Ada Limón

Mystery & Birds: 5 Ways to Practice Poetry

Joshua Marie Wilkinson is putting together a group of micro-essay for teaching poetry to beginning writers. Though I’m not really a teacher, he asked me nonetheless. And since I have so many dear dear friends beginning their semesters this week, this goes out to them. Thanks JMW for inviting me to participate.
Mystery & Birds: 5 Ways to Practice Poetry
Because I work outside of the academic field, I don’t get the
opportunity to teach very often, but when I do, I’m surprised by how
many people read poems as if they can have only one meaning. In my own
experience, I find it nearly impossible to hear the beauty and
meditative joy of a poem’s lines, or the sensual sounds of a syllable,
when I’m reading solely for narrative sense. So, I’ve come to think
that one of the first things to learn about poetry is to simply relax
in its mystery. We need to learn that a poem can have many meanings
and that it can be enjoyed without a complete understanding of the
poet’s intent. On a good day a poem might bring you great joy, on a
tough day, the same poem might reveal great agony, but the poem hasn’t
changed—it’s what you have brought to the poem that has changed. The
more you read a poem, the more time you spend with it, read it out
loud to yourself or to others, the more it will open to you—start to
wink and flirt and let you in. A poem is a complex living thing, its
multiple edges and many colors are what makes this singular art form
so difficult to define. There is an ancient Chinese Proverb that says,
“A bird sings not because he has an answer, but because he has a
song.” That is how I have come to think about poetry—that a poem isn’t
a problem to solve, but rather it’s a singular animal call that
contains multiple layers of both mystery and joy.
It’s that unique animal call that we have to carve out time for if we
really want to do the work that poetry requires. Though I admit I
struggle everyday to find the right balance between my writing
practice and the daily pressures of living, there are a few things
that help me remain true to the work of poetry. Although these may not
work for every writer, the following five points are what have kept me
writing poetry with greater ease and discipline on a daily basis.

01.13.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (5)

Don Share

Ready for…. Issue 2??

Yep. What would an Issue 1 be without an Issue 2?

11.20.08 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (5)

Javier Huerta

Literature of the Undocumented

I recently submitted a course description for a class I will be teaching next semester (si Dios quiere).

Javier Huerta
English R1B
Literature of the Undocumented
Book List: Diary of an Undocumented Immigrant, Ramón Tianguis Pérez; The People of Paper, Salvador Plascencia; The Elements of Style, Strunk and White.
A Course Reader will have additional readings.
Films: Bajo la misma luna/Under the Same Moon; (short film) AB 540 The Movie.
Course Description:
It is a curious thing how many documents attempt to document the undocumented. The texts we will read this semester ask us to engage our critical reading and writing skills on the topical question of undocumented immigration. We will turn our critical attention to articles from both sides of current debates on immigration in order to analyze and evaluate the efficacy of those arguments. In the literary works—a novel, a nonfiction diary, and poems—we will focus on those characters that are either defined by documents or by the lack of documents. We will also look at the significance of documents in our lives: birth certificates, driver’s licenses, school identification cards, passports, death certificates, etc.
The primary goal of this class is to develop students’ practical fluency in argumentative writing and research skills. Taking these texts as occasions to produce further writing on documents and the undocumented, students will write a couple of short writing assignments and a couple of long argumentative essays (each 8-10 pages long).

This class is one I believe I am uniquely qualified to teach and one I wish to continue to adapt and develop for different courses and different levels throughout my teaching career (si Dios quiere).

10.16.08 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (8)

Forrest Gander

University of Montana

If I were a young poet looking to apply to an MFA program, one of the places most attractive to me would be the Creative Writing Program at the University of Montana, and not only because Missoula is so convincingly beautiful.

10.05.08 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (13)

Javier Huerta

[priv-uh-lij, priv-lij]

I had the privilege of speaking to “underprivileged” high school students in El Paso’s lower valley last Friday. My Arte Publico Press contact—when I asked what I was supposed to talk about—said that I should just read my poems and share my “personal story,” The librarians and counselors who invited me to speak hoped students would connect with my “personal story” and be able to envision themselves succeeding academically despite their economic and language barriers. I wanted to say, please let’s not talk academic success until I pass my qualifying exams; I wanted to say, I really didn’t have it all that bad. What goes unnoticed, or at least unremarked, is how my personal story of underprivilege has afforded me certain privileges.
“Privilege” is used too often as an accusation. For example, when someone disagrees with us on an issue like politics and poetry, we tend to say something about how the other person’s privileged situation blinds him or her to the political nature of language. This type of charge is meant not to further debate but to end it. It should be added to the official list of logical fallacies. Call it ad privilegium. Those accused of “privilege” tend to take offense and deny the charge by citing some distant ancestor who may have had it rough at one point or another. Neither the accuser nor the accused admit their privileged status. “Privilege” is a dirty word, and no one wants to claim it.

09.24.08 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (5)

Don Share

The Name Game

As an adjunct to my Kneejerk Poetry list (and just in time for back to school shopping) I’m now assembling a list of names and phrases that are sure to generate controversy instantly. This list has been empirically tested, and is 100% guaranteed to work as advertised; no batteries required!
It’s all open source, so please add your own! Comment… criticize.. distribute freely!

09.02.08 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (25)

Don Share

Kneejerk poetics

There are certain notions about poetry that must apparently always automatically spring to mind. I’ve decided to start a list of them here.

08.25.08 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (66)

Linh Dinh

Check it out!

Since January, I’ve taught at the University of Montana, Naropa and Bard College. Interacting with roughly 70 students, about half of whom were MFA creative writing candidates, I discussed or recommended these writers, artists and works:
Poetry
-Michael Palmer.
-Myung Mi Kim.
-Harryette Mullen.
-César Vallejo’s The Complete Posthumous Poetry, as translated by Clayton Eshleman.
-Pablo Neruda’s “Walking Around,” as translated by W.S. Merwin, and his half great, half awful “Ode to the Sea.”
-Attila József’s “The Seventh.”
-Nazim Hikmet’s “On Living.”
-Miroslav Holub’s “Man Cursing the Sea.”
-Jerome Rothenberg’s anthology, Technicians of the Sacred.
-Clayton Eshleman’s “The Assault.”
-Amiri Baraka’s 2005, Naples recording of “Somebody Blew Up America.”
-Antonin Artaud.
-Henri Michaux.
-Arthur Rimbaud, in particular “Phrases” from Illuminations.
-Charles Baudelaire’s Paris Spleen.
-André Breton’s “Free Union,” as translated by David Antin.
-John Ashbery.
-Joseph Ceravolo.
-Paul Violi’s index poem.
-Ron Silliman.
-Kenneth Goldsmith.
-Bern Porter.
-K. Silem Mohammad’s Breathalyzer and Deer Head Nation.
-Drew Gardner’s “Chicks Dig War.”
-Kent Johnson’s Homage to the Last Avant Garde.
-Jeff Clark’s The Little Door Slides Back.
-Tracie Morris’ MP3s, “Black but Beautiful” and “Chain Gang.”
-Christian Bök.
-Angela Rawling’s reading in Iceland.
-Vietnamese proverbs.

08.04.08 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (15)