"American poetry now belongs to a subculture. No longer part of the mainstream of artistic and intellectual life, it has become the specialized occupation of a relatively small and isolated group." I think about this a lot, and am myself a poet who also often trades in confusion, unreason, lack of clarity, syntactical inversion/invention, and while I lament that this is so specialized I also can't deny that it is intensely personal. when I teach classes, I've come to a point where just making it a deeply human space in the midst of the (what many people would be appalled if I name it) violence of the educational institution, which I think is related to what you're saying here. the art of poetry as an act of humanization, or of radical acceptance of our beings at any given time. a place to rest and make community.
also so few people are interested in meter and I'm such a nerd, I have so many thoughts.
I'm at CSU in Fort Collins. the intermediate poetry classroom usually starts with second-years and up, and there are non-traditional students that sometimes enter the sphere. I teach rhetoric/research, of course, but also some poetry/literature courses. I co-designed and sometimes co-teach the Intermediate workshop online, as well as in person, usually at least one semester and the summer.
My name rhymes with major. And wife also rhymes with knife. My first thought after reading Wife, it was so sharp. I actually said that about needing a wife to my husband.
Ooooh! Yes! A weekly poem sounds great. I am also putting together a biweekly poetry group for sharing our work, getting feedback, and just generally geeking out about poetry. Would you be interested?
Yes, I would be interested. I am one right now that meets once a month with six other poets. I think 5 poets thereabouts is a good number. Once or twice a month is doable. Would you meet over Zoom?
Yes. I will put together a list. I would like to have someone choose a poem to read and discuss each meeting as a way to see how the poet wrote it to make it effective. Some are novices and need learn the craft and the tools. This would be at the beginning of each group. Then two members can share their poems for discussion. How does that sound?
I love this idea! I delve into YouTube playlists to try and get this with spoken word poetry...sometimes it's great, sometimes it's a miss. I'm going to be adding a recommendations newsletter to The Poetry Nook, and I think I will keep the mixtape idea in mind when creating it.
I think the other thing about mixtapes is that they are physical items -- tangible, fragile, unique. They share these qualities with us, who also have bodies which may get damaged, go missing; certainly age.
This contact with, and awareness of, the passing of time is part of what makes both mixtapes and poetry feel so vital, I believe.
Mixtapes and poetry are a promise that something of us might live beyond us, like a tiny message in a bottle -- that there might be a world out there that we could speak to, that would speak back to us.
I am actually trying to either make an actual physical tape or use the recording podcast app on Substack. Is a weekly recording of a poem something that may interest you? Each poem would be dedicated to a reader of The Beauty of Things. My only limitation is copyright. I would have to use public domain poems (like anything prior to 1923).
It's just the list of poems, but I can see if I can provide you links. There is a bit of the whole "ethics of sharing poetry" issue... because a lot of poems are covered under copyright. I would not be able to record me saying them, for example, without getting into trouble.
See my comment from today. It was in the wrong place:
Ooooh! Yes! A weekly poem sounds great. I am also putting together a biweekly poetry group for sharing our work, getting feedback, and just generally geeking out about poetry. Would you be interested?
I love the mix tape analogy. For me Facebook friends who share poetry are definitely like friends who played music for me or gave me mix tapes. When I was in college one of my high school friends, Shanti, used to send me mix tapes. Sadly, I've since lost touch with her, but I still remember driving late at night listening to her tapes.I didn't love all of the songs, but even the ones I initially didn't like much grew on me over time and became beloved for her sake. And I think poetry is the same. I don't always love a poem the first few times I read it, but sometimes you come back to it after years and find that it's grown on you. I like cultivating poetry conversations and poetry exchanges so that I get a constant influx of new poems to learn to love.
Buying a poetry collection is intimidating. They're not cheap and what if I don't actually like the poems? But reading one shared poem online is like a track on a mix tape, it's not a huge commitment. And if over time I start to recognize a poet's name as someone I've enjoyed in the past, if certain poems keep coming up over and over again, then eventually I get curious and maybe google to see if I can find other poems by them. Maybe I'll bop over to You Tube to see if I can't find some recordings of poetry readings or interviews. And then if I still like what I'm seeing I'll get a book from the library. Or occasionally I'll boldly buy it. Usually I only buy poetry from poets I know I like or if I'm buying a physical copy in a store and can flip through it first.
But I also love getting to know my friends' tastes. I love it when I stumble on new poems and new poets that help me to understand my friends from a different point of view.
Honestly, most of the anthologies I have were given to me or I borrowed from the library first and then wanted to write in. I don't like buying books unless I really have to.
Sorry you are not friends with Shanti anymore, but my Holly is the same way. I lost touch after college but had played her tape for years. I may even have it somewhere. She was big on They Might Be Giants.
And I am always interested in knowing what my friends are reading (and writing) so I have been very open to everything they suggest. I look for the common thread between myself and my friend that may run like a stitch through poem. I think of all the people I know though, your taste is the most similar to mine of all my poetry friends. Probably because we are both Catholic and have five kids in the same age range. We are also almost exactly the same age and so very much in the same season of life.
As an aside, my husband made me a CD in college that was an I-love-you-stop-worrying-about-finals CD. I love and enjoy poetry, but most of the poets I read are not contemporary. I still think it Carl Sandburg as a new poet. I would appreciate newer recommendations. Do you know of any Catholic poets who are living?
Trying to find Clarify in writing... I know the Daily Poem had done the poem a while ago but I can't find the link. It is a great poem.
Sarah Cortez is also a Catholic poet who is alive and well. A lot of her best poems have to do with law enforcement since she is also a cop. You can find them here.
I love that mixed CD. My husband has one from 1996-98 that is still in his car and I listened to it a couple of weeks ago when I borrowed his ride.
Yes, there are many good Catholic poets who are very much alive! Dana Gioia is one. I will come up with recommendations shortly.
In the meantime you would probably love this poetry anthology edited by Micah Mattix (whom I reference in the post) and my Catholic poet friend Sally Thomas. Many Catholics but not all Catholics in the book.
I can so relate to mixtapes and all of the 80's and 90's references! IAlso a couple of years ago I wrote a poem about how jealous I am of music.....I mean who remembers the lines of a poem as easily as they do the lyrics of songs? It makes me jealous of song writers (at least decent lyricists).
This is a great response to the question (although I would have cleaned up my grammar had I known others would be reading the text:) You are such a never-ending source of amazing thought and inspiration.
I feel like poems have to hit the right people with the right words at the right time. It's not easy to predict that but I will keep trying.
Well, the thing about songs is that they are in form, and they very often have repeated choruses. It makes them easier to remember. They are easier to remember because their lyrics are often more basic (and vapid IMO). I think the rise of the free verse and experimental poems made poetry less memorable. You took away all the tools for memory to hold--rhyme, meter, etc. Music will have all that built into it.
I was not going to call you out! You could have said, "That friend of yours..." LOL Thank you for being such a great inspiration!
And yes, poems need to hit people at the right time... which is why a friend who knows what season you are in is a better guide than some random podcast which is curated for the masses but not for you personally. And if you have someone you trust as a person give you a recommendation you are more likely to give that poem repeated readings as opposed to dismissing it the first go around if you don't immediately get it.
Thank you so much for the compliment. So glad we are on the same wavelength with Stallings. She is amazing. There is one poem I am sorta dying to write about of yours... the one inspired by Richard Wilbur's Love Calls Us to the Things of This World.
"American poetry now belongs to a subculture. No longer part of the mainstream of artistic and intellectual life, it has become the specialized occupation of a relatively small and isolated group." I think about this a lot, and am myself a poet who also often trades in confusion, unreason, lack of clarity, syntactical inversion/invention, and while I lament that this is so specialized I also can't deny that it is intensely personal. when I teach classes, I've come to a point where just making it a deeply human space in the midst of the (what many people would be appalled if I name it) violence of the educational institution, which I think is related to what you're saying here. the art of poetry as an act of humanization, or of radical acceptance of our beings at any given time. a place to rest and make community.
also so few people are interested in meter and I'm such a nerd, I have so many thoughts.
Wow. I am glad you found this post and commented. What classes do you teach? What are your students’ age ranges?
I'm at CSU in Fort Collins. the intermediate poetry classroom usually starts with second-years and up, and there are non-traditional students that sometimes enter the sphere. I teach rhetoric/research, of course, but also some poetry/literature courses. I co-designed and sometimes co-teach the Intermediate workshop online, as well as in person, usually at least one semester and the summer.
My name rhymes with major. And wife also rhymes with knife. My first thought after reading Wife, it was so sharp. I actually said that about needing a wife to my husband.
Age and Wife.
I am finally beginning to read the poems from my list.
How did you know? I have read Ag an
Also how do you pronounce your last name?
Great!
That would be terrific. I have read a few poems using substack. Windhover is one of them.
Ooooh! Yes! A weekly poem sounds great. I am also putting together a biweekly poetry group for sharing our work, getting feedback, and just generally geeking out about poetry. Would you be interested?
Yes, I would be interested. I am one right now that meets once a month with six other poets. I think 5 poets thereabouts is a good number. Once or twice a month is doable. Would you meet over Zoom?
Yes. I will put together a list. I would like to have someone choose a poem to read and discuss each meeting as a way to see how the poet wrote it to make it effective. Some are novices and need learn the craft and the tools. This would be at the beginning of each group. Then two members can share their poems for discussion. How does that sound?
I love this idea! I delve into YouTube playlists to try and get this with spoken word poetry...sometimes it's great, sometimes it's a miss. I'm going to be adding a recommendations newsletter to The Poetry Nook, and I think I will keep the mixtape idea in mind when creating it.
“I found another boy.” ⚡️💖
I think the other thing about mixtapes is that they are physical items -- tangible, fragile, unique. They share these qualities with us, who also have bodies which may get damaged, go missing; certainly age.
This contact with, and awareness of, the passing of time is part of what makes both mixtapes and poetry feel so vital, I believe.
Mixtapes and poetry are a promise that something of us might live beyond us, like a tiny message in a bottle -- that there might be a world out there that we could speak to, that would speak back to us.
Ok, thanks. I will look for them.
Where do I find the tape?
I am actually trying to either make an actual physical tape or use the recording podcast app on Substack. Is a weekly recording of a poem something that may interest you? Each poem would be dedicated to a reader of The Beauty of Things. My only limitation is copyright. I would have to use public domain poems (like anything prior to 1923).
It's just the list of poems, but I can see if I can provide you links. There is a bit of the whole "ethics of sharing poetry" issue... because a lot of poems are covered under copyright. I would not be able to record me saying them, for example, without getting into trouble.
See my comment from today. It was in the wrong place:
Ooooh! Yes! A weekly poem sounds great. I am also putting together a biweekly poetry group for sharing our work, getting feedback, and just generally geeking out about poetry. Would you be interested?
I love the mix tape analogy. For me Facebook friends who share poetry are definitely like friends who played music for me or gave me mix tapes. When I was in college one of my high school friends, Shanti, used to send me mix tapes. Sadly, I've since lost touch with her, but I still remember driving late at night listening to her tapes.I didn't love all of the songs, but even the ones I initially didn't like much grew on me over time and became beloved for her sake. And I think poetry is the same. I don't always love a poem the first few times I read it, but sometimes you come back to it after years and find that it's grown on you. I like cultivating poetry conversations and poetry exchanges so that I get a constant influx of new poems to learn to love.
Buying a poetry collection is intimidating. They're not cheap and what if I don't actually like the poems? But reading one shared poem online is like a track on a mix tape, it's not a huge commitment. And if over time I start to recognize a poet's name as someone I've enjoyed in the past, if certain poems keep coming up over and over again, then eventually I get curious and maybe google to see if I can find other poems by them. Maybe I'll bop over to You Tube to see if I can't find some recordings of poetry readings or interviews. And then if I still like what I'm seeing I'll get a book from the library. Or occasionally I'll boldly buy it. Usually I only buy poetry from poets I know I like or if I'm buying a physical copy in a store and can flip through it first.
But I also love getting to know my friends' tastes. I love it when I stumble on new poems and new poets that help me to understand my friends from a different point of view.
Honestly, most of the anthologies I have were given to me or I borrowed from the library first and then wanted to write in. I don't like buying books unless I really have to.
Sorry you are not friends with Shanti anymore, but my Holly is the same way. I lost touch after college but had played her tape for years. I may even have it somewhere. She was big on They Might Be Giants.
And I am always interested in knowing what my friends are reading (and writing) so I have been very open to everything they suggest. I look for the common thread between myself and my friend that may run like a stitch through poem. I think of all the people I know though, your taste is the most similar to mine of all my poetry friends. Probably because we are both Catholic and have five kids in the same age range. We are also almost exactly the same age and so very much in the same season of life.
Please. Whatever you want!
Ann’s Mixtape
“Meanwhile the World Goes On…”
Billy Collins “Introduction to Poetry”
Mary Oliver “Wild Geese”
Kay Ryan “Age” (can’t find a copy online though! -- wonderful poem for birthdays)
Ada Limon “Wife”
Jane Kenyon “Otherwise”
Wisława Szymborska “The Courtesy of the Blind”
Anna Akhmatova “Lot's Wife”
Ada Limon “Instructions for Not Giving Up”
Side A
Billy Collins “Introduction to Poetry”
Mary Oliver “Wild Geese”
Kay Ryan “Age” (can’t find a copy online though! -- wonderful poem for birthdays)
Ada Limon “Wife”
Side B
Jane Kenyon “Otherwise”
Wisława Szymborska “The Courtesy of the Blind”
Anna Akhmatova “Lot's Wife”
Ada Limon “Instructions for Not Giving Up”
Actually I found it... fortunately I have committed the poem to memory so I just typed in one of the lines and the Interwebs finally spat it out!
https://voetica.com/voetica.php?collection=2&poet=854&poem=7924#:~:text=As%20some%20people%20age%20they,it%2C%20like%20letting%20in%20heaven.
Hurrah! I have a book of Mary Oliver's and another of Jane Kenyon. The others are new.
And actually if to scroll to Jennifer’s mixtape I think you will like those selections as well. I have her modern Catholics.
The Summer Day and Wild Geese are two of Mary Oliver’s most famous poems.
Check out this excellent RARE interview with Oliver:
https://onbeing.org/programs/mary-oliver-i-got-saved-by-the-beauty-of-the-world/
She is very private so this is wonderful. I love the unedited version.
As an aside, my husband made me a CD in college that was an I-love-you-stop-worrying-about-finals CD. I love and enjoy poetry, but most of the poets I read are not contemporary. I still think it Carl Sandburg as a new poet. I would appreciate newer recommendations. Do you know of any Catholic poets who are living?
Jennifer’s Mixtape
“The Modern Catholic Sampler”
Side A:
Dana Gioia “Words”
Sally Thomas “Change Ringing”
Shane McCrae “The Hastily Assembled Angel Also Sustains the World”
Angela Alaimo O'Donnell “For Shadowment: Villanelle for the Solstice”
Side B:
James Matthew Wilson “Saint Thomas and the Forbidden Birds”
Jane Greer "Catherine of Siena to Her Confessor"
Timothy Murphy “Mentor”
Elizabeth Jennings “Clarify”
All but Timothy Murphy and Elizabeth Jennings are living. Murphy died a few years ago, but he is an excellent poet.
Jane Greer's poem you can find here:
https://amethystmagazine.org/2021/04/30/catherine-of-siena-to-her-confessor-a-poem-by-jane-greer/?fbclid=IwAR1JugCFNNX6mY-e2qZVbP84YGzKoUgMNBL33SC8W6ZXV-cF-82UYs-Adzw
Trying to find Clarify in writing... I know the Daily Poem had done the poem a while ago but I can't find the link. It is a great poem.
Sarah Cortez is also a Catholic poet who is alive and well. A lot of her best poems have to do with law enforcement since she is also a cop. You can find them here.
Thank you so much! I look forward to getting to know some new poets.
I am working on your mixtape! Stay tuned!
I love that mixed CD. My husband has one from 1996-98 that is still in his car and I listened to it a couple of weeks ago when I borrowed his ride.
Yes, there are many good Catholic poets who are very much alive! Dana Gioia is one. I will come up with recommendations shortly.
In the meantime you would probably love this poetry anthology edited by Micah Mattix (whom I reference in the post) and my Catholic poet friend Sally Thomas. Many Catholics but not all Catholics in the book.
Christian Poetry in America Since 1940: An Anthology https://a.co/d/iyQFIxW
Jane Greer is an excellent contemporary Catholic poet. Check out her collection, Love Like a Conflagration.
Yes, I was going to include Jane Greer in a couple of "Mixtape" lists for people. She should be better known than she is! She and Marly Youmans.
I do have a copy of Sally Thomas’ Motherland. This is a good reminder that I need to pick it up and read it!
I love her opening poem. Such a good one for mothers in the throes of young parenthood.
I can so relate to mixtapes and all of the 80's and 90's references! IAlso a couple of years ago I wrote a poem about how jealous I am of music.....I mean who remembers the lines of a poem as easily as they do the lyrics of songs? It makes me jealous of song writers (at least decent lyricists).
This is a great response to the question (although I would have cleaned up my grammar had I known others would be reading the text:) You are such a never-ending source of amazing thought and inspiration.
I feel like poems have to hit the right people with the right words at the right time. It's not easy to predict that but I will keep trying.
Well, the thing about songs is that they are in form, and they very often have repeated choruses. It makes them easier to remember. They are easier to remember because their lyrics are often more basic (and vapid IMO). I think the rise of the free verse and experimental poems made poetry less memorable. You took away all the tools for memory to hold--rhyme, meter, etc. Music will have all that built into it.
I was not going to call you out! You could have said, "That friend of yours..." LOL Thank you for being such a great inspiration!
And yes, poems need to hit people at the right time... which is why a friend who knows what season you are in is a better guide than some random podcast which is curated for the masses but not for you personally. And if you have someone you trust as a person give you a recommendation you are more likely to give that poem repeated readings as opposed to dismissing it the first go around if you don't immediately get it.
This is such a great concept! And thanks for including me among your favorites. A.E. Stallings is also one of my favorites.
Thank you so much for the compliment. So glad we are on the same wavelength with Stallings. She is amazing. There is one poem I am sorta dying to write about of yours... the one inspired by Richard Wilbur's Love Calls Us to the Things of This World.