Review
by Pris Campbell
The Best of Poetry Hickory Anthology
From my distant perch in Florida, I’ve long been convinced that something in the Carolina water breeds especially good poets. This anthology, packed with well-written, spell-binding poems, more than confirms my suspicions. These poems speak in an engaging voice to the reader rather than announcing ‘look at how good I am” by way of contrived metaphors or other poetic devices inserted simply for the sake of having them there. These poems are good. It’s not necessary for them to preen or crow to let us know it.
I like to read poems I can relate to, poems that move me, poems that give me a way of seeing the familiar in a new light. This book did all of that in spades.
I could easily quote lines from every poem but space allows only a few. Those chosen were a difficult call but they give an idea of the range of themes covered in the anthology.
Robert Abbate asks in “Ecce Homo”:
What would Jesus do
once he could be lured
to the place of the fractured
pistol-whipped skull
and once, in the freezing air
he could be lashed to a barbed
wire fence outside Laramie
Maureen Sherbondy continues the theme in a different way in “Praying at Coffee Shops in the South”:
What are those public interludes with God?
Two men at Starbucks holding hands
bent over in prayer leaning into the invisible
Tony Ricciardell brings us back home as he speaks to his now helpless father in “Sins of My Father”:
If I spoke to your mother the way you speak to your wife you would have crippled me, wouldn’t you? If I called your mother bitch or whore, if I curled curses at her the way you hurled curses at my mother, you would have kicked me down the stairs, wouldn’t you?
Malaika King Albrecht’s poem, “The Riddle Song” brings tears as she writes of her father singing “I gave my love a cherry’ as he massages her mother’s useless limbs, hoping her mother is able to hear him, hoping she is looking at him as he sings.
Ted Pope views family from the other direction in “Bright Child” as he watches his daughter move swiftly from infant to adulthood:
….bright child holy child child of all my hope and reverence I
saw her coming down 4th St again today and today would not
be like any other day oh no today I’m going to follow her to
see where she goes to get that glowing external primal essence…
And Joseph Bathanti offers a bawdier view of the South in “Peaches”:
On a roadhouse bathroom wall
in the peach town of Gaffney, South Carolina
a woman’s body laminates itself
across the face of a condom machine
These poems are jewels. If I could I would string them around my neck so I could reach up and feel their glow whenever I liked. Needless to say, I highly recommend this book.
The Best of Poetry Hickory is available at Taste Full Beans Coffee House or from Scott Owens (asowens1@yahoo.com) for just $5 -- All proceeds to Taste Full Beans in gratitude for hosting Poetry Hickory for four years. A reading from the anthology will take place on September 13, 5:30, at Taste Full Beans, and will feature 27 of the poets selected for the anthology.
Showing posts with label Pris Campbell. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pris Campbell. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Six Degrees of Collaboration
Six Degrees of Collaboration:
An Essay on the Creative Process in the Second Person
by Scott Owens
(first published in Pirene's Fountain)
You decide to write a poem. You’ve read plenty of poetry, so you have some idea of what you’re doing. You figure you don’t need anyone’s help to do this. You certainly don’t need to collaborate with anyone. Nevertheless, as soon as you use the first word, in fact, as soon as you decide to write a poem, you enter into what I’ll call FIRST DEGREE COLLABORATION or UNCONSCIOUS UNILATERAL COLLABORATION. Everyone does it. It is, in fact, inescapable. Any use of language is influenced by every use of language we have encountered. Any attempt to write a poem is influenced by every poem we’ve encountered, even by the idea of certain arrangements of words constituting this thing we’ve learned from others to call a poem. It’s Frost’s line from “The Tuft of Flowers:” “Men work together, I told him from the heart / whether they work together or apart.”
With a finished draft in front of you, you realize that the poem echoes something else you’ve read, maybe something by Frost or Williams, Whitman or Dickinson, or maybe something more recent that you’ve read online, and you decide that the poem would gain texture and depth through intertextuality, by playing up that connection with another poem. So you find the piece being initially unintentionally imitated, and you make the imitation intentional, purposeful. You’ve just committed SECOND DEGREE COLLABORATION or CONSCIOUS UNILATERAL COLLABORATION. Not all poets do this, and I would guess that no poet does it all the time, but most good poets become at some point aware of their influences and utilize them on a conscious level. It remains a unilateral collaboration because the poem or poet being imitated played no active role in deciding to be imitated.
So you finish the poem, not really thinking that you’ve collaborated with anyone in an active way, but you decide, as so many poets do, that you’re proud of your creation and you want to show it to someone, someone, perhaps, whose work you admire, presuming that your admiration means they would appreciate your work as well. When you do, your audience is suitably impressed; however, they suggest that it might be stronger if you did something a little differently. Upon reflection you realize that they’re right, and you make the recommended change. Now you’re guilty of THIRD DEGREE COLLABORATION or CONSCIOUS BILATERAL COLLABORATION. Obviously, you intentionally, consciously, even pre-meditatedly accepted someone else’s help in this creation. Granted, it wasn’t an equitable bilateral collaboration. Your critiquer didn’t wield as much power in the final decision as you did, but nonetheless there were two conscious minds at work on the same product.
As you think about what you’ve just done, you come to the conclusion that you liked it. You surmise that most poets do it this way, and that since, to borrow a line from Frost again, “What worked for them might work for you,” you decide to do it again, only this time consciously so from the very beginning. You commit one or both variations of FOURTH DEGREE COLLABORATION: SERIAL CONSCIOUS UNILATERAL COLLABORATION, where you continue to imitate the style of a certain poem or poet; and SERIAL CONSCIOUS BILATERAL COLLABORATION, where you continue to seek the input of a particular audience. Perhaps, since the poems often derive from the same imitated source or are revised under the guidance of the same advisory source, they begin to cohere as poems with a related voice, perspective, or story.
And that’s when you dare go where few have gone before, into the dubious realm of FIFTH DEGREE COLLABORATION, a rarely visited place where even the word “collaboration” is no longer adequate to describe your actions. You realize as you hammer out the final details of a poem that it has been reworked to such a degree by the commentary of your critical audience that it has become as much his or hers as it is yours, that you have, perhaps unintentionally, taken the leap into SINGULAR COAUTHORSHIP. And in a moment of epiphany you also realize the ultimate irony of Frost’s “Mending Wall,” namely that the seemingly Cro-Magnon neighbor was in fact right, that “Good fences [do] make good neighbors,” albeit not because they separate, but rather because in maintaining them, we are brought together.
Having deviated thus far from the path of individual integrity, you finally give in completely to the dissolvent temptations of collaboration. You’ve come to learn that by surrendering absolute control, individual authorship, things do not, as Yeats feared, “fall apart,” but rather, perhaps, fall together. And so, you approach your collaborator with the idea of repeating this process not just on individual poems but on a sequence of poems, each consciously writing poems in response to poems written by the other, and each working together to revise poems begun by either of you, and determining together the nature of the poems that remain to be written to complete, or better, continue, the sequence. And since you are no longer certain which of you is responsible for any given poem, or line, or even word, you know you can only call this SERIAL COAUTHORSHIP, which must certainly constitute that most seditious, most subversive, and most insidious SIXTH DEGREE of COLLABORATION.
An Essay on the Creative Process in the Second Person
by Scott Owens
(first published in Pirene's Fountain)
You decide to write a poem. You’ve read plenty of poetry, so you have some idea of what you’re doing. You figure you don’t need anyone’s help to do this. You certainly don’t need to collaborate with anyone. Nevertheless, as soon as you use the first word, in fact, as soon as you decide to write a poem, you enter into what I’ll call FIRST DEGREE COLLABORATION or UNCONSCIOUS UNILATERAL COLLABORATION. Everyone does it. It is, in fact, inescapable. Any use of language is influenced by every use of language we have encountered. Any attempt to write a poem is influenced by every poem we’ve encountered, even by the idea of certain arrangements of words constituting this thing we’ve learned from others to call a poem. It’s Frost’s line from “The Tuft of Flowers:” “Men work together, I told him from the heart / whether they work together or apart.”
With a finished draft in front of you, you realize that the poem echoes something else you’ve read, maybe something by Frost or Williams, Whitman or Dickinson, or maybe something more recent that you’ve read online, and you decide that the poem would gain texture and depth through intertextuality, by playing up that connection with another poem. So you find the piece being initially unintentionally imitated, and you make the imitation intentional, purposeful. You’ve just committed SECOND DEGREE COLLABORATION or CONSCIOUS UNILATERAL COLLABORATION. Not all poets do this, and I would guess that no poet does it all the time, but most good poets become at some point aware of their influences and utilize them on a conscious level. It remains a unilateral collaboration because the poem or poet being imitated played no active role in deciding to be imitated.
So you finish the poem, not really thinking that you’ve collaborated with anyone in an active way, but you decide, as so many poets do, that you’re proud of your creation and you want to show it to someone, someone, perhaps, whose work you admire, presuming that your admiration means they would appreciate your work as well. When you do, your audience is suitably impressed; however, they suggest that it might be stronger if you did something a little differently. Upon reflection you realize that they’re right, and you make the recommended change. Now you’re guilty of THIRD DEGREE COLLABORATION or CONSCIOUS BILATERAL COLLABORATION. Obviously, you intentionally, consciously, even pre-meditatedly accepted someone else’s help in this creation. Granted, it wasn’t an equitable bilateral collaboration. Your critiquer didn’t wield as much power in the final decision as you did, but nonetheless there were two conscious minds at work on the same product.
As you think about what you’ve just done, you come to the conclusion that you liked it. You surmise that most poets do it this way, and that since, to borrow a line from Frost again, “What worked for them might work for you,” you decide to do it again, only this time consciously so from the very beginning. You commit one or both variations of FOURTH DEGREE COLLABORATION: SERIAL CONSCIOUS UNILATERAL COLLABORATION, where you continue to imitate the style of a certain poem or poet; and SERIAL CONSCIOUS BILATERAL COLLABORATION, where you continue to seek the input of a particular audience. Perhaps, since the poems often derive from the same imitated source or are revised under the guidance of the same advisory source, they begin to cohere as poems with a related voice, perspective, or story.
And that’s when you dare go where few have gone before, into the dubious realm of FIFTH DEGREE COLLABORATION, a rarely visited place where even the word “collaboration” is no longer adequate to describe your actions. You realize as you hammer out the final details of a poem that it has been reworked to such a degree by the commentary of your critical audience that it has become as much his or hers as it is yours, that you have, perhaps unintentionally, taken the leap into SINGULAR COAUTHORSHIP. And in a moment of epiphany you also realize the ultimate irony of Frost’s “Mending Wall,” namely that the seemingly Cro-Magnon neighbor was in fact right, that “Good fences [do] make good neighbors,” albeit not because they separate, but rather because in maintaining them, we are brought together.
Having deviated thus far from the path of individual integrity, you finally give in completely to the dissolvent temptations of collaboration. You’ve come to learn that by surrendering absolute control, individual authorship, things do not, as Yeats feared, “fall apart,” but rather, perhaps, fall together. And so, you approach your collaborator with the idea of repeating this process not just on individual poems but on a sequence of poems, each consciously writing poems in response to poems written by the other, and each working together to revise poems begun by either of you, and determining together the nature of the poems that remain to be written to complete, or better, continue, the sequence. And since you are no longer certain which of you is responsible for any given poem, or line, or even word, you know you can only call this SERIAL COAUTHORSHIP, which must certainly constitute that most seditious, most subversive, and most insidious SIXTH DEGREE of COLLABORATION.
Thursday, April 28, 2011
New Issue of Pirene's Fountain Features Reviews By and Of Scott Owens
"Pirene's Fountain" has been one of my favorite online journals for years now. The editors are not only good judges of poetry but nice people as well. I feel fortunate to have been published in "PF" several times previously, but the new issue (April 2011) features a number of gratifying connections to my work.
Among the 100 or so poems in the issue from notable poets like CJ Sage, Lisa Zaran, Russell Ragsdale, Alex Grant, and Natalie Williams are 2 of my own, "Solitude" and "13 Ways of Flowers" and 8 of my haiku. Along with "Solitude," the editors have included 3 photos from my colleague and favorite photographer, Clayton Joe Young (his photos grace the cover of two of my books, "Paternity" and the forthcoming "Something Knows the Moment"). The photos in "PF" were the inspiration for "Solitude."
This issue of "PF" also includes two reviews of mine, one of Steven Roberts' "Another Word for Home," and another of Gary McDowell's "American Amen." There is also a review by Caleb Pletcher of "The Nature of Attraction," my most recent book, a collaboration with Pris Campbell. Finally, the editors have included my article on collaboration, "Six Degrees of Collaboration."
Here is a link to the entire issue: http://www.pirenesfountain.com/current_issue.html
I hope you'll visit and become a regular reader of "Pirene's Fountain."
Among the 100 or so poems in the issue from notable poets like CJ Sage, Lisa Zaran, Russell Ragsdale, Alex Grant, and Natalie Williams are 2 of my own, "Solitude" and "13 Ways of Flowers" and 8 of my haiku. Along with "Solitude," the editors have included 3 photos from my colleague and favorite photographer, Clayton Joe Young (his photos grace the cover of two of my books, "Paternity" and the forthcoming "Something Knows the Moment"). The photos in "PF" were the inspiration for "Solitude."
This issue of "PF" also includes two reviews of mine, one of Steven Roberts' "Another Word for Home," and another of Gary McDowell's "American Amen." There is also a review by Caleb Pletcher of "The Nature of Attraction," my most recent book, a collaboration with Pris Campbell. Finally, the editors have included my article on collaboration, "Six Degrees of Collaboration."
Here is a link to the entire issue: http://www.pirenesfountain.com/current_issue.html
I hope you'll visit and become a regular reader of "Pirene's Fountain."
Monday, August 2, 2010
"Nature of Attraction" Released
Last Friday I gave a reading at Green Rice Gallery in Charlotte with M. Scott Douglass, editor of "Main Street Rag" and Jonathan K. Rice, editor of "Iodine Poetry Journal." It was a wonderful evening, highlighted for me by the release of my new collection of poetry, "The Nature of Attraction," a collaboration with Florida poet, Pris Campbell.
I read from the book for the first time that night, and received a lot of wonderful compliments from those in attendance. The next day I went to the NC Writers' Conference in Chapel Hill, and yesterday was "family day" at home, so this is my first chance to announce to everyone that "The Nature of Attraction" is now available, and if you've already ordered a copy, it's probably in the mail.
If you haven't ordered a copy, you can pick one up at the Book Release Party this Thursday, August 5, from 5:30 to 7:00 at Taste Full Beans Coffeehouse in downtown Hickory. I'll give a reading, and I have a recorded reading by Pris that I'll play as well. We'll serve wine and snacks, and I'll be signing books for any who purchase them.
If you can't make it to the Release Party, you can order a signed copy from me (email me at asowens1@yahoo.com) or Pris, or you can still order a copy from Main Street Rag (www.mainstreetrag.com)
Here are some comments about the book from several people who got to look at it before publication:
You hear multiple voices in The Nature of Attraction, but not by contrast, more by the harmonic way these voices mesh together, the way words and ideas fold together to form an image, a phrase, a meaning that transcends an individual thought and becomes something shared. That's how it is with this collaboration between Pris Campbell and Scott Owens. In these poems, a lifetime passes for Sara and Norman, a lifetime of great joy and great sadness, of longing and resignation that wanting isn't always enough. Throughout this rollercoaster ride, it's hard to tell where Scott ends and Pris begins and vice versa because the narrators' voice remains steady. A challenging feat handled adeptly by two very fine poets; an extremely worthwhile read.
--M. Scott Douglass, Publisher/Editor Main Street Rag
Baudelaire once wrote, "Romanticism is precisely situated neither in choice of subject nor exact truth, but in the way of feeling." This stirring, painful, and wondrous poetic exchange between two master craftsmen breaks the traditional mould while at the same time reinforcing it. The personas created by Owens and Campbell speak truths that many of us often deny. "The Nature of Attraction" is truly a marvelous read that is surely not for the faint of heart.
--Carter Monroe, Publisher Rank Stranger Press
I read the poems in “The Nature of Attraction” while on a commuter bus on my way home from work. I read them through clear skies and into a storm. A man’s teeth will always be/as large as his fear. I read them pressed against the window, shirt slightly open. Maybe I should give in to my body’s bending/toward her. I read them while everyone else was asleep or trying to be. A star lies on her pillow. Her bed lights up the room. I read them the way a flag has no choice but to unfurl itself to the wind. When her stomach churns/and the moon buries itself deep. I read them the way love might, with lightning all around. Maybe I can get away/without doing anything at all.
--Tammy Foster Brewer
I hope to see you all this Thursday and to soon hear your reactions to our narrative collaboration.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Campbell and Owens Collaborate on New Collection of Poetry
Reprinted from "Outlook" Newspaper (Observer News Enterprise, Newton, NC)
LOCAL POET’S NEW COLLECTION A COLLABORATION
“I never imagined writing a series of poems with someone else would be so easy,” says Hickory poet Scott Owens when asked about the process he went through with Florida poet Pris Campbell in creating their new collection of poems, The Nature of Attraction, due out from Main Street Rag on July 26.
“Poets tend to be rather hard-headed about their work, but Pris and I never really struggled with ego. I think we both became so interested in the developing story of our two characters, that we let go of all preconceptions of how things ought to be and just kept responding to one poem with another one. Before we knew it we had almost 30 poems, half of which she had written, half of which I had written, one of which we had written together, all of which we had revised together, and all of which combined to tell an interesting and coherent story. I think we both felt extremely lucky.”
Owens has become a fixture in the Catawba County and NC world of poetry. Three years ago he founded the monthly reading series Poetry Hickory and began editing the online journal Wild Goose Poetry Review. Two years ago he began writing a regular column on poetry for Outlook. Since that time, he has published 4 new collections of poetry -- this will be his sixth in all -- and more than 400 poems in journals and anthologies across the country. He has also given over 100 public readings of his work and become Vice President of the Poetry Council of North Carolina and Regional Representative of the NC Writers’ Network.
Campbell does virtually all of her work in poetry from her home in Florida, where she is frequently homebound due to her contraction of CFIDS in 1990, prior to which she had been a clinical psychologist. This will be her fifth collection of poetry. Both writers have been nominated for 3 Pushcart Prizes and received a number of other awards for their work.
“The story,” Owens says, “is a love story that begins in unrevealed tragedy and ends in revelation and further tragedy, at least it seems tragic to me.”
The Nature of Attraction will debut at a book release party from 5:30 to 7:00 on August 5 at Taste Full Beans Coffeehouse in downtown Hickory. The event will include a reading of poems by Owens and the playing of a recording of Campbell reading selections of her own. Copies of the book will be available for purchase and personalization as well. Refreshments will be served. Prospective readers can learn more about the book and its authors by visiting www.mainstreetrag.com/Campbell_Owens.html.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
New Book Available at Pre-Publication Discount
My collaboration with Pris Campbell, "The Nature of Attraction," a narrative sequence of poems about a relationship featuring Norman and Sara, is now available for the unbelievable pre-publication discount of only $3.50. The book will be released and mailed on July 26. Here is a link to Main Street Rag's Coming Soon page which includes ordering information and three poems from the collection:
New Book Now Available at Pre-Publication Discount
My collaboration with Pris Campbell, "The Nature of Attraction," a narrative sequence of poems about a relationship featuring Norman and Sara, is now available for the unbelievable pre-publication discount of only $3.50. The book will be released and mailed on July 26. Here is a link to Main Street Rag's Coming Soon page which includes ordering information and three poems from the collection:
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Wild Goose Poetry Review Pushcart Nominations
Wild Goose Poetry Review has nominated the following poems for 2010 Pushcart Prizes: Joe Milford, "The Janitor Moonlighting;" Pris Campbell, "Original Sin;" Linda Annas Ferguson, "I Wanted to Hear Her Howl;" Janice Moore Fuller, "Ellipsis;" Joseph Trombatore, "Brown, Blue, Brown on Blue;" William Keener, "Refuge". Congratulations to these wonderful poets.
Read them all at www.wildgoosepoetryreview.com
Read them all at www.wildgoosepoetryreview.com
Friday, November 6, 2009
Review of Pris Campbell's "Sea Trails: Poems and 1977 Passage Notes"
Review (first published in Wild Goose Poetry Review)
Sea Trails: Poems and 1977 Passage Notes, by Pris Campbell
Lummox Press (2009)
ISBN: 9781929878024
If you like poetry, you’ll love Pris Campbell’s new book Sea Trails (Lummox, 2009). If you don’t like poetry, even if you don’t understand poetry, even if you resent poetry and poets, you’ll love this book. If you like a story, if you like the sea, if you like memoirs, confessions, and reality shows, you’ll love this book.
It’s easy to be impressed with the creativity on display in Pris Campbell’s decision to juxtapose log notes from a sailing journey down the East Coast with highly personal and evocative poetry written about that journey. The complementation of prose and poetry, art and memoir creates a unique example of mimesis in action, a wonderful opportunity to speculate on the relationship between art and life, and the most enjoyable means of facilitating the comprehension of a poem that I’ve ever encountered. All that’s missing is the movie.
What might be overlooked in all of this is that even were there no log notes, no interesting details about sailing, no overarching narrative, and no innovative design, these would still be fantastic poems, and as much as I enjoy all the things that make this book unique and that make it more readable to a wider audience than every other collection of poetry from the past 10 years, it is still the poetry that makes it a great book. Campbell speaks in these poems with a clarity and vibrancy that create an unmistakably familiar emotional impact on the reader. Each poem contains its own catharsis as they build towards the summative climax of the narrative. “Why I Call Him My Lover,” for example, establishes the central conflict of the book while manifesting the oxymoronic desperate resignation of a lover falling out of love.
He’s not my mate.
Not my husband, either.
I don’t think of him
as my partner.
He’s not sweetie, hon,
darlin’, or luv.
I no longer use his given
name except when calling him.
We create what seems like love
in the V-berth each evening
and, sometimes, for a sail
flutter, it is again.
That and the boat
are our only tether.
Similarly, these lines from “Reversals” embody that same speaker’s stubborn hope that something worthwhile can yet be crafted from what has gone stale: “Unknown harbors wait to embrace us, / to cast roses upon hope that what / has been lost can still find fresh breath.” And, one of my favorite poems in the collection, “Original Sin,” re-envisions the myth of Adam and Eve to carry the conflict forward while beautifully expressing the inevitable disappointment one feels in loss:
When Adam bedded Eve in these dark pines
I wonder if they laughed in their nakedness,
threw kisses at lopsided stars.
I doubt Adam searched for other Eves to ogle,
found fault or ignored her. . . .
Our boat swings with the tide, waking us.
He slides inside. My very own Adam,
already tainted by original sin.
The flow of emotions engulfing this waning relationship is not, however, the only current that runs through these poems. There is also a movement towards independence, self-actualization, and, as first made clear in “Rebirth,” a joie de vivre expressed in the thrill of sailing:
I’ve birthed her hundreds of times
just as she’s birthed me,
but each time is a new time.
Umbilical cut, we move towards the open sea.
Even as the relationship between the speaker and her lover fester, this growth towards self-discovery and happiness continues in poems like “Newport Mayhem,” which concludes
I’m glad to sit on Little Adventure
under the darkening plum colored sky, feeling
every fresh second merge with my heartbeat
until my chest splits wide open to the glory of now.
Eventually the contrary currents of waxing self-discovery and waning co-dependence diverge as the speaker achieves her epiphany in “Daytona Redux:”
Suddenly I know I have what I need without him.
My little boat.
Good friends.
Sea air caressing my face.
This day, so beautiful it could break your heart.
The bottom line is that this is a brilliantly satisfying work of art. From the innovative combination of log notes, maps, charts, photographs, and of course, poetry, to the beautiful cover, the enticing narrative, and the sharp, clear, and engaging poetry, it is one of the best works I’ve read in several years.
Sea Trails: Poems and 1977 Passage Notes, by Pris Campbell
Lummox Press (2009)
ISBN: 9781929878024
If you like poetry, you’ll love Pris Campbell’s new book Sea Trails (Lummox, 2009). If you don’t like poetry, even if you don’t understand poetry, even if you resent poetry and poets, you’ll love this book. If you like a story, if you like the sea, if you like memoirs, confessions, and reality shows, you’ll love this book.
It’s easy to be impressed with the creativity on display in Pris Campbell’s decision to juxtapose log notes from a sailing journey down the East Coast with highly personal and evocative poetry written about that journey. The complementation of prose and poetry, art and memoir creates a unique example of mimesis in action, a wonderful opportunity to speculate on the relationship between art and life, and the most enjoyable means of facilitating the comprehension of a poem that I’ve ever encountered. All that’s missing is the movie.
What might be overlooked in all of this is that even were there no log notes, no interesting details about sailing, no overarching narrative, and no innovative design, these would still be fantastic poems, and as much as I enjoy all the things that make this book unique and that make it more readable to a wider audience than every other collection of poetry from the past 10 years, it is still the poetry that makes it a great book. Campbell speaks in these poems with a clarity and vibrancy that create an unmistakably familiar emotional impact on the reader. Each poem contains its own catharsis as they build towards the summative climax of the narrative. “Why I Call Him My Lover,” for example, establishes the central conflict of the book while manifesting the oxymoronic desperate resignation of a lover falling out of love.
He’s not my mate.
Not my husband, either.
I don’t think of him
as my partner.
He’s not sweetie, hon,
darlin’, or luv.
I no longer use his given
name except when calling him.
We create what seems like love
in the V-berth each evening
and, sometimes, for a sail
flutter, it is again.
That and the boat
are our only tether.
Similarly, these lines from “Reversals” embody that same speaker’s stubborn hope that something worthwhile can yet be crafted from what has gone stale: “Unknown harbors wait to embrace us, / to cast roses upon hope that what / has been lost can still find fresh breath.” And, one of my favorite poems in the collection, “Original Sin,” re-envisions the myth of Adam and Eve to carry the conflict forward while beautifully expressing the inevitable disappointment one feels in loss:
When Adam bedded Eve in these dark pines
I wonder if they laughed in their nakedness,
threw kisses at lopsided stars.
I doubt Adam searched for other Eves to ogle,
found fault or ignored her. . . .
Our boat swings with the tide, waking us.
He slides inside. My very own Adam,
already tainted by original sin.
The flow of emotions engulfing this waning relationship is not, however, the only current that runs through these poems. There is also a movement towards independence, self-actualization, and, as first made clear in “Rebirth,” a joie de vivre expressed in the thrill of sailing:
I’ve birthed her hundreds of times
just as she’s birthed me,
but each time is a new time.
Umbilical cut, we move towards the open sea.
Even as the relationship between the speaker and her lover fester, this growth towards self-discovery and happiness continues in poems like “Newport Mayhem,” which concludes
I’m glad to sit on Little Adventure
under the darkening plum colored sky, feeling
every fresh second merge with my heartbeat
until my chest splits wide open to the glory of now.
Eventually the contrary currents of waxing self-discovery and waning co-dependence diverge as the speaker achieves her epiphany in “Daytona Redux:”
Suddenly I know I have what I need without him.
My little boat.
Good friends.
Sea air caressing my face.
This day, so beautiful it could break your heart.
The bottom line is that this is a brilliantly satisfying work of art. From the innovative combination of log notes, maps, charts, photographs, and of course, poetry, to the beautiful cover, the enticing narrative, and the sharp, clear, and engaging poetry, it is one of the best works I’ve read in several years.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
New Wild Goose Online
The new "Wild Goose Poetry Review" is now online at www.wildgoosepoetryreview.com. This issue is the first to feature links to the Wild Goose Poetry Review blog where authors have left comments on their poems and readers can do so as well. We're hoping this will stir up more conversation about the poems, poets, and poetry in general. This issue includes poems by Sam Rasnake, Felicia Mitchell, Richard Krawiec, Jessie Carty (featured), Gabriel Shanks, Daniel Casey, Curtis Dunlap, AD Winans, Harry Calhoun, and many others. My reviews of new books by Mitchell, Krawiec, Linda Annas Ferguson, Sara Claytor, Joanna Catherine Scott, Terri Kirby Erickson, David Rigsbee, John Amen, Bruce Lader, and Pris Campbell are also in this issue. The reviews give me a great opportunity to comment not just about individual poems, books, and poets, but to express my ideas about contemporary poetry in general. I hope you'll at least read those about Ferguson's, Scott's, and Campbell's books. I think I venture further towards "making statements" about poetry in those than in some of the others. In any event, over the next couple of weeks, I'll post those reviews one-per-day or so here as well to create a searchable archive of all of my reviews (at least those the initial publisher will allow me to reprint here). Look for them starting tomorrow
Thursday, October 15, 2009
October Poetry Hickory Video
Here is a link to Jessie Carty's video excerpts from October's Poetry Hickory. The featured writers were Debra Kaufman and Helen Losse. Open Mic readers included Faze, Anthony Straight, DW Bentley, and me (reading from Pris Campbell's new book "Sea Trails" from Lummox Press). Pris is virtually homebound due to her health, so she doesn't have the opportunity to read her own work in public. Her poems can be quite "sexy" at times, which might make it a bit strange for me to read, but they're excellent poems and I relish the opportunity to share them no matter how it might seem.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbvqb9zNPSY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbvqb9zNPSY
Monday, April 20, 2009
In Defense of Post Avant Poetry
“Musings” for April 2, 2009
Some poets spend their time writing poetry; others divide their time between poetry and poetic theory and quite often seem to construct theory mostly as a means of justifying what they are trying to do in their own work. Over the years, it has seemed to me that those who are good at theory are not that good at poetry, while those who are good at poetry aren’t interested in spending much time justifying what they’re doing in the form of theory. Perhaps the nature of the two activities makes this bit of division unavoidable. Poetic theory is analytical and supremely rational in nature. Poetry, on the other hand, often seems much more intuitive, requiring a mind that is free from the constraints of consistent and thorough analysis and reason. For this reason, Carter Monroe is the truly exceptional poet, who has built a career of remarkable poetry and insightful theory.
Carter Monroe is a poet, novelist, philosopher, musicologist, and critic. He is the author of at least 5 collections of poetry, including The New Lost Blues and Billy Putrid, and the novel Journey. His poetry has been widely published in such journals as Rusty Truck, Dead Mule, Wild Goose Poetry Review, and The Pudding House Gang Anthology. He was also founder and editor of Rank Stranger Press, through which he helped writers like M. Scott Douglass, Ron Androla, D.B. Cox, S.A. Griffin, Jim Chandler, Jim Clark, and Pris Campbell find audiences.
Carter Monroe is one of the most important writers in the American South today, not only because of his own outstanding poetry, but also because of the guidance he has offered other poets. Hickory poet, Tim Peeler, says of him, “Carter Monroe is one of the most dedicated students of literature and language that I know. Through his own work and that of Rank Stranger Press, he has been a force in the small press for many years.”
More than anything else, I think what has enabled Monroe to reside comfortably in the worlds of theory and poetry is that unlike most theorists, he plays the game for a sheer love of the game. The ideal sportsman, Monroe doesn’t care if he wins or loses. In fact, it could be said that he often changes sides simply to make the game more interesting. In a recent email, Monroe commented on an article in which the author seemed determined to push the aesthetics of what is often called avant-garde (or more recently post-avant) poetry at the expense of Nobel Prize winning poet, Seamus Heaney. Monroe remarks, “This article reminds me of political discussions in which the sins of one candidate are compared to the sins of another in an attempt to explain who is superior by default. The politics of poetry is so "obvious" as to appear juvenile. Sometimes it seems like a series of cults in which the only common denominator is a refusal to bathe.” I have seen and heard Monroe leap just as quickly to the defense of post-avant poetry as he leaps to Heaney’s defense here. Monroe is just as comfortable writing traditionally-grounded poetry as he is writing post-avant work, and because of that he has a unique appreciation of good poetry regardless of the “school” of poetry it comes out of.
Monroe will be in Hickory on April 14 to read his work at Poetry with Morganton poet, Ted Pope. Poetry Hickory is sponsored by Main Street Rag and held at 6:30 at Taste Full Beans Coffeehouse on the second Tuesday of each month. The Carter Monroe poem below is reprinted from The Pudding House Gang Anthology.
Coffee
What this premise holds within a recreational span
is more than a superfluous afterthought.
Too often the creamer has run dry
necessitating the use of envelopes of powder.
The residue of which, free associates without context
or placid considerations of decay.
It’s the bloodstream in all its glory.
The infrastructure of bodily highways
with charts, grafts, and some idea of gravity,
routing its way toward potential blocks,
in possession of the ability to regenerate,
and curving until the path has become arcane.
The conversationalists fall into the natural order of habit,
precluding accrued genius and the concept of money as tender.
Erstwhile, the cavities remain at varying levels
unmeasured in terms of cerebral analysis,
incapable of judging vegetables
or a digestive system that functions on its own.
The walls are temporarily combustible
shrinking and expanding in a crash-and-burn mode.
Ideas running into the blur of circles
become calmed by morning papers and sacrosanct news.
The blip of day solidifies itself (only briefly) at a standstill
waiting impatiently for the next phase of segmentation.
Some poets spend their time writing poetry; others divide their time between poetry and poetic theory and quite often seem to construct theory mostly as a means of justifying what they are trying to do in their own work. Over the years, it has seemed to me that those who are good at theory are not that good at poetry, while those who are good at poetry aren’t interested in spending much time justifying what they’re doing in the form of theory. Perhaps the nature of the two activities makes this bit of division unavoidable. Poetic theory is analytical and supremely rational in nature. Poetry, on the other hand, often seems much more intuitive, requiring a mind that is free from the constraints of consistent and thorough analysis and reason. For this reason, Carter Monroe is the truly exceptional poet, who has built a career of remarkable poetry and insightful theory.
Carter Monroe is a poet, novelist, philosopher, musicologist, and critic. He is the author of at least 5 collections of poetry, including The New Lost Blues and Billy Putrid, and the novel Journey. His poetry has been widely published in such journals as Rusty Truck, Dead Mule, Wild Goose Poetry Review, and The Pudding House Gang Anthology. He was also founder and editor of Rank Stranger Press, through which he helped writers like M. Scott Douglass, Ron Androla, D.B. Cox, S.A. Griffin, Jim Chandler, Jim Clark, and Pris Campbell find audiences.
Carter Monroe is one of the most important writers in the American South today, not only because of his own outstanding poetry, but also because of the guidance he has offered other poets. Hickory poet, Tim Peeler, says of him, “Carter Monroe is one of the most dedicated students of literature and language that I know. Through his own work and that of Rank Stranger Press, he has been a force in the small press for many years.”
More than anything else, I think what has enabled Monroe to reside comfortably in the worlds of theory and poetry is that unlike most theorists, he plays the game for a sheer love of the game. The ideal sportsman, Monroe doesn’t care if he wins or loses. In fact, it could be said that he often changes sides simply to make the game more interesting. In a recent email, Monroe commented on an article in which the author seemed determined to push the aesthetics of what is often called avant-garde (or more recently post-avant) poetry at the expense of Nobel Prize winning poet, Seamus Heaney. Monroe remarks, “This article reminds me of political discussions in which the sins of one candidate are compared to the sins of another in an attempt to explain who is superior by default. The politics of poetry is so "obvious" as to appear juvenile. Sometimes it seems like a series of cults in which the only common denominator is a refusal to bathe.” I have seen and heard Monroe leap just as quickly to the defense of post-avant poetry as he leaps to Heaney’s defense here. Monroe is just as comfortable writing traditionally-grounded poetry as he is writing post-avant work, and because of that he has a unique appreciation of good poetry regardless of the “school” of poetry it comes out of.
Monroe will be in Hickory on April 14 to read his work at Poetry with Morganton poet, Ted Pope. Poetry Hickory is sponsored by Main Street Rag and held at 6:30 at Taste Full Beans Coffeehouse on the second Tuesday of each month. The Carter Monroe poem below is reprinted from The Pudding House Gang Anthology.
Coffee
What this premise holds within a recreational span
is more than a superfluous afterthought.
Too often the creamer has run dry
necessitating the use of envelopes of powder.
The residue of which, free associates without context
or placid considerations of decay.
It’s the bloodstream in all its glory.
The infrastructure of bodily highways
with charts, grafts, and some idea of gravity,
routing its way toward potential blocks,
in possession of the ability to regenerate,
and curving until the path has become arcane.
The conversationalists fall into the natural order of habit,
precluding accrued genius and the concept of money as tender.
Erstwhile, the cavities remain at varying levels
unmeasured in terms of cerebral analysis,
incapable of judging vegetables
or a digestive system that functions on its own.
The walls are temporarily combustible
shrinking and expanding in a crash-and-burn mode.
Ideas running into the blur of circles
become calmed by morning papers and sacrosanct news.
The blip of day solidifies itself (only briefly) at a standstill
waiting impatiently for the next phase of segmentation.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Review of Pris Campbell's "Hesitant Commitments" (Wild Goose, Winter, 2008)
Review of Pris Campbell’s Hesitant Commitments ($5, 36 pages, Lummox Press, www.lummoxpress.com)
Good poems come in all shapes and sizes these days, but one trait most good poems share is that they have an impact on the reader. That impact may be emotional, cognitive, or, in rarer but often more enjoyable cases, visceral in nature. The poems in Pris Campbell’s new chapbook, Hesitant Commitments, from The Lummox Press, run the gamut of types of impacts, but many of the best poems in the manuscript feature that rarer visceral impact. In fact, poems like “Silk Blouse,” “Voyeur,” and “The Reading” might be described as, frankly, arousing.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking, however, that this is a collection of simple, erotic poetry. Many of the poems are also emotionally or philosophically stirring. The single best poem in the manuscript is the one that delivers the most resounding emotional blow, “about my sadness,” where the speaker asks herself:
how many times can
I lie on my back with a stranger,
legs spread, in hopes
this will be the orgasm that draws
my sadness out of the shadows,
evacuates that old man’s touch
from my childhood thighs?
Good collections of poetry also come in all shapes and sizes these days, and while I can’t say that there is a single trait they all share, many of them do share the characteristic of an over-arching narrative, an element found in Hesitant Commitments as well. This is the story of an emotional journey that begins in inexplicable sadness, leading to desperate, aimless sexual promiscuity, and on to, at first, hopeful and then frustrated love, before concluding with the realization that it is not love alone which can heal the past, but a surrendering of the past to love -- a surrendering that gives up control and creates vulnerability and trust. That’s a mouthful for one sentence; fortunately, the poems take their time in drawing out this narrative. In short, it is a story of self-discovery and the reclamation of fully human emotion lost through childhood sexual abuse. This is, obviously, a timely and important story, and like so many important stories, it is one better understood through the subtle workings of poetry, which make the experience seem our own, than it is through news reports of any form.
Campbell does a masterful job in dealing with a difficult theme, avoiding at all turns being preachy or sentimental, and creating at all turns imagery that resoundingly earns the emotional response it requests. She helps the reader understand what one would think could not be understood. Just as the speaker of these poems reclaims her humanity, she helps the reader expand his.
Good poems come in all shapes and sizes these days, but one trait most good poems share is that they have an impact on the reader. That impact may be emotional, cognitive, or, in rarer but often more enjoyable cases, visceral in nature. The poems in Pris Campbell’s new chapbook, Hesitant Commitments, from The Lummox Press, run the gamut of types of impacts, but many of the best poems in the manuscript feature that rarer visceral impact. In fact, poems like “Silk Blouse,” “Voyeur,” and “The Reading” might be described as, frankly, arousing.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking, however, that this is a collection of simple, erotic poetry. Many of the poems are also emotionally or philosophically stirring. The single best poem in the manuscript is the one that delivers the most resounding emotional blow, “about my sadness,” where the speaker asks herself:
how many times can
I lie on my back with a stranger,
legs spread, in hopes
this will be the orgasm that draws
my sadness out of the shadows,
evacuates that old man’s touch
from my childhood thighs?
Good collections of poetry also come in all shapes and sizes these days, and while I can’t say that there is a single trait they all share, many of them do share the characteristic of an over-arching narrative, an element found in Hesitant Commitments as well. This is the story of an emotional journey that begins in inexplicable sadness, leading to desperate, aimless sexual promiscuity, and on to, at first, hopeful and then frustrated love, before concluding with the realization that it is not love alone which can heal the past, but a surrendering of the past to love -- a surrendering that gives up control and creates vulnerability and trust. That’s a mouthful for one sentence; fortunately, the poems take their time in drawing out this narrative. In short, it is a story of self-discovery and the reclamation of fully human emotion lost through childhood sexual abuse. This is, obviously, a timely and important story, and like so many important stories, it is one better understood through the subtle workings of poetry, which make the experience seem our own, than it is through news reports of any form.
Campbell does a masterful job in dealing with a difficult theme, avoiding at all turns being preachy or sentimental, and creating at all turns imagery that resoundingly earns the emotional response it requests. She helps the reader understand what one would think could not be understood. Just as the speaker of these poems reclaims her humanity, she helps the reader expand his.
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