You are currently browsing the monthly archive for April 2008.
Dear denizens of the blogosphere, do forgive me. I’ve fallen terribly behind not only in terms of updating but in terms of responding to comments and reading all of the other blogs I so enjoy reading and generally being a communicative member of Internet society. It’s been a very busy few weeks, and I think that the fact that I’ve only skipped one night of NaPoWriMo (which I later made up by a two-poem-day) must certainly be a miracle. Or insanity. I can’t quite make up my mind about which prevails. In the past week alone, I’ve driven over a thousand miles, fueled by a thousand liters of Diet Dr. Pepper. However, the frenetic frenzy has, beyond any slim shadow of a doubt, been worth it. There are several bits of Very Excellent News from the Emma Bolden Camp. One piece of Very Excellent News I shall save for later. For now, I can only say that it is a Doozie of a Piece of News, and the cause of much joy and celebration.
One piece of Very Excellent News I shall now share: I found out yesterday that I received a Tennessee Williams Scholarship in poetry for the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. I am absolutely thrilled about this, and can’t wait to revisit that beautiful place, or to work with such amazing writers!
Last weekend, I attended the Alabama Book Festival, which turned out to be a humdinger of an event. This year, Jeanie Thompson organized a poetry-only tent. I hope I’ll be forgiven for the following entry — I once read one blogger (I thought this appeared on Poetry Snark, but I can’t seem to find it) absolutely eviscerate another blogger for an entry of this sort, accusing her of attempting to manipulate Google results. I have no real understanding of how Google actually works, other than through pure magic and wonder which I suspect could only be created by tiny joyous fairies, and so can honestly say that I’m not doing that. My intention is simply to squee like the poetry fan girl I so often am, and couldn’t help being at the Festival.
The morning began with my reading with Bruce Alford, who read some moving and resonant new poems. Alas, I fear that just as I am forever fated to miss Feist in concert, I am also forever fated to miss hearing Jake Adam York and Dan Albergotti read. I first missed them a few months ago in Auburn, when my 103 degree fever prevented me from attending their reading at the art museum; this time, I was signing books. Egads! However, I now have copies of A Murmuration of Starlings and The Boatlands, and can at least imagine what a reading would be like. I no longer have to imagine, however, how amazing it would be to hear Natasha Tretheway read. Her reading ranged through all three of her collections, and found me crying, publicly, twice. During no other poetry reading have I cried, publicly, twice. Not only was her work incredibly powerful, Ms. Tretheway herself was as kind and accessible and gracious as can be, and should definitely be considered a poetry superhero. I took a lunch break after this reading, but returned to the tent to hear Louie Skipper’s reading. I was very much taken and inspired by the way he writes about faith, and look forward to reading more of his work. Nickole Brown and Doug Van Gundy, two Red Hen Press authors, gave an excellent reading. I found myself completely absorbed in Ms. Brown’s reading; her work has a raw, riveting, all-encompassing power that’s rare in contemporary poetry. Mr. Van Gundy’s reading began with some fiddle playing, as all events should, which served as an excellent introduction to his poems, which strongly convey a sense of place, celebrating the Southern landscape. Last but not least was Kate Gale, whose poems are powerful and direct as a knife blade, and told with an urgency that makes you pay attention.
In a word: squee! A fantastic event, and I’m humbled and honored to have been a part of it!
And now, dear readers, Emma needs to catch up on something else she has definitely missed a great deal: sleep. But first, a student sent me this photograph today, due to my propensity to talk about Whitman and All About Eve in class. How happy am I to have both combined in one photograph? 
(I especially love the expression on her face, which seems to be some strange combination of complete disdain and utter boredom. She must not have gotten to the good parts yet.)
First and foremost, some shameless self-promotion: if you’re interested in obtaining a copy of The Mariner’s Wife, my second chapbook, fear not! There is still time! The pre-publication sales period ends on April 18th. Check out Finishing Line Press’ website to order it (also, check out the amazing cover photograph by the amazing Bogna Kuczerawy — how lucky was I to get permission to use this?)!
Second and unforemost, I am a day late on my weekly NaPoWriMo update, which may, in itself, tell you all ye need know about how NaPoWriMo is going. We’re over two weeks in, and while I am still, somehow, miraculously, fifteen for fifteen, I feel as though I’ve entered my sophomore slump. The steam runneth out, and so, it feels, doth the inspiration. I’m at the point of NaPoWriMo where poetry begins to feel like a lot of practice, muscle-stretching and exercises: perspiration, with little inspiration.
Which leads to a question which, I think, a lot of writers often wonder about: what is it that makes a good piece of writing — or, more importantly, a good writer — is it practice and perspiration, or is it some stroke of luck, some natural talent, pure muse-given inspiration?
I found myself pondering this question while at home this weekend. My mother is an absolute expert at two things that elude me absolutely: cooking and decorating. First off: cooking. Whereas I regularly ruin Jell-o and can’t seem to make toast without burning it, my mother is a master chef. Seriously. As in, should have her own show on Food Network. You take one bite of my mother’s lasagna, you will never eat anyone else’s lasagna. My mother attributes her skill in cooking to the fact that she, well, cooks — she tells me that, when it comes to the kitchen, practice makes perfect. And practice she does: trying new recipes, altering old ones, tasting and salting and tasting again. I have followed her advice, to the extent my patience allows, and practiced, and I have gotten to the point where I don’t burn everything every time I cook. But, sitting down this weekend to her goat-cheese stuffed chicken with figs and roasted asparagus (I know — seriously), I knew that no amount of practice would bring me to the point of that dish.
So maybe it is natural talent. Maybe it is some spark. But maybe that spark is something different than the “you got it or you don’t” theorizers suggest. Maybe the answer lies in watching my mother cook, and watching my mother decorate. Upon reflection, I think that I have learned more about my attitude towards writing, and towards the teaching of writing, by watching her than by reading or studying anything else. When I cook, I’m usually frazzled and harried and dropping egg shells in a bowl and saying some unbloggable words. But when my mother cooks, she’s transformed, serene. When she’s dealing with fabric and paint swatches, with patterns that match and paintings that flow, she’s completely enthralled, she’s happy — she loves the work. She loves it enough to go on, to push beyond boundaries and difficulties, to continue to try , to ignore the no’s, the seeming impossibilities, to keep going, to create.
And perhaps that’s the spark, after all: not so much natural talent as the natural gift of patience that love can give. If you love the work, you’ll stick with it, you’ll persevere, and you’ll progress, even when it seems more like perspiration than inspiration, because you love it enough to know that if you stick with it, the inspiration will return.
It’s April 7th, which means that one week of NaPoWriMo is O-VAH! I am stunned with both shock and pride to be able to say that I am currently seven for seven. This seems like a good time to log some reflections.
Last year, the first week of NaPoWriMo found me flailing a bit, but still excited and energized. This year, the first week of NaPoWriMo found me feeling a feeling that can best be described, as most feelings can, through a macro — in this case, a faildog:
Yes, yes, yes. That is very much it: face pressed against the bars with my eyes closed, with the word “FAIL” in large white letters just above my right ear.
There are two reasons for this.
The first reason is that I felt terribly, horribly, terribly out of practice when it comes to the whole poem-ing business. My poor poetry notebook reflects this: though I do have an astounding amount of notes on the medicinal benefits of Alehoof and early modern beliefs about hoot owls for my Witch Project, the population of new poems has dwindled as of late. Regretfully, my last full draft was written on February 20th, and January 28th before that.
Though this fact shames me to no end, I confess because this leads to reason two: the poem population dwindled mostly because I told myself that I just Did Not Have the Time. NaPoWriMo, however, has shown me that this is nothing more than an excuse: I have the time now, so I had the time before — I just wasn’t making enough time for my poetry. Fail.
This lesson is a hard lesson, but one I needed to learn. And I am learning another good thing, which is that it’s a good thing that it’s true, what they say about bicycles — you never forget. Now that I’ve been back on the bike for a week, the poems are easier to write. I’m not quite flying downhill with my hands off the handlebars, crying “wee!” for all of the neighbors to hear, but I’m beginning to coast comfortably without training wheels.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about NaPoWriMo, for me, is that the sheer force of production forces one to face one’s greatest fears about or in their writing. For me, this is the fear of writing Very Bad Drafts, even though I know that it is often absolutely necessary to write Very Bad Drafts to get the The Draft Which Works Well. The thing that I’m learning is that perhaps the most dangerous thing for a writer to do is to think of the Very Bad Drafts as failures. A Very Bad Draft, as unpublishable as it may be, is more of a triumph than a failure: how else will you ever get comfortable enough to say what most needs to be said? How else will you learn?
So, regardless of the outcome, NaPoWriMo? WIN.
A visual aid to the forthcoming story provided by Eric Conveys an Emotion:
One day at young writers’ camp, my friend Seth, who had just the night before been prescribed some incredibly strong decongestants for a stubborn cold, stumbled into breakfast with a well-bandaged hand.
“Seth!” I said, “what’s with the hand?”
“I punched myself in the mirror.”
“What? Why?”
“I don’t know. I just saw myself in the mirror and thought, ‘That [expletive deleted] deserves it.’”
I don’t know if Seth still writes — I hope that he does, as he was an incredibly talented writer — but, if he does, I’m fairly sure that he’d agree that this is an accurate description not just of decongestant-fueled teenage angst but also of the feeling one typically gets after receiving a certain number of rejection slips in a week. Say, eight. Five if it’s a bad week otherwise. But definitely eight.
Lately, however, I’ve been getting a very strange new type of slip — the it’s not you, it’s me rejection.
Take, for instance, the e-mail I received about a residency I’d applied for — a “dear applicant” (like “Dear John?”) letter explaining that the residency program was shut down completely, due to insufficient funding. This is, of course, depressing on a great many levels, mostly because it brings to mind how difficult it is for any arts organization to barely survive, much less thrive, nowadays.
And this brings to mind my second it’s not you it’s me rejection, this one from the New Review of Literature. It seems that, due to a variety of circumstances, including the collapse of its primary distributor, this very fine literary magazine is ceasing publication with its Spring 2008 issue. Though this is incredibly depressing, the editor’s (Paul Vangelisti’s) response to the situation is nothing less than inspiring. Enclosed with the rejection was a manifesto of sorts, published as an editorial in the Spring issue, bewailing the fact that “the current publishing and literary scene appear[s] dire, impoverished, and hopelessly conformist and institutionalized,” and sounding an alarm about “the need for action, for a departure from previous modes of production and distribution.” Their action? A bi-annual review of literature to be published and distributed free of charge, aptly titled or. What’s more exciting than people with the passion to innovate, to recreate the way we read and receive poetry? The editors ask that you write for a copy. I already have.
I received a third it’s not you, it’s me rejection, but this one stirred me to quite a bit of thought, and I think it best to reserve an entire entry for it. Plus, I’m excited to start thinking about tomorrow’s NaPoWriMo poem, and, perhaps, do a little tinkering on my last SECRET NaPoWriMo post.
Whenever I think, say, or hear the word “SECRET,” incidentally, I cannot help but think, say, or hear it the way it’s pronounced in the Conan O’Brien skit.
Emma Bolden is the author of How To Recognize A Lady, a chapbook of poems published as part of Edge by Edge, the third in Toadlily Press' Quartet Series, and The Mariner's Wife, a chapbook published by Finishing Line Press. Her third chapbook, The Sad Epistles, is forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press. She was the recipient of a Tennessee Williams Scholarship to the Sewanee Writers' Conference and was named a Finalist for a Ruth Lilly Fellowship by the Poetry Foundation/Poetry magazine. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in such journals as Prairie Schooner, the Indiana Review, Feminist Studies, The Journal, Redivider, The Greensboro Review, and Verse. Her manuscript was a semi-finalist for the Perugia Press Prize. She is a Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Georgetown College, where she also serves as the poetry editor of the Georgetown Review.
SocialVibe