Bits

I've been wholly preoccupied with work and my fantasy baseball team (trade deadline 19 August!), but here are a few things to add to your background noise:

• Looks like the new 5AM just arrived at VerseDaily. Kelli Agodon had a terrific poem from 5AM featured there yesterday, and today's selection is also from that journal. Well done, Kelli.
• Ray Bradbury has a new book coming out in a couple weeks: It's shorter work (two novellas), which I think is the form that suits him best - I have all his short stories on my shelf, and I'll be adding this one in short order.
• Have I talked here the new season of the Spoken Word Series yet? Gabrel Welsch? Kate Greenstreet? Timothy Liu? David Tucker? Local artists Catherine Magia and Scott Summers and Walking English? I've always been proud of our presentations (and of still being alive as a series going into our 7th year), but this year we've set a new standard for diversity of voices without sacrificing talent bit. This hear I'm joined by cohost Siobhan Barry-Bratcher in delivering the verbal arts to Hoboken.
• I've got two of my poems picked out for the Deb Ager Stanztember Challenge (I'll keep suggesting names until you tell me to stop!). In good faith, I will admit I have their openings lines in memory already from frequent quoting, but I won't store anything else until Labor Day - to be compliant with what I imagine the rules to be.

Well, that does it for freebrain time for this week. Be seein' ya.

The Gift of No

Just received a great rejection from kaleidowhirl. Editor Cynthia Reynolds referred to one the poems I'd submitted and commented "{name deleted} is very close to what I am seeking for kaleidowhirl; I welcome your submissions during future reading periods."

This was a stretch submission for me, and I don't mind the rejection at all when it comes with feedback like this. It came in 4 weeks and contained guidance and encouragement. What more can you ask for? An uncommented acceptance would actually be less satisfying. Well, maybe...

If you haven't been there, give kaleidowhirl a read, including the abcdarium of wordplay and other resources and links there.

Thank you, Cynthia. I look forward to your next issue, and I'll be trying you again.

I will assume that by now you are familiar with the Funky Winkerbean storyline about the recurrence of Lisa's breast cancer. Lisa has had quite the life in this strip, from her teenage pregnancy and the giving up of that child to adoption to her reunion and union with Les to her first bout with the illness that (it has been announced) will claim her this autumn. And if you have a newspaper of any size that still has a decent Comics section, you probably have had at least one article like this one from my local paper.

There are a couple issues to tease out here, and I think they have direct relevance to poetry, and poetry manuscripts in particular.

First, the gut response that "this isn't a subject for the comics". I think this is an emotional reaction that expresses a personal use of the comics: as pure escape. It's certainly fair not to want your flight of fancy tinged with tragedy. However, it is equally unfair to hold an entire art form accountable for one's own purposes. Yes, there are comic strips that are pure whimsy. There are also poets that tend toward pure whimsy (Ogden Nash comes to mind). But I'm surprised that people who object to the presence of the unfunny in the comics consider themselves "traditionalists", ignoring the difficulties presented in "serious" strips like Mary Worth, The Phantom, and Prince Valiant (a personal favorite).

Which leads us to point two: you should enjoy the comics you enjoy, and I will enjoy the comics I enjoy. Neither of us should feel the need to tell our newspapers to take the other's comics away. How is it a reasonable response to tell a publisher not to serve someone else? There is an intelligent position here, one already practiced by many papers six days week with Doonesbury: Put the subject comic in appropriate context. Doonesbury runs on the editorial page in most papers in this area.

So what’s the application to poetry and poetry manuscripts? First: The simple getting over of what’s “appropriate for poetry”. Diane Lockward recently blogged about an expectation of niceness in poetry that some people have. That needs to be gotten over – anything can be the subject of a poem. I could personally stand to see fewer about death and George Bush, but that’s my preference.

And preference is how we get to context. A manuscript – generally – has a consistency to it. A tone, if not a theme, though I tend to prefer thematically linked books (or collections with some good narrative sequences, at least). Within the manuscript, a poem that’s way off on theme or tone can disrupt the experience of the collection in a way that subtracts from its value – even if the offending poem is itself good! That’s my issue with some poets’ later collections – they mix their experiments into the pages in a way I have trouble enjoying – and it’s my sole complaint against the newspapers running the Lisa’s Cancer story. My complaint’s not with Funky Winkerbean writer Tom Batiuk, but with the editors who haven’t adjusted to his content. It’s a different collection – not part of the one it’s stuck in with now.

But then who reads the comics any more anyway (wait, there’s another similarity to poetry…..)

Jersey Writing Stuff (Non-Fiction)

Newspapers may be going the way of the mammoth, but I happen to live in a zone with a pretty good one. What's more, the columnists of my local Newark Star-Ledger are beginning to establish a credible presence in the 'sphere.

Stephen Whitty, the terrific film reviewer and columnist who has read for the Spoken Word Series, has always been very interactive with his readers, but now has a blog that accelerates those interactions into a real dialog. I'm not as much of a filmgoer as I used to be (though that's starting to change as the kids become suitable viewing partners), but I find his reviews extremely well-crafted and enjoyable even when all I know of a movie is its television hype. His profiles of film stars are great reading.

It helps to be interested in NJ politics, but even if you're not you'll appreciate the craft in Paul Mulshine's columns and now in his blog. Mulshine is a devout Parrothead (if a non-member of the following may be permitted to use the word) and defender of the sanity and responsibility of the individual in NJ, and his essays are infused with cultural, political, and personal insight.

They're not blogging -- yet -- but the columns of Kathleen Shea and Kathleen O'Brien (the Jersey one, not the Texas one or any of the others that lurk beneath the surface of Google search) are available at the NJ.com site, and if you're not as fortunate as I to live within their circulations, I really encourage you to stop by. The former Kathleen's Bad Mother Reports have a tremendous following (ardent enough to get people to a reading in Hoboken who had never attended a live reading OR been to Hoboken!), and she's great fun to work with. The latter can wander anywhere from behavioral evolution in society to next-stall celluar etiquette. Wait, that's pretty much the same thing, isn't it?

I have been tending toward non-fiction (the historical sort) in most of my non-poetry leisure reading for about a year, and I've really come to appreciate good practitioners (because there are some awful ones - particularly executing parenting and 20th century history books). These four writers are consistently good, entertaining and insightful, and I recommend them, their still-fine newspaper, and their burgeoning web presences to you.

Next up: Weighing in on the weight of the comics. Sneak preview: The only rational argument also applies to editing an anthology or your own manuscript.

Welcome, Diane!

Diane Lockward - excellent poet, organizer of one of the best poetry events in NJ, and generous supporter of the writing communities she has helped develop through her teaching - has joined the blogosphere.

She was reluctant at first, noting: "I resisted in the past, thinking blogging was perhaps a waste of time and perhaps a bit self-indulgent. Maybe it is. But I've also realized lately that a blog is a good way of joining the larger community of poets."

I think she's right on all counts. And I'm sure she will have something to add to the mix.

Coincidentally, Poetic Asides chose this week to post an excerpt from the 2008 Poet's Market interview with 5 poet-bloggers with some guidance on how poets might want to approach blogging. The good news is, their list contains at least one piece of advice to support just an any approach Diane (or any of us!) should choose.

Please welcome Diane with a visit. The link is to your right.

Publishers, Is This What You Really Think of Fathers?

OK. I have come to accept that the "Poetry" section in most commercial bookstores is going to contain the works of Jewel, Shakespeare, Maya Angelou, and two local authors. But I also accept that - for the most part - contemporary poetry is a limited-appeal art form and a bit of an acquired taste. As a pledge to the fraternity of the word, I feel comfortable admitting this aloud.

But parenting? Is there really an acquired taste for being a good parent? An attentive spouse and caregiver? My local paper recently ran a microreview - a positive microreview - of something called "Dad's Own Housekeeping Book" (Link deliberately omitted). Author David Bowers is a stay-at-home Dad and in general seems to be a creator of useful books, and I hope he won't take this personally, but:

Oh, please.

I'm sure it's filled with useful advice (to be fair, I'm reacting to the review, not the book), but how many more books do we need that assume male parents haven't progressed past Ricky Ricardo? The publisher's description of the book (via BN.com) opens with "Just because you’re born with a “Y” chromosome doesn’t excuse you from cleaning the bathroom, especially in this day and age when time’s at a premium and partners have to be, well, partners." Excuse me, but which of us knuckle-dragging cavemen in the 45 and under category hasn't been living this since we first dropped to one knee?

Maybe my ire is misdirected. What I'm really aggravated about is when friends anticipating their first blessed event turn to me for resources (knowing my first approach to just about anything is to acquire baseline knowledge and the right vocabulary), and I have just the one suggestion: Armin Brott. Don't get me wrong - Brott's books are pretty good, and I learned much from each of them (except for some of the deliberate redundancies of Father for Life). But are these really the only books available that don't assume that we (fathers) are stupid, reluctant, incompetent, depressed, belligerent, or some appalling combination of these? Maybe I'm missing the forest here, but for every "Be Prepared: A Practical Handbook for New Dads", I see 6 "Keeping the Baby Alive till Your Wife Gets Home: The Tough New 'how-to' for 21st Century Dads". I mean, even the (presumably) well-intentioned anthology Fatherhood displays a dismal lack of awareness by including Plath's "Daddy". I'm not looking for pollyanish, sunshine-and-saccharine treatments, just ones that don't think me an imbecile, a jerk, or a monster. Isn't there market for a book about caring, positive, literate fathering experience?

Are there good books out there I just haven't found? Or is this my call to arms? Or, more accurately, to pencils?

RIP Sekou Sundiata

I am very surprised at the degree to which reading of Sekou Sundiata'a passing struck me just now, and I'm trying to understand it. I was introduced to his work at the first Dodge festival I attended, and I had a chance last year to sit in on a couple of his smaller events. People have been referring to him as a "performance poet", and he certainly was that - in his craft discussion, he mentioned that he tended to want to produce a CD, not a book, when he was compiling his poems. But when I asked him what might be different about writing for the ear as opposed to the page (which is how I interpreted his comment), he gently pushed back on my assumption. He clearly wanted his work to be an experience in print or in person - an event no matter how it was encountered - he just seemed to think of the CD as the way he would present the work first.

He had a quiet but forceful presence at the microphone, the kind that for me that makes clear the distinction between confidence and arrogance. Arrogance says "I have had these experiences and I know things better than you and I will tell you them now. Sit down and listen." Confidence says "I have had these experiences and I'm going to talk for a while now. You might want to listen." His presence was augmented by a great set of pipes - the kind of effortless bass that baritones with aspirations of C like me can't help but envy.

I've been looking for links to audio files of some of what he presented in his Dodge appearances so I can talk more about how he adjusted his work in real time, and how the crowd began to create our own rhythms in response to his, but I can't find them. Maybe later.

In the meantime, here are a few links. If you never heard him speak, find some audio below and give a listen. You won't be disappointed. I'm going to go stick Longstoryshort in the player and close my eyes.

Some links:

• Wikipedia's (already updated) entry
• A Fresh Air interview with Terry Gross
• His TV appearances.
• An AAP article.
• His CD Longstoryshort with some audio samples.

Expanding Your Sources

I came to my current marginlly serious approach to writing by a circuitous path. While I've always played with words (my earliest "serious" effort being a novella penned in the fourth grade about a villanous plot to make Mars invisible to the Earth for nebulous and never-detailed nefarious purposes). But I was always more active as both participant and practitioner in other art forms. I've been a chorus and band performer in since first grade, played the accordion since the 4th (more bands, but as a serious solo for the first time, acted in and directed plays and conducted musicals since high school, and devoured books of all genres for as long as I can remember - including those 4 glorious summer of commuting into Manhattan, where I averaged 2 books a week (one I particularly remember was Ed Koch's Mayor - not to date myself or anything...).

My point is this: my poetry today is heavily influenced by sources other than poetry. If you surf the body of my work, you'll of course find weak echoes of Stevens, Frost and Williams, and some more contemprary influences as well. But you might also detect the influence of Loesser's lyrics, any number of prose authors of any period (Twain, Bradbury and Zelazny, to form one non-obvious group), and one I'm often surprised to find myself turning toward, Woody Allen.

If you only know Allen from his movies (or worse, from his more recent, more average movies), you are avoiding the company of brilliance. He has a new book of essays out, his first since 1980, which I'm going to pounce on this week.

...UPDATE BEGINS HERE...

Having always been enjoyed books, plays, and movies in that order, I first came upon Allen in a copy of Side Effects stolen out of my Uncle Frank's bedroom when I was 13. That copy has since been stolen from me, which makes a sort of sense. But I still have my Without Feathers, which has any number of examples of how all great writing has elements that poets can learn from.

Excellent poems are often built around phrasing which is both unexpected and perfect. As in this line, opening "The Early Essays (On Seeing a Tree in Summer)": "Of all the wonders of nature, a tree in summer is perhaps the most remarkable, with the possible exception of seeing a moose sing "Embraceable You" in spats".

What I love about that line is how it starts in ordinaryness (banality, even), and wrenches you to someplace completely different and unanticipated. We can debate whether it's funny (I know, Mother, I know), but there's no debating its originality and craft.

Another example: Allen's names are designed to dive through the ear and create tangible and complete characters by the end of the sentences in which they are introduced. Names like "Sir Osgood Mulford Twelge" and "Kaiser Lupowitz" seem to come with headshots attached.

The point is that Allen is brilliant at dropping you someplace you could not have anticipated. It may not be taking the top of your head off, but remember what Mr. Allen had to say about another of Ms. Dickinson's quotes: "How wrong Emily Dickinson was! Hope is not "the thing with feathers". The thing with feathers has turned out to be my nephew. I must take him to that specialist in Zurich."

NOTE: All quotes are from Woody Allen's Without Feathers, 1975 edition. Also stolen from my Uncle Frank.

I don't know how long they've been around, but Writer's Digest has a number of pretty active blogs now. Seems the poetry one is pretty new, with posts from Nancy Breen and Robert Lee Brewer from the WD Books cast list. I discovered Poetic Asides through a comment made over at Jeannine's place and visited with some trepidation. I gave up on WD a little over a year ago, when it became clear to me that their opinion of meaningful poetry content wasn't aligning with mine (also when Nancy Kress's contributions became less frequent).

It's early, of course (though relative posting rates being what they are, Poetic Asides will have reached the word count of this humble establishment before summer's end), but I think it shows some promise. I think anyone who frequents one or more of the poet's blogs at right will find the content a little light at first (the concept of the spam prompt, for example, are quite old to established poet-bloggers), but remember these blogs aren't for the established "blogosphere", they're for WD aficionados learning what blogs are and are not, what they are capable of and who they can reach.

Which leads me to a question. Many of us began the discovery our voices through relentless imitation. Some of those imitations must have, at times, found a way to an audience (publication, workshop, friend-of-a-friend), and that audience may not have recognized the imitation. For example, a good hunk of my early work aspires to be After Apple-picking or Birches. But a good hunk of my "immediate audience", having a knowledge of Frost that ended at the edge of the woods, therefore learned of the original through my works. Is that bad? Does it mean my work is less meaningful? Less useful? Sure, to one "schooled in the art" my work brought nothing new, but for some people, my work was the key to deeper knowledge of Frost. And to me, those same poems were the apprentice work that helped me hone my sense of rhythm, of sound, of line, etc. that have become something of my own voice.

So: Imitation of the past greats: good or bad? Useful? If so, to whom? Does it deserve positive, negative, or no attention from those who discover it? Enthusiastically joining the blog party without deep, knowledge of what earlier-arriving guests brought with them: good or bad? Useful? If so, to whom? Does it deserve positive, negative, or no attention from those who discover it?

My answer: Poetic Asides may bring new readers the long way around to the places Ron Silliman et al have been working in for years. It will definitely add a new voice, even while it searches through what came before looking for a place to settle in.

(Quick aside, poets only): first submission in almost 2 years went out yesterday. Got any luck you feel like sharing?

(Another quick aside, SF fans only): If you haven't already, go read the July Asimov's - Nancy Kress's novella is terrific.

(Final quick aside: computer nerds only): Any idea why Blogger is resisting accepting a title for this post?

Independence!

Independence from a tyrannical June, that is. A difficult month for a number of reasons which, for tradition's sake, I will not detail here. So. Draw a little picket fence (which is what we used do to between frames of a really bad line of bowling to indicate a fresh start - when we kept score with pencils, that is. Remember those terrific overhead scoring "systems" where you wrote with a nice soft pencil on an acetate and projected it overhead? But I digress...) and let's start this blog new.

Spent Independence Day at the Grover Cleveland Birthplace for their annual 4th of July Ice Cream Social. They really do a nice job - aside from the freezer for the ice cream and the guy on playing Mala Femmena on the synthesizer, they provide you the experience of a party they way it would have been when Cleveland was a boy. My kids rolled hoops, played marbles, enjoyed the game o graces, and dressed up in time-appropriate garb. A delightful afternoon overall.

During my hiatus (which clearly began long before I declared it here), it's occurred to me that I may be a sort of Ed Sullivan as regards the poetry world. After 20 years on and off and 6 years of serious pursuit, I'm confident to say that - even if my career someday shows me to be a B+ practitioner of the art myself - I have a good ear and sense of the craft, have realized some terrific luck recruiting some really fine poets to read in my series in Hoboken, have had some success "discovering" artists in some way. Case in point: the pairing of poet John J. Trause with painter Michael Filan in our Visible Word event. When the fruit of your ideas is good enough to get picked up by objective third parties, you gain a little confidence. And I am just as pleased to see my idea flourish in recognition for other artists as I am to have my own words recognized; in my mind this is one of the things that distinguishes managers and mentors. If you will: Confidence in the skills, independence from the ego.

Speaking of which, I won't have time this year for the annual watching of William Daniels' wonderful portrayal of John Adams in 1776. Good thing I have it memorized.

This Here Little Unintentional Hiatus

Well, just in case anyone is still dropping in here from time to time, let the notion that I'll be posting meaningfully any time soon be gone from your head. June is shaping up to make May look like the slothful Sunday at the heart of a long weekend.

The corner deli ("Your source for Cosmic Liverwurst since 2003") will reopen on July 4th, which hopefully will signify my independence from some current time-consuming activities in addition to portending a sleepless evening for my kids and the delicious overnight smell of sulfur.

Among the things you have waiting for you upon our return:

• Tidbits from the Celebration of NJ Journals
• Upcoming publication news
• Details on an exciting Spoken Word Series 07-08
• Complaints about Bobby Abreu's batting average

Please partake of the menu selection to your right in the interim, make sure you stop by the home planet if that's not how you got here, and I'll see you soon.

New Wordsey

At this Sunday's Celebration of NJ Literary Journals (plus a few neighbors), 24 poets will represent 12 magazines. And those so represented and representing will be:

For US 1 Worksheets: Wanda Praisner, Nancy Scott
For Exit 13: Adele Kenny, John Larkin
For Mad Poets Review: Autumn Konopka, Rachel Bunting
For Heliotrope: Cindy Savett, Michael T. Young
For Journal of New Jersey Poets: Sandra Duguid, Alison Nguyen
For Lips: Stanley Barkan, Jim Gwyn
For New York Quarterly: Peter Arcese, Ira Joe Fisher
For Painted Bride Quarterly: Nicole Hefner, Sanjana Nair
For Tiferet: Priscilla Orr, Edwin Romond
For Home Planet News: Roberta Gould, Robert Milby
For Edison Literary Review: Madeline Tiger, David Vincenti
For Paterson Literary Review: Svea Barrett, Joe Weil

And yes, it's THAT Ira Joe Fisher.

More links if I get a chance, which means probably not.

But come anyway!

In which we get to the point

Shanna Compton has a very good essay up at PoetryFoundation.org.

The severalth annual Celebration of NJ Journals is coming up soon.

The talented and generous Maria Gillan has a new book out.

The next season of Spoken Word Series will be announced next Friday. Smaller? Yes. More power per unit poet? Geeky, but guaranteed.

This weekend is Mother's Day. Go here for ideas, but skip the Plath.

Back to regularity soon.

In Which We Offer a Random Assortment of Things Which Have Occurred To Us But Which We Have Not Had Time To Trim To A Length Shorter Than This Title.

As usual, many good excuses for my absence. As usual, I will keep them to myself. Stuff:

• I hereby declare May to be NaProPoMo (National Procrastinating Poets' Month). Not that I'm procrastinating per se, but that's when I'll get some time to execute my poem-a-day thing. Look at it this way: I'm challenging myself to complete one more poem than all the folks who actually did their thing on time.
• Even though I haven't really done anything with PoWriMo yet, I did say I would get a draft up "soon" (geologically speaking). Well, here:

(Sorry, Deleted)

• Just in case you're interested to know what I do with all that time I'm not writing poems (when I'm not spending it with my family, of course), let me mention that I'll be presenting in the poster session at the Project Management Institute of New Jersey's symposium on Sustainable Project Management on May 7. I'll have a great handout describing a simple tool you can use to assess the sustainability of an individual's contribution to your PM talent pool. Be sure and say hi when you stop by, all you project-managing poets, you.
• No, I haven't given up on my chess thesis. But I have been playing a lot of chess against the computer, and I remain convinced my position will hold water once I articulate it. Whenever that turns out to be.
• Recently heard from the always-impactful Meg Kearney that the Solstice Summer Writers’ Conference is still accepting applications. Poetry instructors are Naomi Ayala, Kurt Brown, Cornelius Eady, A. Van Jordan. Go sign up now.

That's my 8 minutes of on-line time for tonight. More to come, approximately soonish.

All out of Sprynch

Spring/Synch, get it? Snow all over my yard, but it's spring, and that's a great analogy for how I'm managing my time right now?

Yeah, that's about how organized my writings are at the moment. Which is why I haven't posted my chess/poetry thesis again. Tom's comments deserve a response that has been decently proofread.

Anyway, this doesn't mean good things aren't happening.

• Check out the end of the 06-07 season of the Spoken Word Series.
• Take a look at this year's writing workshop at The Center for the Performing Arts at DeBaun Auditorium and the three awesome instructors we have for you.
• Set aside May 20 for what may be the best annual poetry event in New Jersey (and I'm not just saying that because Dodge and the Warren County are biennial or because I'm actually performing in this one)

I've also got my manuscript distilled to pithy chapbook form for spring deadlines (and am understanding its weaknesses more now), I have the 07-08 season of the series in Hoboken just about booked, and have actually transcribed my "notebook" (a tape recorder I usually do my composing on) for the first time in 6 months. So there's stuff, just not organized enough to tell you about today. I'm even feeling up to posting a draft next time. Just to see how good Jeannine's mood really is (Just kidding!).

See you next weekend.

I guess she knows the old man's a poet?

So we're sitting in the living room doing a Mad Lib with one of the kids scribing. We go around and around with the nouns and the numbers until she asks her mother for an adverb. Mommy hesitates for the slightest of instants, and the little one jumps in with "That's OK. Daddy can do that one."

Needless to say, Mommy came up with an adverb.

And now if you'll excuse me, I'm off for some upside-down hog with snuggled cream.

I haven't wandered off...

... but I haven't had time for much reprocessing, and Tom's got me thumbing the chess books I've never actually read. I will get back to my parallels between chess and poetry - I still think they're there, but I want to reformulate my explanation, but in the meantime, please amuse yourselves with this terrific post over at Defective Yeti on the revitalizing of cliches.

The post was made sweeter for me when I saw David Lamotte's name - David, who does not live near me, was one of the first unexpected audience members to follow a link or an add to a Spoken Word Series event in Hoboken. He's a gifted songwriter, and he read a lyric of his "The Water's Gonna Win" as a poem in our open mic period, and it was good stuff.

The small world at work. Back soon.

The exchange before midpoem

Well, Tom's got me reprocessing this theory before I've even exchanged a pawn for a participle, but let's continue.

In chess, the transition from opening to midgame is marked by an exchange of pieces, intitiated by the sacrifice of a piece for the purpose of clearing out and ultimately assuming a controlling posture toward (though not necessary controlling position in) the middle of the board. It is marked by the beginning of development of more powerful pieces for use in midgame.

Before we get to the development of the powerful pieces, let's discuss the transition, the exchange. How is this akin to writing poems? My contention is that more successful poems tend to operate from a vulnerable position - confessional exposure being the most obvious and most overused. If you're willing to think ahead with me and anticipate that a good poem has to leave itself open in anticipation of a surprise somewhere in it (like a well-played chess game will at some point deviate from mere parroting of the great players), then the first transition of that poem is the conscious direction that creates the opportunity for surprise. The sacrifice of a bishop to radically and blatantly disrupt the center defenses may be similar to the driving home of the poem's idea through a repetition of word and image.

Or, maybe, the transition is the deliberate clearing of the space around the poem's opening that makes taking it in a new direction possible. On the chess board, this could be exchange of pawns and knights that leaves the middle empty for the queen to take over. In the poem, this is discarding of the details not central to the poem's thesis that leave the metaphor available for detail and embellishment.

Just like the meaning of a chess move can only be interpreted in the context of the style of the player, the meaning of a poetry development can only be interpreted in the context of the style of the poet. Similarly, a single poet's/player's style can change from poem/game to poem/game.

Next up: me bouncing off your comments.
Following that: Midpoem.

Poetry Like Chess: The Opening

(Disclaimer: By objective standards, I qualify as "advanced amateur" in both poetry and chess)

Accept for this discussion that a chess game develops in a series of known phases: The opening, the midgame and the endgame, with definable transitions between each phase pair. I know some will resist this idea, but this is really not a bad analog for a poem. Poems require compelling openings, precise and developing middles, and impactful (or at least calculated) endings.

Though poetry has the advantage over chess in number of potential openings, it is greatly similar in one way: a wildly unconventional opening portends either genius or the beginning of an unpredictable uneven ride.

Let us take "opening" in this case to mean "stage setting". On offense or defense in chess, a good player is thinking several moves ahead, positioning pieces not for where they need to be now, but where they need to be in the future. And anticipating where the opponent expects them to be and meeting that expectation in one of two ways: Either by presenting the opponent with something different, something surprising but still part of her plan, or by accepting the opponent's expectation, but with a level of preparedness that leaves no square of the board unaccounted for in its depth of planning.

Is this all that different than writing a poem? I know we want to believe that we follow the poem to where it wants to lead us, but I think this isn't entirely dissimilar from playing off a good opponent across the chess board. You have a plan, and you execute that plan, adjusting it continuously as you receive input and opposition. In the case of a poem, we often provide the input and opposition internally, maybe subconsciously, but we are reacting in real time to our own words as they develop on the page before us - the point at which they stop being our property and start belonging to the poem. It is that point at which they are most like the moves of our opponent on the chess board; even if we have anticipated their move perfectly, we are still reacting to it - choosing to keep with our plan or depart from it.

Some chess openings are accepted convention (Ruy Lopez, Ponziani), some are more radical than others, and some require more skills (particularly those that develop the queen early). Again, here, this isn't all that different from the writing process: We can choose to employ standard, or favorite, or accepted openings, or ones that are challenge the reader (the opponent?) to play along with us. A good chess player will decide by the 4th move if the opponent has the skills to make the game competitive. How many times have you decided by the 4th line of a poem that it was not crafted with sufficient skill to be meaningful or useful to you? How many of your own poems have you tolerated past a weak 4th line, ignoring your own awareness that it was weak?

Understand I'm not saying that an unconventional opening, or an aggressive or challenging one is a bad thing - merely that it requires greater skill to pull off effectively. And that discarding convention merely as an act of anarchy is a sure way to lose the reader, and make the challenge of completing the poem very, very difficult.

If I can figure a way to do so meaningfully, next up will be examples. Down the road a piece is: Transition one: The first sacrifice.

Spam, Amy Holman, and Ruy Lopez

(wherein we celebrate Ms. Holman's return to the blogging world with a sincere but ridiculous title).

(1) Re: Spam, let me say that I have received my favorite bit of unsolicited kilobytes in quite some time. Apparently, an underintelligent bot, presumably through entries like this, has flagged me as a Dodge enthusiast.

Dear blog author:

We recently came across your site, cosmicliverwurst.blogspot.com, while searching for bloggers who blog about Dodge issues.

A small group of us have started a new site called http://www.dodge-bloggers.com">Dodge Bloggers . Our intent is to bring Dodge bloggers closer together, and make a positive contribution to the Internet community.

They do promise they will not "send this message (any) more than twice... intentionally". For the record, this is a Ford house, sir. At least until the next recall.

(2) Re: Amy Holman, a comment below and a fresh post over at Literadog lead me to believe that Amy is over computer issues and back to her infrequent but in-depth commentary on publications publishing. Her most recent commentary (on The Potmac Review) shows why we should value the opinion of this author and teacher so highly: she speaks with passion and intelligence on just about all literary fronts.

And (3) Re: Ruy Lopez, consider this, the opening gamibt (if you will) of my comparison between playing chcess and writing a poem: There are many ways to open a chess game. Most are conventional, and will take you to conventional gameplay if you let them. Some are unconventional, and will take you to game situations which can be fascinating or brutal - or both.

Get where I'm going, yet?