Rain, Rain, Go Away

I am settled down in DC for the week, putting together a little video in celebration of National Poetry Month, working away on the nonfiction book (more on that in my latest She Writes "Countdown to Publication" post, here) and watching the rain fall. 


March is a month of birthdays for me, and according to a quick skim of the astrological charts, the pairings of Aries and we Taurus types--my birthday is May 5--tends to be predicated on "strong determination, honesty, and passion for life." That seems like a fair and fairly flattering statement. Also bonding us: games. Whether Trivial Pursuit, Spades, or Chess, the men around me are always game-lovers.  


On Saturday I headed down to Charlottesville for my friend Dave's birthday (where we played Kings, complete with a prep round of Irish Car Bombs). On the long stretch down 29 I thought about small(er) town life. I miss CVille sometimes, and not just because of Bodo's Bagels, though that is a significant factor. I miss impromptu trips up to Skyline Drive. I miss the restaurants and shops of the Downtown Mall. Someday I'd like a house where I can invite a big group of friends over, without wondering where they will sit. 


On a bus ride to New York City for the Poets & Writers Birthday Gala, I sat next to a woman coming from North Carolina. She said she saw more shows--concerts, plays, art exhibits--in Greensboro than she did when she lived in a city. "If there's only one or two big things coming through each month," she said, "you make sure to be there." 


Hmmm.  You know, I have no idea where I'm going to be a year from now. I love DC, but this is the most portable my life has ever been. Which is another way of saying "rootless." Which is another way of saying, oddly lonely. Even at my busiest. Especially at my busiest. 


Speaking of big things going on, this Thursday (April 1) I am hosting Dylan Landis and Joanna Smith Rakoff at the Arts Club of Washington (2017 I Street NW). They will each be reading from their amazing books of debut fiction: Normal People Don't Live Like This and A Fortunate Age. We'll start at 7 PM, with a Q&A and chance to mingle afterwards; if you're around, please join us. 


It's time to toast the start of spring, rain and all. 

21 Poets Recommend Recent Books of Poetry

Ron Slate has done it again! In celebration of National Poetry Month, Ron asked 21 poets to offer recommendations for new or recent books of poetry. Here are my two April picks:



Knock Knock by Heather Hartley 
Carnegie Mellon UP; published January 8, 2010.
80 pages, $15.95 paperback

I do not know how Heather Hartley came to be living in France, where she is the Paris Editor for Tin House and a co-director of the Shakespeare & Co. Literary Festival. Perhaps her muses beckoned her there, since in Knock Knock I find many hallmarks of the European Surrealists: surprising juxtaposition, non sequiturs, and, at times, a dark gallows humor. "His fork outlasted his fuck," declares the title poem, without explanation or apology. "His landlord was the king of butter." Yet unlike Andre Breton and the original Dada-ist generation, Hartley develops these poems as art, and not the mere artifact of philosophical discourse. Her lines are measured and purposeful and her images unforgettable, such as "the Slavic sandman in his fur cap" who "slings mud and spare ribs instead of sweet dreams."


My favorite poems from the collection are centered on a naturalistic, seemingly consistent first-person speaker; a woman with wry intelligence who is both resigned and resigned to hope. These vignettes glimmer with compassion, as in this excerpt from "Advice for the Hirsute":

... The lawyer has lost her mind but O she can dance.

For years, she didn't like her hands

but you can only hide them so long, I said, a girl's got only so many pockets.

(Now she's in love with them like a teenage girl.)

If I gave you the same gift again, wrapped differently,

but the exact same thing,

would you be happy again, a second time?

#




Mayweed by Frannie Lindsay 
The Word Works; published February 1, 2010. 
76 pages, $15.00 paperback

Frannie Lindsay's third collection, Mayweed, operates in a different emotional register: meditative, grieving, at times painterly. I have been a fan of Lindsay's work throughout her renaissance career -- after many years of no poetry, focusing instead on performing as a classically trained pianist, Lindsay has published three books within five years of each other. This burst of output aligns with the unpacking of a painful family history, which sees a natural summation in this volume as a daughter comes to terms with the death of the man who was both father and abuser. Such wrenching material can overwhelm the craft of a lesser poet but Lindsay keeps a tight reign, revealing tension primarily though relentless enjambment and stark image. As in Knock Knock, Mayweed throws us some fantastic curveball moments, as in the opening of the poem "Visiting Hours":

Sometimes he tried to crank the bed by himself,

and his baby blue snowflaked gown would ride up

and there was his drowsy penis that meant nothing to him,

his thigh skin gathered like prom gown taffeta ...

Both these books refreshed my thoughts on mortality; both stayed with me long after the first reading, and the second, and the third.



Check out the titles suggested by other poets--including Katie Ford, Tony Hoagland, Dara Wier, and Jericho Brown--by clicking here.

An Interview with Vrzhu (Or: On Zebras)

Thanks to Michael Gushue and the folks at Vrzhu Press for posting an interview with me over at their blog. Here's an excerpt:

Vrzhu: Truth and poetry. Laura Riding famously gave up poetry in part because she felt it couldn’t tell the truth.  Obviously, we know that the voice in and of the poem is not the same as the poet, or least is not co-extensive with the poet, but in a larger sense, how important is capital T Truth to a poem or poetry?  You said above that in poetry you seek brilliance. What makes up the brilliant in poetry?

Sandra Beasley: Capital T Truth is only recognized in hindsight. So I agree, it is important--but you have to have a certain amount of arrogance to keep writing without knowing if what you're getting at is Truth, or just a convincing facsimile, or utter hyperbole. You'll never know for sure, and maybe Riding grew weary of that doubt. There's no shame in deciding you have better ways to spend a life,

Trying to define brilliance in concrete terms is going to make me sound like an ass. I know; I've tried. All I can say is that you have to try something new. You have to enter a poem without being confident that the subject or language at hand can, in fact, constitute a good poem. Taking the risk is critical--and when you read it, you know it. Some contemporary poets I've read whose work carries (for me) that spark of genius are Bob Hicok, Thomas Sayers Ellis, Matthea Harvey, Josh Bell, and Gabrielle Calvocoressi. But don't tell them I said that. You'll freak 'em out. I suspect it's a terrible burden, brilliance.

Vrzhu: Related question: Plato put forth two famous statements about poetry.  In the Ion, he said that poets do not contain the genius that writes the poems, but are possessed by the Muse who works through them, in the same way that a paperclip held by a magnet becomes magnetic itself.  In The Republic, he banned poets from the Just City because they lied about the gods: they did not tell the truth.  Agree, disagree, or something else with these two views?

Sandra Beasley: This is the stuff of dissertations, not interviews! I like that you're asking the question, I just wish I wasn't the one charged with answering. The Muse is a potent and unpredictable force, and I know that favorite poems of my own tend to be the ones somewhat untraceable in their origin. I assume that's the Muse at work. And of course, poets lie. Rampantly. Mercilessly. All the while justifying it, in pursuit of the Capital T Truth. Can't live with us, can't banish us from the Just City without a fight.

There's a gap between the way we're talking about poets, in these last few questions, and the everyday reality of writing poems and moving them out into the world. We're supposed to honor being possessed by the Muse, and write accordingly--yet also get kids to school, make a stir-fry for dinner, work, pay our taxes on time, and love the people around us. That doesn't even touch the professional side of submitting and publishing, all the while trying to maintain your integrity and passion. Let's not even pretend there's a Platonic balance to be attained; there is only the joys and sorrows of the act of balancing. To be a poet is to be a zebra standing on a marble, trying to make it look like it's all going according to plan.

& You can find the full interview here.