Freshly Rooted

Starting Selling

2012-02-01T08:08:00.003-09:00

Now that the fabulous gloss of excitement is wearing off, I need to start with the tougher work of trying to sell this book. I know it's a necessary part of this whole thing, but it's the toughest part for me. I really hate asking anyone to buy my book, and I have a year or so ahead of me of trying to do just that, in various forms.

I've started with Facebook, which seems like an excellent tool right now. I have a couple of hundred friends on there, so if everyone bought a book, I'd be in great shape. I'm using Twitter, and shamelessly, this blog too. (Want to buy my book? Click here.)

The writing conference I went to in Oregon last summer talked a lot about a writer's "platform" and how big publishing houses are asking writers to indicate they have a big and possibility-laden platform before they will consider publishing their work. It's kind of an interesting concept, actually. There's so many ways to reach readers now than there were even 5 years ago when I published my last book.

One idea being kicked around on Facebook by my writer friends is "virtual book tours." This is a pretty cool idea. As a writer, I'd try to let other writers or anyone with a good following, to let me "visit" their blog. I'd do a guest post, respond to any comments, and then of course use that as a way to sell my book. I actually really like this idea (maybe it's the introvert in me)--I think it would be interesting to get to know others' blogs well enough to write a post in them, and get to know their readers a little bit too.

I'd love to do an actual book tour, too. Corey and I were talking about it last night, and trying to figure out how to swing it. I am thinking about trying for a grant, so we'll see. We'd love to hop on the ferry in the fall and go to Haines, Ketchikan, Sitka, and maybe even Skagway or Gustavus. We love the ferry, and I love the idea of reading in small bookstores, and getting to know some of the writer folks in those towns too.

The lovely news is that I've gotten a few invitations to read in town already. The Alaska Wildlife Alliance has asked me to do a reading in March (not sure if we'll have books in hand by then, so we're working on that); the Juneau Public Library, and Egan Library have all expressed interest too. So that's been really nice, and helpful. And Sara at the UAS bookstore has been wonderful--she's so supportive.

Maybe the coolest moment so far, though, was putting my cover up on Facebook and having so many great comments flood in. I've never felt so supported as a writer before--it was kind of amazing. It makes me think maybe all of this won't be so bad after all. I just need to put it out there, try not to be too embarrassed, and see what happens.

The Cover!

2012-01-24T14:12:00.003-09:00

Wow. I woke up early this morning and found the image for my book cover in my email box. This is going to be one of my all-time favorite days, I think. Just seeing it makes it feel so real!

And I love the cover. The production manager at Salmon is really terrific. We worked together for several months on this back in the fall, and it was really tough to find the right image. I still was a little worried about it until I saw it today, and realized it's exactly right. I posted it on Facebook and a friend asked if it was a mountain range or a whale's tale (it's a boat). That comment made me like it more than ever--that it could encompass all of those things, and be a little bit enigmatic is wonderful.

Seeing this book today really feels like I imagined it would feel, all those years ago, when I decided to try and write. The writing, editing, working with friends, and publishing experience has been so wonderful and rich; I'm so grateful. I've been so lucky to have so many writing friends help with this, and such a good publishing house to work with (Siobhan didn't give me a hard time at all about changing that sestina). I'm one lucky, lucky girl.

In the Midst of Copy Edits, A Minor Miracle

2012-01-19T16:43:00.000-09:00

This week, in the midst of the semester starting, I'm doing final galley proofs for Liveaboard. It's been crazy, of course. I love galley proofs though...seeing the layout of the book for the first time is such a thrill. And the production manager at Salmon did a beautiful job with mine.

But we ran into one small snag--a few lines in one of my sestinas were too long to fit on the page. We could always wrap them, of course, which is what Siobhan did, but I just couldn't stomach it for a sestina. Perhaps more than any other poem, those end words matter, so wrapping just wrecks it. On the first round of galley edits I revised each of the lines that wrapped, and then sent it back. For 2 of the 3, that worked. But the final line was just too long.

So this week I sat down again, and tried to mess with it. I soon realized I was going to have to completely rewrite the line--it wasn't going to work any other way. So I did...and on the 3rd or 4th version suddenly a metaphor for the entire poem emerged--one that I think had been there all along, but that I hadn't seen before. In looking at it, I realized one of the 6 end lines had to be changed. This is a pretty major change for a sestina, not to mention one in the 3rd and final stage of galley proofs...but I started working, and realized that the new word fit beautifully. It actually worked!

In a fit of ecstatic joy I zipped the poem off to my good friend and writer buddy Robyn Holloway, who looked it over, and told me one stanza still needed work. And she was right, of course. In order to make the whole metaphor work, I had to completely rewrite that stanza. And as I did so, I realized I had to rewrite the ones before and after.... As any of you writers know, revising a sestina (well, any poem in form) is so painful. But cool, too. I worked on the poem for two days, and like it so much better. I'm not sure if it's perfect, or even better, but I like it better and that's making me happy. I'm pretty nervous about sending it off to Siobhan, though, as a 2-day-old poem. Most of the poems in the book have gone through months of revision, been seen by at least 3 other writers I trust, been copy edited, etc. Can I possibly trust myself enough to give her such a spanking new poem? I guess I will.

The real gift to me, though, was watching this happen. I've worked on this particular poem for about 7 years now, and it's always felt not quite right. And now it feels exactly right. I hope I'm not wrong...I hope others find it exactly right too.

Spinning Belief

- for Terry Tempest Williams

In the mussel-shelledbeach of night

I dream I am a heron,with her fine, sharp

beak—look how she stalksand spears faith,

swallows it, rises pastthe spinning phalaropes

into the purple shine ofnight, the river lost

below her, tidewaterrising, spinning

like cream in my coffee,as I spin

through my morning, featheredby last night’s

dreams of this perfectbird body, never lost

in the high grasses of belief,always etched sharply

against the river. But I’mnot that bird. I’m a phalarope

stuck in a spinning, freneticsearch for faith.

This morning, sitting onthe river, ancient stories of faith

in my hand, on mytongue, I watch the silk spinning

of one bird and what Isee is this phalarope’s

wake, morning light onthe waves she creates, the night’s

dark doubts spinning awayas she turns, sharpens,

becomes bellyfocused—everything else lost

to the task of consumingthe river, all desires lost

except belly desire—thisbird knows faith.

She fills her long wingswith fish, sharp

bones melting into herown fine skin, as she spins

her body, turning,turning until the empty night

rolls into memory underthe feet of this phalarope.

I might find, if I couldtouch a phalarope,

that the complicatedleaves of belief would lose

hold and helix away intothe consuming night,

until all that remains ishollow bones, and the faith

that fish will rise if Iask, if I simply turn, begin to spin

a prayer with my arms, myfeet, my belly sharp

with hunger and need. Ican feel a sharpened

desire rising, as Iremember the phalarope

who lives in my bones,who just by spinning

through river water,finds the longing, once lost,

to feed this featheredheart. I remember the feel of faith,

that fullness in mybelly, in the deepness of night.

I begin to spin, see fishrise in this phalarope ritual, this faithful

search for solid bodies,rising in the sharp wake of my night,

and I eat, and I eat,the belief I once thought was lost.

Zazen Poetry & Zen Haiku

2011-11-29T19:53:00.001-09:00

Two weeks ago in workshop we started reading The Poetry of Zen (edited by the excellent Sam Hamill). In his intro he talks about the practice of zazen, and that got me thinking about poetry as being an act of meditation--both as we write, and as we read.

In class we talked about the three concepts of zazen: body + mind + breath. And suddenly it seemed so clear how that translates to poetry--those three concepts are so important in poetry too. Body = image, mind = statement, and breath = rhythm. It was really cool to make that discovery and then start explicating zen poems to see how the poems respond to those elements. After our discussion, I asked my students to write zen poems for the following week, and they did an amazing job--some of them really blew us away.

This week we focused on haiku, and on the structural elements of haiku. One that I really got excited about was using the structure of "comparison" where two images come together "to complete each other" (in the words of Jane Reinhold, Haiku-master and scholar). I love the idea of neither image being complete, but in coming together, forming a whole. We talked about "association" haiku too--that two seeminly different things come together because everything is part of the whole. This seems like a very Zen concept too. I talked my students through this structure (and 7 other ones) in class. To prepare, I tried to write in each structure. Here is my haiku using "association":

Breastfeeding in Winter

snow rushing down

milk rising up

release

It's been really nice to return to haiku, and to think about poetry in this pure, simple form. One poem we studied had only one multi-syllable word in it. All had gorgeous rhythm, mostly iambic. And most of them had no adjectives, no embellishment. It was good for all of us, as we get into the final crazy weeks of the semester, to do a little zazen breathing, and meditate on these poems.

Persona Poems

2011-10-25T14:08:00.001-08:00

This week in my advanced workshop we're reading Luci Tapahonso and talking about persona poems. I've written a few before, and a few Eve poems for the Liveaboard book, but it was interesting this week to really dig in and think about what they can do.

Tapahonso has a persona poem in which she inhabits an entire group of people--it's very moving, very sad. I've never seen a plural first person persona poem before. It made me think about how tough it is to speak for an entire group of people.

We also talked a lot about how first person gives us so many "rights" that 3rd person doesn't. If I'm writing in 3rd person, I can't "pretend" to know the details of someone's story, but if I write in 1st person, I can. It's such an odd thing--because of course it's all invented. But somehow writing in the first person gives us permission to inhabit someone and to invent details.

I've been working on a poem about Mary giving birth to Jesus and it's written in the 3rd person. After this week's class I'm wondering if it should be a persona poem. Would 1st person give me more authority? More permission? Would it make it more "believable" and intimate? Things to think about, I guess.

Risking Offending

2011-10-18T16:25:00.002-08:00

So I wrote a surprising poem this week. It's a poem about a really personal, physical thing and it definitely risks offending a number of people (my mom is probably first on that list). And this of course has made me return to that age-old workshop question: how do we handle this?

A few weeks ago when Peggy Shumaker was in my class a student asked her this. She answered it well, like many other writers have, which is that each of us individually has to decide how to handle it. For her, the risk was worth it. She told the class her memoir had in fact offended a family member, but she wasn't sorry she had written it the way she had. And of course we are all grateful she did--it's such an honest portrayal of family life.

Generally, I've tried to avoid this in my work. There are stories I'm not yet ready to tell. But reading Tender Hooks gave me this big push this week. Fennelly's so brutally honest in her poems. I don't want to write like her, but somehow I stepped through that door a little bit. And I have to confess, I love the poem. I may not like it in a month, but I'm in love now (don't you love that initial crush we get on our new poems?). One thing that surprised me was how much it affected me. It's been rare that one of my own poems has changed the way I see the world--often I feel like I'm just trying to explain how I already feel. (This has made me stop and think about what I'm actually doing with poems, since I do believe they should change us as we write. But that's another topic.) I feel really invigorated this week by this poem, and by the whole process of writing. And surprisingly empowered.

I'm not yet feeling too nervous or apologetic about it. The poem is about breastfeeding and talks a lot about the shape of my body, and the way we view women's bodies. I do believe honesty is important in these poems--as a mother I've gained incredible strength from reading Fennelly's poems, and from talking honestly to my mom friends. So I have to believe if I can make this poem work, it'll be worth it to other moms. Now I just have to think about whether or not I'm ready to risk offending my own mom.

Writing into Scaryiness

2011-10-11T15:58:00.000-08:00

For the first time this week I wrote a poem that felt really a bit scary--not something I normally do. I've been reading Tender Hooks by Beth Ann Fennelly and loving it. I've read it before, but it's such an amazing book and teaching me so much again. She's incredibly open and brave in that book, and it's pushing me to be too, I think. I've been writing poems about various biblical women and about really personal aspects of my body--both subjects I've avoided in the past. But I sort of feel exhilarated, too, so I keep writing.

But this week a kind of odd thing happened. A friend from college asked to see what I was working on, so I sent her a new poem. Her response was positive but really guarded--almost as if the poem had frightened or offended her. This made me sort of freak out too. I haven't been reading any of the poems I'm writing because I feel like I'm surfing the wave a little bit, and I don't want to fall off. Sometimes reading new material makes me stop writing, as I begin to see the mistakes in it. But after her comments, I started reading...but actually like a lot of what I'm doing. So I sent a couple of the poems off to a writer friend whom I really trust, and she loved them, so that was a huge relief. She's typically really honest with me, so I trust her when she tells me to just keep going.

It's getting to be midterm, which is usually when I get too buried in papers to grade. This semester I've really promised myself it wouldn't happen. Fingers crossed! I want to keep surfing!

Printing Old Poems

2011-10-04T14:51:00.002-08:00

Lately I've gotten nervous about losing poems, so over this past week I've been running through my folders and printing out old poems and throwing them in a notebook. I've been in a rush so I haven't been reading more than a line or two of each, as they print...but that's been enough to surprise me.

I've been writing Lucy poems like mad--afraid that if I don't get some poetry down about having a baby (birth, babyhood, nursing, etc.) I'll forget it and I'd really like to work with this material. But as I've printed, I've realized how much I've actually managed to write over the past few years, and most of that has been about babies. I've actually got several hundred poems.

I think I may have forgotten (or blocked) the idea of writing about babies, because for so long I felt like it wasn't going to be something I could do much with--I just needed to write it, and I never direct my subject matter, so I wrote--but it seemed like it would be for just me. Then I went to AWP in Denver two years ago and attended a panel with Beth Ann Fennelly and she blew that idea right out of the water. Her book Tender Hooks is an incredible "mama book"--rich, articulate, funny, smart--all the things we'd want in a good book of poetry. And she was published by Norton!

Seeing her book, and listening to her talk, gave me two wake-up calls. First, writing about birth and children is not off the page. Of course we've seen so many terrible "baby poems" out there, but nothing is off limits when it comes to writing. And giving birth--being present at one of the two most fundamental moments of human existence--is a heavy weight poetry topic. Amen! And second, it taught me to stop doubting myself. I learned this lesson once before (actually, at the AWP conference in Vancouver)--to not doubt subject matter (then it was writing about faith) and this was a good reminder again, to simply trust my instincts. That doesn't mean any of this will get published, or turn into a book, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't do it.

And right now, a ratty white notebook is sitting in my desk drawer with the very first outlines of a book in it. Feels pretty great.

Hanging with Peggy

2011-09-27T17:11:00.001-08:00

Peggy Shumaker came to town this week and I was lucky enough to have dinner with her, see her read, and then have her come to class. She is the most generous poet I've ever met--it's amazing how giving she is to everyone around her.

I especially enjoyed her talk with my class. My class (which is excellent) asked really probing, deep questions and she answered them all beautifully. She really gave me some food for thought. One thing she said is that she never cuts from a poem in early drafts--she just adds. She argued that if we cut too soon, we may lose possibilities, and that we need to let those sit for a while. Let the poems get longer and longer and then pare back later. It's an interesting idea. I often cut pretty early--things I think sound awkward, or don't fit, or I just don't like. I'm not sure I could write using this technique, but it did make me think about that magical early draft tunnel--how we get in it, how we stay in it. This is the part of writing that's hard to articulate, and hard to teach. I think each of us enters the tunnel in different ways and part of our growth as writers is to find the way we enter and then keep doing so.

This beginning of term has felt a little magical that way. I normally have 2-3 weeks at the beginning of semesters before I get totally overwhelmed with papers and I write a lot of poems. This term I've been able to go on longer than I usually do, thanks to having two workshops and only one comp class (my first time ever) and I'm finding I'm holding my breath--hoping to keep writing, hoping to keep in that magic zone. I've been writing about one poem a day, and am more or less happy with what's happening. I haven't read any of them again, as I need some space, need to let them sit for a while. Peggy talked about that too--the long period in which we live with the poem. She said sometimes hers are years--she had one poem that she worked on for ten years (that shocked my students!). I don't have any that long, but some are two or three years. A student told me this week that he's never written more than two drafts of a poem or story. That surprised me--I think I'd been assuming they were working on their drafts more than this. It'll be interesting to do a post-Peggy discussion with them.

In the meantime, I'm going to bed so I can wake up at 4:00 and see if I can enter that tunnel one more time.

Cover Photo & Twitter

2011-09-20T14:45:00.003-08:00

Ok, I took two plunges this week!

I finally joined Twitter. I've been sort of avoiding it, since FB pretty well fulfills all my social media needs (and sucks up so much of my time). But Tidal Echoes went on Twitter, and after hearing so much about it at writing conferences, I decided I better dig in. So far it's been a little anticlimactic, but maybe it will get more fun as I find folks to follow, and get followed (If anyone wants to connect: EmilydWall) . I did find John Straley right away, which was fun. He's posting haiku on his. He's so fab.

And, Sioban and I finally decided on an image! I'm so excited, and relieved. It was a surprisingly complex process--but so cool too. And I really like this photo. Now I'm sitting on pins and needles waiting to see the designed cover. Can't wait!

The Poem Tingle

2011-09-14T09:46:00.002-08:00

In class this week I assigned my students an in-class poem based on a poem by Mary Oliver ("Gethsemane"). The assignment was to frame a poem with a large religious, cultural, or historical backdrop (most of the students did 9-11) and then choose one small object and begin the poem there.

I usually don't write in class, as I want to be available to students to answer questions, look over drafts, etc. but the all seemed deeply engaged, so I decided to give it a whirl and I was delighted with what I came up with. I normally can't write poems in the middle of the day, much less in class which always has its own pressures and challenges and keeps my critical brain fully engaged. But somehow, it just worked this time. I wrote about Mary's birth experience in having Jesus and focused mostly on the labor itself. I'm not sure where the poem will end up, but it gave me a great idea for my next collection of poems, and a major structural element of them, so I've had that totally great happy writer tingle for the last two days. Has anyone else had that experience--that you've done something you love, or had a breakthrough--and then you walk around for a few days feeling like you're maybe getting it a little bit right? It's like this fabulous drug and I think it's one of the reasons I (and I suspect other writers) do this. Feel pretty good.

Reading Annie

2011-09-06T07:06:00.002-08:00

I bought Annie Lamott's book Bird by Bird when I was at the conference and I'm loving it. It's so different from other "how to write" books I've read and flipped through. Some of those seem great, but many of them seem to exist to support the writer, more than anything else.

In true Lamott style, this one is crazy, disorganized, and totally funny. She doesn't talk technique so much (although that's there) as she does about the difficulty of being a writer--the psychological backwash of the whole thing. She has a terrific metaphor in there--that her mind is like a bad neighborhood that she tries not to go into alone at night. So perfect. She deals a lot with insecurities, jealousy, and the "critical brain" that keeps us from writing. It's amazing how much of myself I recognize in this book--especially these days as I begin a new project.

I think maybe the most fun I've had as a writer is finishing up the last book. At some point I suddenly realized I was over the crest and I had an actual book, and the rest was organizing, polishing, adding a poem here and there--that was such satisfying, relaxing work. Now I'm back at the bottom again, beginning the climb. That's fun too, but stressful of course. Every time I write a poem I have the whole "is this even going to work? Everyone's done this before, etc. etc." stuff going through my head. The bad neighborhood I've wandered into. It takes a surprising amount of emotional energy to stay out of that neighborhood and the crack dealers who want to suck me in.

I have started my early morning routine again--getting up at 4:30 and writing. I wrote 4 new poems this week. And now I need to follow Lamott's advice, and be gentle with myself, be happy about progress, in any form. It's 4 poems (regardless of how good or bad they are) that didn't exist in the world before this week. And that's sunny sidewalks and a Starbucks up ahead. That's the neighborhood I want to spend my day in.

Cover Design

2011-09-01T16:05:00.003-08:00

It's been a long time since I've been on...I know. I'm making yet another resolve to keep up with this blog! I attended the Willamette Writer's Conference a few weeks ago and learned all about the new publishing buzzword--platforms. The big houses now want to see a writer have a platform and to be managing it well. For those of you, like me, who weren't in the know: a platform is the entire marketing package of the writer--his/her Facebook presence (and number of friends), the blog, twitter account, website, etc. It's pretty interesting, actually. Obviously social media is a great way to market a book.

Which brings me to my best news--the book is done! I finished it a few days before Lucy was born and sent it off to Jessie at Salmon. We are still on track for the book to be printed in January, and launched at the AWP Conference in Chicago in March. I'm pretty excited. Ecstatic, actually. I can't believe this project is finally getting bound and glued!

So now we're doing the fun stuff like working on the cover and gathering blurbs. I was really lucky and got blurbs from Simmons Buntin, Alison Hawthorne Deming, and Peggy Shumaker. They were all really generous with their comments.

The cover is proving to be way tougher than I had imagined, though. Siobhan at Salmon asked me to think about cover art, and that's been really interesting, and really complex. I started reading online articles about poetry book covers, and pulling all my poetry books off the shelf to look at them. Then I spent about 4 months surfing. I have a new-found respect for graphic designers--this is really hard.

I have all these conflicting desires for the cover, which is not making it any easier. I want it to be simple and dramatic...but also emblematic of the book. And all images relating to the idea of liveaboard are not simple and dramatic...of course. It's a messy life. A real liveaboard boat does not look like our iconic vision of a sailboat--it's got power cords and piles of stuff on the dock and a bike lashed to the side, and maybe a kayak too. A part of me adores this and wants to embrace it...but I'm not sure it would make for a particularly beautiful book cover. So...I've been pretty stuck.

Last week Corey went out in the rain with our point-and-shoot wrapped in a sandwich baggie and took a bunch of photos for me. None of them were exactly right, but they did give me a brainstorm about the image I want--a bike on a dock seemed perfect. So then I spent all week surfing for that image, but couldn't find it. I must have looked at a thousand bike pictures and dock pictures and boat pictures, but couldn't find the one I wanted (but got sidetracked with a lot of really weird photos--the world is such a weird place). Thankfully, finally, another bolt of lightening hit me and I emailed our reference librarians on campus and within minutes my in-box was flooded with the sort of fantastic images I had been looking for. A shout out here to all reference librarians!

Anyway, today I narrowed those down to about 5 and sent them off to Siobhan, so we'll see what she thinks. Like working on a poem, I feel both anxious and exhilarated, both at once.

Here's my current favorite--let me know what you think.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/11875865@N03/5576765873/

Manuscript Draft #6

2010-07-20T21:23:00.004-08:00

I'm elbow deep in manuscript revision right now. I finally have a whole week to myself to write. And this is turning out to be a lot of fun. I'm finishing this book in a completely different way than the last one. I am writing poems specifically for this book--to solidify motifs, to fill narrative holes, etc. It's a really interesting way to work.

When I was at AWP we talked a lot about how to avoid "filler poems" (i.e. weaker poems there simply to complete a narrative or fulfill some other purpose) and this has been something I've really been wrestling with. There are a few poems I feel need to be in to give shape and meaning to the book, but some of them are not as strong as other poems. The advice given by a few writers at the conference was to slash and burn--don't let any poem in the door if it's not a great poem (or as close to great as we can get). At first blush, I agree--every poem in the book should be a "good" poem. But on the other hand, I'm starting to really believe in the idea of "poem conversations" and how poems really do shape and affect those on either side. So if a poem significantly changes and enhances a poem next to it, isn't that enough justification to stay in the book? It's doing its work, isn't it?

I had a great moment this week when I sent two poems to a writer friend asking her which I should put in. They are both about Eve and naming the animals. One was just published in Cirque (which is a really terrific new journal, btw), but I really wasn't sure it was done so I wrote a new version. Robyn, my friend, suggested I put both in--why not have several Eve poems? she asked. This was like a little explosion of light for me. I could do an Eve sequence in the book, which would help tie all the major motifs of the book together. It's so awesome to have good poet friends. Thank you Robyn!

Here's the Eve poem published in Cirque.

Eve, Becoming

As I flip through the Sibley Guide,
looking up a duck who arrives
with a splash,
I wonder about Eve—

did she learn from Adam
the name Northern Pintail?
Was she taking notes
as he said Mallard, Blackbird?

Or did the birds tell her
(as Adam checked them off
his life list), winging over her
head,
look at me, my loose
bones of flight

their names just opening
on the wet tongue of her heart—

and suddenly she knew them
like she knew everything—

this is a goose,
this quiet place by the river Tigris
is mine, and my name is Eve.
Recognize me.

Post-Conference Glow

2010-06-18T19:04:00.003-08:00

The Kachemak Bay Writer's Conference was fabulous! One thing I didn't anticipate, but loved, was really getting to know other Alaskan writers better. Joan Kane (winner of a Whiting Award) was there and it was terrific to get to know her. Her book The Cormorant Hunter's Wife is beautiful. Peggy Shumaker, Sherry Simpson, and Nancy Lord were there too. We all took a great harbor cruise together and chatted about politics, poems, and the writing life. It was a real treat for me.

I got lots of good advice while I was there too. One thing that really stuck with me that several people mentioned during the week, was the importance of having a writing community. One writer said she hated networking and finally realized that poets and writers don't really "network" in the true sense of that word...they become friends. And through the years, those friendships yield opportunities. She said thinking of it this way helped her get out there and meet other writers. I like this thought...and I think she's right. In the last few months I've started corresponding with a few poets I admire (including Tom Sexton who has a new book coming out with the University of Alaska Press) and it's been wonderfully encouraging. Writing is such a solitary act, and one that requires such courage...so having others along the way struggling to do the same work is helpful. We speak the same language, we fight the same battles...it's good to have each other.

Tonight I'm feeling so grateful to be part of such a rich, writing community. There is some truly outstanding work being written in Alaska right now, and the writers I got to know this weekend proved themselves to be as generous and warm as they are talented.

Getting Ready for Kachemak Bay

2010-06-07T19:43:00.003-08:00

I've been working like mad to get ready for the Kachemak Bay Writer's Conference. I'm leading 2 workshops, sitting on 2 panels, meeting with a writer to review her manuscript, and giving a reading. I really hope it will be a productive and energizing week for all of us going.

I've also been working like crazy on my manuscript, since I'm mostly going to read from that for my reading. Right now it's really helpful for me to read it in public and get some audience feedback. I spent all weekend with it spread around the living room floor trying to arrange it. I'm feeling pretty good about it now, but it feels like it still has a ways to go.

Here's a new poem I'm thinking of including in it:

Sleeping in Charon’s Wake

Some things
always wake us—a tug, coming in, at 3:00 am
prop boiling the water like a boat crossing
the Styx, our own boats slamming the dock in the wake.
I open my eyes and see powerful sodium lights
shining into the hatch over my head,
hear the shouts as the tug fights the current,
and a man leaps to the dock, to get a wrap around a cleat.

And other things
don’t wake us. Jonie, eating at the pub on steak&prawn
night, drinking her usual bottle of wine, slips
coming down the dock, slips
into the cool, green river next to her own boat
which must have rocked a little bit, in the wake
of her body. Which must have rocked, a little bit,
in the wake, of her body.

5,670 Poems in the Trash

2010-06-01T05:52:00.002-08:00

One of the things that keeps me from sitting down at my computer every morning is the fear of bad poems. It's so discouraging to write a bad poem--even more so than writing no poem at all (it could have been a good poem, right?).

I'm going to be on a panel at the Kachemak Bay Writer's Conference titled What I Wish Someone Would Have Told Me 10 Years Ago and I've been thinking about what I want to contribute to the discussion. I think my biggest regret is simply that I didn't write more poems (well, and that I didn't find Mary Oliver 10 years earlier).

When I was an undergrad at Colby I met the National Book Award-winning poet William Stafford. I cheekily emailed him a letter and some poems since he was living in Portland, where I was from. Amazingly, he wrote me back, said he liked my poems (which was an act of enormous generosity on his part because they were terrible) and invited me to come chat with him when I got home for the summer. So I did--I rode the bus up to Lewis & Clark college one day and we chatted about poetry for a few hours. It sort of felt like one of those imaginary conversations you have with God--if you had two hours, what would you talk about? I can't remember now what we did talk about, but I remember his kindness and his encouragement to keep writing, no matter what.

He said once that he wrote a poem every day of his life. In preparing for this conference I looked him up and it turns out he published 57 volumes of poetry. He didn't publish his first book until he was 48. So, if we assume he started writing seriously then (and of course he'd have been writing before then), and we assume each book has about 40 poems (the average) then he published approximately 2,280 poems (obviously I'm guessing here, but go with me on this). So, then if we assume he was true to his word and wrote a poem every day of his life, for 30 years, that means he wrote approximately 7,950 poems. So, if we do the math...that means that National Award-winning poet William Stafford threw away approximately 5, 670 poems!

That really helped put things in perspective for me.

Really really stuck on a poem

2010-05-24T14:09:00.003-08:00

I've been working on a new poem for the manuscript and I'm really stuck--more stuck than I've ever been. Usually when this happens I just throw a poem in a drawer and forget about it for a year....but I have a little deadline on this one. I submitted an early draft of it to the journal terrain.org and the editor told me he liked it, but it needed to be revised (he's absolutely right). So, I need to get it to him soon, but the more I work on it, the worse it gets. I've shown it to two poet friends, both of whom gave me good advice, but that's not getting me there either. I;ve tried all the revision tricks I know...even tried turning it into an extended haiku at one point, but that was just pathetic.

Here it is, in its current, sad mutation. If anyone has any advice, please, post away!

Liveaboard

Sleeping at the dock,
curled in the v-berth
is like living
again in a womb—
all motion, and muffled
sound—
is that someone
speaking out there?
It’s a skin
separating us from the cold
waters of the world.
Inside it’s soft light
and a worn quilt,
wrapping us in warmth.

And like a ripened womb,
the boat is made to empty
us into the world.
Every few days,
we emerge,
heads rising up
out of the hatch,
to a new world,
a new marina, a new cove,
unfamiliar trees,
and water with new
hazards to learn.
We will cut our tether,
once again,
and let go
into the rush of current
flushing us swiftly,
out to sea,
out into the world
of large waters
where anything can happen.

In the moment
before leaving, we always
hesitate.
I stand on deck,
feeling the hum of the belly
beneath me, hand
on the umbilicus of line,
hesitating, hesitating—
wanting to slip
back below, curl up,
and sleep
in the belly of safe.
But also loving
the whole new world
just around the next
shoreline.

Reading to Edit

2010-05-17T16:03:00.002-08:00

Last night I did a reading with Nancy Lord at the Downtown library. We had a very small but enthusiastic crowd; we got some terrific questions afterward, so that was fun.

I decided to read mostly new poems to see how they played to an audience. This has become my new favorite way to edit poems--reading them, and feeling out an audience. Before Freshly Rooted came out I did a few readings here and there, but not many. But after it came out and I started doing readings, I realized how incredibly valuable that experience is as an editing tool.

It works two ways for me. First, and most obvious, I get an audience reaction. Last night I read a poem from Freshly Rooted that I'd never read in public before and it got a lot of laughter...something I hadn't really anticipated. It's not a funny poem to me...but once I was reading, I could see it as funny, and the laughter made sense. This has really changed my understanding of the poem, actually. Also helpful (although painful) is when I read a poem and the audience is just quiet--and I can tell the poem is falling flat. So the laughter, or sighs, or dead silence all give me clues about how well a poem is floating.

Second, it makes me edit with an even harsher pen. As soon as I'm reading, it's like I have these new glasses on and I can see weak lines or phrases in a way I've not seen them before. It's like I'm becoming a hyper-editor. I actually often edit while I'm reading.

So, it was really useful to read some new poems last night to gauge reactions; this is going to really help me edit those individual poems and the book as a whole. I'm going to be reading at the Kachemak Bay Writer's Conference in a few weeks and I think I'll read mostly new poems there too...but maybe different poems than I read last night. It would be great if I could get the chance to read most of the book at various readings before it comes out.

Euphoria and Reality

2010-05-10T06:32:00.005-08:00

After I draft a new poem, in that first rush of euphoria, my impulse is always to give it to someone. Invariably, I'm in love. Look at this poem I've birthed! I've spun out of pure air! Isn't it amazing?

And then I have to remember, that not everyone wants to kiss a new baby, and not every baby is cute.

I really have to fight the impulse to share, because the poem is almost never done--usually, not even close. Most poems go through months--some even years--of drafts before they are done. The ones I love when I finish usually have a seed of rightness and possibility about them, but that's often about it--so much of it's not yet developed. I think that impulse to share is that longing for someone else to confirm that yes, it has potential. Yes, it might just be a good poem.

One of my goals this summer is to really work on revision. I think the impulse to stop too soon is really strong--for me certainly, and I think for a lot of poets. I think sometimes that's what workshop is all about...us telling us other, kindly and firmly, to keep working. It's not ready. Keep working, it's not ready. We have to learn over and over that even though a poem can be drafted in a few minutes, that doesn't mean it's a finished poem.

Some days I like best the initial writing--that euphoria of a good birth. And some days I like much better the revision--the tinkering with words, the cutting of bad lines, the assurance that it will get better with a little more work. There's no assurance that a new poem has potential. I throw most of them away. A lot of poets do. William Stafford wrote a poem every day of his adult life. If an average book has 40 or so poems in it, and an average time between books is 5 years, that's approximately 1,785 poems thrown away. It's hard to sit down (or get up in the morning) and write one of those 1,785 poems. But we have to write those, to get the 40 good ones.

Today I wrote a new one that I think might be a good one and I rewrote one that badly needed to be pushed back in and germinated a bit more. So, this feels like a good day. I'm savoring this, knowing how many not good ones there are, to come. And I'm resisting the urge to post that new poem here.

Poem Conversations

2010-05-03T22:04:00.003-08:00

Here's a picture of my book in progress.

One of the sessions I attended at AWP was about manuscript organization. It was so helpful--really, amazing ideas from a slew of poets. One of the things one of them said was to think about the conversations poems have with each other and use that as a structuring principle. Of course poems do talk to each other, and the poems directly before and after a poem affect the way we read a poem...so, conversations.

I finally took a day off from grading, locked myself in my office, and spent 4 hours working on structuring my book. I thought about it's "spine" poems, it's opening and closing poems, and its conversations. It was amazing to start grouping them together. I did it wholly intuitively...not by topic or theme, but by obsession and intuitive linking. One thing they emphasized was that we obsess when we write poems, and often a particular obsession shows up in muliple poems. We don't want to necessarily put them together, but to let them refrain. So with that principle in mind, I worked obsessively/intuitively instead of in any kind of surface organization. It was really cool to see how certain poems changed as they started sparking against other poems.

I made an enormous mess on my office floor (once again, Virginia Woolf proving herself right about "a room of one's own"). So I could teach the next day I stuck them all up with magnets on my wall, and I'm doing to let them germinate there for a while, to see how they work and grow together.

Now this is the fun work of writing.

All Promotion, No Writing

2010-04-26T19:29:00.002-08:00

One of the recurring themes at this year's AWP was about self-promotion. I just hate doing that and I've avoided it for a long time. It makes me feel so uncomfortable. But a lot of pretty persuasive arguments were made there. Small publishers simply can't do this any more, and it really is up to us to do it. It's part of what makes us "good writers" for our hard-working, under-funded publishers. So I'm determined to do a better job.

But...I do lament the time it takes. I am really struggling right now to find the time to write. When I got this job in September I was so thrilled that I was now getting paid to write, and I vowed to write 8 hours a day, no matter what. I had the great motivation of my "job" to do it! That worked for the first two weeks. Now I'm averaging about an hour every other week. It's so pathetic. And I can really see it in my work. I've had two editors ask me for work this past month and I feel like I'm picking through the bottom of the vegetable bin for them. Somehow I need to find the time--make the time--to do this. I keep telling myself "I'll write this summer" but I'm teaching this summer too, so I know the temptation to teach instead of write will still be there. Or the temptation to work on my web page, or work on a submission. I suspect part of this is also just me being anxiuos about my writing, and avoiding it. Time to dive back in. Time to stop blogging and write a poem!

The Un-Dog Poem

2010-04-20T06:19:00.003-08:00

Ok, so I'm 6 hours late. But this is still my Monday post. :-)

My publisher at Salmon is putting together an anthology of dog poems called Dogs Singing and asked me for a poem. I don't have a dog, so I initially decided I'd forgo this one...but then realized that a dog anthology could have all sorts of dog poems, and the bigger the variety, the better.

This one's not quite finished, and I don't know if my publisher will like it or take it, but here goes:

The Un-Dog Poem

- for Jessie

This is not a poem about dogs.
This is also not a poem about cats,
and their terrible grace,
and the way they make any woman ungainly.

This is not a poem about
babies and their hungry mouths, mewling
through the night.

This is not a poem about
books, the fresh glue smell, and uncracked
spine of an unread novel.

If this were a poem about these things,
it would be a poem full of wishes,
and heartaches.

It would be a poem about the way

a dog looks, running along the hard-packed
sand of an Alaskan beach, April, long sun setting,
herding a flock of sandpipers and gulls—

symbolizing the old things
we all want—
joy, grace, spirit.

If this poem were about that dog,
it would be a poem of such longing,
and such regret.

And who has the time, anyway,
for such indulgences?

Monday Posts

2010-04-12T07:24:00.003-08:00

I just got back from the AWP conference in Denver and I'm newly inspired! My new resolution is to post a new poem or comment on this blog every Monday. I'm trying to balance actual writing time with writing about writing; once a week posts feels like a reasonable goal.

So I'll share here conference highlights. AWP is the largest creative writing conference held annually; 8,000 people came this year. My favorite moments:

- My publisher asked me if I had a manuscript because she wants to publish my 2nd book (that really holds the 1-10 spots as favorite moments!!).

- Hanging out at the Salmon Poetry table with the other Salmon poets who attended. I made new friends with Tyler Farrell and Susan Miller DuMar and reconnected with old Salmon buddies Simmons Buntin, Eamon Wall, and Kevin Higgins.

- Watching Terry Tempest Williams read a beautiful, heartbreaking essay.

- Watching Gary Snyder read.

- Attending a panel on "Mamas and poetry" and discovering I'm not alone in my obsession with writing about babies; I got so many good ideas about how to do it and encouragement not to hide it any longer!

- Meeting up with other Alaskan writers Erin Hollowell, Barbara Shepherd, and Carol Schirmer.

All in all, an amazing, productive, inspiring week for me!

First Snow Poem

2009-12-05T09:20:00.001-09:00

One of the things I've been thinking about is how to write baby/children poems without falling into the cliche of "wonder." Of course both babies are amazed by the world and I'm amazed by them...and I want some of that in the collection, but it feels like that has to be handled very carefully and I can't have many of those poems.

I'm also trying to stay honest to the experience, and not shape poems to my expectations. I always find this harder than it should be when writing. It's amazing what a strong pull the world of images has on us in this way--magazines, movies, etc.--we have such clear images about what things should be that it's hard to see past those to the way they really are. Anyone else have trouble with this?

Here's one I'm working on now--not sure if this works or not.

First Snow

It snowed, as it nearly always does,
on Hallowe'en morning.

I buttoned your blue coat over your jammies,
slipped on your boots, and took you out

to meet the fat, thick flakes. You are 2,
and although you held your hands out

as I showed you, and watched the snow melt
in your palm, and the ground slowly disappear,

this was not magical to you. This was not
stars filling a dark ground, a cover moving up

a cold, empty bed. You kept turning
toward the door, wanting in, wanting

your blanky and a cup of milk. For you, this was
just change, the world turning on you once again,

and you know exactly how to deal with it:
go inside the warm, familiar house.

Drink a cup of warm milk. Hold your blanky to your face.
Inhale its familiar, sleepy smell.

Borrowed Stories

2009-11-23T06:22:00.005-09:00

One of the things I'm working on now is collecting other's stories and working them into poems. Right now I'm collecting baby stories and blending them in with my own stories.

I've been wanting to be more narrative in my poems, but less "confessional" and this seems like maybe an interesting balance between the two. I'm interested in how I could take someone else's story and make it my own poem--or a poem all of us can connect to. I'm also curious about what readers think of this "borrowing" idea. I've changed details in all of the stories, changed names, etc. in an attempt to make the poem more mine, and to not expose the original storyteller (this is a small town, after all). This is of course what fiction writers do in every story, so I don't feel unethical about it. But I am concerned that the poems will feel like they belong to me. Thoughts?

Here's one of the new ones I'm working on:

Heart Lottery

After her first son was born
with a heart defect, she insisted
on having testing done in the second
pregnancy. Her doctor said no,
her doctor said, better chance of winning the lottery than a second defect
her doctor said insurance.
But she insisted: order the test. I'll pay for it.
I'll fly to Seattle. I'll be the foolish one.
And so she did—lying on the crinkly, vinyl bed
in the quiet room, ultrasound machine humming
like nervous thoughts over her head, the tech
bored and humming too, and then—there it was—
the winning-the-lottery-second-defect, this one not even the same defect.
They stared at the little thumping heart
opening and closing the wrong way. They would do surgery
the day after he was born. If you would have had this baby
in Ketchikan, the heart specialist told her, he would have died.
Which she had known, and hadn't known.
She had simply scratched her thumb against her own fearful heart,
hoping for the one break she needed.

Stereotype Busting

2009-11-16T21:19:00.002-09:00

So the exercise we did in class this week was to introduce a stereotype and then break it, either in a scene or in a poem. I had them first create a list of the qualities of a stereotyped person, and then write from there. The idea was to embrace some aspects of the stereotype and break others. I always do the exercises I assign my students, just to make sure they work. I had fun with this one!

This Church Lady

Gloria is, in fact, a good cook—
and she signs up regularly for after-service treats:

but what she brings is chili peppers
stuffed with goat cheese, and homemade salsa.

She slaps her son's hand
as he reaches for another chip, says in a whisper,

goddammit Harry, knock it off.

After she gets the kids off to school
(no home school for her, Jesus no)

she descends into her finished basement
in pink feathered flip-flops, black coffee in hand,

to work in her studio. She paints fruit
in erotic positions, life-size nudes of a gay friend

who models for her. Right now she is working
on a banjo—she paints it over and over,

its pregnant belly opened to a cave of sound,
it strings taut as stretch marks.

You can tell, just by looking at that banjo,
how much she hates that thing, how much she hated

being pregnant, how much she hates
the church choir with its uplifting gospel bluegrass

and her red-haired husband, in the back row,
strumming and singing, eyes closed, in perfect grace.

In the Poetry Blahs

2009-11-08T15:51:00.002-09:00

So, a black-clad, cliched poet, I'm waffling wildly between euphoria over a new poem and depression at the general state of my poetry portfolio. Anyone else experience the same sort of celebrate/miserate mix?

I'm working on three projects right now, and this makes me think I'm hedging my bets. Maybe I need to commit to just one? I'm always most excited about the newest stuff, and this makes me less eager to be committed to older work--the stuff more likely, I know, to get published or turned into a book. I need to sit down and revise a manuscript, but I keep finding myself writing new poems instead.

The 3rd project, my newest, is just starting to form in my head. I'm finding myself (not surprisingly) writing a lot of baby poems. This delights and horrifies me. I mean, baby poems? Who is going to want to read those besides grandmothers? But I can't seem to stop myself...I'm addicted. So, could this be a project? Or am I dreaming? Right now I'm conceiving the book as a blend of personal, lyric poems about my girls, spliced into narrative poems about other children/parents/babies, most of which right now are very dark (babies dying of sids, child abuse, etc.). So I know it won't be a sweetness-and-light book, but could it work?

Here's one of the new, probably ill-fated poems.

Sleeping with Ellie, Four Months

I wake at 11:00, 3:00, 6:30
to your little arm waving
in the dark.

Your fingers rake the air
testing the waters, to see if
I am still near.

A little snore floats past,
the leaves of a dream,
a current of cold.

I reach out and pluck
you into the boat
of me, curve around you,

fill your mouth
with my warm breast
and listen to you draw me in.

All around us the cold night
air currents and eddies,
against the timbers of our sleep

and I can imagine it's this easy
to keep you this close, this safe,
above the world's deep waters.

September 27, 58° N

2009-10-25T15:41:00.000-08:00

September 27, 58° N

We stay up late to watch
the last cruise ship leave—

the Zaandam with its sheets
of yellow lights, curtained deep

into the still, black water.
We watch until the last edge of light

is drawn aside and then
we can see the dark stage

of water, the delicious
drama of winter, about to start.

What is summer with its flash
and sweetness compared to this?

Bring on the leafless trees,
the skim of ice on curb,

the shimmer of light on a cold glass window.
We can hardly wait

to see who will first appear
on stage, rising out of the deep

place we visit, when the house lights
finally go down.

New Poem

2009-09-03T21:17:00.000-08:00

Wrote this one this morning; still in the very early stages of revision.

Lincoln City, Oregon

We sit in the new parking lot and watch
the fun: a kite surfer, a Frisbee game,
children with buckets and spades--
everyone frolicking on the beach.

They don't know any better.
They've never seen this beach without
the looming hulk of the new casino
rising up above them,

the thousand parking spots,
the new access road that runs by
the bi-mart instead of the old two-lane
through a rich green tunnel of trees.

The windowless buffet in the casino
instead of the old Dunes Café
salt-crusted windows looking over the waves
and German pancakes with lemon and sugar.

(Nothing as far as the eye could see
but a few shingled cottages and cliffs
of rocks where seabirds nest. A winding
road above bordered in wild roses.)

Of course they are going to have fun--
it's what they came to do, after all. They won't
miss what has been lost, what my family
had for three generations.

Maybe it's always this way. We have to love
what's left--the strip of sand and wind--
because we want to love,
want to escape to the beach,

want to frolic, even if it's in a diminished
world--otherwise, we sit in the car above it all,
diminished ourselves. But how can I leap
out now and track through the waves, singing?

New Poem

2009-09-01T20:06:00.001-08:00

Sleeping with Ellie, Four Months

I wake at 11:00, 3:00, 6:30
to your little arm waving
in the dark.

Your fingers rake the air
testing the waters, to see if
I am still near.

A little snore floats past,
the leaves of a dream,
a current of cold.

I reach out and pluck
you into the boat
of me, curve around you,

fill your mouth
with my warm breast
and listen to you draw me in.

All around us the cold night
air currents and eddies,
against the timbers of our sleep

and I can imagine it's this easy
to keep you this close, this safe,
above the world's deep waters.

Ha Jin

2009-08-21T23:04:00.002-08:00

Just finished Ha Jin's newest novel A Free Life. Amazing! He's definitely in my top 5 authors. The protagonist in this novel owns a Chinese restaurant in Georgia and wants to be a poet. It's heartbreaking and has so many truths about the difficulty of trying to be a writer. The novel ends with a collection of poems written by the protagonist. Here's one:

Another Country

You must go to a country without borders,
where you can build your home
out of garlands of words,
where broad leaves shade familiar faces
that no longer change in wind and rain.
There's no morning or evening,
no cries of joy or pain;
every canyon is drenched in the light of serenity.

You must go there quietly.
Leave behind what you still cherish.
Once you enter that domain,
a path of flowers will open before your feet.

This is the first week of my new tenure track job, and the first time I've ever been paid to write. I've written so little in the past two years--all my time has been teaching and caring for the babies. I've let my writing slide and fallen into the exact trap I tell my students not to fall into. But now that I'm getting paid to do it, I won't have any excuses.

I'm really struck by the line "leave behind what you still cherish." Any time writing is time away from the girls...yet it's work I love, too. And maybe there's a way to be with them, even while working. I've wanted to write about them, but like religion, or the other things I care about, it's such a large topic I feel lost in the shadow it casts. I guess all I can do is plunge in.

Dream Poem

2009-06-10T10:36:00.002-08:00

Alas...no poem to post because I dreamt it instead of writing it. Does this ever happen to any of you?

I believe poems come to us in our most unconscious states, but that they only come once--if we miss it, it's gone. And of course the poems we dream are always brilliant in our memories aren't they? I can't remember a single line, but I remember that glow that comes right after a good poem is written….

Waiting for the Baby

2009-05-05T13:23:00.002-08:00

So the doctor put me on bed rest this week. While it's agonizing to be inside, looking out at everyone on the beach, it is good motivation to write poems. Here's a very new one, not yet edited.

Turning Two

- For AnnaCaroline

Do you remember your tears
and panic last night? How you let me
hold you for a long time, your small
head tucked into my neck?

You are still my baby,
my little bug, my sweetest thing.
You will still sit on my lap, still call
to me in your dark dreams.

But I can also see the cocoon of you
spinning, wrapping your baby self
away, starting a new body as startling
as a luna moth, who will wake up one day

and realize how much more of the world
is now below, how reachable that branch
is. And we will love this you, too,
your wing against my cheek,

your flight rising in my throat.

Tidal Echoes Cover & David Woodie's Art

2009-03-21T16:10:00.007-08:00

One of my favorite moments of publishing the journal is seeing the cover. This year the graphic design work is being done by two designers at Capital City Weekly, the local paper that is co-publishing with us now. Katie Spielberger is doing the layout and design and Anna Millard designed the cover. The cover features work by UAS professor David Woodie. His image is above. Amazing, isn't it?

I hadn't seen Woodie's work until the galley proofs of the journal came through and this one just knocked me flat. I go to gallery walk and look at art like any respectable Juneau citizen, but it rarely really bowls me over, and this one really did. I just love this. Somehow it captures exactly how I feel about Juneau.

Poetry Contest

2009-03-21T16:01:00.003-08:00

The Fairbanks Arts Association called yesterday to let me know my poem "Proof" won 3rd prize in this year's contest. The FAA holds a yearly contest for all Alaskan poets, with a category for youth and one for adults. It's so great to see literary arts being promoted this way in Alaska. There always seems to be so much for the visual artists and not much for us writers.

So the awards ceremony is tonight in Fairbanks but of course I'm not going. When I talked to Seth, he said none of the winners will be in Fairbanks so he is arranging to call each of us and have us read our poems over the phone. This will be my first phone reading! I'm sitting by the phone now, waiting for him to call.

Here's the poem that won:

Proof

We have photo after photo
of splashes—

white wings of water
against blue silk,

swirls and eddies
where just a moment ago

a fin, a head, a tail
disappeared into the quiet dark

of the sea. And this is just how
it should be, when we show photos

down south at Christmas to curious
relatives, contemplating Alaska.

This is just how it should be
when we try to remember our own lives

and what brought us to this
moment. We can see the imprint

of hope on the surface of our faces,
while in our bellies, something dives

deep.

A few summers ago when AnnaCaroline was just a baby Corey's mom and dad came up to Juneau and we went on a whale-watching cruise. It's actually the first one I've been on since we moved here 13 years ago. Corey's dad is a photographer and he got these beautiful, amazing photos of humpbacks. Most of mine are of AnnaCaroline and splashes in the water. It's funny how often something that doesn't work, or turn out liked I had hoped, ends up in a poem. Poems are always good consolation prizes.

New Poem

2009-03-12T16:01:00.001-08:00

Last Saturday I read at the Silverbow with a group of local writers. It was fun to see what other poets in Juneau are working on right now.

This is one of the poems I read:

Museum of Natural History, New York

Finally, the day when we will visit the Museum—
a long break between conference talks

and we all go—daddy, grandparents,
and you, rattling under the park and into

the belly of that amazing place.
I’ve been dreaming of the bones of sea turtles

for days. We walk
and walk and walk—you tucked against

my back, looking, looking
and soon we are overwhelmed.

How can we remember all these facts?
How can we hold the vision of so many

birds in our minds? Case after case
documenting a world we need to know better.

Finally, you whimper and save us both.
We slip away from the group

and into the blue whale room—
a life size replica slung from the ceiling

and the whole room, dark and blue
and cool. Below the whale is just a patch

of carpet and all the mothers and babies
are here on the floor. I take you out of your pack

put you down, and we both lie back
under the whale. It fills our whole

sight, going on forever, this view of a whale
that only nursing calves must see.

We follow its belly lines and they are the latitude
lines of the whole world. I reach out and touch

your head, as the quiet washes over us,
as we rest under the sea, and I remember

how I fit with you, and I remember who I am,
in this vast, unknowable world.

This one seemed to get the best response of the 6 poems I read. Maybe because it's the most narrative? I'm still kicking around the idea that poetry readings are hard because we can't follow lyric or meditative poetry orally. Do we need something narrative to hang on to when we're listening?

Tidal Echoes

2009-02-12T07:50:00.003-09:00

How embarrassing...almost a year since I've posted! But it's been a busy one. AnnaCaroline is almost two...I'm pregnant with our 2nd baby (a girl), and in between I've been working like crazy at UAS.

I'm the faculty advisor for Tidal Echoes the Southeast Alaskan literary journal. This week the editorial board has made final decisions on which pieces get included and which get cut. It's always interesting and difficult to make these choices.

Other than working with the student editors, who are fantastic, my favorite aspect of this project is seeing the amazing diversity of topics we Southeast Alaskans write about. We don't restrict our journal to any particular subject matter--something I think is absolutely necessary for a place that has such a "brand" to the rest of the world. It's a relief and joy to see poems written about something other than whales; to see stories written about biking in Arizona, or fighting with your wife. The journal is a much more accurate reflection of who we really are here, and the of the lives we live in this amazing archipelago.

If you want to see the work we do, check out a preview of last year's journal: http://www.uas.alaska.edu/humanities/tidalechoes/docs/TIDALECHOES2008.pdf

The launch party for this year's journal is April 11, 7:00 pm at UAS. Everyone is invited!

Judging Poetry Out Loud

2008-03-11T10:36:00.005-08:00

This past week I had the honor of judging the Statewide Poetry Outloud Competition. This is competition sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation. Check out this great video of last year's winners performing.

The competition was held in Anchorage and high school students from 11 different cities and villages from all over Alaska came. They had each memorized three poems and they performed them for the audience. I was amazed at the power these kids evoked. One student performed "Unknown Girl in the Maternity Ward" by Anne Sexton. Her performance reduced two of us judges to tears and made me realize the amazing value of this project. To perform well a student has to really get the poem--has to internalize it and make it their own. And we could immediately tell who has really gotten into the poems. The Alaskan winner, Alev Kelter, from Chugiak High School in Achorage was wonderful.--I have rarely seen such passion in a high school student for anything, much less for poetry. We talked to her afterwards and she told us she's a hockey player too. Now there is a well-rounded Alaskan student!

After the judging, all of us judges (John Straley, Erin Hollowell, Anne Hanley, and Jerah Chadwick) along with Susan Olson, the State Arts Council staff member who runs this project, went out for dinner at Sacks. John bought everyone champagne and we spent hours just chatting about poetry, about life in Unalaska (where Jerah lives), and about our various teaching lives. It was such a treat to hang out with two former and one current poet laureate of Alaska.

Moments like this...they remind me why we are doing what we're doing. We aren't alone in the love of poetry, and when we get our little tribe together, and discover we all speak the same language, it feels like coming home. Bliss!

Poem from Thirst

2008-02-26T09:38:00.003-09:00

Mary Oliver is my favorite poet. Here is a poem from her new book Thirst.

Walking Home from Oak-Head

There is something
about the snow-laden sky
in winter
in the late afternoon

that brings to the heart elation
and the lovely meaninglessness
of time.
Whenever I get home--whenever--

somebody loves me there.
Meanwhile
I stand in the same dark peace
as any pine tree,

or wander on slowly
like the still unhurried wind,
waiting,
as for a gift,

for the snow to begin
which it does
at first casually,
then, irrepressibly.

Wherever else I live--
in music, in words,
in the fires of the heart,
I abide just as deeply

in this nameless, indivisible place,
this world,
which is falling apart now,
which is white and wild,

which is faithful beyond all our expressions of faith,
our deepest prayers.
Don't worry, sooner or later I'll be home.
Red-cheeked from the roused wind,

I'll stand in the doorway
stamping my boots and slapping my hands,
my shoulders
covered in stars.

Mary Oliver, Thirst

Isn't that lovely? All of her books have been dedicated to "Molly Malone Cook." This latest book has the same dedication but Molly's dates are following, making me think she must have died. I think Molly is her partner, although it's hard to find information on Oliver on the Internet. If this is the case, it puts such a pall on these sweet poems.

I woke up this morning at 4:30 with the first few lines of a poem in my head...but I couldn't quite get my legs to swing out of bed, and the poem is lost. All that's left is the word "stark." Not much to go on. In my memory these lost dream poems are always brilliant.... Has this ever happened to any of you?

Weekend on Eagle Beach

2008-02-25T05:26:00.009-09:00

As we walked along Eagle River toward the beach, sun shining on the snow crust and seaweed, the Chilkat Mountains shimmering in the distance, a woman on skiis came by and said to us, "This is why we live here!" Exactly what I'd been thinking all day.

After a few hours walking along in the sun, we hiked back through the snow and hemlock trees to the cabin, which glowed yellow through the gloaming.

The Gotschall Cabin is lovely. It's warm and has a full kitchen. The two lofts above the main floor are filled with mattresses so we could pile up several for each of us, and cover them with our quilts. We ate chili and cornbread and then made s'mores on tea lights scattered across the long dining table. A perfect weekend.

I saw one raven out on the beach. RuthAnn called him in a great raven voice and he came back and circled us a few times. No poems on him yet, so I'll leave him for now.

I did get one new poem out of the weekend. I took a pic of Corey holding AnnaCaroline up on the loft railing. She loved it and we snapped this pic but now that picture gives me heart palpitations. It always feels so hard to balance between being a relaxed parent enjoying her joy, and the ever-watchful, fearful parent who keeps her safe.

I have been surprised I haven't written more poems about her (although her feedings have taken the place of my early morning writing sessions). I think she'll be good material, as I have such complex and conflicted feelings about the whole experience of being a parent. I've been afraid I'm going to write only sappy, simplistic poetry about her (since my feelings about her are not conflicted and are pretty simple!!). But maybe the way to approach it is to focus on experience. And of course, to write those other poems simply for her.

Camping, Mary Oliver, and Personification

2008-02-19T10:11:00.000-09:00

A blogger today reminded me of Bernd Heinrich’s work, which sparked some motivation to get back to writing. After having AnnaCaroline (who is now 9 ½ months) I haven’t gotten out as much as I used to, and haven’t written as much either. Corey, AnnaCaroline and I are going camping this weekend—our first time really out, and I’m so excited, although nervous that I’m so out of shape I might not be much of a cross-country skier any more. But it will be good to get a nature shot straight to the heart.

In class this week I’m teaching personification and reading Mary Oliver (my favorite poet) and thinking about how personification can really work. I fear I’ve been using it poorly—objectifying objects to serve a larger thematic purpose. Oliver reminds me that when personifying, we have to let the objects move as they would in the natural world, and then look at how what they do informs our own lives. This seems important because it allows for the possibility that we’ll make real discoveries through observation and research, rather than falling on old ideas about natural objects.

Maybe I’ll take Heinrich’s book Mind of the Raven out with me, and reread some of it as inspiration. And who knows, maybe a few Ravens will teach me a thing or two about how to move gracefully through a February rainforest.

Poetry on the Bus

2008-02-14T10:24:00.000-09:00

I just found out I've had a poem accepted for the Poetry Ominbus project! The Juneau Arts Council and Capital Transit partner to put poems on the all the busses in Juneau. It's such a cool idea. I ride the bus pretty often and last year it was great to see everyone's poems up there. Here's the poem they accepted:

Womb Rain

Silver bells of rain on the porch roof
recall us to the womb

the ringing of shower streams
against a taut, bare belly

and our first water selves,
small tails, webbed hands touching

our first faces. Perhaps in heaven
the room where babies wait

has a metal roof, and a chorus of rain
singing us into being.

I've been surfing around to see bus poems in other cities, and I found this terrific poem that was posted on a bus in Seattle:

My Sandwich

That man stole my sandwich.
I had it five minutes ago,
And I know
He’s always after my sandwiches.
So
He eyes me conspicuously
As I eye him back
Knowingly.
We make eye contact.
There’s a blatant connection.
Oh yes,
I’m on to him.
Oh wait, here it is.
Lindsey Baggette
Eastlake High School
Grade 11

It's that fabulous? I laugh every time I read it.

Composition Ravens

2008-02-12T12:55:00.001-09:00

I started this blog to help promote my first book of poems, Freshly Rooted, and hopefully to start a conversation about poetry, Alaska, poetry in Alaska, and everything in between.

Here is a poem from the collection:

Composition: Ravens

Three black knives
cleave morning air.
Snow has softened the sound
but even driving
beside them, we hear
the slicing of wings.
One has a bright orange
peel, the other two stroke,
young swimmers, toward
the concrete wall, kick
off at exactly
the right moment,
toward the highway,
guardrail left
quivering and greasy
in their wake.
They could spend
all morning breaking each
others’ hearts, doling out
the energy they need
to survive the night—
aching to capture the bright
orange jewel, to decorate
their own mouths,
flashing, iridescent
against a white canvas,
loving their terrible bodies.