Despite Obstacles, Why Poetry Matters

After a bout with the fake flu that everyone is giving to each other like a hot potato that you don’t want to catch, the Steiny Road Poet is back from what she will now call her Life of Poetry tour. This is the tour that started January 15, 2013, in San Francisco with Poetry in Red Dress that offered poems of Muriel Rukeyser and Gertrude Stein and featured Karren Alenier, Mary Mackey, Evelyn Posamentier, and Margo Taft Stever and concluded January 20, 2013, in Venice, California, with Beyond Baroque:East & West Coast Poets that showcased Karren Alenier, Andrea Carter Brown, David Del Bourgo, and Margo Taft Stever. More about this tour shortly but first the Steiny Poet wants to talk about how poetry in America is treated.

HAVE POETS GONE POSTAL?

Apparently The Washington Post opinion writer Alexandra Petri has been stirring the embers where sick potatoes are roasted to raise the same old question about whether poetry is dead. In the Saturday January 26, 2013, print edition of The Washington Post, the editors finally saw fit to print Richard Blanco’s poem of elegant heft “One Today,” which he presented at the public swearing in of Barack Obama for a second term as president of the United States. In the same print edition, the Post editors also published Petri’s essay “Ode to an obsolete art” where she sarcastically wrote, “Poets are like the Postal Service—a group of people sedulously doing something that we no longer need, under the misapprehension that they are offering us a vital service.” Petri also stated, “We have movies now capable of presenting images to us with a precision that would have made Ezra Pound keel over. All the things that poetry used to do, other things do much better.” What Mad Men sold Ms. Petri this bill of goods?

While Ms. Petri, a 2010 undergraduate of Harvard knows her ancient poetry assuring us that all literature in its day—The Iliad, The Odyssey, Gilgamesh—used to be poetry, she apparently has not read Muriel Rukeyser’s The Life of Poetry. Rukeyser, who had a thick FBI dossier and who worked in Hollywood as a film cutter, said in her book published in 1949 that Americans see poetry fit to be “passed on but not … used” except for ads and greeting cards. According to Rukeyser, good poetry is “time-resistant more than monuments.” She said Americans fear poetry not only because they are afraid of not being able to understand it, but also it might expose their feelings and cause them to respond. She says poetry prepares the reader for action in perhaps unexpected ways, ways associated with emotional exposure.

Rukeyser said the images produced by Hollywood are all about advertising. Rukeyser was enlisted to work with the WWII effort to fight against Fascism, but ad people elbowed out the creative thinkers saying the people at home during wartime were customers (as opposed to citizens) who needed to just win without considering the meaning of what the country was fighting against and for. She also wrote in her manifesto, “The writer becoming an employee in Hollywood, forced to conform to a code which dictates emotional limits, and producing material which can be censored and re-arranged, with or without his knowledge, is a key figure in our society.” Why? Because movies are part of our every day fare? Why shouldn't poetry fill this gap?

LESSONS FROM THE LIFE OF POETRY TOUR

So now that Steiny Poet has completed her Life of Poetry tour in California, the question most people would ask is what difference did it make? Actually, the better question is what was learned?

Lesson Number 1—the literary community in San Francisco does not support its writers. Two outsiders, Karren Alenier of the Washington DC area and Margo Stever of the Greater New York City area landed at the San Francisco airport on January 12, scrambled over to an Alameda meeting of 20 plus women poets of the Greater San Francisco Bay area, read poems with this group for two hours (everyone sharing their own work) and got exactly one person in attendance at the Poetry in Red Dress reading and that one person had been someone that Alenier had attended three of her readings held in the DC area over a period of several years. Two of the Red Dress poets—Evelyn Posamentier and Mary Mackey—were San Francisco area poets well known to this salon. Salon member said during that warm and gracious salon reception that there were too many readings going on in the Bay Area and they were not sure what to do about it.  However, everyone agreed that it was important to keep on doing readings. Also despite several emails to Joyce Jenkins of Poetry Flash and help from a Poetry Flash insider, no notice of Red Dress was listed in their community calendar.

Lesson Number 2—don’t count on local writers in San Francisco to draw audience. While the Steiny Poet and her traveling mate Margo Stever were trying to arrange a reading in The City by the Bay, one desperate bookseller, who later apologized but nonetheless did not schedule a reading for Red Dress, demanded that book sales and audience count be guaranteed. The fact was Red Dress at Books and Bookshelves had a respectable audience numbering around 30 people and over $275 worth of books was sold.

Lesson Number 3—the most interesting reactions come from audience who were not literary writers. Poetry in Red Dress which had a script that included group readings of work by Rukeyser and Alenier as well as solo readings by each participating poet and presentation of poems by Gertrude Stein, got such comments as:

“I go to a lot of poetry readings with my wife (this was science professor by training) and this program was so interesting and well done. It may be the best I have ever experienced.”

“I enjoyed the variety of subject matter in the poetry and the pacing. I am now excited to go back to reading poetry which I haven’t done in a long time.” (Artistic director of an Asian-style theater company)

Lesson Number 4—don’t underestimate efforts at blogging and social media like Facebook and twitter. What really made the Steiny Poet’s day for Red Dress was having a couple show up who said they came because they read about it in the Poet’s blog posts.

Lesson Number 5—Californians have a much more laid back approach to how they handle things that can frustrate the get-it-right-the-first-time East Coaster. Beyond Baroque, a struggling arts organization with budget issues (just like every other nonprofit in America), took weeks to get an announcement up on their website calendar and then the information was incorrect and, worse, accented information that had no relevance to the workshop and reading that Alenier and Stever orchestrated. Slowly things were corrected. The Steiny knew from talking to a San Francisco poet who had also scheduled a Beyond Baroque workshop and reading that if there was to be any audience at all, it was strictly up to participating poets.

Lesson Number 6—reach out to people whom you want to see in your audience with personal one-on-one conversations well before the event. The Steiny Poet and her travel mate did this for both the Red Dress and Beyond Baroque readings. It worked in both cases and especially interesting was that a member of Alenier’s Coursera Modern Poetry class showed for the Beyond Baroque workshop and the brand newly appointed poet laureate of Los Angeles Eloise Klein Healy attended the BB reading much to the pleasure of everyone associated with the arts center and those in the audience. Also Alenier was able to connect with her former teacher James Ragan (well known at Beyond Baroque and a poet who has read his work to thousands on international stages) who brought his daughter, the poet Tera Vale Ragan.

In the end, the communication of poetry in America still goes between a small number of people. Giving poetry readings is a kind of frontier, where only the brave or foolish travel. Those of us, who carry a torch for poetry, do it because we know it adds meaning to our lives and we hope to the lives of others. For Alenier and Stever, this was not a vanity tour. Both extended themselves to other writers living and not. Both hoped to pass on knowledge about why living the life of poetry matters.

ONE TODAY

And while Alenier missed the live reading of Richard Blanco’s “One Today” because she was flying back from her Life of Poetry tour , she would be happy to illuminate why Blanco’s poem, written for a special occasion in our American history, will be “time-resistant more than monuments.” For starters, think about how it evokes Martin Luther King’s I-had-a-dream speech, the Newtown murders of 20 little children, and 9/11 without prosaic commentary.

All of us as vital as the one light we move through,

the same light on blackboards with lessons for the day:

equations to solve, history to question, or atoms imagined,

the "I have a dream" we all keep dreaming,

or the impossible vocabulary of sorrow that won't explain

the empty desks of twenty children marked absent

today, and forever.

One sky: since the Appalachians and Sierras claimed

their majesty, and the Mississippi and Colorado worked

their way to the sea. Thank the work of our hands:

weaving steel into bridges, finishing one more report

for the boss on time, stitching another wound

or uniform, the first brush stroke on a portrait,

or the last floor on the Freedom Tower

jutting into a sky that yields to our resilience.

(excerpts from Richard Blanco’s “One Today”)

Copyright © 2013 Richard Blanco

WHAT’S NEXT

No, Alexandra Petri, poetry is not dead and there is no hot potato to catch. It’s time for you to go out with your friends and support what poets do. And by the way, Natasha Trethewey, our new American poet laureate, is reading at the Library of Congress January 30 on the subject of the civil war and how it still affects us today. Ask Ms. Trethewey if poetry matters. Ask her if poetry is dead.

Basking in the Digital Light of an Ebook

Sunday December  30, 2012, in a Washington Post editorial essay titled “Vanishing Ink,” Kathleen Parker has articulated quite well the place where those of who read sit – the crack between print on paper versus light-infused digital text.  She writes—and the Steiny Road Poet read this from the pulpy, dirty news paper that was delivered to her door by a human paper courier—“Tension between man and machine is an old science-fiction plot that just happens no longer to be fictional.”

To Kathleen Parker’s thoughts, the Steiny Road Poet would like to add the following.

As the year closes, she is reading her first Ebook and is really enjoying the experience. Choosing to read Prague Spring by David Del Bourgo happened this way: time is running out before she meets this writer and reads poetry with him at Beyond Baroque inVenice, California, on January 20, 2013. While the Steiny Poet does not own an E reader, her husband Jim does and his IPad with a Kindle app made it possible to instantaneously acquire the book at the low price of $.99 from Amazon.

Now she sees there are other advantages. For example, there is no problem with where to store the book when she is finished reading it.

As a publisher of contemporary poetry—the Steiny Poet has been involved as a leader with The Word Works, a small press publisher, for over thirty years and she knows the problems of book storage all too well. Periodically she is called upon to visit their book storage unit where boxes of books have been stacked up for years awaiting distribution through sale or donation. Book inventory requires brawn—boxes have to be picked up and moved. Book inventory is necessary periodically to find books that might be in short supply.

While you, Dear Reader, might be questioning what the copy of Prague Spring has to do with The Word Works, the Steiny Poet says book storage in her personal quarters shared with her husband Jim is a microcosm of The Word Works book storage problem—not enough space and often the book can’t be found when it is looked for so why keep it?

OK, the Poet won’t go into the huge number of reasons why paper books, especially for poetry, are so much better than a digital book. Suffice it to say there is still a line break problem with poetry set on the multi-format digital platform. But nonetheless The Word Works will experiment this year with publishing John Bradley’s Love-in-Idleness:The Poetry of Roberto Zinagarello, an out-of-print title that won The Word Works Washington Prize in 1989 and deserves to be in circulation.

Now back to David Del Bourgo’s murder mystery set in San Francisco with strong  ties to Prague during World War II. The thing I will regret most about reading Prague Spring this way is that I won’t be able to hand it off to my son Ivan, who like his mom, loves to hold that paper book in his hands as he turns the pages.

Collaborative Learning & Poetry Readings

The Steiny Road Poet (a.k.a. Karren Alenier) has been saying for a long time don't go into the woods alone when you can collaborate and possibly learn something you would not have seen or noticed otherwise.

LET'S GO TO CALIFORNIA

Therefore when her colleague and friend Margo Stever said, let's go to California to do some readings, she thought, OK worth a try. She tried to do this alone back in the 90's and while she got a beautiful venue (an art gallery in downtown San Francisco), only a handful people attended despite the formally printed and snail mailed invitations sent to the literary community there.




GOING LOCAL IN LA

Right away Margo and Karren got a reading at Beyond Baroque in Venice, CA. Margo has a contact in the Los Angeles area who said she would help get audience. That's an offer greater than gold for a poet—or two poets in this case.

Margo Stever and Karren Alenier will be reading with David Del Bourgo and Andrea Carter Brown, who are based in the LA area. LA poet Mary Armstrong, a colleague of Margo's, recommended David not only because she admires his writing but also because he has an active relationship with Beyond Baroque. The Steiny Poet knows Andrea by their mutual connection to the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, an arts colony not far from Charlottesville.

RED DRESS IN SAN FRANCISCO

San Francisco was much harder. It took six months and a changing cast of readers to land a bookstore reading for Poetry in Red Dress, the program Karren designed based on a conversation with San Francisco-based poet Evelyn Posamentier. This reading now features Evie, Margo, Karren and Mary Mackey. Andrea Carter Brown put Karren in touch with Mary as a result of all three having poems in Entering the Real World: VCCA Poets on Mt. San Angelo, an anthology Andrea edited to raise money for the VCCA.

The Red Dress reading draws inspiration from Muriel Rukeyser and Gertrude Stein. It's an opportunity for readers and audience alike to learn more about these two literary giants and their views on writing and poetry.

REACHING OUT GLOBALLY

The Steiny Poet has been taking the online Coursera Modern Poetry (ModPo) this fall. The course taught by Al Filreis attracted over 35,000 students worldwide and it has given the Steiny Poet a new perspective on active learning with others. She has been spending time with the DC ModPo participants and she is hoping to connect with the Modpo community in San Francisco and LA.

Yes, indeed, it takes a village to make poetry live!

Live Classes versus MOOC Mania

The state of teaching is in flux. Think of the change from horse and buggy to automobile.

This fall the Steiny Road Poet taught her Inspired by Gertrude Stein writing workshop at the Hudson Valley Writers Center (HVWC) in Sleepy Hollow, New York. It was the second time she taught this course, which she had developed in response to Insight & Identity: Contemporary Artists & Gertrude Stein, an exhibition mounted at the Stanford in Washington Art Gallery earlier this year. For the Stanford-in-Washington workshop, she had 11 students. For the HVWC workshop, she had four.

The Poet worked hard in both cases to make potential attendees aware of her workshop, sending daily Tweets about Stein, writing occasional Facebook entries, mounting blog posts, exercising word-of-mouth promotion, snail mailing catalogs. There was interest in workshop #2 and good student feedback on the first workshop, but in the end, she believes this is all part of a trend exhibiting a declining enrollment in live classes. Part of it is the economy—people can’t afford to spend money on nonessential activities.

However, the question she is now asking is why pay for a poetry workshop when the Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) organization Coursera is offering an amazing Modern Poetry course taught by an Ivy League professor who makes you feel that you are sitting at his table talking to you, coaching you, giving you feedback that motivates you to read the hardest of the contemporary poets? Are live teachers to become headless horsemen?

Doing Original Resource Research

Recently, the Steiny Road Poet had occasion to do research at the Yale Beinecke Library in New Haven, Connecticut. Pointed research of original source materials like unpublished letters and journals is not something the Poet had done before. Before embarking on the trip, the Poet tried to find out what to expect, but there is nothing like going there and getting the experience first hand. So, here is what I learned and yes, portraits of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas hang in the Beinecke reading room.

REGISTERING & ORDERING REFERENCE MATERIALS

Yes, the Beinecke Library gives you some help. You should pre-register with them and line up as many as 10 archival boxes from which you want to investigate materials. You should keep a list yourself noting the name of the archive, the call number, and the box and folder numbers and notes about what you expect to find in these boxes.

It is also important to pay attention to whether the materials you want are part of the Beinecke Library or some other Yale library. For example in the Poet’s research which was centered on Gertrude Stein, the Poet was interested in seeing letters about Stein that were written by a third party to Virgil Thomson. The Thomson archive turned out to be in Yale’s Music Library. If one places the request to the Beinecke this causes a delay in getting these materials. So far, the Poet has not seen those archival boxes because she decided to stay at the Beinecke to work with the materials there exclusively.

The reason it is important to line up the boxes you want from Beinecke is because some of these materials are not stored onsite and they need several days to retrieve these materials.

PLANNING YOUR TIME AT THE LIBRARY

Originally when the Poet was planning her trip to Yale, she thought one day would be sufficient but if that day also involves travel to New Haven, it is important to understand that the hours are limited at theBeinecke. The library is not opened on weekends. During the week, Monday through Thursday it is open 9 am to 6:45 pm but Friday only 9 am to 4:45 pm. So the Poet’s trip included travel on Wednesday with a few hours in the afternoon that day and then two additional full days. What happens as one friend warned the Poet before she went, what one find starts to point to additional resources.

INITIAL ENTRANCE & WHAT IS ALLOWED IN THE READING ROOM

Use of materials at the Beinecke is heavily monitored. On the first day you enter the library, one signs in at the front desk, then you are told how to find storage lockers where you place all the things that are not allowed in the reading room. There are two sizes of lockers. The small locker can hold a small backpack, purse, and coat. The larger locker may be able to handle a small roll bag, but the Poet was not entirely sure about that. The lockers have keys that you are allowed to carry with you even when you leave the building for lunch if you are not clearing out the locker during your lunch break.

Once your things are stored, you proceed with laptop (its power chord), your cell phone (its power chord), loose sheets of paper and several pencils downstairs to the reading room desk. There you present two picture IDs—typically driver’s license and passport. Then they point to the reading room through the glass doors and tell you that they will bring your first box on your pre-ordered list as soon as they have it. That usually takes anywhere from ten to 30 minutes on average. By the time the Poet had picked out a table and set up her laptop including plugging in its power source, the first box arrived. Subsequent boxes you must retrieve yourself and you are only allowed one box at time.

The reading room can be chilly but if you want a sweater in the reading room, you must wear it and you may not take it off. The Poet wore a multi-pocketed travel vest that was handy for carrying identification documents, tissues, power chords, smart phone, and pencils.

STRATEGY FOR COLLECTING DATA

They will tell you at the reference desk to use your cell phone camera if you want copies of the materials you are interested in. Even if you think the letter is only remotely interesting, it is probably a good idea to take a photo of it anyhow. What often happens is that you do not know the value of what you just looked at until you see other materials. So, it is more efficient to take photos of everything rather than worry about having to go back to these materials later. However, you can turn in a box and ask the librarians to hold it until you release it at the end of your entire visit to the Beinecke. Also you can order high-resolution copies that you pay for.

Not all original source material libraries have the same rules. While Beinecke allows you to photograph their materials as long as you heed their permission rules, some libraries only allow you to take notes. Beinecke asks you to remove only one folder at a time from an archival box and to handle the materials carefully. Some libraries require you wear white gloves.

If you need to access an uncataloged archive, the resource librarians are extremely helpful and will do their best to assist you. If you find problems with any materials, you should be a good citizen and fill out a form to help them correct problems. For example, the Poet discovered the gross misspelling of a name in the Stein archive and mildewing papers in an uncataloged archive.

Because every table has its own security camera, you can leave your laptops without fear of it being stolen when you leave the reading on bathroom and lunch breaks. The restrooms and water fountains are on the same level as the reading room.

If you encounter problems with Internet access on your laptop, you can use Beinecke computers set up to search their resource materials.

LEAVING THE READING ROOM

When you leave the library for the day, take all your things with you. The guard outside the reading room doors will ask you to open your laptop to make sure you are not walking out with anything that belongs to the library. There seemed to be no problem with the vest, into which the Poet stuffed her power chords and pencils. Same with your locker—clear it out and leave the key.

For lunch, the Poet went to a fairly quiet restaurant on Wall Street at the corner of College Street where they had a counter to order your food and tables to sit at. She also went to the much livelier (as in noisy) Yale Commons, which is in the building next door to the Beinecke (on the left as you walk out of Beinecke). The student Commons has the appearance of a set from Harry Potter with high ceiling and long dark wooden tables. The cashier is hidden off to the right side of the huge hall where you pay a fixed price of something around $10 for as much as you want to eat from the steam tables and salad bars. The food is fresh, tasty, and plentiful. Very convenient. Sit anywhere.