Ramblings

So I finished my first political poem the day before yesterday (minus one phrase that isn't all worked out yet). It's not that I was trying to write a political poem. And it's not that I've been avoiding writing a political poem until now either (and by political, I don't mean political in the sense that writing any poem is political, or in the sense that the personal is the political. I mean a poem espousing a point of view about how the world should be and fervently hoping others think so too.)

Here's how it happened. At first I was just writing about a personal anecdote, and when I got to the end of it, it didn't seem done. So I invented the next part of the story. Then I got stuck. So I remembered some advice I'd read once about what to try when you are stuck and here's what it is: say the opposite. Whatever it is you just said, say the opposite of it. Abut that opposite right up against the original and see what the tension does, or erase the original and replace it with the opposite and see what happens. Either of those strategies can be worth trying when stuck. And so I did. And what happened was that suddenly there was a point of view to this poem.

And I'm not sure how I feel about having written a political poem. I never thought I would simply because it didn't seem consistent with my...with my what? With my something....

And some people may read the poem and not know it is political. Lots of silly wordplay in it which helps take the edge off for one thing. And for another thing, it's not dogmatic, or I hope it's not. And it's religio-political, or politico-religious. I mean, it's about respect for the separation of religion and non-religion, and respect for the beliefs of others. It's actually anti-dogmatic.

Okay, enough said.

So just by chance I happened last night to also read a book, part-memoir part-rant, which dealt with politics and art and punctuation and more. What I'm talking about is Kurt Vonnegut's A Man Without a Country (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2005), which you really must read if you are a Vonnegut fan, and even if you are not.

To whet your appetite, I include a few random samplings from the book.

About science in art (a subject dear to me): "As an undergraduate at Cornell I was a chemistry major because my brother was a big-shot chemist. Critics feel that a person cannot be a serious artist and also have had a technical background, which I had. I know that customarily English departments in universities, without knowing what they're doing, teach dread of the engineering department, the physics department, and the chemistry department. And this fear, I think, is carried over into criticism. Most of our critics are products of the English departments and are very suspicious of anyone who takes an interest in technology. So, anyway, I was a chemistry major, but I'm always winding up as a teacher in English departments, so I've brought scientific thinking to literature. There's been very little gratitude for this."

About willfully uninformed political leadership: "Persuasive guessing has been at the core of leadership for so long, for all of human experience so far, that it is wholly unsurprising that most of the leaders of this planet, in spite of all the information that is suddenly ours, want the guessing to go on. It is now their turn to guess and guess and be listened to. Some of the loudest, most proudly ignorant guessing in the world is going on in Washington today. Our leaders are sick of all  the solid information that has been dumped on humanity by research and scholarship and investigative reporting. They think that the whole country is sick of it, and they could be right. It isn't the gold standard that they want to put us back on. They want something even more basic. They want to put us back on the snake-oil standard."

And Vonnegut quotes his friend, the graphic artist Saul Steinberg, whose answer to Vonnegut's query if he (Steinburg) was gifted was: "No, but what you respond to in any work of art is the artist's struggle against his or her limitations."

About semi-colons, Vonnegut has (by now) famously said: "They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college."

Thank goodness he didn't come down hard on my favorite punctuation mark, the colon, which I posted about here at Punk Punk-tuation.

Well, this is my third post today, and a long one, and one that dared mention the dreaded politics. So I am sure you've had enough of me and the way I use the word "so" far too often (which Vonnegut does too--yay, I'm in good company). I've had enough of me. So, farewell for now.

Filter in the News

I know I keep inundating you with news about the new volume of Filter coming out at the end of this week, but I have to share the following article with you: "Party in a Box" by Paul Constant on The Stranger website. This gives the best description I've heard yet of what the new box edition of Filter looks and feels like.

Each box takes six hours to put together! Six hours of volunteers' time! Now that's dedication.

I can't wait to get my copy.

If you want to know how to get yours, check out my previous post, Reminder to Check Your Filter. And if you're in Seattle this weekend, go to the party! Where else can you meet people this dedicated to personalized art and publication?

Managing Your Manuscript

New post on the Ploughshares' blog by Peter Kline, about managing your manuscript, ordering your poems, making sure the voice is consistent. If that's what's on your mind these days, check it out.

Writing is Not Lonely

Andrea Cumbo at her blog Andilit.com features a post called Writing is Not Lonely, But Avoiding It Is. She makes the case that when writing one is never lonely--one enjoys spaciousness and wholeness; it's all the things one does to avoid writing that exacerbates loneliness. Check out her blog to be reminded of why we write, and how illogical it is for us to avoid it.

Poetic Productivity

This has been a hard week. One son and I have run fevers for (slightly overlapping) portions of the week, necessitating staying home and either administering care or resting, and not getting stuff done in each case. One son went off to a 5-day nature camp with his grade at school, requiring much preparation. I finished up a series of job interviews and performed some tasks to show I was qualified for the job (and got the job, yay). Did six interviews in ten days for a company I sometimes do some work for. Attended a memorial service for a relative who died seven years ago (as is tradition in Japan). So basically I am worn out. Just plain tired.

And then I got an offer. A writing offer. Which required that I have a certain number of unpublished poems available by a certain time. And guess what? I don't have anywhere near that number of poems ready. There's still time before the deadline, but to meet it I would have to be more productive poetically than I've ever been. But it's an interesting offer and it would be a shame to miss it. So do I try, even if it feels unrealistic, particularly in my exhausted state?

So naturally, I've been thinking about productivity in writing. I've been very fortunate in the last year to have had work solicited from a number of journals, and every time, it wipes out my stockpile of finished work. Not that I'm complaining. It's a wonderful thing to have work solicited, extremely gratifying. But it leaves me in a position in which I don't have much finished work lying around at any moment, making me feel that I've been unproductive. But actually, my productivity this year has been about average, which isn't all that great. It takes me a long time to write each poem (thank goodness I don't do them one at a time, but still....)

So what can I do to increase my productivity, other than spending more hours sitting in my chair attempting to write? Maybe experiment with writing at different times of the day to see if there is a more productive time than the one I usually use as writing time? Are you more productive at certain times of the day?

The periods when I've written more poems than my normal rate have been  when  I committed to myself to write a poem a week, or something such as that. Do commitments like that encourage creativity in you?

Also, writing around a theme helps me. Lines or images I come up with that don't belong in the poem I'm currently working on can often be used in another poem if I'm working on a series. Any similar experiences? Or better yet, any good themes come to mind, as I'm not working on a series right now....

But what else can I do? I'm in need of some ideas here, poets, if you've got any.