Lit Mag: Writer's Bloc

Honestly, I haven't even made it far enough to see if the lit is worth a shit, but the "About" and "Submissions" info are making me laugh out loud.

Check it out. (And hopefully laugh a bit, too.)

Lost Art

Unless you live in a cave, you probably know that the premiere of Lost (the final season!) is Tuesday. I've been obsessing a lot via the internet (anyone could get lost in lostpedia for hours) and eventually I revisited The LOST Underground Art Show, a site that a friend shared with me about a month ago. Fan of Lost or not, you should be able to appreciate the beautiful interpretations of the show.

While I was scrolling through the artwork, I kept thinking I could write a poem about this. After all, handfuls of our most anthologized and memorable poems have been inspired by (if not written directly about) art. And I've written a handful of poems while sitting in art galleries, but I just would never have thought about being inspired by Television artwork.

So, I'm going to write a Lost Art Poem, and if you're up for a challenge, you should do the same. Post your poem in the comment section if you're brave enough. :)

above art by Leontine Greenburg

Elegy

This week, I finished Mary Jo Bang's book Elegy, a collection of poems which won the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry. The book (as noted by Entertainment Weekly) "chronicles the year following the death of her son." Eighty-nine pages of sorrow isn't the most inviting of things, but I found a lot to enjoy in Bang's award-winning collection.

The poems didn't tread on familiar ground nor did they gush with the expected emotion of plenty of past elegies. I was continually impressed by Bang's ability to make the situation and the emotion new. What I appreciated most was her knack for infusing poetic language with straightforwardness; this combination allowed the poems to be intriguing and emotional without gushing with feelings and thoughts that one would typically attribute to loss. Bang writes bluntly about the loss of her son, while still giving the reader phrases that resonate. In her "February Elegy" she writes: "And then someone says, Sit down, / We have a heart for you to forget."

One of my favorite poems of the collection, "Hell," is playful and surprising while still evoking an intense feeling of despair. Here Bang describes her grief through a desolate scene: "I had a lifetime. After which a murder of craven angels / Appeared dresses as crows...These birds eat and eat. Everything."

The thing that really sings in Elegy, though, (especially when compared to the last book of poems I read) is Bang's talent at creating a common thread through the collection, often from poem to poem. Bang recycles language in a way that seems metaphorical to grief: one thought, one memory falling like dominoes into the next, and then often reverting back to the beginning. What's so effective about the reuse is that Bang constantly changes the nature of the images or phrases that she's repeating; it's similar to a good Sestina, the words reassembled in a fresh way so that the reader is eager for the repetition (not tired of it).

If I had to say something was lackluster about the collection, it would be the lack of variety in form. Every poem was in free verse, except for one prose poem. The prose poem was one that I really enjoyed, and I felt like the form was appropriate for the subject of grief; the intensity and rush, the building of tension, and the way words run together when read aloud work well to capture Bang's emotion, much better than some of the short lines and stanza separations allowed in the free verse form.

I'll leave you with a section from "How Beautiful," one of the last poems in Elegy:

At the beginning. She was a child.

And he was a child.

A plane lit down and left her there.

Cold whitening the white sky whiter.

Then a scalpel cut her open for all the world

To be a sea.

The End of Beauty

Between work and watching this (like an addict) I haven't been reading much prose, which feels pretty weird for me. But, I have been reading a good deal of poetry, most recently Jorie Graham's The End of Beauty.

I first fell in love with Graham's poetry when I was assigned to read her poem "Fission" for a poetry class in undergrad. "Fission" was full of wonderful alliteration and internal rhyme and the way in which Graham presents the content (the JFK assassination, among other things) kept me hooked throughout the poem. Literary terminology aside, it was just a cool poem.

So I bought The End of Beauty (published back in 1987) a month or so ago and started reading it when I came back to Chicago after Christmas. The first poem, "Self-Portrait as the Gesture between Them," (written about Adam and Eve) hooked me in the same way that "Fission" had. Graham uses repetition in a way that is to be admired by any poet. She does it in the first line of the poem, "The gesture like a fruit torn from a limb, torn swiftly," and continues to build a recycling of words and phrases that creates an incredible intensity in her poems. Here's a bit (minus indentions) from "Eschatological Prayer," one of my other favorites:

a stirring that wanted to be expected

somewhere yet

still be,

that wanted syllable by syllable to be shattered

over the whole of eternity

into the eyes into the mouths of strangers yet still be,

words bones bits the whole

franchisement

glances promises

and still be.

I constantly found myself bookmarking pages and underlining phrases, lines, and stanzas--the language, the verbs, the images, the surprising coupling of words! However, when I got about halfway through the collection, I felt like I had heard it all before. I really enjoyed most of what Graham did and wrote about in the near 100 pg collection of poems, but eventually they felt a little too connected, too tightly tied together. Her subject matter varied from Jackson Pollock to mythology to prayer and even breakdancing (which was actually one of my favorite poems). Still, the language that she used to describe these things often felt too overused (ex: the word light was used at least once in nearly every poem). In some poems it was the anchor that gave most of the meaning, in others it was a way of watering them down so that they seemed less unique.

Would I recommend the collection? Absolutely. There's much to love here, and I'm definitely going to photocopy several of the poems and pass them on to friends. But what I'd suggest is reading the book in sections, not turning page after page like a novel. A handful of poems a day would do the trick. Just enough to lose a bit of the language in your sleep so that it feels fresh the next day.

Vitamin String Quartet

Happy New Year! It feels strange to watch the turn of a decade for the first time as an adult. It was surprisingly unexciting, sort of like how you just don't feel any older on your birthday. This is also the first New Years I have spent away from both my family and college roommates, so I might be skipping out on the black-eyed peas for good luck tradition (though I got my fill of The Black-Eyed Peas and Ryan Seacrest on New Year's Rockin' Eve...ick). I haven't taken the time to scribble down any resolutions either, but I plan to do so once I'm back in Chicago.

For those of you who have already written your resolutions and gobbled down your lucky peas, maybe take the time to check out one of my current fav musical groups: Vitamin String Quartet. They're an LA based group that--hold your breath--puts a classical spin on popular rock and punk (among other genres of music), specializing in tribute albums.

It's great study music, even better music to write to, and just a good listen if you're into classical/quartet style music. It's exciting to hear your favorite songs in a new way; some of my favorites are the tributes to REM, Pearl Jam, and Incubus, but there's plenty of tributes to choose from if those bands aren't your style. Check out Wikipedia's page on VSQ for a ridiculously long list of the tributes they've done throughout the years. And let me know what you think!

December Winter

Winter is here! After a chilly, rainy November, Chicago has been sprinkled with snow twice in December. Which means before I wage war with snowballs, I have some shopping to do. I still lack a bit of the winter attire that my friends (and even professors) have been urging me to purchase. That means this year's Christmas list is filled with things like toboggans--hats as you Chicagoans call them--and snow boots and ear muffs and plenty of other things to keep me warm and dry during the winter months.

But before Christmas is Finals, so back to revisions I go!

To my Arkansans out there: Enjoy the glimpse of snow below!

NaPoWriMo December

First off, congrats to all you dedicated participants of NaNoWriMo! Throughout November I envied your production and dedication; I even started writing a poem a day to compete, but somehow that got lost in assignments, birthdays, and a wonderful trip to VA Beach.

So today, I'm going to make a commitment: a poem a day in December. I know that NaPoWriMo isn't until April, National Poetry Month, but if production is contagious, I want to catch it while it's going around.

So, I'm encouraging all of you to join me in my early NaPoWriMo festivities this month, and write a poem a day in December! If you're up for it, good luck and keep me posted with your progress! Happy poem writing!