I'm working on finishing up the manuscript I've been writing the past (almost) two years. Most of the poems are done, so now I'm trying to come up with an order of poems and a manuscript title. To that end, I've been busy re-reading articles on both issues.
For what it's worth, here's a quick list of the resources on these topics I've mentioned in the past:
Katrina Vandenbergs' Putting Your Manuscript in Order: The Mix-Tape Strategy (Poets & Writers)
Jeffrey Levine's On Making the Poetry Manuscript (his own blog)
April Ossman's Thinking Like an Editor: How to Order Your Poetry Manuscript (Poets & Writers)
Albert Rios's Organization Strategies (his own website)
Albert Rios's Titling a Poem, Titling Anything (his own website)
Amy Fleming's Expanding Your Poem Through a Great Title (Through the Third Eye)
Annie Neugebauer's Titling Poems (her own blog)
Matthea Harvey's "If You Agree, Won't You Change the Title for Me? (Poem Present)
So after going through all these, it was serendipity that I put on my headphones to listen to the podcasts I've downloaded recently only to hear Radiotopia's Tim Key's Suspended Sentence, about a novelist trying to come up with a good first line. A little different than what I was thinking about, but definitely using the same muscle. Enjoy.
Showing posts with label Jeffrey Levine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jeffrey Levine. Show all posts
Saturday, May 23, 2015
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Taking Risks
I'm not a big risk-taker. That's what I say, it's how I feel. But if you look at my life, you will see all kinds of crazy risks that I've taken again and again, big ones. I went to a grad school that far outstripped the preparation I had from my undergrad school, went directly into competition with other students who had highly priveleged private school educations from preschool through Ivy League colleges. And I went head-to-head with them. And did alright. One of them one day said, "You're not much of a risk-taker, are you?" and I answered, "Well, I'm here, aren't I?" And he answered, "Yeah, seriously. I hadn't thought about it that way." What was for him a given next step was for me a huge risk.
And I live abroad, in an international family, we just opened a small business last month, we have serious health issues that are life-altering, and we face risk after risk. And sometimes I'm pretty tired.
But this sense of being on the edge (as well as just plain being on edge) all the time is good for something: poetry. Jeffrey Levine discusses how risk-taking and the willingness to put danger on the page is often the difference in the diction between an almost-finished poem and a successful poem here.
Here's a quote: "It takes a special sort of nerve to spell (just enough) the connection between the imagery (symbols) of the outer world and what the poet wants us to take from that imagery about how that imagery enhances, reflects, refracts and intensifies the poet’s inner landscape./ How overtly drawn does this correspondence have to be? I think the answer is: just overt enough so that readers can feel the risk taken. Whether or not a reader actually feels the danger on the page depends entirely upon whether the poet has provided us with sufficient correspondence between description and metaphor on one hand, and what’s human, on the other. There must be that ineluctable tension between what we understand abstractly and what we feel concretely. Without that kind of correspondence (and corresponding tension) there’s no felt urgency. Without those risks, the description and metaphor, no matter how well turned, turn merely symbolic. Without sufficient evidence of that correspondence, a symbol is just a symbol, stripped, then, of its power, like an electric circuit whose wiring reaches a dead end: the light won’t go on. Sound and fury are fine, so long as they signify something. Within this correspondence—this levering—the real work of the poem gets done."
Read the entire piece to see an analysis of Louise Gluck's poem "Mock Orange" and its use of urgent diction to draw a correspondence between its metaphors and its emotional content.
And I live abroad, in an international family, we just opened a small business last month, we have serious health issues that are life-altering, and we face risk after risk. And sometimes I'm pretty tired.
But this sense of being on the edge (as well as just plain being on edge) all the time is good for something: poetry. Jeffrey Levine discusses how risk-taking and the willingness to put danger on the page is often the difference in the diction between an almost-finished poem and a successful poem here.
Here's a quote: "It takes a special sort of nerve to spell (just enough) the connection between the imagery (symbols) of the outer world and what the poet wants us to take from that imagery about how that imagery enhances, reflects, refracts and intensifies the poet’s inner landscape./ How overtly drawn does this correspondence have to be? I think the answer is: just overt enough so that readers can feel the risk taken. Whether or not a reader actually feels the danger on the page depends entirely upon whether the poet has provided us with sufficient correspondence between description and metaphor on one hand, and what’s human, on the other. There must be that ineluctable tension between what we understand abstractly and what we feel concretely. Without that kind of correspondence (and corresponding tension) there’s no felt urgency. Without those risks, the description and metaphor, no matter how well turned, turn merely symbolic. Without sufficient evidence of that correspondence, a symbol is just a symbol, stripped, then, of its power, like an electric circuit whose wiring reaches a dead end: the light won’t go on. Sound and fury are fine, so long as they signify something. Within this correspondence—this levering—the real work of the poem gets done."
Read the entire piece to see an analysis of Louise Gluck's poem "Mock Orange" and its use of urgent diction to draw a correspondence between its metaphors and its emotional content.
Monday, October 31, 2011
Halloween and Hallowed Silence
Our neighborhood celebrated Halloween last night (the 30th of October here in Japan) even though it was raining. Although Halloween parties and treats are becoming gradually more known here, a trick-or-treating venue is still relatively hard to come by. However, since we moved in to our current neighborhood about 6 years ago, our neighbors have embraced trick-or-treating; well, some of them have. In order not to disturb the ones who haven't, we distribute a flyer featuring a jack-o-lantern to the neighbors who want to participate, and kids are told to only ring the doorbells of homes with the right picture on the door. It works. Fun was had last night by all who participated. And the others tolerated the noisy running around the street quite nicely.
Speaking of noise, later this week a relative is coming to stay with us. This relative is older and doesn't adjust very well to the idea of family-style living, so her visits are always a challenge. In particular, her need to have the television running 18 hours a day at top volume is a real problem for me (and for my children who have a hard time studying during her visits, or having friends in to play, or doing anything). I cannot work well when she visits, cannot write, and feel distressed a good portion of the time. We don't have a very big home (it's big for Japan but still not big enough that we have more than one tv, or that what one person does at full volume in one part of our home doesn't affect everyone no matter if in the same room or not). So we have announced that from this visit forward, she will have to limit her television-watching to when the children are not studying or entertaining friends (which won't salvage my days, but part of hosting a guest is putting up with crap, I suppose). This particular relative has never taken suggestions well, so we will have to see how she takes outright rules. Shall keep you posted.
Anyway, this got me thinking about silence and how I crave it. When my husband leaves for work and the kids for school, I turn off the tv (which had been on for the morning news) and I don't turn it or a radio or any music on until the family returns and turns that kind of stuff on for themselves. I do work for my clients in silence, I write in silence, I do housework in silence, and that's the way I like it. When I leave the house I put on my iPod and listen to podcasts rather than have to listen to whatever noise the city streets would impose on me. Silence is absolutely key to my sense of well-being. It's odd, considering I grew up as one of eight kids in a house constantly full of noise, or perhaps it's not odd, considering that.
Anyway, this week Tupelo Press editor Jeffrey Levine featured a post about sound on his blog, which is right in line with what I'm musing about these days. He quotes the line from poet Olena Kalytiak Davis's prize-winning book And Her Soul Out of Nothing, "the brain sits right next to the ears.”
This morning I have my blessed silence, after a weekend of kids and noise, and so I am signing off now to enjoy it and the fruitfulness it brings me.
Speaking of noise, later this week a relative is coming to stay with us. This relative is older and doesn't adjust very well to the idea of family-style living, so her visits are always a challenge. In particular, her need to have the television running 18 hours a day at top volume is a real problem for me (and for my children who have a hard time studying during her visits, or having friends in to play, or doing anything). I cannot work well when she visits, cannot write, and feel distressed a good portion of the time. We don't have a very big home (it's big for Japan but still not big enough that we have more than one tv, or that what one person does at full volume in one part of our home doesn't affect everyone no matter if in the same room or not). So we have announced that from this visit forward, she will have to limit her television-watching to when the children are not studying or entertaining friends (which won't salvage my days, but part of hosting a guest is putting up with crap, I suppose). This particular relative has never taken suggestions well, so we will have to see how she takes outright rules. Shall keep you posted.
Anyway, this got me thinking about silence and how I crave it. When my husband leaves for work and the kids for school, I turn off the tv (which had been on for the morning news) and I don't turn it or a radio or any music on until the family returns and turns that kind of stuff on for themselves. I do work for my clients in silence, I write in silence, I do housework in silence, and that's the way I like it. When I leave the house I put on my iPod and listen to podcasts rather than have to listen to whatever noise the city streets would impose on me. Silence is absolutely key to my sense of well-being. It's odd, considering I grew up as one of eight kids in a house constantly full of noise, or perhaps it's not odd, considering that.
Anyway, this week Tupelo Press editor Jeffrey Levine featured a post about sound on his blog, which is right in line with what I'm musing about these days. He quotes the line from poet Olena Kalytiak Davis's prize-winning book And Her Soul Out of Nothing, "the brain sits right next to the ears.”
This morning I have my blessed silence, after a weekend of kids and noise, and so I am signing off now to enjoy it and the fruitfulness it brings me.
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Emancipate Your Manuscript
Here's something I wish I'd had access to before putting my book together. It's a blog post by Jeffrey Levine, editor and publisher at Tupelo Press, giving advice on how to put your poetry manuscript together. Among the 27 different points he makes (some of them long paragraphs even), there is advice concerning big issues such as theme and artistic integrity, and moving down to medium-sized considerations such as ordering the poems and choosing a manuscript title, to small details including adverbs and spell-checking.
Here's a sampling of his wisdom:
2) Every time we write a poem we announce to the world what we think a poem is. The poems you write when urging – wittingly or unconsciously – a particular aesthetic are the ones that belong in the same book. Spread all of your poems out on the floor, a floor that doesn’t need to be disturbed (easy for me to say, I know) and look at them. Read them. Live with them for days and days. See what relationships seem to be developing between the poems....Where do you see common images developing? In what directions do your various threads lead? What seem to be your concerns as a poet during this period of creativity, and how do they seem to want to group....
3) When ordering poems in your manuscript, pay no attention to which poems have been published (and where), and which poems not. At the conclusion of contests, I often (call me perverse) go back and look at the acknowledgment pages of finalists and semifinalists. I find that most poets place an inordinate and mistaken reliance on their publishing history in ordering poems (or in deciding to include certain poems). Many of us assume that because a journal editor smiled on a particular poem that it must be better than the poems not taken, or that a poem taken by Poetry or Agni must be better than one taken by a less well-known print or online publication. I am almost always amazed—amazed—on learning which poems have been taken and which not, and by whom. Nothing could be less relevant to creating a manuscript than whether and where the individual poems found a home. If you believe in your poems, and if you have good reason for believing that they belong together in a particular manuscript, then include them, and order them according to your own aesthetic judgment. Period.
11) Less is more. Keep your manuscript in the area of 48-64 pages – show your reader that you’ve done the important work of weeding and pruning.
15) Proof for the Big Abstractions (i.e., “infinity,” “eternity,”) – the 19th century is over.
16) Proof for small abstractions (i.e., “dark”) – the 19th century is still over.
20) Do you tend to sew up your poems with something willfully plangent (poetic with a capital “P”) or a Yoda-like dollop of wisdom?
21) Do you tend to begin your poems with a line or two (or an entire stanza) of throat clearing?
22) Re-read the two preceding questions. Pretend for argument’s sake that you’ve answered yes to both. Now look at each and every poem with fresh eyes and ask yourself: a) Where does each poem really want to start? b) Where does each poem really want to end? Make no mistake: these are deeply artistic matters we’re talking about, here masquerading as craft questions.
24) Don’t include dedications and thanks on a contest manuscript—there will be plenty of time for that later.
At the link above, there's all that and so much more that I wish I had known to consider when assembling my manuscript. It comes from a person who reads 3000 to 4000 poetry manuscripts a year, so sit up and take note. I sure did (for next time...please, let there be a next time).
Here's a sampling of his wisdom:
2) Every time we write a poem we announce to the world what we think a poem is. The poems you write when urging – wittingly or unconsciously – a particular aesthetic are the ones that belong in the same book. Spread all of your poems out on the floor, a floor that doesn’t need to be disturbed (easy for me to say, I know) and look at them. Read them. Live with them for days and days. See what relationships seem to be developing between the poems....Where do you see common images developing? In what directions do your various threads lead? What seem to be your concerns as a poet during this period of creativity, and how do they seem to want to group....
3) When ordering poems in your manuscript, pay no attention to which poems have been published (and where), and which poems not. At the conclusion of contests, I often (call me perverse) go back and look at the acknowledgment pages of finalists and semifinalists. I find that most poets place an inordinate and mistaken reliance on their publishing history in ordering poems (or in deciding to include certain poems). Many of us assume that because a journal editor smiled on a particular poem that it must be better than the poems not taken, or that a poem taken by Poetry or Agni must be better than one taken by a less well-known print or online publication. I am almost always amazed—amazed—on learning which poems have been taken and which not, and by whom. Nothing could be less relevant to creating a manuscript than whether and where the individual poems found a home. If you believe in your poems, and if you have good reason for believing that they belong together in a particular manuscript, then include them, and order them according to your own aesthetic judgment. Period.
11) Less is more. Keep your manuscript in the area of 48-64 pages – show your reader that you’ve done the important work of weeding and pruning.
15) Proof for the Big Abstractions (i.e., “infinity,” “eternity,”) – the 19th century is over.
16) Proof for small abstractions (i.e., “dark”) – the 19th century is still over.
20) Do you tend to sew up your poems with something willfully plangent (poetic with a capital “P”) or a Yoda-like dollop of wisdom?
21) Do you tend to begin your poems with a line or two (or an entire stanza) of throat clearing?
22) Re-read the two preceding questions. Pretend for argument’s sake that you’ve answered yes to both. Now look at each and every poem with fresh eyes and ask yourself: a) Where does each poem really want to start? b) Where does each poem really want to end? Make no mistake: these are deeply artistic matters we’re talking about, here masquerading as craft questions.
24) Don’t include dedications and thanks on a contest manuscript—there will be plenty of time for that later.
At the link above, there's all that and so much more that I wish I had known to consider when assembling my manuscript. It comes from a person who reads 3000 to 4000 poetry manuscripts a year, so sit up and take note. I sure did (for next time...please, let there be a next time).
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