The Next Big Thing: I Go Viral

"The Next Big Thing" has been going around for a few weeks now like a flu you hope to get. Part chain letter, part credo, authors are asked to respond to ten questions AND to tag five more writers to do the same.  I was tagged by poet and fiction writer Rachel Dacus (click Here for her Q/A).

Here I go:

What is the title of your book?
It's not a book, it's a chapbook:  I Feel Good.

Where did the idea for the book come from?
Grammar, as in the direct-address comma.

What genre is your book?
 E-chapbook of poems, swashingbuckling epic, romance novel with a frisson of manifesto, a hint of saffron.

If your book were made into a movie, what actors would you choose to play the part of your characters?
Penélope Cruz as Jezebel.

What is a one-sentence synopsis of your book?
You can't win, so try.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?
It came in winds, not drafts.

Who or what inspired the writing of your book?

The philosophy of Sun Ra; the musical stylings of Swedenborg; the grandeur and compassion of Emma Goldman.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?
Poem #1 is "You, Jezebel" (note direct-address comma). In its own way, this poem questions the habitual and age-old vilification of Jezebel, Ahab's wife who was greatly misrepresented by history, which, it turns out, is written by historians who are hired by the victors. Such as the victory was. Get a clue, history. No one wins for long, or in the long run. Jezebel, for instance, was not unspiritual nor a-religious. She continued to worship goddesses and gods of her parents, and that served as insult and vexing provocation to Mr. Deuteronomy.

Who published or will publish your book?
It will be published in the next few months by Beard of Bees, Eric Elshtain, editor.

My tagged writers for next Wednesday:

I'll link when links are given to me (unless they post on Facebook, which is also good), but the writers are Melissa Studdard, Mary Meriam (more, forthcoming).
 

A Poet Who Doesn’t Suck (review from 2011)

“Garden of Eye” canvas created by Digital-Matrix.*

The following review was published in American Book Review, Volume 32, Number 2, January/February 2011. 

It is reprinted with permission of the author.

The Future Is Happy, BlazeVOX [books], 2009. $16.

The Eccentric St. Sarai, a Poet Who Doesn’t Suck

by Melissa Studdard

The unspoken rules for writing contemporary literary poetry are clear

to all serious poets. For starters, it is NOT okay to use words like

“love,” “rose,” “heart,” “soul,” “butterfly,” or “grandmother” unless

you intend to systematically deconstruct, or even better, negate,

them. If you do insist on using these horrid words (which, I remind

you, is not recommended), you must find a way to rough them up and

scrape away the centuries of grime left on them by the grubby hands of

former poets, such as Shakespeare, Donne and Petrarch (who sadly, did

not know what they were doing) . You must concede to the premise that

sentiment is embarrassing and sincerity is downright disgusting, and

you must recognize that if you’re feeling attached to a line you’ve

written, it’s probably too “precious” to be published and should be

deleted quickly, before anyone else sees the shameful thing that you

have done. Most of all, you must never, ever do anything that comes

across as too poetic. God forbid that anyone should see your poem and

deduce from it that you are a poet. Better for your poem to imply that

you are a bricklayer, waitress, or serial killer.

The problem is that the anti-cliché has itself become clichéd, and the

gruff tone and handling of subject matter are now as anticipated as

the sentimentality they replaced. So what’s a poet to do in a post

post era, when everything that can be done has seemingly been done and

surprise itself is a cliché? Literary history would suggest a swing

back to a kinder, gentler poetry, as each new literary movement has

been a reaction against what came before it. However, the poets of

this generation find themselves in a particularly bitter pickle in

that anyone who writes in the old style would appear not to be aware

of the new style and would therefore run the risk of coming across as

uneducated. That, we cannot have.

What we do find, however, is that there are poets who are aware of

craft, literary history and current trends but who have decided to lay

their own unique voices and minds down on the page anyway, poets who,

finding themselves at the crossroads of convention and deviance,

choose neither but instead drop the reigns altogether and lift into

Pegasian flight. They are smart and sensitive and funny and well-read.

They are aware of what’s going on around them and what came before

them, yet they allow that knowledge to inform rather than dictate

their work. They are skilled at craft, but they do not craft the life

out of their poems.

And so, despite what might have initially sounded like a complaint

about contemporary poetry, I’m here to tell you that there is still

much good poetry being written, and there are still many good

collections coming out. One such collection is The Future is Happy,

by Sarah Sarai, published by BlazeVox Books, a press that proclaims to

publish “poetry that doesn’t suck.” In Sarai’s case, I wholeheartedly

agree. It doesn’t suck at all. It is, in fact, a poetry of luminous,

brave transparency, and though it would by no means be considered

confessional, it lays bare the unique mechanisms of Sarai’s mind, the

wild fluctuations of her pulse, skipped beats of her heart. Sarai has

no qualms about mentioning weed, chili peppers, the bible and the

afterlife all in the same poem, and her wacky, unique perceptions of

the world spawn metaphor after metaphor, analogy after analogy of

sparkling, lyrical, hilarious insight. Crossing the border is compared

to crossing into the afterlife, Emily Dickinson is presented as a Jew

in hiding, and poop cleaned from a baby’s butt is likened to sin wiped

away by grace. What may appear at first to be flippant always has a

deeper meaning, and the mundane is frequently combined with the

sacred. Take the poem “Aristotle,” for instance, short enough to be

considered in its entirety:

There’s no clean slate

in God’s classroom.

He was clapping erasers

as your ebullient soul popped

like gleeful corn charging

an aluminum lid.

You ker-chewed

from dust falling milky.

What an act of hubris, to be born. 

(Sarai 50, 2009)

Here we see Sarai’s characteristically zany way of handling subject

matter. Reincarnationists have long considered the idea of the earth

as a schoolhouse for the soul, but Sarai makes the idea palpable by

giving God a classroom and erasers to clap. One only need look at the

titles of the individual poems, such as “St. Sarai Carrying the Infant

Christ Child,” “Like Breasts on the Copier,” and “When the Sun Sets

Like a Nice Salmon Mousse,” to pick up on the humor and originality of

the collection. Yet reading the poems reveals a voice that is also

earnest, vulnerable and raw. Alongside these wacky, philosophical

poems are poems about losing faith in poetry, running into a former

lover, and empathizing with a mother who has cancer. Particularly

stunning is the poem, “My Various and Sloppy Forgiveness,” which ends

with an unabashed portrayal of longing.

Sarai is sexy, funny, philosophical, gracious and irreverent –

sometimes all in the same poem, combining the elevated with the lowly,

the drab with the lyrical, the complex with the simple. But in the

end it is not her eclectic subject matter or her charming, sassy style

that will win the reader over - it is her willingness to, without

artifice or pretension, offer her truth to the page.

American Book Review, Volume 32, Number 2, January/February 2011.

Melissa Studdard is the author of the bestselling novel Six Weeks to Yehidah (winner of  the Forward National Literature Award), as well as the newly released My Yehidah, both published on All Things That Matter Press.  She is a book reviewer at-large for The National Poetry Review, a contributing editor for Tiferet Journal, and host of the radio interview program Tiferet Talk.  

Melissa's blog, Bareback Alchemy. Her website.

*Digital Matrix: http://maat-order.org/blog/?p=1113

Kay Ryan was once "Green Behind the Ears"

On her blog Bareback Alchemy, poet and fictioneer Melissa Studdard has called for us to memorize a poem a week—for us to slide rhythms, stops, breaks, bounties, eruption of passion and word into our share of The Collected Unconscious so we can hang out with poets wherever we are, on line at the grocery store or at our desks, watching the clock.

Week One, she choose a poem by Li-Young Lee, prompting me to post one of his poems, "From Blossoms," and write about poet Marilyn Koren who had once insisted I read Lee. (This was in my blog posting on Lee, a few days ago.)  Melissa also knew Marilyn.

You can scroll through Bareback Alchemy for the poems to date and in the future, but I'll give up the line-up so far. Week Two was Emily Dickinson, Three was Rilke, Four was Mary Oliver.  For Week Five, she choose a poem by Adrienne Rich, in memory of the poet's recent passing onto the heavenly dancing glinting weeping joyous spheres. Now on Week Six she has chosen Rumi (speaking of heavenly dancing glinting weeping joyous).

Melissa's urged us to suggest poems, and some of that challenge is intellectual. When I read I now consider whether or not the poem wants in. So much of the decision is weighed against my wee American memory, as so many more poems are worthy.

Nonetheless, Kay Ryan's work does have a way of skipping off the page, of suggesting it needs to be memorized, if only because of a slight occasional aphoristic hint, and more often because the work has that Emily Dickinson succinct universality.  Here, by Kay Ryan, is one such poem.


Green Behind the Ears

I was still slightly
fuzzy in shady spots
and the tenderest lime.
It was lovely, as I
look back, but not
at the time. For it is
hard to be green and
take your turn as flesh.
So much freshness
to unlearn.
_________
Kay Ryan. From The Niagara River (Grove Press), collected in The Best of It (Grove Press).

The Future? Keeps Being Happy! A new review in American Book Review

May 30, 2012 update.  The review in now available, with permission of the author, on My 3,000 Loving Arms at A Poet Who Doesn't Suck (May 30, 2012).

Being my mother's daughter, boasting—she don't come easy. I anticipate Mom will express regret over so much enforced humility when I meet up with her in Yonville, The Beyond So Great, The Mysterious Phase Next of Existence.

(And I would love to meet up with her. I miss my mother.)

Let's get back on message.  American Book Review, a print journal (print: archaic term, wiki it), published a review of my poetry collection, The Future Is Happy (BlazeVOX).

The beautifully written review begins with a beautifully written manifesto of contemporary poetics, then offers insight to the specific of my work, in light of the sardonic, tongue-in-cheek and brave manifesto.

Melissa Studdard is reviewer.  She is also a poet and fiction writer.  Pulled quote:

And so, despite what might have initially sounded like a complaint about contemporary poetry, I’m here to tell you that there is still much good poetry being written, and there are still many good collections coming out. One such collection is The Future is Happy, by Sarah Sarai, published by BlazeVox Books, a press that proclaims to publish “poetry that doesn’t suck.” In Sarai’s case, I wholeheartedly agree. It doesn’t suck at all. It is, in fact, a poetry of luminous, brave transparency, and though it would by no means be considered confessional, it lays bare the unique mechanisms of Sarai’s mind, the wild fluctuations of her pulse, skipped beats of her heart. Sarai has no qualms about mentioning weed, chili peppers, the bible and the afterlife all in the same poem, and her wacky, unique perceptions of the world spawn metaphor after metaphor, analogy after analogy of sparkling, lyrical, hilarious insight. Crossing the border is compared to crossing into the afterlife, Emily Dickinson is presented as a Jew
in hiding, and poop cleaned from a baby’s butt is likened to sin wiped away by grace. What may appear at first to be flippant always has a deeper meaning, and the mundane is frequently combined with the sacred.

More information about American Book Review at http://americanbookreview.org/issueContent.asp?id=193. The review is in the Jan/Feb 2011 issue.

Quick note on classical or old references (& a poem draft),

One poet who read my book (The Future Is Happy—plug the title into Amazon, put it in your cart and buy) commented, "You certainly are well-read."

I don't know that's really true. When I was thirty I was well-read and that is simply by comparison with a broad base of people who didn't hit the Greeks and Romans the way I did. Yeah, there are a few usual lists of classics and the lists are hard to dispute simply because there isn't a lot of competition (i.e., from women and other minority writers). Also because the books are really really good.

But that was then. Now? I haven't read anything by Roberto Bolaño but some of his short stories from The New Yorker. If I hadn't fallen into the temporary good graces of a phenomenally well-read poet who guided me, I wouldn't have read a slew of modern poets. Some of my well-readedness is luck. Regardless.

I'm beginning not to care. And that's a change. Heaven was going to be a place of ever-ripe peaches, thincrust wholewheat pizza with a sauce made by Costanza from the Godfather, silk and whatever might feel good on that, and books. Time to read and reread all the books I never got around to.

However, in support, I distinctly remember Eric Miles Williamson, who has published two novels and a critical study of populism, taste and Jack London, pointing to his impressive bookshelves and saying (remembered), "Each of these represents time I could have been out there." There. Life.

True, life isn't all it's cracked up to be. My time out there often gets me into trouble. I spend time in here emotionally unpacking the time I spend out there. And nothing has changed in my life except for me getting older (Eric said that, by the way, when he lived in New York with his former wife, Melissa Studdard). As I wrote the following poem recently (hence, still in progress), I realized, so what. So what if I've read Ibsen and Strindberg and Voltaire (Candide doesn't count. Candide is forever and always). So so so so what.

I'm not saying anything new but Ill repeat nonetheless. The world is corrupt, certainly the white colonial world, the Christian (and for the past fifty or so years, the Jewish), the Islamic, and the far east--all corrupt and about greed. All there is is the individual and of what use is Doll's House to her?

Counterpoint is that western culture is my story. I spend many hours at the African wing of the Met trying to reorient my brain, to relearn stories. Wonderful art but not my stories. I give up.


Tracker

Nora the door-slammer
knows every ridge of
Torvald's thumb.
A regular Sacajaweja
is she of tracking
her way out from under.
Yesterday, bent northern-
ward from Bleecker
a thoroughly nice woman,
thoroughly my age,
stayed a few steps ahead and
called watch outs for cars
and slush. Thank you, Sacajawea
I said. She laughed at
my silliness—or my ignorance.
How many years has it been
since I heard the name Sacajawea or
Lewis and Clark or Torvald.
I'm not well-researched, I'm lazy.
What I know for sure is old.
Ibsen wrote a great scene and
I have a decent hold on
western culture against
much of which I'd like to slam
a door. Little's known of
Sacajawea's life after Lewis and
Clark opened up the west,
so rich in natural assets.


The stamp is Lewis and Clark with faithful Sacajawea behind them. Please see the irony.