so, i just realized how painfully out of date i was (am?): apparently, the site that was hosting my audio files went belly up a year ago! whoops! and apparently they only notified the paying customers – not the folks that were hosting audio for free (because, you know, sending a mass email is just that difficult).

anyway, i’m trying to find a good site for hosting my audio and streaming it here, for free. there doesn’t seem to be a YouTube equivalent for audio… or am I missing something? WTF?

i found a service that looks pretty good… only their player doesn’t seem to be embedding properly. Not for me, anyway (or for the 12 other people that logged the same problem in the past day). I’m waiting for some feedback. But in the meantime, you can listen to the tracks by clicking on the titles under the dysfunctional players, or by going directly to my page on SoundCloud.

And if anyone knows of a reliable audio hosting/streaming service, let me know. Please.

UPDATE: Looks like all my players are working now. Yippey!

SoundCloud’s whole website was just down for about 30 mins… not sure how often that happens or how flukey the site/service really is. But for now, play away!

This week, I debuted my first set of poetry postcards/broadsides at my reading in Elkins Park. I designed four unique cards (4×6 inches) featuring four different poems, using word art, images, and ink stamps. I’m really happy with how they came out, and people seemed to like them (they bought them!) so I was inspired to create a way for folks to view and buy them online.

If you’re so inclined, you can check them out here and on Etsy.

I hope to be making more cards with other poems in the future. Any feedback on these “first edition” cards is most welcome.

Here’s the thing I’m feeling iffy about. Madras is a nonprofit, and the website explains that all net proceeds from books sales are donated to a charity of the author’s choosing. Now, I come to you as a woman who has spent the better part of her life trying to be of service — giving away my 8th grade field trip spending money to a homeless man in D.C., volunteering in high school, college & after, and ultimately settling into a career as a nonprofit fundraiser & manager. I am all about supporting nonprofits of all shapes and sizes. BUT, I don’t understand why the writers can’t make a little money off their writing?

Now, I don’t know what exactly Madras means by “net proceeds” — maybe they have built in some compensation to the writer — but it seems to me that writers can raise their voices and use their work to support nonprofits, without sacrificing themselves. We need to be able to leverage our art to get money from those who really have it to spare, rather than just giving up what little we might earn.

And this isn’t the first I’ve heard of this… the Poetic Arts Performance Project here in Philly that aims to “use our poetic gifts and those of artists from around the country and globe to help other charitable organizations in the Philadelphia area.” That’s commendable… and yet, I often wonder about arts organizations (which are hobbled to begin with) trying to help other organizations. Why can’t it be enough to raise up the arts, to focus on raising up the arts, and let the art have the powerful social effect that art can have. Keep what little money you might make and put it back into your own organization, so you can spread more art, whether that’s through publishing more stories that won’t find a home any other way, or putting on kick ass readings & educational events. I wonder… do these organizations think that they need to bribe potential patrons with the promise of a tax write off? Do they think it somehow makes it okay to pay for art by not really paying for art by giving to something “more worthy”?  Honestly, I suspect these organizations recognize that they aren’t going to get rich off their books and events, and they altruistically believe that what little they raise can make a difference to another struggling organization. And they may be right.

But I’m not convinced… I’m not sure that doing this doesn’t just reinforce the idea of writing as folly, hobby, something readers can & should get for free… unless its by someone a major publishing house has told them they should pay for.  I know that no one goes into writing for money… but why must writers always be hobbyists, why must we exhaust ourselves at full-time jobs so that we can pay the bills, so that we can live, so that we can write. Why can’t we try to get a least a little compensation for all the hours, heartache, tears, and papercuts we endure as artists.

Everyone else does it. I know its hard for some of us to understand that people who are scientists, engineers, and technologists are really passionate artists in the work they do. Only they make medicines and machines, and they don’t give them away for free just because they loved the process of creating and because they are so impressed with what they made. Hells no. If that was the case, everyone would have a car, a computer, and an iPod.

Maybe that’s over-simplified. And maybe not. All I know is when I buy a book or go to an event, when I’m really impressed by a writer, I feel great knowing that writer is going to get a little compensation for a job well done. A writer who needs that money to keep doing the best damn job she can. Making art. Putting it out there, in people’s faces, saying I am worth something. I am valuable. Listen to me.

But tonight I had a great reading at the Elkins Park Free Library and a few people, including a very generous spirit named Ruth, asked about my website – and so it seems its time to get some motivation back.

As far as readings go, this one was pretty awesome. 30 whole minutes! Enough to present a variety of my work & not feel like I’d overstayed my welcome. And the room was packed, at least 20-30 people. But only about 1/2 of the audience read in the open mic, which means the rest of the folks were there to listen & enjoy poetry. As someone who hosts a monthly reading, I’m still amazed & delighted by those crowds. But then again, those that did read in the open mic were talented and genuine with their art. What’s more, I sold 10 of my brand-spankin’-new poetry postcards (more info & pictures to come).

Many thanks to everyone who was there! It’s always an honor to get invited to read. Tonight was an honor and a pleasure. Plus, I serendipitously discovered a great little reading venue just 10 minutes from my house. Bonus!

Kind hearted man, but ill-fated,
So youthful drowned and cremated.

– and I think to myself, “Well, at least I’m not that bad.”  Then, I wonder: if you can’t be a good poet, is it better to be so profoundly awful or to be just mediocre. Mediocre is always mediocre.  But sometimes, and just sometimes, bad is SO bad that it almost becomes good.

I started thinking about this the other night whilst washing dishes and listening to Monster Ballads, one of my favorite CDs to sing along with.  The CD reaches its zenith for me a little more than halfway through when Damn Yankees’ “High Enough” kicks in.  God I love that song!  LOVE it!!  It’s the kind of song that I will listen to at least 2 or 3 times any time I hear it.  And I know it’s terrible.  It doesn’t even really make any sense.  But something about it makes the blood tingle in my veins.  So, I started thinking, There’s got to be something to this.  There has to be some poetic value — and I’m going to dig right into the lyrics and find it.  So here we are.

Before we get started, you might want to familiarize yourself with the song, if you’re not a hairband fanatic like me.  You can read the lyrics here, and you can listen to it here.  I recommend listening.  As I’ll soon explain, the lyrics don’t have nearly the same impact….

…Welcome back.  If you weren’t a fan before, you’ve been converted, no?  It’s such a rousing song, and I’m a bit confounded as to why.  But I’ve got a few ideas.  First of all, if we’re looking for poetic value, we can forget about finding it in these lyrics.  They are generally cryptic & nonsensical.  It opens harmlessly enough, if we can forgive rhyming “anymore” with itself: “I don’t wanna hear about it anymore/It’s a shame I’ve got to live without you anymore.”  Typical girl left guy love song.  That’s fine.  But what happened to break them up?  Did he cheat? Did she cheat?  No.  This poor guy just made one mistake:  “I didn’t know what to say when you called me baby.”  Huh??? What does that even mean???  And what makes even less sense is why, if he made the mistake, he would be asking he lost love:  “Can you take me high enough/ To fly me over (fly me over) yesterday?”  I mean, if you’re begging her not to leave, begging her to forgive you, do you really think its wise to be asking for a ride in her flying machine?  I’d start smaller dude.  But maybe that’s just me.

Okay, so that’s how the song totally fails on the poetic front.  But where it succeeds is in some of the little poetic devices it employs musically throughout.  Before those less-than-stellar opening lines, the song begins with a soft orchestral prelude.  Okay, I’m a sucker for violins in a rock music.  But I think it works here.  It announces the song as a love song immediately, but it also offers a counterbalance to the “metal” to come.  I actually think this is one of the really successful elements of hair ballads in general.  There’s an inherent tension between the hard energy of the music and the sweetness of the ballad that somewhat reflects the emotional imbalances that come with falling in love.

In “High Enough,” I also like the use of repetition, in the form of the background lyrics.  Although I’m not sure any of the lyrics are really strong enough to bear repetition, I believe the repetition helps to build and sustain the energy in the chorus.  The lead singer asks, “Can you take me high enough/To fly me over yesterday?”  And the background singer’s echo (“fly me over”) emphasizes the desperation, turns the request into a plea.  The pleading is strongest in the last round of the chorus at the end of the song:  “Won’t you fly me over (won’t you fly me over)…” Oh, my heart is breaking with both of them!  There’s also some effective repetition in the last line of the chorus, although there I think it works a little differently.  “It’s never over/Yesterday’s just a memory (yesterday’s just a memory and),” the lead & backup singers croon.  This repetition strikes me as insistent, however untrue.  It’s that idea that if you say something enough times it becomes real.  That’s why we’re repeating.

“Yesterday’s just a memory.”
“Yes, that’s right, yesterday’s just a memory, so it shouldn’t matter that you didn’t know what to say when she called you baby.”
“Yes, because yesterday’s just a memory.  So, why don’t we just move on, right.”
“Right.”

See, if you compare my inane mock conversation to the final line of the chorus, Damn Yankees clearly come out on top poetically.  That’s not exactly say much, but you get the point.

And that’s all I’ve got.  I mean, I think the music rises and falls to great effect, swelling and releasing emotion at all the right intervals.  And I think all the “woh oos” are expertly employed.  But that’s pop music 101, right?   Otherwise, let’s be clear, the song is pretty crappy.  But I love it — it gets me every time and there’s something to be said for that.

I’m particularly satisfied with Wikipedia’s definition of “memoir,” particularly this bit (which may or may not be attributable to Gore Vidal, I can’t tell from the way the entry is arranged):

It is more about what can be gleaned from a section of one’s life than about the outcome of the life as a whole.

The quote makes me wonder: what actually constitutes a “section” of one’s life? How large or small of timeframe might that be? Poetry, at least much of the best poetry, is about gleaning from moments and simple details. And the old cliche is right: Life is but a series of moments. So, I suppose I see each poem as the opportunity to write a mini memoir. The most exciting part, for me, is that these mini memoirs get to defy physics. Once you’ve written enough of them, you can string the poems together to tell a larger story, only that story need not abide by the laws of the space-time continuum. This is where the gleaning comes in. The meanings of our lives, or situations within our lives, are often less dependent upon the chronological circumstances and more upon the way our memories rearrange and juxtapose long after the experiences have ended.

How many times have you been absolutely sure that the last time you saw so and so was at such and such restaurant, only to eventually realize that’s impossible?  Such and such place wasn’t built yet, or it burnt down the year before, or you’ve never actually been to such and such but the color on their sign reminds you of the shirt that so and so was wearing the last time you saw him, although you can’t quite remember where exactly that was.  Probably, where you were at the time doesn’t matter.  It’s what you said.  It’s what so and so was wearing or doing.  Whatever it was, its important enough to be triggered every time you pass by such and such restaurant.  The gleaning comes from that connection.  Maybe you would never think of so and so otherwise.  Or maybe something else would be the trigger.  In all likelihood, whatever it is would have more to do with your subconcious than anything going on the actual world of facts.

That’s why I like to think about poetry in the context of memoir — because poetry is not bound by the world of facts, even if we’re using poetry to tell personal stories. Personal stories don’t necessarily have to be factually verifiable — at least not in our world.  This doesn’t mean, however, that the stories don’t have to be true. But there’s a big difference between “actual” truth and “emotional” truth.  Was James Frey actually in jail for year, or however long he claimed? (I never read A Million Little Pieces, although I feel like I did.)  No, but it may have felt like it to him.   That’s an extreme example of emotional truth (although I’m pretty convinced that James Frey knows is just a big fat liar who thought nothing about emotional truth).  Either way, emotional truth isn’t really acceptable in the world of prose — especially in anything like a biography or memoir that claims a foothold on reality.  But in poetry – ah! – we deal almost strictly in emotional truth.  Was the car blue or orange, it doesn’t matter.  If you’re comparing your mother’s innonence to that of the virgin Mary, then the car was blue.  Period. End of sentence.  Poetry understands that details and specifics are the cornerstones of the most engaging writing, but that those details have some sort of proof to back them up?  Poetry doesn’t care about that.  Poetry wants the best details to help us understand what it all means.

It’s late and I’m rambling.  More to come later.

When I was in graduate school, a fellow poet asked if I would mind being interviewed for a critical paper addressing Sylvia Plath’s continuing influence on contemporary women poets. I immediately agreed—partly because my ego requires that I accept any and all opportunities to be quoted, and partly because, although I knew I felt a kinship with Plath, I wasn’t (I’m still not) exactly sure why. Although I’ve read both The Colossus and Ariel, Plath’s prose—namely The Bell Jar—was what stuck with me most. And not because I ever struggled with a similar mental instability, but because when I first read it (and here is my embarrassing confession of the day) I was so jealous of the “novel’s” writer heroine. (And I use “” because it is such a thinly veiled autobiography). She was winning prestigious awards, scoring prestigious internships, and just generally gaining in writerly prestige. Sure, she was descending into a mire of depression, but did I mention all the prestige?

Yeah…. I was pretty misguided right after college. But on the other hand, my “jealousy” was also kind of motivating. I remember thinking that if Sylvia Plath was writing about being rejected by an esteemed writing course, then that must mean that anyone could be rejected. And if Sylvia Plath was struggling to deal with life in New York, then maybe it wasn’t so bad that I didn’t go to college there. When I wasn’t jealous, I identified with the protagonist’s struggles to figure out how she fit into the world as a woman—get married, act proper & polite, or take job “befitting” a woman, as a secretary or stenographer. Like I said, I was just out of college, so I was asking myself all the same “what do I want to be when I grow up” questions. (The older I get, I find I’m still asking myself these questions, I just answer from a different vantage point.)

So, anyway, my experience of Sylvia was always very me-centric—and had surprisingly little do with her actual poetry. But I guess that’s not all that surprising, unfortunately. First of all, Sylvia became such an icon for women writers (and women?) that, as a woman, she could be your icon just by knowing her story—and not her writing. She struggled with depression—and of course she did (or so, angsty young feminists might say): she was married, raising children, and trying to live up to 1950s upper-middle-class expectations of women—all while also trying to be an artist. Woe! Her death echoed as a cry for help among all us. Give us liberty or give us death! Hoorah! But I don’t think that’s what she intended, and I don’t think that’s what she would have wanted. Would anyone want to be famous because they were in pain? It’s kind of cruel actually. When you’re depressed, you sometimes think that the world would be better off without you. By aggrandizing Sylvia’s death, I wonder if, in a way, we reinforce that point? Would she be less important if she hadn’t died? Would we have gotten the point if we couldn’t superimpose her life story onto her art?

Ah… I’m being cynical. Because then I think about the work. And I think the reason why the poems are so brilliant and why they resonate with so many women is not because we can read her life story in them (although we can), but because, as much of herself as she put into each poem, Sylvia always allowed enough room for the reader to put herself in as well. The poems are at once deeply personal and deeply mysterious. Her images are dark, slippery, haunting, visceral, and at times completely elusive. I have to chuckle when people talk about Sylvia as “confessional” because, honestly, (here comes another potentially damning confession) sometimes I just don’t “get it.” I wonder how it’s possible to confess anything in language weighted with so much metaphor and allusion. Sometimes it’s the political references, sometimes the abstraction of images. Sometimes, I just feel a little lost.

But here’s the thing: I once had a mentor who said that people need to worry less about “getting” it and more about feeling it. And that’s never a problem with Sylvia. As I said, I’m re-reading Ariel (actually reading the Restored Edition, and no matter how opaque some of the poems) I’m always feeling it: anger, frustration, irony, rapture, awe, humor. I’m feeling it. Each poem is a barrage of emotion—Sylvia’s and mine—so artfully, imaginatively rendered.

Considering that amazing artistry, along with the political and personal context of her poems, the question of why talk about Plath is replaced by the question of why not talk about her more? Or, perhaps, why not about her work more? So, this Thursday, I’m looking forward to talking about Sylvia Plath – not in a National Enquirer/Paris Hilton sort of way; I’m looking forward to really digging into her poems, poking around the places that I don’t “get” but that I really really feel, and figuring out how they work, why they work, and what I can learn from her.

The Mad Poets Blog, an offshoot of the Mad Poets Society’s main web page, has been a while in the making. It includes a wicked-cool sidebar events calendar and regular contributions from po-bloggers Anna Evans, Rachel Bunting, Ashraf Osman, G. Emil Reutter, and yours truly. Eileen D’Angelo, the MPS Director and self-professed technophobe, will hopefully join us in the bloggery goodness once I convince her how easy WordPress actually is.

To say that I’m excited is an absolute understatement. You should totally check it out: There’ll be MPS news, ongoing poetry discussion, reviews, interviews, etc. etc. etc.

And as always, I owe a huge debt of gratitude to the Little Mister, who saw the gobbledygook that was passing for code in the WP theme I was using and just decided to recreate the entire thing (in a matter of hours, by the way!) so that it would be easier for me to use/edit in the long run. And it is!

I couldn’t be more excited.

Not only because I get to re-assert the much-needed separation between work & life (although, ironically, my new job is more in-line with my personal ethics/passions/ambitions/etc.), but because, in doing so, I get the joy of creating a work space — an entirely distinct and unique environment in which to spend my days. I realized this about myself when I started working from home: there are things that I will do in an office workspace that don’t work at home… for one reason or other.

For instance, I can have a plant, provided there’s adequate light, which I think there is. At home, plants are verboten because my kitties like to eat them & knock them over. …Of course, let’s not even get started on how much I’m going to miss spending my days with the wee bastards …that’s a whole other matter.

The other thing I can do is set up my Magnetic Poetry stand… again, the wee bastards make this rather impractical for the home. I’m sure that I’d find all the little magnetic words scooped out of their little tray, to be eaten or strewn about the house, and all of my brilliant little magnetic poems destroyed.

But my favorite workplace design feature is to wallpaper the area surrounding my desk and computer with favorite poems. I started doing this at my very first job out of college, where I worked for a dreadful trade magazine. The office was about as lively as morgue (mostly because we were all so miserable we were silently praying for our own swift deaths). One day, I read the poem To My Twenties by Kenneth Koch — and it just made me so purely happy that I printed it out, so I could read it whenever I was feeling low (which happened regularly enough at that particular job I really needed to have a poem at the ready). When I left, after the longest 6 months of my adult life, I untacked the poem from the cubicle wall and took it with me to my next job.

I’ve had the same crinkly print out ever since. Over time, I’ve added several others — Well Water by Randell Jarrell, A Rescue by John Updike, Metamorphosis by Billy Collins, What the Living Do by Marie Howe, and more — each in various stages of crinkle, most with tears, all marred by several folded over pieces of tape, from being stuck and unstuck to my myriad workstations.

As uplifting as my “wallpaper” was, it’s problematic in my own home office. Ironically, the same scraps that have made me feel settled and inspired at work, make me feel sloppy and transient at home. Still, I’ve missed being able to just look at my wall and be transported by a good poem, the way a small framed photo can take you back to that moment when it was taken. I’ll be happy to get those little trips back.

The event will feature 24 poets representing 12 different journals from throughout New Jersey, as well as a few immediate neighbors from across the river. I’ll be reading, along with indomitable Dan Maguire, on behalf of the Mad Poets Review. I’m really looking forward to it — not only because its going to be an excellent showcase of poets and a great way to meet & learn about a variety of journals, but because, as far as I can tell, there are at least three White Castles between the library & the NJ Turnpike. That alone is worth the 2 hour drive!