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."

Cathy Smith Bowers' "The Napkin": An Excellent Example of Narrative Poetry

As I've discussed this project during our Call for Submissions, several poets have admitted that sometimes they weren't quite sure if particular poems are narrative or not. I know Jane addressed the question in an earlier post. One of my simplest explanations:  Something happens. From a more practical standpoint, though, I think an example serves not only to illustrate but to show what we have in mind for this project, especially since our intended audience will be readers, not writers.

When I had the first inkling of what I wanted to do with this project, Cathy Smith Bowers was service her term at North Carolina Poet Laureate. Those of you who came into contact with Cathy during her time know what a force she is.  I love so many of her poems, but two in particular I find myself sharing again and again.

If you love poems, you may have done the same thing: You read a poem that brings to mind a friend, someone who doesn't write poetry and who may not even read it often. These are also the ones you'll ask the poet to be sure to include in a reading.  For Bowers, the two are "Syntax" and this one from The Collected Poems of Cathy Smith Bowers (Press 53) I share with permission:

The Napkin

One night in a pub
on the outskirts of Roanoke,
I sat with my husband

at a table lit only
by the candle’s mute flickering
and the small waning moons

of our drinks. I was writing
in my journal, journaling
a journey soon coming

to its end when suddenly,
at the table to our left,
a soft commotion of arms

and hands. I looked
at my husband, lost in some
lost moment of the now

lost day, and then at them,
a subtle, peripheral glance
I had long ago perfected.

I could easily have touched
them – they were that close – lovers,
perhaps, signing to each other

their tongueless words. Each
in turn, their hands rose, bright
wings above the flame’s dim

corona, secret negotiations
of finger and thumb.
I was stunned to see

how beautiful he was, as if
in the convoluted logic
of my mind, those devoid

of sound and speech must, too,
be devoid of loveliness.
I could see the silvery sheen

of her nails, glimmer of bracelets
and rings as they mounted the air,
lifting then falling, strafing

the crumbed and waxy
landscape of the table below.
When they left, something

fluttered to the floor, the napkin
they had at intervals been scribbling
on, passing back and forth,

the sweet lexicon of their
hands eluding even them.
My husband reached down,

handed it to me. Slowly
I began to read,
unfolding like lingerie

the delicate layers,
each boneless
fleshless

syllable
naked before
my eyes: She
should be talkingto him, it said, not writingin that book. Poor guy,

he looks so lonely.

~Cathy Smith Bowers

That poem has everything a good story could ever hope to include: characters, setting, conflict, dialogue (even though it appears first in gestures, then in writing.) The poet chooses her words and her images carefully, setting the tone of the poem. The figurative language is subtle and fresh--the "waning moons" of the drinks, the message on the napkin "unfolding like lingerie."

Frost said, "No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader." Bowers' poem surprises. This is a poem I would have loved to have written; it's a poem I share over and over.

Wherever Poets Gather

Having just returned home from the fall conference of the North Carolina Writers Network (only to leave again the next morning), I have a head full of great workshops and readings, great writing ideas, a stack of books to read, and a reminder why poetry still matters. The conference held in Asheville was a perfect setting for Jane and me to share our call for submissions for the Well-Versed Reader, since so many of our favorite poets were there.

One of the few complaints I heard (other than the usual variation of themes on thermostat) came during the evening open mic readings, held in three different rooms: "Why have they separated the poets?!"

Fiction write Lee Smith opened the conference with a reading on Friday evening and presented a workshop session on Saturday.  Former NC Poet Laureate Kathryn Stripling Byer was featured at Saturday's luncheon, beginning with her beautiful, timely poem "Mountain Time," which moves from pessimism about the state of and future for poetry to a lovely quilting metaphor.

Two themes thrummed under the surface of so much I heard this past weekend:  Words Matter. Stories Matter. That's why poets write and why readers read. That's exactly why we hope to bring the two together.

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.

Pouring Water on a Great Poem

While keeping in mind our Call for Submissions, I wanted to share a little piece I came across in my reading.


I read the Sunday papers in my own arbitrary method, stacking my favorite sections in the order in which I will attack.  From the New York Times Book Review, I prioritize the "By the Book" interview section, in which the author of a recently published book answers questions about his or her reading life and history.


Last week, Gloria Steinem was front and center. When asked which genres she enjoys reading and which she avoids, her answer both pleased and surprised me. While she admits that she "used to be hooked on novels," she says she's not "hooked on ideas," adding, " Poetry has replaced novels. If you poured water on a great poem, you would get a novel."



That is just the idea Jane and I are pursuing in this anthology project. We want to introduce readers to the distilled language, the conciseness of story found in poetry. I forget huge portions of novels, even short ones. I'm often left with what Cathy Smith Bowers referred to as the "abiding image."


Try this: Think of your favorite novel and conjure up the most concrete image you recall. 

 Of all people, I would never suggest replacing novels with poetry--or biography or philosophy or DIY--but I would hope serious pleasure readers would expand their horizons to include poetry.

The Scintillating Shapes of Story

Nancy’s post discussing pairings of fiction and poetry for book clubs (not unlike the wines and cheeses that nourish discussion) gives a wonderful example of narrative poetry in Miller Williams’ “The Curator,” a free-verse piece. Now, friends, let’s open a dialogue about narrative poetry in the comments section here.  In the weeks ahead, Nancy and I plan to post some good examples of narrative poems that we find compelling and hope you will join us here to read, comment, and suggest narrative poems you love and writers you admire.  While this is not the place to submit your own work for discussion, it is a wonderful forum for links to poems and poets who inspire your work.  Want to share?

So, let’s talk form. Should narrative poems always be free verse? Not at all, in my opinion. Narrative poems can take any number of forms. Some of the most memorable to us from childhood are rhymed and metered to a fine bounce.  Remember “Casey at the Bat” by Ernest Lawrence Thayer or Henry Longfellow’s “Paul Revere’s Ride”?  Poets from Shel Silverstein to AA Milne peopled poems with rhymes we could dance to.  As we grew older, we engaged with epics, narrative poems with a long tale to tell, but also with shorter stories like Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess.” Is this a character study or a narrative poem?  Look at the form it takes—couplets in iambic pentameter— that nevertheless does not read in the bouncy fashion of our childhood favorites.

Now, have a look at Robert Frost’s “Home Burial” written in blank verse (iambic pentameter with no rhyme scheme) so masterfully that Frost uses two partial lines of conversation to complete one line of iambic pentameter, not an easy thing to do. Through conversation, the characters are developed, the plot thickened, and the overall conflict and purpose of the poem revealed or suggested. There’s nothing like a misunderstanding between a man and woman to generate heated discussion. Frost appeals to readers for understanding about this couple’s plight.  I had a student tell me that “Home Burial” and “Death of a Hired Man” could be short short stories or flash fiction.  Clearly, narrative elements—a story and characters—were obvious to him.  Why not just call it prose then? 

Because Frost is a poet.  Because the lines and the form itself, blank verse, is verse, not prose.  Because the margins and line lengths suggest NOT a prose form but a poetic one.  Let’s face it, any number of works can be re-formed into another kind of writing.  The writer gets to make that call for his or her own work.  Still, isn’t the effectiveness of a narrative’s form and structure an interesting conversation to have with your book club?

None of the poems mentioned here are short poems, begging the question of how long a narrative poem should be.  E.A. Poe in his “Philosophy of Composition” insisted that all stories be only as long as one could read in one sitting, no interruptions. Homer would clearly disagree. Perhaps more important than length, I’d say a narrative poem should be effective, long enough to tell the story as well as it can be told and still leave a mystery for the reader to discover. Yes, I know that Nancy and I arrived at 110 as our line limit, simply because we’d like to represent more than one writer in our anthology. What do you think about the relationship between length of poem, story told, and reader engagement?

Can a story be told in fewer lines, even in a few words?  Perhaps you recall DeGroot’s play Papa that says Ernest Hemingway allegedly bet he could write a story in under ten words.  His story was this: “For sale: Baby shoes, never worn."   Whether or not the writer actually wrote the story or engaged in the bet, the legend of it engages writers and thinkers to consider what a story is—what is written or what is suggested that leads the reader to imagine a completion, an actual story.  I submit that these six words are like a good question, the seed of a story, which, when planted in the mind of a writer or reader, becomes rooted and leafy, fleshed out as a plethora of thriving stories.  The six words alone won’t do it for me.  However, you may feel differently and consider this a microscopic story.

As you write and submit your own strong narratives to our Call for Submissions for The Well-Versed Reader, help us engage you in discussing effective narrative poems that you would well suggest to your book club. Post links and comments in the comments section below.