Reading Merwin had me wanting to play around with the long line, since I ordinarily despise it so much. This is more of an exercise than a poem I'm planning to keep in the collection, though I *am* interested in comparisons between God's children: Lilith, Adam, Eve, the Jews, Jesus. Heh, given that sort of company, no wonder Lilith feels like an outcast.
One of Greg's concerns with the pieces I sent him from the Lilith collection was that the language was too mythic/biblical for a contemporary audience, and that I should throw them a bone every once in awhile to keep them interested.
Admittedly, my first response was a snobbish, "Well, if they can't remain interested in an awesome female character who *is* mythic, they can bite my left buttcheek. let them read Shel Silverstein if what they want is rhymey babble." (No offense meant to Shel Silverstein, whose work I enjoy quite a bit.)
Then I looked at it as an opportunity. I mean, if I contemporize the language a bit, I can let Lilith take what she wants from *all* time periods, which could be sort of fun. I'm having trouble making this happen in the pieces that rely on the mythic tone for their delivery (like the rewrite of the Hail Mary and of the Apostle's Creed), but in other places, it's a fun experiment, like in the the piece below, "Lilith: The Interview":
Lilith: The Interview
We didn't have proper clothes
back then. But I'm a fan of black
leather, purple eyeshadow,
and sky-high fuck-me pumps.
I like to appear taller than men.
No, I don't eat babies. I'm not
a succubus (don't you wish!).
I do enjoy a rare prime rib,
paired with a delicate cheesecake.
Ooh, and a nice, bold red.
I have no problem with Eve.
I think her taste in men is poor,
but the woman's got spunk,
eating the fruit God forbade.
I like women who break rules.
If by "rutting with demons"
you mean fun sex with men
who let me be on top
and enjoying it immensely,
then yes, mark me as guilty.
Well, God made me, after all.
Perhaps we should talk less
about bowing to human judgment
and more about accepting the demoness
God himself allows to roam free.
This is the poem I've had the hardest time starting: a letter from Lilith to Eve. Is she condescending? (The poem sort of starts out that way, with the "I hear you bought into the rib tale".) Forgiving? Does she understand why Eve made the choice to stay and play the role of subservient helpmeet? Is she proud of Eve for tasting the forbidden fruit and showing some spirit even as she stayed in voluntary servitude that Lilith herself wouldn't have stood?
I conceived it as a letter from a rebellious older sister to a more obedient younger sister - a few secrets about hidden pleasures, some advice, some respect, and a grudging admission that their roads are likely permanently divergent, but a raw reminder that they're not so terribly different. And yes, this is definitely informed by my relationship with my sister, from whom I'm pretty much estranged. My hope is that the complicated relationship between sisters - the frustration, the love, the envy, and the tenderness - all shine through. A tall order, I know.
Update: poem removed because I've sent it out for competition after some additional revisions. If interested, either comment or email me and I'll shoot you a copy!
The Lilith collection is coming along. Greg has had some great critique that is helping me with revisions, as have my buddies in the SWING writing group. Drew in particular, who really pushed the idea of creating a collection and encouraging me on the project, has been a great help. happily, now that the creative juices are not as blocked, I've been wrestling with a few new pieces. I started out with the impetus of "What stories would Lilith want to tell?", and that engine has slowed a bit for me. Now, I'm turning more to "What would I ask her if I had the chance?", and that's where this new one comes from. I mean, talking to the first woman, wouldn't you wonder what the first man looked like?
Still not certain about keeping it in tercets, though I think it works well enough to propel the poem along. I sort of like this one, because I know I've caught myself remembering a loved one and been somewhat horrified that I could have forgotten the details of their face.
Update: the poem "The Forgetting" has been removed because I've sent it out. If interested, comment or email. (Yes, I know that's a pain in the butt, but if it appears on a blog, it is considered "previously published" for a lot of lit journals and they won't consider it.)
One of the fun things about working in poetry as opposed to prose is that you have the opportunity to harness the power of the line break. I find it very frustrating when folks read straight through a poem without any (even minor) pause at the end of a line. It's a poem. If it were meant to be read without paying attention to those breaks, you may as well just chunk it as prose. The line break is essential to a poem - it creates a specific rhythm (truly - read Nikki Giovanni and then read Merwin. The difference is startling, and it's not just because of the difference in subject matter. The length of the line makes a great difference in the delivery of a piece and how you must breathe to get through it. Yes, you may be reading it to yourself, but the true experience of poetry is aural, and you should think about that that as you read, and even read some pieces out loud to yourself to see how they work with your breathing rhythm.) Anyway, yes, a giant peeve of mine is folks ignoring the break.
The line break. It provides the opportunity for the poet to not only play with rhythm, but to play with language as well. I attended a small group discussion led by Trish Jaggers, a Kentucky poetess and soon-to-be Spalding MFA grad, where she discussed syntactic doubling, or creating multiple meanings through judicious use of words at the end of a line. I find myself fascinated with line breaks, and how those breaks create multiple meanings within the language. I'm currently working on a piece I'm not certain about keeping, but have been really enjoying working with the line breaks to create something more powerful. One of my favorite lines is "God says I am" followed by the self-affirmation of "worth more than rubies. I am" - but of course, I'm biased. And this is a new piece, so I couldn't even tell you if it's worth keeping yet or not. For your critique (and hopefully your enjoyment), I offer "I Am":
More news! (I do love it when the news starts coming in - even if it's rejections, at least it lets you know the wheels are turning and something is happening.) I received an email from Diane Goettel, editor of The Adirondack Review, to let me know that my chapbook manuscript Warsongs came in as a semi-finalist in the Fall 2007 Black Lawrence Press Black River chapbook competition. I also made semifinalist for the Spring 2007 competition with The House That Falls Down. I'm particularly pleased because they're both collections of war poetry, which I know is sort of a no-no for a non-soldier chick to write about. But I did make sure to vet them through my brother, who is a U.S. Marine who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. He shared them with his buddies (without my knowledge or say-so) and said the guys thought they were good...and if it's good to the folks who experience it, I count them as not half-bad.
But yes, two semi-finalist position for the chapbooks, so I feel like I'm close. Unfortunately, hand grenades and horseshoes and all that. Either way, it gives me the gumption I need to actually work on revising those pieces, and I believe I'll send a bevy of them to Greg in my next packet along with some Lilith pieces. Poor Greg. I hear of other people who struggle to fill a packet with 8 poems, and here I am sending the man chapbooks every time. Ah well, if he wants a break, I do hope he'll let me know. I should be getting packet #2 back from him any day now, as I'm due to mail packet #3 out next Friday.
I should also be hearing from Diane Goettel again soon, since it says the Spring 08 competition should be judged (or at least the finalists announced) by July 31, and I did submit three different chapbooks for this round. sheepish I know, I know. But, I mean, I have a number of chapbooks, and it does me no good to have them sitting and collecting dust instead of out at a publishing house. And semi-finalist status made me think maybe they like me. (Unless they only had a handful of people in the competition and everyone who didn't make it got called a "semifinalist." But let's not think that way.)
So yes. Plans include polishing up the Lilith collection, hoping to hear back from Bellowing Ark (I just sent out those solicited materials), going back and tearing through the war poems to get them hale and hearty enough for journal submission, and getting through the rest of the MFA semester, which is rapidly drawing to a close.
I have also been considering approaching the woman who directs the freshman writing program - apparently in the MA program you can adjunct and teach a course if you have 18 hours in. I was biding my time since I'll only have 9 hours of MA work done by the end of this semester, but I forgot that I've already finished 16 hours of MFA work (and it'll be 32 hours in October). I wonder if that'd count and they'd let me teach, given that I already have the MLS and can teach the kids not only how to write decently, but how to do research as well. Must ask, and then must run it past boss to see if I'd even be allowed. But I think it would be a great idea to have a Literary Librarian teaching the incoming kids.
So, yes, much on the plate, and choices to be made as to what I want to write my MFA critical thesis on - I'm currently considering doing it on Komunyakaa, but we'll see. My next post here will be an attempt to sketch out my idea for designing an independent study on national epics that read as poems - more research required on that front though.
So, in short, very happy at semi-finalist status even though in the end that means I'm just the first (or thirty-second) loser. Also happy to have solicited work out of my hands - at this point, the editor either likes it or he does not, and there's little I can do about it. And now, for the waiting...
New working draft. It's interesting - when I write about something that turns to nature, I inevitably return to Kentucky (where I spent nearly 10 years), or to Long Island and the ocean where I grew up. And my distaste for the cramped, loud, too-much of the city always shines through. I think this one will be salvageable with some work.
