The Time Is Out of Joint (O Cursed Spite!): An Update

Friends and poets, Jane and I want to give you an update on the anthology. As you know, what we have in mind is more than a simple anthology or collection of poems. Now that we have made our selections, we are working to organize the poems thematically and to put together the tools that would make this book suitable, useful, and enjoyable for book clubs who normally discuss novels.

Most of you know, too, that since I've moved to Nashville, much of our work is being conducted by phone. (Picture both of us with phones tucked between shoulder and ear as we are clicking away on our respective keyboards.)

We have every intention of making this the best possible publication. We want to get it ready for print as soon as we can, but we aren't willing to sacrifice our goals for the quality of the project.

Meanwhile, we hope you will keep writing great poems. We'd love to see this one become so successful that a second volume would be necessary.

Warmest regards,
Nancy

As we near the deadline for our Call for Submissions, Jane and I are so pleased with the submissions so far, and we're hoping for a deluge by the middle of February. Please continue to share this link with other poets whose work you enjoy.

Today I wanted to share Karen Call's "Do Not Take My Truck," another poem of a narrative nature that appeared on Jayne Jaudon Ferrer's "Your Daily Poem" that appears in my mailbox each morning. It fits the "day in the life of..." mode in the same fashion as Viorst's Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day" to which the poet alludes.

The poem written in direct address to young Conner gives a picture of a small boy's day in which the concept of sharing is pushed beyond its limit.

Questions: 
Is this poem written for children or for adults? 
How do the details of the poem send readers right back into a kindergarten or nursery school setting?
What are the clearest memories you have of your early childhood, particularly in a similar setting? 
Do you have similar childhood memories when others pushed your good nature to its limits?
Who were the bullies you remember? the pushovers? Which were you?
How does this short poem develop the characters?
What clues give insight to Conner's teachers or caregivers? 
Why do adults sometimes fail to recognize the different perspectives of children?

I'll confess that this poem brought me back to Mrs. Powell's kindergarten, which I attended in her basement (before most elementary schools had added kindergarten). I recall my difficulty, when finger-painting, in learning to let my green trees dry before I added my red apples. I remember being cast as Mary in the Christmas play on the day we started rehearsal, but then Mrs. Powell forgot whom she cast and another girl stole my part. (I know I didn't imagine this because I met the girl again when I transferred schools in tenth grade, and she confessed and apologized.) Most clearly, I remember Donnie M., a "bad boy" who was asked to leave our class for some reason. He lived in the neighborhood, and one day we heard a knock on the door. When the teacher opened the door, there stood Donnie. He quickly sang out, "You ain't nothin' but a hound dog!" and then ran away.

I love a poem or story that makes me recall one of my own. I'll bet you do too.

*Thanks to Jayne Jaudon Ferrer for permission to share the poem on her site.

Questions for a Book Club: This Is Not Your English Class.

In a literature class, you might be asked to discuss the use of alliteration, the figurative language, the theme, even the symbolism of "The Napkin" by Cathy Smith Bowers. In fact, when I was teaching high school and college literature classes, poems like this one often opened doors for students usually reluctant to analyze poetry. While English majors thrive on these kinds of discussions, the average member of a book group is looking for a different experience altogether.

By contrast, in a book club I'd expect to discuss these kinds of questions:

How does the setting become real to you in this poem? What details remind you where this incident is set?

Do you ever eavesdrop on others when you’re in restaurants, airports, hotel lobbies? In what ways do you speculate about the people around you?

How would you feel to realize they are also paying attention to you, making guesses about you and those with you?

What does the poet reveal about the characters in this poem? What details are withheld or left to the imagination?

How does the couple being deaf enliven the conflict and the reader’s interest in the poem?  Would the effect have been the same if the speaker had merely discovered the note from the table of people who had merely been whispering?

What images of beauty does the speaker point out?

In what way is this brief incident unusual? How is it ordinary?

How does the suggestion that these two are near the end of a journey affect the poem? Why does she reveal this little detail? Are there other similar small details that pique your interest?

When have you realized you misjudged a situation?

If the speaker had the chance to explain what she had been doing to the couple, what might she say? Does she owe her husband an apology?

What other stories or books does this poem bring to mind? Could this be a vignette in a larger work of fiction? What might have happened before? What will happen next?

NYT Book Review's "The Year in Poetry" Merits a Reminder of Our Call for Submissions

I almost called and had my paper stopped while we were out of town for the holidays, but I wasn't sure they'd get it right. I knew I probably wouldn't read all the daily papers, but the Sunday papers are my guilty (or not guilty) pleasure. It takes me all day at least to work through my favorite parts--the crossword puzzle and word games--and then I save the best for last: The New York Times Book Review.

I was particularly glad I had kept the papers piling up at the neighbors when I got home and found the cover story of the Book Review: "The Year in Poetry." Yes, a whole issue focused on poetry--current poetry by living poets, in fact.

That was just enough motivation to remind readers of the February deadline for our Call for Submissions for our upcoming anthology of narrative poetry for book club readers. If you write poetry, please consider sending us up to three of your best narrative poems.  Whether you write poetry or not, please share the call for submissions with poets whose work you enjoy.

Jane and I feel sure we aren't the only ones who believe plenty of avid readers are missing out of some great writing they would enjoy--if only introduced to it in a way that appeals to them.

They won't be asked to scan metrical lines or any of those English class type questions that can sometimes leave readers feeling inadequate. We just want to share good stories told concisely with words arranged to arouse pleasure, to pique curiosity, to strike a familiar chord.

Maybe 2016 can be another "Year in Poetry."

Calling All Book Clubs

Call for Submissions.
I've been a book clubber long enough to know that coming to a consensus about what to read can be one of the biggest challenges. Some people want to read all the new edgy fiction; others want "something light for a change." Some come for the wine.

Some book clubs are well-organized, choosing books, hosts, and meeting locations a year at a time. Some plan programs about the author or the book. Some have book-themed food--or wine. I've visited book clubs in which the members swap books but never read the same one at the same time. (They also serve refreshments using the good china and silver.)

My book club rarely manages to settle on a single book, often adding a second or third extra choice.  We can't plan too far ahead because the book we read in June might not have been published in January.

Most book clubs I know lean heavily toward current fiction, but some read nonfiction--and some read the classics. One of my male college friends, a non-reader back then, joined a book club after he retired and read War and Peace--and convinced his wife and grown son to read it.

Very few book clubs choose poetry. On a few rare occasions, I've been invited to speak to friends' book clubs who selected my chapbook for reading.  I'm sure there was some duress on the part of my friends. Usually, though, the members expressed surprise that they enjoyed reading poems.  They even seemed to enjoy them more after discussions. 

After teaching high school for all those years when students, given an option, tended to choose the shortest book, I wonder why, then, adult readers avoid poetry? As I've mentioned in an earlier, some  people are put off poetry by school experiences.

I think a bigger problem may be that people rarely have any contact with poetry after school, any reason to pick it up and read it. Try browsing the big box bookstore poetry section, and you will find a little Frost, Dickinson, Whitman--but very little poetry from this century.  If your exposure to poetry is limited to The New Yorker, you might think it's all supposed to be highbrow (translation: obscure and abstract.)

Show up at a local poetry event--yes, most cities have them, even small towns--and you might be surprised. Sometimes the best introduction to a poet is hearing that poet reading his or her own poems. It adds another dimension to the words on the page. 

When I started going to our local poetry reading, I made a point, whenever I could, to buy two copies of a chapbook or collection from the featured poet--one for me, one to share.  Then I had an automatic book club meeting, someone else who could talk about the poems with me.  Almost always, something in the poems suggested exactly who my recipient should be.

Jane and I would love to hear from book club members to know (1. what you are reading; (2. if you've ever considered poetry. 

While I'm talking poetry: The National Book Awards for 2015 were just announced. Voyage of the Sable Venus by Robin Coste Lewis was the poetry winner.  Yes, there is a poetry winner! Check it out.

Of Book Clubs and Poetry

Rather than spend time analyzing all the reasons members of book clubs might not select poetry for their common reading choices, I’d rather share an example or two of poems that dovetail nicely with reading group choices.

When my book club selected Debra Dean’s novel The Madonnas of Leningrad, I thought at once of one of my favorite poems by the late Miller Williams “The Curator.” Both the poem and the novel present fictional accounts set against a historical background. As the Germans neared Leningrad, the priceless works of art were removed and hidden for safekeeping, but their empty frames were left on the walls marking their places.

Dean’s novel deals with the hunger and desperation of the local citizens, many of whom moved into the Hermitage Museum during the days of conflict. Miller’s poem also covers many of these same days, but his poem is peopled by soldiers and then other curious visitors who come to see where the painting once hung. They come to hear the curator’s description of these works of art, more vivid that his usual spiel when the actual canvases remained in place.  The most powerful lines, in my opinion: Slowly, blind people began to come.Slowly, blind people began to come. “Here. Here is the story I want to tell you. / Slowly, blind people began to come.”

Not only would this moving poem pair well with The Madonnas of Leningrad, I realize, but with Monuments Men, the novel by Robert M. Edsel and Brett Witter about the attempts to safeguard monuments and art or to relocate art stolen by the Nazis. Even the recent Pulitzer Prize-winning novel With All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, with its blind young protagonist, might be enriched by a discussion of this poem. Then Barbara Kingsolver’s Lacuna also takes a turn in the end, when her protagonist is charged with safeguarding the collections from the National Gallery during WWII.

I dare say that the story Williams tells in him poem will stay with readers as long as, perhaps longer than, the narrative in these books. With its theme of “confluence,” the odd way that things often come together, it would be a perfect choice.

The Well-Versed Reader, Call for Submissions

  

The Well-Versed Reader, Call for Submissions

We are seeking submissions of strong narrative poetry to be included in an anthology entitled The Well-Versed Reader to be edited by Jane Shlensky and Nancy Posey.  The poems may be on any topic and in any format, but should inspire reading and group discussion.  Send up to three poems to wellversedreader@gmail.com by February 20. For further information and questions, go to www.wellversedreader.blogspot.com.

The Well-Versed Reader, Call for Submissions

Deadline: February 20, 2016

1. Poems must be no longer than 110 lines, in any form that effectively serves the narrative.  Poems must be typed, single-spaced, title first, poet’s name beneath. Online submissions should be attached as a single document in .doc or .docx format.

2.  On the first page of your submission document, include your name, address, phone, and email.  Include a short bio in third person, title of poem(s), and a brief statement about each poem.

3. While we favor original poems, we will consider poems previously published in magazines, anthologies, or chapbooks, if the poet retains rights to the publication. Include previous publication information in your submission.

4. Poets may send up to three poems for consideration. No illustrations, photographs, or images should be included.

5. Poets will be notified via email of acceptance to the anthology.

Please share and check here at the Well-Versed Reader blog site for more information.