Where are all the working poets?

With the passing this week of Philip Levine the literary world heaves with loss.

A Pulitzer Prize-winner, Levine served as U.S. poet laureate from 2011- 2102, and while his death was not a surprise — he was 87 and in failing health — the greater sadness is that he represented a rapidly disappearing type of writer: the working man's poet.

Levine was an auto-worker turned writer who grew up in Detroit.

“I saw that the people that I was working with . . . were voiceless in a way,” he explained in Detroit Magazine. “In terms of the literature of the United States they weren’t being heard. Nobody was speaking for them. . . I took this foolish vow that I would speak for them and that’s what my life would be."

While many poets work in universities as professors or in literary jobs related to publishing, working class poets seem scant. And their voices, when we stumble upon them, feel fresh and real.

Where are the working poets?

I'm thinking of Mather Schneider, a cab driver in Arizona.

And the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering, an annual celebration of rural American West. The event is held every January in Elko, Nevada and for over 30 years has drawn a robust collection of working cowboys and ranching families expressing their culture through poetry, music and storytelling.

And the Fisher Poets Gathering, an annual celebration of commercial fishermen and fisherwomen poets. The event takes place in late February in Astoria, Oregon, and features over 75 fisher poets performing music, poetry and prose. "It's not just old guys looking backward," says founder Jon Broderick. "We hear the voices of people from across the commercial fishing spectrum: deckhands, skippers and cannery workers, young and old, women and men, west coast and east."

What Work Is

We stand in the rain in a long line
waiting at Ford Highland Park. For work.
You know what work is—if you’re
old enough to read this you know what
work is, although you may not do it.
Forget you. This is about waiting,
shifting from one foot to another.
Feeling the light rain falling like mist
into your hair, blurring your vision
until you think you see your own brother
ahead of you, maybe ten places.
You rub your glasses with your fingers,
and of course it’s someone else’s brother,
narrower across the shoulders than
yours but with the same sad slouch, the grin
that does not hide the stubbornness,
the sad refusal to give in to
rain, to the hours of wasted waiting,
to the knowledge that somewhere ahead
a man is waiting who will say, “No,
we’re not hiring today,” for any
reason he wants. You love your brother,
now suddenly you can hardly stand
the love flooding you for your brother,
who’s not beside you or behind or
ahead because he’s home trying to   
sleep off a miserable night shift
at Cadillac so he can get up
before noon to study his German.
Works eight hours a night so he can sing
Wagner, the opera you hate most,
the worst music ever invented.
How long has it been since you told him
you loved him, held his wide shoulders,
opened your eyes wide and said those words,
and maybe kissed his cheek? You’ve never
done something so simple, so obvious,
not because you’re too young or too dumb,
not because you’re jealous or even mean
or incapable of crying in
the presence of another man, no,   
just because you don’t know what work is.

- Philip Levine

Thankful Thursday: How to sleep & write


Step off assuredly into the blank of your mind.

Something will come to you.

- Richard Wilbur


This week I stumbled across these words and took them as encouragement. On this Thankful Thursday, I am thankful for gentle reminders.

The line is from Walking to Sleep, a poem by Richard Wilbur — but I didn't know the lines were from a poem, and didn't even know it was referring to sleep (I found the lines here, in an interview with Anne Tyler). Later, I found the poem and an interview in which Wilbur says "this is a poem about advising someone else on how to get off to sleep."

All week I thought he was offering an insider tip on how to write. But no matter, we take words when and how we need 'em. Maybe my gratitude is for these words, and maybe my gratitude is for the pathways that lead to the people and places that harbor just what I need.

 

Gratitude. Appreciation. Praise.

It's Thankful Thursday, a weekly pause to express appreciation for people, places, things, and more.

What are you thankful for today?

 

And yet


To have loved
and to have suffered. To have waited
for nothing, and for nothing to have come.

— Laura Kasischke

 

A teen girl is shot in the street.

A young man dies on a college campus.

A mother throws her son off a bridge.

Within days, inevitably, a vigil. Candles on cue, to a refrain that has played too many times: This community comes together in support.

But what good is it now, our hand-wringing and alarm, this cooing disguised as comfort?

We are urgent with a terrorized sort of sadness. We come together. But every day we are divided, by politics and opinions, by wounds and hurts. It seems only tragedy binds us.

___

It’s easy to feel stricken. Difficult to put love into action day after day.

___

A friend cried through the Super Bowl commercials. Were the ads that touching, she asks, or is that I've been sick all week and my resistance is low?

Some days a slice of light against the wood floor can break me open.

But isn’t that what we all need now, to feel more?

Let us lower our resistance.

___

And yet. The hand-wringing. The calls for change. It’s exhausting.

Because our pleas ring hollow, small. We feel so much but do so little.

___

But what action, really, would be substantial, meaningful, enough?

___

So long I was surrounded by vitality. Now, neighbors, friends, and family are dying. This is not new. But the sting is fresh.

A friend offers what seems simple but sage advice: “Just love them now and for the rest of your days and know that they love you.”

Loving, then, is that easy? And that hard.

___

I get a massage, but what I really want is a spiritual experience. Strong hands to dig through flesh to find gristle and bone, to excise the deep cavities where sadness takes hold. I want to be remade, cleansed, and spare.

___

The night is briny and thick. Somewhere, someone, is sinking. Someone is always dying.

___

Death is sorrowful but not tragic. Let us not turn this into a project.

___

And yet, let us not turn away.

 

 

Thankful Thursday: 50

Gratitude. Appreciation. Praise.

It's Thankful Thursday, a weekly pause to express appreciation for people, places, things, and more. Please join me.  

The world is big, my gratitudes many:

1.
searchers, seekers, doubters, thinkers

2.
honeycrisp apples

3.
sunny mornings

4.
signs and reminders

5.
socks

6.
the concept of "literary citizenship"

7.
daffodils in February

8.
cashmere

9.
kindness

10.
good wine for $10 (or less)

11.
this poem 

12.
and this poem  

13.
quiet

14.
soup (making, eating)

15.
finding my words in unexpected places (this and this)

16.
attribution (because giving credit is good, and, well, see above)

17.
Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen

18.
nuts, especially sweet

19.
this essay by Heather King

20.
blue skies (as weather and metaphor)

21.
the "good" family genes: wide smile, bright eyes, bleeding heart

22.
teachers who cared: Mrs. Allison, Mrs. Trembath, Stanton Englehart

23.
Summer Camp Writers

24.
television with great writing/direction/acting: Treme, The Wire

25.
the films Robin Williams left us: Good Will Hunting, Awakenings, Patch Adams

26.
being useful

27.
moving in water: swimming, kayaking, paddleboarding, soaking, floating, gazing, lazing

28.
writers and artists who tell me their favorite books

29.
poetry in unexpected places: laundromats, hair salons, bars, alleys, telephone poles . . .

30.
a mentor-turned-friend

31.
letters, handwritten

32.
bubble baths

33.
secrets

34.
going to a party/dinner/event I don't want to attend, and having fun

35.
stretches of time to read unfettered

36.
libraries

37.
post office, mailbox, "real" mail

38.
Carnegie Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art

39.
thrift and consignment stores

40.
books that get me energized to write (this, this, and this)

41.
deadlines and structure

42.
a haircut

43.
Powell's Books, because it shelves new and used snug together in a democracy of literature

44.
letting go

45.
long summer days

46.
young writers who grow up, move on, away, and then send me letters, postcards, rocks, cookies, poems . . .

47.
this explanation by Terry Tempest Williams

48.
endurance

49.
people with quick wit and easy laughter

50.
Dr. Teal's Epsom Salt Soaking Solution

 

What are you thankful for today?


Stacked

Happiness is a fresh stack of books. I can't wait to dig into these:

Small Disasters Seen in Sunlight — new poetry by Julia B. Levine, a psychologist working with abused children. Her previous book, Ditch Tender, is one of my favorites

Be Thrifty: How to Live Better with Less — because I'm a minimalist who loves discounts and deals (note: I bought a used copy)

Dear Thief by Samantha Harvey — a novel/letter/love story

Deep Water by Patricia Highsmith — this is my first venture into this revered writer's psychological thrillers

Shadows of the Workhouse by Jennifer Worth — second book in the Call the Midwife series (which the PBS show is based upon)

Euphoria, by Lily King — her newest novel (I liked her last book, Father of the Rain)

Delicious!, by Ruth Reichl — though she's written numerous books, this is the restaurant critic's first work of fiction (Tender at the Bone was a fantastic memoir of her childhood)

 

What's on your shelf? What are you eager to read?

 

Thankful Thursday: Drive-Thru


Dear Driver of the Car In Front of Me at Starbucks:

When we pulled up for our coffees, the barista said, "Your drinks have been paid for by the car ahead of you."

You were driving away, anonymous and generous. I like your style.

We were stunned and giddy.

"This happens pretty often," she said. "You'd be surprised."

The world, and people, can be so darn nice.

Thanks for reminding me.

xo

Drew


Gratitude. Praise. Appreciation. Please join me for Thankful Thursday, a weekly pause to express appreciation for people, places, things, and more. What are you thankful for today?

 

One line at a time


But for all poets, it’s not their

books that I go back to, that I consider

important, but it’s a few, or maybe many,

poems. I read one poem at a time and

almost one line at a time. The line is the

most important element of a poem,

of poetry, to me.


- Rick Campbell

 

Please join me at Push Pull Books, where I host 3 Good Books
and ask writers to share their favorite books and influences.

 

Thankful Thursday: Why I Write Letters

1.
It's the gentle gesture that draws me, the curve of letters, the slope of a signature, the cross-out in mid-thought. I like letters, the way they slow time to invite reflection for both writer and reader. Letters are tender reminders that feeling is first, just as e.e cummings says.

2.
To celebrate National Handwriting Day on January 23, a friend who owns a wine shop is giving a free glass of wine to anyone who writes her a letter, postcard or note.

3.
Writer and reader share a special language through letters. In each envelope, we seal a message that says, I look for you in these pages, and see my own reflection too.

4.
"In a letter," writes Anne Carson in The Beauty of the Husband, "both reader and writer discover an ideal image of themselves, short blinding passages are all it takes."

5.
Some of my most satisfying writing is rooted in letters. In these of-the-moment conversations, nothing is planned, prepared or overthought.

6.
"The world is full of paper," says Agha Shahid Ali, "Write to me."

 

Gratitude. Praise. Appreciation. Please join me in Thankful Thursday, a weekly pause to express appreciation for people, places, things, and more. What are you thankful for today?

 

Why I bristle when you say you're blessed

New Year's Eve

However busy you are, you should still reserve
One evening a year for thinking about your double,
The man who took the curve on Conway Road
Too fast, given the icy patches that night,
But no faster than you did; the man whose car
When it slid through the shoulder
Happened to strike a girl walking alone
From a neighbor's party to her parents' farm,
While your car struck nothing more notable
Than a snowbank.

One evening for recalling how soon you transformed
Your accident into a comic tale
Told first at a body shop, for comparing
That hour of pleasure with his hour of pain
At the house of the stricken parents, and his many
Long afternoons at the Lutheran graveyard.

If nobody blames you for assuming your luck
Has something to do with you character,
Don't blame him for assuming that his misfortune
Is somehow deserved, that justice would be undone
If his extra grief was balanced later
By a portion of extra joy.

Lucky you, whose personal faith has widened
To include an angel assigned to protect you
From the usual outcome of heedless moments.
But this evening consider the angel he lives with,
The stern enforcer who drives the sinners
Out of the Garden with a flaming sword
And locks the gate.

— Carl Dennis

This poem appeared in The New Yorker
and was reprinted in The Best Spiritual Writing 2013.

 

Great Books of 2014

I like these long lazy days after Christmas and before New Year. It's a quiet lull in which I am suspended in books. Page after page, chapter after chapter, it's read, read, read, and repeat. 

As the year comes to a close, I'm looking back at some of my favorites:

6 Great Books I Read This Year 

Americanah
by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
An insightful novel that deftly wraps love, race, satire, and heart into one strong, sweeping story.

 

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
by Karen Joy Fowler
This odd novel shines with a narrator that turns a screwball premise into a captivating story of full-hearted love.

 

Madness, Rack & Honey
by Mary Ruefle
This collection of lectures from writer/poet/artist Mary Ruefle reads more like flashes and insights from your most creative, smart, wise and eccentric friend/professor/aunt.

 


This is the Story of a Happy Marriage
by Ann Patchett
Long before she wrote the best-selling novel Bel Canto, Patchett wrote for the New York Times, Vogue, Outside, and other magazines. In this collection of articles and essays, she shows unexpected heart, wit, pace and style.

 
Make Lemonade
by Virginia Euwer Wolff
It's rare to find a book for young teens that's rooted in the grit of reality. Written in free verse, this slim but powerful novel offers an unusually credible view of poverty, struggle and hope.


The Madwoman in the Volvo
by Sandra Tsing Loh
A witty, funny and immensely entertaining gaze into the muck of middle age.

  

How was your reading year? What's on your list?

 

More Good Books:

Favorite Books 2013 

Great Novels 2012 

Great Poetry Books 

Poetry That Shaped Me


Good Books: Inner Lives

“I am the daughter, granddaughter, and sister of psychiatrists so I have always been drawn to the inner stories of people," says artist and avid reader Sharon Bond Brown.

Over at Push Pull Books, I ask writers and artists to share their favorite books on a given topic.

Why? Because when we read, creativity stirs, and when we create, our lives expand.

Go here to discover Sharon's favorite books on women's ordinary lives.

What books would you add to the list?

 

Be a winner!


Need a break from all that shopping? It's time to give yourself a gift.

Enter the drawing to win The Existentialist Cookbook, a smart, sharp, tender collection of poems by Shawnte Orion.

The poems are strong, and the writer is real. Here's what I mean: 

I don’t want poetry to be confined or limited to the niche demographic of People Who Like   Poetry.  I’m no professor. I didn’t come out of a University writing program. I’m a “regular” person with a normal job, so I believe poetry can be relevant and appreciated in anyone’s world.

— Shawnte Orion

Go here to read the interview and enter the drawing.
Don't delay. Deadline is Saturday, December 20, 2014.

If you win, I'll mail the book anywhere in the world, at no charge, and for this special occasion I'll include a handwritten, homemade, all-natural, good-natured, personalized, holiday letter written just for you.

A free book and old-fashioned, personalized mail — now that's a merry Christmas.

* Note: I'm giving this book as a gift to my
favorite people who think they don't like poetry.
They'll read these poems and discover they really do!


Thankful Thursday: Shift

Shelly Modes - Start with the Heart

Sometimes it doesn't take much.

You drive a new route. You read a new book. You wake early, or sleep late.

Sometimes it takes more to shift your perspective — a vacation, an illness, something that jars and alarms, something that disrupts the flow.

My head has been deep in a list of plans and tasks, gifts to buy, people to see, places to go. This week I am thankful for the small shift out of myself.

The other day I was Santa's helper, greeting children and taking photos at a community center bustling with holiday cheer. Piles of cookies and candies lined the room, while a choir sang off-key but earnest as families chatted and children squealed. In this delightful chaos, children lined up dozens deep to meet Santa Claus.

These were not tots with trendy clothes and savvy parents, but children with bare necessities and struggling households. With reverence the youngsters walked toward the big bearded man. Child after child quietly whispered their wants. Legos, dolls, Easy Bake ovens. The desires were not fancy or large. There were no lists, no demands, just tender awe and adoration.

In the background a rise of voices joined together in Silent Night, and my own voice quaked with realization. My to-do list felt distant, my own desires petty. In the immediate clamor of need and love and trust, all this was Christmas.

Sometimes it takes so wonderfully little to change our world, to shift our perspective.

 

Gratitude. Appreciation. Praise. Please join me for Thankful Thursday, a weekly pause to give thanks for people, places, and things in our lives. What are you thankful for today?

 

Let me see who you are

Who are you?

The literary you. The writer you. The poet you. The professional you?

It's a hyphen-/slash world in which most of us juggle multiple roles. Like a closet full of clothes (though nothing to wear), I've created a menagerie of personal statements to explain who I am. Marketing me/reporter me/editor/poet/teacher/reader . . .

It's difficult to write about yourself without appearing a braggart or a dullard. I've got many versions that do the job but never really shine (see also: pencil skirt hanging in the back of my closet). I tug at the words, worrying that they're too stiff, too long, too little, too much.

I don't like cutesy bios, in which a writer gets too familiar or too clever. Don't tell me your favorite foods or your cat's name, and don't share the bloated tale of how you've been writing since age two. I'm old school: keep it third person and professional.

Why this concern with the self? If you're sending your work into the world, you need a bio. We want to know the person behind the words. Who doesn't turn to the back of the book to learn about the author? And anytime your writing goes public — from novels, to poems, to blogs, to reading events and teaching gigs — you'll need a bio, and preferably short and engaging.

Here's my latest favorite bio, from Christopher McCurry as it appears in the back pages of Rattle. It breaks the literary norm in that it's not a tiresome litany of his publishing history. Instead it gives a quick but meaningful peek at who he is: 

I write poems because a high school English teacher in Bourbon County, Kentucky, believed I could, and now I want my students to believe that they can write them too. Actually, I want everyone to believe that."


In those two sentences, we learn so much: the writer lived in the South, and he is now a teacher with heart. Knowing this about him, I am eager to read more of his work.

Short, succinct, humble — that's my kind of bio, and my kind of writer.

 

Who are you? How do you shine in 50 words or less?

 

 

Fast Five with Shawnte Orion


I never noticed the difference

between naked and exposed

until your sweater was puddled on my floor

and your shoulders remained covered

in kaleidoscopic swirls of ink. A tattooed

cartography of memories and myths.

Sleeves I could never remove.

- Shawnte Orion, Sleeveless


Because a few questions can lead to great insight, I'm happy to present Fast Five — interviews with my favorite writers, and chances to win great books. (To enter the drawing, simply post your name and contact info in the comments section below).

Shawnte Orion takes poetry to the streets, bars, laundromats and more. His work has been published in numerous literary journals, including Crab Creek Review, Barrelhouse and New York Quarterly. He lives in Surprise, Arizona, and has been named one of 100 Phoenix Creatives.

In his debut poetry collection, The Existentialist Cookbook, Orion sifts through the absurdity of modern life for scraps of philosophy, religion, and mathematics to blend into recipes for elegies and celebrations.

You often perform your work in non-traditional settings: bars, hair salons, museums, laundromats, and street corners. Why?

I don’t want poetry to be confined or limited to the niche demographic of People Who Like Poetry. I’m no professor. I didn’t come out of a University writing program. I’m a “regular” person with a normal job, so I believe poetry can be relevant and appreciated in anyone’s world. I love occasions when I get to read to people who aren’t usually exposed to poetry. Whether they left the house for the sole purpose of doing their laundry or seeing a punk band, I like the challenge and reward of trying to hold their attention and maybe even win them over.
 
The Existentialist Cookbook, your first full-length book, offers a great blend of sharp and smart poems mixed with wonderfully tender and touching pieces. Was this range intentional?

Yes. I experience the world through an array of emotions and moods and I want my poetry to reflect that spectrum. Times when I am withdrawn and pensive are as integral to my process as moments of hilarity. This might have worked against me with certain presses who prefer a more unified “voice” but fortunately Raymond Hammond and NYQBooks appreciated my amalgamated poetics. I don’t necessarily want this collection to contradict itself, but it should contain multitudes.
 
Your poems are quick-witted, full of clever word play and pop culture references, and peppered with such engaging titles as, "Love in the Time of Hand-Sanitizer" and "Unable to Surface for Air During Shark Week." Who (or what) has influenced your writing?

Before I started getting into poetry, the songwriters and filmmakers I was obsessed with in my youth left an imprint on the way I approach poems (Soundgarden and Frank Black music- Antonioni and Ingmar Bergman films, for example). Back in middle school, I also paid a lot of attention to what stand up comics could accomplish on a stage with nothing but words and perspective. It wasn’t until I took a workshop with Denise Duhamel that I began to realize how much crossover there was between the poet and stand up comic worlds. She pointed out that Denis Leary started out as a poet (even published in Ploughshares). I looked up one of the comedians I remember most (John Wing) and found that he published a few poetry books. Influences are a small world after all.
 
Your book bio says you “attended community college for one day” but that your poems have appeared in many respected literary journals. How did you come to poetry, and how did you “learn” to write?

My French teacher in 7th, 8th and 12th grade, Elaine Phelps, had our class work with poetry to understand the language. Translating and discussing the poems of Jacques Prevert showed me how efficiently ideas and experiences could be conveyed through a handful of lines. Once I started reading lots of contemporary poetry, it wasn’t always the brilliant stuff that taught me the most. Often times, it was noticing where and how certain poems fell apart that “taught“ me what I wanted to avoid.

What’s the best writing advice you’ve received?

Continually revisit the poems you thought were finished weeks, months, even years ago. A little bit of distance can create a lot of clarity.
 
Bonus Question: I’m a word collector and keep a running list of favorite words. What are your favorite words?
 
I also try to keep lists, so here are a few of my most recent additions:

reticulated

innuendo

thigmotropic

Win this book!
Enter a drawing to win The Existential Cookbook by Shawnte Orion. Simply add your name and contact info in the comments section by December 20, 2014. I'll randomly (eyes closed!) choose a name from the entries, and the winner will be contacted via email.