked it a lot more than they expected.
I’ve been a literal nervous wreck over the book, not sleeping well at night, shoulders in crunchy knots, worrying. I am excited about the book, but the process is more stressful than I foresaw when I was dreaming about it last year. I think I will feel better when the printed books are on my doorstep. Hopefully 🙂
I still have a bunch of work piled up on my desk I haven’t gotten too yet, but here’s what I’m wondering – everyone else (okay, at least Mary and Jeff) has gotten their contributor’s copy of Eleventh Muse, where’s mine? I hope it’s in the mail today, I could use the pick me up – two weeks and the only poetry mail has been a lone rejection from Poetry Northwest. I did get a small check from my contribution to this month’s “Favorites” March/April issue of Northwest Palate (it has my pictures of Skagit Valley’s tulip festival and Bainbridge Island’s boat dock, as well as little descriptions of both locales.)
Have been struggling with two versions of a poem – one is free verse, the other is semi-rhyme-y. I’m going to post them so vote on which one you like better. Then I’ll take them down because I don’t like poems hanging out on the blog – vote now, just like American Idol, and you can make one of them disappear!

(Poems deleted…)