Gino's Ghazal Blog

Timely Seasoned Poetry

My own sense is that time and season are essential to poetry. We're nearly on the celebration of a new year's beginning, according to the Western calendar, at least. In The Wall Street Journal, Simon Winchester has a provocative reflection on the timing of that celebration. 

Writer vs Reader

Since my retirement, I've been reading a lot of Kierkegaard. "Re-reading" would be more accurate; I began reading Kierkegaard over 50 years ago when an Uncle, a Methodist minister, became concerned that I was reading Nietzsche. The local Methodist minister gave me Purity of Heart Is To Will One Thing; since that I've read Kierkegaard regularly.

The point here is a comment Kierkegaard makes in Concluding Unscientific Postscript and how that comment relates to the issue of the writer's relationship to the reader through the text. Here's the comment:

I have always conceived of the author as a man who knows something more, or knows something otherwise, than the reader; that is the reason he is an author, and otherwise he has no reason to be one. But it has never occurred to me to think of the author as a supplicant, a beggar knocking at the door of the reading public, a peddler who with the aid of a devil of a ready tongue and a little fancy gold stuff on the cover, which quite catches the eyes of the daughters of the family, succeeds in foisting his books upon them.

I trust you'll overlook the sexist attitude of a Dane writing over 150 years ago. There are other significant social and technological differences, but the core of this comment raises an important issue.

The issue is the writer's relationship with the reader, or, perhaps, the writer's intentions toward the reader (via the text). Does the writer — does the poet — cater to the reader, making it as easy as possible for the reader to grasp the text? Or does the writer ignore the reader and write concerned only with her intentions and satisfactions? Perhaps you have experienced the kind of writer's group in which someone is always concerned whether a poem will confuse or offend the reader. Should the reader's response be the poet's main concern?

For much of my teaching career, I used reader response theory in my courses. Students found this approach to be relief from the standard academic "I'm the teacher, and I tell you what this poem means" approach. The question Kierkegaard raises, though, is about the writer's responsibility, or lack thereof, to the reader. Poetry is an especially difficult case, therefore, a good one to consider. Should the poet be primarily concerned with difficulties the reader might have? Should the poet completely ignore the reader?

Poets do have, or hope to have, readers. There is a spectrum of concern, from total immersion in the poet's concerns to a total effort to anticipate and cater to the reader's responses. Which is best? Which do you think is best? This topic will likely be revisited in future posts.

What I Learned and From Whom

I taught writing and literature courses for 42 years. Teachers in higher education receive little to no training in how to teach. That's good, actually. While a novice university teacher may be relying on a year or two as a teaching assistant, at least the cumbersome bureaucracy of public education hasn't tampered with the novice's common sense. (That's a whole other topic that I probably will never take up here.)

I was a graduate teaching assistant for a year and summer at Emporia State University. My mentors there, Bill Elkins and J. D. Lester, taught me a lot. In the summer, they supervised a course in composition for students with low test scores. There were three of us GTAs and the two faculty members. A main thing I learned from that experience was confidence in my ability to design assignments and grade them well.

In the remainder of this post, I will briefly three teachers who taught me some important lessons about teaching, even though their focus was elsewhere.

Cliff Wood, a poet and editor, taught at the College of Emporia (Kansas) during my five-semester stay there. Cliff modeled openness and enthusiasm for me. For instance, he assigned students in a modern poetry class to select a poem and present an interpretation to the class. I chose Wallace Stevens' "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird." My interpretation was an abstract expressionist painting; I did discuss it in relation to the poem. Cliff accepted my "interpretation," an example to me of allowing students latitude in responding to assignments.

After College of Emporia, I attended Emporia State University, which actually awarded me degrees. I received Bachelor of Arts degrees in both English and Art. One of the art teachers was Rex Hall, from whom I took a painting class. Rex had students working at easels in a studio. During our class time, he walked around, observed students' work and interacted with them. He allowed each of us to pursue our own idea -- landscape, abstraction, figure, still life, and medium -- oils, water-color, collage. What I learned about teaching a creative art was: allow students to follow their intuitions but interact with them, and even interfere. Rex would often add a daub of paint to a painting for the student to respond to. I tried to emulate the classroom/studio format in my creative writing classes, having students write in class while I observed and interacted.

The last teacher about teaching I want to acknowledge here wasn't in a university at all. Scott Linn taught taekwondo 25 years ago. He was an effective teacher, and, while I'm sure he had no awareness of teaching me about teaching, he did. To learn taekwondo, one must master the moves and the forms that combine them. There is a very specific goal, a desired outcome. Scott was open, clear, and responsive to students' individual abilities and limitations. He modeled the moves and forms very well, had a good sense of humor, and a friendly presence. I took unintended lessons from him about teaching that enriched my own courses.

On Not Losing Track

Long ago, in another city in another state, I began writing poetry seriously and seeking to publish it. Okay, you say, then the big issue was getting editors to accept my poems. That is a biggie, of course, but only part of the process, and a part that depends on other things, such as filing and record-keeping.

Keeping records then, almost fifty years ago, and now, in another century in another millennium, are two different things. You probably won't be surprised to find that the old way worked better for me. Here are the essentials of that process:

• write something that might resemble a poem
• revise that something into resembling a poem more closely
• type up the best draft
• revise the best draft
• make a "final" draft and file it

Doing these things gave me a file of more-or-less poems that I could submit to editors. What editors where? Here's that process:

• research poetry publications and their editors
• select a publication to submit some of my poems to
• send off the poems
• get the editor's response (most probable response: rejection; sometimes, acceptance)
• do more research and submit more poems

I did mention record-keeping. Until I started using computers, I used file-folders, notebooks, and index cards to file final drafts and to track places to submit poems, submissions, and the responses to submissions. Most of those records still exist, in a box in storage somewhere. Several years ago, I wrote another blog post about this process.

I've had more trouble with tracking drafts and keeping records on a computer than I ever had with hard-copy files and notebooks. Short poems like haiku are especially hard for me to know (1) where they are and (2) what has happened with them.

I still use notebooks to write first drafts, but I type up subsequent drafts on a computer. Just this month, I've decided to record final drafts of short poems, and records of submitting them, in an actual physical notebook rather than casting them into the sectors of a hard-drive.

Here's a question to end with: If you write poetry, how do you keep track of final drafts and their records of submission? Someone has to have some good ideas out there.

A Life Review

When one dies, the heirs sort through the deceased's physical possessions, deciding how to dispose of them. Sometimes there'a bonfire of what the survivors see as useless, although there has to be some reason the deceased hung on to that stuff. Going through someone's possessions after their death is an impromptu review of the life that has ended.

I'm just concluding that kind of life review of my career at Missouri University of Science & Technology. (It was the University of Missouri at Rolla when I came here.) Even though I have given away and traded off many books over the years, there were still more than a dozen sizable boxes in my office. I had two four-drawer filing cabinets and desk full of files and papers of various sorts. (Not to mention oddments of computer cables and several dollar bills I found in envelopes. I have no idea where that money came from.)

I packed eight boxes to go to the university archives. They contain files for courses, files for committees and task forces I worked on, files of department activities, a large amount of correspondence, and various manuscripts that I don't expect to work on again. There were some photographs of me and of a visiting poet or two. I was poetry editor for the journal, Christianity and Literature, from 1975 - 1983. That activity accounts for a lot of the correspondence, and the archives will also include the issues for which I was poetry editor.

I offered books to colleagues, family, and students. Several people took a number of books, or there would be two or three more boxes full of them. I still have some books and desktop items to pick up. Then I will turn in my keys.

All of this sorting and packing was a life review by me of myself. That was unexpected, but I got a view of some important aspects of my life that I hadn't had before. I don't really identify with that man who was known as Eugene Warren until 1988. He seems like a close friend from the past, not me myself. Overall, this process was encouraging. There were some disappointments, but I was already aware of them. What had faded out of memory was the accomplishments. Reviewing them gives me heart as I enter this new phase of my life.

How Not to Get Your Poems Published

Every aspiring poet, many perspiring poets, and perhaps a few expiring ones as well, should know how not to get one's poems published. As we all know, achieving publication is pretty easy: there is an abundance of eager editors ready to accept and publish almost any verse that comes in in postal or electronic mail. Here is how to get that coveted rejection notice, or, even better, a totally silent non-response to your submitted poems.

• Send any poems to any publication you have contact information for. If you have a postal or electronic address, fire off some poems. Don't bother to look at the journal to find out the kind of poems it has published. After all, you wouldn't want to appear to cater to the editor.
• Absolutely do not search out editorial guidelines for submission. Editors like to list the number of poems to be sent, the type of poem they're interested in, the schedule by which the editor wants to receive submissions. Only an amateur, lacking in self-confidence, would conform to such editorial whims.
• Send a lot of poems each time you submit. Let an editor say, "Send no more than six poems." Send thirty, forty, one hundred. How presumptuous of the editor to think that he or she can judge your poems on such slight samples.
• Do not include any request to the editor that he or she read your poems. Don't  give the editor the satisfaction of your saying why you are sending these poems. If you show any courtesy in your correspondence, the editor will quickly realize that you are an inexperienced novice to be completely ignored.
• In contrast to the point above, send a long letter with your submission. Explain why you wrote each poem, what it means, what its specific beauties are, and demand that the editor respond by telling you how great your poetry is (and by extension, how great you are).

Follow these simple points, and surely you will not be embarrassed by having any of your poems actually published. After all, aren't the truest geniuses those whom no one has heard of?

Nominated for the Rhysling Award

J. E. Stanley, a regular contributor to The Ghazal Page, has a ghazal nominated for the Rhysling Award. The ghazal was his contribution to the Moon Radif Challenge Issue. The ghazal is "Lunaticus (in D Minor)." The Rhysling Award is sponsored annually by the Science Fiction Poetry Association. If you go to the SFPA site, you can find information on the Rhyslings, their journal, Star*Line, and other topics. I recommend a visit.

Jim Stanley tells me that Joshua Gage, another contributor to the Ghazal Page has three poems nominated for the Rhysling this year. He and Josh are both members of the Cleveland Speculators. Following this link will take you to a 2008 bibliography of members' publications. You'll see that both Josh and Jim were very active in 2008.

Congratulations to both poets on their nominations for the Rhysling Award.

September Songs

The September issue of The Ghazal Page is now online. I hope that you will not only read it, but enjoy at least some of the six poems presented. There's a stronger thematic thread than sometimes: loss, aging, time, and dancing as a way of transcending these things.

If you have responses to any of the poems or about the issue as a whole (or the Editor's Comments), and you'd like to share your responses, please submit them as a comment to this post.

If you are writing ghazals, don't overlook the sugar radif challenge. Keep my bowl full and my cubes stacked high!

What a Strange Spring

I chose 'The Poet's Life" as the category for this post, but it's pretty much my life, with recent experiences I don't wish on anyone.

There is no May issue of The Ghazal Page yet for reasons sketched out below. I hope to do a May/June double issue in the next few weeks.

What happened? Starting around March 25, I've been seriously ill, hospitalized for five with pneumonia, and nearly two weeks with heart failure, resulting in surgery. I'm home now, can do some work but don't yet have access to me computer with all the Ghazal Page material.

So that's the very brief version. I will follow through on commitments to publish ghazals and respond to submissions as soon as I can.

May you all be well.

Tornadoes & Cricket

It's been too long since I posted here. Now that we're past the first of the year, and I'm (almost!) ready to begin a new semester, perhaps I can post more regularly and more frequently.

A week ago, we had unusually warm weather here. My wife and I went to southern Kansas and northern Oklahoma to visit family and friends. It was shirt-sleeve weather. Some days before, we had some snow and ice. Right now, the weather is more seasonable.

We walked on the Oklahoma State University campus and enjoyed watching an informal cricket game played by a group of Indian students. Like sandlot baseball, the game was clearly more for fun than for serious competition.

a pickup cricket game
on a warm Saturday in winter:
the wicket a domed lid
from a trash can
"Walla! Walla!

(I think I caught the encouraging cheer correctly.)

We returned to the Ozarks on Sunday. Monday night we were under tornado warnings from around 5:00 PM until after midnight. The sirens blew frequently after about 10:00 PM. The only shelter we have is a small closet under a stairway. Every time the sirens sounded, Rose, the dog, and I went into the closet. Our house dates back to the American Civil War — 145 years. Union cavalry officers were billeted in our house back then.

taking shelter
in an old closet
we breath dust
from an officer's coat

The storms extended from Tulsa, Oklahoma to Rolla, Missouri, a distance of about 290 miles. We didn't suffer any damage, but further southwest there was serious property damage and a few deaths. We listened to a radio station from Camdenton, Missouri. The announcer talked on the telephone with several trained weather spotters: Baily, Meatman, Donny, Router, Rev are the names I remember. These folks called in from various locations, including interstate overpasses from which they could see the storms roaring up Interstate 44.