Category Archives: Books

Once again, ambition

Dave Bonta, he of the Poetry Blog Digest, Moving Poems, via negativa, Dave Bonta blog, and more, recently posted a thoughtful essay about personal poetic ambitions vs. careers in the poetry field (see https://davebonta.com/2023/10/ambition-without-careerism/). The link’s here because I encourage you to read it! It is a topic many of us poets return to occasionally, especially when we find ourselves wondering things like why bother and who cares whether we write or not or whether we ever get any good at writing poetry…and whether poets should be paid better, or at all…and whether or not poets benefit by being attached to universities.

In fact, when I read Dave’s post I immediately recalled having written similar ideas, though from a different perspective, on this very blog some years back–and probably more than once. The concept of ambition in poetry, and how one defines that word in relation to poetry, is something I first encountered in Donald Hall’s 1988 book Poetry and Ambition–still in print from University of Michigan. I read this book of essays in 1991, in between changing diapers and coordinating naptimes for two children under the age of four. It was difficult to feel ambition about career at that time, and a career in poetry was ever a pipe dream; but the notion that a writer could feel ambitious about the work she might be doing in learning about and endeavoring to craft really good poems, even should she fail most of the time, felt encouraging to me. I recommend this book, as there’s also a good deal one can find to disagree with in it, and debate is useful for thinking.

Fast-forward to today (time does seem to move in fast-forward), and I find myself retired from a career on the fringes of academia, where I taught composition to students less-prepared for college and ran the writing center at a university. But I did not teach poetry or creative writing and was staff, not professorial/tenured; so the need to be career-ambitious through poetry was null. That suited my personality well. Maybe too well. Yet somehow I managed to get a reasonable amount of my work published (see the sidebar of this page) and to get several chapbooks and books into print (see the My Books tab here). I had my own form of ambition.

What now, I wonder? I have so much work to revise! Recently, I submitted an experimental, historically-based chapbook to a publisher, and I’m working on getting a new book of older work, though not as old as The Red Queen Hypothesis‘ poems, into print. Will I spend the next few years just catching up? Possibly. Is that “ambitious”? Nah, just means I wasn’t ambitious enough to get to it earlier!

Poets, horses

My local public library’s poetry section is on the sparse side. However, after renewing my card today, I felt determined to borrow a poetry book. I considered taking out one of Louise Glück’s collections, but I already own copies of the two on the library’s shelves (Wild Iris and Meadowlands). I chose Maxine Kumin’s 1992 book Looking for Luck instead. When I returned home, I learned that Glück has died (age 80). There will be time to return to her books and to seek out her most recent collection, which I have not read; but hers is a voice readers of poetry will miss.

One thing that her poems do is to face, without shying away from, sorrow or grief. They seldom offer sociably-conventional consolations. The consolation is in the spare beauty of her observation, her control of language. That is difficult to do. When I write from despair or deep grief, I find I want to bring some kind of–call it hope?–into the last few lines. I wonder whether I’ve a tendency to want to comfort; maybe my readers, maybe myself.

I haven’t gotten very far into the Kumin book yet, but it’s clear that this collection includes numerous poems featuring horses, one of Kumin’s lifelong joys (she and her husband raised quarterhorses in New Hampshire). Her poems have taken me back in time, so to speak, to when my daughter was learning to ride. I have had a sensible regard for horses’ size, prey instincts, teeth, and hooves from early childhood–not quite a fear of horses, but pretty close–so when my then-tiny nine-year-old expressed an unwavering and stubborn interest in riding lessons, I held off until persuaded to let her “just try it.” Of course she knew what she was interested in, and of course she loved riding, despite frustrations and beasts who didn’t want to cooperate and being pitched off and stepped on while I watched and encouraged and soothed, swallowing my fears for her safety.

Equine grace, strength, personality did not quite win me over; I’ll never be much of a rider myself. But contending with horses and learning to love and commune with them was good for my child, and reading Kumin’s poems brings back how human animals can have relationships with other animals. I never quite got over horses being an “Other” for me, but observing how my daughter loved being with them inspired me to write quite a few poems of my own [see my chapbook The Capable Heart]. Reading Kumin’s work takes me to a familiar and important place in my own life.

Restorative

I often start a post with a mini-weather report; I guess that’s one way I prepare myself to write, centering myself in the environment I inhabit. Our region received much-needed rain this weekend, but I was out of town–and the weather in Chicago was glorious: cloudless, crisp, mild, a light breeze. Odd, though, how weather conditions can evoke strong memories for me. The amazing clarity of the sky and air reminded me vividly of September 11, 2001, and the two days following it when we had a run of glorious weather and a mood of intense disturbance all around us…and no plane traffic at all. It took a few moments for that recall to settle in, and a few minutes more to let the memory go so I could enjoy the present moment.

~

I was in the Chicago area–Highland Park– for the book launch of The Red Queen Hypothesis. Many thanks to my publisher, Julie Dotson, and the welcoming and supportive group of poets and audience; the reading went well, and we sold some books (always a satisfying thing). I met quite a few interesting people and learned a bit about the city of Highland Park, its relatively long history, its parks, architecture, the storied Ravinia Festival, and how the city’s been coping since the July 4 tragedy last year. Travel always offers perspective. In this case, travel offered community as well: a lively community of people who support the literary arts.

~

I even got to be recorded, with Jennifer Dotson as the interviewer–a first for me. Here’s the link:

My generous poet-host, Julie Isaacson, knew from my writing and my biography that I would enjoy a walk around the Chicago Botanic Gardens–and she was so right! The gardens offered just the respite I needed after airplane travel. We hadn’t the time to stroll all 280+ acres, but the chance to walk amid trees and beside water in the middle of an urban expanse was genuinely restorative.

Now I am pulling weeds and pruning for the approaching autumn, activities that allow me to settle into myself internally and which sometimes result in poem drafts. Please wish me luck on both endeavors!

Language power

In advance of my reading this weekend, Jennifer Dotson of Highland Park Poetry asked a few questions and created the flyer below. I especially like the last question and have more to say about it below.

~

The graffiti on the NJ and NY Palisades sent a thrill through my childish mind and body. I first recall seeing words spray-painted on the cliffs when I was under age five and barely cognizant of letter forms. The view puzzled and frightened me, partly because of the heights (I was acrophobic from a very early age) and partly because I had no idea what those huge, high-up letters signified. When I got to kindergarten and began deciphering letters, the graffiti confused me because it contained signs that weren’t in the alphabet I was learning at school: Ω, Φ, the scary-looking Ψ; θ, Δ, and Σ, which resembled a capital E but clearly wasn’t. Once I could read and still could not understand them, I asked my father what those letters were and why they were up there on the rocks. They reminded me of the ☧ embroidered on some of the altar cloths in church, but I didn’t know what that stood for, either.

Frat boys from the colleges painted their Greek symbols on the rocks long before spray paint was invented, my dad said, possibly as part of hazing rituals. By the time I was a child, the 50s-era “greasers” had begun announcing their love for Nancy or Tina through daring feats of rock and bridge painting; then the graffiti era came into full swing after the mid-sixties, and the process got colorful–the Greek symbols vanished, replaced by “tags.” All of which just reinforces the importance of words in the world.

I will never climb up high to write or declaim my own words, as heights continue to terrify me. But I continue to push ideas, words, arguments, pleas, elegies, and gratitude into the world. Writing is the only way I know how to do that. It’ll have to be enough.

Book launch, travel, PR

Highland Park Poetry press has set up a book launch/poetry reading for The Red Queen Hypothesis (and me) with poet Rene Parks and an open mic to follow. This event takes place Saturday, September 9th at 5 pm, at Madame ZuZu’s, 1876 First Street, Highland Park IL. Here’s a link, and here’s another link. It’s a ways to travel from eastern Pennsylvania but a good reason for yours truly to visit a new place, meet new people–including the book’s publisher–and listen to other poets.

Too often, perhaps, I stay around the home front, indulge in my introversion by gardening and reading, and shy away from promoting my work. Lately, it’s been months since I did any submitting. There was my participation in the annual Goschenhoppen Festival, then a short but lovely week in North Carolina, camping and seeing friends. Now, the veggie season is starting to wind down–tomato sauce simmers on the burner–and I will have fewer excuses for why I am not sending out poems.

But my travel for the year is not quite done. In September there’s one more trip away from PA, and after that we can settle into autumn. I have writing plans, so once we return, I need to create a schedule that is flexible enough I can stick to it but framed clearly enough that it feels necessary and not difficult to integrate into my days and weeks. Every one of my writer friends knows how challenging that can be. Wish me luck. There’s a chapbook that’s been languishing in my desk area for quite a long time, but to which I’ve recently returned; there’s a ream of poems under 21 lines that might make up a collection, too. Then there’s the next manuscript, rather grief-heavy at present, that I need to re-think and revise.

Oh, and all those poem drafts I have not looked at in awhile…

Then there will be the next round of promotion, not just for RQH but for a collection for which I just signed a publishing contract! That book may be released as soon as April or May of 2024. We shall see. After the drawn-out publication wait for this last book, I will not be holding my breath. Still–it’s heartening news on the poetry front.

Above, Blue Ridge Mountains in August.

Aft a-gley

Today marked the first day of the Fall semester at the college, but I had no reason to be there. Instead, I enjoyed the surprisingly fine August weather, harvested tomatoes and basil, and began the much-delayed task of weeding our numerous perennial beds. At 4 pm, I rested in the hammock after a walk and spent a few minutes reveling in retirement; though generally I’ve been too busy to find myself in reflective or relaxation mode, it was nice to pretend for awhile.

Yes–I wanted to read books in that hammock, and get to the community pool, and hang out with friends on the patio until the bats came out and the last fireflies gleamed over the meadow. Ah, but Robert Burns nailed it: “The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft a-gley.” There were so many other things to do.

That said, while I did not do the Sealey Challenge this August, I managed to read several really terrific poetry books–and the month’s not over yet! To keep this post brief, I’ll just mention the book I’m reading now, Jennifer Franklin’s stellar new collection If Some God Shakes Your House. Lots of (mostly) non-rhyming sonnets, a series of memento mori poems, and lyrically linked poems titled “As Antigone–” connect anger, grief, and suggest that anti-authoritarian acts are often more about love than bravery. The speaker keeps denying that bravery’s behind her disobedience, but these poems are brave. I found many of them utterly heart-breaking, so it may not be an “easy read” if you want something cheerful to uplift a low mood. Nonetheless, Franklin’s poems secure hope to love so intensely I could not look away and keep returning to them even before I have finished the book.

I grew up confusing opinion
with oracle. She reminded me
all men are dangerous, each time
I left the house alone….

Jennifer Franklin

It can be difficult to avoid comparing such strong poetry with…well, with what I write. I think that most writers do this occasionally, some more than others. If one is a competitive or ambitious person, analysis and comparisons may be second nature; I have known poets who feel dismayed by their own inadequacy compared to the “greats,” and poets who felt bitterly overlooked because they didn’t get the attention or lauding other writers garnered. Either way is a trap, though. In general, I look to admirable literature as something to enjoy, learn from, admire, and to analyze to figure out how it can be done. If I have ambition, it is the ambition to learn. Oh yeah, the autodidact in me again!

And speaking of ambition, or lack thereof, I am far behind in promoting my book. Next post should contain details of the book launch in the Chicago area (September 9), and perhaps other writing-related newsiness.

Classification

An admission: I’m barely competent at the promotional aspect of The Writing Life and would prefer to hole up in my house and garden and just… write. But writers need readers, and writers benefit by meeting other writers (and readers); and I’ve always been interested in learning new things, even things that are not particularly fun or that I am not naturally adept at. Such as educational learning management systems (ie, “portals”). Such as recording audiofiles of my poems. Such as contacting potential poetry-reading venues or reviewers. Or coming up with clever ways to let people know about my book.

I got a couple of responses from my initial forays, which is lucky. One of these sent me a sort of writer’s questionnaire about my book, and one of the responses I’m supposed to give is to say how I would classify my latest poetry collection. That got me mulling over the whole idea of categorization, classifying, and stereotypes. Genre–that’s easy. It’s poetry. But the sub-category of this book? uh…

~

At the beach earlier this week, we found a much-broken up rock jetty that teemed with creatures. As I sat back on my heels and peered into the mixture of sand-water-rock-mullosk-kelp, I found myself thinking about Aristotle’s immanent realism (epistemology/natural philosophy), ideas he likely nurtured while examining the tide pools of Lesbos. Or I imagine that he may have done so. We humans observe, and then classify or categorize based upon these observations: similarities, differences, various adaptations–in environment, habit, behavior, construction of the being or entity itself.

I think if I had known as a child and young woman that there was a career path called “a naturalist,” I would have pursued it.

~

Unclassifiable doesn’t strike me as much of a selling point. However, there are always art forms that are, to use a current term, intersectional or interdisciplinary, and creations that repurpose, alter, or reimagine the known or customary into something new and intriguing. Fellow blogger and talented poet and novelist Lesley Wheeler‘s books come to mind, as do works by Anne Carson and books from Coffeehouse Press and Tarpaulin Sky (among others).

My poetry is not experimental nor groundbreaking, though it is a little quirky; so here is my recent attempt to classify The Red Queen Hypothesis and Other Poems:

Touching on a range of topics and employing variety in poetic craft—free verse, metrical verse, rhyme, and classic forms—the poems in The Red Queen Hypothesis play with invention, science, and the environment of the everyday.  One example of these juxtapositions is the title poem: a villanelle, based on an evolutionary theory named for an episode in Alice through the Looking Glass, that sums up the corporate rat race. Sometimes tongue-in-cheek, sometimes disturbing, the poems urge readers to observe and to reconsider what is beautiful.

~

I dunno. Does that seem like a remotely interesting description?

(Really not adept at the promotional biz.)

Aristotle, supposedly.
from https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/27/world/europe/greece-aristotle-tomb.html

Aloft at last

https://www.amazon.com/Red-Queen-Hypothesis-other-poems/dp/B0C9SNKGJZ/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2VSSIOETPZQDW&keywords=ann+e.+michael&qid=1689466800&s=books&sprefix=ann+e.+michael%2Cstripbooks%2C104&sr=1-1

My second full-length poetry collection is finally available. Whew! It took a good bit of patience, some frustration, and considerable persistence to get here, but I believed that this was a manuscript worth plugging away on. And thank you to Highland Park Poetry and to judge Cynthia Gallaher for choosing RQH as a prizewinner.

Persistence doesn’t always pay off, but when it does, we tend to focus on how important it is to keep on keeping on. However, I’m not sure I wholly believe in the process of sticking-to-it no matter what; there are times when you do need to let go of an unattainable goal or the pursuit of a not-terrific idea, and just–well, fail. I have let go of quite a few goals, plans, and previous manuscripts when I honestly evaluated my feelings about them and their possibilities for becoming realized. It’s okay to fail. You learn more from failure than from success. I have gained quite an education that way myself.

But I wanted this book to get into print. I like the poems in it. I like the things I learned as I played with meter and form and (mostly slant) rhyme. It was fun to find a range of topics that managed, one way or another, to work together. Mostly, I wanted an audience, to find out whether readers find it thought-provoking or entertaining or interesting. Also, I was starting to sense that it was getting in the way of my next manuscript. Yes, of course I have the next manuscript…

Do I wish the book had come out four or five years ago? Yes. My first collection, Water-Rites, came out way back in 2012; RQH was supposed to have followed more rapidly on that book’s appearance. Am I glad it has appeared at last? Also yes, very glad!

I am grateful to so many people for this book. And I will be grateful to anyone who buys it, reads it, and doesn’t find it a complete waste of time. Meanwhile, I’m working on getting some readings lined up. I know I will appear at the book launch September 9, 2023 in Highland Park, IL! I’d love to read at other venues, so if you know of one let me know.

And if you have a manuscript you really believe in–keep trying.

Transitions of one kind or another

Transitions require reflection and, quite often, reorganizing–and certainly that seems the case at present. I decided back in April to take a hiatus on submitting while I wound down at my college job, also recognizing that I need to put in some work on promoting my book (the cover should appear on my next post!). Besides, before I can send out poetry again, I need to assess what I have that might actually be worth sending out. It’s possible that much of the pile of not-yet self-evaluated poetry exists in unfinished form. That means further revision. While revising is an enjoyable task for me, at this point I confess to feeling overwhelmed. The first task, then, is one of organizing…which I admit I like a lot less than revision.

It was therefore with considerable resignation I faced the drawers, folders, computer files, and index cards that more or less make up my, uh, creative output. The project is nowhere near complete, but I got some cheer by realizing that I have been writing and revising more than I thought, a little at a time. The pile of papers on the chair pictured to the right is 16 months of revisions.

I would pat myself on the back more heartily if that stack had resulted in several damned fine pieces of poetry, but at least it means I’m doing the work that writers do and that I was doing it even when feeling taxed by situations not entirely within my control. Which is also what writers do. Sometimes you need to give yourself a little boost of validation.

A bigger boost of validation for writers is the publication of a book, and that ought to keep me buoyant for awhile even if I do dislike the promotional aspect of book publication (which falls more and more on the writer these days as the book industry contracts). My publisher says the book should be available in August– “Watch this space” –as advertisers used to urge.

Meanwhile, the anthology of contemporary Ukrainian literature published by Vogue Ukraine is now in print and available; it’s full of passionate creative work and includes some internationally notable writers, the best-known of whom is Oksana Zabuzhko, who wrote a reflection about the appearance of her debut novel 25 years ago; one of the most shattering pieces is an extremely current non-fiction text by Olia Rusina written, diary-form, as the assault began on Kyiv. Info here.

Autobiographical?

Although poems can be anything–philosophies, arguments, histories, internal monologues, passions, information, invention, dreamscapes, jokes, narratives, parodies, you name it–poems sometimes parallel a writer’s individual experiences in the world in a way that would, in prose, be termed memoir. When readers think of poems that are “from the heart,” they usually mean work that authentically describes what appears to be personal acquaintance with environments and behaviors: something autobiographical, or “true.” I have tussled with this perception in some of my own work, for example, my chapbook Barefoot Girls, in which the poems describe fictional experiences that in many cases were not my own but those I heard as a teen; and yet, some of them are memoir-ish.

How to decide what categorizes memoir-ish poetry collections? On the one hand, maybe everything ever written by any poet, since connecting the personal with the so-called universal has long been considered the job of poetry. Even narrative and heroic epics, when they are lasting and successful in their aims, contain some aspects we might call personal (motives and emotional responses to a situation, for example), though the writer’s life and its events may be obscured by centuries.

But memoir is not autobiography; readers should keep that in mind. Maybe it’s Vivian Gornick who said that autobiography is what happened and memoir is how it felt–I’m sure I am misremembering, so don’t quote me on that. In a past interview in the New York Times, Sharon Olds derided her own poems as narratives–even personal narratives–but sidestepped the term autobiography; she still refers to the first-person in her own work as “the speaker.”

…even though her poems have been called
diaries, “I don’t think of it as personal,”
she said. “These are not messages in a
bottle about me,” said Ms. Olds.

“The Examined Life, Without Punctuation” by Dinitia Smith, 1999 (New York Times)

Where does that leave us as readers? I don’t know–and I think it’s okay not to know. That said, I have recently read a number of poetry collections that fall decidedly on the memoir side of the continuum and found them interesting, informative, well-written, at times beautiful and also at times hard to read (i.e., profoundly sad). If you, my reader, are intrigued by the challenge of what is or is not memoir in poetic form and are open to experiencing the circumstances and knowledge of other lives and perspectives that such work offers, here are a few books you might investigate. There are many, many more–this list is just from my more recent perusals. Not one of them is anything like the others.

Edward Hirsch, Gabriel, a poem; Jeannine Hall Gailey, Flare, Corona; Emily Rose Cole, Thunderhead; Daisy Fried, The Year the City Emptied; Sean Hanrahan, Ghost Signs; Lisa DeVuono, This Time Roots, Next Time Wings.

is or isn’t is memoir?